Cut and Run

by Ridley Pearson

  “If you’re the Romeros,” Larson speculated, “and you’ve hidden this old guy away on a remote island with virtually no access, but therefore no escape route either, what protections do you take to make sure someone like me doesn’t walk away with the list?”

  She thought about it. “If I’m the one in charge, I’d want to see daily progress. And I don’t want the only copy of that list in his possession.”

  “Exactly.”

  Hope suddenly understood. “Follow the e-mail! Markowitz e-mailed the newest part of the decrypted list each morning.”

  Her fingers were typing furiously now. The light from the screen washed her face.

  “And you’re not going to trust something as important as Laena with a surrogate,” Larson said. “Not when it’s worth tens of millions of dollars. It’s got to be e-mailed directly to you. To the Romeros.”

  “Follow the e-mail,” she repeated. Her hands paused above the keyboard. “Shit!”

  Larson glanced over at her, then back into the darkness of the beach.

  “You said there was a techie there with him.”

  “That’s how it looked,” Larson told her. “A young guy. Nerdy. I can’t say for sure.”

  “Well, this thing’s clean,” she said, slapping the laptop. “That guy’s job apparently was not only to monitor Markowitz’s progress, but to wipe the files… to reduce the chance of Laena or those e-mails being lifted if someone like you did come along.”

  With her finger she drew a line in the condensation on the inside of the car’s glass. An old lighthouse at the end of the parking lot threw a dim beacon out to sea, swiping their faces with each pass. She disappeared from him between the pulses.

  “So we’re screwed?”

  “No way to tell yet,” she said. “His e-mails aren’t on this machine. He must have erased them as he went. His mail is hosted on a server-another way to reduce the security risk if the laptop was taken. The deleted information may still be on here somewhere, but it will take days, weeks, to drill down in and find it.”

  “Then we are screwed.”

  “Now wait,” she said, as if talking to Penny. “The e-mails would have gone through the same connection. Through the university’s grid. Miller’s network. That’s what Markowitz was telling me about following the e-mails. They leave a digital ID at each phase of transmission. There’s no way to completely erase an e-mail once it’s sent. It sticks to every server and relay it touches.”

  “So Miller can help us.” Larson started the car, a sense of purpose finding him again.

  “He read the exchange between me and Markowitz.” She turned her face into the sweep of white light. “My guess is: a guy like him? He’s already on it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  His right eye had not improved. If anything, it seemed to Penny to have gotten worse. He kept it covered most of the time, and because of this, whenever he turned his head to check the truck’s driver’s-side mirror he had no sight of the back berth, no sight of her whatsoever. They passed a sign welcoming them to Colorado.

  Penny had discerned a pattern. The monster (which is what she called him, ever since he’d killed the poor man who owned this truck) was tired and playing games with his left eye, his one good eye, in order to stay awake. First he looked out the passenger window into the truck’s right-hand mirror; then, out the windshield; then out the driver’s-side mirror. He returned his attention to the highway for another couple of minutes and then started the pattern all over again. Always the same.

  He’d put her onto the comfortable bed in the back, ankles and wrists taped together, but no gag for most of the day. She appreciated having the gag off and didn’t say a word, knowing if she did, he’d put it back on. He’d dragged the dead man into some bushes alongside a deserted road well off the highway, late, late at night. She tried her best to forget about that.

  She now lay with her knees bent facing the front so she could see what he was doing, where he was looking. Her nose was still thick with clotted blood, badly bruised but not broken. Inch by inch, she moved her knees up closer into her chest, her sock and the broken shard of pottery nearly within reach now.

  She slipped out the broken piece and gripped it tightly and sawed at the silver tape, working only for those few seconds he eyed his outside mirror. As the edge of the tape was cut, it tore. He had country music playing. Its sound covered the small sounds of the tape tearing as her ankles came free.

  Working her wrists free felt impossible. Twice she dropped the shard of pottery into the bloody sheets, a jolt of panic flooding her until she came to realize he’d all but forgotten about her. He seemed occupied with staying awake and overcoming the pain in that eye.

  She waited three more hours for him to pull over, the digital clock in the truck’s dashboard seeming slower than ever, the expanse of elapsed time excruciating.

  He never stopped at rest areas. He peed or did his business in the woods along empty roads that he’d sometimes take forever to find, driving around on farm roads well off the highway, until for one reason or another he settled on a place. He left the truck and did his stuff first, then returned to collect the Tupperware pot he made her use while he watched-the only time he removed the tape allowing her hands and legs to separate. She never left the truck.

  Until now.

  This time, he glanced back at her on the bed, said, “Same program, little one,” for that was what he called her. “I’ll do mine, you’ll do yours, and we’re out of here.”

  She nodded and groaned, since she was now facing away from him, for this, too, had become part of their routine.

  He left.

  She sat up and pushed aside the black curtain and watched him hurry into the rocks bearing a roll of toilet paper. With two quick jerks, she had the silver tape off her. She couldn’t believe the pain in her limbs from not moving. She rolled and fell into the front seat, slid beneath the enormous steering wheel, and clicked open his driver’s door.

