Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  “That’s the spirit,” Travis said. “Give me the number for your burn phone.”

  She lit the display and read it to him. Then she said, “Let me talk to Piper.”

  “This isn’t a cheap action movie. You don’t get to talk to anybody.”

  “No proof of life, no Oscar.”

  He was quiet a bit. “No, you’re right. It would be best to remind you of the importance of doing as I tell you.”

  She leaned her forehead against the pay phone, her chest tightening. Soon she heard noise and muffled voices.

  Piper’s voice was thin. “Harper?”

  “You’re going to be okay.” Harper strained to keep her own voice level. “I’m going to get you out of there.”

  “I’m so scared,” Piper said. “These guys . . .”

  Harper could hardly bear it. “I’m going to bring you home. Hear me? Piper, I’m going to bring you home.”

  “They said if the police come, they’ll kill me. They took my phone and sent texts to people, like I was fine. They made me call Mom and Dad and say I was at a basketball game so nobody would know they have me. I don’t understand, Harper. Don’t they want money?”

  “Piper. Stay steady. Dig deep and hold on. I’m coming.”

  “You couldn’t get Drew out of Xenon. Can you get me out of here?”

  Claws to the heart. Harper leaned heavily on the phone.

  Piper’s voice filled with tears. “Help me. Please. I’m begging you.”

  “I hear you. Hang in there. Can you do that?”

  The tears were in Harper’s eyes, too. She swallowed, and they ran down her throat. “I’m going to help you. Do you understand?”

  Piper sobbed.

  “Do you understand? Say it,” Harper said.

  After another sob, Piper said, “I understand.”

  “You are a strong fucking girl. Do you understand? Say it.”

  “I am a strong fucking girl.”

  “I will find you, Piper. Wherever you are. I will bring you home.”

  There was a pause. “Like the Pied Piper? Hansel and Gretel? Ariadne?”

  Harper’s mouth hung open. What?

  “Please, Harper. Please—omigod, let go . . .”

  Noises erupted on the other end of the line. Piper’s voice rose and was abruptly silenced.

  “Travis, Jesus Christ, leave her alone,” Harper said. “Don’t hurt her.”

  His voice was smooth and about two degrees above freezing. “I take care of the merchandise,” he said. “I covered her mouth so nobody has to hear her mewling.”

  Harper gripped the pay phone. “If Zero touches her, I’ll hurt you so bad your grandchildren will feel it a hundred years from now.”

  In her hand, the new burn phone vibrated. On the brightly lit display were GPS coordinates—latitude and longitude.

  “That’s where you’re heading,” Travis said.

  She thumbed the burn phone and brought up the physical location of the coordinates on a map.

  “That’s in Canyon Country,” she said.

  The map pictured a bright blue pushpin for the destination, on a stretch of road at the far north end of Los Angeles County. Past the city limits, past the suburbs and strip malls and amusement parks and horse ranches, over the pass and on the down slope to the high desert. It was seventy miles away.

  “It should take you ninety minutes to drive to those coordinates from your present location on Wilshire,” Travis said.

  She calculated. Once she cleared the morass of the L.A. freeways, it should be clear sailing.

  “Be there in an hour,” he said.

  “Hey, hell are you trying—”

  “You failed to answer this pay phone when I first called it,” Travis said. “As a penalty for that failure, you lose thirty minutes.”

  She slammed the receiver down. He may have continued talking, but she had no time to hear it. She ran up the street, pulling out her car keys. Behind her, she heard Aiden’s footsteps.

  With her new phone, she quickly dialed Sorenstam. “We’re heading north to the desert. Busting ass.” She didn’t wait for Sorenstam to answer. She just ran.

  39

  Sorenstam followed Harper’s taillights along Wilshire Boulevard, headed for the freeway. The sun was below the horizon in the west, tinting the car windows red. Oscar slouched in the passenger seat, his entire posture a grumble.

  Radio to her mouth, she said, “They’re going north to the Antelope Valley.”

  Her lieutenant was curt. “Let them go.”

  “I need to see how this plays out.”

  “You’ve been playing along far too long, Detective.”

  Her blood slowly boiled up. “What if I let them go and this isn’t nothing? Nobody from LAPD or the Palos Verdes Police has actually seen Piper Westerman, have they? She hasn’t arrived home yet, right?”

  “That doesn’t mean—”

  “We’re talking about a sixteen-year-old girl. If it turns out that she’s actually been abducted, do you want to be the one who has to tell her parents, and FOX TV, that the sheriff’s department stood down? I don’t.”

  “Detective Sorenstam, I need you to return to the station. We’re shorthanded.”

  “One hour. Give me sixty minutes. We’ll know by then if this is for real or not.”

  He breathed. Finally, he said, “Sixty minutes. No more.”

  “Thank you.” She clicked off and pulled out her phone to call Aiden. When he answered, she said, “You’ve got sixty minutes. If you want my backup, you need proof by then.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  She hung up. Oscar was looking at her.

  “Are we going to follow them?” he said.

  “From a distance.”

  “You calling in a surveillance team? Double up?”

