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ADAM
teddekker.com
DEKKER THRILLER
THR3E
Obsessed
Adam
DEKKER FANTASY
BOOKS OF HISTORY CHRONICLES
THE LOST BOOKS
Chosen
Infidel
Renegade
Chaos
THE CIRCLE TRILOGY
Black
Red
White
THE PARADISE BOOKS
Showdown
Saint
Sinner (SEPTEMBER 200 cool
Skin
House (with Frank Peretti)
DEKKER MYSTERY
Blink of an Eye
Kiss (with Erin Healy—JANUARY 2009)
MARTYR’S SONG SERIES
Heaven’s Wager
When Heaven Weeps
Thunder of Heaven
The Martyr’s Song
THE CALEB BOOKS
Blessed Child
A Man Called Blessed
A D A M
Ted Dekker
© 2008 by Ted Dekker
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or
other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of
the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas
Nelson, Inc.
Published in association with Thomas Nelson and Creative Trust, Inc., Literary Division, 2105 Elliston
Place, Nashville, TN 37203.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales
promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.
Unless otherwise noted, scripture references are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity
to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Drawing of children by Mary Hooper
Page Design by Casey Hooper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dekker, Ted, 1962-
Adam / Ted Dekker.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59554-007-2 (AE)
ISBN 978-1-59554-382-0 (CE)
ISBN 978-1-59554-424-1 (IE)
I. Title.
PS3554.E43A66 2008
813'.54--dc22
2007033068
Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1
The thief cometh not, but for to
steal, and to kill, and to destroy . . .
As quoted by John the Apostle
John 10:10
Crime Today 45
NO ONE—not the migrant
workers who remember seeing
the baby kicking stubby legs while
he lay on a brown blanket next to the
fields, not the Arkansas farmers who
chuckled while poking the child’s
belly, certainly not his adoring father
and mother, Lorden and Betty
Price—could possibly imagine that
the brown-eyed baby boy named
Alex Price, born August 18, 1964,
would one day stalk innocence like a
wolf stalking a wounded lamb.
Then again, 1964 was more than
four decades before Alex Price began
the calculated cycle of terror
that would end the lives of so many
young women.
As the children of migrant workers
themselves, Lorden and Betty
Price had grown up with the same
strong work ethic many migrant
field workers shared throughout the
south in the 1940s and 1950s.
Devout Catholics, they planned on
instilling love and sound moral sensibilities
into whatever children God
blessed them with.
They regularly attended Mass at a
small cathedral in nearby Conway
off Route 78, where the faithful congregated
each Sunday. With just a
little more fortune, a little more education,
a few more helpful people,
Lorden could have opened up his
own mechanic shop, according to
MAN OF SORROW:
JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS
by Anne Rudolph
Crime Today magazine is pleased to present Anne Rudolph’s narrative
account of the killer now known as Alex Price, presented in
nine monthly installments titled “Man of Sorrow: Journey into
Darkness.” Rudolph’s award-winning investigative reporting provides
us with a rarely seen glimpse of good and evil at work within
our society today.
1964
Reprinted from Crime Today magazine, 2008
46 Crime Today
those who knew him. He had a way
with machines that impressed the local
farmers.
The small family of three lived
rent-free in a trailer on the back side
of the Hope farm, a deal brokered
with Bill Hope in exchange for
Lorden’s extra help maintaining all
of the farm vehicles. Bill even
loaned Lorden his 1953 Dodge truck
for transportation. All things considered,
the Prices were doing pretty
well for themselves when little Alex
came into the world.
“Cutest little bundle of boy you
ever did saw,” Constance Jersey recalls
with a soft smile and tired eyes.
“They used to tote him around in one
of those wire buggies Lorden had
found in the dump and fixed up.
Didn’t matter what they put him in,
you couldn’t make that boy stop smiling
and cooing as if he was the luckiest
soul in the whole wide world.”
Other workers remember Lorden
racing up and down the cotton-field
roads late one day, sticking his head
out of the truck, hollering for Betty
and demanding to know where Alex
was. Seems he’d misplaced both of
them and panicked. He found them
in the barn, taking a break from the
hot sun.
When Alex was one year old, Betty
gave birth to a beautiful, blondehaired,
seven-pound, two-ounce baby
girl whom they named Jessica.
Lorden was the kind of man who
made sure every person he met knew
just how adorable his children were,
and he didn’t have to work hard to
accomplish this task.
“They’re going to college,” he announced
to his coworkers one hot
day in the cotton field. The cotton industry
was taking a downturn in the
midsixties, replaced by the more
profitable corn market. The work
was hard and the pay was hardly
enough to keep a family alive. “I
swear, they’re going to college if it’s
the last thing I do.”
The coworkers gave him no mind.
The idealist in Lorden frequently
made such bold announcements, but
life as a blue-collar worker in Faulkner
County in 1965 didn’t hold out much
hope for anything so extravagant as
attending the University of Central
Arkansas in nearby Conway. Still,
Lorden repeated his intentions often,
claiming that they would one day
make some real money in the factories
up north, and send their children
to college.
Just over a year after Jessica’s
birth, as winter set into central
Arkansas, Lorden announced to his
wife that Bill Hope had agreed to let
him take the truck up to Chicago for
Crime Today 47
an extended visit with relatives
who’d left Arkansas several years
earlier, hoping to work in the factories.
The Prices packed their belongings
in two large suitcases, bid their
neighbors farewell, and headed down
the dusty road.
The Dodge pickup returned nearly
five weeks later laden with gifts from
the north. José Menendez, who lived
with his wife, Estella, in a second
trailer near the Prices, remembers the
day clearly. “You gotta understand
that them Prices was a frugal bunch.
They didn’t spend money on much
unless it was for the kids. The smiles
on their faces when they came back
with that haul had us all thinking
about going up north to work in the
factories.”
A perfectly good washing machine.
Two new suitcases full of clothes,
mostly for little Alex and Jessica. But
the chainsaw was Lorden’s prize. He
cut enough firewood that first week
to last both them and the neighbors
two winters, José recalled.
The first four years of Alex Price’s
life can only be reconstructed from
the memories of people like the
Menendezes and the Hopes. Hearing
it all, one has to wonder what would
have become of Alex had his parents
been allowed to continue their slow
but deliberate gain on a happy life.
Would they have moved to
Chicago and sent the children to a
public school while they saved up
the money for a secondary education?
Would Alex have grown up on
the farm, then finally opened the
shop his father only dreamed of?
The night of January 15, 1968, was
warm by Arkansas standards, a balmy
51 degrees according to the weather
service records. Heavy, dark clouds
hung over most of Faulkner County.
Betty tucked Alex, then four, and
Jessica, who was three, in their twin
beds in the back bedroom, sang them
a soft song as she did every night,
said their prayers, and turned off the
lights. José Menendez recalled that
the Price’s mobile home, which
stood only fifty yards from their
own, was already dark when he went
out for wood at eight thirty.
The crickets sang in the nearby
forest; otherwise, the night was
quiet. At approximately 1:45 a.m.
