Wolfhunter River

by Caine, Rachel

  I slide down into the passenger-side footwell. Mike, with difficulty, stretches out on the backseat. “Don’t tell any of the locals,” I tell Fairweather. “We don’t know who to trust.”

  The detective glances down at me. “You’d best start at the beginning,” he says. “Because last I knew, you all were looking to clear Vera Crockett. Who are they?”

  “We still are. Marlene was killed by either Weldon or Carr,” I tell him. “She knew about a wreck that happened out on the highway outside of town, right near the forest. She helped clear it all up.”

  “And?”

  “And there was a dead driver, and a tied-up little girl in the back.”

  He looks grim. “Jesus. Ellie White.”

  “The kidnappers’ plan didn’t include a bad-luck head-on collision, and the police chief and tow-truck operator deciding they’d just struck gold. When was the ransom paid?”

  “Thirty million dollars, paid four days ago,” he says. “Wire transfer to an offshore bank.”

  “My guess is two geniuses here organized that and got some local banker in on the scheme to clean the cash. They could provide proof of life. The original kidnappers couldn’t.” There’s a siren coming. Getting louder.

  “Stay down, cruiser’s coming.” Fairweather slows, stops, and rolls down his window. “Hey, what’s the commotion about?” He has to shout to be heard over the siren. It cuts out.

  “Escaped prisoner,” I hear another voice say over the idling of two engines. “Vera Crockett, if you can believe that.”

  “Haven’t seen her, but I just got back in town,” Fairweather says; it’s a classic mix of truth and fiction. “Just heading for the station right now.”

  “Watch your back. People around Vera Crockett got a habit of dying on us.”

  That’s slick, I think; the cop is already laying the groundwork for getting rid of all of us.

  The chat goes on a minute or so, and then Fairweather rolls up his window and drives on. I hear Mike groan in the backseat. “You okay?” I ask.

  “Fine.” He isn’t. Mike’s voice goes a little deeper. “If I’d just stayed with you, Sam—”

  “It probably would have gone down the same way,” I say. Ironic that Miranda’s dead in a fight that had nothing to do with her, or Gwen, or Melvin Royal. A fight over money, pure and simple. But I’d like to think that she would have protected that little girl to the end. Miranda was a mother first. Always.

  Having her gone from the world now feels inexplicable. Love, hate, that no longer matters. She’s been such a presence in my life that coming to terms with that vast absence will take time.

  “You think Carr and Weldon are behind this,” Fairweather says. “That they’ve got the kid?”

  “Likely,” I say. “Unless the poor kid’s already dead.”

  “Proof of life came in, but that was before the ransom was paid. Time’s running out, if it hasn’t already,” he replies. He’s silent for a while. “I’m not going back for Gwen.”

  “Hang on,” I say, and start to get up.

  “Stay down. Got another black SUV like this one, coming up behind us,” he says. “It’s the original kidnappers, right? Come to find their prize. They still want their cash.”

  “Don’t care,” I say. “We have to go back.”

  “They’re safe where they are, right?”

  “I don’t know that. They’re with the lawyer. Sparks.”

  “Then they’re safe for now. Stay the hell down.” He’s watching the rearview mirror, and I can read the tension in him. He finally says, “Carr’s got a compound outside of town. He claims he’s a farmer, but word is he’s some kind of sovereign-citizen nut too. It’s a perfect place to keep the kid secret. I’m making the call.”

  Mike says, “Could local PD pick up that call? Listen in?”

  It makes Fairweather hesitate as he reaches for the radio. “Yeah. Shit. We need a good head start.”

  I care about that, but not as much as I care about finding my family right now. “Gwen and our kids. Right now. Or I jump the hell out of this car.”

  “Do you want to die?” he asks. “If I don’t get you two out of town, that will happen. Not just to you. To Gwen and the kids too.”

  I don’t like it, but he might be right. “Be honest. Is Sparks part of this?”

  “Don’t think so,” he says. “He’s a screwup, but not in with Carr and Weldon. Sparks is a loner. Not a very good lawyer either. He passed the bar after—what was it—three tries? He’s been pretending to be a big shot around town for many years, but he never tried a single criminal case before.”

