Mr. and Mrs. Sandoval clung to each other. They looked more shell-shocked than assured. And I could empathize.
Marc returned, dressed in his street clothes. He clutched his car keys in his hand. Without a word, he marched outside.
Barrett and I went after him.
Marc yanked open his car door.
“Whoa, Sandoval,” Barrett said. “Where are you going?”
Marc ignored him. He radiated anger like the sun radiates heat. He got in the car, slammed the door, started up the vehicle—and I jumped into the passenger seat beside him.
“Marc, where are you going?”
“I’m going to see Lucy Ribisi. I’m going to shake Elena’s location out of her—”
“And then what?” I demanded. “You’re going to kidnap Ruby, phone Max Ribisi in your best falsetto voice, and set up the swap, pretending to be Elena?”
“Ribisi won’t give a damn who I am as long as I say I’m going to bring him his kid.”
I reached across the console, switched off the engine, and pulled Marc’s keys from the ignition.
“I know you, Marc. You’re not going to hand over a twelve-year-old girl to a gangster.”
On the steering wheel, Marc’s hands tightened. Wordlessly, he bumped his forehead against the wheel’s soft grip again and again. And that’s when his cellphone, in his jacket pocket, began to jangle.
Marc slid the phone from his pocket. He didn’t even look at it. He just put it to his ear.
“Sandoval,” he said.
And in a heartbeat, his entire demeanor changed. Marc laid his mobile on the flat of his hand. He hit the speaker feature—and Elena’s voice filtered through the phone.
“—and then Lucy told me everything.”
“Elena,” Marc said, “if you’re with Lucy and Ruby Ribisi, you need to contact the U.S. Marshals immediately.”
“They’ve done all they can, Marc. When Lucy was notified of Max Ribisi’s release, she came back to Colorado to talk it over with the marshal she’s been seeing. He tried to help her. He tried to protect Ruby. But you see how it’s all worked out.”
“If you turn Ruby over to the marshals,” Marc reasoned, “she’ll be safe. Lucy will be safe—”
“But what about Cody?” Elena fought to keep her voice from jumping an octave. “Marc, Ribisi’s got Cody. If he doesn’t get Ruby, he’s got no reason to let our son go.”
“We’ll get Cody back. I swear to you—”
“I’ve got Ribisi’s number,” Elena interrupted. “I’m going to call him now. I’m going to cut a deal with him now.”
“You can’t—”
“Be ready, Marc. I’m going to see that Cody is safe.”
Her speech thickened and I knew she was crying.
She said, “I love that boy more than life itself. Tell him that, Marc. Tell him that from me.”
“Elena, don’t hang up.”
But the hollow sound of dead air was the only answer.
“This is not happening,” Marc muttered.
Except, of course, it was.
With Elena’s intervention, there was no way I could pretend to be her and call Max Ribisi on the phone that he’d provided. No way I could bluff my way to meeting him. And no way I could lead Marc, Barrett, or the FBI to him—and to Cody.
But I refused to accept that I was powerless.
I went into the house, and as Marc and Barrett put their heads together, I did the one thing I could think of. I retreated to the privacy of Marc’s boyhood bedroom. And there, I made a phone call.
“Ms. Sinclair,” Marshal Ingram said, picking up immediately. “How’s the Lone Star State?”
“I imagine you could look out your window and tell me yourself.”
Ingram laughed, and the sound was as light and pleasing as a waterfall.
“You have a point,” she said, “but I’m not here on official business.”
“Does that go for Marshal Douglas, too?”
Ingram paused as she thought about how much to reveal to me.
“He’s in Texas as well,” she admitted, “though we’re not traveling together. As a matter of fact, he also took leave. You, however, might know more about his plans than I do. Seeing as how you stole his phone.”
“I prefer to think of it as ‘mined it for information,’ ” I told her. “And I left it on the steps of Dustin Toomey’s church, if he really wants it back.”
“I think he has other things on his mind.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s why I’m calling.”
