Grave Danger
Автор
Nichole Severn
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Chapter One
“When I’m done, you’re going to beg me for the pain.”
Chloe Pascale struggled to open her eyes. She blinked against the brightness of the sky. Trees. Snow. Cold. Her head pounded in rhythm to her racing heartbeat. Shuffling reached her ears as her last memories lightninged across her mind like a half-remembered dream. She’d gone out for a run on the trail near her house. Then... Fear clawed at her insides, her hands curling into fists. He’d come out of the woods. He’d... She licked her lips, her mouth dry. He’d drugged her, but with what and how many milliliters, she wasn’t sure. The haze of unconsciousness slipped from her mind, and a new terrorizing reality forced her from ignorance. “Where am I?”
Dead leaves crunched off to her left. Her attacker’s dark outline shifted in her peripheral vision. Black ski mask. Lean build. Tall. Well over six feet. Unfamiliar voice. Black jeans. His knees popped as he crouched beside her, the long shovel in his left hand digging into the soil near her head. The tip of the tool was coated in mud. Reaching a gloved hand toward her, he stroked the left side of her jawline, ear to chin, and a shiver chased down her spine against her wishes. “Don’t worry, Dr. Miles. It’ll all be over soon.”
His voice... It sounded...off. Disguised?
“How do you know my name? What do you want?” She blinked to clear her head. The injection site at the base of her neck itched, then burned, and she brought her hands up to assess the damage. Ropes encircled her wrists, and she lifted her head from the ground. Her ankles had been bound, too. She pulled against the strands, but she couldn’t break through. Then, almost as though demanding her attention, she caught sight of the refrigerator. Old. Light blue. Something out of the ’50s with curves and heavy steel doors.
“I know everything about you, Chloe. Can I call you Chloe?” he asked. “I know where you live. I know where you work, and I know your running route and how many hours you spend at the clinic. You really should change up your routine. Who knows who could be out there watching you? As for what I want, well, I’m going to let you figure that part out once you’re inside.”
Pressure built in her chest. She dug her heels into the ground, but the soil only gave way. No. No, no, no, no. This wasn’t happening. Not to her. Darkness closed in around the edges of her vision, her breath coming in short bursts. Pulling at the ropes again, she locked her jaw against the scream working up her throat. She wasn’t going in that refrigerator like the other victim she’d heard about on the news. Dr. Roberta Ellis. Buried alive, killed by asphyxiation. Tears burned in her eyes as he straightened and turned his back to her to finish the work he’d started with the shovel.
“Don’t bother trying to break the ropes. Dr. Ellis learned that the hard way when she dislocated her elbow trying to escape. She suffered for hours before she ran out of air. Needlessly, I might add. If she’d just followed the rules, she would’ve died peacefully like she was supposed to.” Peacefully. He said the word as though he’d been doing her colleague a favor when he buried her inside a fridge just like this one. The scrape of metal on rock grated against her nerves. A pile of dirt landed beside her. He was digging a hole, large enough for the refrigerator to fit.
Her grave.
Chloe forced herself to take a deep breath, a combination of chemical cleaner and staleness burning her nostrils. He’d cleaned her makeshift coffin. Police hadn’t been able to recover any forensic evidence from inside Dr. Ellis’s tomb. It’d been wiped down with bleach before her killer had placed her inside.
She memorized the interior shape of the refrigerator, imagined the door closing on her forever. She had to stall for time. She had to find a way to get free. Scanning the trees and ground around her, Chloe fought to clear her head. Dr. Ellis’s body had been buried within the city limits. If the man above her had kept to the same MO, she still had to be in Denver. “If you’re going to kill me, why hide behind the mask? Why disguise your voice?”
A combination of dirt and ice froze her from the outside in. Her fingers stiffened. Depending on weather conditions, it took two hours to freeze a body solid. She could still move. They hadn’t been out here long. She closed her eyes. She had to focus, listen. Yes, there. A breath of relief rushed from her lungs. Brakes on asphalt, but not a vehicle. Something heavier. A plane? Had her attacker intended to bury her by the airport? If she escaped—
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you, Dr. Miles.” The man in the mask rounded back into her vision. Rough hands wrenched her to her feet, and the surrounding forest tilted on its axis. A hint of peppermint dove into her lungs. Gum? “I’m going to let the refrigerator do the job for me. Don’t worry. The police will have your location by this time tomorrow, but, one way or another, the truth will come out.”
