Back from the Brink

by Emery Hayes

  “I was hoping you would say that.”

  “Nope.”

  “What?”

  “I believe the answer is no,” he said, quoting her.

  “Oh, that’s low.”

  “Lower to supply an addict.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Let’s do this,” he suggested. “You’ve been running for two months now? How long does it take for you to get it done?”

  “Fifty-seven minutes.” She was pretty proud she’d gotten it under an hour and so was Lars. He whistled his appreciation between his teeth.

  “That’s almost a ten-minute mile.”

  “My last mile is always the fastest. Nine minutes thirty-three seconds yesterday. Go figure, you’d think I’d be dragging my butt at that point.”

  He nodded. “What kind of time were you making your first week?”

  Nicole snorted. “The first week all I could squeeze out of this body were two miles a run, and it took me thirty minutes.”

  “You see that,” he said. “You’re stronger, faster by far in comparison.” He popped several french fries into his mouth and spoke around them. “You don’t want to mess that up.”

  She spared him a glance as she pulled to the shoulder of the road. She parked the Yukon at the entrance of the Embrys’ driveway. “You’re a good friend, Lars.”

  “It was nothing,” he said.

  “You talked me down. Those hostage negotiation classes are doing both of us some good.”

  He chuckled, pushed the last few fries into his mouth, took a sip of his iced tea over that, and climbed from the Yukon. Nicole met him passenger side and they stood there, in the loose gravel at the side of the road, considering the house. It was down a gentle slope, maybe two hundred feet from the road. All the windows on the main floor were lit and three cars were in the driveway now, a blue Camry joining the truck and the compact.

  “How do you want to do this?”

  “Follow my lead, unless you have a better one,” she said.

  Their feet crunched in the gravel.

  “Elias Embry was the only one home when I came by this morning, and he was in the backyard, gardening. Mid to late sixties, retired. His wife was grocery shopping.”

  She knocked and they waited. They heard movement, soft footfalls that didn’t arrive at the door but shuffled somewhere toward the back of the house. Nicole knocked again.

  “Mr. Embry,” Nicole called through the door. “It’s Sheriff Cobain.”

  He opened the door, pulling it back so that Nicole could see past him into the living room. The lamps were lit: polished wood flooring, a gray sofa and two floral chairs, a painting on the wall, a book, opened, facedown on the coffee table. The room was empty.

  “You’re back,” Embry said.

  “We have some questions,” Lars told him. “Mind if we come in?”

  Lars delivered it as a question but pulled open the storm door, and Embry stepped back.

  “We’re just starting dinner.”

  “We won’t be long,” Nicole promised.

  “Sure, come in. I could get some of that tea you missed earlier,” he offered as he turned into the living room.

  “Thank you, Mr. Embry, but we won’t be staying.”

  They followed him to the center of the room, but no one made a move to sit down. There were two hallways off the living area, one that led to the kitchen and the other to the bedrooms, Nicole assumed.

  As Nicole watched, a girl stepped out of the shadowed hall and into the room, but no farther. Young, brunette, hazel eyes. She could pass for Caucasian but Nicole knew better. The girl met Tandy’s description and closely resembled the department sketch. She had the baby cradled in her arms.

  Nicole sought and maintained eye contact with the young woman. Her gaze was steady, her chin lifted. Not challenging but determined. If not brave, bold, and probably a good helping of both.

  “You weren’t honest with me this morning, Mr. Embry,” Nicole said.

  There was movement behind the girl. An older woman, hair the color of steel and facial features just as strong, stepped into the room. She held a bottle in one hand and a burping cloth in the other.

  “This is my wife, Lois, and our guest, Adelai,” Embry said.

  The girl wavered on her feet. She was exhausted. Her skin was pale and bruised, with scrapes across her cheek, an arm, and both hands, such as one would receive from a terrifying run through dense foliage.

  Nicole took a step toward her. Lois moved at the same time, crowding the girl and the baby.

