Chapter 6 - Into the Iron BellyZ
The Rainier Timber Mill had been abandoned since the mid-nineties, a sprawling skeleton of rusted corrugated iron, rotting wooden piers, and towering gravel mounds hugging the dark, murky edge of the Snohomish River.
The midnight air was biting cold. Fog rolled off the river in thick, ghost-like sheets, swallowing the headlights of the old pickup truck I had borrowed from Nora’s shed.
Jeremy sat in the passenger seat beside me. He didn't look like a boy going to meet his sister's captors; he looked like a shadow waiting to strike. In his lap lay a flare gun we had found in the cabin's emergency kit, along with three red magnesium flares.
"Mom," Jeremy said as I cut the engine.
I turned to him, taking his small, cold hands in mine. "Jeremy, listen to me. No matter what happens in there, if things go wrong, I want you to run. You run to the main road and don't look back."
"No," Jeremy said directly, his dark eyes locking onto mine with fierce intensity. "We came together. We leave together. She’s my twin, Mom. I felt her breathing the whole time."
My heart squeezed with an unbearable ache. For eight years, I thought his silence was trauma. Now I realized it was a lifeline—a psychic tether keeping him connected to a sister he knew was still breathing somewhere in the dark.
We stepped out of the truck. The mud sucked at our boots as we walked toward the massive sliding iron doors of the main saw mill. One of the doors hung off its hinges, creating a narrow, gaping black maw into the building's interior.
Inside, the air smelled of wet rot, industrial grease, and old sawdust. High above, shattered skylights allowed shafts of pale moonlight to cut through the darkness, illuminating the massive, rusted circular saw blades and conveyor belts that stretched out like ancient torture devices.
"Zane!" I shouted, my voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls. "We're here! Show yourself!"
Silence answered. Only the drip of rainwater falling from the ceiling onto the iron floor. Tink. Tink. Tink.
Then, from the far end of the mill—on an elevated wooden catwalk twenty feet above the ground—a single spotlight snapped on.
The blinding white beam illuminated a small wooden chair tied to the catwalk railing.
Seated in the chair was a young girl. She wore an oversized gray sweatshirt, her long dark hair tangled and matted over her face. Her hands were bound behind her back with thick yellow nylon rope.
"Janice!" I screamed, my feet moving forward before my brain could register the danger. "Janice!"
"Stop right there, Claire!"
A figure stepped out of the shadows behind the chair. It wasn't Zane.
It was Dean Montgomery.
He was no longer wearing his custom tuxedo from the Bellevue Hotel. He wore a dark leather coat, his silver hair disheveled, a heavy black semi-automatic pistol held loosely in his right hand.
"Dean..." I gasped, stopping in my tracks fifty feet below the catwalk. "Where is Zane?"
"Zane was soft," Dean said, his voice echoing with a bitter, maniacal edge. "He always was. He thought he could play both sides—keep his white-picket-fence family while using my money to fund his gambling debt in Vancouver. But when the girl saw the files, he panicked."
Dean walked to the edge of the catwalk, resting his hands on the railing, looking down at us like a king surveying a conquered kingdom.
"He couldn't kill her," Dean continued, shaking his head with mock pity. "He didn't have the stomach for it. So he gave her to me. I've been paying three hundred thousand dollars a year to a private facility in Idaho to keep her hidden, drugged, and quiet—just in case Zane ever decided to get brave and go to the feds."
"You kept my daughter locked away for eight years?!" I shrieked, my nails digging into the palms of my hands until they bled. "She was five years old!"
"She was a liability!" Dean roared, his voice snapping like a whip. "Just like Jeremy! Just like you!"
Behind me, I heard a heavy footstep in the shadows.
Before I could turn, a thick arm wrapped around my throat from behind, cutting off my air supply. I flailed wildly, my hands clawing at the forearm, but the grip was like iron.
"Don't move, Claire," Zane’s rasping voice whispered in my ear. He was bleeding from his jaw where Jeremy had struck him, his face swollen and purple in the moonlight. He held a long hunting knife against my throat.
"Dad, let her go!" Jeremy yelled, stepping forward, raising the flare gun with both hands, pointing it straight at Zane’s chest.
Zane looked at his son through half-closed, bruised eyes. "Put it down, Jeremy. You don't know how to use that."
"I know how it works," Jeremy said, his thumb pulling back the heavy iron hammer on top of the orange plastic gun with a loud CLICK. "It burns at two thousand degrees. It will burn a hole straight through your chest."
"Jeremy, don't!" I choked out through Zane’s suffocating grip.
Up on the catwalk, the girl in the chair suddenly stirred. She lifted her head slowly, her long hair falling back, revealing pale skin and deep blue eyes that were identical to Jeremy's.
She looked down at the catwalk floor, then across at the boy holding the flare gun.
Her lips parted, dry and cracked.
"Jer... emy?" she whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound.
The sound of her voice hit Jeremy like a physical blow. His hands trembled for a split second, tears finally bursting from his eyes, overflowing down his cheeks.
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"Janice," Jeremy sobbed, his voice breaking for the first time in eight years. "I'm here. I came to get you."
"How touching," Dean sneered from above, raising his pistol, pointing it directly at Jeremy's head. "A family reunion in the dark. But unfortunately, none of you are leaving this mill alive."
