Hunter/Prey

Chapter 19

If you go down there, you’ll never come back up.

The problem was doing something to stop it from happening. Even if Harper believed her and talked to the kids back at the cabin, he’d still have to find where Beckard took her first. She didn’t know the area, so she didn’t have a clue where they were, only that it was densely wooded, similar to where she had clashed with Beckard earlier that night.

It was some kind of backup location, she guessed. A hideout. Beckard probably always knew that sooner or later his luck would run out. Her instinct was to call this a mistake on his part — staying around in the area knowing he might be (or had already been) exposed. But the more she thought about it, maybe it wasn’t such a stupid thing to do after all. Beckard would know, more than most, about the risks of staying on the road if he was being pursued by the police. He would understand the effectiveness of a statewide roadblock, especially in this part of the country, where the closest big city to get lost in was still a long way off.

Of course, there was a very real possibility he wasn’t thinking straight, that the pills he was popping liberally (that he didn’t think she noticed him doing) were playing tricks with his mind. Was it possible for him to overdose on painkillers? Or at least choke on them?

Not with my luck.

It was some kind of old building, about twice the size of a backyard shack, and made of brick. Its exterior had, over the years, been partially swallowed up by the woods that surrounded it, making it very easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for, or where exactly to look. How long had it been here? Decades and decades. Forgotten, until a psychopath in need of a place to hide showed up one day.

The entrance was behind a rusted-over black metal gate covered in vines and moss, and to get to it, Beckard had to pull down what looked like a large green and brown tarp covered in branches, leaves, and dirt. It wasn’t anything natural, but some kind of makeshift hunting canvas that he had put together to camouflage the opening.

Beckard disappeared around the building for a moment before returning with a key he had apparently gone to retrieve from somewhere. He used it now to open a large padlock and swung the metal gate wide open in order to get at the wooden door on the other side. It was old and heavy, and Beckard had to put his entire body into it just to move it. She prayed he snapped his stitches and would maybe bleed to death.

No such luck, because he pushed the door open just enough to reveal bright LED lights hanging from the ceiling. She couldn’t make out much of anything else from the backseat of the police cruiser where Beckard had left her. The only reason she could see what he was doing and where was because of the car’s headlights.

He walked back to her now, drawing the Glock when he was almost at the car. He opened the door and motioned her out, and Allie once again wondered if he was ambidextrous, and if not, how accurate he would be shooting with his left hand.

“Find out,” he said, smiling at her.

Shit.

She climbed out silently, clumsily. She had to grab onto the open door with both hands to maintain her balance because of the handcuffs.

He moved behind her and poked her in the back with the cold gun barrel before she was completely outside. “Into the abyss, Allie Krycek.”

She walked toward the building, drawn to the open door and the warmth of the lights flooding outside. Against the backdrop of the darkened woods, it looked very much like an ominous entrance to someplace that was not meant for human visitation.

If you go down there, you’ll never come back up.

“Found it a couple of years back,” Beckard said behind her, as if he were discussing his favorite T-shirt. “I’ve been getting it ready ever since. You never know when you’ll need a place to hide once the chickens come home to roost. And I think today qualifies.”

Scarred concrete blocks on the other side of the door came into view. Someone had originally painted the walls in a lime-green color, but it had faded over the years, leaving just the natural gray behind, with a patch or streak of lime-green still holding on here and there. Cobwebs clung to the corners, and something furry scurried into her path, appearing out of the opening and disappearing into the freedom of the woods before she could get a good look at it.

“Go right in, don’t be shy,” Beckard said.

When she stepped inside, she understood why the shack-like building had looked small from the outside — that was because it was just an entrance. About five feet from the door was the first of many steps leading down. She counted ten in all before the stairs made a sharp right turn around a corner. Another lamp hung along the wall further down, illuminating a dirty and dust-covered landing. Allie thought she heard the thrumming of something from below, around the turn, but maybe it was just her own labored breathing.

“Down you go, princess,” Beckard said behind her before chuckling. “Bet you’ve heard that before, huh?”

She didn’t answer and didn’t move right away.

If you go down there, you’ll never come back up.

“Come on,” Beckard said, poking her in the back with the gun again. “This isn’t a democracy. You don’t have a choice.”

Every time he prodded her with the gun, her instincts were to twist around and grab for the weapon. But she needed him to be close enough to do that, and there was still the problem of the handcuffs. Those were, though, doable as long as he was close enough. Allie didn’t have any illusions that she could take Beckard if he was at full-strength, but maybe now, at half (maybe less) strength, she might stand a chance—

“You’ll have to be fast,” he said, and she could hear the amusement in his voice.

