One Grave Less (46 page)

Diane’s heart dropped to the floor. She turned and ran to the stairs and up to the second floor to the conservation lab.

Too late. Jonas was on the floor, blood running down his face. He groaned and tried to rise.

“He has her, hit me, shot Korey,” Jonas said.

Frank found Korey on the floor, blood pooling under him. “It’s not that bad,” Korey said. “The son of a bitch took Ariel. Jonas and I are fine. Go find her.”

Diane shot out the door and back down to security.

“Steven Mays is out there with my daughter,” she said.

That brought her a bewildered look from Chanell.

“This guy kidnapped a little girl and has her somewhere near here,” said Frank. “Jonas and Korey are in the conservation lab hurt and need help. Do you have a gun?”

Frank had his gun. Diane armed herself with one from the security office. To her surprise, both Lindsay and John were armed.

How could I have been so stupid?
Diane thought, as she headed out the door. She stopped. He could have already taken her in a car to who knew where.

“Have you seen any cars leave?” Diane asked Chanell.

“No, we’ve been watching pretty close,” she said.

Diane thought a minute. “The back road behind the museum,” she said. “They have a car there.” She raced for the back door. Damn it, she was going to get Ariel back. Her little girl didn’t come all this way to be lost to her.

Diane asked Lindsay and John to find Cameron and get out of him by any means necessary where Steven might have taken Ariel. She, Frank, and David were on their way to search the grounds. Chanell caught up with them before they got out of the building.

“A couple of the back cameras have been disabled, just a few minutes ago,” said Chanell. “That’ll be where they went out. Do you want security to go with you?”

“I need you to protect the people in the museum,” said Diane.

Chanell nodded. “We’ll do that,” she said.

“We need to split up,” said Diane, to Frank and David. “The backyard of the museum is too big.”

“No,” said Frank.

“I know it’s not safe,” said Diane, “but we need to cover as much ground as possible. Please.”

Frank studied her face a fraction of a second and nodded. “Be careful,” he said.

All three were familiar with the grounds. They all jogged the nature trail on a regular schedule. Diane could search it with her eyes closed. Good thing because, with the storm cloud cover, it was pitch-black dark. They had elected not to take flashlights because that would make them targets.

Diane hurried, scanning every time lightning lit up the sky. She was sick with fear. This couldn’t happen again. She couldn’t survive it again. What kind of mother was she to let this happen to Ariel another time? Diane ignored the pelting rain as she searched. The wind almost knocked her down.

Lightning flashed and she saw the sparkle of a red shoe. Ariel. Diane ran to it.

It was the aftermath of the massacre all over again—finding Ariel’s bloody shoes. Diane felt sick. “Damn it,” she said through her teeth. Only this time it wasn’t bloody.

She hurried on. She had never before seen a rainstorm like this one. The rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was blowing it straight sideways with such ferocity that the drops were stabbing her skin like hundreds of tiny knives. The limb of a tree broke with a loud pop overhead and came crashing down beside her. She pushed on against it. Her eyes grew accustomed to the dark; she became used to the shadowy landscape. She watched for movement that wasn’t wind and rain.

She thought she heard something.

“Ariel.”

A male voice calling Ariel. Had she gotten away? Diane’s heart leaped with hope. She listened through the howling wind. She breathed in the rain. It felt as though she were going to drown in it. She could hardly see. She coughed. The lightning flashed again and there was a figure—a black silhouette strobed by lightning flashes. She ran toward it. It wasn’t Frank or David, she knew their silhouettes. She saw the sports coat flap in the wind at the next strobe of light. Steven.

Then she heard him.

“Ariel, damn it, you little brat. Where are you? God, you are a lot of trouble.”

Diane took aim and fired.

If her aim was good, she blew out his right knee.

She saw him go down. She ran to him and watched him writhing on the ground.

“Where is she?” yelled Diane. Blood was washing from his hand. She thought she saw a little half-moon of teeth marks. Good for Ariel.

Steven rolled over and tried to raise his gun. Diane fired into his shoulder. He grunted and passed out.