  “We were about to feed him,” Lois said. “If you’ll excuse us.”

  Nicole ignored her and held the girl’s gaze. “I’m Sheriff Cobain. We’re here to help you,” she assured her.

  “We’re helping her,” Lois said. Her voice was commanding, sharp when there was no need.

  The girl stepped forward and spoke directly to Nicole, “Take me with you, please.”

  “Is that your baby?”

  “Yes,” she said. “His name is Matthew.”

  The scrapes on her hands and arms were new. They had begun to scab but were still red. And at the back of her mind, Nicole began an inventory of what must be done. Photos of the girl’s injuries, the doctor would need to establish time of birth, a DNA sample taken to match to the placenta …

  “He’s tiny,” Lars said. “Born today?” He had been cleaned and bundled but still had the scrunched facial features of an hours-old baby.

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “How old are you, Adelai?” Nicole asked.

  “Eighteen,” she said, but Lois contradicted her. “Sixteen. Babies having babies.” Her voice leveled censure at Adelai and the world in general.

  The girl shook her head. “That’s not true. I’ll be nineteen in June. The twenty-fourth.”

  Mrs. Embry moved then, turned so that she pulled the young woman’s attention her way. “You’re complicating things,” she said. “Let me do the talking. It’s what we agreed on, and for good reason.”

  “I never agreed to it.”

  “But the baby’s father,” Mrs. Embry continued, “he wanted it this way.”

  And Nicole saw the wavering of Adelai’s determination as her eyes misted and her teeth pulled at the corner of her lips. “He didn’t,” she said. “We hoped it would never come to this.”

  “They need medical attention,” Nicole said.

  “A nurse tended to them this morning,” Lois Embry said.

  “What nurse?” Lars pressed. “Can you give us a name?”

  “When and if you need it,” Lois returned. And Nicole wondered if Tandy had found her way here or if the nurse Mrs. Embry spoke of was another sympathizer. It was clear to her they had found one stop on the modern-day railroad north, a place where Adelai had known she could find help.

  Nicole stepped around Lois and closer to the young woman and her baby.

  “Do you have a purse?” she asked. “Anything you want to bring with you?”

  Lois placed a hand on the girl’s arm. “She’s staying with us.”

  Lars moved then. He came to stand in front of the older woman, invading her space, the toes of his boots nearly touching her loafered feet. “Unlawful detainment?” he asked.

  “That’s your specialty,” Mrs. Embry returned, but she removed her hand. She kept her place beside the woman and baby and held Lars’s gaze with a defiant tilt of her chin.

  “Move aside, Mrs. Embry. Any further interference from you will be considered obstruction.” His voice was low but firm, about as impenetrable as concrete.

  Nicole didn’t wait for her to comply but nodded at Adelai and said, “Let’s go now,” and moved toward the door. The young woman followed. And when Elias Embry approached, Nicole held out her hand to stop him.

  “Do you have personal belongings?” Nicole asked Adelai, while maintaining eye contact with Elias.

  “No. Nothing,” she said. “It’s just us.” She held her baby closer to her ches
t, and the baby sighed and his hand opened, his tiny fingers tangling in the girl’s hair.

  “Where are you taking her?” Lois asked, but Nicole ignored her.

  In addition to emergency equipment, backup arms, a change of clothes, and a collection of bottled water and energy bars, Nicole kept a child’s car seat stored in the back of the Yukon. It was a requirement that forty percent of the department vehicles have them. Most often they were used to transport children to child welfare following well-checks that went bad or domestic violence calls that required the removal of the child from the home. The closest social welfare office and its workers were nearly a hundred miles away.

  They settled the baby in the seat and the girl beside him. When Nicole had the Yukon running, she asked, “Where to?”

  “The hospital,” she said. “I should have gone there first but was afraid.”

  Nicole hit the lights but kept the siren quiet.

  Lars used his shoulder radio to call in their location. “Transporting a woman and her baby to Glacier Community Hospital. ETA ten minutes.”