Goddammit. How does he always know?

She took the first step down and wondered if this was what a death row inmate felt as he was being led to his end.

“It’s amazing how much you look like your sister,” he said between steps. “Now that I know the two of you are related, I can’t look at you without seeing her. It’s uncanny.”

He wasn’t wrong. She did look like Carmen, but only because she had made an effort to. The blonde hair and slender frame was a part of it. Allie had always been more naturally curvy than thin, but dieting and steady cardio exercises over the years had fixed that. The Krycek girls had always been tall, so that was never an issue. The green eyes, on the other hand, were contact lenses covering up her natural blues. She had become so used to them during the four months that she spent traveling back and forth between the same stretch of road, waiting for him to bite, that she hardly remembered she had them on.

She hesitated as he reached the landing, with the turn coming up.

“Don’t stop now; you’re almost there,” he said, poking her in the back of the neck with the gun this time. The barrel was much colder than it should have been and sent shivers through her body.

She turned the corner and saw another flight of stairs. This one was shorter, with only five steps, and it led to the bottom where another lamp hanging from the ceiling revealed more of the wall’s original lime-green color.

It was some kind of underground bunker. Maybe one of those old school bomb shelters.

Small, the size of a single studio apartment. There was a cot along one wall and shelves stacked with black boxes with pictures of food on them. Spare lamps hung from hooks, and the outlines of strange, bulky objects peered back at her from shadowed corners. The overwhelming stench of abandonment was suffocating.

The floor was hard and rough and absorbed the sounds of her footsteps as she walked across it. More cobwebs dotted the ceiling, and a pair of cockroaches ran across her path and vanished into a crack along the wall. Something else moved in one of the darkened corners to her right. It was a brief scurrying noise, but Allie decided she’d rather not find out what had caused it.

“Welcome to your new home,” Beckard said behind her. “Now be a good girl and stay very still.”

She heard a click! and another large swath of the room lit up as he turned on a second LED lamp hanging along the wall.

“What now?” she asked. She couldn’t tell where he was behind her exactly or how close.

“Walk to the far wall, turn around, and sit down.”

She did as he instructed, turning around as she slowly sat down Indian style.

He had taken out a second pair of handcuffs and now tossed it into her lap. “Put one end around the cuffs you have on now, and the other into that,” he said, pointing at a thick metal spike with a round loop at the end, jutting out of the wall a few inches to the left of her. “Don’t get cute,” he added with a grin. “I want to hear the sound of that lock catching.”

She picked up the second pair of handcuffs and hooked one over the chain between the first handcuff, then slipped it into the spike. As a result, her arms were now suspended slightly in the air and she had to sit sideways facing the center of the room with her right shoulder pressed against the wall. She shivered slightly from the cold contact.

“You’re taking this well,” he said, holstering the handgun.

“Disappointed?”

“A little. I expected more of a fight.”

He walked over to the cot and sat down. It creaked loudly under his weight, but he didn’t seem to notice it. He was too busy pulling out a white bottle from his pocket. He shook out a couple of pills and swallowed them.

“Generic brand,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked, “but it works just as well. I can barely feel the pain.” He stood up and flinched a bit, which led her to think he was lying about “barely” feeling the pain. “I gotta go do something. Until I come back, you be a good girl and don’t go anywhere.”

He started up the stairs, but stopped halfway and looked back at her.

“Oh, feel free to scream if you want.” He banged his fist on the wall, producing a dull thud each time. “Fifties construction. They really knew how to build things back then. You could set off a nuke in here, and someone standing on the other side of the door wouldn’t hear it. But hey, don’t take my word for it.”

He continued up, whistling to himself, his footsteps fading.

Then the grind of the heavy door against the concrete floor as it closed.

She waited…and heard the low rumbling of the Crown Vic starting up. Beckard was wrong; the bunker wasn’t soundproof. Noises didn’t travel freely down here from the outside world, but it was noticeable and she could feel the engine vibrating slightly along the structure.

She didn’t move until everything was quiet and still again, signaling that Beckard was gone.

She turned her focus to the metal thing protruding out of the wall next to her and spent some time examining it closely. Her arms were already starting to tire from being suspended in the air. All those nights of lying in bed, dreaming up nightmare scenarios, and not one of them involved being handcuffed to a wall in an old bunker.

She didn’t panic, though. Allie had come too far to start doing that now.

Ten years of research, six years of training, and three years of getting ready for this moment…

She jingled the handcuffs and took a breath.

It was going to hurt.

Oh, who was she kidding?

It was going to hurt a lot.