Outside the Wire

by Patricia Smiley

  “Did anything happen on one of those assignments that might have made you a target?” Davie said.

  Lunds loaded the brush again and swept more varnish across the hull of the boat. “Not that I recall.”

  “Zeke was wearing his Army dog tags when he died. Can you tell me why?”

  Lunds hesitated before responding. “He always wore them before a mission.”

  “You mean during the war?” she said.

  “Then, but after, too, including when he traveled for TidePool. He said feeling them on his chest helped him focus.”

  The hard rock pressing against her tailbone had now made her leg numb. She rose to her feet to get the kinks out and teetered on unsure footing.

  Lunds noticed. “There are a couple of folding chairs by the back door. You’ll probably be more comfortable sitting on one of them.”

  “I’ll go look.” Vaughn walked toward the cabin.

  Davie watched him go and then turned toward the heavy brush lining the opposite bank. Just beyond the river’s edge were jagged rock formations and a pebbly beach. A tree stump, splintered and dead, leaned out toward the river.

  The rock had not only cut off her circulation but had also chilled her bones. She hobbled toward Lunds to banish the prickles shooting through her leg. She bent over the canoe, admiring his handiwork. “Looks like it has a history.”

  He met her gaze and held it. “Everything has a history.”

  True, she thought. Given enough time, she hoped to forget some of hers. “What kind of wood is it?”

  “The gunwales are cherry but the planking is western red cedar.”

  The canoe’s two cane seats resembled the material in the kitchen chairs from her grandparent’s old house. “It looks vintage.”

  He scrutinized her, deciding if her interest was real or fake. “The canoe belonged to my father. It’s been in storage since he died. Seemed like the right time to get it back in the water.”

  His expression softened. It made her wonder how long his father had been gone and if their relationship had been close. She was about to ask him another question when she glanced toward the opposite bank and saw a deer emerge from the trees and wander down to the water to drink. Lunds looked, too.

  Questions about his father would have to wait. “You shouldn’t stay here, Mr. Lunds. It may not be safe. The department has something called Emergency Witness Relocation Funds. We can put you up at a safe house.”

  He kept his focus on the deer. “I can handle myself.”

  “You mean like Zeke Woodrow handled himself?”

  “Zeke didn’t know he was a target. He let his guard down. Thanks to you, I don’t have that problem.”

  She swept her hand over the smooth surface of the hull. “Just be careful.”

  Lunds was still staring at the opposite bank. She turned in time to see the deer prick its ears and bolt between the trees. She felt the hard jolt of Lunds’s hand against her shoulder. Then she was airborne. Icy water slammed her body. Bullets pinged off the rock next to her head. They had to be coming from the opposite bank. Something splashed in the water next to her, dragging her under the surface toward the middle of the roiling rapids. Her hip hit a boulder. Pain radiated up her spine.

  She opened her eyes to see Dag Lunds clenching her jacket in his right hand, towing her into deeper water. She thrashed in the turbulence, shouting a warning to Vaughn. But the effort sent water flooding into her mouth and down her throat. A moment later, she surfaced, choking. Lunds was next to her, pulling her onto her back. The faint smell of burnt gunpowder swept past her on the breeze and disappeared. All she could see in front of her was raging white foam. The sound was deafening.

  “Don’t try to swim,” he shouted. “Keep your head and feet out of the water. Point your legs downstream.”

  She was a good swimmer but that skill was of no use to her now. The rapids swept her along. Her heavy clothes weighed her down like an anchor. She tried to pry off her boots but the move threatened her fragile position in the water. She had to stay afloat, keep her head and feet out of the water as Lunds had instructed. Her neck muscles felt weak. She sensed the water getting warmer but realized her body was growing numb from the cold.

  Her partner must have heard the shots. He would run to investigate. If the shooter had a scope on his rifle, as she suspected, Vaughn would make an easy target. She imagined him lying on the ground, bleeding out on the dirt while she was powerless to help him.

