They arrived in Salem an hour later, then spent nearly twenty minutes finding the address. The street was broken into sections, and the GPS on her phone sent them to a dead end where they found a huge welding shop instead. They backtracked around the shuttered lumber mill that broke up the street and finally found a cluster of businesses, all housed in metal buildings. The upholstery-repair shop in the front had an address that was only one numeral different from what they were looking for.
They parked across the street in a mechanic’s parking lot that held several other vehicles. In the twilight, they couldn’t see what was behind the building on the other side, but a light was on in the back area, and they spotted a wide strip of asphalt leading to the rear.
“I’ll get out and do a quick check,” Rox offered.
“Be careful,” Marty cautioned. “They could be on edge because of the Fed Ex delivery that didn’t show up.”
“Maybe not.” She found a small flashlight in the truck’s glovebox. “Everyone has waited for a delivery that didn’t happen.”
“True enough.”
Rox climbed out, glad she’d worn navy-blue workout clothes for the trip—comfortable and hard to see at night. The closed shop in front hosted one night light next to its front door, but everywhere else was dark. She hurried across the narrow street, heading diagonally toward the driveway leading to the back lot. Once she turned into the alley, she hugged up against the front building, side-stepping to stay out of sight. If a vehicle suddenly rumbled out from the back business, she had few options. Hopping the chain-link fence on the other side of the driveway might be her only choice. But it would look bad. Or maybe they would think she was a meth-head burglar.
At the end of the shop wall—her only cover—she stopped and scanned the back lot. The small metal transport office was dwarfed by the massive warehouse on the other side of the back fence. A carport next to the shop covered two white vans. Damn. Multiple vehicles could mean multiple runs. Probably not at night, she reassured herself. Perhaps the company made auto-part runs during the day to keep busy, which would explain why RWH Transport functioned as a separate entity. But at least she and Marty had finally found the transport office. Lights were on inside and outside the building, so someone was still on the job.
Rox hurried back, her footsteps the only audible movement in the quiet industrial area. A mile in the distance, she could hear the freeway, but otherwise, stillness. The heat of the day was gone, and she shivered in her long-sleeved pullover. She had a jacket in the truck but wouldn’t likely wear it until they reached the base camp.
She climbed in the cab and reported her findings.
Marty grunted. “If someone’s working tonight, they must have a pickup scheduled.”
“That’s what I think. But there could be several runs. Maybe we should have brought two vehicles.”
“I thought about it when I mentioned the motel, but clearly, there’s no place to stay in this area.” Marty sipped from a thermos of coffee. “I really doubt they would schedule two program abductions in the same night. Unless both kids are going to the same camp. In which case, we’ll be fine.”
Rox was less optimistic. “Unless the poor kid in the crosshairs tonight is a girl. They separate the genders into different hiking groups.”
“I’m sure they take a lot more boys into the program than girls.” Marty gave a shy smile. “Even I got into a bit of teenage trouble.”
He’d never admitted that before. “What did you do?”
“You know my friend who lived across the street—”
“The infamous Steve Hannagin.” Rox had heard plenty of those stories.
“Let’s just say we played a prank on a neighbor that didn’t go as planned, and a mailbox got destroyed in the process.”
“You scoundrel!” Rox laughed. “Were the police involved?”
“Yep. But we were only thirteen, so no arrests. Steve and I mowed a lot of lawns to pay for the damage.”
They were quiet for a moment, then Rox said, “The kids who get sent to these camps are a lot more troubled than that. I know the parents must feel desperate. You would have to before making that choice. Because these programs are extreme.”
“They’re not all the same.” Marty patted her arm. “We’re rescuing Josh because his father thinks he’s suicidal. He needs a different kind of help.”
“Let’s not forget that Tommy Goodwin is dead.” She sounded more defensive than she meant to.
“But we don’t know why. His death might be completely unrelated. Or it could have been an accident.”
They were still waiting for the autopsy results. When a body had been left outside to decompose for weeks, determining cause of death could be difficult. Marty knew that as well as she did. They talked about the case for a few minutes, then Marty said he needed to rest his eyes. Rox pulled her laptop from under the seat, opened an article she’d downloaded, and started reading.
An hour later, her eyes grew heavy and she rolled down her window, hoping the cold air would revive her. Marty was sleeping soundly, making a soft snoring noise. She had a flash of guilt for bringing him out here. An old guy with a bad heart was not an ideal extraction partner. But she would rather work with him than anyone else, and he would rather be here than at home, dying slowly in a chair.
An engine rumbled across the street, and Rox snapped to attention. She grabbed Marty’s arm and shook it. “Wake up, old man! We’ve got activity.”
He sat up. “What’s going on?”
“Do you hear that? One of the vans is being warmed up.”
“Good. I’m ready to roll.” He reached for his key in the starter.
“Not yet!”
“Right. I knew that.” The poor guy was barely awake.
“Should I drive?”
