Page 67 of Girl, Reborn

‘Jesus, Ell, you’re going to…’ Luca saidas she gripped the handle.

‘Buckle up,’ said Ella. The gate rushed tomeet them as rotted boards and rusted wire filled the windshield. Luca suckedin a sharp breath, hands flying up to brace for impact. But Ella welded herselfto the seat and held steady.

The car hit the gate like a battering ram,timbers splintering, metal shrieking. Fragments peppered the glass, the hood,clattered across the roof like a hailstorm in hell. But they were through, thesad remains of the gate crumpled beneath the wheels like so much kindling.

Luca wiped sweat off his head. ‘We’realive.’

Ella just grunted, too focused on the taskat hand to trade quips. The track curved sharply and she hauled the wheelaround, nearly sending them fishtailing into the bone-dry ditch. Ahead, thefarm proper swam out of the murk. The pictures on Seth's wall had shownwide-open fields, a spread of healthy crops and rolling pastures.

But this was a graveyard.

Fields lay fallow. Rusted equipmentjutted from the overgrowth like the bones of long-dead beasts. And somewhere upahead, the farmhouse, with chipped paint that was peeling like bad sunburn.Beside it were a few outbuildings in matching states of decay, and off to theleft, a silo stabbed into the sky like a concrete middle finger to God andcreation.

But no sign of their drowning chamber.

Ella's mind whirred like an overheatingengine, possibilities and permutations clicking through at breakneck speed. Noway would Baxter build his murder palace out in the open, exposed to the eyesof any passing stranger. He was crazy, not stupid. He'd want privacy,seclusion.

‘The barn,’ Luca barked. ‘Maybe it's inthere.’

Ella was already shaking her head. ‘No,look at the state of it. It’s barely standing up. He'd want something sturdier,more permanent.’

‘Silo? That’s the only other place.’

It had to be.

Ella said, ‘It's got walls, a roof. Andhow much you wanna bet it goes deep? Real deep.’

She whipped the steering wheel, sendingthem careening toward the silo's hunched bulk. The tires caught, skidded,plowed furrows in the earth before finding purchase again. Ella didn't let up,didn't dare breathe. Just aimed the Detroit steel at the broad side of Baxter'srural castle and prayed they weren't too late.

The car juddered to a stop mere feet fromthe silo wall, and they were moving before the engine had time to die. Bootshit dirt, guns swept up, two sides of the same coin minted in blood andgunpowder.

Ella reached the silo first, Luca ahalf-step behind. She pressed her back to the corrugated steel, held up threefingers, two, one...

Then whipped around, bringing her Glock tobear on the darkness gaping at the threshold.

‘FBI!’ Her voice bounced back. ‘Baxter,hands up!’

Nothing. Just the high, tinkling echo ofher own bravado and Luca’s movements beside her.

She took a step forward, then another. Letthe shadows swallow her whole. The smell hit her like a wave; mold and ratdroppings and motor oil and septic grime. The bone-deep reek of a killingfloor.

But worse than that, cutting through themiasma like a scalpel – chlorine.

The astringent bite of a swimming poolgone rancid, chemicals left too long to curdle and congeal. The same unholyperfume that clung to their waterlogged stiffs. There was no mistaking thatbouquet of death.

Ella's finger kissed the trigger. She andLuca fanned out to cover all angles, only there wasn’t much to cover. Just araw concrete chamber, maybe twenty feet across. Pipes angled up the curvingwalls in a mad tangle of corroded metal and bursting seams. Puddles spreadacross the floor, like the whole room was slowly dissolving, melting down toits rotten core. There was a bench of work tools – Baxter’s murder kit, Ellareasoned.

But there in the center – a sight thatpunched the wind from Ella's lungs.

A silo within the silo. A giantcylindrical vat, its metal skin pockmarked with rust and algal blooms. It rosefrom the floor like a pagan monolith, gears clanked in its depths, the grind ofteeth on bone. Water slopped over the lip in fetid waves, the sour odor of athousand drowned and bloated dreams.

‘Ell.’ Luca caught her sleeve, dragged hergaze to the base of the machine. ‘Look.’

Water. Black and glassy, lapping gentlyat the lip of the pit.

And bobbing there like a child's toy was afigure.

A man, tethered to some invisible pointbelow the surface. Floating face-up, eyes fixed and staring at the distantceiling.

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