Ty breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to be turning his back on these men anytime soon, especially not with one arm out of commission, but at least for now they’d passed his test. He bent and picked up a small rock, marking on the wall with it. It made a faint chalky line on the stone. Ty did it again harder, trying to make sure they’d see it.
“I can’t go back up those stairs,” English said to Frost and Park. He indicated his massive shoulders and arms. “I damn near got stuck coming down them. Maybe we can find an exit on this level.”
“The kitchen has an exit,” Deuce said. He turned his flashlight back on and handed Ty his gun. English and Frost both jumped when he spoke, then calmed immediately when they realized it was him. Riddle Park didn’t seem surprised, though. He was hanging back, probably for the same reasons Deuce had been. Ty met English’s eyes, shrugging.
“I hear you, man,” English said. “Can’t be too careful.”
“Especially since Kline . . .” Frost glanced from Ty to Deuce.
“This was her first run with the company,” Park told them. “She wasn’t us.”
English was nodding. “She’s on me and I’ll take responsibility for that. If you don’t want to trust us, I don’t blame you. But these fuckers killed Hardin, and he was our brother. We want this. We’ve got your back on this, Sidewinder.”
Ty stared into his eyes and saw nothing but truth and anger and pain. “I’m sorry for your loss. He died protecting five young lives. Man’s a hero.”
“Yes he is.”
Ty filled them in on what they’d learned, and where they should be searching for Amelia and the other children.
“What about bringing O’Flaherty down here?” Frost asked. “Can’t he lead us to them? Is he okay?”
Ty winced, hesitant to admit he had knocked their only solid lead unconscious during a fit of anger. “He was wounded, but when he wakes he’ll be the first one down here searching. The problem is he said he was going so fast, he’s not sure he knows where they are. He also said he gave the oldest boy a gun, so we need to be careful.”
“Are there any more Tangos to be worried about here?” Frost asked.
“We don’t know. Fraser’s alive,” Ty answered. “So we’ll get it out of him. But we have to assume someone else was leading this thing. To be able to reach your girl and turn her, it couldn’t be a local in charge.”
“Guys,” Deuce said, his voice shaking. “Can we please find my baby girl?”
Ty gripped Deuce’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll stick together, when we come to a split, we’ll divide into groups. Cover more ground that way.”
“Why not just call to them if they’re down here?” Frost asked.
“If someone’s down here looking for them and they answer our calls, there’s no guarantee we get to them first,” English answered before Ty could respond. “We should look first.”
Ty nodded and glanced at Deuce again. “That’s your call, bud.”
“That’s my baby girl out there. I’m not letting anyone get to her before I do. We’ll look for them.”
Ty gave him a curt nod. He hadn’t expected any other answer. He turned to English and the others. “What did you see the way you came from?”
“There are storage rooms,” Frost answered. “Some of them look like they were once jail cells.”
Ty and Deuce shared a look. “Definitely part of the castle complex,” Deuce grumbled.
“Castle?” English asked. “It’s on the other side of the island.”
Ty nodded. “You see our problem.”
“Son of a bitch,” English snarled.
“What information do we need right now?” Kelly asked Zane. When Fraser had regained consciousness, they’d tied him to a dining chair, and Earl was now standing with a shotgun aimed at his face.
“We need to know how many, and who. The whys and hows can come later,” Zane whispered. He was watching Kelly work, fascinated. Kelly was patching Nick’s side up, with Nick laid out on a table, his face turned away from them. The bullet had grazed him, skipping off a rib. It had been just enough to knock him over the edge of the cliff and draw blood, but it hadn’t done any permanent damage. Kelly had cleaned it and was using some sort of skin glue from his medical kit to close it up.
“As soon as we get what we need from him, I’m going into the walls to find Ty,” Zane told them. “He’s been gone too long, something’s wrong.”
“The passages open up when you go down a level,” Nick said, his voice having returned to his usual soothing, sedate tone. “It’s a maze down there, natural caves and lava tubes mixed with man-made tunnels and rooms. They probably go all the way over to the castle ruins.”