by H. L. Wegley
In an instant, Allie’s panic fled and her fear morphed to seething anger. But she could not let them see her defiance. She needed to appear intimidated.
“Are you convinced? Answer me, now.”
Allie lowered her gaze from the man’s face to the dark forest floor and nodded.
“We have wasted far too much time on you.”
Two engines started and revved.
In a few more seconds, Allie flew through the forest. The greasy hair of the unkempt, uncouth man flew in her face, brushing her lips. Her urge to vomit came again. She fought it off by picturing herself grabbing Hector’s head and gouging out his eyes. The fear that they would hurt Benjamin stopped her.
They would likely kill her if she tried anything and she had to stay alive long enough to reach her family, to know they were alive. Until then, she would pray the FBI could find and rescue them.
And Jeff? After what she’d done to him, Jeff belonged to her past, not to whatever remained of Allie’s future.
* * *
Jeff stayed up with Wes and Cliff after Allie went to bed sick. He waited with the marshals hoping McCheney and the helicopter would return with news about her family.
Cliff's cell rang. He answered, exchanged a few words, then hung up. “The chopper is returning, but it's still several miles out.”
“Why are you still up, Jacobs?” Wes asked. “If you had any sense you'd go to bed like Allie.”
“Do you always insult your clients?”
“Clients?”
“Yeah. I pay your salary.”
“Well, why don't you get some rest and let me earn my salary?”
Jeff had no reason to stay up now that Allie had gone to bed and the chopper was going to be later than they expected. “See you guys in the morning.”
His bed felt good to Jeff’s tired body, but sleep wouldn't come. Worries about Allie kept him awake. Why had her mood become so gloomy? Was it only because she felt ill?
He prayed for Allie, for her family, and for the FBI in their search. The peace that usually followed praying eluded him. So did sleep.
The same uneasy feeling that crawled up his spine before Allie ran out of the woods returned. Though the marshal's house rules restricted Jeff from entering Allie's room, he couldn’t sleep until he knew she was okay.
Jeff opened his bedroom door, walked down the hall to Allie's room, and reached for the doorknob.
“Sorry, Jeff. That's off limits. You can survive without Allie until morning. You saw what she went through this evening. She needs some sleep.”
“There's something wrong here, Wes. If you're not going to let me go in, then you check on Allie.”
“If it'll shut you up, I'll look in on her.”
Jeff stepped away from the door.
Wes knocked softly and waited.
No response.
Wes cracked the door and looked in. His eyes widened. He pushed the door open farther, then hit the light.
Allie was gone.
“Maybe she’s in the bathroom,” Wes said.
“She’s not, Wes. The door’s open.” The thumping of Jeff's heart became a wild drumming.
Wes ran down the hallway toward the living room. “Cliff, call the local police and the Sheriff. Allie's gone. I'll call McCheney. Then you and I need to start searching for her.”
Both marshals were busy in the living room, so Jeff stepped into Allie's bedroom looking for clues as to what happened. His gaze locked on a sheet of paper folded in half on Allie's pillow. He stepped to the bed and picked it up.
When he unfolded the sheet of paper his eyes stopped at the first word written on the page, “Jeff.”
He continued reading.
I have something that I must do for my family. In fact, I’ve finally come to my senses and realized that whatever passed between us was only a brief infatuation that came from my moments of weakness and vulnerability.
It’s my family that matters most to me and you are not part of it. Our relationship would never have worked, anyway. My father would never allow it.
Thank you for saving my life. I will be forever grateful. But that is all.
Goodbye, Jeff. I wish you well.
Alejandra
He stared at the sheet of paper. Her cold message came like a stunning blow. Could Allie have written this? Not the woman he knew. Or was it that he didn’t really know her? After all, how well could he know another person in less than forty-eight hours?
Where she had signed her name, large, swollen circles marred the paper. Allie's tears.
Mixed signals. It didn’t add up.
