Chapter 6 - The Traitor in the Shelter
The ventilation fan stopped.
Mara crossed the chamber and opened the control panel. Two wires had been cut cleanly. The lock was mechanical from the outside and electrically reinforced from within. Whoever trapped them had known the shelter's design.
Daniel looked from Ruth to Melissa to Mara.
Claire's warning hung in the air.
One of the people helping you is working for Vale.
Noah began coughing as dust settled from the silent vents.
"How long do we have?" Daniel asked.
"Hours before the air becomes dangerous," Mara said. "Less if they pump something in."
Melissa backed away from the others. "You think it is me."
Daniel did not answer.
She pulled her phone from her pocket and placed it on the table. "Search it."
Ruth did the same. Mara only watched.
Daniel examined the chamber. The lock had engaged after Claire's video ended, suggesting a timed signal or remote trigger. The laptop might have transmitted their location. Yet Mara claimed the shelter was secret.
"Where did the computer come from?" he asked.
"Claire mailed it to a post-office box under an old alias," Mara said. "I collected it after her death."
"Why did you wait fourteen months to show us?"
"Because the encryption opened yesterday. Claire set it to unlock when the marker entered the valley."
Daniel stared. "Then the marker is broadcasting."
Mara nodded. "At very short range, unless someone installed receivers nearby."
Noah reached into his pocket. The black marker felt warm.
A low hiss came through the air duct.
Mara smelled the vent. "Smoke."
Daniel lifted Noah onto the table while Ruth soaked cloths with bottled water. Melissa searched the walls. Behind a shelf of canned food, she found old survey markings and a narrow seam.
"There was a drainage shaft," Mara said. "It was sealed when the depot closed."
They pulled the shelf aside. Daniel struck the wall with a fire axe. The concrete covering was thin. After several blows, it cracked inward, revealing a rusted pipe barely wide enough for a person.
Smoke thickened near the ceiling.
Noah went first, crawling with a flashlight between his teeth. Ruth followed. Melissa insisted Mara go before her because of the bullet wound. Daniel entered last after placing the cassette, photograph, laptop drive, key, and marker in a waterproof bag.
The pipe sloped downward through freezing mud. Behind them, someone entered the chamber. Daniel heard boots and a muffled voice.
"They found the wall."
A flashlight beam appeared at the pipe entrance.
Daniel crawled faster. The pipe ended at a grate overlooking an underground stream. Mara kicked the grate until the corroded bolts broke. One by one they dropped into waist-deep water.
The current carried them through darkness and out beneath the old rail trestle. They climbed the bank as smoke rose from the hidden tunnel entrance.
Mara checked everyone for injuries. Then she looked at Melissa's arm.
The white bandage around the bullet wound had come loose. Beneath it, taped to her skin, was a tiny black device blinking green.
Melissa stared at it in horror.
"I didn't put that there."
Mara tore it free and crushed it with a rock. "A proximity tag. Kreel marked you when he shot you."
The accusation shifted, but did not disappear.
Ruth noticed something in the mud near the stream. A boot print, fresh and narrow, led away from the outlet.
Someone had been waiting for them.
They followed the print to a thicket and found a discarded gray coat hanging from a branch.
Mara's coat.
Daniel turned.
The woman standing beside them wore only a black sweater now. The scar crossed her cheek exactly as before.
But inside the coat pocket was a second instant photograph.
It showed Mara Voss lying dead beside the burning Black Pine lodge thirty-one years earlier.
On the back, Thomas had written:
WE LEFT HER BODY THERE.
Noah looked at the woman.
"Then who are you?"
She did not run.
Rainwater traced the scar on her cheek. Daniel studied the angle of her jaw, the old injury in her left hand, and the exhaustion she had concealed since the creek. None proved truth. Yet liars usually rushed to fill silence, while this woman allowed it to accuse her. Behind them, smoke pushed from the tunnel mouth in slow gray folds. Whoever she was, she had saved Noah twice and carried a dead woman's name like a punishment.
May you like
She removed a silver chain from beneath her sweater. A child's identification tag hung from it, stamped with the number 06.
"My name was Mara Voss," she said. "Before Black Pine gave it to someone else."
