Runaway

by Anne Laughlin

  Catherine took the Glock and the revolver out and handed the automatic to Jan.

  “So you are expecting trouble?”

  “I don’t want to be surprised by trouble. Let’s put it that way.”

  A final bend in the road brought them in sight of the ranch. Jan quickly took in the buildings scattered about—a couple of wood cabins, and farther back, a sorry looking barn. But what grabbed her immediate attention was the group of men standing in front of one of the cabins. At the sound of their car pulling up, the men turned toward them.

  “That’s the bloke from the last camp in Michigan, right?” said Catherine.

  Jan watched as Drecker led the men toward the car. He wore his camouflage, as did several others. The rest, the younger ones, all wore jeans and sweatshirts.

  “That’s Drecker, and it looks like the guy next to him is claiming to be a major,” Jan said.

  She put her gun in her jacket pocket and saw Catherine do the same. They opened the doors to step out of the car, just as Drecker reached its hood. When he saw their faces he pulled his sidearm and leveled it at Jan. Guns flew into the hands of the uniformed men, who quickly spread into a circle around the car.

  “Easy now,” Jan said. She held her arms up, palms out.

  “Sergeant, do you know these women?” The major stood next to Drecker, his hand on top of his weapon. He hadn’t bothered to draw it.

  “Yes, sir. They were at our Michigan training camp just a few days ago. Now they’re nosing around—”

  The major raised his hand to cut Drecker off. He moved forward and stood in front of Jan.

  “State your business.”

  Jan looked at the man, but out of the corner of her eye she kept track of Catherine. She didn’t like the way three of the men were surrounding her.

  “We’re here for the same reason as in Michigan. We’re looking for a missing girl. A missing underage girl.”

  “I told you there that we’d never seen the girl you’re looking for. That hasn’t changed,” Drecker said.

  Jan kept looking at the major.

  “If you’d allow me to reach into my jacket,” she said. “I’ll pull out a photo of her to show you.”

  She reached into her left pocket and could see every gun hand brace for shooting. The major raised his hand again, this time to stop her.

  “Don’t bother with the photo,” he said. “I haven’t seen a girl here, and neither have my men. Right, men?”

  The uniformed men barked out a “Yes, sir!” The ones in sweatshirts were less sure of themselves. Jan supposed they were frightened, but they looked more guilty than anything else. She wondered which one was David Conlon.

  Drecker walked over to the sweatshirt group and sent one of them running to the back of the property.

  “Now, I’ll have to ask you to leave. This is private property, and as of right now, you’re trespassing.”

  Jan looked at Catherine, who shrugged and seemed as if none of it mattered to her one way or the other.

  “I suppose it’s your prerogative,” she said to the major. “But it seems a shame for us to have to bring the sheriff out here.”

  Drecker motioned with his gun for them to get back in the car.

  “You’re only making this harder on yourselves,” Jan said. “Maddy Harrington has now been transported across state lines and that makes the charge federal.” She paused and looked straight at Jacovich, ignoring the guns pointed at her head. “You don’t much like anything that’s federal, isn’t that right, Major?”

  Jacovich took his gun out of its holster and kept it pointed at the ground. Jan knew he was mad, but she guessed he couldn’t decide who he was most mad at. The young men in the sweatshirts looked frightened now.

  “Now, ladies,” he said. “I’ve about run out of patience.”

  “Let’s go,” Jan said, turning her back on the guns and looking over at Catherine. She had a bemused look on her face, as if she were watching a group of boys playing in a schoolyard. Jan got in the car, followed by Catherine, and quickly backed up, scattering the armed men behind them. She turned back onto the road and gunned it, punishing the sedan’s undercarriage at each bump and rut along the way.

  “The direct approach didn’t work,” Jan said, “so let’s go with Plan B.”

  “I find that Plan B is usually the one that works,” Catherine said. “But it doesn’t hurt to try Plan A.”

  “It might have. Now they’re on high alert. And they have time to hide Maddy, which is what they sent that one guy off to do.”

