The Hiding Place

by Paula Munier

  She listened but heard nothing. “Are you sure about this?”

  Elvis didn’t answer. Just kept his nose pointed toward the door, unmoving in his posture and his conviction.

  “Okay.” She pulled her Swiss Army knife from her cargo pants pocket and pulled out its thinnest tool. The light was somewhat brighter down here at this end of the chamber but still too murky to pick a lock by. Lockpicking was an art she’d learned from Martinez, whose clever hands could pick locks, play the guitar, and field strip and reassemble a rifle blindfolded in less time than anyone else in the battalion. Teaching her to do the same was one way they amused themselves during the downtime between missions. She never did master the guitar, but her rifle breakdown and reassembly timing soon rivaled his own. And she could pick a lock efficiently as well, although rarely as quickly as he could.

  In the civilian world, there wasn’t much call for the blindfolded rifle business, but since leaving the military she’d been called upon to break into a surprising number of locked facilities. She stuck the flashlight under her chin and held it in place with her raised shoulder, spotlighting the padlock. She angled the thin tool into the lock mechanism. The flashlight slipped and she nudged it back into place and started again. She wiggled the tool to trip the mechanism, pulling the shackle out of the body of the lock. Snapping the tool back into the Swiss Army knife, she stowed the knife and the padlock back into her pants pocket. Martinez would be proud.

  She opened the metal door.

  “Patience!” There on the toilet slumped her grandmother, ankles and hands bound with yellow nylon rope, silver duct tape slapped across her mouth and around her head.

  Elvis squeezed by Mercy, placing his front paws on Patience’s knees and leaning forward, licking her face. Her grandmother opened her eyes and those baby blues shone with affection at the sight of Mercy and Elvis.

  “This is going to hurt,” Mercy warned. Elvis kept his head in Patience’s lap while she unwound the duct tape from her grandmother’s head as gently as possible. Then she used her knife to slice off the rope that bound her hands and feet.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said Patience. “But very, very glad to see you and this sweet boy here.” She rubbed her hands together and then buried them in the Malinois’s neck, scratching under the collar where dogs most appreciated it.

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t know. These guys in a Subaru pulled up in the parking lot and the driver waved me over, told me he had a calf in trouble. I told him I’d get my kit and meet him at his barn but when I walked around the car, the passenger from the front seat intercepted me. I felt this arm around me and this sickly-sweet-smelling cloth in my face, and then nothing. Chloroform, no doubt. The next thing I know I’m in this place. What is it?”

  “It’s a bunker. Behind a dilapidated 1950s ranch in the middle of nowhere in Rutland County.”

  “That makes no sense at all.”

  “I’ll explain it later. Elvis, up.” The shepherd backed away from Patience. “Where is Claude?”

  “He’s safe. I sent him home to Quebec.”

  “Well, that was premature.” Mercy helped Patience to her feet.

  “Don’t I know it.” Her grandmother clutched her hands.

  “You’re shaking.” Mercy clucked her lips. “Go, Elvis.”

  “I’m fine. Just get me out of here.”

  The shepherd left the water closet, and Mercy followed him, half-carrying Patience.

  “Do you think you can make it up those stairs?”

  “Absolutely.” Her grandmother looked around. “This place is creepy.”

  Mercy guided Patience down the room, but she kept stumbling.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself. Let me carry you.”

  “I can do it.” But with her very next steps, Patience wobbled so badly that Mercy caught her just as she started crashing toward the concrete floor.

  “Hold on.” She leaned over and placed her hands on her knees. “Come on, we’ll piggyback it.”

  “No way.”

  “Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here before whoever put you here comes back.”

  “Don’t tell me you came here alone?”

  “This from the woman who sent Claude home.”

  “I was wrong about that.” Patience moved behind Mercy’s back and wrapped her good arm and her legs around Mercy’s waist and chest.

  “You think?” She tucked her forearms under her grandmother’s knees and straightened up. “Let’s go.”

