by Jeff Carson
“Shit.” Her chest was heaving now. “If he’s on the side of the road, and I have to pull over to meet him … then what are you going to do if you’re following me?”
Wolf wanted to placate her, but she had a good point. “I’ll stay out of sight. They’re doing a drive-by now. We’ll have more intel in a few minutes.”
He watched with his peripheral vision as she stared at him. He kept his eyes on the road, his expression neutral, his mind on Rachette’s next call.
Chapter 34
Detective Tom Rachette drove in Patterson’s immaculately clean, feminine-scented car two miles south of town on Highway 734, trying to figure out a place to stuff the breakfast burrito wrapper. Every surface was cleaner than a baby’s butt, so he hesitated, but only for a second, before he tossed it to the floor.
Wiping his grimy hands on his pants, he tried to breathe. His heart was racing and had been for the past hour. His stomach was queasy and food was probably the last thing he needed. He should have left the burrito in the microwave, but he was freaking out and needed something to do while he made the drive, contemplating the mayhem that was sure to come this morning. Now, to add to it all, he was holding back a nervous crap.
He let off the gas at the sight of a long-haired kid in a bright-yellow vest, waving a flag at the ski-resort entrance.
Rachette pulled the car over into the turn lane, taking him from a well-worn and plowed lane to a few inches of fresh powder, which proved no match for Patterson’s all-wheel-drive crossover vehicle. If he ever got rid of his Volkswagen, he should look into one of these. They were solid.
Pulling up next to the guy, he rolled down the window.
“How’s it going?” Rachette asked.
“Pretty damn good. Twenty-two inches of freshies. Gonna be an epic day up there. Plenty of parking—”
“Yeah, hey, we need to park that vehicle behind me at this entrance, okay?” Rachette produced his badge.
The guy’s eyebrows shot up above his mirrored sunglasses. “Uh, yeah, okay.”
“We’re leaving the keys in it. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t touch it. If we don’t come back, there’s going to be a woman coming to drive away in it. Let her.”
“You got—”
Rachette rolled up the window and drove forward. Hernandez followed close in his own vehicle, a four-wheel-drive Jeep SUV new model, which they’d decided was the more reliable of the two if it came down to tough terrain, which meant they were going to leave it for Lauren.
He took the turn onto the ski-resort entrance road, flipped the car around, and parked along the road on the exit side.
Hernandez followed suit and rocked to a stop behind him. Hernandez hopped out of his vehicle, then walked over and had his own conversation with the parking guy. His head bobbed and breath shot out of his mouth as he pointed down the road. Then the parking guy nodded like his life had just been threatened, which, knowing Hernandez, it probably had.
Hernandez jogged over and climbed into the passenger side. He kicked the burrito wrapper. “You’re gonna trash Patterson’s car like that?”
“Pfft.” Rachette hit the gas and they shot out onto the road.
“Nice pickup in this thing,” Hernandez said, his voice a little strained sounding. Probably nervous, too. Rachette was glad to finally have somebody with him. Especially Hernandez, who Rachette knew was lightning quick with his gun and, if it came down to it, his fists.
Rachette shrugged. “It’s not bad. Smells like lady’s crotch deodorant, but not bad.”
Hernandez shook his head. “Better than that outhouse on wheels you drive.”
“The Volks? She’s a steed.”
“I think a steed is a male horse, isn’t it?”
“Nope. Can be either a male or female.”
Hernandez stared at him, then checked the mirrors and leaned forward in his seat. He palmed the dashboard and tapped his fingers.
“Two-eleven?” Rachette asked, though he knew the answer.
“Two-eleven.”
They road in silence for a mile and a half. When mile marker 210 flashed by the window, Rachette tapped on Hernandez’s shoulder.
“Why don’t you chill, act like we’re relaxed and not looking for some guy.”
“Yeah.” Hernandez leaned back and took a big breath. “Shit, this is crazy. I never been in nothing like this before.”