  That’s a jolt. “Never? Why give him Vera’s case?” But I know. They’d arranged for Sparks to have the case because Weldon knew Sparks would flail around and let Vera down . . . which he probably would have, if Vee hadn’t called Gwen the day that her mother died. Nobody had seen that coming. So I ask the question that really matters to me. “Are they safe with him?”

  Fairweather takes time answering that, which doesn’t make me feel any better. “I know he can’t be part of any kidnapping scheme. Weldon doesn’t trust him. Neither does Carr,” he finally says. “Doesn’t mean I like him. What kind of man makes his sister work as his housekeeper and calls her by a made-up name?”

  It takes me a second to realize that he’s talking about Mrs. Pall. “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish to hell I was. It’s like a Gothic nightmare in that house. It’s possible the two of them are—” Fairweather stops and shrugs. “Who the hell knows.”

  “We need to go back,” I say. “Right now.” It’s more urgent now than ever to get to my family.

  “We’re already out of town,” he tells me. “And we’re not turning around.” He takes out the radio and keys it on. “10-34, 10-34, dispatch immediate county assistance, Detective Fairweather with FBI agent Lustig and one civilian outside of—”

  The shot comes almost head-on. It punches through the windshield; I don’t see that from where I am, but I hear it. Fairweather drops the radio. “Shit!” Fairweather yells, and jerks the wheel to the left, then right. For a second I think the shot’s missed him completely . . . but it hasn’t. It’s hit him right below the collarbone, dead center, and punched a hole right through. It’s a big entry wound. Blood starts pouring down his shirt front, wicking through the cotton. Bright red taking over the starched white. He looks down at himself as if he’s not quite getting the idea of what’s just happened. I lunge up and grab the wheel as his hands come off it, and I struggle to steer the car as it starts to veer wildly back to the other side. He’s pulled his foot off the accelerator, but that instinct is dead wrong; if we stop now, we’re dead. Someone’s in the trees, and if we don’t get past, they’ll keep firing until we’re swiss cheese.

  Fairweather’s eyes have rolled back. No breath, and the pulse of blood has already stopped from his chest. He’s dead. I hate the calculus.

  I don’t have time to honor him. I open his driver’s-side door, slam my fingers down on the seat-belt release, and shove him out as I scramble into the blood-drenched seat. It’s warm. His blood soaks into my pants, the back of my shirt. I try not to think about that, or the fact that I’m leaving a good man behind us.

  I floor it.

  “Mike!” I yell. “Hold on!”

  “Yeah,” he says. He sounds quiet now. No jokes. This is Mike Lustig in combat, steady as a rock.

  The windshield is a cracked, crazed mess of webbed glass, but I don’t have time to deal with that. I ignore the damage and try to see past it. Sharp turn coming up five seconds. Four. Three.

  Another shot drives through the windshield, and another. Both miss me, because the angle’s growing more and more acute. The cracked glass doesn’t help the shooter either, and I’m cramming myself into the far left corner as I drive. I swerve and keep my foot down; the back tires scream and shimmy, and I correct as it fishtails.

  “Incoming from your six!” I yell, because now we’re past the shooter’s
position, and he’s got time to swing around in his perch and try to get me from the back. He might be able to see Mike from that position, depending on his elevation. He’ll take whatever target he can get, and maybe just spray and pray at this point.

  I sink down into the seat and keep the gas pedal jammed to the floor. I hear more shots thunking into metal, breaking more glass. “Call out!” I say.

  “Present!” Mike yells back over the roar of wind streaming in. Pieces of glass are breaking free and whipping into my face. I can’t slow down. This asshole is a pretty good shot. If I can make it to the next curve . . .

  I can’t.

  A tire blows—whether it’s from a bullet or just the stress, I don’t know—but the whole car jerks sideways as physics rips the rubber apart. I can’t slow down. I keep the thing moving. But I can’t keep it straight.

  “Brace!” I yell, and set myself, because I know we’re going into the ditch. I can’t stop it in time, and something in the steering feels loose and shattered. We’re screwed.

  And then the car rolls.

