Tall Pines Mysteries: A Mystery/Suspense Boxed Set

by Aaron Paul Lazar

  Our childhood flashed before me. Willow calling Callie and Sky horrible names. Swearing at them. Shocking them. And going out to find her next boyfriend. “Willow went out with all those boys to fulfill the prophecy your mother imagined for her, didn’t she?”

  Sky nodded. “At first I thought that. Then I wondered if she just wasn’t screwed up somewhere in her head. Maybe because our father died. Of course, Willow was twenty-three went he passed.” He ducked his head. “I don’t know. Mother should have been kinder to her. Then she wouldn’t have hated us so much.”

  Roberta cleared her throat. “Sorry to bust in on your conversation, guys. But we’ve got to pull over and walk from here.”

  Sky took my hand again and squeezed my fingers. “Can you forgive me? For worrying you?”

  I held his hand this time for a brief moment, rubbing my fingers against his skin. “Of course. And I know Callie never held one speck of ill will toward you. She loves you, hon.”

  He blinked back tears, but didn’t lose control. “Thank you. You’ll never know what this means to me.”

  I gently disengaged my hand, wondering if he was convinced he was going to die tonight. Shelving the thoughts of Willow, I knew I’d figure out if and when to tell Callie when this was all over.

  Roberta pulled in under a copse of pines. Their leaves made a blanket against the darkening night sky, and when the truck rumbled to a stop behind them, it was invisible from the road. “Time to get out and get this done,” she said.

  I exchanged a worried glance with her and followed our dodgy troop into the coming night.

  Chapter 36

  The dew that seeps into your clothing when night falls had already soaked my jacket and jeans. Even my socks felt wet inside my sneakers. But that was probably because I was lying on my stomach next to Beau with a pair of Sky’s binoculars pressed tight against my eyes. The boulder I hid behind lay a hundred yards downstream from the cabin. Every few minutes, Beau whined softly.

  Quinn crouched a few feet ahead of me, behind a young stand of elms. Roberta knelt to my left, waiting for the signal from Sky, who had disappeared into the darkness to scope out the cabin.

  One black SUV sat illuminated by the porch light beside a rusted-out old Jeep that apparently hadn’t run in decades. With no plates, two flat rear tires, and what looked like a squirrel’s nest on the front dash, I figured it wasn’t going to be a threat, nor a possible means of escape.

  Rushing water murmured on the far side of the hunting cabin, confirming the existence of a waterfall. I assumed it was the one I’d seen through the slats in the window in the room where Callie was being held. The river roared louder than it did at Tall Pines. I wondered if was because we were level with the surface, as opposed to being fifteen or so feet above it. With the waterfall nearby, the sounds were probably magnified compared to the relatively shallow waters that ran by our cabin.

  Sky had run down his plans with us, with contingencies that threatened to boggle my simple mind. I wasn’t exactly schooled in warfare or attack tactics. And I always lost at Stratego, even to my mother.

  Much to my surprise, Quinn had absorbed Sky’s plans and backup-plans with a gleam in his eyes. He’d done his tour of duty overseas in the army as a young man–well before I met him—and he glowed when Sky drew diagrams in the sand illuminated by the pale yellow oval of my flashlight.

  My husband handled his weapon with familiarity, and had tucked a big knife into his boot. I had no idea what kind of gun he held, but it was huge and pretty scary looking. I’d been completely unprepared for this version of my usually mild-mannered husband, and as inappropriate as it was, felt a small shudder of desire when he stroked the metal monster with an almost loving eye.

  Roberta opted for the shotgun, since it was supposed to handle a bit like her hunting rifle, and I was given a small pistol that felt dreadful in my grip. Safety on, safety off. Sky showed me how to aim it, and I prayed I’d remember his instructions.

  I told myself that if Callie’s life was at stake, I needed to suck it up and be a man. Or a brave woman, one or the other. I’d tucked it into my jacket pocket, with the safety on.

  Sky’s mourning dove call alerted us to his discovery. Three low hoots meant wait. Someone is inside.

