Fatal Secrets (43 page)

“It caved in part of the mine.”

“You okay?”

“Yes. The women?”

“We have a sheriff’s med unit and van here, and an ambulance on its way.”

“Good. Now find Sonia and Clinch.”

Cammarata heard the conversation. “She went after Marchand, did she?”

“I don’t know.” But Dean feared she had.

“Shit.”

Dean was itching to get out and find her himself. His skin crawled, thinking about what might happen in a confrontation between Sonia and her father.

Clinch shined his light down the hole. “He’s dead.” “Where’s Sonia?” Sam Callahan looked around.

“Sonia! Sonia Knight!” He asked Clinch, “Are you sure there were only two of them?”

“Yes,” Clinch said. “Dammit, where is she?”

Sam took out a heavy-duty light and shined it into the hole. “Do you hear that?”

Clinch listened. “It sounds like running water.”

Sam called Brian Stone on the radio. “We have a situation. We need rope and lights. Tell Hooper that Agent Knight may be in trouble.”

Dean followed Trace and Brian to the edge of the hidden shaft that Sonia had fallen down. “Where is she?”

“Dr. Sheffield thinks she fell into an underwater river,” Trace said.

Dean couldn’t have heard that correctly. “I don’t understand.”
His skin prickled and his chest tightened. “Where is she?”

Sheffield shined a heavy-duty light on the blueprints. “This river is flowing toward the mine. It was a huge problem for the original miners before they—”

“Stop,” Dean said. “I just need to know where she is.”

Sheffield continued. “It flows east to west, of course. It’s heading toward the mine, but it’s more a pool of water this time of year. If she didn’t drown—”

Dean closed his eyes. “I’ll go in. Get the rope, Brian. Lower me down.”

Sheffield shook his head. “Not a good idea. All this movement and activity has disturbed the sediment. But I know where she’ll end up.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Cammarata exclaimed. “She could be hurt, she could be—”

“Lower me down,” Dean repeated. But it was too late. Cammarata jumped into the shaft and disappeared.

“Shit!” Dean turned to Sheffield. “Take me to where she’ll be. Right now.”

“It’s dangerous—”

“I don’t give a shit how dangerous it is. I need her back.”

Sonia coughed up muddy water. It was pitch-black. She couldn’t see anything, not even her hands in front of her. She shivered, soaked through.

Where on earth was she?

Running water echoed all around her, deafening. She’d lost her gun when she fell—she felt around for it and her hand fell into deep water. She scrambled back
up to where she’d landed. She’d lost consciousness at one point. She must have. She remembered falling and then … now.

More cautiously, she felt the surrounding area, crawling away from the water. Her knees and hands sank deep into mud. She sat and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking herself.

It was so dark.

The familiar panic rose in her chest, her body breaking out into a sweat. But it was cold, so cold, and she shivered uncontrollably.

Her voice echoed eerily in the dark. “Don’t move, Sonia. Sit tight. Someone will find you. Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t move.

But they would never find her. How long had she been here? How far had she fallen?

She had to find a way out herself. Or she would die here.

She crawled
again
. Slowly. Carefully. The mud sloshing through her fingers. The ground became firmer the higher she went. Okay. This was okay. She wished she had a light …

Idiot! Brian Stone had given them all emergency lights. Shake and break, he’d said. The long stick was still in her pocket. She pulled it out with trembling fingers, holding it as if it were a life jacket. Shake. Break. A faint glow emanated from the stick. She held it up.

A skull glowed inches from her face.

She screamed.

Dean stopped walking. “Did you hear that?” he asked. He, Brian Stone, and Sheffield were back in the original
mine, going down a long shaft following metal rails that had been laid more than one hundred fifty years ago.

“I hear water,” Brian said.

“Good sign,” Sheffield replied, spry for his age. He led the way. “The cavern opens up down here. Unless the river has changed flow dramatically over the last hundred years.”

Dean didn’t want to hear it. He couldn’t. He would find Sonia. He wasn’t going to let her die, not like this.

They continued walking down the shaft.

“Did you hear that?” Brian said. “She’s not far.”