  “Do you require EMT assistance?” dispatch asked.

  “Negative. New birth, conditions stable.”

  Dispatch promised to alert the hospital, and Lars signed off.

  “The baby was born today, wasn’t he?” Nicole asked.

  The girl nodded.

  “Beside the lake?” she continued, pulling the Yukon onto the lake road.

  “We didn’t want it that way,” she said. “We prepared for everything, including this.”

  “Men came to your house last night,” Lars said. “They chased you into the woods.”

  “I ran into the woods knowing they would follow, but there was nowhere else to go.”

  “Why are they after you?”

  “I’m not safe here, and neither is my baby.” The girl’s voice faded, and Nicole looked at her through the rearview mirror. Her eyelids were heavy.

  “You’re safe now,” Nicole told her.

  “No,” she said. “There is no safe place. There never has been.”

  Nicole pulled into emergency and climbed out of the Yukon. She pulled open the girl’s door as a nurse came out with a gurney.

  “Mom and her baby,” she said. “Born this morning.” She assisted Adelai with her seat belt. “We’re at the hospital,” she said. The girl’s eyelashes fluttered but did not open. “We’re moving you to a stretcher.”

  She woke then, grasping for her son beside her. Nicole watched the frantic pulse in the girl’s throat calm as soon as her hands made contact with her baby. She looked so young, so desperate, so alone.

  “Are you really eighteen?” Nicole whispered.

  “Yes. I promise.”

  The nurse held the gurney, and Nicole and Lars helped Adelai and her child onto it. A doctor came out the sliding doors and immediately turned back the blanket swaddling the baby. He placed a stethoscope to his chest, under his chubby neck.

  “Color and heartbeat are good.”

  They started walking toward the double doors.

  “Mom might be the worse for wear,” Nicole said.

  “Exhausted,” Lars said. “Been up all night, ran three miles, chased through the woods, gave birth sometime during all that.”

  Nicole stayed with the girl. She had another, singularly important question. They walked through the double doors into a receiving bay loaded with emergency equipment, all of which they passed unneeded. She looked ahead. The doctor would cut her off soon, when the staff pushed through the interior doors and took Adelai back to an exam room.

  “Adelai,” she called softly, but when the girl didn’t stir, Nicole leaned in and repeated more firmly, “Adelai, this is very important.” The girl’s eyes opened. “Do you know the men who chased you? Their names? Where they’re from?”

  “Matthew said they would come quietly, and they did.” She paused and sipped at the air.

  “Who were they?”

  “People who don’t like people like me,” she said.

  They were fast approaching the doors. Nicole grabbed the girl’s hand and gave it a squeeze. With her other hand, she slowed the progress of the gurney.

  “Adelai,” she called, and waited until the young woman’s eyelids flickered open once more. “Did you notice a problem on the lake last night?” she pressed. “There was some commotion not far from where you had run.”

  “On the lake?” Adelai asked, and her eyes shifted, darting left of Nicole’s gaze. It could have been nerves, but it was more likely evasion. “I didn’t notice.”

  The gurney slid through the double doors to exam and Nicole stopped, watching the young woman and her baby move out of reach. Temporarily.

  “People like her,” Lars repeated. He stood beside her, his phone in hand. He had taken notes as Nicole questioned.

  “And who could that be?” Nicole posed.

  “Tandy was right,” Lars said. “Adelai is Syrian. I’ve heard the accent before.”

  “Where?”

  “The evening news, at least once a week, ever since immigration laws changed but refugee need hasn’t.”

  Nicole nodded, following that thread as far as it would take her. “Who doesn’t like refugees? Undocumented aliens?”

  “Some of our finest citizens,” Lars said, referring to the fringe of their community, masked men who called themselves militia. But they were no match to the almost military precision that had stormed the house, executed a man, and chased a girl into the woods without leaving much of themselves behind.

  “The assault on that house was organized, efficient.”

  “Expert training,” he agreed.