“Hell no. I’m fine.”
The engine sound was coming toward them. “Get down.”
They both leaned over into the middle of the bench seat, with Rox hanging off the front edge. She imagined how it would look to someone walking up. Rox giggled, and Marty shushed her.
The rumble grew louder, then headlights shone in their windshield and they heard the vehicle pull into the street. As the noise retreated, Rox eased up and watched the white van stop at the corner.
Marty sat up too. “Now?”
“Give it another block. We’re the only traffic out here.”
They waited to a count of five, then Marty started the truck and pulled out. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through Rox’s veins. If they handled this well, they would be at the base camp in a couple of hours. Josh might be out in the wilderness, but they would find him.
“What if the kid isn’t at the base camp?” Marty asked, obviously on the same train of thought.
“I’ll pressure one of the counselors to lead me to him. Or I can follow someone who’s hiking out with supplies. These kids can’t be that isolated, can they?”
“I don’t know. I’m starting to think they are.”
At the intersection in the distance, the white van turned left, and they could see two large men in the front.
“My biggest concern is the local police chief,” Rox said. “If he’s a Ridgeline advocate and someone in the camp calls to report our interference, we could end up in cuffs.”
“We have Josh’s father on our side,” Marty reminded her. “And with his mother dead, I’m sure the waiver she signed giving Ridgeline temporary custody is now void. We’ll threaten them with a kidnapping charge.” He turned to give her a crooked smile. “We’re not without connections. We both know people in the FBI we can call.”
Rox laughed. “It will be three in the morning by the time we get there. We’ll be on our own.”
“I brought my weapon.”
Rox sighed. “I know.”
Ahead, the van slowed and took the south I-5 exit.
Surprised, Rox mumbled, “Where the heck are they going?” The road over the mountain pass was just north of Salem.
“They must have a pickup south of here.”
“I hope we don’t have to drive all the way to Eugene.”
“Can you imagine doing that for a living? Driving around the state in the middle of the night abducting teenagers?” Marty shook his head. “I spent my career arresting people, yet the process of confining another human being still repulses me.”
Thirty minutes later, the van exited the freeway, and they followed it to a new suburb outside of the small college town of Corvallis. As the van turned deeper into the maze of side streets, Marty hung back. They were the only vehicles on the road at this hour. “I’m tempted to park and wait,” he commented. “They would have to pass us on the way out.”
Rox hated to let the van out of their sight. “Let’s not take the chance. Shut off your lights.”
When they reached a neighborhood with nothing but dead ends, the van made a sudden right. Marty pulled off the street, parking behind a big RV. The homes in the neighborhood all looked like they’d been built that summer, with no trees or mature vegetation. “I’m going on foot the rest of the way.” Rox opened her door. “I want to witness how they operate.” She needed to see for herself if the horror stories told by teenagers were true.
Before Marty could discourage her, Rox jumped out and ran across the corner lawn, catching sight of the van when she reached the side street. The vehicle was parked in front of a house near the end. She looked around for something to hide behind. A short hedge in front of the next home would have to do. She jogged over and squatted behind it. Peering out with one eye, she watched the two men climb out. The passenger guy opened the van’s sliding side door and left it that way. Dark clothes and clean-shaven, they looked like ex-military. The escorts chatted briefly, but she couldn’t hear what they said.
At the front door, they walked in without knocking. The parents had to be expecting them, so the silence was to keep from alerting their victim. So weird! Rox was glad she’d never had children. The sacrifices and choices people were forced to make… not for her. She wanted to move in closer—and watch the interaction with the kid through a window—but didn’t dare. Once the thugs came out, she had to be able to run back around the corner and get into the truck before everyone got rolling again.
The big guys were in the house for less than five minutes. When they came out, they were carrying someone wrapped in a sheet. The abductee was squirming but silent and mostly likely bound. A sick feeling lodged in Rox’s stomach as she watched the thugs toss the sheet-wrapped teenager into the back of the van. She straightened her legs but kept bent over as she ran back across the corner lawn. She hurried to the truck and scrambled in. “Let’s get down, they’ll be rolling by in a minute.”
She and Marty ducked into the middle of the seat again, but this time it didn’t make her laugh.
Chapter 33
Tuesday, July 11, 1:45 a.m.
Tailing a vehicle in the middle of the night on an empty road was easy—until the other driver suddenly braked for no apparent reason.
“What are they doing?” Rox was instantly on high alert.
“Either they know we’re back here and are testing the theory, or they have to pee.” Marty sounded calm.
“We have to go past them.” As the only other visible car on the road, they had no choice. Rox strained to see ahead in the dark to why the van had slowed. “I don’t see a turnoff, unless there’s an unmarked private driveway.” They were over the Cascades and driving through the high-plains flat land between Sisters and Bend.
“My guess is they have to pee. I sure do.” Marty kept the truck moving at the same speed, and they rapidly approached the van, which had pulled off at a small turnout. By the time they drove past, one of the men had climbed out.
