Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

streams ran down the hillside, the wind roared, and she pulled her jacket closer. The cold air sliced every inch of her exposed skin.
    Jenna, she thought, where are you? She didn’t call out. The noise of the storm made any kind of utterance completely impractical. And if that had not been the case, Emily would have kept her mouth shut as a precaution. She worried if Jenna’s captor was within the sound of her voice. If he was, there was no need to tip him off. Surprise and her Glock warm from her constant touch-were among the things she had going for her. But neither were her greatest source of strength and power; finding Jenna stood above all.
    My daughter’s out there and I’m not leaving until I find her and bring her home.
    Something screamed. Startled, Emily looked up and into the night sky, a boiling brew of clouds. Just a seabird. She was almost there. The bunker was twenty yards away, behind a hedge of sea grasses and spruce trees so tortured by the elements they looked like alarmed figures fleeing the waves of the Pacific. The trek to the top of the bluff had taken no more than ten minutes, but with each step she felt as if the sinking sand would steal her feet. Here. I’m here. But where are you? Where is the bunker?
    Emily steadied herself on the grassy and sandy layer that covered the concrete slab roof of the secluded bunker. She looked around with her light, finally tracing the edges of the roofline beneath her feet. Waving the flashlight’s beam toward the ocean, she could distinguish the crisp edge of the bunker’s camouflaged covering. Bracing herself against the elements, she moved slowly toward its face.
    Emily could hear the surf of the Pacific two hundred feet below, pounding the embankment with a relentless fury. Gooseflesh consumed her body. Since she could barely see, she climbed down a ledge backward, facing toward the edge of the cliff. She expected it was no more than ten yards away. There was no other way down, at least none she could see with a flashlight that only produced a strong beam when she rocked it back and forth, shifting the weakening batteries.
    She bent down, her back to the ocean, and slid. Her hands were frozen and wet, but she barely used them for grasping; they’d become more like hooks than hands. She dropped ten feet, feeling the relief that came when her feet rested on the packed red clay and sand of the earth.
    The red clay.
    She was close. Close to finding Jenna. Her heart pounded with such a hurried force, she worried that she might have a heart attack. She’d die right there. No one would find her. No one would find her daughter. Her lips were blue, and vapors curled from her mouth as she frantically searched for a way in. All the while, a fierce wind pummeled her.
    The bunker had three openings, not really windows, but more the size of very small doors. Each had been fashioned with bars by the state’s Fish and Game Department to allow access for bats, but to deter visitors of the human kind. A sign proclaimed the bunker as a protected habitat for Townsend’s Big-eared Bats. On closer inspection, she noticed that one of the bars could easily be removed. It was clear by the color and condition of the bar darker and smoother than the others-that it had been handled. It had been moved. She tucked the flashlight under her armpit, its beam scattering in the wrong direction. She pulled and twisted and the middle bar came loose. She dropped it and it fell with a thud into the sand.
    This is the way in, she thought, hoisting herself up to the opening and fishing her feet through it. She swiped her light at the floor to make sure the drop wasn’t so severe as to cause an injury. She slid herself into the opening, and slumped to the wet concrete floor. She dropped to her knees. She was inside.
    Once more, her light moved across the floor.
    Blood? Oh God, no! she thought as she caught the sight of red spatter that had marked the middle opening. Oh no, please. The words nearly slipped from her lips as her freezing fingertips felt the red color. It was hard. Even under the layer of wetness from the rain, Emily Kenyon could feel that it was a dried pigment. Not blood. Paintball, she thought, momentarily relieved.
    She pointed the beam into the depths of the bunker. It looked empty, dark, hollow The space was surprisingly largemaybe as much as two thousand square feet. She trained her light all around. There were sodden boxes full of garbage. It smelled of bat guano.