19. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

They were all searching the area where the GPS tracker and tablet were found. Some were searching over the area where Indio had disappeared so inexplicably, and Lonnie felt his hair standing on his arms.

For most people, that meant something frightening, or the feeling of being watched. Perhaps he was being watched. The killer was out there somewhere, and Lonnie didn't doubt a second that he was paying attention to all the men on the ranch hunting him.

But the hair standing on end for Lonnie was more about his instincts. He had a feeling crawling up his mind, trying to roost and let him know what was happening. Sometimes it only took a second or two. Other times, well, it could take days.

The one thing Lonnie Lane Walton knew beyond a doubt was that they didn't have days.

Dante came over to him, frazzled. "My brother is on his way. He and his wife are on the plane now. I'd like to greet him with their firstborn."

"I would like the same. Dante, this is all very strange. The trackers were all where the men were last seen, except for Indio's."

"That concerns me, and Eight is furious. He thinks the worst, I'm afraid. I'll admit…so do I."

Lonnie, however, didn't. He felt Indio wasn't dead. For one thing, no one had found any blood, and for another, Sel followed a direct trail. If he simply wanted to shoot the man, he had a gun. He could have ended it, and they would have found him and the dead body of Alex Brooks there, where the tracker he'd stolen was located.

It was all strange, but it made sense in a way that disturbed him.

Just then, Dante got a call from Bonita, who was at the location where Indio's tracker had stopped. Dante placed his phone on speaker. "Go ahead, Bonita."

"I'll be damned if that mother fucker didn't build a trap. There's a hole dug here, and it's filled with water. He's got some heavy rubbery lining in the bottom to hold the water."

"Pond liner," Lonnie said.

"Sure must be."

"It makes sense," Lonnie said. "His phone and his tracker died at the same time. So, the water killed them. Smart, but he captured more without going to this trouble."

Travis had come over and added his two cents. "Maybe he was just getting started. Seems he likes to kidnap them and keep them a while before he kills them. This could be just the start for him."

"Crazy. He's crazy. It's like he wanted to keep them as…company. Companionship, and once they served their purpose, kills them."

"Could be," Travis agreed. "Killing people slow is worse by far. He might be looking for companionship, but also he's prolonging their deaths."

"In some ways, like your father, he might be trying to make it seem like they died of natural causes. Starvation, whatever."

Dante asked, "Like his father? In what way?"

Quickly, Lonnie explained, "I'm an alcoholic. When Travis and I first were together, his father was furious that his son was gay. He kidnapped me and poured liquor down me, great amounts of it, so once I died and he could drop me somewhere, the coroner would conclude it was my drinking that killed me."

Dante spat, "What a bastard!"

Lonnie heard him, but his mind's switches were all flipping, and his hair was lying flat at last. "Jesus, Travis. Your father."

"What about him?"

"Where did we find him?"

"A bunker, but…but they already found Harrison's bunker."

Dante grabbed Lonnie's arm. "That was a small panic room. If he was truly a survivalist, he'd have made another one!"

Lonnie ran over to Tango, who was about to scream from lack of other clues. "Tango, he might have another bunker, and if it's near here…"

Tango's face lit up, even as the sun from the east was lighting up the world. "The ranch has a ground-penetrating radar drone. They use it to find water for new wells. I'll call Jace and have him get it now."

Lonnie, Travis, and Dante had people look over the area for entrances or anything that could show them where the bunker could be.

It all happened quickly. The drone was in the air by seven that morning, Jace, Tango, and Lonnie watching the screen of Jace's phone. Almost immediately, a huge obstacle under the earth could be seen, dark, solid…metal.

"It's there all right, but how do we know how to get to it?"

Suddenly, Tango's phone rang and he saw it was Dallas. He and Ruben had come out to help look for their partner, Marius. On speaker, Dallas told them, "Ruben and I found some kind of hatch. It's dug down into the ground, grass and shit over it like it's a little hill. It looked like a cave until we moved some brush away and saw the door."

"We'll be right there," Tango told him. To Jace, Tango said, "Take the drone flying over where we are. If we can figure out how far in it goes from the hatch, we can figure out if we can blast in somehow."

"Taking an awful risk blasting."

"Hopefully we won't have to."

Lonnie ran with them the two hundred yards it took to get there, and once inside the cave Dallas was talking about, they all stared at the solid metal door and the keypad next to it. He told Dante, "It's a fucking code. Who knows what it could be?"

Hollering back to Dallas, "Prince is still at the farmhouse?"

"Yeah!"

