Second Sight

by Sharon Sala

  “No, but I have one more question. What happened when you flew drones over the compound?”

  “I was told they were too high up to get anything but the layout of the compound, which is what we already had with satellite images. Why do you ask?”

  “You wanted pictures of the girls’ faces to run through the missing children database, and I brought something that might help make that happen,” she said.

  Hank smiled. “Thank you, but what we use is state of the art. I doubt you’d have anything—”

  “Your doubt is misplaced,” Wyrick said, before leaving to go back upstairs and knock on Charlie’s door. “If you’re asleep, wake up,” she said and knocked again.

  Charlie came to the door, buttoning up a clean shirt. “What’s up?”

  “I need the keys to the Jeep. There’s something in it I need,” she said.

  He pivoted in the doorway, ran back to get his car keys and then headed downstairs. Wyrick ducked back in her room to get her laptop and followed him.

  “What’s going on?” Willis asked as he saw them coming down the stairs.

  “Just getting some stuff for Wyrick,” Charlie said.

  Hank came out of the com center and followed them out.

  Charlie unlocked the Jeep.

  “What all do you need?” he asked.

  Wyrick pointed to a box and a small bag. “Those, and bring them to the porch.”

  Barry came out from behind the cabin with Chavez beside him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Willis shrugged.

  Charlie put everything down on the table, then watched as Wyrick began pulling stuff out.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “I have a new kind of drone,” she said. “We’re going to get pictures of the girls’ faces with it.”

  “No,” Hank said. “That will alert them to the fact they’re under surveillance and might cause them to move to another location.”

  “Only it won’t,” Wyrick said. “I need someone to alert me as to when the girls are being marched across the compound.”

  “I can verify that for you with my men on recon,” Hank said.

  “It’s almost twelve,” Wyrick said. “I’m putting this in the air. You said we’re a mile from the compound, so the timing is going to be tight. Just tell them to let you know when the girls are coming out and I’ll send it up.”

  Willis ran inside to the com center to deliver the message as she pulled out the plane. When she did, the men stared and moved closer. Except for the inner workings of the camera, both the case it was in and the plane were nearly invisible.

  “What is that, plastic?” Hank asked.

  “Sort of,” Wyrick said and dug through her bag until she found a small plastic pouch full of gold and silver confetti. She turned the plane upside down, opened a little hatch in the bottom and then handed it to Charlie.

  “Hold this for me, please,” she said, poured the confetti into the belly of the plane and closed the hatch. She pulled up a program on her laptop, clicked a few keys, and then took the plane from Charlie and handed him the laptop. “Okay...you guys can see what the camera sees in real time as it’s recording.”

  Then she grabbed the plane and her controls, and moved out into the yard, with Hank right behind her.

  The men weren’t convinced in any way that this was a viable option as they watched the plane take off, and it took them a few seconds to realize it was silent.

  “It’s not making any noise,” Hank said.

  “Solar powered. The better to sneak with,” Wyrick muttered.

  Her gaze was on the little screen in front of her as she aimed the tiny plane up the mountain, using the open road below it as her guideline.

  All of a sudden Willis came running, carrying a walkie-talkie.

  “Some men inside the compound are on their way to get the girls,” he said.

  Wyrick kept her eyes on the screen, seeing the ground and the trees beneath the small plane, but still no walls. Remembering the layout of the compound from the aerial photos she’d seen, she aimed the plane just slightly to the left and almost immediately saw it coming up.

  The walkie-talkie squawked again. “The girls are coming out.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” Wyrick said, and flew the plane over the wall.

  “There they come,” Charlie said, as a long line of young girls came out of a building in a single file. He was trying to catch sight of Jordan Bien, but from the angle of the camera he couldn’t see their faces.

  Wyrick lined the plane’s flight path right over the girls’ heads and pressed a button on her controls.

  “Wait...what’s that?” Barry asked, as they began seeing sparkles drifting down over the girls.

  Charlie grinned. “I’ll be damned. It’s the confetti. And look! The girls are looking up, just like you wanted them to do.”

  At that point, Wyrick turned the plane around and flew it back over the girls, knowing the camera was catching every upturned face in different expressions of delight.

  They could all see the guards’ confusion as the confetti began floating through the air, but by the time they thought to look up, the plane was over the wall and on the way back.

  Hank was embarrassed that the woman had accomplished this so easily. He wanted access to that plane and her controls.

  Then Charlie looked up and pointed.

  “Hey, Wyrick, here comes your plane.”

  “I see it,” she said, but before she could move, Hank was already running toward it. She frowned, and when she saw the expression on his face as he started back with it, she went to meet him and took it out of his hands.

  “I want to check this out,” Hank said. “We need this to—”

  Wyrick’s eyes flashed angrily. “We? We as in the federal government? Oh hell no. I already hold the patents on every aspect of this, along with a patent on the formula for the material with which the plane is made. You people aren’t getting your hands on it. All you ever want to do is turn things into weapons.”

