Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Dark
The trail was a nightmare of slick shale and tangled briars that tore at my denim trousers. The storm drowned out every sound except the thrashing of the canopy overhead and the rush of swollen creeks tumbling toward the Cumberland River below.
Fifty yards off the path, my red light caught a flash of unnatural color pinned against the thorns of a blackberry cane.
I froze, sinking to one knee, the shotgun sweeping the black corridor of trees. Nothing moved.
I crept forward. Caught on the thorns was a strip of fabric.
Bright yellow. A fragment of a sleeve with three tiny black threads: the remains of the embroidered bumblebee from Sophie’s hoodie.
She had torn it off on purpose. She had reached out as she was being carried and snagged it on the briars.
*Good girl,* I thought, a single sob catching in my throat before being crushed down by sheer willpower. *Keep leaving the path, baby. Mom’s right behind you.*
Ten feet further along the spur, I found the second clue.
Pushed into the mud beside a rotting oak stump was a plastic juice bottle cap Daniel always bought—the cheap cherry syrup brand he drank when he was coming down from an amphetamine binge. Beside it lay a bloody footprint. Not a boot.
A bare foot. Small.
My blood ran cold. Hoyt had lost her shoes or thrown them away to prevent her from running. She was barefoot in fifty-degree mud, surrounded by flint shards and thorn bushes.
Suddenly, a voice echoed through the trees ahead. Rough, strained, cracked with hysteria.
“You said we weren't gonna hurt her, Hoyt! You swore on Mom’s grave!”
Daniel.
I dropped flat into the fern undergrowth, sliding the Pelican case behind a rotting log. I brought the Mossberg to my shoulder, peering through the rain-soaked timber.
Thirty yards ahead, sheltered beneath the overhang of a collapsed limestone rock-crusher, a pale yellow light flickered. A Coleman kerosene lantern sat on an upturned grease drum, casting elongated, grotesque shadows against the pitted stone face of the quarry wall.
Daniel Mercer sat on an overturned milk crate, clutching his left arm to his chest. His jacket was torn, his face battered and swollen, his left eye swollen shut with dark purple hematoma.
Hoyt Mercer stood over him, holding a rusty iron pry bar in one massive, grease-blackened fist.
And in the corner, huddled inside the rusted cab of a stripped Caterpillar tractor, was Sophie.
Her yellow hoodie was black with mud. Her bare legs were scratched and purple from the biting cold, drawn up tight against her chest. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Daniel with a mixture of terror and revulsion. Around her mouth, Hoyt had wrapped a thick strip of silver duct tape, but her hands were free.
She wasn’t crying.
She was staring at the ground near her feet, her small fingers rhythmically tapping against her knee. Three taps. Pause. Three taps.
Morse code. *S-O-S.*
She was keeping her mind working. She was fighting to stay conscious.
“Shut your mouth, Danny,” Hoyt snarled, spitting a wad of tobacco juice onto the limestone floor near Daniel’s boots. “You lost your nerve the second she ran into the hall and slipped that note. If I hadn't grabbed her, the Holloway bitch would’ve had the sheriff on us before we cleared the bypass.”
“We shouldn't have taken her!” Daniel wept, rocking back and forth. “Claire doesn't have the optics, Hoyt! I told you! I traded them to Marcus six months ago! There’s no money! Claire’s got nothing!”
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“Claire has a military pension coming and a command that won’t let an NCO’s kid disappear into a river,” Hoyt said, his voice flat, dead, devoid of human warmth. “And if she doesn't have the crates, she has the title to that four-acre parcel in Christian County her grandfather left her. Somebody’s paying me for eight years in Turney Center, Danny. And if nobody pays, nobody leaves this quarry.”
***