  17

  CONNOR

  When Mom goes with Mrs. Pall, Mr. Sparks smiles at the three of us—me, Lanny, and Vera—and puts his finger to his lips. He goes to the door and quietly shuts it. “There,” he says in a low voice. “Now. We need to get you somewhere safe in case the police demand entry, regardless of our wishes.”

  He takes a remote control out of his desk and presses a button, and the bookcase over on one side silently swings out from the wall. The only thing I can think is, That’s really cool, because I’ve never seen anything like that except in the movies. It’s like a Batman trick.

  It sounds like he’s doing something good for us, but I’m not so sure. Why wouldn’t he do this when Mom could see? I don’t want her not knowing where we are. So I look at my sister. “Lanny?” I’m asking her because I don’t know for sure, and she will.

  She looks at the hidden door, then at Hector Sparks. She’s frowning. “Maybe we should wait for Mom,” she says.

  “There’s no time,” Sparks says. “Do you want Vera to be caught? Perhaps killed?”

  Lanny shakes her head. She gives up and heads for the hidden door. I don’t like it. I’m not sure why, not at all, but I just don’t. So I go to the office door to tell Mom.

  I hear something click in the door before I get there. When I try to open it, the knob won’t turn. “Mom!” I bang on it. Hard.

  “Quiet!” Mr. Sparks snaps. “Go with your sister, boy. You’ll be safe down there.”

  I turn around. He’s standing behind his desk, still. “Open the door!”

  Lanny’s turned around now, and she and Vera are standing there watching. “Connor?” my sister says. “Come on. We should do what he says.”

  “Not until we tell Mom!”

  Mr. Sparks sighs, opens a drawer, and says, “I truly did not wish this to be difficult. But you brought this on yourselves.” He takes out a gun. It’s an old one, a revolver, like something you’d see in an old black-and-white movie. But it’s a gun, and I freeze. So do both the girls. “I need you all to go downstairs at once.”

  “You do have her,” I blurt out. “Ellie White! You kidnapped her!”

  Mr. Sparks frowns at me, as if I’ve said something really dumb. “Don’t insult me. I’d never hurt a child.”

  “My brother’s a child!” my sister says. She sounds angry and terrified at the same time. “You leave him alone!”

  “He’s over twelve,” Sparks says, like that makes sense. “I didn’t abduct that poor girl. I wouldn’t. And if you three are good and obedient, I promise that you’ll be perfectly all right. But right now, get in that room, or I promise you, I will shoot one of you right now.”

  He scares me.

  I want my mom to break down that door and find us and take that gun away and kick his ass, but I think she doesn’t even know we’re in trouble. I’d yell, but I’m afraid that would make things worse. So I keep my voice quiet. “Mom will come for us,” I tell Lanny. “It’s okay. Do what he says.”

  My sister doesn’t argue with me. It’s just about the first time that’s happened, but I don’t get to enjoy it. She leads Vee into the opening of the bookcase.

  “Boys should be seen and not heard,” Mr. Sparks says. “You’ll have to be taught how to behave. But I believe you have some promise, young man. Once you’re removed from the influence of your mother . . .”

  I’m scared now, really scared. I look at him. I don’t blink. “If you hurt my mom or my sister, I’m going to kill you. And I can. I know how. My dad taught me.”

  It sounds good. Scary. I’ve been practicing that since I learned it frightened off some of the bullies in school.

  It doesn’t work on Mr. Sparks. He shakes his head, like I’ve said something stupid, and hits a remote control on the desk. I hear the office door unlock, and for a second I think he is going to let me talk to Mom . . . but then he grabs me by the wrist and drags me into the opening behind the bookcase. I yell and pull back, but he’s bigger and stronger and shoves me inside the opening. He reaches to grab a handhold that swings the bookcase closed behind us. I hear a click. I don’t think I know how to open it again. I think about my mom not knowing about any of this, just walking in. She won’t know. And if Mr. Sparks has a gun, then Mrs. Pall will too.

  Lanny’s got to be in here—but she isn’t. It’s a small space, and then there are stairs going down. I can’t see her, but it’s dark at the bottom. “Lanny!” I shout. She doesn’t answer. I try to get free. I can’t. Sparks puts his hand around my throat and squeezes until I’m on my toes, gasping for air, and it hurts, it hurts really bad. He shoves me forward and keeps his grip on my throat. I stumble down a couple of steps, then a few more.

