Eleven (44 page)

I shimmied in the tight space, careful to move slowly and not cause the wood of the coffin to groan. Sweat dripped down my face, my breathing labored as my heart continued to palpitate.

Focus.

I maneuvered a hand beneath me and reached into my back pocket.

My personal cell phone, the one Jack would have preferred I left at home. I kept my hands still and listened.

Their voices were low. They were moving away.

I pulled out the phone and shimmied to the side to free enough space to bring it up to me. I bent at the elbows, slid it open, and turned it on. The brightness of the screen made my eyes water, but as my vision came into focus the news was good and bad. There was reception down here, but the battery was almost dead.

Shit!

I might not have enough to make a call, but I needed to try. I pushed a button and it beeped. My heart sped up as I worried Amanda would hear it and stop the call from being made. But I heard another door open. It was distant, and I assumed it came off the alcove.

I pushed the numbers for Jack’s cell phone and cringed as every digit beeped.

Jack drove in a police cruiser with the lights on. Zachery sat beside him.

“We’re going to find them, Jack.”

“We don’t have a choice.” He had lost too many men in his life and saw too much bloodshed. If he could at all prevent it, he would. The cell rang, and Jack looked at the caller ID. “It’s the kid’s name, must be his personal number.”

Zachery pulled out his phone and got on the line with Nadia. “We need you to triangulate a call. Live now to Jack’s cell.”

“Where are you?” Jack asked.

“I know who the eleventh target is…”

“Kid—” The connection hissed with static.

“Target number eleven is—”

“Where are you?”

“She has us at—”

Jack tossed his cell in the console. “We were cut off.”

“Nadia, do you have it?” Zachery asked.

“Yeah, yeah, just give me a second.” Seconds passed. “It bounced off towers northeast of Sarasota. There’s a lot of empty land and farmer’s fields out there.”

“What the hell are they doing out there? See if there are any abandoned buildings, churches. Try churches first,” Jack directed.

Zachery hung up the phone and looked at Jack. “We will find them. Everything will be okay.”

“Stop saying that.” Jack pulled out his cigarette pack and lit one. After inhaling deeply, he said, “Amanda Knowles found out Keith wasn’t her real father—” He pressed harder on the gas.

God, how I hoped Nadia had tracked the call and at a minimum that I had saved a man’s life.

I heard voices from outside the coffin but only caught mumbled words.

I needed out. The haziness had somewhat cleared, and it was easier to assess my options. I thought of punching through the lid of the coffin but realized the unlikelihood of that. The space was too tight to muster a punch or a kick that would contain enough strength. On top of which, wood coffins were built to withstand six feet of dirt and not cave in. Unfortunately, my only way out was if someone let me out.

If I yelled and screamed, it would take what little bit of oxygen I had left. I would risk killing myself. If I stayed quiet Amanda may leave me in here to die.

I had to think of how she operated. She had learned from Bingham. She would be organized. But Paige and I had thrown confusion into her plans making her deviate course and improvise. She had crossed over from being in control of her emotions to an illogical and disorganized state of mind. At this point, she would prove her point and that might mean killing us.

Paige had yelled out there was another burial site and that Amanda had a gun. If Amanda had lost all control, she would have just shot Paige but she hadn’t.

The vibrations of footsteps were headed toward me. The lock on the casket hit the wood. As the lid opened, my eyes squinted from the brightness.

Amanda held a gun on me. “Get out now. And do as I say.”

“Where’s Paige?”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Did you kill her?” Rage heated my earlobes and raised the hairs on my neck.

“Get out and do as I say.” Her fiery red hair sprung as wild flames around her face.

I held up both arms and got out of the coffin.

“In there.” Amanda cocked her head toward the corner alcove, but her eyes and the gun remained fixed on me.

I walked to the corner and looked at the circular grave. Images flashed through my mind of the sites from Salt Lick and the bodies of the victims.

“In that door.”

Inside Paige sat on the floor, her legs bound and her arms behind her back. Her eyes were covered. There was a gurney, and I recognized the man on it. There were two vertical slashes in his torso already.

“Daddy, we have two friends who will be joining us.” Amanda graced his forehead with the touch of her fingers.

Jack pounded on the door to Keith Knowles’ house. “FBI! Answer the door!”

Both he and Zachery held their guns ready to fire.

“We’re going in.” Jack stepped back and looked to Zachery, who charged at the door. It opened, and Zachery had to catch his balance from the momentum.

“Where’s your father?” Jack asked the question as he entered the house with Zachery behind him.

“You can’t just come in—”

“Where is your father?” Jack repeated the question, his nose gracing the end of Reggie Knowles’.

“He’s not home.”

“Do you have any idea where he’d be?”

Reggie shook his head.

“Listen, Kid, we need you to keep calm. We have reason to believe your sister has him.”

“Has him?”

“Do you have any idea where she would take him?”

“Take him?”

Jack pushed Reggie into a hallway wall. With one hand splayed on Reggie’s chest and the other wielding the gun, he said, “Anywhere special to her?”

“I can’t think of any—”

Jack’s cell rang. He kept the eye contact with Reggie as he backed up and answered. “Agent Harper.” He balanced the phone between his ear and shoulder and clipped his gun back in the holster.

“I found a church on Utopia Road up around where the signal triangulated. It’s been abandoned for five years now. Its name used to be The Redeemer Church of Christ.”

“Send the directions to my phone.”

There was no response.

“Nadia?”

“I just got the financials back on Lori Carter, Bingham’s sister. You’re not going to believe this, but in her Will she left a few hundred thousand to Amanda Knowles. Hang on a second. There was a stipulation. She was to buy the church on Utopia Road.”

“That’s where we’ll find them.”

Jack went back inside. “Reggie, you’re coming with us.”

“What? Why? What did I do?”

“We need to keep an eye on you.”

Zachery took Reggie’s arm and guided him to the squad car.

Behind the wheel, Jack asked Reggie, “Does your father have a cell phone?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll need that number.”

He rhymed it off and Zachery dialed.

I got down on the floor beside Paige and brushed a hand on her arm, doing so carefully as to not alert Amanda.

Keith Knowles lay sedated, as his chest rose and fell. Beside the cot, a table held a scalpel, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a jar of cotton swabs, and a towel stained with blood.

“What are you looking at?” Amanda waved the gun at me. “You try to understand, and you will fail. You could never understand why I do this.”

The fire in her eyes advised my instinct that it was best to remain silent.

She kept the gun on Paige and me as she brushed the back of her free hand along her father’s hairline. “He deserves to die, to gain repentance, to be forgiven.”

“You do God’s work.”

She turned to face me. She studied my face, the contortion of my mouth, my eyes. “That’s right.”

“All the people you killed deserved to die.”

Amanda smiled. “Yes, that is right.” Another brush of her hand caressed her father’s head.

As a narcissist, appeal to her intelligence, make her feel unique, elevate her. “Help me to understand.”