  “Put me down.”

  “Don’t fuss, you’ll just make it harder for me.” Fortunately Patience was a trim woman, so Mercy could manage carrying her down the length of the bunker to the staircase. But carrying her up those steps would be a challenge. She stopped at the foot of the stairs for a breather.

  “Go on up,” she said to Elvis, and the shepherd sprinted up to the hatch and disappeared from view. Mercy began the slow and steady ascent, Patience leaning her head against her shoulder.

  “You really are my favorite granddaughter,” she whispered in Mercy’s ear.

  “I better be.”

  When they reached the top of the steps, Elvis was waiting for them, ears perked and curlicue tail at attention. Susie Bear’s big pumpkin head appeared next to the shepherd’s handsome face.

  Troy was last to appear in the frame. “Let me help you.”

  She leaned out and over the hatch. She felt his strong arms embrace her grandmother and pull her to her feet.

  Patience gave the game warden a sweet pat on the cheek. “Thank you.” She stepped aside to greet the dogs, who were deliriously pleased to see her, licking and wagging and snorting and sniffing their favorite veterinarian. Not looking for treats but making sure she was all right. But she had treats in her fanny pack, as always.

  “My pleasure.” Troy extended his hand to Mercy, and she grasped it. He lifted her out of the bunker and onto the solid if snowy ground.

  “Everyone okay?”

  “I’m good,” said Mercy.

  Patience smiled. “I’m good, too. Now. I was beginning to get worried.”

  “Is the house clear?” asked Mercy.

  “All clear. But ransacked, just like the others.” He regarded her grandmother with concern. “Did you recognize the guys who kidnapped you?”

  “No. The driver had a baseball cap pulled low onto his forehead. He had deep-set black eyes and he needed a shave. The other guy wore dark ski clothes and a hoodie.”

  “What about the guy in the back seat?”

  “I never got a good look at him.”

  “Any of them from the security video?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think you’d recognize the passenger if you saw him again?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I tried calling for backup but there’s no signal out here,” he said. “We don’t know when these guys are coming back. We should leave now and take Patience back to the truck, where we can call for assistance and let Harrington’s Major Crime Unit take over. They can track these guys down, and we can get you all home safe and sound.”

  The distant rumble of snowmobiles pierced the gloomy quiet of the deserted Woznicki homestead.

  “We’re out of time,” Mercy said.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. I’ll take Patience.” He scooped up her grandmother into his arms with ease and strode for the snowmobiles, which they’d parked up by the edge of the driveway just short of the crescent that fronted the house. Mercy and the dogs huffed alongside him.

  “I’ve got the bigger touring snowmobile,” he said, “so Patience rides with me. No arguments.”

  “Good call.” Mercy had to admit that Troy was a far more skillful sledder than she was, and certainly he was more experienced riding the snow machines with heavy loads.

  When they reached the snowmobiles, he put Patience down. He climbed onto the larger of the sleds, and Mercy helped h
er grandmother get on it behind Troy. Her cast made holding on to the rear handles a challenge. “Forget those. Lean into him. Grip his waist with your knees and hold on to his chest with your good arm as best you can.”

  “You can’t hurt me,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  He handed her a helmet and Mercy tugged it on over her grandmother’s head. Troy slipped on his helmet and revved the engine. The two of them roared off toward the truck, Susie Bear loping behind, moving as powerfully along in the snow as a polar bear.

  Elvis perked his triangular ears at her as if to say, let’s go already. Mercy swept her unruly curls off her forehead and clamped her helmet over her hair before it could get away. Climbing onto her snowmobile, she hurtled after Troy and her grandmother. Elvis raced with her, keeping up easily.

  She put on the speed to catch up to Troy. He was more comfortable going fast than she was on these monsters. She felt the enormous power of the machine as she zoomed up to pull alongside Troy and her grandmother.

  The distant rumble of the other snowmobiles was not so distant anymore.

