A murmur of negatives.
“Well, if you think of anything, or hear anything, let me know. I’ll probably be coming around to visit each of you privately, too. Only unlike Mr. Haynes, I won’t be bringing a couple of grand with me when I come, just a lot of annoying questions.”
That, at least, got some smiles. The entertainment apparently over, the people started to drift away. The Shipps, having wandered by after showering in the natural hot spring tank, were the last to go. Virginia hovered almost as if she had something to say, but maybe it was just her way of letting Hal get some air, Ken speculated. There was a blank look on Hal’s face as he watched the proceedings, and when Ken looked at him, the old man stepped forward, his hand extended.
“Pleased to meet you,” Hal said. “My sister said you were a Sheriff.”
Ken caught Virginia’s gaze over Hal’s shoulder. Sister? The two had been married for decades, Ken knew. And Hal had known Ken for years.
“Pleasure,” Ken replied, reaching for the hand.
“Harold’s been like this all day,” Virginia said. “Exhausted, probably. Sat up all night, far as I can tell. When I found him this morning he was just lost.”
Ken got closer to Hal, and their fingers touched, and then they clasped hands firmly and Ken felt like he was holding a live wire. A shock went through his entire body, leaving his arm numb and shaking. Hal reacted with surprise too, and dropped Ken’s hand.
“Boy, we got a little static electricity going that time, didn’t we, Ken?” he asked.
“I guess so,” Ken said. Wherever Hal had been, he was back now.
“What brings you back to the Slab?” Hal continued. “Following up on that real estate guy’s pitch?”
“Oh, no,” Ken said. “He’ll follow up on that without my help. I’m actually doing real police work, Hal. You know anything about a skull that ended up in the fire pit?”
Hal looked like he was thinking it over. “No, no, I can’t say that I do. How long do you suppose it’s been there?”
“Well, that I don’t know,” Ken replied. “A little while, at least.”
“I sure hope you find whoever put it there, Ken. Best of luck to you.”
“Thanks, Hal. Appreciate it. You folks take care.” Ken gathered up his bag and equipment, touched the rim of his Smokey hat, and carried everything to his Bronco. His arm still tingled from the unexpected shock of touching Hal Shipp.
***
The men untied her for breakfast, allowing Lucy to eat a plate of scrambled eggs and a few pieces of steak they had cut for her, standing at the kitchen counter with only a fork. When the gag came off, the curly-haired guy who had done most of the talking so far did some more of it.
“None of what we talked about last night was negotiable, doll, so don’t waste any effort trying to talk us out of anything. Just use it to eat. You’ll need your strength, believe me.”
The other guys laughed at that. Lucy took his advice and downed the food as fast as she could, in case they changed their minds again. Someone put a cup of black coffee in front of her and she swallowed that too.
“Here’s the thing,” the curly guy continued. “We’re lousy hunters. We’re shitty hunters, if you want the technical word for what we are. But what we’re doing here, it’s not really hunting, you see? We’re sportsmen. It’s something entirely different. Hunting’s when you track something down so you can kill it. We have no interest in killing you—although we would if we had to. No, our interest is in tracking you, for the sport of it, and then using you. For the sport of that.”
Lucy nodded her understanding, shoveling in her last forkful of eggs. She ate fast, not knowing if they might at any moment decide she’d had enough time. She didn’t want to upset her stomach but she figured she would need the fuel. When she had downed the last of the coffee, she realized she still had the fork in her hand.
“Can I keep this?” she asked.
“A fork?” the guayabera man asked with a chuckle. Today he wore a military-style olive drab T-shirt and camouflage pants, though, as did all the others, so she knew she’d have to come up with a different name for him. She noticed they’d been careful not to use their names in front of her. She took that as a positive sign—maybe they intended to let her live, after all. “You want to keep a fork?”
“You guys have the guns, so it seems only fair,” she said.