Lorden was awakened by a creaking
noise, a fairly common sound in the
Price house, which was set on an unstable
foundation and easily shaken
by wind. Only when it occurred to
him that there was no howling wind
did Lorden open his eyes and listen
more carefully. It was the absence of
wind that awakened him, he later
told the police.
48 Crime Today
The screen door squealed in the
dark, and Lorden sat upright. A faint,
muffled cry reached his ears.
Now panicked, Lorden threw off
the blanket and ran into the tiny living
room. He saw that the front door was
open, but his mind was on the children’s
bedroom. Barging through the
doorway, he saw a sight that would
haunt him for years to come.
Two empty beds.
“I couldn’t think. I just couldn’t
think,” he later recalled. He stood
frozen in the doorway, staring at the
empty white sheets for a few long
seconds before crying out and
sprinting out of the house.
A Ford pickup truck was parked on
the gravel driveway. The driver’s door
slammed and for a moment Lorden
saw the shapes inside: an adult wearing
a cowboy hat sat in the driver’s
seat, and another with long hair was
shoving Alex and Jessica into the
truck from the passenger’s side. Freed
from the hands that had muzzled
them, both children began to cry.
Lorden ran toward the truck but
was only halfway across the lawn
when it rumbled to life and jerked
forward, spewing gravel.
Now in a mindless panic, Lorden
ran for the Chevy, started the engine,
and took off after the disappearing
pickup. Betty ran from the house,
screaming his name. He had the
presence of mind to shove open the
passenger door and call out for her
to report the kidnapping to the
county sheriff. She would have to
call from the main ranch house.
Lorden had a difficult time remembering
what happened next. “I
couldn’t think!” he repeated later.
“I just couldn’t . . . couldn’t figure
it, I couldn’t think!”
In an understandable state of anxiety,
the father raced down the driveway,
took a hard left at the first fork,
following the Ford pickup’s dust,
and pushed the old Chevy to its limits.
His eyes were on the set of taillights
two turns ahead.
The next corner turned ninety degrees
to the left, and Lorden overshot
it in a full slide. The truck came to a
crashing stop in the ditch beyond.
Unable to restart the truck, Lorden
exited the vehicle and ran after the
distant taillights, calling out to the
Menendez trailer on his right. José
ran out, and a breathless Lorden
yelled that someone had just taken
Alex and Jessica.
But without a truck, José was
powerless to give chase. And by the
time he got to the Hope ranch house
to call the police, the Ford pickup
was long out of sight.
Bill Hope reported the kidnapping
Crime Today 49
to the Faulkner County sheriff at
1:56 a.m., then jumped in his car
with José and headed for the county
road nearly a mile away. They found
Lorden Price at the intersection pacing,
staring down the long strip of
empty asphalt that stretched empty
in both directions.
“It was the most horrible sight I’d
yet seen,” José recounts. “The man
had run about a mile and was near a
breakdown. He had that look of
death on him.”
Without a clue as to which direction
the kidnappers had fled, Lorden
couldn’t decide where to take the
chase, so Bill Hope headed east. The
road ran through a forested region
without streetlamps, and the dark
clouds blocked the last hint of light
from the sky. They raced east, following
the spread of their headlights,
nothing else.
They couldn’t have calmed Lorden
Price in those first ten minutes if
they’d wanted to. But as the road
yielded nothing of promise, he soon
grew silent in the backseat. Bill
slowed the car after fifteen minutes
and asked Lorden if he wanted to try
the other direction.
Lorden didn’t respond. He just
lay down on the backseat and sobbed.
“It was horrible,” José said. “Just
horrible.”
Sheriff Rob Green received the
call to investigate a kidnapping at the
Hope Ranch at 1:59 a.m. He tossed
The Prices’ home in Arkansas
50 Crime Today
his cold coffee and immediately
headed out. Officer Peter Morgan
from the Conway police department
also responded to the call. Both had
arrived on the scene by the time Bill
Hope, José Menendez, and Lorden
Price returned.
While Lorden did his best to calm
his hysterical wife, the officers started
processing the crime scene. An all
points bulletin was immediately issued
for a truck matching Lorden’s
description. Although kidnapping was
not a common occurrence, all of the
law-enforcement officers knew how
critical the first few hours of search
were. A trail is only a trail as long as
it remains discernable.
With the help of the highway patrol,
hasty blockades were established
on four of the six country roads in
and around Conway. The FBI’s Little
Rock field office was informed of the
incident at daybreak, and Special
Agent Ronald Silverton agreed to assist
the local sheriff in prosecuting
the search. Kidnappings qualified for
federal involvement, but for the most
part, the FBI only pursued those
cases they determined to be successfully
prosecutable. The Price kidnapping
wasn’t promising, but Silverton
thought that if they moved quickly,
they might have a chance.
With Agent Silverton coordinating
FBI resources and Sheriff Rob
Green leading the investigation on
the ground, an exhaustive search for
the missing children was launched.
Field and ditch, canal and culvert:
no evidence found. The word of
Alex and Jessica’s kidnapping was
heavily circulated through dozens of
Arkansas newspapers and radio stations.
The Prices had no photographs
of their children, the simple
reason being that they didn’t own a
camera. They had saved for a family
portrait to be taken in Conway for
Christmas that year, but it was still
late harvest.
An artist was brought in from the
Little Rock police department, and
his sketch of the two children was
printed in newspapers and on flyers,
which were tacked to hundreds of
posts covering a two-hundred-mile
radius. Meanwhile, the authorities
constructed a likely kidnapping
Police sketch of Adam and Jessica Price
Crime Today 51
scenario based on the evidence gathered
at the crime scene.
The Unknown Subjects, or
UNSUBs, as unknown perpetrators of
crimes are commonly called, evidently
approached both the Hope
ranch house and the Menendez trailer
before proceeding to the Price house.
Multiple boot impressions matching
those outside the Price children’s window
were also found on the ground
outside windows at both the Hope and
Menendez homes.
“We knew then that we were dealing
with the worst sort of kidnapping,”
Special Agent Silverton recalls.
“The evidence suggested that the
perpetrators passed up valuables in
clear sight of the Hope windows and
moved on to the Menendez house.
Finding nothing of interest, they approached
the Price house, where
they found what they’d come for:
children.”
There are two primary classifications
of kidnappers: those who kidnap
victims as leverage for ransom,
and those who kidnap victims for
their own personal use.
It became immediately clear to
Silverton that they were dealing with
the latter classification. The Prices
obviously had little or nothing to give
a kidnapper in exchange for their
children. They didn’t hold positions
of influence or have access to information
that any kidnapper might be
seeking.
In all likelihood, Alex and Jessica
were taken by someone who either
wanted but could not produce children,
or by someone who intended
to use the children for some unidentified
enterprise.
In addition, the evidence suggested
that the perpetrators were not
new to the crime they’d committed.
Once they found the children, they
painstakingly removed the window
frame from the wall, one screw at a
time, a task that may have taken up
to an hour.