Sonia cried out
again
. How were they going to find her in here? She held the light up, but the cavern was so huge she couldn’t see the walls around her.

She heard a grunt and splash. “Help me! Help!” She cried out. “It’s Sonia.”

“Sonia! Thank God.”

“Charlie? Where are you?”

“I see your light.”

He grunted like he was in pain. She held up the light and saw a dark red shirt in the water as Charlie struggled to get up the slope she’d landed on. She slid down the mud and held out her hand.

He took it. Slowly, she pulled him out of the water.

His shirt hadn’t been red when she last saw him.

“Oh, God, Charlie, what happened?”

“They said you fell. I didn’t know if you had been shot or what. I came after you.”

“Why?” She hugged him tightly. “Charlie, you’re bleeding.”

“There are rocks. I—” He coughed. “I hit them.”

She held up her light and pulled up his shirt. His chest was bloodied; she saw a rib protruding.

“Charlie, lie still.” She pulled off her flak jacket, then her T-shirt. She wrapped it as best she could around Charlie. Tears streamed down her face. Charlie was in bad shape.

“We have to get you out.” He closed his eyes and coughed up water, mud, and blood.

“Why did you follow me? You didn’t know. I could have been dead. I don’t want you to die.”

“That’s a first,” he said faintly.

“I hate what you did, Charlie, but I don’t hate you.”

“You should.”

He didn’t say anything for a long minute. Sonia heard something over and above the water. Faintly, “Sonia!”

She called out as loud as she could, “Over here! Help!”

“Sonia! We’re coming.”

She saw a bright light bouncing against the walls of the cavern.

“Help’s coming, Charlie. Hold still.”

He shook uncontrollably, going into shock.

“Charlie, hold on. It’s just a little time.”

“I want to die, Sonia. I need to die.”

“No. No, dammit! You taught me so much. I’m stronger because of you.”

“You’re strong.” He coughed and this time blood poured from his mouth. “Because of you.”

“Sonia!” Dean called.

“Here!” She waved her glow-stick. “Charlie’s hurt!”

“I’m coming!”

Sonia said to Charlie, “Dean’s coming. Help’s here. Hold on.”

“Forgive me, sweetheart.”

“I forgive you. I forgive you, Charlie, dammit!”

“Find. What happened to Ashley. Please.”

“You’ll find her. Dammit, Charlie, fight!”

The bright lights showed the cavern to be monstrous in size, and Sonia sat on a small cutout. She couldn’t believe how much water was in here. She couldn’t believe she’d survived.

“Don’t die, Charlie.”

There was a ramp and railing that went around the top of the cavern. Dean walked across the precarious edge to get to her. She willed him to be safe. She couldn’t lose him. The five minutes it took to reach her seemed like an eternity.

He didn’t say a word, just held her. He was trembling.

Sonia said, “Charlie’s hurt.”

Reluctantly, Dean let her go. He inspected Charlie’s injuries and checked his pulse.

“Honey, he’s gone.”

“No. No.” She let Dean gather her into his lap and hold her while she cried until Brian Stone came down with a rope to bring them all up, the living and the dead.

Sonia had never seen so many people in her parents’ house.

She put on her best smile and walked through the crowd, greeting everyone.

It had been a perfect day up until an hour ago, when Dean left their wedding reception after giving her a quick kiss and telling her he’d be right back.

To Sonia, right back meant five or ten minutes. Not—she glanced at her watch—sixty-seven.

She made her way to the kitchen, which was surprisingly devoid of people. She crossed to the window and looked into the backyard.

Her parents were there with Riley, Max, and their cousins. She had been tickled when Max showed up with a three-day leave for the Fourth of July weekend. “I couldn’t miss my sister’s wedding,” he’d told her when he surprised her at the rehearsal dinner the night before.

The day had been perfect, but it would have been even more so if Wendell could have lived long enough to see her married to a man like Dean Hooper. He would have liked him.

