Beckon (24 page)

Chapter 45

“Jack!”

Elina slid through total darkness, clawing at the sides of the tunnel but unable to stop. She slid down the passage until she felt herself falling through empty space and plunging into icy waters. She surfaced, gasping for air, and felt a current pulling her along, swirling and spinning until at last she felt solid ground again under her feet.

A rush of terror swept over her. She was lost in complete darkness, and now she was utterly alone.

And Jack was probably dead as well. He had risked his life to save her, but she hadn't been able to save him. Elina couldn't hold back her tears.

Then, above the sound of the waterfall, she thought she heard another sound.

It was soft but grew steadily louder until she finally recognized it. It was Jack's voice. She heard him emerge from the tunnel above her and splash down into the water.

Her hopes rose. “Jack!”

“Elina?” he called back.

She laughed as relief washed over her. They called out to each other in the pitch-blackness until at last she felt his hands. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tighter than she had ever hugged anyone in her life.

He was laughing. “I know where we are. There's an underwater passage here that leads outside. All we have to do is wait until daylight.”

With Jack leading, they found the shoreline and collapsed on the soft, pebbled ground, flooded with relief.

Elina lay on her back, exhausted.

/  //  /

Jack woke up to a dim gray light filtering into the cave. His head was still buzzing from the horrors he'd seen back in the tunnels. And yet his chest ached at the thought of losing the amulet in the pit. He wondered what the artifact meant and what significance it held for the N'watu. He'd actually held it in his grasp for an instant, but now it was likely lost for good. His lips tightened. He'd come so close.

If only he'd had a few more seconds.

He touched Elina's shoulder to wake her. “I think the sun's up.”

He helped her up and led her along the shoreline until he could see daylight through the underwater tunnel. They plunged one last time into the water and swam through to the other side, where they emerged in the small lake under a blue sky.

They swam to the shore and lay in the dirt, soaking in the sunlight. After a minute, Elina crawled back to the edge of the water. Jack could see she was staring at her reflection. Her face was covered with black marks, obviously something the N'watu had done as part of their ritual.

Elina stood up to face him. “All I can say is this stuff better not be permanent.”

Jack looked her over now in the daylight. She had short black hair and beautiful brown eyes. But any other feminine softness her face might have held was tempered by a firm jawline and a two-inch scar that ran across her chin. She carried herself on a short athletic frame with a rugged sort of beauty. Jack could tell she had been a cop, and a tough one.

The black marks on her face had faded a bit from being in the water but were still fairly distinct. There was no telling what kind of substance the ink was made from. Jack grinned and tried to sound reassuring. “Actually, it's kind of attractive.”

“Said the guy with no funky marks on his face.”

Jack laughed and pointed toward the trees. “C'mon. The road isn't too far.” He led her through the woods, retracing the route he had taken only two days earlier.

“What day is it, anyway?” Elina asked.

“Uhh . . .” Jack rubbed his eyes, trying to calculate the number of days he'd spent in darkness and terror. “It's Saturday. Or, no . . . Sunday, I think.”

At length they came to a highway. Jack explained that this was where he had first run into Malcolm Browne. He pointed up the road. “The town's just up that way.”

Elina stopped. “We're not really going back there, are we?”

Jack thought about that for a moment. “Well, Carson and that big guy are both dead back in the tunnel. And I think Vale was injured pretty badly too, so I'm guessing he's either dead or will be soon.” He shrugged, recalling Dwight's enigmatic message to him before he died. “Besides, Dwight said there was something in his office that I needed to see.”

“What is it?”

“That's what I want to find out.”

They walked through the morning, slogging along the pavement without seeing a single vehicle. They passed the time talking, sharing their respective histories. It felt strange to Jack, but there was something about Elina that made him feel as if he'd known her for years. He told her more about his own journey and his father's disappearance. Elina seemed fascinated by the mystery but stopped short of saying what Jack himself had been thinking all along, though his heart had not wanted to speak the words.

“I can't bring myself to think about how he might have died,” Jack said finally. “That they would have sacrificed him to that—”

“But you don't know that for sure,” Elina said.

Not knowing was of little comfort. Something inside Jack still yearned to find out exactly what had happened to his father. Despite how gruesome it might have been.

His thoughts drew back to the mysterious amulet. It had been the confirmation he'd been looking for, the evidence he had come all this way to find, and now it lay under a mountain of rock. Forever out of reach. He could have validated his father's theories, but now he was leaving empty-handed with so many questions unanswered. He still didn't know what the symbols meant, and now he feared he never would.

But even worse than that was what he had lost along the way. He'd come through his nightmare having left his best friend back in those caves.

It wasn't until the sun was directly above them that they finally reached Beckon once more. They walked through the middle of town, where everything seemed as quiet and as still as death.

They came to the old Saddleback Diner and peeked in the windows, but no one was around. Then they crossed the street to Dwight Henderson's office and went inside. The place was cluttered and musty, and Jack made his way down the hall to the back room.

The door was locked, but after a few attempts, Jack managed to kick it open. Inside stood an antique desk, a couple chairs, and some file cabinets. In the corner was a door to the supply closet that was stacked full of boxes.

Jack inspected the boxes as he pulled them out. Each one was packed with notebooks. He shuffled through the top box and grabbed one of the books. “Looks like Dwight had been keeping quite a few journals.”

Elina peered over his shoulder for a better view. “What do they say?”

“Whoa.” Jack tapped the cover. “Look at the date on this one.”

Elina took the book and frowned as she scanned the pages. “Nineteen
forty-seven
?”

Jack opened a second box and pulled out another leather-bound journal. “Nineteen twenty-one.”

“These can't all be his,” Elina said.

