Julianne seemed aware of it too. Her body had stiffened and she was pivoting her head as if straining to see in the dark.
“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” he whispered. “You’ll see so much more of it than most. More than anyone else alive. I’ll take you farther, I promise. The tours they ran, those were like making people pay admission to admire a mansion’s front porch but never letting them get inside the door. I’m so excited to show someone else what lies beyond. Nobody has seen these places but me, do you understand that? And she was mine. She was going to be mine.”
His own whispers returned to him in a soft echo and he felt a pang of regret, thinking of all that this would cost him.
“What’s done is done,” he said, and then he pulled his helmet free from his pack and put it on and turned the headlamp beam to red, the night-vision setting. A crimson glow covered Julianne’s face. He slipped his knife out and opened the blade, and her eyes went a little wide but still she did not resist. Not once had she made a move to run or fight him. She had demonstrated nothing but trust in a situation where he had expected no trust. It took courage, but he understood the manipulation in the technique. She was trying to create a sense of partnership so that he might let down his guard.
He leaned as close to her as he could, nose to nose, his eyes on hers, her face awash with red light, their exhaled breath creating mingling tendrils of fog.
“I’m giving her up for the truth,” he said. “No one will ever understand what that means. No one but her. I had hope for you, even for Novak. Misplaced hope. But we’re still here. And the lie you told me once will need to become the truth now. Do you understand me? Do you understand what that means?”
She nodded.
He moved her hair away from her neck gingerly and brought the blade up against her flesh and made a soft “Now, now,” like a parent removing a splinter from a child’s finger, as he sliced through the tape. He peeled it loose and her lips parted but she didn’t speak. She just breathed. Her breath fogged in the red light like bloody vapors.
“I told you that I would show you everything I could,” he said. “And I do not tell lies, Julianne. I do not tell lies. For a long time, I thought that you did not either.”
“I want to help you,” she said.
Ridley smiled. “Sure you do. And now you have your chance. We’re here for the truth. Your job is to help me remember. Can you do that? I have faith in your abilities, if not in your integrity.”
She gave an unsteady nod. None of her usual confidence. Trapdoor could do that to you. Trapdoor could turn the brave to weak in a flash.
He put the knife back in his pocket and retrieved the sapphire necklace and pressed it into Julianne’s palm. He held her hand tightly, the stone between them.
“That was around Sarah Martin’s neck,” he said. “Then it was in my hand. I want to know how that happened. That’s your job. That’s your life.”
54
Ridley’s truck was pulled off the road just in front of Trapdoor.
Mark parked behind it. His headlights caught the rear window and showed an empty interior. When he cut the engine he felt as if he could hear his own heartbeat. He got out of the car and approached the truck. There was no one inside, and the dusting of snow across the hood and windshield told him that it had been parked here for a while. He’d been on the phone with Danielle MacAlister not five minutes ago. The truck had been here longer than that.
He started to walk around the gate and then hesitated, turned, and went back to his car. Opened the door and found the map he’d peeled off the wall of Danielle’s basement, the last map Ridley had turned over to the MacAlister family. Folded it and put it in his pocket.
“You won’t need to go inside,” he said aloud. The reassurance felt necessary. His mouth was dry just thinking of the place. Something in the stillness of the night whispered otherwise, though, whispered that Ridley hadn’t left his door wide open and his truck here because he intended to skip stones over the frozen creek.
Twin tracks of footprints leading away from the truck said that he hadn’t come alone either.
Mark thought about calling Blankenship. But what was there to report? The appearance of trespassing, which Mark was about to do himself? He’d come here to confront Danielle, not pursue Ridley. Suddenly both were in play.
He followed the tracks away from Ridley’s truck. The size difference was apparent. Ridley was traveling with a woman or a child.
Julianne?
Mark wished for a gun.
The tracks led along the driveway but behind the trees, as if whoever left them had wanted to approach unseen. They led all the way up to the garage. Mark was thirty feet from the base of the exterior stairs when he saw the blood.
There were vivid splashes of red on each riser of the steps and on down into the yard. There the footprints continued but the blood died out, washed clean by the snow. Two sets of tracks led to the garage. Three led away. And one of them had left bloodstains. That set of tracks came from the biggest footprints.
Cecil went after them, Mark thought. Ridley roughed him up and probably got what he came for, but Cecil went after them.
He followed the tracks as far as the blood went, then stopped and stared ahead. The frozen creek was lost to shadows but the footbridge and the cave entrance were illuminated with floodlights. He could see a figure on the footbridge, descending toward the cave. Cecil Buckner. Mark shouted at him, but Cecil didn’t hear; he stepped through the open door and vanished. It was not a good sign that the door was open, and Cecil didn’t appear to be the one who’d unlocked it. Ridley had gotten in ahead of him.
Trapdoor was open for visitors once more.
Mark glanced up at the big house, where even more lights were on and Danielle’s car was parked in front. Did she have any idea what was happening here? Or was she waiting, clueless, as her bloodied caretaker staggered after Ridley Barnes into the cave? Mark took out his phone and called her as he doubled back toward the drive. Five rings, voice mail.
He came out of the woods beside the garage, intending to run up to the big house and tell Danielle to call the police just as she’d threatened to, when something moved in his peripheral vision and he pivoted to look.
Motion again, and this time he saw it clearly — a scarlet bead fell from the top of the stairs and hit the snow below. Another fell, and then another. Mark lifted his head to look at the apartment. From this angle, he saw that the door was ajar and the wood in the center of it was splintered, puckered with small holes and jagged fragments.
Numbness crawled up his spine and spread along the back of his skull.
Too much blood. That is too much blood.
He went up the steps slowly, taking care to avoid the blood, which grew thicker with each riser. Now he could see a stream of it working through the cracked-open doorway. He felt just as he had when he’d opened the hidden door in Ridley’s house, certain of the horrors that waited. This time, though, he wasn’t going to be rewarded with maps.
He pushed the door open, which allowed more blood to rush out and pool against his boots, and he saw what remained of Danielle MacAlister.
She lay on her back in the center of the floor, close to the door. She hadn’t been standing that close to it when she’d died, though. The impact had blown her back several feet. It was a shotgun wound. Twelve-gauge at least. Maybe a ten. Fired at close range, the load heavy enough to obliterate most of her left side and shoulder and rip a hole through her throat. Her right hand was curled toward her throat, as if she’d tried to close the wound.