Burned Bridges

by A. J. Stewart

  “She did that?” asked Beth.

  The waitress nodded. “No reason. Just angry about something that nobody remembers. I was in a coma for a week.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Long time ago. High school. I was going to college, you know that? Penn State. My papa was as proud as punch.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  She shook her head slowly. “After it happened, I don’t remember things so good. I forget stuff. I couldn’t remember the classes, even if I wanted to.”

  “What about the police?”

  “I met with a lawyer. Some prosecutor guy. He said because I didn’t remember too good, the defense would say that I couldn’t be sure who did it.”

  “She got away with it?”

  The waitress shrugged. “They took her away. After she burned down her mama and papa’s farm. I didn’t get to leave, but at least she wasn’t coming back. Until now.”

  The waitress looked at the carpet and ran her hand along the cat’s back. “Well, g’night.” She turned, walked to her room and closed the door. The three of them stood in silence for a moment, and then Hutton took the sheets and laid them over the sofa. Flynn kicked off his boots and took a cushion from a lounge chair and dropped it on the floor by the dormant fireplace. The women lay on the sofa with their heads at opposite ends, their feet woven around each other.

  They lay in the darkness, listening to the sounds of each other’s breathing, and the purring of the cat.

  The morning came on as slowly as the evening had. There was light above in the sky long before the sun hit the north-south valley, lighting the hills to the west. Flynn woke first. He put on his boots and walked around the property. It was small and neat. Well-tended gardens and lawn. He came back inside to find the waitress in the kitchen, drinking water from the faucet.

  “I need to get to work,” she said. Another long day about to begin.

  “We’ll get out of your way.”

  “No rush. But . . .”

  Flynn shook his head. “Not a word to anyone.”

  The waitress nodded. She put the glass in the sink and grabbed her keys and walked to the door.

  “Will I see you again?” she asked.

  “You got any pie left?”

  She nodded again.

  “Then definitely.”

  They were gone within ten minutes. Flynn woke Hutton and Beth and they splashed water on their faces and got in the Yukon. Flynn drove. He headed back toward the diner. The lights were on and there were three vehicles in the lot. The waitress, the cook, and a customer. He turned left and headed up the mountain.

  The tires looked less like a fort in the daylight. They looked like a graveyard for tires. He drove by again. The house looked older and the barn looked newer than they had in the twilight. There was more debris around the grounds. Oil drums, discarded farm implements, an old car up on cinderblocks.

  Flynn drove on, watching the road and the mileage counter. He lost view of the farm in his mirrors and then looked for a spot. Slowed and turned off the road along the fence line of a property above the road. Noted the mileage. Close enough to a mile and a quarter. Two kilometers, give or take. He drove up across open ground. The wheels rose and fell on the rough terrain, and it jostled them about. Flynn kept on into a line of trees. The fence stopped but the trees seemed to mark some kind of property line. They were in an unnaturally straight line, as if planted by a land owner generations ago. He pictured the triangle in his head. The farm at one corner, at right angles to the road and to a point up the hill. He estimated the angle between the fence line and the road and drove the hypotenuse of the triangle.

  Eventually he stopped the truck and stepped out. Walked to the trees and looked out across the valley below, and then came back and got in the truck and continued for another minute. Stopped again and looked through the trees and saw the farm below. Smoke was coming from the barn and the chimney in the house. Someone was home and they were having breakfast.

  Flynn set up camp. He crept down the hill a short way and looked back up. Between the shadows and the pines and the foliage, the Yukon was invisible. He made his way back up and took Hedstrom’s Leupold scope out of his daypack. He scanned the hill above. Trees and bushes. No roads, no homes. Beth and Hutton stood by the Yukon.

  “I’m just going to take a quick look up the hill,” Flynn said. He took off between the trees. The two women watched him disappear into the foliage. Beth had her arms wrapped tight around herself. Hutton could see her breath in the air.

  “I’m getting back in the truck, it’s cold out here,” Hutton said.

