Chapter Sixty-Seven

Hunter took the cement steps going down to the house's cellar as cautiously as he possibly could, counting each step as he took them, and he was immediately surprised. This was a deep, deep cellar. It took him eighteen steps to get to solid ground. And it was pitch-black and cold down there.

As Hunter climbed down the last step onto the adobe floor, he paused, the beam of his flashlight circling the room that he was in, while his eyes took in everything they could.

That first room was rectangular in shape and not very spacious. The walls were crude and seemed to be made of solid concrete blocks. At the center of the ceiling, a single light bulb sat inside a heavy-duty metal mesh box. Ventilation was provided via a makeshift system, where a thick PVC tube, sporting unevenly spaced holes, ran along the edges of the ceiling before disappearing out the only door in that room… a door that led deeper into that hell cave. No wonder the air down there felt heavy and stale.

Pushed up against one of the walls, Hunter saw a large-capacity, solid-lid, chest freezer with a thick padlock hanging from the lid latch.

The padlock was unlocked.

Hunter walked over to the freezer and lifted its lid – empty and unplugged – but what made Hunter's heart drop to the bottom of his stomach were the scratches and blood smears that he saw on the inside of the lid and along all four internal walls. The freezer that he was looking at wasn't used to keep food from perishing. It was used as a human-freezing container.

Shaun Daniels had frozen to death inside that box. Hunter had no doubt of that.

Just like he'd done upstairs, before entering a different room, Hunter paused by the door and listened for sounds coming from deeper inside that cave, but all he could hear was the low humming of the makeshift ventilation system in operation.

The door, which was more of a passageway because it had no physical door, led into a corridor that L-shaped itself to the left at the end, but not before passing two more doors – both also on the left. No motion monitors again.

How big is this fucking cellar?Hunter wondered. He truly hoped that it wasn't as large as the whole of the house's ground floor. If it were, this place would be massive, and that was never a good thing.

Weapon and flashlight in hand, Hunter entered the corridor and carefully approached the first of the two doors. It was open and, just like the room that Hunter had come from, it was pitch-black in there.

He stopped at the doorway and circled the room with the beam of his flashlight.

It wasn't a room. It was a holding cell – square in shape and no larger than seven foot long by seven foot wide. The air inside it was saturated with the smell of feces, urine, vomit and bitter human sweat.

On the floor, pushed up against the cell's back wall, was a filthy, bloodstained, single-person mattress. No pillows… no blankets. At both ends of the mattress, chains with wrist and ankle shackles sprang out of the walls. To Hunter's right, in one of the corners of the room, there was a dirty plastic bucket with a metal lid on it. Hunter didn't have to check it to know that that bucket was the cell's latrine. On the ceiling, inside another metal-mesh box, instead of motion monitors, Hunter could see speakers.

The walls to that holding cell seemed to have been soundproofed, which Hunter thought was pointless. They were so deep under the house that someone could've been lying with their ear pressed hard against the kitchen floor upstairs and they wouldn't be able to hear a gunshot if it had come from behind a regular closed door down in that death cellar, let alone a human scream.

Hunter returned to the corridor and moved on to the next door along.

Another holding cell, but this one was larger than the one Hunter had just come from. Once again, the walls seemed to have been soundproofed. The single mattress pushed up against the back wall was in much better condition than the one in the previous cell – no bloodstains – and here, there was a pillow and a blanket. Identical chains with wrist and ankle shackles also sprang out of the walls, but the latrine, to the right of the door, wasn't just a simple plastic bucket with a metal lid. It was a proper, heavy-duty, portable toilet, with a removable waste tank.

Compared to the previous cell, that one was a Presidential Suite.

That new cell was also saturated with the same smells as the previous one, but there was a new scent lingering in the air – a scent that was hard to describe because it was one of the oddest combinations of aromas that Hunter had ever inhaled: bitter… sweat… sour… pungent… consistent but scarce… heavy but light… all rolled up into one. Even though it was hard to describe, Hunter knew exactly what that smell was because he had come across it before… way too many times.

That, Hunter knew, was the smell of human fear.

