Page 5 of Engaging the Deputy

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Definitely a tornado.” They were still down on the ground, but there was a gapingly huge hole above them instead of the house’s floor and once closed and locked trapdoor. He could see starlight overhead.

He could also see that part of the ladder to climb out was missing. He turned on the penlight and shone it around the space. Lowering the light, he looked at Olivia and found himself smiling.

“What?” she demanded, reaching up to pull a sliver of wood from her hair.

“You… Your face is a little dirty, that’s all,” he lied. “I must look filthy too.”

She pushed to her feet. Her blue eyes were wide with the fear that still had her in its grip.

“We’re alive,” he said and laughed. “That was something, wasn’t it?”

He saw her swallow and look skyward. “I need out of here.”

“That might require some help. I’m not sure about the ladder,” he was saying as she grabbed hold of it and the rung tore off.

“Easy,” he said as another part of the ladder fell away from the dirt wall, sending debris onto them. Fortunately, he caught the ladder before it hit him in the head.

“You have to be kidding,” she said, sounding close to tears.

“Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out,” he said as he noticed something he hadn’t before. A portion of the root cellar behind Olivia had caved in. With the storm past, he’d just been glad that neither of them had been injured. But now he worried that the rest of the cellar might not be stable. They still could be buried alive if they weren’t careful.

“Why don’t you move over here by me?” he said as his light caught on a pile of something white lying in the caved-in portion of the cellar. “Easy,” he warned again.

“If you’re trying to scare me—”

The moment she reached him, he got a clear view of the bones that had been exposed when a portion of the wall had caved in.

“What is that?” Olivia cried, moving even closer to him as she took in his grisly discovery. “Are they…human bones?”

CHAPTER THREE

Deputy Jaden Montgomery was already out assessing the damage left behind from the windstorm. Power was nonexistent in some areas and there was reported damage to a few buildings, including a couple of old barns that had lost their roofs. But no injuries or loss of life.

Until he got the frantic call from Starling.

“We need help!” Emery Jordan had cried. “We’re out here in Starling, what’s left of it. I can’t find Rob. I can’t find the others. Oh, man, it’s really bad here. The town is almost completely gone. The tornado…” His voice had broken.

“How many of you are out there?” Jaden had asked and then told Emery to sit tight, that he was on his way. Starling was the last place on earth he wanted to go on Halloween night, of all nights. He had enough bad memories of the place. His parents had been members of the anti-government militant group years ago, long before Elden Rusk had left and the community had scattered, some a lot farther than Fortune Creek, where he now lived.

He had no desire to recall one of the darkest times of his childhood and had avoided going anywhere near Starling. He knew teenagers often went out there in an attempt to scare themselves with the ghost stories and alleged sightings of Elden Rusk. Kids! But Emery Jordan wasn’t a kid anymore. What had a bunch of them been doing out there at their ages?

As he drove toward the abandoned community, the closer he got, the more eerie it felt. But he hadn’t expected almost total destruction. In his headlights, he began to see the piles of debris the storm had left, houses leveled to the ground. It looked as if a bomb had gone off, turning some buildings to kindling and sending others hurling off their foundations to pile up a quarter mile away.

The devastation shocked him, not that he hadn’t hoped years ago that the place would disappear forever. Reports of a tornado had come in late last night. But they usually did little more than tear up a barn or shed, wipe out a few telephone poles.

The brunt of the storm had missed Fortune Creek, yet had pretty much wiped Starling off the map, from what he could see in the moonlight. According to Emery, he and seven other twentysomethings from the closest town of Libby had been partying in the empty buildings when the storm had hit. Right now, five of them were missing and others had minor injuries.

Jaden had called in medical help as well as a search party on his way to the scene. As he came over the rise, he saw a van sitting sideways in the road and a pickup lying on its side, buried in debris. What appeared to be the roof of a house had piled up beside the road.

A bad feeling settled in his stomach as he parked and got out.

* * *

Olivia screamed. She wouldhave kept screaming for help, but Cody pulled her to him in a tight hug.

“No one can hear us down here,” he said. “Do you have your phone?”

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