  She lowered herself and climbed down onto the pavement, the fresh air the first thing she tasted.

  But what now?

  Her plan all along had been to get free. Now that she was, she had no idea what to do.

  Nothing but vast farm ground as far as the eye could see, with nowhere to hide. The only place to hide was the tangle of boulders and rock into which he’d disappeared. She saw snow-covered mountains in the distance, but they had to be a million miles away!

  There! She spotted it. A huge metal tube that ran under the road. Without a second thought she ran over to it and off the road, and tucked herself into a crawl and scurried inside. It was dry and sandy in the bottom, and spiderwebs stuck to her face and hands as she pushed in farther, now centered between the two large openings at either end.

  She waited, not knowing what else to do.

  It seemed like forever before she heard the clap of the cab door open and close. Then open again. Then close. Heard his feet move this way and back that way again, and she could sense he was searching the underside of the truck’s trailer.

  The monster did not call out for her, and this surprised her most of all. She waited to hear him drive off, to look for her. But instead she heard his feet approaching. She heard him… laughing. Chuckling to himself.

  Then he called out loudly, “You really think so?” A moment later, closer yet. “You really think this will work? You think I will let this happen, little one? Is there even a remote chance I will let this happen? THERE IS NOT! And the longer you hide from me, the longer you go before your next meal. You HEAR ME? This is your choice and you’re making it! So think about it.” Another long pause. He was closer still. Now his face appeared at the end of the long pipe in which she hid. She shuddered and pulled into a ball.

  He dared to smile at her. “We’re not so different, you and me. I like you.”

  Penny began to cry.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Larson lost most of the day to making arrangements. Dr. Miller had once ag
ain come through, this time working through the night to follow Markowitz’s e-mails. Those e-mails, all with encrypted attachments, had been sent from Useppa Island to Mountlake Terrace, Washington, north of Seattle. While the private jet was being refueled early in the afternoon on the outskirts of Denver, Larson sat in a black leather chair in the passenger lounge, speaking on the BlackBerry’s cell phone.

  He should have felt a pit in his stomach over the seven thousand dollars it cost for him and Hope to fly charter from Tampa to Seattle. If he was not reimbursed for his expenses over the past twenty-four hours, it would take him a couple years to repay the home equity loan. But with Penny’s life in the balance, none of that mattered.

  “I tried Rotem: Got his voice mail. You’re stuck with me,” he informed Trill Hampton.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Hampton complained. “That mess out at the Orchard House flattened us here.”

  Larson knew the pall that hung over operations following the loss of a fellow deputy. The double homicide must have been devastating and would have long-lasting repercussions.

  “I dropped two of Romero’s men last night, and one of them shot and killed Markowitz in the process.”

  “That was you,” he said, as if this possibility had already been raised.

  “It was ugly. I walked-had to-and I didn’t report it. I’ll pay for that.”

  “The FiBIes are apeshit.”

  “We’re a step ahead of everyone.”

  “We? As in you and the witness?”

  “As in,” Larson confirmed. “We haven’t determined how much of Laena he decrypted, but with this meeting called, they must have most if not all of it. How losing Markowitz affects the Romeros, we don’t know. But in all probability, it has sped things up for them. We’ve traced Markowitz’s e-mails to an address north of Seattle.” Larson read the exact address. “Another four hours or so, we’ll be on the ground there. I need you to get the place under surveillance until I arrive. Use our guys if possible. Use local law only if you have to.” Larson didn’t love the idea of Seattle ’s finest being part of the operation. “I want you and Stubby with me. Rotem as CO. We converge on this place ASAP. There’s at least some chance the Romeros have one or two children held hostage-Markowitz’s grandson was nabbed about the time of his disappearance.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “The kids are our top priority, so this is not a crash raid. You got that, Hamp? No matter what, we do not crash this place.”

  “Got it.”

  “And no one goes in ahead of me.”

  “ ’Kay.”

  Larson read him the address provided by Miller for a second time. He said, “The three of us-you, me, Stubby-go in after dark. Tonight. We’ll need full gear. No SWAT guys ahead of us. No crash team. But we’ll want them all-we’ll want the fucking Russian army-as backup if it comes to that. The best guys we can assemble.”

  “I’ve got it all down.”

  “But you, Stubby, and I are lead.”

  “And if Scrotum balks at that?”

  “Then you need to give me a heads-up, so I can work the alternatives. Don’t leave me hanging.”

  “You got it.”

  “You’re going to have to move if we’re going to do this tonight. You’re on a plane in the next two hours. If Rotem’s right about this meeting-this auction-taking place tonight, then this is our only window. Markowitz’s grandson has lost his value. We’ve got to act now!”

  “So what are you doing keeping me on the phone?” Hampton complained.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Towering cedar, lodgepole pine, and Douglas fir climbed the low hill behind Katrina Romero, looking like ivy on a ruin. The low pewter clouds, broken into patchwork, streamed overhead while the sunlight that pierced through felt summer-warm and sublime. The breeze carried the smell of burning leaves and the cackle and chirp of chipmunk and squirrel competing to shore up their supplies before winter fixed its grip.