The truth?
“Please, please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this!” Chloe fought to pull free of his gloved grip, but the ropes around her ankles only unbalanced her. She hit the ground hard. A few inches of soggy foliage softened the blow, but a sharp sliver of rock lodged in her side. A scream escaped her chapped lips. Blood spread across her long-sleeved shirt and jacket as her heart pumped faster.
“Hmm. Well, I don’t like that.” He stood over her, hands curling into fists. He’d discarded the shovel next to the hole meant to become her grave. “While any injuries inflicted will only make your last moments far more unbearable, that one is going to bleed you dry before I’ve had a chance to have my fun. But you know that better than anyone, don’t you?” Digging into his black cargo pants, he knelt beside her. He produced a small orange plastic box. “Good thing I brought my first-aid kit.”
“Go to hell.” Covering her wound with both hands, still bound, Chloe locked her jaw against the scream. The rock hadn’t gone in too deeply as far as she could tell, but he wasn’t getting anywhere near her. Two tugs was all it took to dislodge it from her side, and another moan escaped her control. She quickly set the rock against the ropes around her wrists as he riffled through his small kit.
He laughed. “Every second you waste is another second you’re likely to bleed out, Doctor.”
The bloodied rock cut through the rope around her wrists faster than she’d expected. Kicking with every ounce of strength she had left, she connected with soft tissue protecting his digestive tract. Pain exploded down her side and across her back, but she shoved it to the back of her mind. Her attacker fell, and she swiped the rock underneath the rope around her ankles before he had a chance to rebalance. She didn’t wait to see if he’d gotten up and forced herself to her feet. Chloe pumped her legs hard and ran, her heart in her throat. The main road had to be close. It had to be close.
A growl reached her ears, and she pushed herself harder. Puffs of crystalized air formed in front of her lips. Tears froze in their tracks down her cheeks, the dropping temperatures working to slow her down. She was a runner, but the laceration from her fall on the rock shot agony through her side. Barreling footsteps echoed from behind.
“Help!” she screamed as loud as she could, branches cutting the skin across her neck and face as she raced toward the sound of the road. Her breathing filled her ears. Was that a car passing? “Help!”
The trees started to thin, the light brighter here. Or was that the desperation playing tricks on her mind? Blood seeped through her fingers, but she didn’t dare stop. Didn’t dare look back. She had to keep going. She had to get to the road.
A wall of muscle slammed her into the icy dirt.
“You’re faster than I gave you credit for.” His lips pressed into her ear, his breath hot against her over sensitized skin. A shiver raked down her spine, intensifying everything around her. The trees. The roots. He wrapped both hands around one ankle and pulled. “Even when you’re bleeding to death. That’s why I’ve always admired you. Your determination. The quality of your work.”
All too easily, she imagined Denver police heaving that light blue refrigerator out of the ground after her attacker’s anonymous tip and finding her body inside.
“No!” Clamping onto the nearest root, Chloe heaved herself closer to the base of the large pine. The root broke away clean, and her attacker dragged her backward. She couldn’t think—couldn’t breathe—but she swung as hard as she could.
A groan filled the clearing. His hold on her ankle loosened. She clawed across the foliage. A whooshing sound reached her ears, and she exhaled hard, her tears stinging her cheeks. A car.
Chloe dug her fingernails into the nearest tree and lifted herself to her feet. Run. No looking back. She stumbled forward, gaining strength with every step before she was finally able to jog. Every muscle in her body protested.
Another car drove past. Louder. Closer. Her heart threatened to beat straight out of her chest, but...slower than before. She gasped for air—she was losing too much blood. She could do this. Pressing her hand into her side, she pushed forward. Couldn’t stop. He’d catch up any minute. He’d find her. She just had to flag down—
The ground dropped out from under her feet. She rolled end over end. Branches and bushes scratched at her skin as darkness closed in at the edges of her vision. Sliding down the last few feet before the road, Chloe closed her eyes as oxygen crushed from her lungs.
A rumbling tore down the road, growing louder, and she forced her eyes open. No. This wasn’t the end. Pain tore through her as she flipped onto her side. She couldn’t scream. Couldn’t let him find her. “Move, damn it.”
A red pickup truck barreled down the road. Chloe struggled to her feet. One step. Two. Asphalt solidified her balance as she raised her hand for the driver to stop. Tires screeched loud in her ears a split second before the darkness swallowed her whole.