  Hank had no comeback for her accusations and watched her walk away.

  Still pissed, Wyrick packed up the plane and controls back in the box and took it into the cabin.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said and took it up to her room. She started to leave, then changed her mind and got the bag with her clothes out of the closet. She dumped everything on her bed, then opened the box and put the plane and the controls in her clothes bag. She put a couple of shirts on top of it, then put the rest of her clothes in the box. Then she placed the bag back in the closet and left the box at the end of her bed before going downstairs.

  “Everything okay?” Charlie asked as he handed her back the laptop.

  “Yes. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll get everything we need.”

  “We need the footage from the camera,” Hank said.

  Wyrick was already into her system, her eyes focused on the screen as she worked.

  “You need to know who the girls are,” she said. “Give me a few minutes.”

  The agents looked at each other and frowned. And since Hank was the one who’d given them permission to be here, he felt obligated to set their boundaries.

  “I think the two of you have mistaken your role in this,” he said. “We allowed you to come here to exchange information, but you do not have permission to—”

  Charlie interrupted. “I don’t need your permission to go in after Jordan Bien. But after I found out what was really happening in that compound, I made a vow to myself that I was bringing the rest of the girls home, too. You people have had months to deal with this and knew nothing of what was happening until we got here. I have no idea what security levels you’re all at, but I can promise you, Wyrick’s security clearance tops it. I know her value and honor it. And I know
her honesty, and value that more. So back the fuck off and let her do what she does best. Or...I can just make a call to the nearest news station and drop a truth bomb about the workings of Fourth Dimension in their laps, and see how long it takes you to act then.”

  None of them liked being called down, but they couldn’t argue with the truth of what he’d said.

  “I’m going to see if they’ve picked Jud Bien up yet,” Barry said and disappeared into their com center.

  Wyrick was oblivious now to the undercurrents around her.

  Her fingers were flying over the keys, pausing only to click the mouse as she moved from window to window.

  But Hank wasn’t satisfied. “Dammit, Charlie. There’s a reason we play by the rules in our world. What she’s doing might nullify the evidence we collect to use against them in court.”

  Wyrick paused and glared at them, sarcasm dripping from every word.

  “Technically, none of the film from my camera belongs to the FBI. Technically, what I’m doing, I’m doing for my boss, who came here at the behest of a client. Technically, everything I’m doing, I’m doing for him, so if he wishes to share evidence with you, that’s his business. And technically, your satellite images of the compound show you were spying on them. And technically, Charlie Dodge has a license to spy on people, too. So do you want to take down that cult and save those girls, or do you want to go to sleep tonight knowing those little girls are being raped by grown men and forced to have their babies? Are you afraid to allow us to help for fear someone else will get the glory? If that’s your vibe, Chicken Little, why don’t you go ahead and wait for the sky to fall? Or wait a few minutes.”

  Then she glanced at Charlie. “Boss, it’s your call.”

  “Do your thing,” he said, and gave Hank Raines a look that was unmistakable to misinterpret. Charlie was not only surprised by the Feds’ attitudes, but they were pissing him off.

  Wyrick began separating the faces of the girls on the film into individual photos. Each time she had a new photo, she uploaded it into the national database for missing children.

  The girls didn’t appear to have been starved or beaten, and they looked clean and healthy. It said nothing for the fact that they’d been turned into what amounted to slaves, but that would soon be rectified.

  But then everything changed when she enlarged the next girl’s face. The swollen lips, the black eye and bruising all over her face were shocking.

  “Charlie, we just found Jordan Bien,” she said.

  Charlie headed straight for the table where Wyrick was working, and when he saw the photo, he groaned.

  “What the hell did they do to her?” he asked.

  “What happened?” Hank said and immediately circled the table to look for himself. “Oh my God. Do they all look like that?” he asked.

  “No,” Wyrick said.

  “And this is why delay is not possible for the girl we came to save,” Charlie added.

  Wyrick continued to upload the rest of the pictures into the database, but as soon as she was finished, she leaned back.

  “I’m having withdrawals. Does anyone here drink Pepsi?”

  “I do,” Willis said. “May I bring you one?”

  “Yes,” Wyrick said. She was thinking about getting a candy bar from the stash she’d brought with her, when her computer signaled a hit by shouting, “Hallelujah!”

  “What was that?” Hank asked.

  “The sweet sound of success,” she said, pointing to the screen. “There’s your first identification. A girl named Barbara June, aka Barbie, Lawson.”

  Hank’s eyes widened. “That was fast. How did you—”

  “May I link to your printer?” Wyrick asked.

  Hank sighed. “Just a second and I’ll get you the—”

  “No need,” Wyrick said, slipped into a new window and found the printer. She added the connection to her setup and hit Print.

  As she continued to get more hits, she kept printing them out. When the last one came through, she hit Print and then threw up her hands.

  “Okay, boss, that’s the last one,” she said.

