Chapter 5 - The Rescue in the Mud“He’s safe!” Daniel yelled, his hands frantically searching the iron lock securing the wooden box. “Eli is at the hospital! He’s safe with the nurses!”
A ragged, choking sob came from inside the box. “Thank God... oh, God, thank you...”
The lid was constructed from double-layered three-quarter-inch plywood. It was secured by a heavy steel HASP locked shut with a brass padlock—the exact padlock that matched the small brass key hanging around Travis Cole’s neck at the hospital.
Daniel drew his crowbar, wedged the curved steel claw beneath the iron HASP, and braced his feet against the concrete foundation block.
“Stand clear of the lid!” Daniel roared, putting his entire two-hundred-pound frame into the lever.
The wood splintered with a loud, cracking noise. The steel screws tore out of the damp plywood, and the HASP snapped open.
Daniel threw the heavy plywood lid back.
The flashlight beam illuminated a sight that would haunt Daniel for the rest of his life.
Lying inside the narrow, coffin-like box was a woman. She was emaciated, her ribs visible beneath a torn, filthy cotton dress. Her hair was matted with dirt, her skin ghostly pale, and her wrists were raw and bleeding from rope burns. A small PVC pipe had been driven through the floorboards above her head to provide a crude trickle of air.
She raised a trembling, bone-thin hand to shield her eyes from the sudden brightness of the flashlight beam.
“It’s okay,” Daniel said, his voice breaking as he reached down into the box. He wrapped his arms around her frail shoulders, lifting her gently out of the wooden pit onto the muddy ground of the crawlspace. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
She weighed no more than eighty pounds. Her body was shaking violently from shock and hypothermia.
Daniel dragged her out from beneath the skirt boards of the cabin, bringing her into the open rain. He pulled his water-resistant tactical windbreaker off and wrapped it around her shivering body.
“What is your name?” Daniel asked, wiping the wet mud from her face.
“Sarah...” she gasped, her blue eyes wide with terror as she looked toward the dark woods. “Sarah Cole... he... he kept me down there for six months...”
“Sarah Cole?” Daniel gasped, his mind spinning. “The death certificate... the records in Jacksonville said Sarah Cole died of cancer six months ago!”
Sarah let out a bitter, terrified laugh that turned into a wet cough. “That... that wasn't me... he killed a homeless woman in Jacksonville... burned her body in a house fire... and used her death certificate to erase me from the world...”
Before Daniel could process the sheer scale of the horror, a sudden, blinding pair of high-beam headlights flashed through the trees at the edge of the clearing.
A heavy diesel engine roared through the storm.
A black pickup truck smashed through the palmetto bushes, skidding to a halt twenty feet from where Daniel and Sarah were lying in the mud.
The driver’s side door flew open.
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Standing in the pouring rain, holding a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, was not Travis Cole.
It was Officer Peters.