  She drove. “I’m going to call the Kern County Sheriff’s Office to let them know their missing person has turned up safe and sound.”

  “Nobody who cares about me would call it in the way they did,” he said. “My friends would put their name to it.”

  He looked at her. She understood. She got on the 405 heading north. He slouched lower in the seat, knowing who might lie ahead.

  Harper kept one hand on the gearshift, changing lanes and dodging in and out of traffic on the long slope down the 405. Ahead, the lights of the valley spread like a vast electric yellow bowl. She was going eighty-five, and if that damned pickup hauling a horse trailer didn’t move out of her way, she was going to veer right and pass him on the shoulder. Aiden sat almost motionless in the passenger seat, but his legs were jammed hard against the foot well, as though he couldn’t keep himself from invisibly trying to brake.

  Forty-five miles to go. The dashboard clock told her she had forty-three minutes left.

  The horse trailer signaled and pulled out of her way.

  “Finally.” She shifted into fifth and accelerated.

  Ahead of her was a river of red taillights, all the way to the bottom of the pass and beyond. She kept her foot hard on the pedal. Aiden glanced at the speedometer.

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’s this or nothing.”

  She glanced in the rearview mirror, the headlights hitting her eyes hard.

  “If a cops flashes you, what then?” Aiden said. “Pull over and let them give you a ticket, I’d recommend.”

  That would take ten minutes. “Drive it like I stole it.”

  “Run from a flashing light and you lose any chance of getting to Piper. They’d catch you live on TV.”

  “So I’m going to make sure no flashing lights get on my tail. They are not even going to spot us.”

  He gave her a look like: Good luck with that.

  “You watch for LAPD or CHP. And I mean with eyes you didn’t even know you had,” she sa
id.

  He continued looking at her for another long second.

  “What?” she said.

  “I see why people wanted you driving getaway.”

  She didn’t know if he meant it as a compliment. If not, she didn’t have time to feel offended. They were in this now, and he would either trust her or not.

  “We’re going to get her,” she said. “We’re going to get Piper back.”

  She hit the bottom of the hill, holding hard to the wheel through what should have been an easy turn at the speed limit. Forty minutes left. Thirty-seven miles.

  “We’re ahead,” she said.

  She blew past the 101 and headed north across the valley. Her heart was drumming, her mouth dry. The freeway stayed clear. Until they reached the mountains at the north end of the valley. They saw the red flick of traffic braking ahead of them, accordioning, people coming hard to a stop.

  “Shit,” she said.

  They slowed to stop-and-go. For three minutes, she stayed with it, her hand feeling numb on the gearshift. Aiden glanced at the clock.

  He rolled down his window and levered himself out to peer ahead. “Accident.”

  “No. No.” If they didn’t do something, they had no chance of getting to the next stop.

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.

  No—his badge.

  “Get on the shoulder,” he said.

  She hit the blinker and he rolled down his window and stuck out his arm. She wished he had a gumball light for the dashboard. But this was second best.

  He looked over his shoulder. “Go.”

  She swung onto the shoulder, put on her flashers, and eased along past traffic, crunching over dust and detritus. She glanced again in the mirror. She saw lights, bright and relentless. She didn’t know whether they belonged to cops or kidnappers or ghosts come to take her.

  The red river of electric taillights stretched on for as far as she could see. Thirty-eight minutes.

  40

  Harper cleared the jackknifed gasoline tanker fifteen minutes later, swerving back into traffic when Aiden spotted the emergency flares and the CHP motorcycle officer in the road with a flashlight, directing traffic. Her pulse felt as quick as the engine’s rpm.

  Aiden checked the side mirror. “Go.”

  She put the pedal down.

  The road rose into crenellated ranges of hills and mountains that formed the northern barrier of the Los Angeles Basin. The MINI, though quick and light and responsive, still had only four cylinders. It was screaming as she downshifted into fourth and began the climb. It had heart but not a huge amount of power, and she had to shove her foot hard against the pedal to keep the car from losing speed on the uphill.

  Thirty-two miles left. Twenty-three minutes.

  We’re not going to make it.

  It was only a whip of a thought, but she must have hissed through her teeth, because Aiden looked at her.

  “Just drive,” he said.

  “You think they won’t kill Piper if I’m late?” she said. “Don’t kid yourself.”

  She tried to loosen her grip on the wheel. Her fingers were close to cramping. “They’ll punish her to punish me. They’ll start killing her slowly. And they’ll let me hear it. If we don’t get there on the dot, she’s gone.”

  They wound through hills and swung onto Highway 14, deeper into ranch land and scrub country, farther into the ranks of hills. The headlights thinned. The moon rose and spread an eggshell layer of ghostly light across the landscape.

  Twelve minutes. They crested another hill. The lights of Los Angeles were deep behind them, a yellow fuzz radiating from the horizon. Harper pushed the car flat out across the broad summit of the grade. Ahead, the road sliced through a canyon down a long slide to the desert floor. They were entering the Mojave, the desolate and ever-distant top corner of the county. They were well beyond the jurisdiction of the LAPD now, into the realm of desert rats and exurban commuters and the far-flung outposts of the sheriff’s department.