  “I’ll head them off,” she shouted above the din. “You get Patience to the truck.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Hold on, Patience,” yelled Troy.

  They shot forward on the snowmobile, rocketing towards the truck. He hated leaving Mercy behind to serve as the diversion. But he knew that her first priority was her grandmother and she wouldn’t have it any other way. The best thing he could do for Mercy was keep her grandmother safe.

  Susie Bear galloped behind the snowmobile. When she wanted to, she could run nearly thirty miles an hour. Even so, the Newfie retriever was falling behind as Troy hit sixty miles an hour on the snow machine. His sled could go more than a hundred miles an hour, but he didn’t want to risk losing Patience, who was hanging on for dear life. He looked in the rearview mirror, but he couldn’t see anything but forest behind him. The whine of distant snowmobiles faded; the only snowmobile he could hear now was his own. He’d either outpaced the bad guys or Mercy had completely succeeded in sidetracking them, or both.

  “Nearly there,” he told Patience as his Ford F-150 came into sight. Patience didn’t say anything, but he could feel her shivering against his back. As they plowed along, he could feel the solidity of the fiberglass cast protecting her broken wrist strike his torso with the precision of a metronome. He hoped the rough events of the past forty-eight hours hadn’t worn her out too much. Like her granddaughter, she was tough, but she was also only human—something he wasn’t sure either of them liked to admit.

  Troy was never so glad to see his truck in his life. He slowed the sled down as they approached the vehicle, easing up on the throttle and slowing to a stop. He parked the machine right by the passenger side of the Ford F-150.

  He helped Patience maneuver off the snowmobile and gently lifted her helmet from her silver-blond head. He yanked his own headgear off and dismounted. “Are you all right? You look a little shook up.”

  She stomped her feet in the snow and ran her hands through her hair. “If this game warden thing doesn’t work out, you might consider a career as a snowmobile racer.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “We’re not there yet.” He opened the truck door for her. “Let me help you up.”

  “We can’t leave,” said Patience.

  He gripped her around her waist with both hands and lifted her onto the seat. “Buckle up.”

  She gripped his arms with the strong fingers of a seasoned veterinarian. “We can’t leave without Mercy.”

  “We’ve got to get you out of here. That’s what she wants.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She turned those bright blue eyes on him. “I’m a good shot.”

  Troy didn’t doubt that for a minute. Seemed like everyone in Mercy’s family was a good shot. Maybe even her mother.

  Patience grinned. “I was married to a cop. I know you have a weapon to spare in here somewhere.”

  Susie Bear barged up to the truck, placing her big paws on Patience’s lap, plumed tail wagging.

  “Go help Mercy,” she told Troy, scratching the Newfie mutt between the ears where she liked it most. “I’ve got Susie Bear to protect me. And that gun you’re going to give me.”

  Troy sighed. He knew Patience would never take no for an answer. And he really didn’t want to leave Mercy on her own. He knew she could take care of herself, and she had Elvis, but the guys she was up against were dangerous.

  “Okay.” He handed her his smartphone and his gun and pointed to the radio. “Call for backup. There’s more ammo in the back if you need it. But try not to shoot anybody.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He closed her door and then grabbed a rifle from the cab, leaving the door open for Susie Bear. She vaulted up into the back, and then pushed her considerable bulk over the console in the middle to take up her position as guard dog in the driver’s seat.

  “Good dog,” he said to Susie Bear. “Stay.”

  “We will,” said Patience. “Now go get our girl.”

  * * *

  MERCY SPED AWAY, in the opposite direction of Troy’s truck, toward the bunker. She knew Elvis would follow her. She steered the snow machine in a wide circle, passing right in front of the three guys on snowmobiles who were after them, two of them on one machine and one riding solo. The men who’d most likely snatched her grandmother and hog-tied Becker and Goodlove. They wore balaclavas under their helmets, looking more like aliens from a planet without snow than criminals on the run in wintry New England.

  She wondered who they were. If George Rucker was one of them, who were the other two? Maybe Simko and another ex-con pal?