  I caught Roberta’s eye and nodded. We both settled down behind the boulder and tried to get comfortable. I ached to talk with her, just to pass the time. But I kept silent, as we’d promised we wouldn’t whisper a word.

  After what seemed like hours, but was probably no more than forty minutes, the screen door slammed, Bruno stumbled outside, and the SUV roared to life. I wondered if he was drunk, because he wheeled the vehicle in a ragged circle backwards, then took off in the opposite direction to the one in which we’d arrived, with his windows wide open and Latin music blasting from the inside.

  After a cautious few minutes, Sky whistled twice. Roberta and I advanced, following Quinn to the cabin. The all-clear signal brought us together at the cabin’s front stoop. Beau strained against the leash, trying to get inside. I knew he sensed Callie in there. To keep him safe, I tied him to the railing and asked him to sit. His big eyes didn’t understand, but I held my ground.

  “Sit. Stay. No barking, Beau. Be a good boy.”

  He obeyed, much as I knew he wanted to bound into the cabin and lick his owner clean of all the nastiness to which she’d been exposed.

  Sky stood with his blackened face a study in grim determination, his voice low and purposeful. “I’m pretty sure that guy was the only one inside. Quinn, go around to the other side of the cabin and keep an eye on the back door. Roberta, you stay here and blow your whistle if anyone approaches. Marcella, come with me. Callie might need coercing, especially since she hasn’t seen me in years. She might not recognize me with all this grease on my face.”

  We obeyed wordlessly. Quinn disappeared first. Roberta walked to the edge of the porch, cocked her shotgun, and stood with legs separated and back to us, a silver whistle dangling from a chain on her wrist.

  I stood with my heart drumming wildly beneath my ribs and took out the weapon that made me feel like a little girl with her big brother’s cap gun. With trembling fingers, I took the safety off and followed Sky’s broad back into the kitchen. Beer bottles littered the round table, and three boxes filled with cans and bottles towered in the corner. A coffee cup overflowed with cigarette butts. And a beef jerky package had been ripped open, still housing two long strips of dried meat. The place smelled like sour sweat and burned coffee.

  Sky motioned for me to stay in the doorway, checked out the next room, and waved me to his side. “Nobody’s here. We’re gonna have to break into her room. I think it’s that door.”

  The door he pointed to was fashioned with rough pine planks and looked impossibly strong. The five-inch steel padlock that held it latched shut was even more impressive.

  “Sky, how do we get inside?” I sidled up to the door and put my ear to it. “I don’t hear a thing.”

  “Call her name. See if she responds.”

  “Callie?” My voice came out not much more than a whisper.

  No response.

  “Callie?”

  “Maybe she can’t hear you. Try louder.”

  He searched around the kitchen for an implement to wrench open the door.

  “Callie! It’s me. Marcie.” I waited another few seconds. “Maybe she’s drugged.”

  Sky’s face tightened, and his wrists curled into fists at his side. “Oh my God. What if they killed her already?”

  I touched his taut arm and stopped the tirade I suspected was coming. “No! They wouldn’t have kept the door locked if she was dead. No way. She’s in there.”

  He grabbed a fire poker from the woodstove and slammed it into the padlock. “What I wouldn’t do for bolt cutters now. Man.”

  With several more thrusts, he ripped the lock from the door. It swung open, revealing a dark room.

  “Callie. It’s me. Marcella.” I stepped into a b
lack hole, feeling the wall for a light switch. I found it, flipped it on. The room stayed dark.

  “Use your flashlight.” Sky motioned to the bulge in my jacket pocket.

  I fished it out and thumbed it on. The room looked familiar—exactly like the vision we’d shared through the crystal. The ceiling light fixture was missing its bulb. No other lamps or light fixtures loomed out of the darkness.

  Sky moved across the room cautiously. “Over here, the bed’s on this wall, I think.”

  I swung the weak beam across the room, cursing myself for not putting fresh batteries in it. Damn. I’d had hours to think of that, and hadn’t done it. Some soldier I was.

