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“Carter?” She tried to see through the vents in the unit, met with nothing but blackness and the charred smell of oil. Shoving to her feet, Leigh gripped the wrench in both hands and swung as hard as she could. Twice. “Carter, talk to me.”
Stillness.
No. This wasn’t how it was going to end.
Chris Ellingson didn’t get to win this time.
She swung the wrench a third time. The bolt head broke off, and the furnace casing fell with a loud protest of metal on cement. She dropped the wrench and crouched to fit into the open space.
A tunnel.
Ellingson hadn’t been fixing his furnace. He’d been suring it up as a prison. Dirt packed under her fingernails and into the cut in her palm as she crawled on hands and knees through the shoulder-wide hole in the foundation. She’d left the flashlight in the garage, now surrounded by only the sound of her heavy breathing. “Carter? Can you hear me?”
She wasn’t sure how far she’d made it. No way to tell if she was even going in the right direction, but she wouldn’t stop until she got him out of here. The ground sloped upward slightly, adding pressure to the doubt cycloning through her head. There was barely enough room for her to fit through. Getting Carter out would take time he didn’t have. Her elbow brushed against the side of the wall. One wrong move and this entire tunnel could buckle on top of her, severing her chances of escape, leaving Carter to die. “I’m coming. Just hang on.”
The air was colder here. Closer to the surface. Rocks and tree roots bit into her knees to the point her slacks shredded down to raw skin. Reaching out to get a sense of what was ahead, her fingertips connected with something soft. Not dirt. Fabric. She gripped on to the source. A T-shirt?
“Carter? Say something. Please. Say something.” She felt for his face. The soft skin of his eyelids tugged beneath her fingertips. Closed. Leigh set her hand on his chest. He was unconscious, but he was still alive. Barely.
Determined voices called through the darkness. “Agent Brody!”
Help had arrived.
“We’re down here!” A burst of relief escaped up her throat as she craned her head up. Wood slats let in the slightest amount of light from her flashlight aboveground. She was underneath the hatch.
She’d found him.
Leigh gathered the boy into her arms as best she could in the small space and held on to him with everything she had left. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Tuesday, March 16
9:00 p.m.
Carter Boucher was still out there.
She’d been so sure he was the one on the other side of that hatch door—had needed it to be—but Leigh had recovered something so amazing in his place.
Michael Agutter waved at her through the window looking into his room. Soft blond hair matted over his ears with traces of dirt and sweat. His strong jaw hadn’t changed much over the course of the past few months, but there was a frailty in his eyes that hadn’t been in the photos she’d collected of him. He was much thinner than he should be. She’d been able to count his ribs through his stained clothing while she’d ridden with him in the ambulance to the hospital. Bruised. But nothing permanent. At least, not physically.
It’d taken two officers to break the padlock so she didn’t have to drag him through the tunnel back into the basement of the Ellingson house, and he’d gripped on to her the entire time, even in unconsciousness.
Leigh waved back, her palm cleaned, stitched, and bandaged. Based on his vital signs and with a good helping of food, it seemed Michael would make a full recovery. One she was glad to witness.
“He would’ve died if you hadn’t been there. Now he gets to go home after three months of being separated from his family.” Livingstone had snuck up on her despite the four-inch heels and the hospital’s tiled floor. “I’m starting to regret not bringing you into the investigation before now. We might’ve recovered the boy sooner.”
“Police would’ve found him, given enough time.” Part of her recognized the lie she was telling herself. Knew it would’ve been too late for Michael Agutter, that the crime scene unit wouldn’t have found the hatch until every box in that garage had been processed in turn. Question was why was he still alive? No other victims had been known to make it past the three-day mark. What made Michael Agutter so special? “His parents are already on their way in from Fruitland. They should be here within the hour.”
“And what of Carter Boucher?” The director kept her gaze ahead, arms crossed over her chest. Impenetrable by things she saw in her case history, unaffected. “Anything at the scene that could tell you if he’d been there? If Ellingson was the one to take him?”
Leigh ran through everything she’d seen, everything she’d touched in that house and in the space behind the furnace. She hadn’t heard any other voices calling out in the dark. No cries. No breathing apart from her own. No signs of anyone else. If Carter Boucher had been in that house, Ellingson had kept him separate from his long-term hostage. Radioed reports coming from the two officers posted outside Michael Agutter’s door revealed Chris Ellingson hadn’t just built one tunnel. There’d been an entire maze originating from behind the HVAC system. Any number of directions she could’ve gotten lost. She’d gotten lucky. She watched as the boy’s doctor unstrapped the blood pressure cuff from his arm. They both had gotten lucky. “No. Just Michael, but we’re still looking.”
“Very well. I’ll update Boucher in person if he hasn’t already threatened his way onto the scene.” Livingstone moved to leave but turned back. “I wanted you to know. Chief Maynor called for a press conference a few hours ago. Since you were literally under a rock, I assume you haven’t heard the news.”
Standard protocol. Feed the people what they wanted to hear while promising everything was under control. Finding Michael in that crawl space would be no different. Another case bulldozed by the chief’s ego. “I’m sure it’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
