“What do you mean, ready to move?”
“They were getting ready to do covert surveillance so we could get eyes in there.”
“In broad cloudy-with-a-chance-of-rain daylight?”
“They’re very good. It’s what they do.”
“Just hold on. Angel, where exactly are the Vandenbergs being held?”
“They’re all in that corner bedroom,” he said, “except for Mrs. Vandenberg. She’s cooking for them.”
“Is there a guard with the family?”
“No. There are three men. Two in the living room and one in the kitchen. The family is tied up, so they aren’t going anywhere.”
I nodded. “Look, I have inside information.” I told her what Angel said. “If we can distract them somehow once Mrs. Vandenberg is finished cooking, we can get them out. They aren’t guarding them.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw it. Through my binoculars.”
“What binoculars?”
“The ones I dropped. And no longer have.”
“Well, thanks to you, the first thing we have to do is try to get you out of there so you don’t get everyone killed.”
Guilt ate through the lining of my stomach. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
“Can you see them now?”
I was just about to say no when Angel nodded. Of course, he could be my eyes.
“Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Do you think you can get out of there if we provide some kind of distraction?”
“No!” I whisper-yelled at her. “No, two distractions in one day? It isn’t like they’re not a tad suspicious already. They’re bad guys. They were born suspicious. I can see them.”
Angel gave me a thumbs-up, then disappeared.
“I’ll know when to run.”
“Janey, if you are wrong and they spot you—”
“I have this. Just get ready to move.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You said your guys were ready. Are they or aren’t they?”
“They are, but this isn’t a game, Janey.”
“I have this. Once the Vandenbergs are all in that back bedroom, I’ll provide a distraction, and you and your men secure that room and get them out.”
“Janey, I refuse to authorize you to do any such thing.”
“I’m not asking permission. I’ll give you the okay sign when it’s time to move. Or I might get shot in the head. If either of those happens, move.”
“Janey, I am ordering—”
I hung up before she talked me out of doing something stupid. Truth was, I had the advantage over all of them with all of their equipment. I had a dead teenaged gangbanger with an attitude and, well, not a whole lot to lose.
Angel appeared beside me again. He lay down in the brush, ducking his head as though they could see him. “There’s one guard on the window at all times. I’ll have to do something to draw his attention away.”
“I have another idea. A really good one. I just need a sharp stick and a lot of blood.”
* * *
I was so nervous, I wanted to throw up. My stomach roiled as I lay on the ground, waiting on word from Angel.
Agent Carson called back a third time. I told her they were finally letting Mrs. V go back with her family, so it was almost time and she should get her team ready.
She had reluctantly agreed to let me distract the captors so her men could secure the room. I hadn’t given her much of a choice, but despite that, no agent alive would just let some stranger waltz into her sting operation and “be the distraction.” No way. Absolutely not. There had to be more to that story than met the trained eye.
“Janey,” she said, growing somber, “these are very, very bad men.”
“I know. They’re holding a whole family hostage.”
“The Vandenbergs never stood a chance of survival. These are not the kind of men that let their hostages go.”
That got the blood pumping. “Got it. They’re super bad.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Positive.”
“What exactly are you going to do?”
“I thought I’d play it by ear.” I hung up and glanced at Angel. “Here goes nothing.”
Angel had found me something better than a stick, but if I didn’t get killed in the crossfire that was sure to come, I would probably die of tetanus or a flesh-eating virus. This couldn’t be sanitary.
I took the piece of rusted metal he’d found a few feet away and started cutting cut along my scalp line. My first try wasn’t deep enough. I needed more blood. This had to look convincing.
“Maybe you should stab me with it,” I said to Angel.
“Fuck that. I ain’t stabbing you. I ain’t cutting you. This was your idea.”
I closed my eyes and tried again. This time I thought of Joseph and Jasmine and how scared they had to be. The metal sliced through several layers, and blood gushed down my face. I rubbed it into my scalp and shook my head to disperse it, then scraped the metal along my cheek, neck, and chest, making deep—and hopefully convincing—gashes.
The phone rang again. Agent Carson was probably not liking my plan. Sadly, part of that plan was to smash my phone. I raised the metal and slammed it into the phone over and over.
“You’re one angry chick,” Angel said.
I put my hand on his arm where I’d scratched him. “I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He stared a moment, then laughed it off. “Please. I’m an asshole. I know that.”
“You weren’t being an asshole. You were being a thirteen-year-old boy.” I leaned in and kissed his cheek. He lowered his head, embarrassed. “Okay, tell me when he’s not looking.”
He nodded and disappeared. About fifteen seconds later, I heard the single word “Go.”
I hopped onto my feet and sprinted as fast as I could to the tree line that circled the house. Once there, I skidded under some brush and waited.
After another few seconds, I heard another “Go.”
This time, I ran in the same direction I’d just come, only I stumbled a lot, falling all the way down and having to drag myself back up. I weaved to the back door, knowing they were probably all three watching now, and slammed my palms against it.
“Is anyone home?” I yelled, my voice hoarse.
