by Sam Sisavath
“Same as you two; we’ve crossed paths in the past, and when she couldn’t take the job, she called me,” Allie said. The lie came easily; and it should, since she had rehearsed it numerous times in her head. “She’s taking twenty percent of my share.”
“Twenty percent for doing nothing?” Dwight chuckled before glancing over at Reese. “Maybe I hitched my ride to the wrong trailer.”
“I know you don’t mean that,” Reese said.
“You don’t think so?”
“We’ve been through too much together.”
“Yeah, well, I bet Juliet wouldn’t let me do all the driving.”
“But you’re a very good driver, Dwight.”
Dwight smirked. “Do you even know how to drive? I mean, you do know we drive on the right side of the road here, right?”
Reese smiled. “So I’ve been told.”
Listening to them bicker back and forth as if they were on a Sunday drive and not escorting young girls to a destination that might be worse than death made her want to gag. More than that, it made her want to reach for the P250 and end it all right here and now. Even if she couldn’t save the girls, whatever happened to them out here in the open roads had to be better than the life waiting for them at the end of it.
She hadn’t realized how much she had talked herself into acting until the radio on the dashboard squawked, and she reflexively froze just as one of her fingers made contact with the grip of the pistol holstered behind her back.
“Leader, looks like we may have a problem,” a male voice said through the radio. She recognized it as belonging to one of the two men in the van at the back of their caravan.
Reese picked up the radio from the dashboard and keyed it. “What kind of problem?”
“I got a state trooper behind me.”
“What’s he doing?”
“I think he’s following me. He’s moving pretty fast…”
“Maintain your speed and let him pass.”
“Gotcha—” He stopped in mid-sentence, then said, “Shit, I think he’s slowing down to match my speed.”
“Stay calm, Vanguard,” Reese said.
Vanguard was the codename for the minivan. The semitrailer was called Nest because, she assumed, of the little “chicks” being transported. It was all perfectly (and nauseatingly) logical.
“What’s going on?” Dwight asked, looking over.
Reese shook his head.
“Trouble?” a new voice said through the radio.
“Maintain your speed, Nest,” Reese said.
“Roger that.”
“Vanguard, what’s the trooper doing now?” Reese said into the radio.
“I don’t have a clue,” Vanguard said. Then, less than two seconds later, “Crap.”
“Status.”
“He just lit me up.”
“Fuck me,” Dwight said.
Reese sighed and seemed to take a moment to collect himself.
“What should we do?” Vanguard asked.
“Pull over,” Reese said.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Pull over?” Dwight said. “That’s the last thing he should be doing.”
“Chances are the trooper’s already punched his license plate into his database and called in a description of the vehicle,” Reese said. “The plate will run fine; it’s legit, so there’s no reason to panic.” He keyed the radio: “Nest, there’s a rest stop coming up in three miles. Pull into it and wait for us.”
“Understood,” Nest answered.
“Vanguard, go radio silent.”
“Going silent,” Vanguard said, and Allie detected a noticeable quiver in the man’s voice for the first time. He might not have been scared, but he was definitely spooked.
“Now what?” Dwight asked.
“Slow down,” Reese said. “Let Nest past us by, then make a U-turn.”
Dwight took his foot off the accelerator. Allie twisted in her seat and watched as the red and black semitrailer caught up to them, then moved over to the next lane before passing them by. A man with a red beard and a beat-up ball cap in the front passenger seat of the big rig’s cab gave their car a nod out his window just before the large vehicle overtook them.
The Ford slowed down further, Dwight watching the oncoming traffic, before making a quick (and very illegal) U-turn. He hit the gas and they shot back down the road.
“Slow down,” Reese said. “I just want to see what’s happening, not draw the cop’s attention.”
Dwight took his foot off the gas until they were barely doing three miles over the speed limit.
“This went to shit fast,” Dwight said quietly, almost to himself.
“Nothing’s gone anywhere yet,” Reese said.
Reese, Allie noted, had remained impossibly calm. She marveled at the man’s control and at the same time reminded herself that if she ever had to pick who to shoot first, it would have to be Reese. She didn’t ever want to end up in a gunfight with this man.
“How are we going to handle this?” she asked.
“Without a firefight, if at all possible,” Reese said.
“That’s the trick, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
“Not exactly part of my job description…”
“Hopefully we won’t have to expand your duties,” Reese said.
As the familiar flashing of red and blue lights came into view about half a mile in front of them, Allie couldn’t decide if she was glad or petrified by the turn of events. Did she want this to happen? Was this the best thing to happen, or the worst? On the one hand, being out here alone among wolves was terrifying despite everything she had been through and done, and the prospect of having allies was exhilarating. But if they were stopped here, if she was forced to show her hand, all her plans to rescue Faith would go up in smoke and she would have to start all over again…
Sara. Think about Sara and the others. If you can save them here, now…
She wrapped her fingers around the grip of her gun and mentally readied herself for what was coming next, what she would have to do. She focused on the back of Reese’s head, in front and slightly to the right of her, just barely visible behind the front passenger seat’s headrest.