  Aiden said, “Exit’s in two miles.”

  “Eleven minutes. How far once we get off the highway?”

  “Maybe five miles.”

  “Come on, baby, come on . . .”

  “The road looks a lot rougher once we turn off.”

  “Of course.”

  “You grew up out here, didn’t you?” he said.

  She nodded at the sage and chaparral. “No. This is New York City compared to where I grew up.”

  The black stripe of the descending highway unrolled for miles to the desert floor. From there, it ran straight north through Palmdale and Lancaster, electric outposts of well-gridded streets and civilization. China Lake was a hundred miles farther on up the road, past the next range of mountains, out in the white nowhere at the edge of a dry lake bed.

  “At least here, we’re within range of help if something goes wrong. We can see the city down there. We don’t have to rely on a highway patrol officer happening upon us from fifty miles away.”

  “You think help is going to be close at hand?”

  “I’m a Pollyanna,” she said. “It’s within arm’s reach.”

  He put his hand against the back of her neck and held on, reassuringly. She kept driving.

  Aiden held on to Harper’s neck, feeling her pulse boom. Under the blue-white glow of the dashboard lights, she looked spectral.

  “Pollyanna kicking ass,” he said.

  The engine was screaming. They were going ninety-plus on the downhill. The road was good and she drove it like she meant to get every ounce of speed out of the car, sure and slick and confident. He didn’t doubt her driving ability.

  Her knuckles stood out on the wheel, forearms corded. Half in a mutter, she said, “If they hurt Piper, I’ll kill them.”

  “Are you actually willing to trade yourself for Piper if things go bad?” he said.

  “That’s what I told Travis.”

  “I mean actually.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep Piper safe. I’ll do whatever they want.”

  “Two different things.”

  She paused, lips parting. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

  The road cut through a bulldozed canyon, heading sharply down the long grade. The canyon walls sped past, gray in the moonlight, rock upon endless rock. Nothing upon nothing. Her face was set, lovely and drawn. She had no idea what she was promising.

  “If you do whatever you have to, then I’ll help you, no matter what,” he said.

  Again she glanced at him, a brief, searching look. Her eyes were clear and harder than sapphires. She nodded, sharp and definite.

  He glanced at the clock. Seven minutes. Ten miles. He wasn’t worried about her driving. He was worried about her intentions.

  “They want you. Once you’re in range, they’ll try to take you,” he said.

  “How far to the turnoff?”

  “Half a mile.” He turned to her. “They have no intention of letting you drive home with their hostage.”

  She scanned the road for the exit. It wasn’t lit, no streetlights, just a green sign and an arrow. She lifted her foot from the gas pedal.

  He said, “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes. I know.” She downshifted and slipped into the exit lane, hanging on as it curved. “I know, Aiden. So we have to get Piper out before anything else happens. To her or to you or to me.”

  “Excellent. You have a plan to do that?”

  She braked and veered around an outcropping of rock. “I don’t.”

  Of course she didn’t. She had been driving like a maniac just to get there, had hardly even been breathing.

  “But I will.”

  She held the car steady as the road narrowed and the good pavement turned to rough old asphalt, crumbling at the edges. “We’ll
think of something.”

  He looked at her, and against every wish and hope, he felt a fresh moment of doubt about her goals, and her heart.

  As though maybe she’d tricked him into coming along with her on a mission to meet up with people who were . . . what, her confederates, even now? People she wanted to kill, with his help?

  Was he meant to be the reliable witness she would use later on, to exculpate herself?

  His chest felt hollow. His head was beginning to ache.

  No.

  Don’t do this, Garrison. Stop it.

  He pulled back from thoughts that were leaching into his mind like lye. He counted to ten. Clear your thinking. Analyze it, and see if you’re going down a road that’s illogical and self-defeating. You’re being paranoid.

  He noted how upset and shaky Harper was—or had been, at the start. Now she looked intense and ready to go over the edge.

  She looked fierce. He watched her, and felt her intensity in the darkness of the car. Was she acting?

  No. She couldn’t be. She was tuned as tight as a saw blade and ready to cut. Her rage and fear were too real and raw. He knew that Harper was a trickster, a thief, and that she had managed to hide her intentions from Zero and Travis on the day of the armed robbery. She couldn’t be that good an actor, to fool him this late in the game. Could she?

  He said, “What do you know about ambushes?”

  “Not much.”

  “Have you ever taken part in one?”

  “No. I’ve been jumped before. By these guys.” Her face looked pained and driven. “But I know all about double crosses.”

  He didn’t have to ask her to spell that one out. She was an expert at it.

  “One mile ahead,” he said. His phone rang.

  She gunned it.

  Near the crest of the pass, just before the highway leveled out and began the long descent to the Antelope Valley, Sorenstam held her phone to her ear, listening to Aiden’s number ring. He picked up.

  “You there yet?” she said.

  “A mile away.”

  “We have six minutes left in the hour my lieutenant gave me,” she said. “If you don’t want me to turn back, you—”