Hunter got to where the corridor L-shaped itself to the left and paused by the edge of the wall, once again listening for any sounds, and once again he heard nothing, which wasn't exactly surprising, now that he knew that the rooms down in that hellhole were soundproofed.

Carefully, Hunter rounded the corner to find yet another two holding cells – these ones on the right wall – and they were pretty much a replica of the two cells he'd seen in the previous corridor. The first one was smaller and squalid when compared to the second one.

What the fuck?Hunter thought, as the beam of his flashlight searched the space again. What does this killer do? Upgrade his victims to better captivity conditions depending on good behavior?

The next door that Hunter came to wasn't on the walls to his left or right, it was directly in front of him and it had been left ajar. Hunter tiptoed to it and paused. There was no light coming from behind the door – no sounds either.

Hunter pulled the door open and stepped into a new space. This was a large room – larger than the living room upstairs.

Once again, his flashlight searched the spaces… the corners… the hiding spots… for signs of someone else there. There were none, but the room chilled Hunter to the core because he knew this room. He'd been inside similar ones before… plenty of times.

Holy shit!

Hunter was standing at the door to an operation hall… a surgical room that could very easily double as an autopsy theater. That room, Hunter had no doubt, was used for torturing victims. In there, the odd scent of human fear was simply overwhelming, but it collided with those of cleaning agents, antiseptics and disinfectants.

‘Arghhhhhhh!'

The faint scream reached Hunter's ears like a lover's whisper, catching him completely by surprise and making him shiver in place. His heart picked up speed inside his chest like a jet plane at takeoff, but his eyes held steady, following his flashlight, which shot in the direction of where the dim sound seemed to have come from.

Another door – all the way across the room from where Hunter was standing and a little to his left.

This time, Hunter didn't search the spaces, the corners or the hiding spots. Despite being muffled and sounding like a whisper, Hunter could easily tell that that scream had come from Garcia.

As stealthily and as quickly as he could, Hunter got to the new door and tried the handle – unlocked. He carefully pulled it open just enough to dislodge the door from its frame. As he did, he also saw light come from inside the next room.

‘One of the workers,'Hunter heard Garcia say, but his voice was labored and heavy, and full of pain. He sounded like he was fighting for breath with every word. ‘…is a truck aficionado. Can tell a truck just by its silhouette.'

Hunter peeked through the door opening, but he couldn't see anything. The door opened onto what looked to be a five-foot-long walled strip of nothing – like a mini entry corridor before the main room, which was located to the left, and that was lucky. That meant that Hunter could pull the door fully open and step into the room, but he would still be protected by the wall.

And that was exactly what he did – quickly and silently.

Once inside the room, Hunter flatbacked his body against the wall at the edge of the mini entry corridor, looked left and took the quickest of peeks.

What he saw shocked him.

Just past the corridor, a few feet to the right, he could see a couple in wheelchairs. They looked old – really old – but Hunter could be mistaken because, truthfully, they both looked to be at the brink of death… mummified even. Their gazes were unblinking and straight ahead, as if they were either hypnotized or watching something they just couldn't tear their eyes from.

Whoever they were, Hunter knew that they couldn't have been the ones who had taken Garcia. So who the hell were they?

The conclusion that Hunter came to was that they had to be captive victims, just waiting to die.

To the left of the couple, Hunter caught a glimpse of a table of instruments covered in weapons – most of them blades of some sort.

‘All right.'Hunter heard a new voice that came from deeper inside the room. The voice was male, strong and threatening. ‘How about the fingers? How did you find out about that? And think before you reply, Detective, because if I suspect that you're lying, the next thing that I'll burn… will be one of your fucking eyeballs.'

Time to act.

From his flatback position, Hunter rotated his body left, 180 degrees, landing him at the opening to the room. The old couple in the wheelchairs were just a little to his right and a couple of feet ahead of him – just at the edge of his field of vision. Hunter's arms were stretched out, double-gripping his weapon. His eyes were ready to search left, right and center for his target, but they didn't need to. The target was about twenty-five feet directly in front of him, a little bent over in front of a terrified-looking and shirtless Garcia, who had been tied to a high-back chair.

‘Are we clear, Detective?'

Hunter aimed his weapon at the man's back. ‘Somehow… I really don't fucking think so.'