The phone call? It must have instigated all this, both her message and her leaving.
The reason she gave for leaving …
I have something that I must do for my family.
Allie was sacrificing herself for her family, or trying to. At that thought, something stirred so deep in Jeff's heart that it frightened him. In the next instant, all fear was gone, replaced by a resolve to find Allie, no matter the difficulty, the danger, or the cost. And he would not accept the message in her note until she repeated it to his face.
Jeff stepped out of Allie's bedroom and looked down the hallway toward the living room.
Wes had his cell glued to his ear, and Cliff punched buttons on his phone.
If the cartel had used the phone call to coerce Allie to meet them, the meeting place would probably be in the edge of the trees across the field to the east. That was the nearest hidden approach to the house.
The front of his house was well lit. She wouldn’t have gone that direction. But the back of the house …
Jeff slipped out the back door, leaped the fence, and sprinted across the field, his powerful legs ripping the sod with each stride.
A few seconds later, Jeff's heart thumped hard as he slowed to enter the trees. If she came this way, Allie might still be in the vicinity.
Jeff stopped and brutally willed his oxygen-starved body to stop breathing. He managed to create enough time between two breaths to listen. The brief silence was broken by the sounds of two engines droning through the dark forest. Two small, four-cycle engines.
The cartel goons had taken Allie on an ATV.
Jeff looked into the trees, toward the sounds of the ATVs. Somewhere in the distance, a light flashed through a gap in the trees.
He turned and looked toward his house.
Jeff clenched his jaw, turned toward the forest, and sprinted into the dark shadows toward the sounds of the ATVs, toward whatever danger lay ahead, and toward Allie.
Chapter 12
Jeff ran with reckless abandon toward the sounds of the two ATVs. He hurdled logs and leaped small bushes, fearing losing the ATVs more than anything the night or the forest might hold.
Knowing the general lay of the land helped. This was the dry side of the valley, sheltered from much of the rain.
He flew through the widely spaced Ponderosa pine trees covering the mountain slopes and weaved through several stands of white oak and Madrone trees. The sparse vegetation allowed moonbeams to light the ground. It was enough for Jeff to run.
Dense patches of Manzanita dominated the areas burned by forest fires in previous years. The current path of the ATVs would soon bring them to such an area. The ATVs would have to circle around the Manzanita, while Jeff could plow through it. Slicing off distance at every opportunity was the only way he could hope to close on the ATVs.
Jeff’s biggest disadvantage, he didn’t know the ATVs destination. Were they taking her to a car or truck? If so, Allie was—he refused dwell on that possibility.
But, if Jeff caught them, what could he do? The truth was, he’d probably get shot. He shoved that depressing thought from his mind and focused on running the fastest mile he’d ever run. Pictures of Allie being held captive by such depraved members of humanity sent Jeff into a sprint.
During the assault on Bolan Peak, she had begged him not to let the cartel thugs have her. Now, the cartel had he
r and, once again, Jeffrey Jacobs was a failure. Regardless, this time he refused to run from his failures. He would get Allie back.
After a half-mile of hard running, Jeff's deep gasps for air forced him to settle into a slower, steadier pace. He needed to run smarter, not harder.
Thankful that the ATVs sounded no farther ahead, he sought ways to close on them. Jeff turned toward the northeast.
The ATVS had headed toward a deep ravine where a creek flowed down from the mountains. The cartel thugs would have to cross the creek well below the ravine if they planned to continue going northeastward. Riding double with Allie, they could not cut straight across.
But I can.
Jeff ran into an open area and stopped. Here the ravine became a narrow canyon. A protruding boulder provided a launching ramp that might enable him to jump the twenty-foot-wide gorge. If he could leap across it, he could gain a quarter mile or more.
The long jump wasn’t his best decathlon event, though he had leaped more than twenty-five feet. But did his tired legs have a twenty-foot jump left in them?