  23

  Davie had lost track of how long she’d been struggling in the river. All she saw was thunderous white water crashing through the narrow canyon, waves peaking at least three to four feet high. A giant boulder loomed ahead, threatening to smash her to bits. Even if the water pushed her toward the bank, the steep rock outcroppings allowed no way to climb to shore. Farther downstream, the water tumbled forward and then disappeared—a waterfall.

  A few yards ahead of her, she spotted Dag Lunds clinging to the roots of a tree where the river had worn away the soil. As she tumbled past him, he extended his arm. It took all the strength she could dredge to grab onto his wrist, while the force of the water tugged at her and weakened her grip. Her hand slipped. If she couldn’t hold on, she was going to die.

  As her fingers slowly slipped away, Davie felt Lunds’s legs scissor around her torso. He grabbed her jacket with his free hand and pulled her toward him. When she got closer to the roots, she wrapped her arms around the nearest one, hoping the tree wouldn’t break away from the shore and sweep them both away. Water trickled from her nose down her throat. She gagged. Coughed up water. Gasping for air, she held onto the roots because her life depended on it.

  She didn’t know how far downstream the rapids had taken her, but she heard no more gunshots. It was unlikely the sniper had been able to follow them through the dense brush and trees—at least not yet.

  “I’m going to lift you up,” Lunds shouted over the noise. “When I do, put your foot on my shoulder and grab on to anything on shore that’s stable. Then pull yourself onto the bank.”

  “What about you?”

  “One thing at a time.”

  Lunds reached under the water with his free hand as she raised her foot. She pushed against his hand as he boosted her out of the water far enough to latch onto another branch higher up on the tree. He supported her on his shoulders until she was able to crawl onto the bank.

  Then she extended her hand to him, leveraging every ounce of her 104-pound body to anchor him as he groped his way to safety. If he hadn’t been so fit, he’d still be in the water. Once he made it to shore, Davie collapsed on the ground, panting from exertion, too weary to move.

  She saw Lunds scanning the far side of the riverbank. “We can’t stay here. We have to find cover.”

  With his help, she struggled to her feet. Together, they stumbled toward a stand of trees and collapsed on the ground.

  Lunds’s voice sounded raw and raspy as he lay next to her. “Are you all right, Detective?”

  Instinctively, she reached for her badge. It was gone. Swept away by the current. She felt gutted. That badge meant everything to her, not only because it bore her father’s old detective number but also because she’d suffered and sacrificed to earn it. Her body trembled as she searched the inner pocket of her jacket and found her cell, wet and probably damaged beyond repair. Polyester might be water-resistant in the rain but not when submerged in a river.

  She felt wasted and closed her eyes. “My phone’s wet.”

  Lunds continued scanning the terrain. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no coverage out here anyway.”

  A moment later, he rolled over, grabbed her hand, and started rubbing it between his. She felt warm air blowing on her face.

  She opened one eye and saw him looming over her. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “We’ve got to find dry clothes. You
have zero body fat and you’re quaking ten on the Richter scale.”

  Her body was shivering from cold and stress. Davie tried to respond but she was so exhausted she could only muster a nod.

  “I’m guessing my cabin’s about a mile away,” he continued, “but that’s a long hike in wet clothes, especially since the air is getting colder. There’s a convenience store just up the road. Let’s go that way.”

  “I have to find my partner. See if he’s okay.”

  “The store has a landline and Wi-Fi,” he said. “You can call from there.”

  She struggled to her feet, glancing toward the river. Dry grass sloped to a bank lined with boulders and trees. Dead branches littered the stream. Foothills rose in the distance. Such a beautiful scene, she thought. But as she knew, things weren’t always what they seemed.

  Davie’s hair had escaped its knot and now hung in red clumps around her shoulders. She peeled off her jacket in hopes the sun would dry her cotton shirt but it clung to her skin like plastic wrap. Lunds’s shirt was made for river canoeing but it wasn’t waterproof.