  “There it is,” I said, moving toward the bed. Sweat drenched my underarms, neck, and back. Fear built inside me, threatening to turn me into a puddle of weepy woman. I knew something dreadful was about to appear out of the recesses of the dark room. Rat Man, or Bruno, waiting to pounce on me. Worse, a demon, stretching his bony hands out from under the bed, ready to pull me down to hell.

  With a sob of relief, I spied a shape beneath blankets. There she was. I approached with Sky at my side. “Callie? Callie honey, are you okay?”

  Sky motioned for me to wake her. I touched the lump that looked like a head buried beneath the blanket, but it felt mushier than a skull should have. With a start, I pulled back. “Holy crap.”

  Sky moved in and pulled the blankets down, staring hard at the shape before him. “She’s not here.”

  I gawked at the pillows arranged to look like a human body, and swung the beam toward the window. Two of the boards hung crooked, each swinging from one nail. A bent fork lay on the floor beneath them. I’d noticed an outhouse on the way in, and realized that they’d have to march her out there a few times a day, or clean up a terrible mess. She probably snatched the fork on one of her trips through the kitchen.

  Sky whistled. “Hot damn. She escaped.”

  He fingered the boards where she’d worked the nails out of the frame, and just as I was about to ask him where he thought she’d go a hand reached into the room through the window. My heart stopped beating, then rammed like a conga drum. “What the hell?”

  Quinn’s face appeared behind the arm. “She escaped,” he said, as if he were delivering the weather.

  I dropped onto the bed. “Quinn, geez. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry, babe. I’m coming in.” Seconds later, he arrived with Roberta at his side. Beau still whined from the porch.

  All energy drained out of my body. “Oh my God. She’s out there somewhere. In the dark. All alone.”

  “Better than being here,” Roberta said. “At least she’ll have a fighting chance.”

  Quinn sat beside me, his strong arm pulling me close. “But now they’ll know she’s escaped, since we ripped that lock off the door.”

  Sky moaned. “Damn, you’re right. We’ve gotta get out of here before that moron comes back.”

  I followed the group outside, pointing to the destroyed door. “And when he sees this, he’ll probably call in his pals. The ones with infra-red heat sinking thingies.”

  Sky led the way out to the porch, where he untied Beau and handed me the leash. When we reached the truck, Sky didn’t get inside. Without speaking, Quinn handed him his knife.

  Sky turned to me. “Give me your gun, Marcella.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t really see his face, but his low voice rumbled with determination.

  “I’m going after her. I’ve had a lot of experience tracking people in the desert. This woodland stuff will be a piece of cake. Once the sun comes up, I’ll find her. I promise. And I’ll bring her back to you.”

  To my surprise, Quinn sided with him instantly. “Good idea. If you can pick up her trail at dawn, that drunken lug will probably still be sleeping. Maybe that guy will come home with a six pack and drink it all before he notices the bedroom door.”

  Roberta got into the truck and started it up. “Keep down when they come back, Sky. We can’t afford to lose you, too. And when you find her, climb to the top of the mountain again. You’ll get a cell signal there.” She thrust her cell phone into his hand. “The Tall Pines number is preprogrammed in. It’s not labeled, but count down twelve numbers and select that one.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, realizing before I even voiced my opinion on the idiocy of Sky’s solo save-the-world plan, that I’d be outnumbered. “Let’s get home then.”

  Quinn slid into the truck with Beau, and I squeezed beside them. “Find her fast, Sky.”

  He leaned forward to kiss my cheek. “It’s a promise.”

  In a flash, he disappeared into the dark woods. I closed the door to the old truck, stuck my hand out the window, and rapped on the roof with my palm. “Let’s go, Roberta. I might just take your rifle and shoot her kidnappers, if you don’t get us out of here.”

  Quinn moved over closer to me, and Beau lay at our feet. “That’s my girl.” He slid an arm around my shoulders. “I knew you had that killer instinct when I first met you.”

  For some reason, his words made me feel like crying. It had been a long night, and we still didn’t have Callie. I lay my head on his chest, sniffled once, and closed my eyes. “Damned right I do.”

  The truck trundled home on the dusty track, but I’d fallen into a fitful sleep long before we reached Tall Pines. Quinn half-carried, half-walked me into the cabin, but I didn’t fully wake until I saw Gordon McCann and ten other agents drinking coffee around our dining room table.