The next mile marker came into view far in the distance, sucking the wind right out of Rachette. “Keep an open eye.”
“No shit. Keep a steady pace. Just drive by him, and we’ll have to go down a mile or so and turn around to come back.”
As they neared the 211 mile-marker sign, Rachette let his foot off the gas because there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary ahead.
“Don’t slow down,” Hernandez said. “It’ll look obvious.”
“To who? There’s nobody here.”
They swiveled in their seats, pressing their noses to the glass. There was nothing but snow-stacked trees and virgin powder on both sides of the road. To the left, beyond the trees, was the meandering Chautauqua in a snow-covered meadow, but no structures whatsoever, and certainly no cars.
Rachette slowed to a crawl as they approached the mile marker.
“Don’t slow down,” Hernandez said. “What if he’s on foot, watching?”
Rachette studied the snow in every direction and shook his head. “No. There’re no footprints. It’s untouched powder.”
He pulled over and came to a stop. In front of them on the side of the road stood a green-and-white sign— the 211 mile marker. Something was attached to it.
“Look.”
“Shit, is that what I think it is?” Hernandez opened the door and launched himself outside.
Rachette got out and walked around the rear of Patterson’s idling car. He studied the fresh powder on top of previously plowed snowpack and saw a set of fresh tire tracks that weren’t theirs.
The tracks showed that a vehicle had parked and a man with large feet had walked around the rear of his car, just like Rachette was doing now. Rachette followed the footprints to Hernandez’s and then looked back up at the mile-marker sign.
“Shit.” Hernandez said. “What does this mean?”
Whoever had parked here had fastened a cell phone to the sign with black electrical tape.
Rachette walked to the front of his car and looked at the outgoing vehicle tracks. They swung hard left, almost to ninety degrees. An eighteen-wheel truck blew by, kicking up snow and exhaust in Rachette’s face, but he held firm at the side of the road, staring back the way they’d come.
“I have no idea. But it’s not good.”
Chapter 35
Wolf slowed at the speed-limit sign at the northern edge of town, dropping them from fifty-five miles per hour to thirty-five. A second sign would drop them to twenty-five in another hundred feet. He was antsy, loath to let off the gas, but the last thing he wanted was to draw attention to his vehicle with Lauren inside. With Vail Pass now open, the radio was blowing up about the BOLO for Lauren Coulter and her blue BMW SUV.
Lauren’s phone emitted a high-pitched tone, shattering the tense silence of the cab. “It’s him. It’s back to the foreign phone number.”
Wolf twirled a finger.
“Hello?” Her face twisted in confusion as she listened to the call.
Wolf’s phone vibrated silently in his lap. He saw it was Rachette and pressed the call-end button.
“Yes … okay.”
He leaned over and put his ear close to her, and she tilted so he could hear.
There was a lot of noise coming out of Lauren’s phone, a voice over background music.
“I want you to go to Ed’s Grocery Store,” the voice said. During the pause before the next sentence, Wolf heard more music, clanking dishes, and random voices.
“I want you to go to the far western edge of the lot and wait for me there. I’ll come pick you up in a few minutes. You tell anyone—an
d our original agreement still stands—and Ella and I leave together. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
The phone went silent.
“He hung up,” she said. “He changed the meeting place to Ed’s Grocery Store. What the hell?”
Wolf grabbed the phone and looked at the untraceable number from before. “Why did he use that … ?”
Rachette called again and this time he answered. “Yeah.”
“He’s not here. He taped a phone to the mile-marker sign.”
“Okay. Get your asses back into town. He changed the meeting point to Ed’s Grocery Store.”
“Okay.” Rachette hung up.
“What’s this guy doing?” Lauren asked.
Wolf’s eyelids slid down to half-mast. “He’s successfully splitting us off from my deputies.”
Chapter 36
Bristol clicked the call-end button on his computer screen, ending another call originating in Vienna, Austria—another nifty piece of software he’d acquired on the internet.
