he was already in the tunnels, too, and maybe that was why the call didn’t go through.
He knew one thing. They had to keep moving. It was a long and elaborate tunnel system, but somewhere in it, they had to find his mother.
Quickly.
Because Charlie Dearborn had disappeared.
So had Merissa Hatfield.
And they were certainly going after their victims, ready to spirit them away, and if they weren’t all stopped soon . . .
They might disappear into a darker void forever.
Chapter 5
Angela lay perfectly still, her mind racing.
Merissa Hatfield and her accomplice had obviously worked this all out.
A cemetery!
And in the days of Covid19, while a cemetery didn’t tend to be crowded, it was also a time when people were staying home, when they were busy trying to survive, they didn’t worry as much about bringing flowers to a cemetery or remembering their departed loved ones. Even funerals were sparsely attended.
Of course, those managing the cemetery would know when a burial was going to take place.
They’d also watched, she was certain. They had known Annie Green would come to honor her father; they’d even known her husband left her there for her private time before joining her.
As to her, well . . .
She’d walked right into their office. And while she hadn’t presented them with her credentials, she had presented them with a challenge.
Taking her had made sense in two ways.
She was expecting a child.
And since she claimed she had a witness, she was a danger to them.
But they had to know by now that law enforcement was crawling all over the cemetery.
That would mean they’d need to move quickly.
Footsteps, hurried, came closer, closer, closer . . . and stopped.
She knew it was Merissa Hatfield.
She dared to open her eyes; they were shielded by the remnants of the shroud.
Merissa Hatfield had her phone out; she was staring at it and then pounding at it. She let out a sound of furious aggravation.
Apparently, some cell phones didn’t work in these tunnels.
“Where are you, you ass,” Merissa murmured. “We’ve got to get out of here, we’ve got to get them to the farmhouse and abandon ship! Where are you, where are you, where are you? I can’t drag two pregnant cows through the tunnels alone!”
Cow?
Two pregnant cows?
That’s what the women they probably killed after birth were to them; farm animals, breeders, nothing more, while the infants were precious cargo, sold to the highest bidders.
She tried to judge Merissa Hatfield’s position and the woman herself. She had only come after Angela when the man had already accosted her. Angela had been held—and that was the only way she had gotten the knock-out rag over her nose and face.
She wasn’t tough, and she wasn’t trained.
Well, she wasn’t pregnant, either.
But she was only tough when she was in control, when her victims were in a state in which they couldn’t fight back.
That was the deciding factor.
Once again, she begged silent forgiveness from Papa Jim.
She curled her fingers tightly around the femur.
She heard Jennie’s ghost whisper out in worry.
“She doesn’t see you; she doesn’t see you! Lay low. We can get more help!”
“Stupid cell phone!”
Merissa Hatfield threw her cell phone down and then seemed to think better of it. “All right, I don’t know where the hell you are, but I can get one of those bitches to the farmhouse and cut the damn brat out of her and run. Screw you, Charles! I’m on my way out of here!”
She was going to leave; she’d find Annie Green.
Cut the damned brat out of her and run!
Angela no longer had a choice.
She threw her legs over the side; she meant to spring up.
She was almost at her full nine months of pregnancy—springing was not really an apt description for anything she could do.
But she was up.
Merissa Hatfield swirled around. For a split second, she stared at Angela, her mouth gaping in horror.
Angela could only imagination what she looked like, draped in the torn and decaying remnants of Papa Jim’s shroud.
But then Merissa let out a scream of rage and hurtled herself toward Angela.
Angela lifted Papa Jim’s femur, and swung with all her might.
*
There had to be a spring, a mechanism.
And Jackson reminded himself, whatever it was, it was something that had been created circa the Civil War.
He tried again to move the altar; it wouldn’t budge.
Then he thought the mechanism didn’t have to be by the altar or under the altar. If it was a lever, it could work from connections that had been set just about anywhere.
He stopped,