THE CALL ABOUT the body had come in a little more than an hour ago.
Police Chief Weston Ford shoved his truck into Park, the entrance to Contention Mine a soft outline through the windshield. He pulled the flashlight from the glove box and holstered his pistol. It was probably nothing. Teenagers liked to come out here at night. Dare each other to go inside the abandoned mines. It was a rite of passage, proof they weren’t kids anymore.
Straw weeds and bushes bent at the wind’s whim as he shouldered out of the vehicle. Snow had started melting over the past few weeks, but low temperatures still solidified the dirt under his boots as he surveyed the area. Pressed right into the San Juan Mountains, Battle Mountain, Colorado, and its twenty-eight hundred residents were stuck in the chaotic season shift where the weather couldn’t make up its damn mind. It warmed above freezing during the day, but right now, with the sun ducking behind the mountains, ice worked under Weston’s thick sheepskin, wool-lined jacket and jeans. He reached back into the vehicle and collected his cream-colored ten-gallon hat, centering it on his head.
He swept his flashlight around the edges of the mine. Up until a few years ago, Contention Mine had been the main source of income for the town and most of the families who lived in it. The owners had been forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy when it became too hard to even purchase toilet paper on credit, but the promise of a fresh start had been enough for town residents to hope. Until things got worse. Battle Mountain coal had supported the economies of two states for decades and fueled a shrinking number of power plants across the country. Now more than six hundred families were out of jobs while the entire town waited for a new company to take over operations.
They’d been waiting six years.
Weston surveyed the footprints in the dirt leading straight into the mouth of darkness. Too many sets to count. The wind rustled through thick pines on either side of the short incline leading into the mine. A low whistle reached his ears from inside. It’d been over a decade since he’d shoveled coal, but the layout had been engrained in his brain a long time ago. He crossed the threshold into pitch-blackness.
Thick supports braced up along either wall and crossed the ceiling above him in expertly measured intervals. The familiar scent of gravel and must dived into his lungs as he searched along the tunnel. His footsteps echoed off the walls the deeper he walked into the mountain. His heart thudded steadily at the base of his skull. None of the kids had waited around for him to show up, most likely terrified of what their parents would think of them crawling around in the deserted mine. But as Battle Mountain’s only law enforcement officer, he was duty bound to check it out. In a dying town this small, most of the calls he responded to were domestic violence–related. The unemployment rate had skyrocketed into mid–double digits, stress was higher than ever, tempers raged, and he didn’t have time for prank callers.
The ground sloped down. He followed the cart tracks at least three hundred feet. The tension bled from his shoulders, and Weston pulled up short of the slight decline. The flashlight beam vanished about ten feet in front of him. No sign of a body. No sign anyone had come this far into the mine.
“If anyone’s down here, I think this is when you’re supposed to jump out of the shadows and kill me. No takers? Great.” His words tumbled one over the other as they echoed down the length of the shaft. He’d wasted an hour climbing up the mountain and another twenty minutes getting dust and the smell of coal lodged into the fibers of his clothes. “Won’t stop me from finding which one of you called in a false report.”
He turned back toward the entrance, and a glint of something metallic caught in his flashlight beam. His nerve endings shot into awareness as he maneuvered the beam back. This was a coal mine. Nothing in this mountain should reflect light back like that. Weston closed in on the abnormality. He crouched over a dark patch of dirt. Loose. Disturbed. That didn’t make sense. The mine had been shut down six years ago, and he doubted any of the teens in town would spend more time in here than they had to.
The pool of light spread over the patch as he set the flashlight between his teeth and reached for a pen he kept in his jeans. He scooped the metal from the dirt with the end of his pen. It looked like some kind of silver handle, fitting the shape of his hand. Scratches and a couple of dents gouged the worn surface. Mine workers were deliberate about bringing personal effects into the tunnels in case of an accident of the explosive or cave-in variety. Watches, photographs, rings, wallets—anything they could use to be identified in the aftermath. But this length of stainless steel didn’t seem to fit the bill. “Now what are you doing down here?”
Weston stepped back, gauging the width and height of the disturbed dirt. Approximately five feet by three feet. Who the hell would come out here to bury something? The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and the piece of steel slipped from the end of his pen. He positioned the flashlight near the wall, angling the beam down across the patch of dirt. Unpocketing his phone, he tapped the flashlight button and set his device screen down to cast a wider circle of light. Collapsing, he clawed through the first couple of inches of dirt and scooped it out onto either side of his knees.