No fingerprints were lifted from
the room. There had been no cry of
alarm from the children until they
were outside the house, suggesting
they’d been carefully lifted from their
beds while deep asleep. Like many
parents, the Prices sometimes allowed
the children to fall asleep on
the couch and then moved them to
their beds, which could account for
the reason neither Alex nor Jessica
made a fuss sooner than they did.
The cold outside had likely woken
the children, but by then their
mouths were covered and their abductors
were running for the truck.
Guessing that the kidnappers were
not of the variety who holed up nearby
52 Crime Today
while they issued their demands for
a ransom, Silverton broadened his
search to the states surrounding
Arkansas. An extensive search of the
FBI records for abductions with a
matching profile was immediately
initiated. Casts of the tire marks and
the boot impressions were sent to the
FBI’s crime lab at Quantico for detailed
examination.
A week passed without any solid
leads. Lorden and Betty grew even
more frantic. Hope of a quick recovery
gave way to a resolve for a long
search.
The fact that only the vilest kind
of human could possibly take a child
wasn’t lost on Lorden. His fear of
what the children might be facing
was replaced by a sleepless rage
against the animals who preyed on
such young, innocent children.
A month passed, and Silverton
visited the Prices with some advice
that they refused to accept. The
number of cases in which abducted
children were recovered after being
missing for more than a month was
negligible. He gently encouraged
Lorden and Betty to prepare for a
life without their children.
Two months went by, and not a
single solid lead to the UNSUBs’
identities or location surfaced. The
authorities knew what shoes they
wore—size 11 and size 6 Bigton work
boots, likely worn by a man and a
woman. Perhaps a husband-and-wife
team. Based on the tire casts, they
concluded that the vehicle used for
the kidnapping was a Ford F150
pickup manufactured between 1954
and 1957. A file full of circumstantial
evidence suggested the kidnappers
lived in a rural setting, were handy
with tools, likely lacked formal education,
and would go to extraordinary
lengths to acquire a child. But none
of this evidence led the FBI or the
local authorities to the abductors
themselves.
Two months stretched into six, and
Lorden slowly gave up hope and began
to take Agent Silverton’s advice.
Betty wanted to have another child
immediately, but he insisted they
wait. “Lorden was afraid they’d come
back and take that child too,” José
Menendez said. “I’m telling you, he
never recovered. He was a shell after
that. Like you couldn’t pull no life
from the man if you tried.”
Alex and Jessica were gone. For
all Lorden and Betty knew, their children
were dead.
But Alex and Jessica were not
dead.
They were in Oklahoma.
And they would not rejoin the
world for thirteen years.
O N E
2008
A HOT, STICKY EVENING in Los Angeles. Outside, the city
was clogged with traffic and a million souls fighting their way
through another rush hour, preoccupied with bloated mortgage
payments and impossible social pressures. Inside the FBI’s Los
Angeles field office, the air conditioner’s hum had more significance
to Daniel at the moment.
Special Agent Daniel Clark stared across the broad maple desk
at Frank Montova’s dark eyes, set deep behind puffy cheeks, like
raisins. The man’s neck bulged over a collar two sizes too small. Of
the fifty-six domestic FBI field offices, only four were large enough
to be helmed by an assistant director in charge, or an ADIC, as
opposed to a special agent in charge. LA was one of those four. The
running joke was that Montova fit his professional acronym at times.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t use other resources at our disposal,”
Daniel said.
“You don’t catch a methodical pattern killer who’s left a trail of
9
fifteen victims across nine states without a lot of help. I don’t care
how good you are. You go rogue, you break the chain-of-evidence
custody, and you’ll blow our chances of getting a prosecution altogether,
let alone a conviction.”
“This isn’t just about getting a conviction,” Daniel said. “It’s
about stopping the killer in the Eve case before he kills another
woman. It’s about getting into the mind of a killer without him
knowing it. I think I can do that better alone than with a team. We
follow protocol, we may never find him. We have to anticipate him,
not just chase him.”
“You sure this isn’t about Mark White’s death?”
Mark was the forensic pathologist who’d worked with Daniel,
uncovering what clues they could from the victims’ bodies. Two
weeks earlier he was killed in a car crash that hadn’t yet been
ruled accidental. Daniel had considered Mark a friend more than
a partner.
“I can understand how you might come to that conclusion, but
no. Mark and I had discussed going dark. This is about trying to get
an investigation ahead of Eve, not just waiting to catch up with his
crime scenes.”
“I’d be more concerned with legality and judicial precedence.”
Montova’s lips turned down. “The director doesn’t like it. There are
reasons why the bureau investigates the way it does.”
Daniel took a slow breath, calmed himself. “You’re denying my
request?”
The chief eyed him carefully. “It’s my call. And, yes, I’m leaning
that way.”
Daniel stood from the green upholstered guest chair and
stepped over to the window. Like many of the bureau offices, the
furniture was dated, held over from the last round of budget cuts.
Two bookcases stuffed with black case logs and leather-bound legal
Ted Dekker
10
briefs. A fake rubber tree plant in one corner. Round oak conference
table with four metal chairs. Gray industrial carpet.
The city towered outside, gray piles of concrete jutting to the
sky beyond Wilshire Boulevard like a dusty three-dimensional bar
graph.
“Fifteen women are dead because of our bureaucratic inability
to do what is necessary. He kills every lunar cycle, which means he
already has his next victim. And if pathology’s correct, he’s already
exposed her to the disease. Twenty-eight days is tomorrow. And we
have no breaks, am I right?”
“Go on.”
“If we get nothing this time, let me go dark. Give me access to
whatever information I need—I work strictly through a channel of
your choosing. Officially take me off the case. Put a legal layer of protection
in play so that we don’t endanger the evidence or the case, and
then prosecute as you see fit. But let me do what I do best. Alone.”
Montova regarded him with a long stare. Shifted his eyes to the
bookcase on his left. Daniel followed his gaze. Two spines stood out
from the long row of books, a red one and a black one, side by side.
Inside the Criminal Mind
Fixing the Broken Among Us
Both were authored by the same man. Daniel Clark, PhD.
He’d written them after receiving his doctorate at age thirty-five.
The subsequent five years of lectures and tours led to his divorce
from Heather, after which he requested and received a reassignment
to the field. That was nearly two years ago.
At first the Eve case gave him an avenue of escape from the pain
of the divorce. But the case soon developed into an obsession
because, as Heather insisted, Daniel knew nothing but obsession.
It was why he understood the obsessive criminal mind as well as
he did. It was why he’d gone back to school for his doctorate. Why
A DAM
11
he’d ignored his wife in favor of dishing out a hundred lectures on
the same subject. It took an obsessive mind to know one.
Behavioral patterns, like forensic evidence, could lead them not
only to a conviction but also to a new understanding of the psychology
of serial killing. ViCAP, the federal Violent Criminal Apprehension
Program, had a continually evolving database about the
intrinsic natures of violent criminals. A pebble of prevention against
a landslide of future psychopaths.
The Eve killer was a poster child for the conclusions presented
in both of Daniel’s books if there ever was one.
Montova’s eyes were back on him. “Do what you do best, huh?”