  Her department ID was still in the plastic lanyard around her neck, along with the twenty-dollar bill she’d replenished after her encounter with the tattoo artist the day before. Her Smith & Wesson was in its gun pouch in her handbag at the cabin.

  Davie’s hip hurt. She wouldn’t be running with Joss for a while. She hobbled behind Lunds on the trail for about ten minutes before the convenience store appeared. The bell over the door rang as she walked inside and saw the same pony-tailed clerk standing behind the counter. At first, the woman looked startled by Davie’s appearance. Then she grinned.

  “Can’t say you’re the first people I’ve seen in here who took a dip in the water, but most of them put on a swimming suit first.”

  “I need to use your phone.” Davie fumbled for the water-soaked twenty-dollar bill behind her ID, wondering why her words sounded slurred. Her fingers were so stiff that the money slipped out of her grip and dropped to the floor.

  The woman frowned as she surveyed Davie’s condition. “Honey, you look like you need more than a chat on the telephone. You’re shivering.” She eyeballed Lunds. “Looks like hypothermia. I have an Ascotherm IMO 86 in the back room. That’ll warm her up.”

  Davie bent down and tried two times before she snatched the bill. “I have to call my partner.”

  “Let’s start with some dry clothes,” Lunds said. “Do you sell anything besides T-shirts?”

  The clerk motioned for them to follow her. “Come with me. Both of you. There’s a lost-and-found box in the back room. Nothing fancy but at least you’ll be dry.”

  “I’m fine,” Lunds said.

  “Yes, you are,” she said with a wink, “but you’re also wet. You need to change out of those clothes. Trust me on this. The river is running fast and cold this time of year. You have to be careful.”

  “I need to use the phone,” Davie shouted. “My partner—”

  “Dry clothes and then the phone,” Lunds said to her. “Detective Vaughn wasn’t in the line of fire. I’m guessing he’s fine.”

  “Guessing?”

  “You can’t help him if you end up in the ER.”

  The clerk hustled them to a storage room and a cardboard box filled with an array of mismatched shoes, single socks, and ratty castoffs. Davie grabbed a wool sweater with a hole in the elbow and a pair of XL orange sweatpants that would be clownish on her small frame. There were no shoes in her size, not that she would wear somebody else’s footwear in any event. She cringed as she thought of all those foot fungus pictures she saw on the Internet. Her boots were wearable, even if they were saturated with water.

  Davie changed in the restroom at the back of the store. As she stripped off her soggy clothes, she gaped at her image in the mirror. Along with the cat scratches on her shoulder, there were now ugly new bruises blossoming on her back and thigh. That’s when she realized how weak and achy she felt. Her wet clothes went into a plastic garbage bag the clerk had provided. She hung her head and dried her hair under the wall-mounted hand blower, standing there for longer than she needed until her body felt somewhat warmer.

  She hurried back into the store and found Lunds looking over a rack of protein bars. He had changed into a pair of surfer shorts with a loud geometric design and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a logo for some heavy metal band.

  “Phone,” she said.

  Lunds pointed toward the wall behind the counter. “The clerk is making coffee. She said cell coverage is bad in the canyon but you can use the landline. If your partner is looking for us along the river, he may not get the call.”

  Cell reception was the least of her worries. At this point, she didn’t even know if her partner was alive to answer the call. Since her cell was waterlogged, Lunds told her to give his number to Vaughn in case she had to leave a message.

  “Tell him we’re going back to the cabin. We should be there soon.”

  Davie hurried to the telephone and pressed in her partner’s cell number. Her heart sank when he didn’t answer. “We’ve got to get back to the cabin. I have to make sure he’s okay.”

  A moment later, the clerk appeared from the back room with two steaming cups of coffee in Styrofoam containers. Davie limped toward the door.

  Lunds grabbed both cups. “Is there anybody who could give us a ride back to my place?.”