  Beth nodded and followed. They both quietly closed the doors. Hutton didn’t start the engine, but it was still warmer in the vehicle. She turned in her seat to look back at Beth.

  “So you live in San Francisco?” she asked.

  “Marin County, actually. I work in San Francisco.”

  “How did you meet John?”

  “In Lake Tahoe. I was up there skiing with friends. John was marching through.”

  “Marching through?”

  “He likes to walk. A lot.”

  “I noticed. But in the mountains, in winter?”

  “He was actually marching from Colorado to San Francisco. He said he wanted to see the Golden Gate.”

  “There are flights. Busses, even.”

  “I know. But he likes walking.”

  “And he stopped in Tahoe.”

  Beth nodded. “At Northstar. He was sitting by one of those little fire pits they have around the village. Only the one he was sitting at wasn’t working. There was no fire in the pit. A girlfriend of mine liked the look of him, so we sat at the same pit. It was freezing, but my friend kept trying to include him in the conversation. She started talking about drinks she liked and didn’t like, and she asked John what he thought, and he said he only drank at weddings and funerals. My friend asked what he drank at weddings and he said champagne. Then she asked about funerals, and John and I answered at the same time.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Bourbon.”

  Hutton nodded. She had seen the bourbon, but not at a funeral.

  “And you’re sure he only drinks that at funerals?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him drink alcohol at all,” said Beth.

  “I saw him with bourbon once, in Iraq. And again in New York.”

  “Drinking?”

  “He seemed to prefer doing it in private.”

  Beth nodded. “Oh, that. He locked himself away, right?”

  “In Iraq. In New York he didn’t get the chance to do anything with it.”

  “He doesn’t drink it,” said Beth. “He opens it and lets the smell fill the room and then he sort of meditates on it.”

  “Meditates? John?”

  “Yes, I know. But his father drank bourbon, he told me. I think it reminds him of his dad.”

  “He’s a complicated guy.”

  “Yeah. Complicated is the word.”

  Flynn returned having ventured partway up the hill. There were signs of tracks made through the trees over the years, but nothing that he noted as recent. He preferred to take a position higher on the hill, but the rocky terrain up higher obstructed the view of the farm. He clambered down to their original position, got comfortable against a tree, and put the scope to his eye in the direction of the farm. Everything was the same. The house, the barn, the tires. The open turnaround area. Black smoke billowed from the barn’s chimney. Gray smoke from the house. All else was still. The grass in the field beyond glistened with dew.

  He settled in to wait. Hutton came and sat next to him. They took turns looking through the scope. It flattened the view but gave the colors greater depth than the wan sun. Without a monopod attached, the scope was harder to keep still and there were tiny vibrations in the image, like the whole farm was on some kind of agitator.

  “Someone should go in,” Hutton said.

  “Someone will.”
>
  “I mean for a closer look. Get the lay of the land.”

  “Too risky. When I go in, I’ll go in hard.”

  “What’s in the barn?”

  “No idea.”

  “It’s a good size barn. Could be anything.”

  “Damn right.”

  “So I should go down and take a look.”

  Flynn dropped the scope from his eye and looked at Hutton. The shadows of the pines were softening her face, blending the angles the way a good portrait photographer would.

  “You need to stay here,” she said. “For Beth, and for me. To keep an eye on me.” She smiled.

  “How will you do it?”

  “Down the hill, further to the south. Cross the road out of view of the farm and come in behind the barn.”

  “The barn is what we need to know. Remember, it’s not a voyage to make a more complete map of the world.”

  “Got it.”

  “In, out.”

  “Got it.”

  Flynn looked back down at the farm. “I wish we had comms.”

  “Radios would have been a good idea. I’m used to New York. Too dependent on cell coverage.”

  Flynn nodded, unsure.

  Hutton touched his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. And we don’t want to go down there later and discover an arsenal the hard way.”

  Hutton left her courier bag. She took her cell phone for pictures. She took her flashlight for the shadows and in case a late exfiltration was required. And she took her Glock for everything else.

