Once Buried Read online

  Jenn knew it was time to turn on the anguish.

  And it wasn’t hard to do.

  She remembered the betrayal as if it were yesterday. She remembered, too, how she’d refused to take part in Linus’s hazing when he’d come to live with Cora.

  Even so, Linus had had to go through the whole awful thing just like she had.

  Tears came to her eyes now.

  “I stayed right there beside that hole for the rest of the day. It got dark, and nobody came back, and I was alone out there in the woods, and it was night, and I was scared half to death. It seemed like forever until I finally gave up. And then I had to find my way out of the woods in the dark. All by myself. I was lost and terrified and I didn’t get home until morning.”

  A sob came out of Jenn’s throat.

  “And now it’s happening all over again. My partners are somewhere having a beer and having a laugh at my expense. Well, maybe they won’t laugh so much if I never come back, ever. Or maybe they won’t care. Yeah, I’ll bet anything they just won’t care.”

  Jenn’s tears were coming easily now.

  Through her tears, she could see the man’s expression pass through a whole range of emotions, as if some dark memory were welling up in his mind.

  She knew she was stirring up something in him—she had no idea exactly what.

  But if she distracted him enough, maybe she could thwart him somehow. She just had to stay alert, be ready to take action.

  “I’ll bet you know what it’s like,” Jenn sobbed. “Getting betrayed, I mean. Getting left behind by people you trust. You’ve been through it too. It’s so awful. It’s like …”

  Jenn looked around the pit, then at the man again.

  “It’s like getting buried alive,” she said.

  Suddenly the man’s eyes bulged, and for a moment his whole face froze into a mask of terror.

  Oh, God, Jenn thought. He remembers something.

  But what?

  It started to dawn on her that her tactic was about to backfire in some awful way.

  Finally, the man threw back his head and let out a long, howling shriek of despair.

  He shouted to the sky, “You … left … me … to die!”

  Then he stared down into the pit at Jenn. In a horrible, croaking voice, he said, “You! Die! Now!”

  He staggered over to the wheelbarrow, which was already full of sand.

  Jenn threw her arms over her face as sand poured over her head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  As Bill drove the SUV toward their destination, Riley stayed glued to her cell phone, searching for old newspaper stories about what had happened to Felix Harrington all those years ago. She found absolutely nothing. Apparently the police had kept it quiet to protect the kids who had buried Felix.

  It was one more reason for Riley to believe that Felix had never learned what had happened to him.

  If he wanted revenge, it could only be for some wrong that he felt deeply but couldn’t even name.

  As they neared the bridge on the York River, Riley heard Bill grunt with dismay.

  “Oh, shit.”

  She looked up and saw what had annoyed him.

  Lighted up in the darkness, the double-swing bridge was wide open, letting a large ship pass through. The ship was most of the way through the bridge, but it was moving much too slowly for Riley’s liking.

  Bill pulled to a stop in the row of cars waiting for the bridge to open again.

  “Be patient,” she told Bill. “I’ll go find Jenn.”

  She got out of the SUV and looked around, trying to spot Jenn’s car.

  She couldn’t see it anywhere.

  Where is she? Riley wondered.

  She took out her cell phone and called Jenn’s number. To her alarm, she got an out-of-service message. Then she typed in a text …

  Jenn where R U?

  But when she sent it, it was marked “undeliverable.”

  She climbed back into the car with Bill.

  “Jenn’s not here,” she said.

  “What do you mean, she’s not here?” Bill said. “You told her to meet us here.”

  “I know,” Riley said. “I looked all around and didn’t see her car. I can’t reach her by phone or text either.”

  “That’s crazy,” Bill said. “This is the second time today when she’s not been where she’s supposed to be. Where is she? What’s she doing?”

  Riley didn’t know what to say. But she had a sinking feeling deep in her stomach.

  Bill said, “You had a talk with her back in Lorneville. What was it all about?”

  Riley suppressed a groan of frustration. She hated keeping secrets from Bill.

  But she remembered all too clearly her promise to Jenn …

  “Whatever you tell me, I won’t repeat it to a single soul.”

  So far, Jenn had kept Riley’s secrets. It was her turn to keep Jenn’s.

  After waiting for a reply, Bill said, “OK, I guess it’s something you can’t tell me. I respect that. But Riley, something has been wrong with Jenn for two days. And now we can’t depend on her to be where we need her. I don’t care how you feel about that, but I’m through with her. I’m going to have to report her behavior to Meredith. She’ll be finished at the agency.”

  Riley couldn’t argue with Bill. And she couldn’t excuse Jenn’s behavior either.

  But she felt confused about her own feelings.

  She knew she ought to feel angry and disappointed.

  Instead, she felt inexplicably afraid. She couldn’t explain that fear even to herself, so she just kept quiet about it.

  The ship moved the rest of the way through the opening, and the huge arms of the bridge swiveled back into place. The barricade lifted, and the row of stopped cars started to move again. Bill turned on the SUV’s siren and flashing lights and sped past the traffic, across the arched bridge, and down onto the highway on the other side.