  “Sorry, honey. My husband drove the truck into Fresno. He won’t be back for a couple of hours. I might be able to raise somebody from the volunteer fire department, but it would take them a while to get here.”

  Lunds met Davie at the door and handed her one of the coffees. “It’ll be quicker to walk if you can make it. If your partner isn’t there, it means he’s probably safe and out looking for us. We can take the Harley and go looking for him, but it’s better to wait until he contacts us. Regardless, we’ll be more comfortable at my place.”

  Lunds was right. There was no benefit in staying at the store. “I can make it.”

  24

  With her coffee in hand, Davie followed Lunds toward the cabin. They stayed off the main road in case the shooter was driving the route, looking for them. The caffeine and dry clothes, not to mention the exertion of walking, soon brought warmth back to her body, except for her feet, which squished inside her wet shoes. But her hip hurt and her limp grew worse.

  “You think it’s safe to go back to your place?” she said.

  “I’d guess the shooter is gone, at least for now.”

  Lunds knew the woods, so she didn’t worry when she became disoriented and hopelessly lost. He was a least a foot taller than she was but he kept measuring his stride so she wouldn’t fall behind. Twenty minutes later, they reached the cabin. As soon as she saw the structure ahead of her, she limped toward the clearing where the detective car had been parked. It was gone. Despite Lunds’s assurance that Vaughn was safe, she wasn’t convinced the missing car was a good sign. She imagined Vaughn wounded, hanging on to life, struggling to drive himself to the nearest hospital.

  She made her way toward the side of the house where her partner had gone in search of folding chairs. Her pulse throbbed as she canvassed a wide swathe of the grounds surrounding the cabin but found no trace of him or any blood trails that indicated he’d been wounded.

  Lunds appeared behind her, offering his cell phone with an outstretched hand. “Call him again. Tell him where we are and to meet us here. And give me your phone. I’ll see if I can make it work again.”

  Her fingers fumbled as she passed him her cell and then entered Vaughn’s number on his keypad. She waited for an answer but was forced to leave another message.

  Her purse was still sitting by the rock near the water’s edge. Her Smith & Wesson was undisturbed in the gun pouch. Lunds had already cleared the cabin. There was nothing to do now but wait. She entered the cabin, pried off her bo
ots, and collapsed on a couch in the living room. She thought about calling her boss, but the lack of cell reception wouldn’t allow her to tell him the whole story without interruption, so she decided to wait until she located Vaughn.

  Under the weight of stress and exhaustion, she drifted off to sleep. Sometime later, a ringing phone awakened her. She sat up, groggy, and looked around for the source of the noise. Lunds wasn’t in the living room, but the call wasn’t coming from his cell, because it was sitting silently on the table next to her.

  She padded barefooted toward the kitchen, following the noise and found that the ringing was coming from a phone submerged in a bowl of rice on the counter. Her phone. The rice must have wicked enough water from the internal mechanism to make it function again. Davie was surprised that trick actually worked.

  She answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion.

  “Where the hell are you?” Vaughn shouted. “I’ve been going crazy out here looking for you.”

  Her words spilled out in an uninterrupted volley. “I left a bunch of messages. Didn’t you get them? Are you okay? We’re fine. Never mind. We’re at the cabin. Can you come and get us?”

  He huffed air before answering. “I’ll be right there.”

  As Davie ended the call, she heard footsteps. She looked up to see Lunds moving toward her. While she’d been sleeping, he’d changed out of the lost-and-found clothes and into a pair of jeans and a plaid lumberjack shirt. In his hand were a fleece jacket and a pair of thick socks.

  “I assume that was your partner. Is he okay?”

  She nodded. “He’s on his way here.”

  His brow furrowed as he handed her the jacket and socks. “We can wait for him on the porch if you’d like, but you’ll need these. And by the way, I put your clothes in the dryer. No guarantee what they’ll look like when they come out.”