I told Ingram about Douglas’s relationship with Lucy Ribisi. She’d suspected as much. But the text messages I’d found on his phone were the clincher. I went on to explain how he’d helped Lucy fake her death in Omaha. And I told her how Max Ribisi hadn’t believed her to be dead for an instant.
“Douglas’s judgment regarding Max and Lucy Ribisi has raised some eyebrows in recent weeks,” Ingram admitted. “And not just mine.”
“He’s doing his best to protect Lucy and Ruby,” I said. “I’ve got to give him credit for that. But he’s made some grave errors. When Ribisi couldn’t locate his ex-wife and daughter, Douglas was happy to let him pursue the assistant federal prosecutor who worked the deal.”
“Elena Preble,” Ingram said, and she quoted my own words back to me. “Douglas let Ribisi ‘run the wrong fox to ground.’ ”
“Exactly. As a result, Ribisi has wiped out most of Elena’s family to pressure her into rolling over on Lucy. Kidnapping her son is the last straw as far as I’m concerned.”
“And far as Special Agent Sandoval’s concerned, too.”
“Yes,” I said. “Now, here’s the thing…”
I told her how Ribisi had managed to phone Lucy, how he’d demanded his daughter, and how Lucy, desperate to protect her child and less than confident in Douglas in that regard, sent Ruby off with Elena, an understanding mother and the person who’d helped her in the first place. But now Elena was taking matters into her own hands. And she just might try to trade the girl for Cody.
“If she attempts that,” Ingram said, “Ribisi could end up holding all the cards.”
“We can’t let that happen,” I reminded her. “Cody has to come out of this, but so does Ruby.”
I could hear Ingram thinking—and I took that as a good sign.
At last, she said, “Keep close to your phone.”
I promised I would.
And she disconnected.
Chapter 41
Time stood still. My phone didn’t ring. Barrett and I scoured the Sandovals’ backyard for footprints, fibers, anything that could indicate which of Ribisi’s men had carried Cody away and where they could be right now. We canvassed the neighbors. We grilled them about strange vehicles, strange men, strange sights, and strange sounds. We came up with nothing. We did everything anybody could—and it still wasn’t enough.
Like mine, Marc’s phone remained silent. His parents’ landline, however, rang off the hook. And so did their doorbell.
Friends called, arrived, commiserated, brought more casseroles, overstayed their welcome, and left only to be replaced by more friends, neighbors, long-lost relatives, well-wishers, the parish priest, and assorted hangers-on. A pair of somber FBI agents met with Marc. They asked Mrs. Sandoval to go over her story of discovering Cody gone. The mind and memory are funny things, and interviewing witnesses at various intervals can jog their brains and bring up observations suppressed during the panic of an event. But Mrs. Sandoval couldn’t come up with a single additional detail that made a lick of difference.
In the middle of the afternoon, I caught Barrett and Marc with their heads together in a corner of the great room. Barrett immediately left the house. He drove off in our rental car. Ten minutes later, he returned on foot. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been and Marc kept mum, too.
The remainder of the day dragged on. The visitors chattered incessantly. Mrs. Sandoval wept because she could no longer hold back her tears. Mr. Sandoval tried t
o comfort his wife. He tried to stand near his son. He tried to stay out of the way.
We had no answers, no ideas, no inkling.
We had no peace.
And just as someone got the bright idea to heap food onto plates and hand them around, Marc appeared at my side. He showed me his cellphone, hidden in his hand. A single text message lit up his screen.
It was from Elena.
Be ready, it read, at Lucy’s.
The message electrified me. I looked around for Barrett, spotted him standing beside the sliding glass door. His eyes met mine and he disappeared onto the patio.
He already knew, I realized. Marc had already shown him. And Barrett must’ve moved the car earlier in the day in anticipation of this message.
Now we could sneak away.
And we did.
And when we were on the road with Barrett at the wheel, Marc in the backseat, and me riding shotgun, my phone chimed.
“Ingram’s onto Douglas,” I said, paraphrasing the text. “And Douglas is at Lucy’s.”
“Did he bring backup?” Barrett asked.
“He’s on his own. And given what he’s been up to, I think he wants it that way.”