  She stayed behind the high side of the tree line and walked away south. Flynn kept the scope scanning from the southern end of the road to the barn. Looking for her in the foliage, looking for her on the farm. He didn’t see her. He took that as a good sign. She wasn’t military trained and her patch was an urban environment, but she knew her stuff.

  He watched the farm for any movement. Saw nothing in the first hour. He figured two hours to be enough to get down, take a look and get back. He saw no movement in the second hour. Beth came and sat by him. He saw no movement in the third hour.

  It was the fourth hour that he saw something. A person walked out of the farmhouse. A woman. Large-framed and big-boned. Carrying more weight than a doctor would recommend, for sure, but it was more than that. She was just built large. Like an outhouse, was the phrase that came to mind. She had short hair the color of dust and wore a checked flannel shirt. Flynn handed the scope to Beth. Told her to focus in on the house. She did.

  She dropped the scope.

  Flynn picked it out of the pine needles. “Did you see?”

  He didn’t need to ask. The color had drained from her face. She nodded, very slowly.

  “That’s her. The woman who took you?”

  Another nod, laborious, like she had whiplash.

  Flynn trained the scope back on the porch of the house. Cameron Dennison stepped down onto the dirt driveway and walked across the open area toward the barn. There was a traditional-style large door for farm machinery to get in and out. Within the large door was a smaller door. A human-sized door. Cameron stopped before it, pulled it open and then stepped inside. Flynn kept his scope on the barn. He didn’t see anyone come out. He saw no more movement in the fifth hour. The woman didn’t come out of the barn. No one came out of the house.

  Hutton didn’t return.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  There were always pros and cons. On the pro side, the sun was well through its arc, and the shadows in the valley were long. He would be close to impossible to spot. He figured he could be there and back in thirty minutes if he pushed it. An hour if he didn’t. The rural environment was his domain. He had trained in it, long and hard. He also had weapons. His Glock, plus the MP5K he had acquired at the drug den. He had a good lay of the land and had spent hours studying the farm.

  On the con side was Beth. He wished she wasn’t there. He wished she was safe at home in San Rafael, doing lawyer things and going to wine tastings and the farmer’s market. He wished, in a roundabout way, that he’d never gone to Tahoe. That he’d never decided to march to the Bay Area. That he hadn’t stopped off for a look at the snow. That he hadn’t been by the dormant fire pit or offered a smile and been enchanted by her smarts and her wit. He couldn’t quite take it all the way and wish he’d never met her. But that was just selfishness and ego. Right now there was no doubt she would have been better off. She wouldn’t have been abducted. She wouldn’t be sitting in the Appalachian Mountains watching a farm. And he wouldn’t have to leave her alone.

  “I need to go down and take a look,” he said. He was ready for the let’s call the police retort. It would be a reasonable response. It was how reasonable people thought.

  “I know,” she said. “She should be back.”

  “The keys are in the truck. If I am not back in an hour, get in it and go. Don’t stop until you get to a city. Then and only then, tell someone.”

  She nodded and put her hand on his cheek.

  “Come back.”

  “I intend to.”

  He left her with the scope. He took both guns. Handing a firearm to an untrained civilian might work in the movies, but more often than not ended in disaster in the real world. He moved south along the trees as Hutton had. Counted five hundred steps and then cut right and down the hill. There was plenty of tree cover, but he took it steady. The long shadows served to mask his movement. The only sound was the underbrush beneath his feet, but pine needles were as close to silent as he could get. He made it to the road in twenty minutes. Five behind his mental schedule. Waited, listening. Then he broke cover and marched across.

  The trees around the farm were similar but different. Pines, but a variety distinct from those on the hillside. There were broad oaks near the barn. He reached the edge of the cleared section around the farm. The house was at twelve o’clock to him, the barn at nine. The tire fort was in between. The whole place smelled of rubber. Like a rancid potpourri. Fresh rubber and old rubber. And burning rubber.