“Damn it,” she said out loud.

She picked up his gun and put it in her waistband. She looked for a hiding place.

“Ariel,” she shouted.

Why would the little girl ever trust her again? Twice she had let her down. Diane wanted to cry. Instead, she waited for the next lightning and searched.

Nothing. She moved forward down the hiking trail, more slowly this time, looking for hiding places.

“Ariel, honey,” she said, but it came out as a croak.

The next flash of lightning, she saw another shoe. She ran to it.

“Ariel,” she shouted as loud as she could.

“Mama?”

The voice was so soft Diane wasn’t sure she heard it.

“Ariel,” she shouted again, “it’s Mama. Where are you, baby?”

“Mama.”

It was louder this time. Coming from a thicket beside the ditch up ahead. Diane raced to it. Lightning flashed and Ariel came running to her. Diane held her.

“Baby, I’m so sorry.”

“I bit him, Mama. He won’t try to hurt me again.”

“No, baby, he won’t.”

“Well, ain’t this cute?”

Diane pushed Ariel behind her and turned to the voice.

Another supersoldier. He had caught them out in the open.

“You’re the bitch that chewed up James.” His laugh sounded like some weird sound effect coming through the deluge of wind and rain. “He’s really pissed. He’ll like it that I found you. You still got no notion where that package is? I’ll bet if we put a gun to that runt’s head, you’ll come up with it right quick. Now drop your gun. You don’t have a chance to raise it before I pop you one.”

Diane stood looking at him, thinking.

“Drop it, bitch, or I’ll drop you.”

Diane dropped the gun. It splashed and disappeared in the puddle of water beside her.

“Now, come over here,” he said.

Frank was right. They shouldn’t have split up. But if they hadn’t, they may never have found Ariel.

“Come. Over. Here. Now,” he barked, trying to yell above the howl of the storm.

The lightning flashed a dozen, two dozen times, until it was a giant, continuous, arcing electrical spark lighting the sky, and Diane heard the sound of a freight train, saw the giant shadow, saw the supersoldier turn.

“What the hell?” he said.

Diane reached behind her and pulled Steven’s gun from her waistband. Before the man could turn back toward them, she aimed the weapon with firm hands and fired at his head and neck until there were no more bullets. She knew from the jerks of his body he was hit multiple times.

Diane saw him snatched up by the storm just as she jumped for the ditch beside the trail, holding Ariel to her.

They didn’t move, hardly breathed, until the roaring noise subsided.

“What was that?” whispered Ariel.

“That was our friend the tornado,” said Diane. She squeezed Ariel to her. “Love your heart, baby girl,” she said.

“Where did the tornado take him?” asked Ariel.

“I hope a long way from here. Kansas maybe,” said Diane.

Diane was afraid to leave the bushes and the ditch, afraid of finding another soldier and not having any more bullets, or encountering another tornado. She settled into as comfortable a spot as she could find and pulled Ariel on top of her, trying to cushion her from the hard wet ground.

“Are you all right, baby?” Diane asked her.

“I’m fine. Lindsay and I had to do stuff like this all the time,” said Ariel.

“You like her, don’t you?” said Diane, smiling into the darkness. Sticks poked at her back and she was wet and tired, but she was never more comfortable.

She felt Ariel nodding. “I was afraid she might leave me if everything got too hard, but she didn’t.”

“Ariel, baby, I’m so sorry . . .”

Ariel put a hand on Diane’s mouth. “You didn’t leave me,” she said. “The bad man took me away. I love you, Mama.”

“And I love you, baby,” Diane said.

The rain began to let up and the wind died down to a hard breeze, but it was still dark.

“Ariel. Diane.”

Another voice in the darkness. This one belonged to Frank.

“Here,” she said.

She got up and ran to Frank, carrying Ariel. He embraced them both. He had the ruby slippers in his hand.

“We need to get back to the museum,” said Frank. “I found Liam in the woods—or rather, he found me. He’s been tracking the mercenaries. He has them all taken out but one.”

“Our friend the tornado took him to Kansas,” said Ariel.