“Yes.”
“And what is it that you do best, Daniel?”
“I work alone best. Without all the distractions that keep me out.”
“Out?”
Daniel hesitated. “Of his mind.”
“Eve’s mind.”
“Yes.” Few understood the discipline and focus required to
enter the criminal mind.
“Isn’t that a dangerous thing to do? Alone?”
Daniel shifted in his chair, uncomfortable for the first time.
Heather’s words came to him. They’re your addiction, Daniel. You live
your life in their minds!
“If not me, then who?” he said. “You want this piece of trash off
the streets, you take some risks.”
The assistant director clasped his hands on the desk calendar in
front of him. His straight hair, normally slicked to one side, curled
down over one ear. Montova was a respected man—a throwback to the
previous generation, preferring a pen and a calendar to a Palm Pilot.
As he liked to put it, the mind was sharper than any brain power a
computer could muster.
Ted Dekker
12
“You’re more concerned about beating Eve at his own game
than you are about the victims,” Montova said.
Daniel crossed his legs. “You’re forgetting that I was on the
Diablo case in Utah. I’ve seen what a compulsive killer can do in the
space of seven hours. Don’t tell me I don’t care about the victims. I
care about stopping the killer, not just wandering behind him with
a dustpan and filling out Uniform Crime Reports.”
“I’m not saying you don’t care about the victims. I’m saying
they’re not what drives you.”
Daniel started to object, but the words caught in his throat.
“Does it matter?”
“Actually, it does,” Montova said.
His desk phone beeped twice.
“It tells me why your motivation runs so deep. This isn’t just a
job to you, and that makes you a risk to this investigation, even a liability.
Your allegiance to protocols—I don’t care if you wrote
them—is critical.”
The phone rang twice more before he reached for the receiver
and lifted it to his ear. “Yes?” He listened, interrupting once for
clarification.
Daniel glanced at the books he’d written. Heather had repeatedly
made the same accusation Montova had. The truth of it had
cost them their marriage.
Montova hung up and pressed another extension. “Send her
in.” He set the receiver back into its cradle.
“Send who in?”
The door opened and a woman stepped in. Closed the door
behind her.
“Daniel, meet Lori Ames. Lori, meet Daniel Clark, our major
crime SAIC.”
Daniel stood and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
A DAM
13
“I know your work,” Lori said. “It’s great to finally meet you.”
Daniel turned to the bureau chief. “I take it this conversation is
over. I hope we can—”
“Sit down, Clark,” Montova said. To the woman: “Have a seat.”
Lori brushed past him, wearing a gentle smile. Soft brown eyes
and a slender body wrapped in a dark business suit. Black heels.
Blonde hair that hung just past her shoulders.
But it was the way she looked at him that caught Daniel’s attention.
Like she knew more than he might assume she did.
He followed her back to the guest chairs and sat.
Montova eyed them both and spoke when neither offered comment.
“Agent Ames is a pathologist from the Phoenix field office’s
evidence response team. She knew the fourteenth victim, Amber
Riley, and has since become quite familiar with the case. We’d like
to reassign her to you.”
They were replacing Mark White two weeks after his death. But
why not with a local? There were at least five qualified pathologists at
the LA field office. He glanced over at her. Skirt tight against one
toned leg crossed over the other. Not exactly the dress of a field agent.
“I suppose that’s your call, sir.”
“It is, and I’ve made it. She starts now. And I’ve changed my
mind. I’m granting your request. Assuming, that is, you don’t object
to working through Lori. She’ll remain on the case but shadow you
in all respects.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. Working within these new parameters you suggested,
of course. Who do you suggest I turn the case over to?”
“Brit Holman,” he said without thinking. The man was competent
and nearly as familiar with the case as Daniel was. “You’re saying
you’ll let me go dark alone, as long as my sole contact is an
agent who’s new to the case?”
Ted Dekker
14
Montova looked at Lori, who evidently took his stare as an invitation
to share.
“The first believed victim was discovered sixteen months ago in
the basement of All Saints Catholic Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Maria Stencho, a twenty-three-year-old tasked with cleaning the
church. Her body was bruised and blistered, and traces of a previously
unknown bacteria similar to Streptococcus pneumoniae were
found in her blood. SP is normally associated with meningitis,
which infects the fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord and
can kill a host within hours in a manner consistent with Maria
Stencho’s death. No signs of struggle, no evidence of blunt-force
trauma. No evidence of harm caused by any weapon. According to
the local medical examiner, cause of death was acute encephalitis,
most closely associated with symptoms consistent with ICD-10,
code A-85, meningoencephalitis. The lab work detailed leukocytes in
the cerebrospinal fluid after a lumbar tap, and confirmed that the
disease was present and in full effect at the time of death. It was
first assumed that Stencho died from a form of meningitis. Shall I
go on?”
“I get the point,” Daniel said.
But Montova held up his hand. “Please, go on.”
“The next victim was found twenty-eight days later in San Diego.
A Mormon, age twenty, female. This time in the basement of an LDS
church. Nearly identical set of circumstances except this time the
name EVE was painted in red on the cement wall next to the body.
Lab came up with the same results in the spinal fluid, and the local
coroner found evidence of the same intracranial pressure, as well as
advanced infection of the meninges. She died of brain pressure
leading to cerebral hemorrhage. A new victim has been found every
new moon—the killer evidently likes the dark. All fifteen have been
female, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. All found
A DAM
15
underground: seven in church basements, four in abandoned cellars
at abandoned farms, four in natural caverns preselected by
the killer.”
Lori switched her gaze to Daniel. She was unique, he’d give her
that much. Fresh. Her eyes sparkled with an infectious mystery. If
he wasn’t mistaken, in her late thirties.
“Evidence recovered from each scene includes size 13 shoe
impressions—Bigton boots available at any one of several large
chains across America. Stride indicates a height of six-six, and
indentation puts him between 220 and 250. Different white vans
were recovered near two of the sites. Hair and skin cell samples
from each identify the killer as Caucasian, blood type B-positive,
male. The lab cross-checked him through Combined DNA Index
System (CODIS), and his DNA profile has appeared in no other
investigations outside of this series. Hair indicates he is in his forties.
There were no latent prints. No saliva, blood, semen, or any
other fluid that could be traced to any other source than the victim.
The killer’s not a secretor. He’s effectively either a newcomer
or a ghost.”
A pause. Then she went on delivering the data with practiced
precision.
“The fact that he’s gone to such great lengths to avoid leaving
any prints suggests he believes his prints are in the Automated
Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) database. Which in turn
suggests he’s a professional. His killing is organized, patterned, premeditated,
and clearly religiously motivated. He’s killing with
motives that are consistent with a classic psychopathic profile—he
knows right from wrong, and he chooses wrong. He will continue
until he is captured or killed. His profile indicates that he will likely
never be taken alive. Nothing else is known about Eve.”
Beat.
Ted Dekker
16
“Would you like me to tell you about you now? An even more fascinating
case.”
“I know myself, thank you,” Daniel replied, offering her a polite
grin.
“Do you?”