  Between him and the house was an old vehicle. It was rusted and still intact, but it wasn’t going anywhere. It sat mounted on cinderblocks, its tires removed as if sucked off by the gravity of the nearby tire fort. He looked around and listened hard. Nothing but breeze rustling through trees. He moved into the open.

  First stop was the old vehicle. It was a sedan of some kind. The badging was long gone, but the boxy shape suggested a 1980s vintage. He slipped to the rear of the vehicle, keeping the car between himself and the house. He slipped the MP5K underneath and pushed it against the cinderblock. Two guns was one too many for a search of the barn. He liked to keep one hand free. And although he didn’t expect a full firefight, it was good to have a fallback position. Plans go to hell as soon as boots hit the ground.

  He moved along the car and then stayed crouched as he stepped briskly across the yard to the barn. He slipped around the far side of it, the side he hadn’t seen from his position up the hill. There was nothing to see. There were no windows, no doors. He moved back to the front end of the structure. The walls were solid, but not solid enough to stop a rifle round from within.

  The latch mechanism on the door was a basic bolt-action thing. Pull out to open, push in to close. Easy to attach a padlock. There was no padlock. Flynn dropped to his knees and worked the latch open, inch by inch. He took it slow and kept the pressure on the door as the slide came free. The natural tendency of the door was to fall open. He kept his hand against it and slid down until he was lying on the ground, hand on the bottom of the door. The door didn’t go all the way to the ground. It was framed inside the larger barn door, such that there was six inches of the larger door between the ground and the access door. Flynn got as low as he could and readied his weapon. Then he eased his hand off the access door.

  It fell open just a crack. Not enough to see in. So he used his shoulder to ease the door open wider. Four inches, then six. Enough space to stick his head in. Which was always the dangerous part. Came
ron Dennison could be sitting in a lawn chair in the barn, waiting to pop him right between the eyes. But his eyes weren’t where eyes were supposed to be. It was natural to focus on an area about four feet from the ground. Most people looked for the head, but most people looked low. Which nine times out of ten was okay, because looking low meant they were focused on the largest possible target. The torso. But Flynn’s torso was in the dirt. He stuck his head in at floor level.

  And recoiled at the smell.

  The barn smelled like recently burned rubber. The stench clung to the settled air in the barn. The space was vast. A concrete foundation. Enough room for two or three large tractors, the kind that harvest wheat. Flynn wasn’t sure of the terminology. Reapers? Combines? But there were no tractors. There was just a large expanse of dirty concrete floor up the center of the barn. There were fluorescent tubes strung from the rafters lighting the space. Along the right side of the barn were machines. Heavy solid things. On the left side was a small forklift truck, and pallets of black stuff wrapped in plastic. He kept his Glock trained in the barn and pressed himself up, took a deep breath of outside air and stepped inside.

  He moved right, against the row of machines, his weapon trained as he swept the space. The machines he passed were both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It looked like the motor pool on an army barracks. He had seen similar things, and could guess at others. He had never owned a personal vehicle. His parents had owned cars, and the Legion had had vehicles of all types and sizes. But he had never owned a car himself. He had never maintained one. Never had to tune an engine or rotate the tires. But he had seen such things happen. The machines seemed designed to hold tires upright and spin them. One machine had an abrasive buffer on it. Another was attached to a computer that he had seen a soldat in the French army operate. It was meant to balance tires, whatever that meant.

  He crossed the floor to the other side. The pallets were stacked high with thin strips of rubber about four inches wide. He followed the pallets to the far end of the barn and then crossed back to the other side. There he found two machines that looked like they were designed to make giant donuts. One was much larger than the other. They were curved like a donut, and when he looked inside, he saw there were bumps on the inside of the shell. The machines were molds. For affixing new treads to old tires. There was a whole process to it. Taking the old rubber off, abrading it so the new rubber would stick, and then heating the rubber and molding it. That was where the smell was coming from. There wasn’t sufficient air flow to take it away.