Chris Mooney - The Soul Collectors

The pain turned into a jackhammer and before she sank back down to the pillow she saw the back of the ambulance, the open doors revealing patrol cars, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles parked on wild grass twisting in the wind, while above a pale milk-coloured sky filled with smoke.

Someone jumped on the back bumper and she heard heavy footsteps.

Sergey's face hovered above her own. The man looked beaten down, broken, but he didn't have a single scratch on his face. Good. The copter had made it out.

It took great effort to speak.

'Taylor,' she said in a hoarse whisper.

'En route to the hospital. You're going there too, in a moment.' Sergey touched her hand, squeezed it. 'You're fine. Probably a concussion and that's it.'

'Three.'

'Three what?'

'Third one. I keep this up I'm going to end up like Muhammad Ali.' She licked her lips. 'The listening device.'

Sergey hadn't heard her. He leaned closer and she asked him about the listening device she'd found inside the USB drive.

'The Boston techs couldn't track it down,' he said. 'My guess is they shut down their listening post from their car or wherever they were hiding.'

'Hatch?'

'Gone. Blown apart, have no idea who or what was down there.'

Sarah, she thought. Had Sarah Casey been trapped somewhere beneath that hatch?

'Same with the mass grave site where you found Jack's wife,' Sergey said. 'Explosion blew it apart, scattered shit everywhere. We've started the recovery effort, collecting body parts, evidence, whatever we can find. We almost didn't get out of there.'

'Farrell?'

'Banged up but okay.'

She looked at Casey. Sergey answered the question.

'I don't know,' he said. 'The Stryker frame's a precaution. When they found him, he was unconscious. Could be a severe concussion or something more serious, we won't know until he gets to the hospital. That's where you're both going. Keats is going to be there with you. Keats and some of his men. They'll keep an eye on you and Jack.'

'I'll come back and help you search.'

Sergey didn't answer. He had already left.

An EMT, a doughy, bald man with cheeks red from the cold, came into view and she saw him knock twice on the side of the ambulance. It drove away a moment later, sirens wailing.

The EMT moved in the space where Sergey had knelt and checked the machine beeping somewhere behind her. A moment later he checked one of the straps binding her wrists to the gurney.

'Too tight?' he asked.

She nodded and looked up at the ceiling, drowsy. The EMT loosened the strap, then cupped her hand in his own.

She lifted her head slightly. It wasn't the EMT who was holding her hand; he had moved to the other side of the gurney to shoot something inside her IV line. It was Keats. He was kneeling by the end of the gurney and his eyes were damp.

'Sorry,' he said.

She swallowed, trying to get some moisture into her mouth. 'Not your fault.'

'I'm sorry,' Keats said again, and this time he lost it, broke down and started to cry. 'They made me do it. They have my son.'

A bolt of fear exploded through her and then died as the drugs floated through her system.

'They said they'd give Luke a lobotomy,' Keats wailed. 'He's only eight, and they said they'd turn him into a vegetable like Jack's wife unless I brought you to them and I had to… I'm sorry, I had to do it, God forgive me, I'm so, so sorry.'

Darby struggled to stay awake and Keats wailed as if he were about to burst apart at the seams. The EMT clapped a hand on the Secret Service agent's shoulder, leaned in close and told him not to worry. Luke was alive and everything was going to be okay.

Darby couldn't remember how she had arrived at this place, wherever this place was, or who had brought her here. She remembered lying in the back of the ambulance and Keats crying and then she had drifted away. When she woke up, all she saw was this cool, pitch-black darkness that smelled of mildew, dust and decay. She had been stripped of her clothes, her wrists shackled with chains that extended somewhere above her, bolted to the ceiling. Her ankles had been shackled too, but she could move if she chose.

She did, the first day, stumbling around in the darkness with her chains, her fingers and palms sliding against smooth stone. A hole dug in the floor to use as a toilet. She felt thick iron bars mounted inside a small, rectangular space. The same darkness was out there but with sounds of life — jagged breathing, crying.

Several times she had called out for Casey. He didn't respond. Either he was somewhere else or he was dead. She had tried calling for Sarah Casey and received no answer.

Sergey and the FBI had to be looking for her — and Casey, Keats had said they wanted Casey too. A package deal in exchange for Keats's son, Luke. She didn't know about Casey, but she still had a GPS unit installed in her arm. The FBI hadn't come so she assumed they couldn't lock on to her signal, which meant she was being held somewhere underground. She didn't know where — for all she knew she could be halfway across the world. But Sergey and his men had to be looking for her. And what had happened to Keats? Had they spared his life and left him to spin some bullshit story about how she and Casey had disappeared — or had the Secret Service agent disappeared too?

Darby lay in the dark with questions revolving in her head and heard whispering voices asking God for help and strength. Prayers for mercy and forgiveness. The voices never stopped.

Darby didn't pray. She didn't sit around trying to wish the situation away. She was here, trapped, but sure of one thing: she had to find a way to survive. If she was going to live, she would have to be the one to save herself.

She had no idea how long she'd been shackled in here. At least a day but probably longer. Two, maybe, possibly three. The darkness pressed against her and her mind kept demanding answers. She couldn't provide any so it reacted, of course, with its natural primitive response: fear. And each time it came, each time she felt it flutter through her stomach and limbs and start to close around her throat, she didn't push it away, didn't try to talk it away. She embraced it. I'm shackled in some dungeon-like cell, so, yes, I'm scared. There's no food or water and I'm starving, so, yes, I'm afraid. Every inch of my skin is exposed, and when they come, they could hurt me like they hurt Mark Rizzo and Charlie and everyone else that came before them, so, yes, I'm terrified, because I don't want to be hurt. I don't want to suffer.

But that would come later.

The first part of their plan, whatever it was, had to do with fear. They wanted her to be trembling in fear when they came. That was why they had locked her in here in the dark. They had stripped off her clothing to make her feel vulnerable. They had denied her food and water because hunger did extreme things to the mind. Her mind didn't know what was happening or going to happen so it busied itself conjuring up all sorts of gruesome scenarios. She acknowledged all of these things but she also knew she had to steel herself against them. Conserve her strength and, more importantly, her sanity. Fear clouded the mind, prevented you from seeing opportunities. She had learned this first-hand, during the time she'd been imprisoned inside Traveler's dungeon of horrors. She had survived that and she would survive this.

So she occupied her time with things she could control — her body, her mind. She kept her body limber. Stretched. Did push-ups and sit-ups and when she finished she meditated to clear her head. Show no fear, she kept telling herself. That's what they want to see from you, that's what feeds them. No matter what happens, don't give them what they want. Keep the fear at bay and you'll find a way out of this. These people are not divine beings. They bleed like the rest of us. The first one came as she lay asleep. She awoke to the sound of a key in a lock and she sat up as the door swung open.