Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  Amy kicked at the gravel, watching Lara stretch. “How do feel?”

  “Exhausted but I’m glad to be out of there.” Lara looked at the girl. “Hey. Thank you.”

  “Did they keep you in that room all night?”

  “Not exactly the Ramada. Weird being on the other side like that.”

  “Like a criminal.”

  Lara nodded.

  Amy watched the husky bounding over the terrain. “What now?”

  “Need to get my bearings. Then try to pick up their scent, determine which way they went. Is there a map in the glovebox?”

  Amy rummaged the glovebox and came back with a map, unfolding it across the hood. Clicked on a flashlight. “How precisely can you track them? Is it a general direction or can you pinpoint the route they took?”

  “They went north, I can you tell that. I should be able to follow their path. It just means stopping every so often to double-check.”

  “Cool.”

  “We’re about here.” Lara pointed at a spot on the map and trailed her finger up half an inch. “We need to find a bus station. Get you a ticket and you can head home. I’ll call to update when I can.”

  Amy leaned back. “I’m going with you.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “No.” Amy’s features set to stone. “That asshole has my dad. I’m going with you.”

  “Amy, you were great back there, getting me out. And the plates and packing the truck with gear but this…” Lara stumbled, chose her words carefully. “You know what Grissom is. I can’t bring you into this. Your dad would kill me.”

  “He’ll be dead unless we get moving. Two are better than one. And I’m not some useless kid.”

  Lara steeled herself. “I am going to find your dad and bring him back. But I can’t do that if I have to look out for you too. You’re a crackerjack kid, Amy. No doubt. But you’re sixteen and--“

  “Seventeen,” Amy cut in.

  “I can’t do it. I won’t.”

  Even the dog sensed the standoff. It stood watching them, one forepaw lifted and waiting for something to happen.

  Amy yanked open the truck’s rear door and dug around and came back with the nine millimeter. “See that stop sign?”

  The red sign leaned in the tall grass thirty feet from where they stood. Lara glanced nervously at the road. “Put that away, Amy.”

  “Three rounds in the ‘O’.” Amy planted her feet and brought the gun up in both hands. A tiny pause before she tapped off three rounds. The Glock bucking only slightly in her clenched hands.

  Lara watched the puncture marks bloom inside the third letter of the stop sign. The smell of the gun drifted across the frozen grass.

  Amy bent to pick the spent casings from the ground and slipped them into her pocket. “I know what we’re going after, Lara. I know our chances aren’t worth crap but I’m going with you. It’s my dad who’s in trouble and if you think you’re gonna ditch me here, you got another thing coming.”

  Lara blew out her cheeks, cried uncle. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s find your dad.”

  They drove the rest of the night, travelling east through The Dalles then north, past the towns of Kennewick and Pasco. They had pulled over twice so Lara could recalibrate her fix on the trail. Amy had started to fade so Lara took over behind the wheel and Amy hunkered down in the passenger seat to sleep.

  When she woke, the truck was quiet and still. The driver’s seat empty. They were parked at a decrepit looking gas station. A light snow was dusting the few cars humming past on the road. Lara stood on a gravel spur, looking out across a vacant field of snow to where the treeline hemmed in the sightlines. A wall of pine and cedar and darkness. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

  Amy swung out of the cab. “Why did we stop?”

  Lara turned to look at her. “They crossed the border.”

  “How do you know?”

  Lara kicked at the snow with her boot. “Because the border is twenty minutes north and their scent is already cold. They’re still travelling north, up into the BC interior.”

  “So we cross the border too.” Amy watched a tractor-trailer roar past. “It’s Canada. How bad can it be?”

  “Not if we get stopped. I have no ID on me. Your name has probably been red-flagged to border authority. And if they search the truck, we’re screwed.”

  “Is there some other way in?” Amy nodded to the treeline before them. “It’s not like we have to swim across. There must be some backroad we can take.”

  Lara shook her head. “There’s no roads anywhere near the demarcation line. The border’s patrolled constantly. More so on this side. We’d be spotted in a heartbeat.”

  They watched the road, neither one speaking. The dog trotted up behind Amy and nosed her hand.

  “We’ll have to chance it,” Amy said.

  Lara looked at her reflection in the windshield. “God, I look terrible. We should clean up first, try to look like tourists.”

  Amy opened up the back. “I packed us some clothes. Brought your toothbrush too.” She nodded at the ramshackle gas station. The exterior door of the bathroom was filthy and chipped. “How disgusting do you think that bathroom is?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Lara rifled through the bags, pulling out clean clothes. “So what’s our story? Why are we visiting British Columbia?”

  “To see family.” Amy pulled out the small toiletries bag. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”

  Lara’s face darkened.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just, I usually spend Christmas at my sister’s. This will be the first time without her in five years.”

  Amy kept unpacking stuff, pretending she didn’t see Lara quickly wipe her eyes. “Maybe when this is all over, you can call Marisol. Just to let her know you’re okay.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  The bathroom was cramped and it smelled and they jostled over one another as they changed clothes and made themselves look as normal and bland as possible. Just two gals travelling into another country for the holidays. With a cache of lethal firepower hidden in the back.

