Sheffield called after her, “The mine!” but she must have heard him wrong. She wasn’t going into the mine, she was going into the forest. She had Marchand in her sights. If he resisted, would she be able to shoot her own father?
She aimed.
A second, bigger explosion knocked her to the ground.
“Holy shit,” Cammarata said as he pushed the door closed against the tumbling rock. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” Dean said through clenched teeth. He couldn’t think about Sonia now; he had these young women to think about.
The flashlights revealed that there were approximately thirty Chinese girls. These weren’t women. None of them was over sixteen. They all wore simple, handmade dresses that were filthy. Empty water bottles lined the walls. Was water all they’d had for the last four days?
Cammarata was doing a good job calming them down. When the mine stopped shaking, Dean realized that this room was built like a bunker in the granite. He didn’t know where the air was coming from; it tasted stale, but that might be from the perspiration of the women. But the explosions could have cut off their ventilation, which gave them little time.
“Get the elevator operational,” Dean commanded. “Now.”
For once, Cammarata didn’t argue but went right to the elevator and started working.
Dean tried his walkie-talkie, but no one responded. Was he out of range? Could the signal not cut through this rock? Dean wanted to know that his men-and Sonia-were okay. He needed to know what the hell was happening up above.
All he heard was static.
Sonia lost sight of Marchand when he cut through the trees. She slowed, listening, but her heart was pounding.
Hearing laughter, she dove for cover behind a thick pine tree.
“You are a stupid girl,” Marchand said.
“You’re not going to get away. We know who you are, we know what you look like. I’ll hunt you down until the end of time.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll be dead.”
She wasn’t going to fall for his mind games. She looked around her, trying to gauge where she was and how she could lure him out of the woods. There was rustling, and movement-where was he going?
She closed her eyes and listened closely.
She dove in the nick of time. A bullet whizzed past her head. And then she was falling.
She hit the ground with a thud, stunned.
Sonia looked up. He stood there, against the moon. She saw the silhouette of the gun in his hand pointed into the hole she’d fallen into. She quickly turned off her flashlight and prayed he couldn’t see her. But the hole wasn’t big. He could probably hit her with his eyes closed.
“Marchand!” she called. “You can kill me. Go ahead. My people will hunt you down like the fucking animal you are.”
She felt around the wet, muddy slush for her gun. Damn, where was it?
A bullet hit the muck inches from her leg. No light reached this far down, which was the only reason he missed. Unless the bastard enjoyed this game of cat and mouse. She prayed Clinch or someone heard the gunshot and was close by. If she could stall Marchand just a few minutes, her team would be here to arrest him and toss her a rope.
She focused on staying calm, but the pitch-black of the hole, the small space, it all conspired against her. She was trapped. The panic started, escalating, and her hand shook as she continued to search for her gun. A sob escaped her chest, a barking pain.
She heard Dean’s voice in her head.
Her father laughed from above and fired his weapon again. This bullet hit a good foot above her head.
“I’m not your papa, Sonia. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now, haven’t you?”
She didn’t respond. He was goading her. He wanted to hurt her, or maybe he was low on bullets and wanted her to talk, give away her location in the pit.
“Your mother was a whore,” he continued. “She worked for me and my father. She took four, five men a day. No one knew who your father was. We’ll call him John.” He laughed again, a low, creepy laugh that sounded almost crazy. “My father had a soft spot for Gabrielle. She was just a manipulative whore, like you. You could be my sister, since my father fucked her often.
“Sergio Martin worked for me. He was supposed to take Gabrielle to town for an abortion. Believe me, no one was more surprised than I was when the doctor called and said she’d never arrived.”
Sonia didn’t want to listen, certain Marchand was lying. Wasn’t he? Why would he make up a story so insane?
“They hid for years. I never stopped looking.
Marchand fired into the pit again. The bullet clipped one leg on the side of her thigh. She bit back a cry and rolled to the side. It hurt, but it wasn’t serious.
She felt her gun under her back. It was wet and slick with the mud, and she tried to clean it as best she could with her damp shirt.
Sonia closed her heart and mind to what Marchand said. He wanted to scare her, to divert her attention from the danger she was in. And it was working. Her panic, her anger, everything. She was losing.
She barely remembered her mother. Only the sadness that spread like a sickness through their small cottage. But Gabrielle had risked her life, had died to save Sonia. Sonia would not allow Marchand to win after everything her mother had sacrificed.
“Why didn’t you kill me then?” she screamed up the shaft. “Why play daddy to a four-year-old?”
His voice was cold. “Because everyone trusts a widower missionary traveling with a child.”
Sonia’s claustrophobia disappeared, dwarfed by the anguish and anger she felt at being used. She aimed her gun at the silhouette of the bastard up top and fired. The gun worked, and she pressed the trigger again. Again.
Marchand’s body jerked against the sky, as each bullet hit its mark. He fell into the pit with her.
* * *
Sonia quickly rolled to get out of the way, then scrambled to gain hold of something as she started to slip. But everything was slick and wet and she rolled down, through loose, wet soil. Down, down, down faster and faster until she screamed, and her mouth filled with mud. Dean came up with the last of the Chinese girls. It took only ten minutes to get them all out once Charlie got the elevator working. When he reached the landing, he saw Lawson sitting up against the wall with a bullet in his leg. He’d been given a field dressing. Another man he didn’t recognize lay dead. The entrance had disappeared.
Brian Stone was on the radio, looking frustrated.
“What happened?” Dean asked
“Two men came in and then one turned and ran back out when he saw Lawson. The dead guy panicked when he saw us, started firing. There was a small explosion of some sort-I think he hit an old lamp, but I don’t know what caused it. Then the ceiling came down. We fired back. It was a righteous kill, Agent Hooper.”
“Did you search him?”
The SWAT leader tossed him a wallet. “Jerry Ignacio, lives in Sacramento. There’s a passport on him, too, and about three thousand dollars. Couple guns, a knife.”
“Have you tried to get out?”
“We’ve been in contact with Callahan, they’re right on the other side. There’s a small crawl-through. We’ve