I didn’t wait for them to actually answer. I just wanted them to think I was out of my mind, trying to get help. I walked the perimeter of the house, yelling for someone, anyone, to help my husband. When I got to the front door, I pounded on it.
“They checked the room, just to make sure nothing was up,” Angel said as he followed me. He disappeared and reappeared again in the blink of an eye. “Now they’re all three up front, watching you. Their guns are drawn.”
I fell against the front door and pounded, leaving bloody palm prints all over it. “Please, I need to use your phone. Please.”
“Tell them to go now,” Angel said.
I dropped one hand to my side and gave Agent Carson the okay signal, praying she saw it, because the door opened. The man had put his gun aside and was studying me.
It was the same man who sat at Mr. V’s desk for at least two days, but I’d mussed my hair and bled all over my face. Surely he wouldn’t recognize me.
“Please,” I said, swaying as though I were about to lose consciousness. “My husband. He’s in the car.” I pointed toward the lake then held out my busted phone. “Do you have a phone? Please. He’s trapped.”
When they did nothing but watch me, I bent at the waist and vomited on their floor. The vomit was real. No way to fake that shit. The fact that one of them was holding an AK-47 on me—I’d seen it through the slit between door and jamb—proved to be all the motivation I needed to empty the contents of my stomach. Then, in a dramatic twist even I didn’t see coming, I fell to my knees and passed out in my own puke. Or, well, I pretended to. I lay as still as humanly possible as one of the men brought his gun around and
pointed it at my head.
20
Life ain’t all burritos and strippers, my friend.
—TRUE FACT
Trust hadn’t exactly been my strong suit, but I was putting my life in the hands of an FBI agent I’d never met and her team. Hopefully, they would live up to their reputation of being excellent shots.
The men started to panic. They spoke in frantic Farsi, trying to decide what to do with me, arguing among themselves, giving the team precious time to save the Vandenbergs. One of the men shoved another. He wanted to put me in the shed out back. Surely I wouldn’t live long, especially in this cold. The other wanted to bring me inside and put me in a room so they could keep an eye on me. The third just wanted to shoot me in the head. They were too close. They were going back to Mr. V’s store and getting the package that evening, and risking it all by keeping me alive when they were only going to kill me anyway would be stupid.
I didn’t dare open my eyes, so Angel relayed to me their every move.
“They keep looking outside to see if anyone saw you come up,” he said. “But none of them have thought to check on the Vandenbergs yet.”
We just needed a few minutes. Just long enough to get the family untied and out the window.
“Be right back,” he said, then, an instant later, “Okay, they are all untied, and the team is lifting the children out now.”
I fought the spike of elation and found I didn’t have to fight it too hard. One of them kicked me in the gut. He was trying to get me off the porch. They’d decided to tie me up and put me in the shed to die, but no one wanted to pick me up, probably thanks to my inspired decision to pass out in my own vomit. It was also an excellent rape deterrent.
My hair was a mess of tangles. And, sadly, the aforementioned vomit. It stuck to the blood on my face so that even if I’d wanted to see, I couldn’t have. The man kicked me again to roll me another couple of feet. Tears pushed past my lashes as the pain ricocheted through me. He finally gave up and picked up one of my booted feet to drag me across the wooden porch.
“He’s going to pull you off the edge,” Angel said. He started to panic. “The side of the porch is at least a five-foot drop. The fall will break your neck. Hold on.” He must’ve done his disappearing act again. He came back almost instantly with “They’re coming down the hall.” He sounded more excited than afraid. “Get ready to run.”
But did the FBI have all the Vandenbergs out? I needed to know.
“The big one is turning around,” he said, the panic filtering back into his voice again. “I think he heard something.”
I groaned and pretended to come to for a moment. I gave a halfhearted kick at the man trying to wrench my foot off. It gave me the perfect excuse to protect my head when he pulled me off the porch. I landed with a thud that knocked my breath away, but I’d curled up a little and protected my head from hitting the side of the porch and my neck from being broken, landing on my shoulder instead.
“You did it,” Angel said. “You got their attention.”
Then, in an act that defied my imagination, it was so fast and so decisive, three shots were fired almost simultaneously through suppressed rifles. I opened my eyes and scraped at the hair in front of them in time to see the one next to me crumple into a heap. Through the porch slats, in my peripheral vision, I could see the other men crumple at the exact same time, as though the whole thing had been choreographed.
The team had killed them. A sniper in the trees across the road took out the one closest to me, and the team who’d entered from the back got the other two. All headshots. All perfect.
I scrambled away from the guy closest to me and, yep, threw up again.
* * *
A female agent brought me a bottle of water as Angel played with the Vandenbergs’ German shepherd and an EMT saw to my self-inflicted wounds.
“Agent Carson?” I asked.
She nodded and sat beside me on the back of the ambulance.
I laughed softly. “We’ve already met.”
“Yes, we have.”
“You came into the diner yesterday. Why didn’t you introduce yourself?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “I couldn’t have told you anything anyway. And I didn’t need anything else from you at that moment, so…”
“I get it. Love ’em and leave ’em.”