Lori said it with complete sincerity, as if she were his therapist and
was only interested in the truth. Then she smiled. “I hope not. My
mother always told me that men who think they know themselves are
only stuck-up versions of those who don’t.”
“Smart lady.”
The soft hiss of the air conditioner settled the room.
“Like I said, Lori has familiarized herself with the case,”
Montova said. His phone rang and he took the call. He nodded
curtly and dropped the receiver back in its cradle.
“You’ll have time to fill in the blanks on the way.”
“Sir?”
“Local police in Manitou Springs, Colorado, just received a
report of an abandoned white van found by two spelunkers near the
Cave of the Winds. They found an entrance to an unmarked cave
nearby. The report drew a flag from Eve’s ViCAP profile. Local
enforcement is setting up a perimeter, but they’ve been told to stay
out of the scene until you arrive.”
Daniel sat still, breath gone. Eve.
Ice crept through his veins.
Daniel stood and crossed the room in three long steps. He
grabbed the doorknob and was halfway through before Montova’s
voice stopped him.
“Lori goes with you.”
He spun back and saw that she was already right behind him.
“Fine.”
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17
TWO
HEATHER CLARK GLANCED at her watch for the fifth time in
as many minutes. Eleven o’clock, the note had said. Information
you will kill for. The bar at the Emerald Dive. Limousine. Which was why
she was here for the first time since the divorce.
Her friend, Raquel Graham, one of the better defense attorneys
in Santa Monica, sat at the bar next to her, rocking subtly to the
rhythmic tune blaring over the Emerald Dive’s sound system. The
new music, she called it. As opposed to the old music, which had
filled the radio waves when she and Raquel were tearing up Santa
Monica in their twenties.
They all liked the new music, they just didn’t know the names
of the bands. Or the songs, for that matter. Nothing as sensible as
Red Hot Chili Peppers, which made a clear, definitive statement.
What did names like Sky Block Streak say? Probably more than she
cared to know.
The Emerald Dive catered to the professional downtown crowd—
18
smart-dressed lawyers and such, half of whom Heather recognized
from the major firms around town. She’d made partner at Biggs &
Kofford a year earlier, ten years after signing on as a defense attorney.
Another two years and her name would join Jerry Biggs and
Kurt Kofford on the stationery. Assuming she stuck around.
Honestly, she doubted she would. The last year had ruined her
for run-of-the-mill litigation.
Raquel tossed her dark hair, took another sip from the Tom
Collins in front of her, and eyed Simon—a prosecutor from Los
Angeles—as he crossed the room headed for the bathroom. They’d
been dating a full month, something of a record for Raquel, who
was thirty-nine and had yet to settle into any semblance of a permanent
relationship. She tended to approach men the way she
approached cases: moving from one to the next, always hoping for
the next big payday.
“So this is the one, huh?” Heather asked, glancing at the clock
on the wall.
Raquel offered up a whimsical smile. “Could be, you never
know.”
“One month and counting.”
“I wouldn’t talk, sweetie.” Raquel raised a brow and took
another sip. She nodded at a blond man across the bar, engrossed
in a conversation with a friend. Jake Mackenzie, whom they both
knew by reputation as an up-and-comer.
“There you go. You always did like blonds.”
“Please, he’s not a day over thirty.”
“And that’s a problem? You’re only thirty-seven, babe, and any
guy in this place can see you put the rest of the competition to
shame.”
Heather’s eyes shifted to the clock.
Raquel set her drink down. “Will you stop that?”
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19
“Stop what?”
“You got a hot date I don’t know about? The clock!”
“It’s a sin to look at a clock?”
“I’m trying to help you out here, sweetie. You’ve been
divorced—”
“Please, not the divorce talk again,” Heather said.
“Exactly. Forget the divorce already. You left that egotistical
maniac almost two years ago for good reason. But no, you won’t let
go, will you? No, we shall be called Heather Clark because we were
once married to a god named Daniel Clark. Why did you leave him?”
“Because he was an egotistical maniac”—she took a sip—“that I
fell in love with.”
“Listen to me.” Raquel turned Heather’s face toward her with a
gentle hand. “Look at us. What do you see?”
“Two women, in a bar, at eleven on a Wednesday, when most
reasonable lawyers our age are in bed.”
“Since when were you reasonable? You know what I see? The
smartest defense attorney in Southern California, who’s so wrapped
in the sad past that she’s forgotten how to live for the future. The
fact that she happens to have a body that looks as tempting in a tank
top and holey jeans as it does in a business suit only makes her misplaced
desperation more tragic. Learn to live, sweetie. Trust me,
you were born to sweep ’em off their feet.”
“Spoken like a seasoned litigator.”
Raquel turned back to the bar. She was right, of course. Time
was marching on, and Heather had allowed the past to suck her in.
If anyone knew just how deeply, they would probably arrange for
therapy.
The Budweiser clock’s long hand tripped the large twelve at the
top. Heather scanned the patrons once again, but saw no one
focused on her. Whoever had left the note would approach her.
Ted Dekker
20
Unless they didn’t want to be seen by Raquel. Heather had been
working the Mendoza case for the last three months, a high-profile
drug case involving a sixty-year-old Mexican woman who was being
charged with laundering drug money through a dry cleaning business
she owned. All the evidence pointed to an open-and-shut case,
but after spending an afternoon with Marie Mendoza, Heather
couldn’t bring herself to believe the woman was capable of, much
less guilty of, the crime.
Someone else was pulling the strings. Someone who had a lot to
hide.
If the note referred to information on the Mendoza case, as she
assumed, it would likely come from a source interested in the
strictest confidence.
Then again, she just might be meeting with someone who
wanted her off the case and was simply luring her into an alley
where they intended to whack her.
“We’ve got to get you a date, Heather. Give me that much.”
“I’ve had plenty of dates.” Her contact was late. She eyed the room
for a sign from any man or woman who would acknowledge her.
“What, two since Daniel split?”
“Daniel didn’t split. I left him.” A dark-haired man with a strong
jaw and thick brows entered the bar, scanned the crowd, and settled
on her. His face looked like it had been pistol-whipped a time or
two. Heather considered bailing.
“So you left him. What’s the difference?” Raquel said.
“The difference is, he still loves me.” She picked up her purse.
“And you’re right, I do need more dates. Like the one I have
tonight.”
Raquel faced her. “You have a date? Who?” She followed
Heather’s stare across the room.
“Limo driver by the door. Don’t stare.”
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21
“Him?”
“Him,” Heather said, standing. “If I’m not back in half an hour,
call me. If I don’t answer, call the police.”
She left Raquel staring after her.
THE LIMO DRIVER with the grizzly face led Heather from the
bar without speaking. Where he intended to take her, she had no
idea, but she found the idea that she should follow him inadvisable.
What was she thinking?
She stopped on the sidewalk ten yards from the bar’s front door.
“Where are we going?”
He kept walking, offering no explanation, as if it made no difference
to him whether she followed. He was simply doing what he
was ordered to do.
She took a few more steps. “Excuse me, maybe I have this
wrong, but I won’t just follow you without knowing where you’re
taking me.”