Jeff stopped and studied the distance in the moonlight. It was a downhill jump. That would help.
He would either make the jump and have a chance to catch up to Allie or, if he didn’t clear the ravine, he wouldn’t have to listen to disparaging remarks about Jeff Jacobs anymore. But the consequences of failing to make this jump sent adrenaline surging through his veins.
Full of energy now, Jeff backed up several yards and sprinted toward his long jump board, the boulder.
Jeff gathered himself for the jump. When his left foot hit the outer edge of the rock, he launched his body out over the chasm. His legs pedaled, churning the air with the form of an accomplished long jumper. His body flew through the moonlit area and into the darkness of a shadow cast by a large pine tree.
Jeff's feet hit and dug into the dirt. He had made it across. He drove his arms backward, propelling his body forward so he wouldn’t fall back into the gorge.
His chest slammed into the trunk of the tree. Jeff fell on his rear. Sitting on a bed of pine needles, he shook off the stunned feeling and jumped to his feet.
A loud buzz came from his left side.
Jeff leaped hard to his right.
He pulled his feet up to his body while he flew through the air.
A long, dark form shot toward the spot where he’d been standing, then blended with the dark forest floor.
When his feet hit the ground, Jeff jumped farther to his right and sprinted eastward.
Behind him, the big timber rattler continued its buzzing complaint.
Jeff didn't mind snakes, only the poisonous variety. If he’d been bitten by a large rattler, he would’ve had to stop running or the venom would kill him.
A defensive rattler should have been able to bite him. In spite of Jeff’s disgrace and failure, he had been protected. That thought encouraged him as he continued running toward the sound of the ATVs.
The ATV engines labored, lugging down. They must be climbing the mountain ahead. If the climb took its toll on the machines, it would take an even greater toll on his body.
He ran up the small mountain taking shortcuts wherever possible, but the sounds of the engines said he wasn't gaining. His lungs burned from the abuse, but Jeff stumbled ahead on rubbery legs.
The steep grade slowed him to a walk as he climbed the last few steps to the top of the mountain. He stopped. Something had changed.
No ATV engines.
What did that mean? Were they loading Allie into a car?
He summoned the strength to run from the mountaintop down to a clearing that provided a view of the valley shrouded in darkness.
Below, in the small, sheltered valley, a light flickered. A campfire.
Would they be so careless as to build a fire?
He had crossed several hills and a mountain. The camp lay several miles from civilization, hidden in a small valley. At 1:00 a.m. in such a remote place, they probably felt safe. And, obviously, they were not expecting a visitor.
As Jeff descended the mountain toward the light below, he sought a plan, any kind of a plan, to free Allie and to stop the ATVs from carrying her away again. He had ruled out stealing an ATV. That was too risky. But neither did he want armed thugs chasing Allie and him on those machines.
The camp lay only fifty yards ahead now, beyond some bushes and trees. The sound of running water came from the other side of the camp, and above the sounds of the brook, the murmur of voices.
Maybe the running water would cover some of his noises, but he needed to avoid—a sharp crack sounded. He had stepped on a dry branch.
Jeff stopped.
So did the voices in the camp.
How could he have been so careless? The only redeeming thing about his miscue was his distance from them. If they came looking, they probably couldn't find him before he slipped away.
Jeff waited and watched.
Two men stood and turned slowly in a full circle scanning the surrounding darkness. When they finished, one of them shrugged. The other sat.
That was strike one. He couldn't afford another.
After a couple of minutes, the murmur of voices in the camp resumed.
One man walked to a vehicle beyond the firelight. A pickup. He pulled what looked like several sleeping bags from it and carried them back toward the others near the fire.
Jeff needed to spot Allie now and to get an accurate accounting of both men and vehicles.
He circled toward the pickup, keeping the vehicle between him and the men. There were two four-wheel-drive pickups and, only a few yards away, lay an old logging road. The overgrown road appeared to end at this spot. Probably the site of an old logging landing.