Sonia didn’t know if she’d ever put to rest the trail of blood left by Noel Marchand, but knowing he wasn’t her biological father helped. It was hard to think of him as anything but—she’d lived nine years with him, traveling from village to village in Central and South America. And although she now knew he was using her to lure his prey, she remembered teaching the children English and French and basic math; she’d taken pride in the farms she helped establish. As Dean told her one night when she couldn’t sleep, focus on the positive and the good, and put the bad on a shelf.

“I know you’ll remember it’s there, but if it’s far enough from sight you’ll forget for a time. And when you do remember, I’ll be here. Always.”

Sonia turned and jumped when a man walked in.

“Sorry,” Dean’s brother, Will, said. The Hooper brothers didn’t look alike, but they had the same chocolate-brown eyes and square jaw. “You have a big family.”

Sonia almost corrected him—her family was actually small—but then she realized her friends, her colleagues, Dean’s colleagues, they were like family. She smiled. “I’m lucky.”

“Dean’s the lucky one. I never thought he’d get married to anything but his job. And giving up that post in Washington, oh, sorry. Is that a sore point?”

“Not at all.” Dean had given up his prestigious position in Washington to relocate to Sacramento and take the job as assistant special agent in charge. Some might think it was a demotion, but Dean told her he wanted the change of pace, the challenge and her.
“Sacramento is your home. This is where your family is. They’re
going to be my family. I’m not leaving them. I love them, almost as much as I love you.”

Will said, “I thought I’ll sneak away for a few minutes. My wife wanted to take a walk through that park down the street.”

“It’s a nice place. Riley and I played baseball and soccer and basketball there all the time. There’s a little zoo if you walk all the way to the other side, right next to the church.”

“You don’t mind, do you? Thirty minutes?”

“Take all the time you want.”

“Where’s Dean?”

“I don’t know. He had an errand.”

Will’s redheaded wife came running in. “Ready?” she said and they went off on their walk, hand in hand.

Sonia turned back to the window. The Rogans, two of them anyway, were there. Sean Rogan was showing Andres something—a card game, Sonia thought. Great, just what she needed—Andres beating them at yet another game. The kid was a whiz. She didn’t know what was going to happen to him, but she was pulling every string, and she had a lot she could pull, to keep him here. Owen and Marianne loved him and wanted him. He had no one else.

Kane couldn’t make it, but Sonia wasn’t surprised. He rarely came to the States anymore. But he’d called her that morning and they talked about Charlie and the past, as well as the future. “You forgave him, he knows that,” Kane had said. “And he died a hero. That’s all he wanted.”

“I’m looking for Ashley Fox,” she’d told him. “We found Jones’s old journals and are piecing together information. But—”

“You think she’s dead.”

“Yes, But I’ll confirm it if it’s the last thing I do. Her mother deserves to know what happened.” And for Charlie.

She’d never forget the night in the mine. She’d never forget the cloying fear. It didn’t matter that she’d come out on the other side and hadn’t let her claustrophobia beat her, she still woke up shaking, feeling the weight of the world on top of her…

“Sonia.”

She smiled, recognizing her husband’s voice. She turned and was surprised to see a young pretty woman with him.

“Maya.”

The girl nodded, looked at Dean with wide eyes. “Andres?” she asked.

“He’s out back,” Sonia said.

Dean walked Maya outside and Sonia watched from the window again. When Andres saw his sister, love and relief crossed his face. He ran to her and hugged her tightly. Tears streamed down their faces, and Sonia’s own tears flowed as well.

She heard Dean return to the kitchen and turned and embraced him. “You found her.”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up again,” he said. Ever since they’d cracked Jones’s code a week after the mine incident, they’d thought they’d found Maya twice. Each time they’d been mistaken, though they’d rescued several underage prostitutes in the process.

“How is she?”

“She’s okay.” He wiped away her tears. “She’s strong, like you. She’ll need help, but she’ll make it. Because of
family.” They looked out the window as Andres introduced his sister to Owen and Marianne. “I told your parents yesterday morning. They want Maya, too.”

“I’m going to cry all over again.” She took a deep breath. “That was a wonderful surprise. You are incredible.”

“Just call me Mr. Incredible.”