  Chapter 37

  I sat on the rocker in the corner while Quinn and Roberta talked to McCann and the agents for five hours straight. It was after midnight when Roberta drew a map of the trail to the hunting cabin and to the burned-out headquarters of the Outsourcers. She told them everything she’d observed as a local, from the time the Outsourcers started their hush-hush research center to the rumors she’d heard around town.

  Quinn gave them the memory stick with all the maps and data, but held back on the hemp necklace and vial. I realized I still hadn’t asked Sky about it, and was glad my husband wasn’t going to try to navigate the path near the river and head down slippery steps toward its hiding place in the middle of the night. I phased in and out of sleep, occasionally answering questions, but couldn’t stop thinking about Callie. I rested one hand on the table where our landline phone sat, not ringing, and prayed to hear from Sky.

  Callie had escaped in the dark night. I imagined her fear. Although darkness must have cloaked her and made her feel somewhat comfortable when she climbed through that window into the woods, how would she feel when dawn broke and the wide-open world surrounded her?

  My dear friend quaked in fear at open spaces. I was convinced it was those guys who attacked and raped her in college who’d forced her into a lifetime of seclusion. She was afraid someone would jump out of the trees or bushes and hold another knife to her throat and rip into her innocence like they’d done before. Who could blame her?

  Bruno and Rat Man had threatened her with the very same fate. The fact that she didn’t like men had nothing to do with her fear. The act they’d threatened had nothing to do with sex—it was violence of the worst sort. It only made it harder, imagining her having to endure such horror at the hands of those brutes. I prayed that Sky’s ghostly attack during the vision had scared them off long enough to spare her.

  Callie’s threat had come from indoors now—completely opposite to her quandary of past years—and her salvation lay in the wide-open spaces, as far from that cabin by the waterfall as possible.

  And now, here she was, surrounded by trees and bushes. And who knows what else? Bears? Bobcats? How did that make her feel?

  Free?

  Frantic?

  What would she do if she ran across a snake? Her limited outdoor experience had involved a calm, little lake and the gentle woods that rose up the hills behind the shore.

  I touched the phone cord, willing it to ring. Quinn had told the men at the table that Sky
had goggles that let him see in the dark. Something about night vision. He mentioned to McCann that he expected Sky had probably started to track her the minute we left the hunting cabin, and maybe already had her under his wing.

  I prayed it was true.

  Sleep stalked me like a vengeful lover. I could not stay awake, no matter how hard I pinched myself and tried to stay alert.

  Many hours later, I woke to a cold cabin with a crick in my neck. Someone—Quinn, I assumed—had covered me with a quilt. My hand still stretched toward the phone that hadn’t rung, and I realized with a start that McCann and the agents had disappeared.

  Without even thinking, I reached for my purse, where I’d stashed the roll-on with Deep Relief. I slathered my neck with the oil, and in seconds, the pain and stiffness was gone. This time I wasn’t surprised.

  “Quinn?” I poked my head in the bedroom, where I found Beau sleeping on the bed, alone. “Honey? Where are you?”

  Moving through the kitchen, where a stack of dirty coffee cups piled in the sink, I opened the door to the porch and noticed Roberta’s truck and all of the FBI vehicles were gone. Our van sat lonely on the far side of the parking area. A great horned owl flew past the van, settling on the porch railing. His immense round eyes stared at me, and his head cocked from side to side.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be nocturnal?” I stood still, admiring his ticked feathers and long-clawed feet. “Can’t you sleep?” I backed up into the doorway when he lifted his wings and chirped at me. Chirp wasn’t exactly the sound, but it was shorter and less threatening than the familiar night-owl screech. He picked up one foot, then the other, dancing in place.

  “Nice moves,” I said. “And your talons look really sharp. Bet you catch some juicy mice with those babies.” When I spoke, his big round eyes focused on mine, as if saying, you bet, I do. He squawked once, then pushed off into the air again, disappearing behind the tall pines that surrounded the cabin in a majestic flapping of wings.