  When they turned off the highway onto a smaller road, Bill turned off the lights and siren and followed GPS instructions through the back roads. Finally, they reached the end of the road and saw the house they were looking for. Bill parked the SUV and pointed.

  “Hey, isn’t that Jenn’s car?” Bill said.

  Riley was startled. It certainly was Jenn’s car, so obviously she had come on alone.

  But where was she right now, and what was she doing?

  Was she in trouble?

  Riley and Bill got out and drew their weapons. As they approached the house, Riley expected to pound on the door and announce their presence. But then a more distant sound caught her ear.

  She touched Bill on the shoulder.

  He looked at her, then cocked his head to listen.

  He nodded—he could hear it too.

  It was a man’s voice a short distance away, yelling …

  “Die! Die! Die!”

  They followed the sound around the house until they saw an area lit by a single floodlight illuminating a large, square pit. At the nearest side of the pit, a man stood facing away from them, using a wheelbarrow to dump a load of sand into the pit.

  He kept yelling down into the pit …

  “Die! Die! Die!”

  As she and Bill moved closer, the man didn’t notice them. Riley thought he probably couldn’t see them there outside his ring of intense light. Finally, Riley could glimpse what was down in the pit.

  Two women were partially buried there—one of them about waist deep, the other nearly up to her neck. The pit was large and it would take a long time to fill it. Right now, the man seemed intent on piling sand into one part of it.

  He was concentrating his attention on the woman who was already buried more deeply, dumping all of his current load of sand on her. She was writhing weakly, her hands barely free and trying to push the sand away. She was obviously exhausted.

  Riley couldn’t see the victim’s face, but she recognized the haircut from behind.

  “It’s Jenn!” Riley whispered to Bi
ll.

  Still not noticing her or Bill, the man was shoveling more sand into the wheelbarrow to make another load.

  Riley stepped into the pool of light, several feet behind him.

  “FBI,” she yelled. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

  The man froze for a moment.

  Then, in a blur of movement, the man whirled around and the shovel flew out of his hands, spinning through the air. It hit Riley in the stomach handle-first.

  She buckled over and the gun dropped from her hand. She felt a flash of anger with herself for miscalculating his possible moves.

  But before she could regain her bearings, the man was upon her, grappling with her. She was startled by his enormous strength. She fought back and they spun around together, locked in each other’s grip.

  Then Riley felt herself falling and knew they had both gone over the edge of the pit. Her back hit the sand at the bottom, with the weight of the man on top of her.

  She had expected the blow from the fall to be sharper. Instead, the surface felt strangely soft and cushion-like.

  As the man kept thrashing on top of her, the sand seemed almost to come to life, pulling her whole body downward.

  And then Riley knew …

  Quicksand!

  She flailed away at the man, trying to push him off of her.

  Instead, they rolled together, then rolled again.

  Riley desperately needed help.

  She wondered …

  Where’s Bill? What’s he doing?

  *

  It had all happened too fast for Bill to process.

  Before he knew it, Riley and her assailant were locked in fierce combat, and then they’d tumbled into the pit.

  And now they were thrashing away down there in a gloppy mix of sand and water.

  Quicksand, he realized.

  Riley was in danger of sinking and suffocating.

  Bill’s weapon was still in his hands.

  He pointed it toward the figures in the pit, trying to get a clear shot at Riley’s attacker.

  But as the struggle continued, both of the figures were caked in sand.

  Could he even tell which of them was which?

  I can’t get a clear shot, he thought.

  Then he was fighting to keep the memories out of his head …

  Memories of Lucy lying on the floor of an abandoned building, and a young man rushing toward her, and himself firing at the man, not knowing that he was only trying to help Lucy …

  Don’t think about it!

  Bill yanked himself back to the present moment.

  As he stared downward, the two bodies seemed almost to be a single mass now.

  No, it was impossible.

  He couldn’t get a clear shot.

  *

  As they rolled together, Riley wound up on top of the man who had attacked her. She pushed hard against his chest and raised her head to get a good breath of air. Beneath her, the man’s head and shoulders disappeared beneath the sand.

  Then Riley realized …

  He’s going to suffocate!

  She tried to pull him out, but the thick, sticky mass seemed more alive and malicious than before—and devilishly strong. The more she wrestled to pull him loose, the deeper they both went. By trying to help him, she was only hastening his death.

  She heard Bill’s voice nearby.

  “Leave him. Don’t even try. Here. Let me help you.”

  Riley looked up and saw that Bill was crouching on the edge of the pit. He was extending his hand toward her.

  She was barely within reach of it. She reached out and grabbed his hand, and Bill tried to pull her toward him.

  But her own weight, her entire body, was in the sand’s slippery but powerful grip.

  It was as if she couldn’t help but pull in the opposite direction.

  How could she assist him in his efforts to pull her out?

  Then she remembered something Flores had said over the phone about the childhood trauma Felix Harrington had endured, and how he’d managed to survive being buried alive for twenty minutes …

  “… he twisted around a lot to keep some air in front of his face.”