He hit something solid.
He hesitated, feeling out the shape of what he’d found with both hands. Following the curve of cold steel, Weston pushed dried, packed dirt out of the way. The smooth surface of the container transformed into a ripple of lettering in the upper right-hand corner. He reached for the flashlight, brushing away as much dirt as he could to read the letters. “Galanz.”
A refrigerator?
Warning knotted his gut tighter as he pushed back onto his heels. Something wasn’t right. Shoving to his feet, he raced back to the entrance of the cave and out into the frigid temperatures seizing his muscles. He rounded the bed of his pickup and pulled a shovel from the back. Sweat built in his hairline despite the freezing temperatures. His legs protested the exertion as he worked his way back through the tunnel and started digging.
Friction burned his bare hands as he dug out the shape of the rest of the container. There was only one reason someone would come all the way out here to an abandoned mine and bury a refrigerator. No. He couldn’t think like that. The call that’d come into the station had to be from one of the teens in town. This was a prank. Battle Mountain was safe. Plunging the end of the shovel into the crevice between the retro-style refrigerator and the wall of dirt around it, he tore his jacket from his shoulders. Something broke away from the door, and Weston angled the flashlight into the shadowed hole.
A padlock.
Swiping his dirt-caked hands under his nose, he shook his head. Not a prank. Minutes passed. Hell, maybe an hour, but he wasn’t going to stop. An ache set up residence in his shoulders as he discarded the last shovel of dirt off to his left. The refrigerator had been set perfectly level within the cocoon of dirt and gravel, the door and freezer box angled straight up toward the ceiling. One foot in the moat he’d shoveled around the container, Weston wedged his fingers between into the rubber seal and pulled.
The gray refrigerator door ripped open and slammed into the earth. Sickening odors escaped, penetrating through the mustiness of the mine as he stepped back. He covered his nose and mouth, but it’d be impossible to forget a smell like that. Decomposition.
He collected his phone from the ground and pointed the flashlight into the container. Air crushed from his lungs as the dust settled around him. Long brown hair coiled around the woman’s thin shoulders, dark lashes sweeping across her colorless cheeks as though she were sleeping. Her blue pinstriped shirt and dark jeans followed the contorted shape of her body. The padlock. The burial. The evidence of cracked lips and broken fingernails that had been crusted with blood. A shot of nausea exploded up Weston’s throat. It was impossible to get an identification from the swelling around her face and neck, but there was no doubt in his mind. The woman inside the refrigerator had been buried alive. “Holy hell.”
He lunged away from the scene and braced himself against one wall as he emptied three cups of coffee from his stomach into the dirt. This wasn’t happening. Not in his town. Not like this. Son of a bitch. He had to radio the station. His hands scraped along the walls as Weston stumbled back along the tunnel. The call hadn’t been a prank, but his gut said the teens who hung around the mine hadn’t been the ones to report the body. They wouldn’t have even known it’d been there without unearthing the damn container used to suffocate her.
The killer had made the call.
Weston wrenched open the driver’s side door and reached in for the radio strapped to his dashboard. Compressing the push-to-talk button, he tried to force the images he’d seen in that tunnel from his mind. In vain. “Macie, do you copy?”
The radio crackled before the sound clipped short. “Hey, Chief. How’s the body hunt going?”
Ignoring the sarcasm in his dispatcher/receptionist’s voice, he skimmed the back of his hand across his chin. The soft outline of Contention Mine stared back at him through the windshield, just as it had before. Only this time, a shiver chased down his spine. He’d taken over as police chief three years ago when Charlie Frasier had retired after forty years of protecting Battle Mountain. Nothing like this had ever happened in their town. He didn’t have the resources or the officers for an investigation of this caliber, but he couldn’t ignore the evidence he’d uncovered in that refrigerator. He had a dead woman on his hands, and he sure as hell was going to find out who put her there. “I need you to get that new coroner up here, the one who just moved here. You know whom I’m talking about. Dr. Pascale.”
“Sure, Chief,” Macie said. “Did those teens give you trouble, and you need help getting rid of their bodies?”
“No.” Weston set his forehead against the steering wheel and closed his eyes. “The call wasn’t a prank.”