He walked on. A younger man and his girlfriend or wife angling
down the sidewalk stared at her, then back at the man she was talking
to. She nodded politely, and, not eager for a scene, walked on.
The man veered to his left, walked up to an old black sedan,
opened the door, and stared back at her. Still not a word.
Curious, she glanced back, saw several passersby watching, and
decided to approach the car. She’d never get inside, of course. But
to turn back now would only leave her clueless as to this information
she would kill for.
She stopped five feet from the opened door, removed her eyes
from the man who was now staring at her, and peered inside.
The car was empty.
The driver motioned to the backseat. “Get inside.”
Ted Dekker
22
“What is this?” she demanded.
“Please. I’m only doing what I’ve been paid to do.”
“You left the note?”
“Please—”
“If you have information, I’ll take it. Otherwise I’m afraid I have
to get to my friends. They’re waiting.”
“I was told to tell you it’s about Daniel Clark,” the man said.
“This could save his life.”
Dread replaced her annoyance.
“What is this? Who sent you?”
“That’s all I know. Please, lady, I don’t get paid unless you get
inside.”
Several others on the sidewalk were now watching, whether
curious or concerned she didn’t know or care. Ignoring the onlookers,
Heather stepped into the black car and shifted to avoid
being smacked by the door as it thudded closed.
The driver slipped behind the wheel and pulled away from the
curb. He punched a number into his cell phone, listened for a
moment, then disconnected without speaking.
“Where are we going?” Heather asked.
“Home.”
“You know where I live?”
A cell phone flashed on the seat next to her.
“Answer it,” the driver said.
She hesitated, then picked it up slowly. Flipped it open and
lifted it to her ear.
The voice on the speaker was soft and low. “Do you love your
husband, Mrs. Clark?”
“Who is this?”
“Do you love your husband?”
“We’re divorced.”
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23
A static-filled pause.
“Is that why you’ve kept his name?”
“I really don’t see how it matters to you.”
“It doesn’t,” the voice said. “It matters to you. Please, tell me.”
The whole business was unnerving. But there were much easier
ways to hurt someone. She doubted whoever was behind this had
her harm in mind. They’d gone to some trouble to get her in a controlled
environment and on an untraceable cell call.
She saw no harm in giving him an answer. “Of course.”
“Yes, of course. Would you kill for him?”
The question caught her broadside.
He clarified. “To bring him back, healthy, without this ridiculous
obsession he has with . . . Eve. To have your husband’s love and
affection. Would you kill?”
Maybe, she thought, then rejected the idea.
“The truth is, you love your husband very much.”
This time she said what came to mind. “Yes.”
“You may need to before it’s over. There’s more to this than
what they all see on the surface.” The caller breathed into the
phone. “Eve cannot be stopped.”
She didn’t have the words to reply.
“If Daniel tries to stop Eve, he will die. He’ll be dead tonight, or
tomorrow, or in a week, or in a month, but in the end he will be dead.”
This was Eve speaking to her? She became aware of the tremble
in her fingers. “You can’t know that.”
The caller waited before dismissing her in a soft voice. “You’re
as obsessed with Eve as he is.”
The caller knew about the basement?
“Eve’s a sadistic killer who’s preying on young, innocent women,”
she said.
“Not innocent, no. But this isn’t about sixteen young women.
Ted Dekker
24
It’s about Daniel. It’s about you. It’s about me. And it’s about what
the world thinks of all of us when this is over.”
“Sixteen?”
No response.
The car stopped in front of her house.
“Even if this were all true, I don’t see how I can do anything.
What you’re suggesting is . . . It has nothing to do with me!”
“Good night, Heather.” The line went dead.
She closed the phone, stunned.
The driver put his hand out. “Give me the phone.”
She did.
“Don’t waste your time trying to find me. Just the messenger
who left you a note for a lot of money. Never met the guy and never
will. Get out.”
Heather opened the door and climbed out. Without further
explanation, the driver took the car into the night.
The suburban neighborhood was dark except for a few scattered
porch lights. She felt lightheaded. Confused. Sick.
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25
THREE
MIDNIGHT
THE TOWN OF Manitou Springs nestled in the shadows of
Pikes Peak an hour’s drive south of Denver.
The FBI Citation had flown Daniel, Lori, and three other field
agents to the municipal airport in Colorado Springs, where they’d
met up with the tactical unit from the Colorado Springs PD. Three
black Suburbans snaked their way up Highway 24 toward the
Manitou Avenue exit.
Daniel followed the lead car. Lori sat to his right, Brit Holman
behind. The car’s tires hummed beneath them. No one spoke.
They’d said what needed to be said on the flight over the Rockies.
Success today would all come down to luck, and the hope that in his
boldness the UNSUB had made a mistake.
The stakes were clear. Assuming the hikers had identified the
next murder scene, Eve was either present or not. Either he had a
victim with him or he didn’t. If he had a victim, she was likely dead,
like the other fifteen they’d found.
26
If she was alive, they would have their first real break in the case.
An eyewitness.
If she was dead, they would be back where they started: armed
with another dead girl but no further evidence of who Eve was
beyond the fact that he wore boots, was white, drove vans with false
registrations on occasion, was in his forties, knew a thing or two
about disease, and had a rather substantial issue with young women.
They needed a break—if not an eyewitness, at least a better shot
at evidence collection, which was why the local authorities were
holding the perimeter without closing in. The last thing they
needed was a SWAT team contaminating a virgin crime scene.
The walls in the FBI’s LA Major Crimes offices were plastered
with a profile of Eve, most of it speculation based on what they did
have, and most of it Daniel’s doing. Pysch profiles, religious profiles,
education profiles, physical profiles. Enough to flesh out a living
being who could stand up and walk out of the room to kill his
next victim.
But speculation did not flesh make.
“This is it,” Lori said, staring at the Manitou Avenue sign ahead.
Daniel followed the lead vehicle through a tight right-hand exit
loop and merged onto a deserted street that angled through the
small, sleeping town. The scattered streetlights glowed with a yellow
hue above them, diffused by a thin night fog.
They passed through the center of Manitou Springs, turned up
Canon Avenue, snaked back under a highway bridge a hundred feet
overhead, and entered a narrow canyon, leaving the last glimmer of
light behind.
Darkness. Eve had a penchant for darkness.
Daniel glanced at Lori, now dressed in black slacks and tennis
shoes. She wore her gun in a shoulder holster, a Heckler & Koch
.40. He’d learned on the flight about her career with the bureau.
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27
Nine years on the force following medical school. A string of other
details that he’d been too preoccupied to register.
With any luck, none of it would matter. If they failed tonight, he
would take the time to understand his new partner, but for now
Lori was just along for the ride.
William’s Canyon narrowed. They drove deeper, following the
red taillights of the tactical vehicle that held Manitou Springs police
officer Nate Sinclair, who had first confirmed the abandoned van’s
location with the help of the two hikers. Evidently the hills surrounding
the canyon were occupied by squatters who holed up in a
system of caverns and caves that was still being mapped. Cave of the
Winds was a tourist trap, but undiscovered cave systems were the
draw for serious spelunkers.
