"Let her go!" I roared, straining violently against the men holding me down. "Take the damn book! Let the kid go!"
Cole stepped calmly into my field of vision. He bent down, picked up the black ledger from the floorboards of the truck, and flipped through the pages. He smiled.
Then, his smile faded. "Where is the flash drive?"
My mind raced. I had slipped the small silver USB drive into my front pocket the moment I read Emily's letter.
"It's gone," I spat, blood mixing with rain on my lips. "I sent it to the feds already."
Cole stared at me, his eyes narrowing in cold calculation. He knew I was lying, but he didn't have time to strip me down in the woods.
He gestured to Silas. Silas threw Lily into the back of the closest SUV and slammed the heavy door shut.
"You have the ledger, you son of a bitch!" I screamed. "Leave her out of this!"
Cole crouched down, bringing his face inches from mine. "The ledger is useless to me if the cartel knows the data is on a drive somewhere else. They'll kill me just for the risk. I need everything, Arthur. Everything."
Cole stood up and looked around the decaying sawmill. Beside the storage bay was a massive, subterranean root cellar made of thick concrete, historically used for cold storage.
"Put him in the cellar," Cole ordered quietly.
They dragged me across the dirt. I fought like a feral dog, thrashing and kicking, but a heavy blow to the back of my head sent the world spinning into darkness.
They threw me down a short flight of concrete stairs. I hit the damp floor hard. The heavy steel door above me slammed shut, plunging me into absolute, suffocating darkness. The deafening sound of a heavy padlock clicking into place echoed above.
"You have twenty-four hours to call the number in the ledger and bring me that drive, old man," Cole's muffled voice bled through the steel. "Or the girl joins her mother."
The engines roared to life above me, fading into the distance until there was nothing left but silence and the slow drip of freezing water.
I was trapped underground. And they had my granddaughter.
CHAPTER 4
The absolute darkness of the cellar was heavy, pressing against my chest like a physical weight. I lay on the damp concrete for several long minutes, my ribs aching, my breathing harsh and ragged. The cold was seeping through my leather vest, threatening to pull me down into a state of shock.
But I didn't have time for shock.
I rolled onto my knees, reaching blindly into the pitch black until my hands found the rough concrete wall. I followed it upward, finding the short flight of stone steps. I crawled to the top and pressed my hands against the heavy steel door. I pushed with all the strength in my legs and back, but the door didn't give a fraction of an inch. It was barred and padlocked from the outside.
I ran my calloused fingers along the edges of the steel door. It was an old, industrial cellar door, heavily rusted. I felt the massive hinges bolted into the concrete frame. The bolt heads were thick, heavily corroded with decades of rust.
I was a mechanic. I had spent forty years taking apart metal joints fused by rust and time.
I reached into my boot. The men had searched my pockets and taken my knife, but they hadn't checked the lining of my left boot. I pulled out a small, flat piece of tempered steel—a feeler gauge I kept for checking spark plug gaps, heavy enough to double as a makeshift wedge.
I worked in the blinding dark. I wedged the thin steel under the head of the heavy hinge pin and struck it upward with the heel of my palm. Clack. Clack. Clack. Pain shot through my wrist with every strike, but I blocked it out. I thought of Emily. I thought of her trapped in Cole's life, desperately writing those notes in the dark to protect me. I thought of Lily, terrified in the back of an SUV.
With a sickening screech of rusted metal, the hinge pin popped loose.
I pulled it free, moved to the bottom hinge, and repeated the brutal process. Ten minutes later, the door was unmoored from its frame.
I stepped back, braced my boots against the stone steps, and kicked the heavy steel door outward with every ounce of force I had left. The door buckled, shifting awkwardly in the frame, and fell outward onto the dirt, letting in a blinding rush of grey daylight.
I scrambled out of the cellar, breathing heavily, the cold air filling my lungs.
My truck was ruined—tires slashed, windows shattered. I was stranded.
But I wasn't helpless.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small silver flash drive. It was safe. And because I had read Emily’s letter, I didn't need to guess where Cole was operating.