  “Still, we didn’t even know if this was the right property. Now we do.”

  Jan handed Catherine her iPhone. “Use the map function and see if you can pinpoint our location.”

  “We’ll have to go around the back, don’t you think?”

  “Yep. And I bet there’s no way to drive to it.”

  Jan looked for a place to hide the car.

  “Another walk in the woods with you would be lovely,” Catherine said. She leaned toward Jan. “Will we have time to tumble around a little?”

  “That’s not even funny,” Jan said.

  But they both laughed.

  *

  After David led the others out of the barn, Maddy and Kristi climbed down from the hayloft. Kristi walked over to a push broom leaning against the wall and started to sweep.

  “I’m going to start cleaning. This place is horrible.”

  Maddy stared at her. “That’s your response? To start cleaning?”

  Kristi looked confused. “Response to what?”

  “To them talking about underground armories, that’s what. I didn’t come out here to build a fort.”

  “What exactly did you come out here for? Aside from wanting to be with me, of course.” Kristi was flapping her eyes most ineffectually. Maddy decided not to answer the question because she hardly knew the answer anymore. Instead, she sat in the middle of the barn floor and watched Kristi push clouds of dust in circles around her.

  The door screeched open, loud and fast, and Tommy stumbled in.

  “You guys have to run. Now!”

  He was panting as he grabbed Maddy by the arm and tried to haul her up. Kristi stepped over and pulled his arm away.

  “What the hell, Tommy?”

  “I’m not kidding. Those private investigators are here, the ones looking for you in Michigan. You can’t get caught here. David would get into a lot of trouble.”

  He hustled them out of the barn and pointed north toward the woods. He put his phone into Maddy’s hand.

  “I don’t know if this will get a signal, but I’ll try to call when the coast is clear. If the line’s dead just stay away until we come get you.”

  “How are you going to know where we are?” Maddy asked.

  Tommy kept pushing them toward the woods and looking behind his shoulder. “I don’t know, but we will. Just stay north.”

  Maddy hesitated. She didn’t know if Drecker was sending her away permanently, left to wander aimlessly in the vast woods, or whether she could count on David to come get her.

  “Come on,” Kristi said. “We have to get moving.”

  “You shouldn’t come with me. I’d rather have you finding out what’s going on here.” Maddy said the words, but she desperately wanted Kristi to come with her.

  Tommy pushed both of them forward. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

  They sprinted to the cover of the woods and found their way along the same path as their first trip into the woods. Only there wasn’t a path. There was only their slight memory of the route they’d taken. She tried to pinpoint the sun to orient them, but the thick tree cover made that impossible.

  Kristi was leading the way, keeping up a brisk pace. “We’ve been here twenty-four hours and already everything is fucked up.”

  Maddy felt stung. She was the reason things were a mess, and now Kristi hated her for it. She stopped walking and Kristi turned around.

  “I think you should go back,”
Maddy said. “The more you stay with me, the more screwed up things will be for you.”

  “Girl, I am not letting you run into these woods alone. Are you crazy? The important thing is we get you out of sight so they don’t snatch you away.”

  “I shouldn’t have come. I really didn’t think my parents would send people looking for me.”

  A crashing noise came from behind Kristi, and Maddy gasped as she saw a huge buck loping through the woods. He stopped and observed them for a moment, but it was Maddy and Kristi who resembled the deer caught in the headlights. They froze in place and watched as the deer slowly turned his head away and ambled off.

  “That would have been cool if I wasn’t scared to death,” Kristi said. “I thought it was one of those soldier dudes again.”

  “If we keep heading north, we’re going to be right where we saw that guy. We should go east. I think our property goes pretty far that way.”

  “They’re going to be looking for us north.”

  “I’m not sure yet that I want them to find us. Like I said, you should go back. It will be better for you.”

  “No way.”

  Maddy headed east, leading the way this time. She was feeling more sure-footed marching through the forest, but completely at sea as to what she was doing. If the investigators really had shown up, she knew Drecker would kick her out. And if he didn’t, did she really want to stay? Her idea of the ranch hadn’t included soldiers and armories and old men. But the idea of being grabbed by the investigators and taken back home to Winnetka was horrifying.

