The Inner Circle

100

" It’s under us,” Dallas says.

“Whattya mean?” I ask.

“The place. The caves,” Dallas explains as the narrow two-lane road sends us rising and falling and rising again over yet another set of low twisting hills, which are getting harder to see as the 4 p.m. sky grows dark. “That’s why the road’s like this. I think the caves are right under us.”

I nod, staring down at my phone, which casts a pale blue glow in the car and is still getting enough signal for me to search the websites of all the D.C. TV stations to see if anyone’s covering the story.

I search for Nico’s name… for my name… even for the word homicide or murder. Nothing. No mention of St. Elizabeths, no mention of a dead barber, and most important, no mention of me being wanted as a fugitive.

“Now do you understand why no one’s heard of us in two hundred years?” Dallas asks, once again trying to put me at ease. It almost works-until I gaze out at the snow-covered trees and we blow past the red, white, and blue road sign with the picture of George Washington.

Welcome to the Washington Trail-1753

It’s silly and a meaningless coincidence, but I can’t help but imagine Nico’s joy if he knew that we were driving the same path that George Washington marched on back in 1753.

“Beecher, stop thinking what you’re thinking,” Dallas warns.

“You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

“I saw the sign. It’s not an omen.”

“I never said it was an omen.”

Dallas hears my tone. He believes me. “Though it is kinda haunted house,” he admits.

“It’s definitely haunted house,” I say with a nod.

With a few quick turns, Dallas weaves us deeper into the hills, where at every curve in the road the nearest tree has a red reflector sunk into its trunk. Out here, the roads don’t have lights, which we need even more as the winter sky grows black.

“You sure this is right?” I ask.

Before he can answer, my phone vibrates in my hand. Caller ID tells me who it is.

“Tot?” Dallas asks.

I nod. It’s the fourth time he’s called in the last few hours. I haven’t picked up once. The last thing I need is for him to fish and potentially figure out where we are.

As we round the final curve, the hills level out and a brand-new glow blinds us in the distance, forcing us to squint. Straight ahead, giant metal floodlights dot the long field that stretches out in front of us. A familiar churn in my stomach tells me what my eyes can’t see.

“This is it, isn’t it?”

Dallas doesn’t answer. He’s staring at a white bus that slowly rumbles through the brightly lit parking lot on our left.

The only other sign of life is a fluorescent red triangle that looks like a corporate logo and is set into a haystack-sized man-made hill and serves as the sole welcome mat. You don’t come this way unless you know what you’re looking for.

Just past the red triangle, at the only intersection for miles, a narrow paved road slopes down to the left, toward a high-tech check-in building, then keeps going until it dead-ends at the base of the nearby stone cliffside that surrounds the little canyon that we’re now driving in.

But as we make the left toward the check-in building, it’s clear that the road doesn’t dead-end. It keeps going, into a black archway that looks like a train tunnel, inside the cliff and down underground.

“Stay in your car! I’m coming to you,” a guard calls out in a flat western Pennsylvania accent, appearing from nowhere and pointing us away from the check-in building and toward a small freestanding guardhouse that looks more like a construction shed.

I look again to my right. There are two more sheds and a bunch of workers wearing hard hats. The check-in building is still under construction.

“Here… right here,” the guard says, motioning us into place outside the security shed-and into view of its two different security cameras. “Welcome to Copper Mountain,” he adds as Dallas rolls down his window. “I assume you got an appointment?”