A saw.
He wore yellow gloves. They were covered up to the forearms with blood.
It was the ritual, just like Max had described. The men in front of him were cutting up a victim and feeding it through the hole in the structure.
A cry escaped Jack’s throat. Both men stood and looked in his direction but Jack didn’t care. It wasn’t the blood on the man’s gloves made him cry out. It was a flash of color on the ground. Yellow. No, not yellow. Blonde. Blonde hair.
Oh God. It’s Sarah.
The men were cutting up his little girl with a saw.
Stuffing her body piece by piece through that little hole in the rock.
The world closed in around him. His periphery blacked out and he was looking through a tunnel. At the end of this tunnel stood the objects of his rage. Scott Moran and Jim Butcher, both frozen in place by this sudden intrusion from the outside world.
Without thinking, Jack crawled to his feet and ran screaming at the two men. He slowed enough to steady his gun. The first shot ricocheted off the rock structure behind Butcher. The second blew up a puff of dust ten feet in front of him.
Butcher stood dumbly in the line of fire, as if his brain couldn’t quite process Jack’s appearance. He stood with his mouth hanging open at the charging intruder.
Jack closed the distance fast. Nothing registered in his brain except his need to kill the men in front of him. The need to avenge his little girl’s death.
His third shot hit its mark. The slug tore into Butcher’s chest. The next one caught him in the throat and his neck erupted in a gurgle of blood.
Still Jack charged forward, shifting his fire to Moran. The smaller man had reacted faster than Butcher and was crawling on the rock floor away from the spray of bullets. Jack was merciless. He emptied his weapon into the man. Then he was on top of him, beating Moran’s face with the gun while blood and bits a flesh sprayed over his chest and face.
Slowly, cautiously, sanity climbed back into Jack’s mind. Exhausted, he gave into it and slid off Scott Moran’s disfigured body. He didn’t want to look at what was left of Sarah, but he knew he had to. Maybe there was some way to restore dignity to her body. A few words of prayer before they were blown up together in this underground hell.
He dried the tears that clouded his vision and then turned to look at his poor, little girl.
A sob wrenched out from his body as he realized the impossible.
It wasn’t her. The body was too large. It was a young woman. Maybe a teenager. The legs were gone but the torso was there. And the face. Covered with a mop of blonde hair.
Jack grimaced as he looked over the girl’s body. Dark sores covered most of the pale white skin. Gingerly, he reached out and pushed the hair off her face. Her eyes bulged out as if she were still capable of being shocked. A wet trickle of blood ran from her nose and covered her lips.
Lonetree slid into a crouching position beside him. “You O.K?” His gun was drawn and his eyes darted back and forth. He looked down at the bodies and then at Jack. “Who’s the girl?”
Jack recognized her. The last time he had seen her was in a photo. She had been younger then, but not by more than a few years. In the photo, she had been standing next to her horse. Smiling. Happy to be alive.
“It’s his daughter. The bastard killed his own daughter.”
“C’mon,” Lonetree said. “We have to get out of the light.”
They both tensed at a sudden noise next to them. Like someone crawling over loose rocks. Lonetree started to move away, but Jack reached out and stopped him. The sound came again, closer this time. He turned in the direction of the noise. It took another movement before it registered where the sound was coming from.
Both of them stared toward the dark hole in the stone structure. Something was inside. And it was moving toward them.
EIGHTY
Huckley pushed Lauren to the ground and blocked out the light as he stood over her. He pointed over to one of the horse stalls and grunted for her to move. When she hesitated, Huckley brought the heel of his boot down on her hip, followed by another kick into her rib cage. The pain flooded through her. A voice came from further back in the barn. Janney. He was shouting at Huckley to take it easy.
She gasped for air. The last kick had knocked the breath from her. A dull pain spread from her side and radiated through her torso. A broken rib, she thought, maybe a couple of them.
The blows caught her off guard, not just because of the pain but because of the suddenness of the violence. She always knew she was in danger, especially since Huckley’s instructions to the young deputy and the last ten minutes of his leering glances at her, but she held out hope that her deal with Dr. Mansfield would save her. She wondered if the doctor had changed his mind. The optimism she had felt only minutes earlier — that she at least had bought her daughter some more time — was gone, kicked out of her by Huckley’s boot. Then again, Dr. Mansfield did say he couldn’t look weak in front of the other men. She clung to the hope this was all part of the act.
She played the supplicant and crawled across the wood floor on her hands and knees, sliding on the thin layer of straw that covered the barn floor. The pungent odor of animal feces and machine oil filled her nostrils. She ignored the smell and searched the floor for a weapon. A screwdriver. A nail. Anything sharp. But there was nothing.
Huckley kicked the bottom of her foot to get her moving faster. Once in the stall she turned and huddled against the wall as far from Huckley as she could get. He grinned and swaggered closer. She noticed for the first time that his belt was unbuckled. As he walked he slowly pulled at one end and slid the belt from his jeans. His tongue darted out from between his lips and flicked the air in a crude sexual gesture.
Huckley’s pale face leered over her as if breathing in her fear. He threaded the belt back through the buckle and cinched it together. The resulting noose went over Lauren’s head and Huckley pulled until it was snug on her throat. He stretched the other end of the belt high up on the wall where a thick nail stuck out from the wood. Forcing the head of the nail through the belt hole, it created a taut hangman’s noose that choked Lauren unless she stood up straight and motionless. Huckley pulled her hands behind her back and snapped handcuffs around her wrists. He stood back to inspect his work.
“Think you can handle this?” he said to the deputy.
Sorenson stepped into Lauren’s field of vision. His eyes tracked over her body, looking everywhere except her eyes. His interests were elsewhere.
“Yeah, I can take care of this.”
Dr. Mansfield walked by on the edge of her peripheral vision. She tried to turn to look in his direction but the noose around her neck tightened at the movement. She heard his voice though, “Grab the girl and let’s go.”
Huckley patted the deputy on the back and gave Lauren a wink. He wished he could sense her thoughts, sure that they would be a delicious mix of terror and hatred. But like always, the Source produced a background of white noise that made it impossible for him to sense anything else. He had to make do with the look on her face as opposed to the content of her mind. Not quite as satisfying, but still fun to look at. He walked over to Sarah, once again sedated after her earlier outburst, and hefted her off the floor. He carried her under his arm like she was a duffle bag, her arms hanging limply to the ground.
Lauren lunged toward her daughter only to have the belt noose tighten around her neck. She backed off, the belt cutting off her air supply. She wanted to scream at the three men as they boarded the elevator platform but she could only stomp the floor in frustration. She twisted her hands against the handcuffs until she felt the warm slickness of blood cover them.