One thing was certain, he could not let them put Allie into one of those pickups. They would head down that road and he would never see her again.
Between the trucks and the fire, partially hidden by bushes, sat two SUVs.
He circled the camp until he was between the brook and the fire. Where was Allie?
Thoughts of what they might be doing to her broke his concentration. Jeff’s stomach churned. If he didn’t spot her soon, he was going to lose it, do something crazy, and get himself killed.
As he often did during track and field competitions, Jeff brutally stuffed his emotions and stuck to his task, studying the camp.
Four men sat near the fire, one less than the number who had escaped uninjured from their battle at Bolan Peak. One man must be tending to business elsewhere.
Three of the men had dark hair and skin like most Hispanics. The fourth was definitely Caucasian.
Jeff listened to their words. They often started sentences in English then transitioned to Spanish.
When the Spanish words began, the Caucasian man launched a complaint. The three others switched back to English. If the pattern held, Jeff could follow most of their conversation.
He moved closer, not more than twenty-five yards from the men. He surveyed the perimeter of the lighted area. Allie!
He tried to muffle his gasp.
She sat facing a tree only fifteen or twenty yards in front of him.
Allie’s profile, silhouetted by the firelight, showed her hugging a Madrone, apparently tied with her arms around the tree.
His gaze remained locked on Allie, studying her. How did she really feel about Jeff Jacobs?
The men's words yanked his attention back to them.
“She knows too much and has cost us far too much, already. Today the FBI took over the second plantation. They killed Gustav and Leonardo. Of course, they were already wounded, not much use to us. We even had to…” The goon walked over to Allie and stroked her hair, “… to move papa, mama, and little brother Benjamin…” He yanked on her hair.
Allie groaned then swiveled her head toward the men.
Jeff could imagine her fierce glare.
“We need to move them to the last plantation,” the tall man said.
“I t
hink we need to kill them all, cut our losses, and leave these mountains. They are cursed.” The stumpy goon with the long hair turned toward the other three by the fire. “Do you want to rot in a cell for the rest of your life because of what una pollita knows? If we are caught, that's what will happen, because she knows far too much.”
The Caucasian man appeared restless. His foot tapped out a snappy rhythm on the ground. He leaned forward, holding his hands near the flames. “I joined you for the money.”
The long-haired man sneered at him. “You did not join us. We chose you and made the offer. Do you think you could've refused it? No, gringo. We kill those who refuse.”
“Regardless, I'm in it for the money. We've lost over two million dollars because of her and our losses are growing.” He pointed toward Allie. “If we keep her away from the pimps, we can sell her to one of the big-time dealers. If she's unspoiled goods, she'll bring a good price.
“You're right about una pollita. If she is, as you say unspoiled, the international traffickers operating near Portland might pay as much as four-hundred thousand dollars for one like her. They could double their money in a year. And maybe a hundred thousand for her little brother. It's not two million, but if we …” he looked at Allie, “… work papacito and mama until they drop, or until we are forced to move, we might recoup half our loss. Perhaps we would stay in favor with El Capitan's son. That would probably save our heads.”
Hearing the man speak of Allie as mere merchandise lit a raging fire inside of Jeff. By the time he had doused the fire, his body shook. He was breathing too hard and too loud. Jeff covered his face with his hands to muffle the sounds.
The stocky, greasy-haired man approached Allie. “So, mi pollita, am I looking at unspoiled goods? Answer me!”
“I would not dishonor my family.” Allie's words dripped with disdain. “So what do you think?” She spat on him.
The man drew back a boot to kick her.
“Cool it, Hector!” The tall quiet one's voice spoke with authority. “Both unspoiled and undamaged is what brings top dollar. Surely you can find other ways to vent your frustration than kicking una pollita in the face. In fact, I will help you. You stand the first two watches tonight. And leave the girl alone. Do you understand?”