“That’s the kinda girl I am.”
It was nice talking to her. Comfortable. Like an old pair of jeans—
“But I still have to arrest you.”
—that had been rolled in a cactus plant. “No shit?”
“No shit. You interfered with an ongoing investigation—”
“Yeah, but you were only investigating because I told you to.”
“There is that. I’ll talk to my superiors and try to get your charges reduced.”
I was hoping for dismissed.
“You cut yourself up pretty bad,” a man said from beside me.
I turned to see Bobert there. He handed me a cup of coffee, and I kind of wanted to make out with him.
I took a sip, then asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Giving Agent Carson a hand.”
“Can you convince her to drop the charges?”
“Drop them?” he asked, taken aback. “I was going to see if she’d pile on a few more. Obstruction of justice.”
“She has that one.”
“Endangering a law enforcement agent.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Unlawful use of a … sharp, rusty object.”
“You know what?” I said, stopping him while I was ahead. “I’m good with her charges. It’s okay.”
He chuckled. “Wait till you see Cookie. She is not happy.”
It was my turn to be taken aback. “You told her?”
“Only because I want to continue being married to her.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, mumbling to myself. “The name Cookie does not strike fear into my heart. How bad could it be?”
The moment I said it, a loud shriek that carried over the land far and wide and made children of all ages cringe and dogs whimper sounded from my left.
“Janey Doerr!” it said. It knew my name.
Cookie came stomping up, and for the first time I was a little afraid of her. “What the fuck?” she asked, her eyes filling with tears. “What—? How—? I can’t even—!” Then she pulled me into her arms, unaware of how painful it was.
I looked at Bobert. “What the heck did you tell her?”
“The truth,” he said, the turncoat.
“Janey,” she said, holding me at arm’s length, then pulling me back in for a bone-crushing hug. Literally. She was crushing my bones, and I was pretty sure she was doing it on purpose.
Agent Carson spoke again. “You’ll have to thank Mr. Pettigrew for me, Detective.”
“I sure will,” Bobert said. “He gave it his best shot.”
I straightened my shoulders and tried to speak. It was a pretty good effort, given that no air would pass through my windpipe. “What about Mr. P?”
Bobert grinned. “He was trying to put you off coming out here.”
I gasped. For a really long time. “He was in on it?”
Cookie let go, then questioned her husband with an arch of her brow, equally curious.
“Yes, he was,” Bobert said.
I felt so used. So betrayed. So utterly out of the loop.
“I have to admit,” Agent Carson said, “we didn’t even know about this cabin until you asked Detective Davidson to look into it. You led us straight to them.”
“So you’re dropping the charges?”
“Not on your life.”
We watched all the activity while the EMT finished bandaging my wounds and gave me a tetanus shot. The cut on my foot from last night was already healing. Hopefully this would heal just as quickly. Must’ve been a vitamin freak in my previous life. Probably ate green shit. Stuff that rhymed with ale and … ettuce.
“Hey,”
I said, elbowing Cookie to get her attention.
It was her turn on the oxygen mask we found in the ambulance. She pulled it off with a sucking sound and a questioning shrug.
“That’s the guy.” I stood and walked slowly forward, stunned to my toes.
“You’re just doing this because it’s my turn,” Cookie said.
“No, really. That’s the guy.” I pointed. Among the plethora of officers and agents roaming the area both outside and inside the yellow tape stood the massive bald-headed hulk that worked at the dry cleaners. “Hold it right there, mister!”
He turned to me and flashed a nuclear grin. I thought about tackling him to the ground. Instead I just stormed up, all stormy like. About that time I realized he was wearing Kevlar. Did bad guys wear Kevlar?
Before I could say anything, he asked, “Vy you are here?” Then he threw back his big head and laughed.
I was still processing his presence when Agent Carson walked up with the woman from the dry cleaners as well. She also wore Kevlar.
She looked at her comrade. “Vy she is here?” Then they both threw back their heads and laughed. It was so bizarre, like a bad laugh track for a sitcom.
I was in the Twilight Zone. And not the good one the dentist puts you in.
The woman stopped first and pointed to my head wound. “You have balls,” she said. “I am Klava Pajari, and this is my partner, Ilya Zolnerowich. Ve are retired FSB agent. Ve vork—” She considered how to put it. “—job on side.”
“Oh, so this is a side job?”
Ilya nodded. “Because of you, ve sleep together. Vith our minds.”
“You’re psychic lovers?”
Klava gave a nervous chuckle while glaring at Ilya. “His English is not so good. Vat he means is our minds are rest knowing how you have help us. Ve clean your coat for free, yes?”
They laughed again. It echoed through the tilting fun house that used to be my brain.
After they got over teasing me—which took forever—they told me the story of how they had been on the trail of a Russian arms dealer for years. They’d tracked him to America, but he moved around a lot, and they couldn’t get a lock on his location. The only thing he did religiously, no matter where he went, was bet on street fights. He grew up fighting on the streets of Russia and was addicted to the life.
The Dirt on Ninth Grave Page 26