“Sure, darlin’” the curly guy said. He was definitely the decision-maker of the bunch, and the first one she’d plunge the fork into if she ever got the chance. “You can keep the fork. Enjoy it. You need to use the can before you get going?”
“Sure,” Lucy said, willing to delay the start any way she could. A few minutes sitting around in the shade while they stood outside in the sun, getting more and more anxious and disturbed—she would take that. She knew it wasn’t much of an advantage—it wouldn’t compensate, for instance, for the fact that her wedge sandals were just about impossible to run in. But it was something, and she had decided during the night that she would cling to any positives she could. Negative thinking was just going to get her dead.
When she got inside the outhouse, she realized, too late, that she should have asked for water instead of coffee for breakfast. Water would do her more good and stay with her longer. But it wasn’t like they’d offered her the choice—the coffee had just been put in front of her. If she hadn’t accepted it, she might well have gone thirsty.
Once again, she sat inside until they banged on the walls and insisted she come out. When she emerged, she was still cool, but the two guys who had escorted her out had already sweated through their T-shirts.
“Let’s go, bitch,” one of them snarled. He was the one with the drooping mustache that made him look perpetually miserable. Probably he is, she thought, or why would he participate in something like this.
She just gave him a smile. “Show some respect,” she said. “You don’t own me yet. Maybe you never will.”
“Oh, we own you, bitch,” he said. “Just like you were bought and paid for. You just don’t know it yet.”
“We’ll see.” Lucy said, trying to maintain a pleasant demeanor. It was fun to see just how much it pissed this guy off when she was nice to him.
The other escort, the muscular one with the ponytail, seemed to understand her psychological warfare, though, because he grabbed the mustached guy’s arm. “Let it go,” he said. “She’ll find out soon enough.”
“There’s thirteen graves around here full of bitches didn’t think we owned them either,” the mustached guy said, ignoring his friend’s advice.
“Shut up, man,” the ponytailed guy said. “You too,” he said, directed at Lucy. “You just keep quiet.”
She nodded and smiled as they walked her back to the house.
The other men were scattered around the couches and chairs of the cabin’s main room, looking like they were ready to get going. “You know the rules,” the curly guy said. “You get away, you get away. You don’t, you’re ours. You get a twenty-minute head start. Any questions? Too bad. It’s really very simple.”
She had questions, but none that she would bother to ask. What the mustached one had let slip answered the most important one. If they brought her back here, not only would they use her but then they’d kill her. So she wasn’t coming back to this cabin, ever. Curly was right. It was very simple.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Nobody’s stopping you. Clock starts now.”
Lucy turned without a second look back and ran out the door. As soon as she was outside, she took off the sandals and looped them over her wrists. It would hurt to run on the bare dirt and rocks, but she’d make far better time barefoot. At the same time, she didn’t want to let go of the sandals, because they might come in handy later on.
She still had the fork, tucked into the rear pocket of her jeans.
Bare feet slapping the hot stones and fallen twigs and raw earth, Lucia Alvarez ran for her life.
Chapter Eight
Carter Haynes wasn’t foolish enough to think that most people on the Slab would have checking accounts, or would know what to do with a check if they were given one. But he also wasn’t stupid enough to bring cash to a place like this without protection. The bodyguard he’d hired was a walking mountain of a man named Nick Postak. At six-five, he towered over Carter, and he looked like he was probably double Carter’s weight, too. He had a big beefy face with small eyes under a heavy brow, a thin line for a mouth, and a wicked-looking red scar that ran from the outer corner of his left eye all the way down his cheek, past his ear. He wore jeans and a polo shirt stretched to its absolute limit by muscular upper arms and wide shoulders. Its tail was left untucked to hide the pistol Postak carried in a holster at the small of his back. Carter carried the cash in a briefcase. With Nick Postak at his side, no one would be crazy enough to try to take more than their share.
Also in the briefcase were contracts. They were simple, two pages each, no fine print. The head of each household—and he used that term loosely, in a place where a “household” might live in the back of a broken-down van—had to sign before he or she got the green.