  Katrina rode the buckskin with the dusty white tail. She wore a black riding jacket over a tailored white shirt with a dozen small mother-of-pearl buttons running down its front. “Mother-of-toilet-seat” an instrument-builder friend of Philippe’s called the plastic substitution. Katrina held herself erect, the cream riding pants stretched tight.

  Philippe Romero, by blood her husband Ricardo’s uncle, but in life a younger half brother, stood below her, looking up. He was a smallish man in his late twenties, with dark features and thoughtful eyes. He glanced at the leather patch on the inside of her thigh, rubbed smooth and polished by hours of her locked embrace with the saddle. She leaned down and handed him the CD-ROM, a small disk in a plastic jewel case.

  “This is the last one,” he said. “Seriously, Katie, I can’t thank you enough.”

  “What’s wrong? Why’s this the last? And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ ” She’d been burning these disks for him every day or two for the past three weeks. “You don’t look well, Philippe.”

  “We suffered a great loss,” he said. “Not a lot of sleep last night for me. But what we have-this last disk-is more than enough for our needs.” He sensed a change in her.

  “Then after tonight, you won’t need me.”

  “To burn e-mails to disk? No. But I don’t like the sound of that. What’s going on, Katrina?”

  “Why don’t we ride together?” she asked, looking to the woods beyond him. “Do you still ride? How long since we took a ride together?”

  “I’m not sure Ricardo would love that.”

  “Do you actually think he is capable of love?”

  Stunned by the question, especially directed at him, Philippe felt he had no choice but to watch as she tapped her heels and rode off. Rising and falling in that saddle, timed perfectly as the horse trotted, in such a suggestive way that Philippe believed it had to be intentional.

  Stretching back over her shoulder, she called to him, “Red Rock in half an hour?”

  The choice of that place as the rendezvous set the record straight. He wasn’t imagining any of this.

  The thirty minutes passed quickly as he readied a gelding to ride, left a few messages, and made a few calls to buy him time. He selected a circuitous route through the cedar forest-past the eighth green, a half mile out the Winifred trail, and then off-trail several hundred yards south to a small outcropping of rock covered in red lichen.

  They’d shared this as their secret place while growing up as teenagers, the site of a coming-of-age sexual encounter that remained the most explicit and vivid sexual memory of his life. A violent summer rain. The two of them tucked into a small cave, her shirt soaked through, her nipples puckered and firm and inviting his fantasies. As he now rode closer to that spot, he recalled her crossing her arms, and his own embarrassment at having been caught staring. Her sudden change of heart, as she uncrossed them, stood with that proud posture of hers, and then disrobed right there in front of him. No words, no explanation. Never breaking eye contact with him, her nakedness revealed only in his peripheral vision.

  She’d ordered him over to her: “Come here,” or something like that, leaving little doubt who was in control. Her sharp tan line from the point of her darkly tangled hair-and so much of it!-to the sloping curve on her chest.

  As teenagers, they had kissed until his mouth burned and she’d whispered for him to touch her, and then, miraculously, had moved his hand to her breast so he might know what to do.

  Their one and only encounter-not that he hadn’t want to relive it. She represented the sum of all good in this world, and he’d slowly driven her away with his need of her.

  And then came Ricardo and her, in this same cave-Katrina saying it was forced, Ricardo saying otherwise. A child. Marriage.

  As Philippe arrived this time he found her with her back pressed up against a fir tree, sheltered from a light drizzle, their situation not so very different than all those years before, a fact not lost on either of them.

  She made no move to her mare, apparently
had no intention of taking that ride she’d proposed. He dismounted and tied off the gelding and ducked under the heavy branches to join her in the muted light, the clouded light playing on her face. He never felt entirely comfortable around her, always on the edge of an apology.

  “So,” he said softly.

  Her eyes hardened and she said, “I saw the boy.”

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “It happened. They thought he was sick. They asked me to have a look.”

  “They shouldn’t have done that.” He’d heard nothing about this.

  “How could you do such a thing? Kidnap a little boy, little Donny’s age?”

  “It’s not something to discuss.” He had no doubt how she would feel about the young girl now in Paolo’s care.

  “Of course it is. You, of all people. I’m leaving,” she announced. “Tonight. During your meeting.”

  He had trouble catching his breath.

  “It’s the one time I’m guaranteed of Ricardo, of all of you, being that distracted. I’m taking Callie and Remy.”

  “Not tonight,” he begged.

  “Yes, tonight. It’s perfect. His full attention is on this meeting you’ve called.”

  “But why?” he asked. “I can’t let you do this. Not now.”

  “This place is like a prison. His men drive my children to school. Pick them up. My only chance is tonight.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You can come and go as you please.” He turned to go, not needing this.

  “Not with the children. They never leave the children.”

  “And tonight?” He had no time for this. He’d come here hoping to be seduced, only to find himself betrayed. Ricardo-already unpredictable and dangerous-would be impossible if she left.

  “I overheard them. They’re assigned to this meeting of yours. This is my opportunity, Philippe, my one decent chance, and I intend to take it.”