One to the back of the head. Whatever you do, take Reese first. Take Reese first.
“Easy does it,” Reese was saying from the front seat as they neared the police lights. “Don’t attract any unnecessary attention.”
The state trooper’s squad car was parked behind Vanguard’s van, both of them idling at the shoulder of the road as Dwight drove the Ford past them. She spotted two troopers still sitting inside their vehicle, and the last thing Allie saw was the slightly anxious face of Vanguard’s driver, standing outside the van, the driver-side door open behind him, as he looked back at them as they drove by and kept going.
“Go for one more mile, then turn back,” Reese said.
“And then what?” Dwight asked.
“We’ll play it by ear—”
The very familiar pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire crackled behind them. Allie heard them clear as day even with the windows rolled up, and so did Dwight and Reese.
“Well, fuck,” Dwight said.
“Oh well,” Reese said.
Dwight slammed on the brake and spun the steering wheel in the same fluid motion and had them turned around and flying back up the interstate in less time than it took her to see the trees blurring by outside her window. It might have looked like reckless driving to an outsider, but Allie knew better. There was, she now understood, a reason why Dwight always drove.
Allie drew the P250 and put it in her lap, while Reese did the same with his Glock just before he turned around in his seat and looked back at her. “This time, shoot to kill, understand?”
She nodded back, praying that none of the fear and doubt showed on her face. She must have succeeded, because Reese turned back around without another word. She relaxed her grip on the gun. Not too much, just enough that she co
uld feel blood circulating through her digits again.
The van and state trooper’s vehicle came up on them faster this time because of Dwight’s speed. Vanguard’s drivers stood alertly (panicked?) on the side of the road, gripping MP5Ks that dangled from slings over their shoulders. Both men, their faces flushed with adrenaline, looked over as the Ford neared before skidding to a stop in the middle of the road next to them.
Reese had already begun to power down his window even before the Ford stopped moving, and he looked out and said to the two men with that (How is he doing that?) calm voice of his, “Get back in your vehicle, and let’s go.”
The two men nodded and ran back to the van.
There were no signs of the troopers, but when she saw the multiple jagged lines of holes painted across the windshield of the squad car, she didn’t have to wonder about where their occupants were or what shape they were in.
Dwight stepped on the gas and they were moving up the road again, as if nothing had happened. She looked around them, grateful for the lack of cars along all four lanes at the moment, because no witnesses meant no more casualties.
Except for those two bastards in the squad car.
Allie had to remind herself that she couldn’t have done anything to save them, not in the backseat of the Ford with Dwight and Reese. But knowing it and accepting what had happened were two different things, and she felt a tightness in her gut as the Ford continued to pick up speed.
She twisted in her seat and looked out the rear windshield, spotting Vanguard as it quickly caught up to them. Too quickly. “They’re coming up too fast.”
“Jacked up on adrenaline,” Dwight said.
Reese picked up the radio from the dashboard and said into it, “Vanguard, slow down. You’re too close.”
Vanguard didn’t respond over the two-way, but the vehicle started drifting back.
“Well, this is a mess,” Dwight said, and she thought he sounded slightly amused (?). “They’re not going to be happy.”
“That’s why there are contingency plans in place,” Reese said.
“Still, they’re going to be pissed about this.”
They, Allie thought. Who is they?
“It happens,” Reese said.
“Spare me the Zen bullshit,” Dwight said.
“You should try it sometime, partner.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it going to take?”
“Happy thoughts.”
“Was that a joke?” Dwight said. “Shit. Two years together, and that must be the first joke you’ve ever told.”
“You just haven’t been paying attention,” Reese said before keying the radio and saying into it, “Nest, come in.”
He didn’t have to wait long for a response: “What happened?”
Reese ignored the question and said, “Pull out of the rest stop and proceed to the alternate route.”
“What happened back there?” Nest asked again.
“Get going now,” Reese said, raising his voice slightly—not out of impatience, she realized, but rather just to remind the man on the other end of the radio who was in charge.
It worked, and Nest said, “Understood.”
“What about us?” the man from the van asked through the radio. He sounded excited, maybe even out of breath.
Definitely jacked up on adrenaline.
“You’re compromised,” Reese said. “If you stay with us, you’ll endanger the whole job. Ditch your vehicle and find another one, then proceed to the backup location and wait for further instructions.”
The two men known as Vanguard didn’t respond right away.
“Do you understand,” Reese said.
“Understood,” Vanguard finally answered.
“We’ll be in touch through the secondary method. Until then, destroy this radio and wipe your phones. You are now officially persona non grata.”
“What about our cut?”
“You’ll receive payment as usual. Nothing’s changed. As far as we’re concerned, you did your job.”
“Roger that,” Vanguard said, sounding relieved that time.
“They fucked up their job is more like it,” Dwight said when Reese put the radio back on the dashboard.
