Read Bonfires Burning Bright for Free Online Page B

identical to the one two miles behind them. The brass plate had only one call button. Up.
    Avalon pushed the button, and Griffin, who had re-holstered the pistol on their long walk, withdrew it again.
    The doors opened to a normal elevator again, this time with only three buttons. T for their level, which Griffin guessed stood for Tunnel . The next floor up was B, and the top floor was G.
    He selected B, and the doors shut. The elevator shot upward, and the ride felt close to as long up as the one at the other end of town had felt going down.
    “I’m going to be disappointed if this doesn’t come out under a volcano, or something equally Bondian,” Avalon quipped.
    “Hope for Moneypenny, but be prepared for piranha,” Griffin said, as the car slowed to a halt and dinged.
    As the doors parted, Griffin raised his M9. They heard a voice yell at them.
    “Freeze! Out of the elevator, slowly.”
    Griffin peeked around the edge of the elevator car to see Jennifer Turkette sitting on the floor, across a ten-foot wide concrete room. Her back was to a huge vault door, like Griffin had seen in old banks. She sat cross-legged, as she had back in Ellison’s house, when Griffin had first seen the African American woman. But her nurse’s uniform was gone now. Instead she had her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she wore a thick, hooded gray sweatshirt, tan slacks and hiking boots. She also had a holster on her hip, and a Glock in her hand, pointed at the elevator door.
    The only thing in Griffin’s favor was that the woman looked like she had been crying.
    When she saw Griffin and Avalon, she lowered the gun. She looked like a woman who had nearly given up on life.
    “Oh, it’s you,” she said, dejected.
    Griffin cautiously stepped out of the elevator, with Avalon following him. He kept his M9 trained on the woman.
    “Miss Turkette, are you alright?” he asked, while surreptitiously glancing around the bare concrete room, looking for other threats or doors or even cameras, but the room was bare except for the elevator and the vault door.
    Turkette stood up and looked Griffin in the eye, sniffing back her tears.
    “That sonuvabitch left me behind.”

 
     
    8
     
    Kyle Gardner slowed his Ducati. Laurie Whittemore, sitting behind him on the bike, pointed over his shoulder to their turn. The gravel road ran straight, and dipped down to a parked pickup truck. The bike’s headlight illuminated the weather-beaten sign at the entrance to the gravel drive:
     
    Green Meadow Farm
    Eggs, Cheese, Apples.
    Best in Tow
     
    The N at the end of ‘town,’ had long since faded to a murky yellow, the same color as the rest of the sign. Kyle brought the bike down the lane and parked behind the battered truck, the emergency call he’d received on the two-way radio repeating in his head.
    Uh, this is Charley. I’m out to Green Meadow Farm, and Cash’s here. Somebody shot him. We need that doctor feller. Fast. There’s a bomb shelter or something, down the slope of the property. He’s awake, and we’re keeping pressure on the wound, but I don’t know what else to do.
    Kyle had jumped on the two-way at the station, and told the man—apparently the town’s drunk, Kyle had later learned—to continue keeping pressure on the wound. He’d be there shortly.
    Laurie had overheard and insisted on coming with him, which was fine, really, because he hadn’t known the farm’s location. Plus, he enjoyed her company. When he’d first met her at the diner, he’d seen past her timidity and her badly applied makeup. He’d seen a spark inside her that was dying to get out. He thought she might be a poet or a writer or something.
    Through the last two weeks, they’d talked more and he’d finally gotten her to open up. She was a songwriter—but a songwriter with no confidence. He wasn’t sure what she’d been through in the past—neither of them wanted to discuss their exes—but he believed the challenge of their shifting to