“Is Ribisi at Lucy’s?” Marc asked.
“Yes.” I buried my phone in my pocket. “Ingram counted six men, but believes there may be more. And she says they look like they’re digging in to stay.”
“As long as I get Cody out,” Marc growled, “I don’t give a damn what they do.”
“We’ll get Cody out,” I said.
And that was a promise.
We found the Bonnie Bluebonnet B&B exactly where we’d left it, on a quiet road running through the heart of Texas Hill Country. An orange springtime sun had begun to set behind the tall Victorian house. Night was on its way—and that would work to our advantage.
Barrett drove past the place one time and one time only. We couldn’t risk Ribisi’s boys noticing a return trip. But once was enough to note that Lucy’s oval sign, which had swung from the wide porch’s eaves, had been ripped down and cast aside. One of her nice oak kitchen chairs had been set up to block the sidewalk, too. And the strip of cardboard tacked to it proclaimed, CLOSED, DO NOT ENTER.
Every light on the first floor appeared to be burning bright. The next two levels were dark, and so were the cellar’s window wells. But the lamplight and the coming darkness meant we’d be able to see into the house while those inside would have a hard time looking out.
With the help of our car’s GPS, we found a dirt track that snaked from the main road to arc in the general direction of the B&B’s back forty.
And when we could see the Victorian’s peaked roof winking one last time in the rays of the setting sun, Barrett pulled off the road and into a clump of purple sage.
“We can still call in the FBI,” I said.
“You know what will happen to Cody if we do,” Marc replied.
I did know. Because Ribisi had told me. When he’d thought I was Elena, he’d warned me that I’d be choosing a coffin for Cody if I stepped over the line. And the FBI, with their hostage negotiators, tactical teams, and tear gas would definitely be stepping over the line.
“Then everyone remember where we parked,” I said, and reached up to disable the dome light.
And then we were out of the Chevy, keeping to the natural cover growing from the earth, and roaming across the rolling terrain with our eyes on the house ahead and anything that moved.
About thirty yards to the left of Lucy’s tall kitchen windows, a stand of small cottonwoods embraced the advancing night. We jumped the creek behind them and dropped into their dense shade. The first stars emerged to dot the velvet sky overhead. There would be no moon. But five long rectangles of golden light poured from the kitchen’s windowpanes.
To the right, a man I’d never seen before leaned in the doorway of Lucy’s mudroom, smoking a cigarette. Its smell was cheap and strong. Its coal end glowed, and when he finished with it, he tossed it into the mulch border of a flower bed.
He stepped down onto the flagstone patio, and as if he were on patrol, he paced along the back of the house. He passed through each of the glowing rectangles, and in their ambient light, I could make out two window wells in the foundation and a metal flap that had to be access to an old coal chute. The guy was no perimeter guard, however. When he reached the edge of the stonework, he unzipped his fly. And he peed onto a pretty swath of bluebonnets.
Returning to the kitchen, he veered toward the coal chute. He kicked the metal plate, clang, clang, clang. He went indoors with a hearty laugh—but I didn’t get the joke.
When nothing else moved and no one appeared, Barrett signaled that he’d swing to the left. Marc flashed a thumbs-up, indicated he’d take the right. They’d work their way to the front of the house, immobilizing threats and getting the lay of the land.
Marc was armed, but his semiautomatic wouldn’t do him a lot of good against an entire crowd of thugs, each probably packing some serious firepower of his own. No, the goal was to even the odds. And then get the kids out.
That was where I came in. Smaller, lighter, and faster, I could find Cody and Ruby. And my mission started as full-on night began.
Under the cover of darkness, Barrett caught my hand. He gave it a squeeze to wish me luck and remind me that we both had something to live for. And then he was gone, moving rapidly and not looking back.
Marc, too, took off for his side of the house. But before he left the cover of the cottonwoods, he stopped. I could sense him rather than see him return. He yanked me to him, kissed me hard, hot, and hurried, and left me breathless. It was his apology, and his final profession of love.
Because there was a good chance none of us would be coming back.