  A few moments later, Barry came out of the com center carrying a sheaf of papers.

  “Uh...these just came through the printer, but I don’t know who—”

  “They belong to Charlie,” Wyrick said.

  As soon as Barry handed them over, Charlie spread them out on the table.

  “How many did you identify out of the photos that went through the database?” Hank asked.

  “All of them,” Wyrick said. “But keep in mind, I didn’t have any way to identify the others who are already married, and Jordan isn’t in the database for obvious reasons.”

  The agents crowded around, eyeing the photos.

  “It usually takes longer to get IDs through the database,” Barry said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlie said.

  Hank shrugged. “Identifying all of the girls that fast is—”

  “I don’t make errors,” Wyrick said, then stood up, her face devoid of expression as she took her laptop and walked out of the room.

  Charlie was furious.

  “You’re assholes. All of you. Or is it because a woman just showed you up? Do your damn job and don’t get in her face again. You want to be pissed at someone? You can be pissed at me. You want to make digs about someone’s abilities, challenge mine. But while you’re trying to decide who has the biggest balls, let me know when you get Bien picked up. I got hired to find him, and I’m the one he’s willing to talk to. The glory of taking down this cult is all yours, and you would be doing me a favor if our names were never mentioned. We came after one girl, and her father is going to help us get to her. The rest of them are yours to rescue and run before the cameras, but you don’t get access to Jordan Bien. You don’t get to parade her through the media. Understand?” He pointed at the photos. “There’s the evidence you need to get your warrants,” he said and walked out, leaving the printouts behind.

  They could hear the solid thud of his footsteps as he strode across the wooden floors and then up the stairs.

  “He’s pissed,” Willis said.

  “Ya think?” Hank muttered as he gathered up the printouts.

  “Chavez, you and Willis get the warrants we need. After those are in our hands, we’ll call in for backup. We have to have total surprise on our side to make this happen without giving them time to hurt anyone, or destroy their records.”

  Chavez and Willis both left the room in tandem, leaving Barry behind with Hank.

  “Is there any news on Jud Bien?” Hank asked.

  “I know we sent people to pick him up. We haven’t heard anything back yet, but I’ll check,” Barry said and left.

  * * *

  Jud had never unpacked, but now that he knew he was going back, he decided to shower and change while he was waiting. He’d forgotten to ask where they wanted him to meet them. If he was supposed to be outside, or waiting in his room, then remembered he was dealing with people who found criminals for a living. They’d find him soon enough. He showered and shaved, then changed into clean clothes before heading downstairs to check out.

  It was just after 12:00 noon, and he hadn’t eaten since last night, so he stopped in the main lobby at a coffee bar for a sweet roll and some coffee, and sat down to eat.

  People-watching had always been something he enjoyed, but today he saw all of them as having one thing in common, one that he was about to lose—his freedom. And it was no more than he deserved.

  He continued eating, finished off his coffee and was thinking about going to get another cup to go when he began hearing what sounded like a helicopter over the motel.

  His first thought was that some kind of Medi-Flight chopper was passing over, but it kept getting louder instead of fading away, and that was when it
hit him.

  They’re here for me.

  He tossed his cup and napkin in the garbage, then picked up his bag and walked outside.

  Police cars were everywhere, blocking off traffic so that the chopper could safely land in the hotel parking lot. He watched as it landed, then saw a couple of men get out of the chopper and start toward the hotel.

  FBI. He recognized the look.

  His heart started pounding as he shifted his suitcase from one hand to the other. Then a half dozen policemen came out of their cruisers, accompanying the agents.

  In that moment, he realized how far away from decency he’d fallen, and that his life was never going to be the same. He had the feeling he was going to pee himself, and then remembered Jordan, and the feeling went away. His fear was nothing compared to what he’d done to her, and he could only imagine how frightened she was now on her own.

  The agents stopped in front of him.

  “Sir, may we see some identification?”

  Jud took out his driver’s license. “I’m Jud Bien. I’m the man you came for.”

  They took the wallet out of his hands, patted him down for weapons and then cuffed him. He hadn’t expected that, but when he thought about it, he guessed they didn’t want to take the chance that he’d change his mind and run.

  “Come with us,” the agents said and then took him by the arms to lead him toward the chopper.

  Within minutes he was buckled in and they were in the air. He looked down as they were flying away and saw his car.

  He looked at the agent beside him. “What will happen to my car?”

  The agent stared at him a moment before he answered. “I have no idea. We’re just following orders.”

  “How long will it take to get to Shawnee Gap?” Jud asked.

  “A little over an hour as the crow flies,” the agent said, and at that point, Jud leaned back and closed his eyes.

  He didn’t blame him for staring. What he’d done was the antithesis of decency. It occurred to him then that he should have let Tara know he’d called, but he hadn’t done that. He wanted her to know that he’d kept his word, and then let it go. Nothing mattered now except getting Jordan out alive.