Pine trees and aspens emerged from the fog on either side, just
visible by the vehicle’s glaring lights.
Daniel lifted his radio. “How far?”
A voice he assumed belonged to Sinclair crackled back. “Half a
mile.”
The canyon twisted around bends every fifty yards, hopefully
cloaking their approach.
“Kill the lights,” Lori said.
Daniel caught her stare. She’d read his mind.
“I believe he waits nearby until he’s sure that his victim is dead,”
she said. “Not with the victim, but close enough to maintain the
surveillance.”
“I know, I wrote the profile.” He lifted the walkie-talkie again.
“Kill the lights.”
The radio remained silent for a few seconds. “It’s gonna be hard
to see with this fog.” No one outside the cars could possibly hear the
radios, but Nate’s voice barely broke a whisper anyway. Big day for
Officer Sinclair.
Ted Dekker
28
“Kill the lights,” Daniel repeated. “Stop a hundred yards from
the site. We go on foot. The tactical team can use their night vision,
but they do not close until I say so. You have that?”
“Copy.”
“Roger.” The tactical unit behind them.
The lights ahead blinked out. Daniel twisted a knob he thought
controlled the lights, was rewarded with a swish of the wipers
instead. He reversed the switch and tried another.
Night smothered them.
“You see them?” Lori asked.
He slowed to a crawl until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The
profile of the vehicle ahead broke the lines of the forest as it slipped
around the next bend.
“Slower,” Daniel ordered.
“Copy.”
Red brake lights glared ahead.
“Okay, friends. It’s game time,” Brit said, speaking for the first
time since they left Colorado Springs behind.
“Remember, no one crosses my lead. That includes the tactical
team. Keep them back, Brit. Way back. I want zero site contamination.
Zero.”
Daniel had made no secret of the fact that he didn’t think they
should use a tactical team on this one, much less a team he didn’t
know. Brit had agreed, but protocol won the day: armed suspect
plus hostile scene equaled tactical purview.
Brit chambered a round in his Glock. “Alpha team is taking half
a squad up the flank. The rest will stay twenty yards to my rear
unless otherwise directed.”
“Just keep them out of my scene until I’m in,” Daniel said,
glancing up at the rearview mirror. The hardened special agent
who would officially be handed the case if Daniel went dark was
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29
nothing more than a ghostly figure by the amber light of the dashboard.
Dark hair, strong chiseled jaw—a college receiver who’d
graduated with honors before being recruited by the FBI.
Daniel had trusted the man with his life on several occasions.
Given a choice of partners, he’d choose Brit Holman over any other
without a moment’s hesitation.
“Outside it is,” Brit said. “To my rear. I’m going in behind you.”
Daniel nodded. “Just keep them out of our way.”
“And me?” Lori said. A simple question asked without any
expectation. One Daniel hadn’t considered. In a case so dependent
on information gathered from the victims, some would argue that
she was more important to the investigation than he.
“How many raids have you been on?”
“Eight,” she said almost before he’d gotten the question out.
There wasn’t a breath of hesitation in her.
“You’re with me,” he said.
She nodded. “They’re slowing.”
Daniel stopped the vehicle just behind the lead, shrugged into
a Kevlar vest, took an H&K MP5 from behind the seat, chambered
a round, and flipped off the safety. Engaging weapons on approach
was an easy way to an early grave. Clanking chambers carried to
all ears.
Lori had engaged her pistol already.
She waited for him to slip out before easing out of her door.
Daniel rounded the car, ignoring all except Nate Sinclair, who was
crawling out of the cab.
“Stay on the asphalt,” he whispered. “Don’t speak unless
directed. How far?”
Nate’s eyes were white in the night. “Around the next bend. To
the left, fifty yards off the road. You do realize that I haven’t actually
seen the van. We were told to stay back. Way back.”
Ted Dekker
30
“The cave, not the van. I was told you can get us to the cave.”
Nate pulled out a GPS unit and switched it on. “Assuming the
coordinates the hikers gave me were right. Quick thinking on—”
“Let’s go.” Daniel glanced at the team that had gathered behind
him, waiting in tactical fatigues and helmets, armed for entry, ready
for engagement. Ready to start a war.
He nodded.
The soles of their boots padded over the black asphalt. Crickets
chirped, a song of life or death, Daniel didn’t know. But his mind
was in the tomb already.
Who are you, Eve? What drives you to take the lives of young women?
Are you there in your hole, standing over another dead body?
The trees parted on the left and Nate stopped. He looked at
Daniel for approval and veered for the gap when Daniel fixed on it.
The van sat in the clearing, dark and cold with a rusted white
paint job. Windshield cracked. Balding tires. It was an old Dodge
Caravan from the nineties. Serial numbers on the glass, the chassis,
and the engine undoubtedly filed like the other vans he’d found. It
would keep the evidence response team happy for a few hours.
Daniel motioned Brit and each took one side of the van, peering
inside the windows without luck. He waited for Brit’s cover, put
his hand on the sliding door, and jerked it open, rolling right to
give his partner a clean shot inside.
The van was empty. No rear seats, no tools, no rope or restraints.
No Eve.
No girl.
Lori stepped close, scanned the dark trees ahead, and spoke in
a voice that no more disturbed the night than a moth’s wings.
“He’s here.”
With those words Lori stepped into his space. She felt the scene
in the same way he did. “You’re right. Go easy.”
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31
A cliff rose to the sky at the end of a deer path, fifty yards farther.
The cave opening was precisely where the GPS coordinates
had placed it. A large pine and a boulder twice Daniel’s height protected
a two-foot fissure in the cliff face.
Daniel motioned Brit to send the tactical team along the length
of the cliff in both directions, then cast one long look at Lori, who
had her eyes locked on his.
I hope you’re ready for this.
Then he slipped inside.
He pressed his left hand against the smooth stone surface along
the southern wall and inched forward in the dark. Gun ready at his
shoulder, muzzle low. Lori right behind, breathing steadily.
Her leading hand touched his elbow. Released it. Touched it
again.
The sound of water dripping in a cavern was the first evidence
that they’d entered more than a long, thin fissure. A musty odor of
earthen mildew filled his nostrils. A scent that had permeated the
root cellars Eve had used on two other occasions.
The ground suddenly sloped down. And it was down there that
he first saw the faint hint of light. Hardly more than a shift in the
darkness, from the thickest black to a shade of dark brown.
He instinctively reached back to stop Lori. His hand found her
belly. He held her shirt and eased her close, heart in his throat.
“He’s here,” he mouthed. “Watch your feet.”
Then he let her go and picked his way down. To a wall, where
the tunnel made a sharp right.
The light glowed at the end of a long passageway, flickering
orange on granite.
Daniel fought the impulse to run around the corner to the
source of that light. He waited until Lori and Brit were by his side.
Rattling stones announced the presence of two men from the tacti-
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32
cal unit close behind. Daniel tried to wave them back, but even if
they could see his hand, they were already down the slope.