  The husky was waiting patiently outside the door when they came out. They climbed back into the truck and drove for the border.

  THIRTY-THREE

  GALLAGHER AWOKE TO silence. No vibrating rumble of the vehicle nor low hush of highway whipping past. He sat up, stiff from the hard floor beneath him and blinked his eyes against the gloom. His coat had been tossed over him as a blanket. The temperature had dropped and he wasn’t in the van anymore.

  His hands were free, the restraints gone. So too was the blindfold and the gag over his mouth. The floor underneath him was wooden and it creaked under his weight at the slightest movement. Slits of light broke through chinks in the wall and his eyes picked out the contours of a room. Bare walls and the old wood floor, dark joists strapped across the ceiling. The room smelled of must and dirt and rot. Where the hell was he?

  He got to his feet and his head swam like a bad hangover. His eyes found the outlines of a door. He expected it be locked but the door swung open with a croak of rusty hinges. The glare of sunlight off the snow blinded him. The ground stretched out before him and ended at a wall of trees. Giant pine and cedar, a few spruce trees. His boots crunched the snow as he stepped out and turned back to survey the building he had awoken in. A ramshackle wooden house of blackened clapboard and grey cedar shingle. At least a century old, the timbers skewed and the beams tilted out of plumb. Crumbling slowly in on itself with the weight of the snow pushing the roof down. Hemmed in close behind the house stood the treeline, the heavy forest creeping in as if slowly swallowing the structure.

  He stood on a road. Fresh tire tracks in the snow. A single vehicle had passed this way, presumably the one he’d been transported in. The treads snaked away as the road twisted around a bend. He followed the tracks, rounding the bend. More buildings came into view, lining both sides of the road. Some were houses or small cottages, other
s were tall with wide verandas. Storefronts with picture windows. All of them as old and decrepit as the one he’d awoken in. A crumbling pioneer outpost from the early part of the last century, left to molder against the wall of pines creeping in around it.

  A ghost town.

  The border crossing was relatively quiet, even for this time of the year. Two pickups and a handful of tractor trailers snaking their way through the guard booths. Lara drummed the steering wheel and watched the vehicles inch forward. Not one had been pulled aside.

  So far.

  “I think we’ll be okay,” she said. “They’re waving most people through without a fuss. Christmas, I guess.”

  Amy bit her lip and turned to regard the dog in the backseat. “What about the dog? What if they hassle us about him?”

  “Just be cool and everything will be okay.”

  “This is crazy. Maybe we should turn back, try something else.”

  Lara took the girl’s wrist. “You have to calm down. These people go on their gut instincts. Any paranoia or twitchy behavior will set them off. So be cool. Okay?”

  Amy took a breath and counted sheep as they inched closer. Needing to distract the girl from her own demise, Lara asked her about basketball. Was she still playing guard? How had her team performed this year?

  It worked. Amy launched into a breathless recap of their season and how she had improved her game but still had a problem fighting off the bigger players. Lara kept her talking until they drew up before the yellow swing arm.

  The border guard peered at them with an air of practiced boredom. A woman in badly applied eyeshadow and plastic nails asked them where they were from and what their nationality was.

  “American,” said Lara. “From Portland.” The key to bullshitting your way through was to cut as close to the truth as you can. A ruse Lara had gleaned from an endless parade of shifty smokehounds trying to eyefuck her in an interview room.

  “Where are you headed?” the guard asked.

  “Calgary.”

  The woman bent low to see Amy and then scanned the rear seat of the truck. “What’s the purpose of your visit and how long will you be staying?”

  “We’re spending the holidays with some family. Coming back the day after Boxing day. So five days.”

  “Uh-huh. Is that dog registered?”

  Lara just rolled with it, spotting a test when she saw it. “Yup.”

  The woman clicked her fake nails on the window sill. “What’s his name?”

  Amy gulped. The dog didn’t have a name. Why hadn’t they ever named the dog? How stupid had they been?

  “Ivan,” Lara replied without missing a beat. “He’s not liking the drive at all.”

  The woman clicked her teeth. “They’re like little kids in the car, huh?”

  “Exactly.” Lara smiled back. “What kind of dog do you have?”

  “Sharpie,” the guard said. “She hates the car too.” She reached for her control panel and the liftgate swung up. “You have a Merry Christmas.”

  “You too.” Lara waved and drove through the checkpoint, picking up speed as the dotted lines guided them onto the road into another country.

  Amy gasped for air, realizing that she had held her breath the whole time.

  The husky stuck its snout through the window, flaring its nostrils against a fresh blast of wind and scent.

  Another hour on the road before stopping for gas. They bought a roadmap and sandwiches and let the dog stretch its legs. Amy unfolded the map on their knees. “Where are we?”

  “We crossed here in Boundary.” Lara pointed at the map. “So we’re about here. They’re still north of us.”

  A dollop of tuna salad dribbled onto the map. Amy wiped it away and snaked a finger along their route. “There’s a lot of wilderness here. And not too many towns.”

  “Mountains too.”

  “Can you tell if we’re getting close?”

  Lara shook her head. “He’s got a day’s start on us. Plenty of lead time.”