But Jack was busy digging through another box. “He must have wanted me to find them.”

Elina began searching through the boxes as well. A moment later she pulled out a folder and showed it to Jack. Inside was a photograph. A very
old
photograph. In the picture, Dwight stood in front of what looked like a saloon. He was wearing a striped shirt with a vest and a bow tie. Beside him was an attractive Hispanic woman. And next to them stood Frank Carson and Malcolm Browne. The sign behind them read,
The Saddleback
.

Elina stared at Jack. “This can't be for real . . . can it?”

Jack shrugged. “He told me perilium not only enhances the body's immune system but also slows down or even reverses the aging process.”

Elina gestured to all the boxes on the floor. “Well, these dates would mean that Dwight was more than a hundred years old.”

“At least,” Jack said. His gaze beat a trail around the room. “I wonder how old the others were. For that matter, how old were those N'watu in the cave? They might have been down there for hundreds of years.”

The thought was staggering to Jack. He shuddered when he considered the implications of such a miracle drug. And the cost for the people trapped in this town by it. No wonder Vale went to such lengths to protect his secret.

Elina lifted out another leather-bound journal, this one tattered, its pages yellowed and stained. She thumbed through the brittle pages. Coming to one passage in particular, she stopped and read the words aloud.

“I am finding that my great distaste for these activities has waned of late, as well as for Mr. Vale and that godforsaken town. Regardless of my part in the matter, I can no longer pity those souls I have sent to their destruction. I no longer have the room left in my heart for it, for I am driven too deeply by love for my dearest Julia and I am ever compelled to save her. I will not lose her. My soul be cursed, I will not lose her.”

She paused before reading the date. “October 11 . . . 1899.”

They looked at each other in silence. After a moment Elina said, “I wonder if he found it again. His conscience, I mean.”

Jack had found a bitter reflection in Dwight Henderson's words, echoed by the stinging indictment he had received from Thomas Vale. He'd been driven here by his obsession to solve his father's mystery. And more than that, to validate his father's theories and perhaps thereby gain some of that legacy for himself. But at what expense? Jack wondered now if he had lost a portion of his own conscience somewhere along the way, buried deep beneath his ambitions.

Alongside the bones of his friend.

But more importantly, would he ever find it again?

He looked back at Elina and gave a faint smile. “I think maybe he did.”

Then a thought struck him. “Wait a minute.” He began to dig furiously through the boxes, searching the dates until he located the right one. He looked up at Elina. “Twelve years ago.”

Elina's eyebrows went up. “You think there's something about your dad in there?”

Jack flipped through the notebook, his hands nearly trembling, following the dates until he discovered the one he was looking for. Part of him hoped he would find something—some clue or mention to help him gain closure. To know at last what had happened. But part of him hoped he wouldn't.

Then Jack froze as his eyes fell across his father's name. His heart was beating so fast he could barely read it.

“He
was
here,” Jack said. “Vale lied to me.”

“Of course he lied,” Elina said. “He wanted to keep his little operation here a secret.”

Jack scanned the pages. They had indeed captured his father. He had come upon the town and was asking questions. Asking for directions to the nearby Caieche reservation. Not suspecting a thing.

Jack fought back his emotions. “He . . . he never even made it to the reservation.”

He read further as Dwight detailed how they had held his father captive in Vale's compound on the hill. Vale had hoped to utilize his knowledge to study the N'watu for his own advantage. Vale was, after all, a prisoner of the lost tribe like everyone else. And he was searching desperately for some clue to the secret of the perilium. A way to concoct it for himself. They held Jack's father there for several months, giving him limited access to part of the caves and allowing him to study the tribe at some length. Even to meet Nun'dahbi herself. No doubt his father had seen the woman's amulet even as Jack had. The artifact that appeared to have been so important in his father's other notes. Jack read until he came to a section that sent chills down his back.

One day his father had attempted an escape and fled into the woods. Dwight detailed how Carson and the others had tracked him down. They used dogs and hunted him. Cornered him like an animal. But his father was not going to give up easily. There was a struggle, and . . .

And shots were fired.

Carson acknowledged that Kendrick had left him little choice. In the end, the man was simply not willing to cooperate, and while his elimination was regrettable, he was too great a risk to keep alive any longer. And Vale has never been one to risk much.

Jack stared at the words on the page. The account had been written with such clinical detachment. Almost as if they had put down a rabid dog and not a human being.

He wept as Dwight described how they had hauled his father's dead body into the cave to be fed to the kiracs.

But there was something else.

Dwight also indicated that he had retained the research journal Jack's father had kept in hopes of eventually finding something useful. He wrote that he had hidden it under the floorboards inside the closet.

Jack went back to the closet and knelt down to inspect the floor. One of the boards was indeed loose and rattled beneath Jack's hand.

His heart was pounding as he pried it up, surging with the same emotions he'd felt when he first discovered the hidden compartment in his father's desk.

Under the floorboard was a thick notebook covered in dust. Jack lifted it out and blew the dirt off. He opened it and felt as if his heart would burst through his ribs. On the inside cover, written in faded ink, was a name.

David C. Kendrick

He held up the book. “It's his journal!”

Jack thumbed through the pages and found that the entries went back several years before his father's disappearance. They appeared to chronicle most of his expeditions. Some of it was written in English, but other parts were in Latin. Some in Greek and even some in what looked like Hebrew. But parts of the last several pages were written in . . .

Jack peered closer. The writing used the same characters he had seen inside the caves. He looked up at Elina, not knowing whether to scream or laugh or cry. A thousand emotions clamored for dominance. He couldn't wait to pore over the pages of the book. To find out what secrets it might hold. And what answers. He rocked back on his knees, clutching the journal to his chest as though it were his father himself.