The first four stops went as planned. A little finessing and the contracts got signed. It didn’t even hurt to hand out the eight grand, because he knew it’d be coming back to him in spades. A small price to pay.
Those four stops had taken about ninety minutes, which meant the sun was getting high and hot by the time he and Postak exited the fourth hovel. But there was something different outside this time, besides blinding light and the smell of baking aluminum siding.
This time, there were five men watching them as they made their exit. The five men were big men—not Postak’s size, but big nonetheless. One of them was tattooed from head to foot, with a shaved head and bulging muscles. Another looked like a Viking or a Hell’s Angel or some unholy combination of both, with a thick red beard and a long mane of red hair and a build like a refrigerator with legs. The other three weren’t quite as imposing, but since most of the Slab’s residents tended to be retirees and their grandparents, these five looked like the youngest and most dangerous of the lot.
They started across the slab toward Carter and Postak. Postak stopped, hands held casually behind his back, except that Carter knew he was going for his gun, that in fact his intent was anything but casual. For the first time, he wondered if bringing this much cash with him to this godforsaken Slab was a bad idea. Carter held up one hand over his eyes, blinking against the sun at their backs.
The Viking twitched a thumb toward a broken-down RV, the next disaster of a home in line for Carter to visit. “You coming to see me?” the man asked.
“If that’s where you live,” Carter replied, keeping his voice steady. He could sense Postak’s tension. The big man had made himself still, barely breathing, but ready to move.
“It is,” the Viking said. “But you ain’t invited in.” He didn’t sound like he was kidding.
“You do understand that I just want to get your signature on a document, assuming you’re the head of the household, and then I’ll pay you two thousand dollars?”
“And then I’ll have to move off the Slab,” the Viking said. He spat into the dirt. “And how far is two grand going to get me out in the world? Pay first and last month’s rent and a security deposit on someplace and it’s gone. What good is that?”
“It’s better than nothing, which is what you’ll get if you don’t accept the offer. The land is legally mine, and everyone needs to get off it.”
The Viking looked around at his friends. They didn’t look like they’d be easy to move. “You can try,” he said.
“I know you may not like to admit it,” Carter reminded him. “But the law does apply out here, just like it does everywhere else.”
“That’s what they say. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“You’ll see it, soon enough,” Carter said. He raised his voice. “Do the rest of you men feel the same way?”
All four of the others nodded or grunted what must have been affirmatives.
“Show me where you live, then, and I won’t bother calling on you. And you’ll get no money. But those who will go along with the law will still get paid, so don’t try to stop me from delivering their payments.”
The Viking smiled broadly, revealing uneven yellow teeth flecked with gold. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
***
Imperial County contained more miles of dirt road than paved road, probably by a factor of two to one. Off-roaders, hunters, farmers, drug and illegal alien smugglers up from Mexico, and the Border Patrol tracking them all kept the dirt roads busy year-round, though traffic fell of somewhat during the hottest parts of summer.
For this duty, Billy Cobb had borrowed Lieutenant Butler’s Bronco. Even so, he complained at every stretch of washboard, every jounce or drop that slammed his butt against the seat or his head into the roof. The Bronco was ancient and its suspension’s best days had been long ago. It beat the hell out of the Crown-Vic but still, Billy figured a more contemporary SUV would be a good use of Sheriff’s Office funds. What if it was Arab terrorists I was looking for out here, instead of possible kidnappers, he thought. They’d be driving around in a Humvee or a Cadillac Escalade or a Mercedes goddamn Unimog and here I’d be, shaking my spine out my asshole in this old burner.
But he was out anyway, and so were deputies from every substation in Imperial and Riverside Counties, checking every road, every barn, every empty canyon accessible by four-wheel drive. They’d been told to look for a black or dark blue Lincoln Navigator. But so far there was no clear determination if a kidnapping had in fact happened, or if the Navigator even existed. The FBI hadn’t even been called in, because the evidence that a crime had been committed was so flimsy.
