“What?”
“There’s an abandoned building on the Earth-view map!” She set aside the tablet, picked up the old book and quickly flipped to a page she had marked. “It was supposedly torn down. Apparently, it never was. That’s what we’re seeing. It was recorded as destroyed on the day it was supposed to have been demolished, but there’s mention in this record that...doctors were still placing patients! Oh, whoa! Alex did make a discovery, but I think someone made that discovery before him.” She looked back at the map on the tablet. “The dirt road ends, but there’s a smaller path, which disappears as you get to the water. But the building...it was an insane asylum! The Mariana Institute for the Mentally Unfit. That’s what Alex wanted to tell me about—that’s why he’d been so silly and secretive.”
“It’s where he’s being held!” Devin said.
Devin had slowed to a stop as they reached the crossroad; she was looking over Vickie’s shoulder at the tablet, and the map that had been created as a combination of past and present.
Neither of them saw the truck coming.
They just started to look up, aware of the sound of wheels moving over the rough terrain...
And then Vickie saw the vehicle—and the face of the man in the passenger’s seat.
Then it broadsided them with tremendous speed and force, and sent their Jeep flying and flipping into the woods.
*
It was a different smell, one all its own, that clung to the long dead—better, of course, than the horror smell of certain stages of decay that curled even the strongest stomach.
And still...
That smell was all around the corpse of Brenda Noonan.
What had been left of her had been embalmed, but she’d been so ripped and torn by the time that she’d been found that she resembled a creature from a zombie flick.
Dr. Graves barely noticed.
He was looking for one thing.
“It’s possible, it’s possible,” he murmured, “but so unlikely... This tear, or these tears, the loss of tissue and flesh... Yes, that would have been forest creatures. Yes, and yes, but they happened after death, not before it. Some of them...vultures, crows, insects, other birds, some land creatures...they’re all waiting, all of the time. It can be difficult to tell...”
Griffin stood still, watching, not commenting.
Dr. Graves didn’t really want conversation right then. He was comparing the body to the chart in his hand, which was from the previous autopsy completed by the last medical examiner.
“Not that he was bad at his work!” Graves said, pausing to look at Griffin and Rocky. “He wasn’t looking for a wound on the throat, on the small bones, the way that I am!”
He turned his attention back to this work.
Griffin was glad that he did so.
Because he was suddenly aware of someone in the room with them.
Someone dead.
Rocky let out a small sound at his side; he tensed.
Yes, he saw her, too.
But he didn’t think that it was the spirit of the woman lying so horribly mutilated on the stainless-steel gurney before him.
There was just something too different about her.
She was tiny, for one. And her hair was long and blond, but there were delicate curls that just edged her face, reminiscent of a style from a period long, long ago.
Was she the woman Vickie saw? He didn’t know.
A tragic frown marred her beautiful face.
She definitely wanted his attention. He nodded to her, trying to let her know that he had to finish listening to Dr. Graves.
The medical examiner was still speaking, pointing out various aspects of the havoc created upon the body, and then he let out a guttural sound of both disgust and victory.
He’d found the telltale mark upon a piece of cervical spine.
Brenda Noonan’s throat had been slashed. Soft tissue was gone; the proof remained upon a tiny part of bone.
Griffin’s phone rang and he excused himself and answered it quickly.
It was Jackson Crow from headquarters.
“We’ve just gotten a call from the remote security and diagnostic car service the rental car agency uses. Vickie’s SUV was in an accident and they’re sending people out. The car was struck hard enough to flip and roll. We can’t reach Vickie or Devin,” Jackson said. “You need to get out to—”
Griffin wasn’t listening anymore; he could see that Rocky had also gotten a message and was already heading out the door.
Griffin barely explained to Dr. Graves.
“We have coordinates,” Rocky said. “I’ve got the directions on my phone.”
“How the hell do you go fast enough, or make the kind of mistake on roads like this, to flip and then roll?” Griffin asked.
He and Rocky looked at one another.
“You don’t!” they said at once.
*
Vickie never blacked out, not for a single moment. The air bags, however, were blinding at first, and she was so shocked that she was momentarily paralyzed, trying desperately to comprehend what had happened.
“Devin!” she murmured, struggling to reach for something sharp—anything to extract herself.
Then, just as suddenly as it had inflated, the air bag deflated.
So did Devin’s.
Her friend, however, was unconscious.
“Devin, Devin!” she called.
She realized that they were still upside down. She extricated herself from her seat belt carefully, and then reached for Devin’s wrist. There was no blood on her anywhere, and she had a pulse.
She had to get her out of the car.
That was the plan! They had been hit on purpose; someone was coming to get them!
The gun.
Devin carried a gun. She needed to find it.
She tried to find the hook on Devin’s seat belt. Even as Vickie grabbed for the buckle, Devin’s eyes opened. She blinked, then focused on Vickie. “Get out of here!” she told her. “Get away—fast! Rocky and Griffin will be on their way. Find them. Get out of here now. I can hear someone coming!”
People were coming.
Vickie could hear voices. And movement. The people who had caused the crash were coming through the woods.
“I’ll get myself out—you go!” Devin told her. “Go, hide. The car has a GPS system thing on it that notifies the rental office of a crash—our people will come. Hide, now!”
“I can’t leave you—”
“Yes, you can! Go! I’ll be all right. You won’t be! Move! Go now! I’m stuck. My belt is stuck. I’ll get out, and then I’ll be running like crazy, somewhere behind you. But now...go!”
“You’re bleeding!” Vickie told Devin.
“Just flesh wounds, honestly. I swear. I’m begging you—go!”
Agonized and torn, Vickie finally realized that Devin would be better off alone—she’d only have herself to worry about, not an unarmed civilian, as well.
She unclipped her own belt and let herself fall. The voices were coming closer and closer.
Shimmying through the crushed window, she made it out of the car.
“Go! I’ll be close behind you. Get away from the car!” Devin urged her.
Away from the car, yes! Those who had hit them would be there within seconds. Help would not be so nearly close behind.
Vickie ran, hard.
Deep, deep into the trees, into the forest, into a maze of green darkness.
*
Griffin could see the wreck from a distance as they approached a crossroad.
One vehicle—a truck with its front end crushed in—was off on the side of the narrow road. It must have slammed into the Jeep.
The Jeep was far ahead down the road; it had been struck with such force that it had flipped and flown and landed a good distance away. Griffin had no intention of stopping by the truck; he didn’t look. He didn’t have to.
Rocky verified what Griffin expected.
“Empty.”
Griffin slammed the gas pedal, maneuvering around the truck. There was another car on the road ahead of them.
The blue sedan that had been driven by Robert Merton and carried Isaac Sherman and Charlie Oakley was stopped just behind the nearly crushed, upside-down Jeep.
He pulled alongside the vacant vehicle, aware that as he did so someone was moving off into the woods.