"Get him here and tell him to bring his computer and whatever else he could need to break this code."

"I'll go get him myself!"

Ruben came down the steps and banged on the door. "Marius! Marius, we're here! We're gonna get you out! Marius! "

*****

The air was stagnant, the room getting warmer, despite being underground. There were lights, very dim ones running on batteries, so they could see one another in a weak yellow glow.

Sel watched Dex, staring up at the ceiling, and he looked to be praying. Indio paced, and Bennie sat close to Sel. "If he gets in here another way, some way we don't know about, you get behind me and stay behind me."

Indio threw them both a nasty look after Bennie said that. Sel settled onto the couch in front of the big television, thinking until his brain hurt. "We're going to run out of air."

"Yeah, big news," Indio spat at him.

Ignoring him, Sel said, "They had to have found them both by now. It's been hours."

"Found what, Sel?" Marius asked.

"I left Binx's tracker and the tablet under a tree right by the front entrance."

Marius said, "Right, but that doesn't give them a code. If, by some miracle, they figure out we're underground, that is. There are a lot of obstacles to get to us, and if it takes too long…"

"Way to be positive, Marius. You have two men out there likely losing their minds over you. Can't you…I don't know, think of something to do instead of this doom and gloom?"

Avery agreed with Sel. "You could start with getting us loose."

"Right. That's right! We haven't looked for spare keys. Everyone spread out and look for the keys, or knives, or something that we could try to pick locks with."

Indio, surprisingly, agreed with him for once. "Don't need knives. They won't help. Find me a couple of forks."

Sel rushed to the kitchen, where he pulled out drawers. In the last one on the right, there were utensils, and he pulled out two forks, handing them over to Indio.

Indio took the forks and bent all the tines down except one on each fork. Then he started with Dex, having Dex sit forward so he could better reach the lock.

Looking through more drawers, he was disappointed to not find any knives, but Brooks likely hid those immediately, knowing that when he was gone, they could easily get up, hop around until they got weapons.

Then, in the small pantry, the door almost hidden, he found a lever coming out from a shelf, partially hidden by boxes of cornflakes. "Hey! Someone come here!"

Marius was through the door. "What's up?"

Dex was right behind him, rubbing his wrists. "He got you loose! That's great." Sel pointed to the lever. "That's…something. Should we pull it?"

Marius jerked his head toward the door. "Get back, Sel."

Instead of arguing, he thought of Bennie's words, and did what Marius wanted. As soon as he was clear of the pantry, Marius pulled the lever, and they heard the gentle whoosh of another door opening. "What is it?"

Dex came out and said, "It's the works for the place. The fans, air filters and such. And…computers."

Sel rushed in with them, and off to the left was a line of monitors, each showing one camera position in the bunker, one outside the back, another outside the front. The three of them saw all the people outside the bunker trying to get through the back entrance, they let up a cheer and hugged one another as the others filed into the room.

"Well, damn," Jim hollered. "They know we're here!"

"Who knows computers?" Marius asked. "Maybe we can get them a message."

Sel knew a little, but Dex sat in the chair, pulling over the keyboard. "Prince showed me some tricks. Not a lot. We've pretty busy."

"I'll just bet," Marius teased.

"Not just with that, you dick," he said as he laughed and started working his fingers on the keyboard.

The monitor directly in front of the computer lit up and showed the box to enter a password. "Okay, here we go."

"We don't know the password, my dear cousin," Marius told him.

"What do you think Prince showed me? How to play solitaire?"

Sel mumbled, "Solitaire? God, you guys are old."

They both glared at him, and he decided that was a good time to look around the room. "Indio, Bennie, come with me, please. Let's see if there is a manual way to get the air circulating. We can give them more time to get us out of here."

Indio moved in front of Bennie and told him, "I'll go with him. You stay here."

"You don't tell me what to do, dick."

Sel was getting frustrated with them. He spun on his heel and said, "Listen, I might need you both. Get along, or don't, but stop this shit."

"Sorry, Sel," Bennie said.

"Sorry, my ass. You like this guy, go fuck him. Have at it."

He left and Sel could only smile. Bennie whispered, "Sel, your dad will kill that guy."

"No, he won't. I won't let him."

"Already acting like the boss. I'll let you deal with your dad and uncle."

"I've been doing that my whole life," he said as they ducked under some coils of wires strung across the walkway. "Look at all this equipment. How did this not show up on his financials?"

"Rich people have a way of hiding anything."

He thought of his own family and said, "Right."

