But the child resisted.
“Wait!”
She grabbed Wyatt’s sleeve.
“My mama told me something else.”
“What?”
Lucy looked toward the tunnel.
“She said when you find the red door, don’t open it.”
Wyatt frowned.
“Why?”
Lucy began trembling.
“Because that’s where they keep the children who never came back.”
Chapter Five: The Red Door
The mine smelled of wet stone, rust, and something bitter that caught in Wyatt’s throat.
He carried a flashlight in one hand and the Winchester in the other.
Memphis had followed him to the entrance, but Wyatt made him stay outside.
For once, the horse obeyed.
The tunnel descended into darkness.
Old wooden supports creaked overhead.
Water dripped from unseen cracks.
Wyatt’s boots disturbed dust that had lain undisturbed for decades.
Every few yards, he stopped and listened.
At first, there was nothing.
Then he heard the knocking.
Three taps.
A pause.
Three more.
“Hannah!” he shouted.
The sound stopped.
His voice echoed through the mine.
Then a woman’s voice answered.
“Wyatt?”
It was faint.
Rough.
Older.
But he knew it.
There are voices a person never forgets.
A mother’s voice calling him home.
A wife’s voice saying his name in the dark.
A little sister laughing through tears.
“Hannah!”
He ran.
Pain shot through his knee.
He stumbled over broken timber, caught himself against the wall, and continued.
The tunnel opened into a chamber containing a rusted ore elevator.
Beyond it stood two doors.
One was gray steel.
The other was painted red.
The red paint was peeling, but the color remained unmistakable.
Wyatt remembered Lucy’s warning.
Don’t open it.
He approached the gray door.
A heavy chain secured its handle.
“Hannah?”
A woman’s voice answered.
“Wyatt, is that really you?”
His throat closed.
“It’s me.”
A sob came through the door.
“Oh, God.”
Wyatt pressed his forehead against the steel.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I know.”
“Thirty years, Hannah.”
“I know.”
He searched the door for a lock.
There was a rusted padlock near the floor.
He struck it with the iron bar he had brought from outside.
Once.
Twice.
On the third blow, the fastening broke.
Wyatt pulled the door open.
A woman sat on a narrow cot beneath a bare lightbulb powered by a humming battery unit.
Her hair was streaked with gray.
Her face was thin and bruised.
Her wrists were marked by restraints.
But her eyes—
Her eyes were the same.
Hannah Mercer had come home from death.
Wyatt dropped to his knees.
She stood unsteadily and fell into his arms.
Neither spoke for a long time.
They simply held each other while thirty years of grief passed between them.
Finally, Hannah whispered, “Did you find Lucy?”
Wyatt nodded.
“She’s safe.”
Hannah began sobbing.
“Thank God.”
He held her tighter.
“I should have found you.”
“No.”
“I should have kept looking.”
“Wyatt, listen to me.”
He pulled back.
She gripped his arms.
“You have to get Lucy away from here.”
“Eli’s taking her to the state police.”
Hannah’s expression changed.
“Eli?”
“One of Rourke’s men. He helped us.”
Her face drained of color.
“Wyatt, no.”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Eli isn’t one of Rourke’s men.”
Wyatt stared.
“Then who is he?”
Hannah’s voice became barely audible.
“He’s Rourke’s son.”
Chapter Six: Thirty Years of Lies
Wyatt felt the blood drain from his face.
Eli had taken Lucy.
He had handed the child directly to the son of the man who had chained her.
Hannah seized his shirt.
“We have to stop him.”
Wyatt helped her toward the door.
But her legs were too weak.
He lowered her onto a wooden crate.
“Tell me everything.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
Thirty years earlier, when she was sixteen, she had discovered something terrible at Copper Queen Mine.
Their father, Samuel Mercer, had worked as the mine’s night mechanic before the operation closed.
He had always warned his children to stay away from the abandoned tunnels.
But one evening Hannah followed a truck into the basin.
She saw three men unloading children.
Not teenagers.
Not runaways old enough to fend for themselves.
Small children.
Some were crying.
Others were silent.
One little boy had a stuffed rabbit clutched to his chest.
Hannah hid behind a generator and watched the men lead them underground.
She recognized one of the men.
Deputy Dale Rourke.
Another was the county judge’s brother.
The third was a stranger wearing an expensive suit.
Hannah went home and told their father.
Samuel turned white.
He ordered her never to mention it.
But Hannah refused.
She planned to go to the state police.
That night, Wyatt argued with her.
He thought she had been sneaking around with a boy.
He accused her of lying.
She shouted that nobody ever listened to her.
And Wyatt said the words that haunted him for thirty years.
If you walk out that door, don’t bother coming back.
Hannah left.
Before she reached the highway, a truck forced her bicycle into a ditch.
She woke in a locked room.
Rourke told her that if she ever spoke about the mine, her family would die.
For months, she was moved between isolated properties.
Then she escaped.
She found work under a false name in New Mexico.
For years, she lived in fear.
Eventually she married a kind mechanic named Daniel Bennett.