He opened a palm at Brit and mouthed for him to keep them
back.
Montova’s voice haunted his mind. What do you do best, Daniel?
I work alone. I go into Eve’s mind alone.
Why do you go into Eve’s mind alone, Daniel?
Because I know him. I know how he was made, and I know how
to unmake him.
Daniel hurried down the long passageway. The ground was
mostly clay, blown in by the wind over the centuries. He avoided
loose stones, advancing in a crouch, weapon ready.
Then he was at the next bend, facing a wall that flickered with
light that could only come from flames. Daniel raised his weapon
and took the corner low, cutting the pie in increments with the
front sight of his MP5, breathing and scanning, high and low, left to
right.
The wide cavern ran fifty yards and ended at a flat wall. Two
flaming torches hung from wire fixed to the ceiling at the far end.
Stables, the kind you might see in a barn, ran along both sides.
Marked off by two-by-fours that ran from ceiling to floor. No scent,
sound, or indication of any animals.
An image of a hermit flashed through Daniel’s mind. A whole
tribe of them were reported to inhabit these canyons. This wasn’t
Eve. The den was occupied by squatters. They kept their animals
here.
A hot vise of panic seized his shoulder blades. They’d been
wrong?
“A prison,” Lori whispered.
His mind snapped at the words.
Water dripped steadily on rock somewhere. He stepped forward,
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33
swung his muzzle to his right, into the first cell. The light on this
side was dim at best. He pivoted, swept the cell.
Stone floor. Empty.
He spun and searched the cell along the opposite wall. Same.
Daniel hurried down the cavern, peering into the cells on
either side. Empty. All empty.
But the fourth wasn’t. A dead goat lay in the center. He knew it
was dead, not sleeping, because it was on its back, four legs jutting
to the ceiling. The carcass was intact, but the thorax had been sawn
and spread, and the internal organs appeared to have been
removed in a macabre display of pathology—a classic Y incision. No
blood on the floor. The beast had either been killed elsewhere and
brought here, or killed here with exacting precision.
He moved on, fixed on the cells to his left, walking laterally,
nerves strung like bowstrings, palms now wet on his gun. More light
here. The flames licked at the smoke they spewed.
The cell next to the last on this side was empty.
And the last cell, too, except for a gray blanket that hung from
a wire stretched between the wood posts and the back wall.
He jerked his head back and saw that Brit had already checked
the cells on the other side. Brit mouthed the word at him: clear.
Meaning what? Eve had taken this victim with him? Or that this
wasn’t Eve?
“Daniel?”
He turned back and saw that Lori had advanced past him and
was staring into the corner of the last cell. Where the gray blanket
hung like a curtain. Not against the wall as he’d assumed, but several
feet from the wall. He moved closer to see what had arrested
her attention.
Propelled by something close to panic, she ran in front of him,
slapped up the crude wooden latch, and rushed inside the pen.
Ted Dekker
34
He peered between the two-by-fours and saw the victim then.
Seated on a metal chair between the blanket and the stone wall with
Eve scrawled in red behind her. Dressed in the same dirty white hospital
gown that all of Eve’s victims had been found in.
Only this victim had a gunnysack over her head.
And she was shivering.
Alive.
“Wait!” Daniel advanced, rotated into the cage, and moved past
Lori.
Heart hammering like a steam pump, he stepped up to the
blanket, pulled it all the way back, and stared at the girl.
“She’s in shock,” Lori whispered.
Daniel spun to Brit, who’d entered behind them. “This is him.
Set up a perimeter south to Pueblo, north to Monument. Lock
down 24 in both directions, fifty miles out. Get that tactical team
scouring these cliffs. I want them to find routes up or down, specifically
toward the highway. Have them spot and flag any large footprints,
anything similar to our profile.”
Brit snapped orders at the two men who’d followed them down
the tunnel.
“He was here in the last thirty minutes,” Lori said, pointing
toward a wet spot of blood on the floor. “We need to glove up. For that
matter, she could be contagious. One sneeze, and she could turn
this sickness into an aerosol.”
“We don’t have time,” Daniel heard himself say. Eve had never
left a victim like this; they couldn’t risk losing her. Lori made no
objection, despite the break in protocol.
Silence filled the cavern except for the dripping of water. And
the faint rattle of the metal chair under Eve’s victim.
She was thin—not an ounce over a hundred pounds. Pale. Blue
veins traced the flesh beneath her arms’ translucent, blotchy skin,
A DAM
35
symptomatic of the meningitis variant that had killed the others.
Dirty, trembling fingers hung loosely by her sides. Bare feet.
No sign that she was aware of their presence.
Lori broke the stillness. “She’s dying. We have to get her to a
hospital, Daniel. We may already be too late!” She reached for the
girl’s arm and gently touched the blotchy skin with a gloved hand.
“It’s okay, honey. We’re here to help. Can you hear us?”
Daniel eased forward, took the corner of the brown bag
between his fingers, and pulled it up. They had to keep the girl
alive—she was their only living link to Eve.
The sack slid up, revealing her slender neck, then her chin.
Quivering lips, glistening with spittle. Jaw clenched.
Daniel pulled the bag free.
The girl’s eyes were wide open but had rolled back into her
head so that her irises were hidden. Her white eyeballs stared
ahead, sightless.
Mucus ran from both nostrils and mixed with foaming spittle
that seeped from her mouth. Stringy blonde hair hung below her
ears, trembling.
The girl’s head moved. Turned slowly toward them. Her mouth
parted and she began to suck air in short, tight gasps. Her nostrils
flared with each inhalation.
The sight of this victim tortured by such an abnormal condition
rooted Daniel to the ground. A thousand discussions about cause of
death in the Eve investigation hadn’t prepared Daniel for actually
seeing a live victim being ravaged by the disease.
Lori backed away.
“Her eyes . . .” Daniel wasn’t sure how to express his concern
over the severe rolling of her eyes.
“Photophobia is a classic symptom of meningitis,” Lori said.
“She’s reacting to the light.”
Ted Dekker
36
The girl’s mouth opened wider and she growled at them. Foamy
bubbles popped in the corner of her mouth.
And then her jaws clamped shut and she began to whimper. A
desperate cry for help from a wrinkled face. Her eyes righted themselves
for a moment, irises grayed by whatever disease was killing
her, then rolled back into her skull again.
Daniel felt his heart rise into his throat. His own fingers were
quivering, perhaps more than hers.
Lori walked behind the girl, eyes wide. “We have to help her.”
She tentatively placed a hand on each of the girl’s shoulders.
No response. Just the grimacing hyperventilation.
“Daniel!”
“How?” His voice sounded like a gravel mixer.
“We have to get her to the hospital.”
He’d never seen a condition that presented in such a disturbing
way, and he didn’t know what the girl was capable of, but they didn’t
have time for caution—they’d wasted enough time assessing her
condition already.
He stepped in, slid one of his arms under her legs and the other
behind her back. She didn’t resist. Neither did she calm.
He lifted her tr
 one hundred nights · Tue Aug 12, 2008 @ 06:53pm · 0 Comments |
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