  “You need some rest. You’re looking a little bleary.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Amy leveled her with a look. “Lara, you’ve been driving for how many hours? You’re starting to weave all over the road.”

  Lara couldn’t deny it. The last hour had been rough, her eyesight blurring the road ahead. Now with a meal in her belly, exhaustion set in to roost. “Okay. We’ll find a motel somewhere and get a couple hours of sleep, then continue on.”

  “I don’t want to lose anymore time,” Amy said. “You sleep in the back. I’ll drive for a while.”

  “You’re exhausted too. We both need to be alert when we get there.”

  Amy looked at the map again. “Where’s there?”

  “There’s only one highway that runs through these mountains.” Lara traced her finger up the map to an open space of green. “They turned off the main road, somewhere up in here I think.”

  Amy lifted her gaze to the road. “What if we’re too late?”

  “Your dad’s going to be okay.”

  “How do you know? He could be--“ She cut off the thought before uttering it.

  “Grissom wants me to find him. He won’t do anything drastic until I do.”

  Amy took a breath to calm down. “What are we gonna do when we get there?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Lara said. “One more reason to rest up and clear our heads.”

  Amy lowered her eyes to the map again. “Looks like there’s a town up here. Not too far.”

  “Okay, let’s crash there. Where’s the dog?”

  The tiniest crack of a smile lifted Amy’s mouth. “You mean Ivan?”

  “I know. My mind blanked out on names. Except for that one.”

  Amy stepped out and opened the back door, whistling for the mutt. The husky trotted up out of a ditch with its nose dusted in snow and leapt into the back.

  The crumbling shacks held little but musty smells and broken glass. The dry bones of woodmice strewn amongst the debris on the dryrot floors. Gallagher roamed from building to building, exploring the earthly remains of whatever town this was. He found a blacksmith’s shop with an anvil and blast furnace still intact. Rusting pickaxes and spades piled into a corner, the wooden handles splintered and gone. He hefted the pick, the tool of a miner and guessed that this was once an outpost of the goldrush. One of a countless number of towns that sprung up overnight when some crazed hermit panned gold from a creekbed. Abandoned just as fast when the vein ran dry and no further ore could be picked or dynamited from the mountainside.

  He ducked under the low lintel and stepped out to the road. His eyes cast up and down the drag, ears cocked for any sound but there was none. Where was Grissom? Did he dump him here and keep moving? Why bother abducting him at all? Cupping a hand over his mouth he hollered up a ‘hello’. A bird startled from a tree and flapped away. Nothing more.

  He explored more of the dead village, passing the barnboard wreck of a stable and the ruins of a church. The roof had caved in and the cross that had once crested the steeple lay poking up out of the snow.

  The single tire treads wound past the ruins of the church and graded down the hill. There, at the bottom of the slope, was a vehicle.

  A plain-looking cargo van, quiet and still on the incline. Rushing down, he jerked open the driver’s door. Empty.

  The keys, impossibly, remained in the ignition.

  He turned the key but nothing happened. Not even a click. He turned it again and again. He popped the latch lever and climbed out. Threw up the hood and peered into the engine. The distributor cap was gone, the cables ripped out to leave the plugs exposed and useless. Searching around the van, hoping to find where it had been tossed but there was no sign of it. Gallagher spit onto the snow. The vehicle was useless.

  Opening the rear door revealed little save the space he’d been confined in. There was a toolkit and a chainsaw. A red gasoline canister, three-quarters full. Trash and debris.

  What the hell wa
s the bastard up to? Grissom had transported him all the way out here to this ghost town and then crippled the van beyond repair. That meant that Grissom was close but had no further need of the vehicle.

  End of the line. For everybody.

  Amy awoke to a cold nose pressed into her cheek. The husky snorted and wagged its tail. Pushing the dog away, she sat up and looked at the window. Still dark outside.

  Lara didn’t stir in the bed next to her. She didn’t wake, didn’t even seem to be breathing she lay so still. Amy shuddered and got dressed quietly and took the dog outside.

  She let the dog run and walked to the truck stop just south of the motel. Got coffee, eggs and bagels to go and headed back. Slipping back inside the motel room, she found the bed empty and the bathroom door closed. A hushed break from the other side of the door that sounded like sobbing.

  Amy stood still, listening. “Lara?”

  The sobbing ceased, replaced with the sound of running water.

  Lara emerged from the bathroom, patting her face dry with a towel. “We overslept.”

  “Guess we needed it,” Amy shrugged. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” Lara reached for her clothes. “Is that breakfast?”

  “Greasy spoon fare.” Amy handed over a cup of coffee and watched Lara dress. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No. Let’s get going. We’ll eat on the road, okay?”

  The highway was empty of traffic so she let Amy drive. A single vehicle passed them travelling south before the sky broke grey. Sunup still an hour away. Lara studied the map, trying to spot some area of terrain where Grissom might hold up.

  Amy held the wheel. “Any luck?”

  “No.” Lara put the map down and watched the road. “They’re close though.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I can just tell.”

  The Cherokee drifted over the yellow line. Amy corrected her course. “When you change into the, you know, wolf, do you remember anything?”