Cam made sure there weren’t any creatures lurking in the deep muck, then stood still just to listen. The only sounds were a low hum from the lightbulb and the drip of water in one of the passageways leading out the back of the cavern.
“The lady or the tiger,” Jay-Kay’s E-mail had said. He remembered the story, only here there were three doors instead of two. Her meaning was clear: This was White Eye’s very private little zoo. Open the wrong door and you’d get the American version of the tiger. By implication, he should find Mary Ellen behind one of the doors. He called her name, quietly at first, then louder. To his surprise, his voice didn’t echo at all, and for a moment he imagined the roof of the cavern pressing down on him. He took the dogs into the first cage on the left and brought them right up to the heavy wooden door, hoping they could tell which door was safe. The door had four iron T-hinges and the boards were rough-cut oak, reinforced with steel straps. One long steel strap was hinged on one side of the door and wedged into a hasp on the other. The dogs would not approach the door, and they scampered back out of the cage as soon as he let go of their collars.
He banged on the door and called again. No response. He tried the same thing with the other two doors and got the same reaction. The dogs were useless. The animal smell in the cages was probably overwhelming to their sensitive noses, so he decided to get them out of there. They’d be equally useless if a mountain lion did appear, especially in a confined space. Slap, slap, chow time. He called them back to the ladder and then hauled them one by one up the ladder and released them outside the chicken coop. He checked his surroundings for watchers and took them to the truck. Then he went back down into the main cavern.
He squatted down on his heels and considered the wooden doors. Lady or the tiger? he thought. Decision time. But unfortunately, here there was no princess in the stands, twitching her hand to tell him which door to open. This place was probably where White Eye had kept and raised Night-Night, although, he told himself reluctantly, that shouldn’t have required three cages. But as best he could tell, none of the mess down here was fresh, and with White Eye in the ground, any other cats would have decamped a long time ago, assuming there were tunnels or passageways behind those doors that led outside somehow. The cages themselves were made of hog panels. They didn’t seem strong enough to contain a determined mountain lion, even though there were sides and tops to all three. But then if the cats had been tame, it might not have mattered. There were three bolts on each door, though-top, middle, and bottom-so maybe tame was a relative term.
He decided on the right-hand door, since that’s where he had ended up. He walked in and levered the big strap out of its hasp and swung it up and over behind the hinges. Then, his. 45 ready, he pulled the door open. It was very heavy, but it moved silently on well-greased iron hinges. The door was at least eight inches thick, which would certainly have muffled any response to his calls. Inside, there was another passageway, but this one was narrower and much lower than the one he’d walked down to get here. He might fit through there on hands and knees, but he wouldn’t want to try it. The air in the passage smelled infinitely better than in the cage room, and it blew toward him in a gentle breeze. The dangling lightbulb swayed imperceptibly on the ceiling, throwing some shadows around the walls. He decided to leave this door open while he checked the other doors, if only to improve the air.
Which one next? He looked down at the floor of the cages to see if he could determine whether the muck was any fresher in one or than in the other. The straw was such a mess, he couldn’t tell. The left one, then. He opened it and found yet another passageway, this one a little higher but just as narrow. This time, he bent down and looked at the mud on the other side of the doorjamb. Were those prints? Yes, they were. Fresh? Who the hell knows, he thought. My tracking skills haven’t improved since the last time I saw some of these. No fresh air moved out of this passageway, however, so he pushed the door shut, not bothering to reset the locking bar. He wondered how far back those tunnels went, and he wished the dogs had been braver. On the other hand, everyone always said they were smart dogs.
Okay, Jay-Kay, wherever you are, this time it’d better be the lady, he thought. You promised. With a grunt, he opened the center door and saw a shallow rock cavity about six feet deep. It was stacked with cardboard boxes. Hunched in the middle of the stacks was Mary Ellen Goode. She was strapped into what looked like a stripped-down clone of the steel chair in the trailer. Adhesive tape covered her mouth, and a damned cell phone lay in her lap. He started to say something but then saw that she was staring at him with a look of pure terror on her face. Actually, he realized, she was looking behind him.
67
There were two mountain lions standing in the area in front of the cages, glaring at him. When he turned fully around, they both reacted by lifting their lips and exposing far too many teeth. The larger of the two lowered its head and issued a loud growling hiss, while the other one started to slink off to one side, never taking its eyes off the two humans in the storage room. The door he’d left unlocked in the left-hand cage was now ajar.
Cam took out the. 45 and moved as carefully as he could toward the door of the cage. He could see that both cats were in poor shape-thin, almost emaciated, with crud in their eyes and an unhealthy color to their fur. He realized they were starving, which probably didn’t help his and Mary Ellen’s situation any. He kept the. 45 in his right hand pointed in their direction, although he didn’t really want to fire that thing down here in a stone cavern. With his left hand, he carefully reached out to the edge of the door and began to swing it shut. This time, the other cat growled at him, although neither one of them made a lunge for the door as he managed to get it shut. He felt for a latch, then remembered he was inside the cage. Both cats began to prowl back and forth in front of the three cages, although they were keeping their distance. Maybe they’re tame, he told himself. He wondered if starving canceled out tame.
Reaching through the pencil-thick wire squares, he felt for and finally found the middle of the three latches and pulled the bolt across until it seated in the frame of the door. Then he felt secure enough to go back and get Mary Ellen out of that horrible chair. He let her take off the adhesive tape while he kept one eye on those two cats. If they charged the door, the heavy oak frame ought to keep them out.
“Don’t shoot them” was the first thing Mary Ellen said once she got the tape off.
Ever the animal sympathizer, Cam thought. “Won’t if I can help it,” he said. “You okay?”
“Thirsty,” she said. “How did you find me down here?”
“I got mail,” he said. “Jay-Kay sent me GPS coordinates. Are we alone, you think?”
As if in answer to his question, there came a loud thump from the direction of the entry tunnel and a squeeze of air pressure in the cavern. Both cats reacted with low squalls. Cam swore. That was the big trapdoor in the chicken coop. He had laid it all the way on its back when he first opened it. There was no way that it could have fallen back shut. Someone had just closed it. Should have left the damned dogs loose, he realized. Mary Ellen understood at once.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Not the end of the world,” he said. “In a couple of hours, there’ll be people out here looking. I came alone but checked in with Carrigan County along the way.”
The cats were prowling closer to the wire doors now, as if trying to figure out how to get in.