They found the fans, three of them taller and broader than the two of them put together. As they looked around for switches, Dex hollered out, "I'm in!"

Sel told Bennie, "Keep looking. I'll go see what he can do for us."

Back at the computer, Dex explained, "I can't get to everything. There are passwords to just about all of it, but I went around the initial one. I can't get the fans back on from here, but I can access the cameras, at least. I don't hear anything, so the camera must only be video, no audio. And lurking around in the controls, it's being sent out too. I can't see where yet, but I'd make a bet, if I could."

"To Brooks's phone?"

"Yup. And not only that, but there is also a device somewhere in here that Brooks can operate from his phone, too. It kills cell signals. It's off right now, but I can turn it on and off from here. If he turns it off to fuck with our search team, I can switch it back on."

"Good. Keep trying to get the fans back on. Bennie's looking for manual overrides, but there's no sign of one over there."

"That makes no sense. You didn't see it, but Dallas found a laptop in the ranch office that was thirty years old, and the two others on the entire ranch were about that. Harrison had no working knowledge of such things. He knew enough to look up his bank balance. That's it. So, set up all this to be run by computers?"

"Brooks?" Sel asked.

"They were estranged, at best. I doubt it. But it is possible Harrison thought his kids, the ones he claimed, could use this place. When we get out of here, we'll contact them again. They didn't know a thing about the panic room, didn't mention this either. Who knows, but right now, we know he's watching us. The good thing is, there are no cameras here. And the ones out there have no sound."

"How is that good?"

"He won't know that we're in here figuring things out."

Sel wandered back into the main living area of the bunker to see Jim drinking a beer and Avery eating an MRE. "These things ain't half bad."

Sel found Indio in the storage room, going through every unmarked box. "Hey."

After glancing back at him, he grunted, "Hey."

"You know…Bennie wasn't trying to hurt me. Until recently, he was my bodyguard."

"Didn't think that," he threw out, then ignored Sel again.

Sel was glad to hear it. That meant he thought he was hitting on Sel. "Well, he was just…trying to get through to me about a couple things."

"Don't really give a fuck."

Knowing that was a lie, Sel smiled but said, "Finding anything?"

"I'd find something quicker if you weren't bothering me."

Sel walked over to a box marked heating oil, and opened it, seeing jugs of the stuff. He went to another one marked MREs and took a couple out. "Hungry?"

Indio stood and turned slowly, his eyes two angry slits. "I know we're all supposed to drop everything when you come into a room, but right now, I'm looking for something to help us get out of here. It's hard enough in this light without you jabbering in my ear."

Sel moved closer to him as he said, "Stop acting like you hate me."

"Never said I hated you," he whispered, taking a step backward.

Sel took another step forward. Indio took another step back, but that one set him against another shelf. Sel didn't push it, stopping his movement as he said, "You act like you hate me."

"You don't even fucking know me. How do you know I'm acting like I hate you?"

"So, you like me?"

Indio was breathing heavily, and his eyes were staring so hard into Sel's, Sel could almost physically feel them. Then he moved, and when he did, it caught Sel off-guard, and he nearly fell back on his ass.

No chance of that, however, as Indio caught him by the shirt, yanking him hard, right into his chest. "Shut the fuck up for once in your privileged life," he said before he smashed his mouth onto Sel's, kissing him with enough force to make sure Sel felt it for a very long time to come.

His hair was in both of Indio's fists in seconds and he couldn't move, but that was the thing. He didn't want to move, but then he was moving, and he was the one back stepping as Indio walked him to the wall and moved to pin him there.

The kiss changed the second he couldn't move, Indio moving his tongue into Sel's mouth, brushing it roughly across Sel's. Sel moaned into the kiss, and it was from surprise, sure, but it was also the fact it was the best kiss of his life.

Feeling it to his toes, Sel gave himself to that kiss, tilting his head, letting his shoulders fall, then he went further, curling his leg around the two of his, hands holding Indio's waist as he was kissed with such a burning passion, he thought they'd both erupt into flames.

When it was over, Indio broke the hold Sel had on his legs and moved away from him except for one hand that moved from Sel's hair to his throat. "Stop goading me."

Sel was dizzy with desire and all he could do was drunkenly nod.

"I can't have you." He moved in, kissing Sel much more gently. "Yet."

He was gone from the storage room, leaving at a quick pace and Sel was left against the wall to smile.

Yes, he was trapped in a concrete tomb. Sure, there was a serial killer who wanted to kill them all, but at that moment it all fell away.

Indio wanted him. Just…not yet.