Allison Brennan - Fatal Secrets

No!

She jumped up and fired her gun, aiming into the high branches of the pine trees. Snap . A branch split.

“Shit!” she heard from the mine.

The two men emerged and hunkered down behind a stack of old lumber outside the mineshaft entrance.

They were at a standstill. Sonia whispered to Clinch, “Get Callahan and the others.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Dammit, we need them now!”

“Believe me, they heard your gun. They’re on their way.”

Dean stopped walking. “Did you hear something?”

“No.” Cammarata stopped and shined his light on the door. “This is it. It’s padlocked.” He knocked on the door and spoke in Chinese. The women inside started shouting and crying.

“Can you tell them we’re here to help? They need to quiet down,” Dean said.

“They’re scared.”

“They’re going to be dead if Marchand is here. I need to listen.”

His walkie-talkie was making noise, but with the noise in the room he couldn’t hear it.

Danger .

Someone was alerting him to danger. Was someone approaching the mine? Or was it the mine itself that was the danger?

“Charlie, someone’s coming.”

Charlie spoke firmly in Xiang through the door. The cries didn’t stop, but they quieted a bit.

“We have to get them out. Several are sick. They need water. Shoot the lock.”

“Wait. There’s danger. Someone upside is trying to reach me using Morse code.”

A faint echo hung in the air.

“That was a gunshot,” Dean said.

“We have to get them out. Now.”

Dean didn’t have a choice. He shot the lock.

They were at a standstill, the two killers behind the trees. Sonia inched closer, staying under cover.

The darker man made a run for the entrance only five feet away, then fired his gun in Sonia’s general direction while Marchand followed.

“They’re going back in!” Sonia exclaimed. “Dammit, Dean is in there.”

“And he gave us explicit orders-”

“To watch the entrance. Not to let that bastard breach it! How far away is Callahan?”

Sonia couldn’t wait for the answer.

She slid out of hiding. “Marchand!” she shouted. “Dammit, you motherfucking bastard, show yourself!”

Silence.

Then her father stepped out from the mine. She wanted to shoot him right then. Be done with him and the misery he caused.

“Sonia. I somehow knew you were here.”

“Sergio Martin, aka Noel Marchand, aka Pierre Devereaux and any other damn identity you use-you’re under arrest.”

He laughed. Her finger itched to pull the trigger. But she couldn’t kill him in cold blood.

“Put your hands up!” she shouted. He laughed and dove behind a tree. But at least he was away from the mine. Away from Dean and the others.

She stood, obscured by brush, listening to the moving laughter. Where was the second man?

“Clinch, number two, where did he go?”

A volley of gunfire came from the mine.

Boom!

The ground shook, but Sonia stayed on her feet. “Shit, Clinch, that was an explosion.”

Before Clinch could respond, the entrance crumbled, the sound of the collapse tearing at Sonia’s heart. Dean. No, no, this couldn’t end in death. She couldn’t lose the victims. She couldn’t lose the man she loved.

In the woods behind her, the laughter continued. “Are you going to try to save them? Please do. I’ll find you, Sonia. Next week. Next year. I will kill you after I kill everyone you care about. And I will enjoy every minute watching you suffer.”

Sonia inched toward the voice, which was too close. “Don’t.” Clinch put his hand on her arm. But he didn’t understand. No one did.

The ceiling began to cave in around Dean, and the women inside the room screamed. Cammarata pushed open the old door and spoke rapidly in Chinese. He pushed past them, and a chunk of granite slid loose and blocked part of the doorway behind him. The smell of rotting food and feces clogged his nose and lungs.

“You’d better be able to get that elevator running, because I don’t think we should go back up the stairs.”

“Why?”

Dean pointed his flashlight at the staircase.

The last ten feet were gone.

Marchand was on the run.

Sonia glanced back toward the mine entrance. She had no tools to dig them out. Callahan was nearly here, with equipment and reinforcements. She could wait here, but her father would get away. Disappear into another country, waiting for her to let her guard down so he could kill her family.

If they didn’t catch her father now, he would escape and go back to exporting people. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if he went back to his old ways. She wouldn’t be able to sleep, waiting for him to make his move.

She ran after him, ignoring Clinch’s command to cease.

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?

He’s not your father. Owen Knight is your 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.

Crunch crunch crunch crunch .

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.”