Rox had to use a restroom too, but she wasn’t letting herself think about it. Or drink any more coffee. She’d bought caffeine pills for their last trip and had taken one earlier. “What now?”
“I’ll slow down a bit now while you watch to see what they do.”
Rox unbuckled to turn in the seat. The lights of the van stayed steady for a minute, then the road curved and she lost sight of the other vehicle. That had happened repeatedly on the trip over the pass, so she didn’t panic. Yet. “I can’t see them at the moment.”
“I still think we’ll be fine. We’re ninety-percent sure they’re headed for Sun Ridge. The questionable part comes after that.”
“We can pull off the road later and let them pass us again. I need to pee anyway.”
“We’ll see how it goes.”
They didn’t see the white van again until they’d driven through Bend and stopped at a tiny rest station to relieve themselves. The other vehicle cruised by, followed by a Jeep with a canoe on top. With the transport service back in sight and her bladder empty, Rox relaxed a little.
They reached Sun Ridge twenty-five minutes later, and Rox checked her phone. Just after three, as she’d predicted. The little town was dark with only a few motel signs illuminating the highway.
“This is where it gets tricky,” Marty said, slowing down. “If they see us make the turn off the main highway, they’ll know for sure we’re following them.”
Until that point, they could have just been another car going in the same direction, headed toward Klamath Falls.
“We shut the lights off again right before we turn.”
“I will, but I can’t drive the whole damn mountain road that way.” A edge finally crept into Marty’s tone.
He had to be tired—and the hardest part was yet to come. “Want me to drive for a while?”
“I’m fine. Just a little worried that we’re going to lose them at the last minute.”
She was too. “If we do, we’ll just keep heading in the same direction as last time. They probably didn’t move the base camp very far.”
They passed the last gas station at the edge of town and Marty accelerated. They were still forty or fifty minutes from the base camp, but no longer the only vehicle on the main road. She’d noticed headlights behind them when they’d driven through Sun Ridge.
“We might have picked up a state trooper,” she said, trying not to sound worried.
Marty glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t see it.”
Rox looked over her shoulder again. No lights. “Maybe it was a local cop.”
After a moment Marty announced, “We need a Plan B.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Rox reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a wad of cash. “I brought Scott Goodwin’s retainer, which I haven’t returned yet. If we lose the van, we park and stop them when they come back out. Then we bribe them to show us the location.”
“Maybe we should have done that in the first place.” Marty laughed. “I’m not optimistic. They might be the kind of guys who will bust our heads together just for fun.”
A new dread seeped into her stomach. What if the escorts hung around the base camp to sleep or rest for a while? They could be an added layer of trouble for the extraction. “We’ve never done one quite like this, have we?”
“And I hope we never do again.” Marty didn’t bother to smile at her.
On the flat road ahead, the van veered left and drove into the high-mountain desert toward the big rock formation they’d seen on the last trip. Marty shut off the headlights. They would have to rely on the moon to see the turnoff, then hang back far enough to not arouse the transport thugs’ suspicion.
Thirty minutes later—with no van in sight—Marty pulled off the road. “We’ve lost ’em.”
Chapter 34
Rox woke to the alarm on her cell phone. She sat up, disoriented and stiff. What the hell? She looked over and saw Marty asleep behind the wheel of their truck. Oh, right. They had decided to rest for a few hours and begin searching for the base camp at daylight. Rox rubbed the back of her neck, which ached from sleeping against the window. Her forehead pounded too, with the onset of a migraine. Get out, walk around. She forced herself to climb from the cab
. The crisp mountain air made her shiver, and only a glimmer of daylight streaked through the trees. In the near-darkness, she moved toward the road and its flat surface. After ten minutes of pacing back and forth, inhaling the cold pine-scented air, the tension in her skull eased up.
Rox climbed back in the truck and shook Marty’s shoulder. “Wake up, old man.” He made a soft cry in his sleep. Damn, she should have left him home like she did for the last extraction. It wasn’t fair to drag him out here into this crazy scenario. What if he had a heart attack?
“I’m awake.” Her stepdad sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I was dreaming about snakes crawling into my tent. Nasty!”
“Sorry about getting you into this situation.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine.” He shifted and groaned. “Stiff as hell, but nothing that a good soak in the hot tub won’t fix.” He opened his door and stepped out. “I could really use some coffee though.”
“Me too.” Rox considered their options. “Should we drive back into town and get some, maybe chat up or bribe some locals into giving us directions?”
“A waste of time.” Marty headed behind a tree.
Rox reached into the storage space behind the seat and pulled two cans of Diet Coke out of the cooler, then rummaged through her backpack for breakfast bars. Better than nothing. She downed half the soda but waited for her partner to return before tearing open her snack.
As they ate Marty asked, “What’s the plan?”
Broken Boys_The Extractor Page 17