  That’s it! she thought. She remembered long ago reading instructions on getting out of quicksand, and it all came back to her now.

  Instead of struggling against the muck, she needed to create space between it and her body. Space for water to seep in and allow her to get free.

  Defying her own fighting instincts, she let her body go slack. Then she twisted and moved her legs as gently as she could.

  Sure enough, she could feel water seeping between her legs and the sand.

  She kept moving her entire body in the same manner, feeling the quicksand loosening its grip on her, until at last she was floating on the top of it and Bill was able to pull her out of the pit. Exhausted from her ordeal, she collapsed in a heap.

  Solid ground had never felt so sweet to her before.

  Bill quickly pulled her to her feet.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to help the others.”

  Riley and Bill went to the other end of the hole where the two women were partially buried. The killer’s intended victim was still up to her waist in the quicksand, staring in silent shock at the struggle that had just unfolded.

  Jenn was still neck-deep in the ordinary sand that the killer had poured over her, but now she had managed to get her arms fully free.

  Jenn called out to Bill and Riley, “Get her out first. I can wait.”

  Bill picked up the shovel that the killer had thrown at Riley. He extended its handle to the woman, and Riley started talking her through the process of loosening herself from the sand.

  *

  About twenty minutes later, both Jenn and the woman were out of the sand. Bill took out his cell phone and called for belated backup. He also notified them that there was a body for the medical examiner’s team to pick up, but that it was still partly submerged in a quicksand pit.

  Jenn and the woman were now on their feet, although the woman was awfully wobbly and leaning on Jenn for support. They all headed for the killer’s house.

  As they walked, Bill said to Riley in a miserable voice, “I couldn’t take the shot.”

  Riley saw that his expression was distraught.

  “You couldn’t, Bill. The killer and I were all tangled up together. There was no clear shot to take.”

  Bill didn’t reply, just trudged along beside her.

  Riley felt a pang of sadness. She understood why Bill was upset.

  After his recent bitter struggle with PTSD, this felt like a terrible setback to him. Surely Bill would get back to his old self eventually. But now Riley knew it was going to take longer than both of them had hoped.

  The door on this side of the house was unlocked. Bill drew his weapon again, in case an accomplice was still lurking somewhere inside. While Jenn kept comforting the distraught woman just outside the door, Bill and Riley crept on inside the house.

  They found themselves in what had once been a large and comfortable living room, with a large window overlooking the beach and the river. There was little furniture there now except for tables cluttered with sand timers of various sizes. On one table in the middle of the room were four large timers, nicely carved with rippled, sand-like patterns on the top.

  Riley felt a chill.

  These were surely the ones the killer had intended to use to taunt authorities over future deaths.

  Bill and Riley stepped through another doorway that led into what had once been a kitchen. The only remnants of its former use were an old refrigerator and a hot plate and an old sink. The rest had been turned into a workshop filled with equipment for both carpentry and glassblowing, including a furnace.

  “I’ll check upstairs,” Bill said.

  As he headed up the stairs, Riley went to a bathroom and gathered up some towels.

  She soon heard Bill’s voice calling from above.

  “No one’
s here.”

  Riley called to the women outside, “It’s safe. You can come in now.”

  Jenn brought the woman inside, and Riley shared the towels with them as they started to rub as much of the sand off of themselves as they could.

  Bill soon came back downstairs and said, “There was a computer on in his bedroom. I checked it. It looks like he made pretty good money day-trading.”

  It made good sense to Riley. Felix Harrington had been able to make a living right here in his house, all the while maintaining his solitude.

  As she kept rubbing herself off, Riley stared at the big sand timers sitting on that table.

  She felt anger welling up inside of her.

  He wasn’t going to stop, she thought. He was going to keep on killing.

  But she realized her anger wasn’t just at the killer.

  It was the same anger she’d struggled with since she’d started working on this case.

  It was anger against time itself.

  She and her colleagues had won this little skirmish against time.

  But she knew that their victory wouldn’t last forever.

  No one ever defeated time in the long run.

  Sooner or later, everybody had to die.

  Riley heard the sound of sirens approaching in the distance.

  The wailing noise triggered a burst of rage.

  One by one, Riley picked up the sand timers and smashed them to the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  Riley woke up slowly.

  The sun shone brightly through her bedroom windows.

  And from the angle of the beams she knew …

  It’s late morning!

  Where had the hours gone?

  Had she been absent from work?

  Then she realized—it was Saturday. Felix Harrington—the man known to the public as the Sandman—was dead. He wasn’t going to bury anyone alive today. Or any other day.

  She remembered getting home just before dawn on Friday and collapsing on her bed. Later that morning, she’d awakened just enough to get rid of her sandy clothes and take a luxurious shower. Then she’d gone back to sleep again until a call came in from Quantico.

  To her relief, Meredith had let all the agents on the team join in on a videoconference to make an initial report on how the case had unfolded. Riley hadn’t even needed to leave her bedroom to take part in that.