Frank stared at her a moment. Then he looked at Diane.

“That’s what happened,” she said.

“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?” he said.

“Nope. It was a sight to see,” said Diane.

“I see you found Steven,” said Frank.

“Ariel bit him and got away. I shot him,” said Diane. She was starting to feel giddy if not homicidal.

Frank put an arm around her and they started back. They found David bending over the form of Steven, who was groaning.

“What I don’t understand,” said David, “is, with all that time spent in the jungle, why you didn’t learn.”

“Learn what?” rasped Steven.

“Who’s the most feared in the jungle?” said David.

They left Steven to be picked up by the paramedics whenever they got out there, and they walked back to the museum. Diane took them through a side door that led into the Pleistocene Room. They hurried to the security office. Chanell was gone. The guards told them that Chanell went to give first aid to Cameron Michaels.

“They said that woman went to town on him,” one of the guards added.

Good, thought Diane.

They found Michaels lying on the couch in the meeting room. Lindsay had a baseball bat in her hand.

“Confiscated from the basement encampment,” said Gregory. He stared at Ariel.

“My God in heaven, it’s true. I was afraid to believe it.” Gregory knelt in front of her. “Do you remember me?” he asked.

Ariel nodded.

“As soon as you get phone service, I must call Marguerite,” he said. “She will be overjoyed. Ariel.” Gregory hugged her. “This is the best,” he said.

“How is Cameron?” said Diane.

“He’ll live, unfortunately,” said Gregory. “He has a lot of broken bones. But he’s not saying much, just that we can’t prove anything. I don’t know what he thinks we can’t prove after this night.”

“Something terrible,” said Diane.

She thought of Simone running from the supersoldier, trying to hide her proof, shoving the bag of feathers, animal parts, and the bone under the display case. Diane ran it through her head as if she were Simone, and she knew where the package was.

Across from the Mayan display was the back entrance to Mike’s office with the sign on the door saying when he would return. Simone saw a safe place for her package—under the door to an office that wouldn’t be used for three weeks.

Diane opened the door and there it was on the floor. A bulky envelope that just fit in the space under the door, addressed to Diane Fallon from Simone Brooks.

Diane took the envelope downstairs and opened it at a table with Gregory, David, and Frank. Ariel had stayed with Lindsay and John while Diane searched for the package. She sat in Lindsay’s lap watching her mother open the package.

Simone had laid it all out in typewritten notes. Photographic and testimonial evidence filled in by some guesses on her and Oliver’s part. Diane laid the photographs on the table. She felt sick.

David and Diane both were right. Simone had remembered seeing Cameron’s briefcase at the massacre site. It hadn’t registered with her for a long time. And one day, out of the blue, she remembered it. She asked Hannah to send the photographs she took so she could check and make sure her memory was accurate. It was.

Diane thought of all of them. Family for a time. They had known one another so well back then; at least Diane had thought so. They had known Simone to the point that she and David could put themselves in her shoes. They hadn’t known Cameron and Steven at all. How could they have missed seeing what they were? Steven had been good at his job. He had seemed compassionate. What happened?

Diane looked at Hannah’s photograph of the briefcase with Cameron’s initials sitting by Father Joseph’s desk. When Simone saw the picture she knew that her memory was correct. She saw the briefcase, saw that Cameron was actually there the day of the massacre instead of afterward. That inspired Simone to open the boxes that Oliver had sent to his and Simone’s apartment in the United States for safekeeping. It had been shocking to Simone, as it was to Diane and the others who stared at the photograph now.

According to what Ariel witnessed, thought Diane, Oliver must have confronted a shocked Father Joe with it and it broke his heart to discover he was sending children into slavery.

The crimes had started with selling endangered parrots to collectors. It went from there to selling people—the people who came through the mission displaced by war and disaster, people who came for help.

Then Ariel came into Diane’s life. Because of Ariel, Diane was spending more time at the mission, so they had to be more careful in order not to be discovered. They hated Diane for that. That was a guess on Simone’s and Oliver’s part, but Diane thought they were probably right.