“Yes, well, they don’t have to know that,” Reese said.
The familiar sight of the black and red semitrailer appeared in front of them, slowing down just enough for Dwight to drive past and eventually take the lead once again.
It felt like a very long time before she saw one, two—three state troopers flash by on the opposite lane. They were already moving at high speeds, and she suspected the only thing keeping them from going even faster were civilian vehicles that didn’t get out of their way fast enough despite their blaring sirens and flashing lights.
She followed the speeding cruisers through the rear windshield, their red and green lights vanishing one by one over a hump in the road.
Jesus, this got bad real fast.
The semi was easily visible behind them, the height of its cab looming over a station wagon moving between their vehicles. She told herself that as long as she kept Nest in sight, she could still save Sara and the others and at the same time find and rescue Faith on the other side of this nightmare.
And all she had to do to accomplish both those things was be lucky.
Be really, really lucky…
Six
“Her name’s Faith,” Lucy said, showing him a sixteen-year-old teen on the tablet. It was a high school picture, and the girl, blonde with blue eyes, had a big, bright smile on her face as she posed. “She went missing about two years ago when she was seventeen, along with her boyfriend, during a cross-country trip to visit some colleges in the east. They found the boyfriend a few weeks later, in a shallow grave about a mile from where their car was eventually located.”
Lucy swiped at the screen and Faith’s image was replaced with a body partially covered in dirt, surrounded by shrubbery. It looked like a boy, but it could have been anything given its decomposing state. Hank had seen bodies before, but the state of this one still made him physically flinch.
“There was a big manhunt,” Lucy continued. “Local, state, even the FBI. Faith is a pretty girl, and white, and she got plenty of media coverage. But it never lasts. Sooner or later, the media finds another pretty girl to focus on. Two years later and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who even remembers there was a big brouhaha over her.”
“I was already off the force by then,” Hank said. “But I don’t remember seeing it on the news.”
“She didn’t go missing in your state, lieutenant. There was some national news coverage, but you’d have to be a diehard cable news crime watcher to even have glimpsed it. I looked at the old footage; it was basically a minute here, a minute there, nothing that would have stuck in anyone’s mind.”
Hank nodded. He knew all about how fickle the media could be when it came to crime. People who didn’t work in law enforcement never really understood just how much went on that no one cared about, whether because the victims weren’t interesting enough, weren’t pretty enough, or, in many cases, hadn’t been born white enough.
He took a moment and opened the Coke he’d gotten from the vending machine outside and took a sip, balancing the bottom of the can on top of the chair he was straddling. The girl sat on the bed with the tablet while the dog lay on his stomach, chin resting on the dirty motel carpet. The animal looked bored, which Hank preferred over those big brown eyes watching him every second he was inside the room. As hard as it was to believe, Apollo actually seemed to respond to the lack of tension by lowering his guard.
Dog’s smarter than most people I’ve dealt with.
“So that’s what Allie and I are doing all the way out here,” Lucy said. “We’ve been looking for Faith for the last eleven months. Trust me, we wouldn’t be here otherwise. No offense, but there’s not exactly a lot to do around here.”
“None taken,” Hank said. “So, this Faith girl. She’s a friend of y
ou two?”
“No, we don’t know her.”
“Friend of the family?”
“No. Her mom just asked us for help.”
“So she’s paying you…”
Lucy shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. We’re helping her because she asked us to, and because we can.”
Hank didn’t respond right away. Yes, he understood what the sixteen-year-old girl was telling him, but he didn’t really understand it. In his experience, people didn’t pack up their lives and check into a seedy motel in the middle of nowhere just to help out a perfect stranger. And they certainly didn’t invest eleven months of their lives doing it.
Lucy was smiling at the confused look on his face. “We’re kind of independently wealthy. Well, Allie is, anyway. We don’t need the money.”
“How ‘kind of’”—he used air quotes—“independently wealthy are we talking about?”
“Enough that we can get information we’re not supposed to have.”
“Like my police records.”
“Uh huh,” the girl nodded. “And a lot of other things.”
“And the two of you are out here looking for a girl that went missing two years ago? What makes you think she’s even still alive?”
“Because Allie found her.”
“You said that before. How?”
“Allie’s very good at finding people. She once spent ten years tracking one person. I guess you could say she’s honed her skills even more since. It helps that she has money to spend this time, where before she had to dig for every scrap of it herself. Makes things even easier.”
“Still, two years is a long time, kid. I’ve been out there. People go missing all the time. Sometimes on purpose, other times not. They don’t usually show back up two years later.”
“Allie’s sure enough that she did what she did.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
Lucy picked up the tablet again, and Hank watched her fingers dancing across the screen. He barely knew how to peck at his old computer keyboard back when he had one, but to see the kid tap-tap-tapping up a storm reminded Hank just how old he was.
Way too old to be in a motel room with a kid and a dog, that’s for damn sure. What if someone shows up? How am I going to explain this?