All in all, Billy thought he’d be more help up on the Slab, helping the Sheriff investigate the very real murder they’d found evidence of there. Or down in El Centro, tracking down that hooker who’d run away on him. The more he thought about her, the more steamed he became.
The old jeep road he was on now snaked alongside the Chocolate Mountains, just outside the aerial gunnery range the Marines operated there, following the course of the Coachella Canal. The road was long and narrow in spots—once, when he met some four-wheelers out in an old Dodge Raider, he’d had to back up an eighth of a mile to find a pull-out wide enough to let them pass. It wound through a deep canyon, the rocky sides of which were so close that he was afraid he’d scrape the Lieutenant’s vehicle.
But at least there was shade inside the canyon—pulling out on the other end he was back in bright, direct sunlight, bearing down on the Bronco as if someone had covered it with a thick blanket. Billy swore and cranked the air conditioner another notch. The desert was still out here—if there were birds, they stayed in the shelter of bushes or cacti. Mammals hid underground, snakes and lizards probably sunned themselves on flat rocks away from the roads. No one moved around more than they had to.
But cutting across the road was another, even less-traveled dirt trail, with unmistakably new tire tracks on it. Billy had planned to skip that road—he wasn’t even sure where it ended up, but it cut across the canal and then up to the north, so maybe out of the county altogether, and almost no one ever used it.
Which just made it more intriguing now.
He made the turn and headed north, rear wheels sliding a bit in the dirt as he did. But they caught again, and he followed the narrower track. If he could find the girl and bring her home safe, he could move up his mental timeframe for becoming Sheriff, he knew. He might even get Butler’s job right away.
After a quarter mile or so, the tire tracks made another turn, this time into a dry, dusty wash. Billy followed suit. The Bronco’s wheels spun a little as they hit the sand, then bit in and the vehicle moved forward. But something bothered Billy as he straddled the tire marks in the sand. After a moment, he determined what it was, and he braked to
a full, sudden stop, kicking up a cloud of dust that enveloped the SUV.
There was no way that a Navigator had a narrower wheelbase than Ken’s old Bronco, he decided. So the very fact that he was straddling these tire tracks meant that they hadn’t come from a Navigator or probably any other luxury SUV. This was more likely something little, a Rav-4 or a Chevy Tracker or something. Maybe even an old Suzuki Samurai.
But it was not the vehicle he was looking for. Not even close.
Shit, he thought, pushing the door open and getting out. He kicked at the sand. This is a dead end. They’re not out here, if they even exist. He couldn’t believe how angry he was, and once again, his service piece was in his hand before he even realized it. He took aim at a ball of teddy bear cholla cactus clinging to the end of a branch twenty yards away and let fly.
His first two shots missed, zinging off into empty desert somewhere behind the cactus. But his next one connected and the cholla ball disintegrated. He moved his aim down the branch, shooting off chunks of it with each squeeze of his trigger. Finally, he emptied the clip into the tiny plant’s trunk, chopping it down completely.
And the whole time he shot at it, instead of seeing the cactus, in his mind’s eye he was looking at that streetwalker down in El Centro.
***
At Kelly’s signal, each man grabbed his own gun or guns and headed out the door. Vic carried an Ithaca 12 gauge shotgun that had been Cam Hensley’s—hunting had never been a hobby or even a real interest of his, except for these once-a-year excursions, so he’d never bothered to get one of his own.
Besides, what they were really doing out here had very little to do with guns.
Their Dove had been given a twenty minute head start, as Kelly had promised her. It took less than a minute for Rock to find one of her footprints in the sand—she’d already taken her sandals off—so they knew which direction she’d gone. East, into the rising sun. And into the deepest part of the Mojave desert. It’d be a long time before she found human population in that direction. Maybe in a few days she’d find herself at the Grand Canyon, if she survived that long. Vic didn’t think she would.
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