  They walked on and on, not sure how far to go to be safe. They hadn’t brought any water along, but Maddy knew there was a stream that ran through the eastern portion of the property. After another few minutes she could hear it, and soon they saw a creek at the base of a gully with steep sides carved into the earth who knows how long ago. The noise they heard was from a small stretch of rapids where the water hit some rocks and tumbled down a declivity in the stream. Above it, the water ran gently, and as clear as glass. Maddy scrambled down and knelt beside the water, scooping handfuls of water to her mouth. Kristi put her face right to the water and slurped it up.

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you the right way to drink from a creek?” Maddy said.

  Kristi grinned. “We have never had creeks clean enough to drink from, so no. I just thought the direct approach was fine.”

  Maddy sat back on her heels. “Let’s just go a little farther and then hole up for a while. We can come back here if we need more water, but it feels a little exposed to me.”

  She took out Tommy’s phone, but there was no signal.

  “Looks like we’re on our own,” Kristi said.

  “It’s either good news or bad news that there’s no way they can track us. I haven’t decided which it is.”

  They crossed the creek by hopping on stones and continued east on the other side. Kristi was leading the way when she screamed and dropped like a stone. Maddy could hear or see nothing around them; it was as if Kristi had been smote from above.

  Kristi was laying flat on her back, her hand on her right thigh. She groaned.

  “What happened?” Maddy said. She took Kristi’s other hand, still looking all around, expecting something bad to show up and explain it all.

  “There’s a fence there. Look. It’s low. Hit my leg.”

  Maddy looked where Kristi pointed and saw three thin wires, almost invisible if you weren’t looking for them. But now that she was, she could see them stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions, held up with short stakes pounded in every six feet or so.

  “It’s electrified,” Kristi said. “Fried my leg.”

  “Fried it?” She couldn’t see anything on Kristi’s pants leg, no scorch mark or anything. “How bad is it?”

  Kristi got up and hobbled around a bit. “It’s okay. I can walk it off.”

  “Why is there an electric fence in the middle of the forest? I’m pretty sure this is still our land.”

  “Really? This is like the Ponderosa or something. I didn’t know we had so much land.”

  “I think that if we stay on our land, we’re more likely to be caught by whoever’s following us. Let’s keep going.”

  Maddy found a slender tree she could use to boost herself up and over the electric fence, and Kristi followed close behind her, landing on the other side with a grunt.

  “Maybe the fence is actually our fence,” Maddy said, “and it’s meant to keep people from coming in. That’s possible, right?”

  “Let’s just put some distance between us and the fence. Then we need to rest for a bit. My leg actually hurts.”

  They hiked another hundred yards or so, keeping their eyes on the forest floor, picking their way forward. Maddy didn’t see the three men approaching, but suddenly they were right in front of them, their rifles pointed at their chests. They were wearing camouflage like the man they’d seen the day before.

  “Get your hands up,” said the man standing in front. He had a name sewn onto his uniform—Martin—and appeared to be in charge. He wore lieutenant’s bars on the collar of his shirt.

  Maddy and Kristi raised their hands, just like in the movies, which was the only reference they had for what was happening.

  “I think there’s been some mistake—” Maddy started to say.

  “Shut up,” Martin said. He motioned with his head to one of the men behind him, keeping his rifle trained on them. The man came forward and pulled restraints from his back pocket. He reached Maddy first and started to pull her arms down and behind her back.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Kristi said. “If we’re on your land, all you have to do is ask us to leave. There’s no reason to go crazy on us.”

  Martin strode forward quickly and hit Kristi in the midsection with his rifle butt. She dropped to the ground and Maddy could hear her struggling for breath.

  “You assholes!” Maddy screamed.

  “Get a gag on them,” he said, and the other man moved up to assist. Within a minute, they had both Kristi and Maddy on the ground, gagged and with their hands tied behind them.