Chapter 42
I drew a deep, cool breath, willed my heart rate to slow. Marc was gone now, into the blackness, and so was Barrett. And despite every feeling stirred up inside of me, I had to set emotion aside—so I did.
Leaving the shadows of the cottonwoods, I crouched low and ran for Lucy’s kitchen windows. Dropping flat against the white clapboard below the first one, I eased my nose over the edge of the sill. I could be spotted if someone in the house chose to look my way, but with darkness outside and light blazing within, I had the upper hand.
The knife Lucy had thrown at me still protruded from the cabinet door, except now, her happy red apron dangled from it. The lid from her cookie jar had been cast aside and cracked. An empty jug of milk sat on the candy-maker’s marble slab, surrounded by a ring of filmy glasses. Lucy herself was nowhere in sight, and neither was Douglas. Recalling the end of Don and Sheree Strathmeyer, together in death, shot through the head in their own claw-footed tub, I hoped Lucy and her lover had met a better fate.
But I didn’t count on it.
The quarter-sawn oak table of her breakfast nook was now the site of a poker game, with a heap of cash as the pot in the middle. Ribisi sat at the head of the table, a fan of cards in his hand and a beer bottle at his elbow. His gunman, the skeevy guy in the filthy undershirt, still had his .38 tucked in the waistband of his pants. I could tell because he’d leaned so far back in his chair, the rear legs could fly out from under him at any moment. Two more men had bellied up to the table, and all of them were drinking and having a rollicking good time—especially at the expense of the brunette banished to stand in the corner.
She was a lovely woman with a generous mouth, button nose, and hair that probably curled like crazy if she were to release it from its bun. I recognized her from her photo on file with Colorado’s Office of Barber and Cosmetology Licensure, but also from Marc’s description. She was Cody’s mother, Elena Preble.
A semicircle of brown glass curved around her feet. Round bruises had already darkened her arms, left bare by her tank top. A cut above her left eye bled freely. And it didn’t take me long to realize why. Mr. Undershirt polished off his beer and threw his bottle at her. Creep Number One drew a card, cursed his luck, and t
hrew his bottle, too. One struck her leg before falling to the floor to shatter and the other smashed on the wall beside her head. She cringed with fear and nicks and cuts, and the men just laughed and laughed.
But beneath the roaring braggadocio, I heard a whimper and a cry. I stepped away from the window and deeper into darkness. The night seemed to hold its breath all around me, as if nothing in nature dared to make a sound. And then I heard it again: a child’s soft sobs and a gentle shushing. The noises came from the cover of the coal chute.
Now the man’s kicking it made sense to me. Like his boss, Max Ribisi, he was a bully and a brute. And he kicked the coal chute’s cover to scare Cody stiff—because that’s where Ribisi had stashed him.
I swung the panel open slowly, listened intently. Someone was definitely down there. But I couldn’t see into a coal bin in the night.
I knelt on the flagstones, wriggled into the chute feet first. The opening was narrow and my hips didn’t like it. I gripped the lip of the frame, pushed myself deeper. The chute’s liner felt like tin. It creaked with my weight.
Stray nail heads caught at my clothes. I slipped south all of sudden. The chute’s cover flapped closed above me. And then I was sliding until I was falling. I landed on the cold packed-earth floor in a heap.
I staggered to my feet, heard a sharp gasp.
“Cody?”
The snuffling grew louder, but the boy didn’t speak. I felt through my pockets for my cellphone. Calling up its flashlight function, I shone it around.
In a corner of the coal bin, black with coal dust, a little boy in dinosaur pajamas and a gangly twelve-year-old girl cowered together like Hansel and Gretel in the house of the hungry hag.
“Jamie!” Cody squealed, and Ruby rushed to shush him.
Overhead, chairs creaked and men laughed. I heard the rumble of their voices. And the shattering of their beer bottles.
I dropped to my knees beside the kids and whispered. “Are you guys okay?”
Cody nodded eagerly.
Ruby was cautious. And I couldn’t blame her. Her lower lip was split and wet with fresh blood, and beneath the black of the coal dust, the side of her face was turning blue.
The Kill Wire Page 25