  What did they hope to gain by kidnapping Patience? Revenge seemed like a far-fetched motive, after all these years. It was clear that, whoever they were, they were looking for something in all these houses, and usually that something was money. George had already killed her grandfather, killing Patience seemed like, well, overkill. She knew that revenge drove people mad—Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge—but there must be more to it than that. Especially for the others, the ones who weren’t George.

  When they saw her coming, they took the bait and stormed through the snow after her. She bounced over a small rise and plunged down the slope, riding the machine like a runaway pony. This was faster than she’d ever gone before on a snowmobile. She could glance at the speedometer but she didn’t dare.

  Fast but not fast enough. The snowmobilers surged up to her, hemming her in between their speeding snow machines. She pumped the brake, slowing down her machine, and let her pursuers tear ahead.

  These guys are real sledheads, she thought. She couldn’t outrace them, so she’d have to outsmart them.

  She headed for the woods. She spotted a trail to the right, and she gunned for it. The guys spun around in fierce sweeps of snow and barreled back toward her. She hit the trail first and scouted the route ahead. The trees grew thicker as she maneuvered the machine deeper into the woods. Stands of beech and birch gave way to dense knits of hemlock, cedar, and spruce. The sledding was more complicated here on this ungroomed trail and she was forced to slow down to avoid hanging branches and fallen logs and random boulders.

  Mercy could hear the sleds storming behind her. The trail narrowed, barely room for two abreast now. No way for three. The good news was that they couldn’t hem her in again. The bad news was they drove their sleds faster and more furiously.

  Ahead she could see that the trail forked and as she approached the parting of ways she leaned toward the right, then steered to the left at the last minute. The guys directly behind her couldn’t correct course fast enough and slammed into a snow-covered tangle of trunks, shrubs, and brambles.

  But the other sledder made the turn. She could feel him gaining on her, but this side of the fork was tougher to navigate. Branches broad enough and low enough to knock her right off her sled stretched right across the path. She’d obviously
taken the road less traveled by.

  She was forced to slow down to avoid the low-slung limbs—as was her pursuer. But given his superior sledding skills he was bound to overtake her sooner rather than later.

  A sliver of silver-white shone beyond the edge of forest, and Mercy knew they were headed for a body of water. Frozen water. A sudden movement to her left, and Elvis shot out of the trees and tackled her pursuer. He swerved wildly on his snow machine but held on. In the rearview mirror she saw Elvis land on his feet and keep on running, back off the trail and into the woods.

  She knew the stubborn shepherd would try it again. Now that they were in the woods they couldn’t go quite as fast, and Elvis could catch them up with all his shortcuts through the trees. Mercy could see a clearing ahead now, frozen marshland that fronted the lake beyond. As soon as she crossed the boundary between woods and wetland, she went full throttle, blazing over the open ground, the sledhead in swift pursuit. About fifty feet across the frozen marsh, she executed a wide turn, cutting the guy off. He revved his engine and aimed for the frozen lake that shimmered beyond the cattails.

  Mercy smiled. Now the man in balaclava was the one on the run. She was the cat and he was the mouse.

  She’d corner him at the cattails, where the frozen marsh became frozen lake. Traversing the lake this time of year was too dangerous, and she and Elvis would catch him as he tried to find another exit route.

  The ice did not always hold during the Ides of March, that dangerous time marking the seasons of endings and beginnings, when what appeared thick as a block may be just a thin layer of ice ready to crack. Underneath its seemingly solid surface, she knew that the great pond seethed with life. Fish swam in restless circles, pushing their pale mouths against the cold barrier, tapping tapping tapping at the frozen veil between winter and spring, longing to leap up and out into warmer air come summer.

  The man on the snowmobile did not stop at the edge of the frozen marsh. He flew out across the lake while she slowed to a stop just beyond the stand of cattails. Before her lay an icy expanse of white shadowed by perilous patches of gray and silver and blue.