  Maddy was lying on her side, face-to-face with Kristi. She worried about Kristi’s labored breathing, though she felt strangely calm, as if she were watching events unfold in a video game and she just needed to be smart about her next move. Her own situation didn’t feel real, but Kristi’s terrified face did.

  The men didn’t talk after Martin ordered the other two to pick them up and force-march them through the woods. Maddy’s arm hurt where her guy gripped it tightly. She felt unbalanced and as floppy as a rag doll. She looked at the man holding on to her; he was about her parents’ age, pretty old, and he stank and had a scraggly beard. She could see that the uniform he wore was ancient with patched elbows and knees, frayed collar and cuffs. He wore one of those floppy camouflage hats. If it were white it could have said “Aruba” on it and been at home on the beach. It didn’t look like this man had ever spent a day on a beach. He kept his eyes grimly forward as he dragged Maddy along.

  Ahead of her, Kristi was having a harder time, her one arm gripped by her guard and the other hugging her stomach. When she sagged, her man barked at her and tugged ferociously at her arm. Ahead of them was Martin, setting a brisk pace as they moved farther and farther away from the ranch. Even if she weren’t gagged, Maddy wouldn’t have bothered to scream for help. It was clear there wasn’t anyone coming. She guessed these were the Idaho cronies of Drecker’s, the ones they were hooking up with out here. She knew that Drecker must have called them or radioed them or sent smoke signals. She wasn’t sure how they had it worked out, but he wanted Maddy gone and these guys were going to oblige him.

  After a half hour’s march, Maddy and Kristi were brought into a large clearing in the middle of the woods. There were no roads leading in or out of it. It was as if some force had planted a cookie cutter from above and simply lifted a large circle of forest up and away. Maddy tried to get her bearings as t
hey were dragged toward the far side of the clearing. They saw a large wood structure in the middle of the clearing, low and wide, with smoke coming out of its chimney. In front of it was a group of women staring at them, their eyes wide in surprise. Several of the women moved to gather the children running around in the area in front of them. They all looked like they were dressed in homespun clothing. Maddy had seen similar clothing at some of the museums her parents dragged her through on their vacations.

  There was a row of small shacks lining the northern perimeter of the clearing. She saw several more children playing in front of those. She did not see any men, other than the ones dragging them toward two large cabins on the eastern edge. Maddy felt her first frisson of fear. What if they locked Kristi and her up in a dark cabin, tied up and gagged? When they got to the cabin, she dug her heels in and struggled, uselessly, she knew, but the idea of going into the cabin was sending her into a panic. When her guard yanked at her arm, Maddy tried to drop to the ground, making herself boneless and too heavy to hold. It was a trick she’d used as a child, when her parents tried to drag her someplace she didn’t want to go.

  “Pick her up,” Martin barked. The guard picked Maddy up from behind and under her arms, dragging her into the cabin behind Martin and the others. Then he dropped her on the floor. Her shoulder nearly popped out of the socket as she landed on her back with her arms tied behind her.

  “We’ve captured intruders, sir,” Martin said. “Two girls.”

  Maddy twisted around to see who Martin was talking to. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she could see more detail in the cabin. It was rectangular, all one room, with a bare minimum of furniture in it. A square table and chairs at one end, a cot along the side, and, at the end farthest from her, a fireplace and a straight-backed chair beside it. She could see someone sitting in the chair, leaning back on the two rear legs with his back against the wall. The chair tipped forward and the man stood up.

  “Bring them to me,” he said.

  Maddy was hauled to her feet and the group moved to stand in front of the cold fireplace. She got a good look at the man as he got a good look at them. He also wore a camouflage uniform, a little worse for wear, but his boots were shiny. He looked really old, like her grandfather, but with a fire in his eye that she never had seen in her grandpa. He looked mean, and Maddy knew the situation was only getting worse, that these men weren’t going to just send them back to their ranch or home to her parents. She looked at Kristi standing next to her and saw she was staring at her feet with tears in her eyes.