  He keeps pushing me on. “I’m going to let go now,” he says when we’re in the middle. I can hardly breathe, and I’ve stopped fighting him. “You be a good boy or your sister will suffer.”

  The pressure lets up, but he grabs my shoulders. Still pushing me down, step by step. “My mom is going to come get us,” I tell him. “She’ll find us!” I can barely say it. My throat hurts bad, and I’m shaking all over.

  “No, I don’t think Mrs. Pall will allow that,” Mr. Sparks says. “Watch your step, it’s a little dark at the end, I must get that bulb fixed. Three, two, one . . . and we’re here.”

  The lights come on, really bright and hard.

  We’re in a cave. The second I realize that, I start feeling like I’m suffocating, because Lanny and I, we were in another cave once as prisoners, and all of a sudden it feels like the walls are moving in on me, the dark is too dark, and I want my mom. I want her so bad that I feel like I’m going to start screaming. I hate this, I hate that Mom is up there without us, and Mrs. Pall might kill her, and I hate this smiling man with his ugly, mean eyes.

  I see Lanny and Vee huddled against the wall at the bottom, and the second I do, I run into my sister’s arms. She shoves me behind her, and as she does, I realize she’s found a weapon. It’s a piece of rock, and it’s not very big, but it has a wicked sharp edge on it.

  “What is that?” Lanny asks, and nods toward the other end of the cave. There’s a locked steel door on that end with a window in it at the top, and a bigger dark window next to it, like you’d see inside a house. Only it’s blacked out. Mr. Sparks pauses where he is, and that smile gets wider.

  “It’s going to be your new home, girls.” He has the remote control in his hand, and he presses a button.

  The black window has a metal shutter on the other side, and it raises up, and I see the three beds in the other room. There are only two women in the room, though, and as soon as the window slides up, they both get up and stand there, staring straight ahead with their hands folded together. They’re wearing white dresses. And they have long hair.

  I recognize their pictures because I looked at them online: the missing women of Wolfhunter. The sickly-looking blonde is Tarla Dawes; she’s the younger one. Th
e other one is Sandra Clegman, who I think is older.

  There’s one missing. Bethany Wardrip. I remember the awful body we found at the river, and I want to throw up when I remember her picture from the website. That was her. It had to be.

  “You killed her,” I say, and look at Mr. Sparks. “Bethany.”

  “No, of course I didn’t,” he says, and for some reason I believe him. He sounds offended. “I take very good care of my girls. She just got very sick. There was nothing I could do for her.”

  “You threw her away. Like trash!”

  “I left her for God and nature to purify,” he says. “You’ll understand how dirty women are when you get older. I’ll teach you.”

  “Like you taught them?” I swallow back more vomit when I see that those women on the other side of the glass haven’t moved. It’s like they’re afraid to breathe. He’s going to put my sister in there too. And Vee.

  But he hasn’t said anything about me. Which is scary. “Are you going to kill me?” I just ask. I’d rather know now.

  “Of course not! I won’t put you in there with them; that wouldn’t be appropriate. I’ll teach you how to be responsible for them. Be their father,” he says. His cell phone buzzes, and he takes it out to read a message. He looks grumpy when he puts it back. “Stay down here with the girls. I will be right back.”

  He points the remote at the window, and the shutter comes down. I can imagine the two women in there slumping over, sitting down. Maybe crying. They’re so frightened. I could see it in their faces—that they’re scared all the time.

  Mr. Sparks is a monster, and I never saw it, just like I never saw it in Dad, and I hate it, I hate it that I can’t see it. Monsters shouldn’t look normal.

  If he touches my sister . . . No. No, you won’t let him. Mom won’t let him.

  I’m still staring at the black window when I hear footsteps. When I turn around, I realize that Mr. Sparks is halfway up the stairs again, moving fast. Mom! I turn and rush for the stairs; I get there ahead of Lanny, who’s running for it too, but we’re still only halfway up when I hear that bookcase swing shut again, and the lock snaps in place.