Martin had used the rest of the drive to fill Eddie in on the true identity of Jonathon Walks. And now that they were here, Martin was losing faith. Captain and every uniform in the county had beaten him to the factory by nearly twenty minutes and had yet to report finding anything. Worse, Ama’s little red dot had disappeared off the map before they’d reached the end of Janie Walton’s road.
“You’re absolutely sure this is where the signal was coming from before it dropped?” Martin asked Eddie.
“Yes. She was right here. On the north side of the factory, maybe off the back of the building by a quarter of a mile.”
Martin leaned in to instruct Mrs. Walton to stay where she was, but she was already out of the car. Her face turned up at the night sky, and she sampled the air.
“This place still smells exactly the same,” she said. “Don’t waste your time searching the factory. Michael would never go inside.”
“I don’t mean any offense, ma’am, but right now I don’t think any of us can predict what Michael would or wouldn’t do,” Martin argued, struggling for patience.
“I’m telling you, he won’t be in there. If he knows you’re looking for him, if he knows he’s being chased, he won’t be in there. He’ll be out there,” she said, and pointed her finger away from the building and into the woods. Martin stared at her, wondering how she knew where to point.
“The factory isn’t the only thing I can smell,” she said, as if she’d read his mind, and she turned her eyes upon him. “Can’t you smell the river?”
“Her location was here, not the river. Let’s check where the map showed her to be, then we’ll go into the woods.” Martin peered into the dark. Chasing a perp through alleys and down city streets was one thing. Combing these woods was going to be a completely different monster.
“We got something!” a voice called in the dark.
Martin bolted across the field. Stanton was shining a light down what looked to be an open sewer lid just inside the tree line. There was a square hole in the ground, six feet deep and sealed with brick. Two doors were cut into it. The larger door almost looked like the hatch to a spacecraft, and the other was a small, square metal door, which stood open, a combination lock cast off to the side.
Martin climbed down. There were scuffs in the dust on the floor, and Martin saw what looked like a smear of blood on a lower rung of the ladder and another on the doorframe. He shone his light beyond the opening, revealing a tunnel, three feet in diameter.
Stanton dropped down beside Martin and tested the bigger door, which didn’t budge.
“Do we have anything to blast it open?” Stanton called up to Captain, who stared down at them from above.
“Don’t bother,” Martin chimed in. “This reads like they left, not like they’re holed up in there. If Michael had Ama here, he’d have been sure to secure the way in.” He spotlighted the edge of the ground-level lid, revealing tiny keyholes on both sides. “It locks. They’re not here.”
“What about the other open door?” Captain asked.
Martin returned his focus to the tunnel. The track was straight and level as far as he could see. He climbed the first couple of rungs of the ladder so he could follow the trajectory aboveground. Assuming it stayed straight, the tunnel led right back to the factory.
He relayed his findings to the captain.
“Stanton, check it out,” Captain ordered. Stanton crouched to enter the tunnel.
“Someone went that way, but I don’t think it was Michael,” Martin cautioned, Janie Walton’s advice echoing in his mind.
“Got it,” Stanton replied, and disappeared.
Martin surfaced. Eddie approached the hole, hope and fear and hesitancy pulling at his features.
“She’s not down there.” Martin wiped the grime and disappointment from his face. “Where’s Mrs. Walton?”
Eddie turned back in the direction they’d come. Several other officers dotted the grass, but she was not among them.
“Come on.” Martin touched Eddie’s elbow, swinging his gaze back and forth. He reached under his coat to withdraw a gun and then produced a second one and handed it to Eddie. “Do not shoot unless I tell you to.”
Eddie’s phone chimed, and he glanced at it. “It’s back!” he nearly shouted.
“Where?” Martin stared at the screen. The little red dot flashed beside Cold River. “Refresh the location every thirty seconds,” Martin instructed. “Can you run?”
“Today, I can,” Eddie said, and they sprinted into Tarson Woods.
AMA Chapter 81 | 7:45 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MICHAEL STOOD AT HER BACK, and the riverbank crumbled at her feet as he again told her the story of the river and how it made him clean… how it made him invincible. She’d heard it all in pieces before, but she let him talk. The river was barely a half mile from the factory, if that. Hazel had gotten out. Martin—if all went well—should have her location. She just needed to borrow as much time as she could.
A flash of movement to her left nearly made her look up, but if she looked, so would Michael. He had repeatedly said he wouldn’t push her, that it had to be her choice, but Ama wasn’t sure he would keep that promise if the police appeared.
She must have tensed, because Michael stopped talking and she felt his attention swing left.
“I think I saw someone,” she whispered, following his gaze. She heard a rustle in the leaves but didn’t see any flashlights. “Maybe it was a deer,” she said.
“Probably. Let’s move upstream a bit, just in case,” Michael said, his hand skimming her waist, guiding her to the right, protecting her from venturing too close to the edge. Ama noticed they were moving uphill. The fall would be farther.
“You’re scared,” Michael said.
“It’s a long way down.”
“It is. But at the bottom is freedom. If you invite Death to eat at your table and Fate intercepts the invitation, you’ll have nothing to fear for the rest of your life, because you will know, beyond all doubt, that Lady Fate has you in her hand.”
Or that I was a college swimmer and set a record for the two-hundred-meter butterfly.
Ama stayed at that pool in her head. When she jumped, she would pretend she was diving in for a race; the shock of cold water would be just like the training pool at a five o’clock practice, the ache of a one-mile swim during summer conditioning. That grit had been what made her successful in her career and maybe a little tough to understand.
That grit, she decided, would be enough.
MICHAEL Chapter 82 | 7:50 PM, December 9, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
AMA SMELLS LIKE THE RIVER. The hem of her long dress billows against my legs, and her hair dances on a gust of wind. Even standing still, she is movement, water, Lady Fate herself.
I can feel her turning over pieces of her life in her head, probably looking for a sign. I remember how it felt, standing at this spot, looking into the water, cold and scared. Then the moment came when I knew I would survive, and it will come for her, too.
At her sides, her fingers curl and uncurl. Her weight shifts back to front, and I remember the same show of nervousness she’d displayed in the courtroom before they read the verdict. Now she will be on trial, the river her judge and jury, and I am her defender. The symmetry is beautiful, perfection.