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Kate shook her head. “Oh, God, sorry, I just—”
“Expected the worst.”
This poor woman had been dead for several days, but more telling than her time of death was her build—she was chunkier and shorter than Lucy.
Sean looked up and saw the stain on the wall. He searched the other stalls and found more stains, some so faded they blended with the old, chipped dark red paint. At least nine. No other bodies, but it appeared that the stalls were crypts, and the bodies buried there. The ground was too hard now, but in the summer…
“We don’t have to wait,” Sean said.
“We need to know exactly where she is,” Kate said. “If we storm the house, he could kill her.”
Sean pulled thermal binoculars out of his bag and turned them on. Kate stared in envy. “We don’t get those.”
“They’re expensive, and probably cost twice as much for the government.”
“How far can you see?”
“From here to the house. But the far side of the house isn’t going to show accurately. The more walls the infrared has to penetrate, the weaker and less reliable the signal.”
He retraced his steps back to the barn door and looked through the binoculars. The cold helped. He saw one heat signal on the second floor.
“One person upstairs.”
“One?”
Sean looked at the house with his bare eyes. “There’s a basement. I’ll need to move closer to get a better angle—with ground interference, I can’t get a good line of sight this far away.”
“Let’s regroup.” She glanced at her watch. “SWAT is seven minutes.”
When they’d returned behind the barn, Hans said, “They’re estimating twelve minutes now. They encountered an unplowed road.”
“There’s a body in the barn, about a week dead,” Kate said. “And evidence of others. Sean spotted one person upstairs. He needs to get closer to look in the basement. Sean and I are going to go around the back of the house. Hans and Dillon, you circle around to the trees behind the house and keep a lookout. As soon as we have confirmation that Lucy is inside we’ll act. Hans, you still have an open line?”
“Yes, SWAT’s listening.”
“Okay. Keep them up to date with the status and our location. And cover us.” She gave Dillon a quick kiss, then turned to Sean. “You ready?”
He nodded.
They skirted along the edge of the woods until they had the best line of sight to the basement. Though they were exposed across the open hundred feet to the house, they crossed without incident. Sean approached a basement window which was almost completely obscured by snow. He couldn’t see through the glass, but he was able to angle the binoculars to assess if there was anyone downstairs.
He saw two heat signatures. Two? Had Miller gone downstairs? One was sitting, one was lying down. Was it a dog? Maybe a large guard dog? No. Definitely human, the arms were obvious. Lean body, but it was huddled up as if to conserve heat. He showed Kate. She looked perplexed. He scanned the house again. There was a heat signature upstairs as well.
Kate whispered into her two-way radio, “Hans, there are two individuals in the basement, one on the second floor.” She motioned to the porch.
Sean shook his head. “Window.”
He started scooping snow. He quickly realized that the window was far too small for either him or Kate to get through.
Kate whispered, “We go up the steps—I go right, you go left—and look for a way in. Keep communication open.”
He nodded, stuffed his binoculars back into his bag, and pulled out his gun.
They started up the back stairs.
Lucy’s head throbbed from the attack, and her body ached from being dragged through the snow and down the stairs. She was bleeding from her head and a gash on her arm so deep it would need stitches.
She looked at the window across the basement. There was something different—it seemed brighter, some of the snow was gone. But she couldn’t see anything outside, and her vision was cloudy. She suspected she had a concussion, but she couldn’t let any injury slow her down. She needed a plan.