  “Border Patrol,” she said.

  “Are there that many bad agents?”

  “At least a handful,” she said. “But I like the fit.”

  Another piece sliding into place. It made sense, kept all the players in a tight knot in the middle of Blue Mesa. Something had happened out on Lake Maria, and it wasn’t the ice man. Murder always became the center of a homicide investigation, but perhaps in this case the body in slow melt in MacAulay’s morgue and the GSW were but small pieces of the puzzle. And the missing agents and the mess inside BP were the centerpiece.

  “Who is Matthew that BP wants him so badly they would kill a woman and child to get to him?”

  “They already have him, dead or alive,” Nicole said.

  Lars looked at her over his smartphone. “You know something I don’t?”

  “Where were you when your children were born?”

  “Exactly where I was supposed to be. I caught every one of them straight out of the chute. But not all men rise to the occasion.”

  “But Matthew would have. Adelai is sure of it.”

  She turned and headed back to the Yukon. Lars fell into step beside her.

  “We need to put a deputy outside Adelai’s room,” she said. “Stay with her, Lars, until relief comes. Casper should be back at the station by now. I want her to look at the digital files Green gave me. If Monte was at work on something within the department, it will give us direction.” If it was reliable. She was beginning to worry that anything Green gave her was tainted.

  “Will do,” he said. “Casper has that degree in cyber sleuthing or whatever. Encryption is part of it.”

  “She’ll be a great help,” Nicole agreed.

  She glanced at her watch. Six thirty.

  “Head home when relief gets here,” she said. “You’ve been up almost as long as I have.”

  She planned to do the same, after she had filled out the warrant and delivered it herself to the judge, then gotten Casper up and running. The banks were closed, but BP ran around the clock. She wanted access to personnel files, including anecdotal notes and official reprimands, for both Monte and Baker. And anything the judge would allow on Green.

  13

  Nicole was up before dawn. She started the coffee, cut herself a wedge of pie she’d missed the night before, and sat down at the kitchen table
, still bundled in her flannel pajamas and robe. Her conversation with Jane Casper had gone better than she’d hoped. The young officer had skimmed the file marked INTERNAL and revealed a few things right off—the numbers listed under Nicole’s name were indeed criminal codes particular to the BP, and so both Nicole and Jane felt that Monte had been getting ready to contact Nicole about corruption in his agency. Embezzlement, stolen evidence, money laundering, and murder were among the offenses Monte had noted. The who part was harder. Monte had masked names under pseudonyms and pseudonyms under scratch. But there was a pattern. It was alphabetical, some kind of deletion and replacement, the deputy was sure. Casper would spend most of today trying to crack it and going over bank statements.

  Nicole called in to her office for an update on the night’s events, something she usually received when she arrived at the station. There had been no rescue or recovery on Monte or Baker. They’d had an otherwise quiet evening with a few domestic calls, an overturned truck on one of the state routes in the southwestern part of the county that had set more than four hundred chickens loose, and shots fired outside a home on Chatham Avenue. Next, she called Green.

  He answered with a gruff alertness.

  “No news on this end,” Nicole told him. “Do you have an update?”

  “Nothing’s changed,” he said. “I heard you found the woman you were looking for.”

  “Yes, we transported her to the hospital last night.”

  “What’s her connection to all this?”

  “Is there a connection?” Nicole returned. “We haven’t established that yet.”

  “But there’s a dead man in her bedroom and evidence of a chase.”

  The tracker Nicole had sent to follow the trail from Adelai’s house had found nothing unusual. The girl’s footsteps had been easy to follow, often in a zigzag pattern, so she had known some evasive tactics. But she had left the brush trampled, branches broken, making it easy for those in pursuit to follow. At nine months pregnant and in labor, Nicole couldn’t fault her for that. It was a miracle she had gotten away. The men following had done better. Their footsteps had been heavy, the tread in their boots matching the castings taken at the house, but they had passed through the brush without snagging and leaving behind pieces of themselves.