He took off his headphones and stuffed them in his bag, slammed his laptop shut and bagged it too. He scraped his chair back and stood.
The many loitering people inside looked at him with raised eyebrows.
He gave them a nod and a charming smile, and they turned back to their loud conversations over the equally loud crappy music blaring from the speakers.
He felt like popping two bullets in each of the baristas behind the counter—a thank-you for providing such an ear-splitting atmosphere to work in—but instead he waved and said, “See ya later.”
Of course, he meant nothing of the sort. He was never going to set foot in this town again.
He ran out to the Toyota 4Runner parked alongside the road, jumped in, and fired up the engine. The heavy weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket pressed against his hip.
The engine roared and lurched forward with the slightest touch of his foot. He was going to have to get a nice SUV like this with his new money.
Chapter 37
“Splitting us off from your deputies?” Lauren put a shaky hand to her forehead. “What? Why? He knows about them? He knows our plan?”
Wolf dialed Patterson.
“Hello?”
“He just called from the foreign number again. The first call from the older number was a decoy to split us from Rachette and Hernandez.”
Patterson paused. “He knew about them? How the hell—”
“Listen, I think he was at that new coffee shop down the street. The music was very loud in the background of the call.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“He wants to meet Lauren in the parking lot of Ed’s and take her to her daughter. I can’t tail them in this car. Go tell MacLean right now. Tell him to get someone’s civilian car and get to Ed’s. It’s supposed to go down in a few minutes, on the western edge. Did you hear me?”
“Yes. I’m just … shit. MacLean’s not in his office. He was here.”
“Hernandez and Rachette are too far to make it in time. Get Munford. Somebody. Anyone with a civi car. Tell them to get it to the rear of the store and park it next to my vehicle.”
“Okay.”
“Go now.”
“Okay.” Patterson hung up.
Lauren’s face was whiter than the snow outside.
He put the phone down as they entered the northern edge of town. Ed’s came into view up on the left, a sprawling boxy grocery store with huge windows and a mostly vacant parking lot.
He slowed on the strip of unplowed road in the center lane, the SUV wobbling side to side, and hung a left into the parking lot.
At 8 a.m. the morning grocery shopping rush was not at full volume yet. A few cars dotted the lot, but he paid them no attention. He was sure of what he heard over the phone speaker. The last time he’d been inside that new coffee shop, Dead Ground, the same African music, blaring at the same ungodly volume, had been playing. It was physically impossible for the man to make the drive from there to here that quickly.
“I’ll drop you off at the western edge.”
She looked pale. Her breathing was too rapid.
“Calm down, okay? Deep breaths.”
“What if he asks about how I got there?”
“Point vaguely to one of these cars,” Wolf said. “Breathe, Lauren.”
She closed her eyes and did as instructed.
“I’ll be with you every step. I won’t let anything happen to you two.” The words were out. A tiny voice inside screamed at him to take them back.
Chapter 38
Patterson’s hands were tingling, blood rushing in her ears.
She’d returned to her desk as the morning shift had come on duty. Now looking around, she found those people were all gone, save two detention-level deputies standing by a box of doughnuts.
“Hey, you.” She knew neither of their names.
One of the deputies put his hands on his chest. He was a skinny guy with short hair and big ears. “Me?”
She opened her mouth to speak and then waved her hand. “Never mind.”
She walked to the end of the room and put both hands on the cold windows overlooking Main. She leaned forward, accidentally bumping her belly. The baby kicked violently.
“Shit.” She put a hand underneath her stomach and peered out the window toward the coffee shop, which was down the block to the left.
She had to lean her shoulder into the glass for an oblique view, but she could see the sidewalk in front.
A front-end loader was doing its thing with the mountain of snow lining the middle of the street, like it always did when there was a huge dump. There were a few cars parked alongside the road, and traffic was very light.
A man jogged around one of the parked cars, a Toyota SUV, and jumped into the driver’s seat. The door bounced all the way open on its hinges, and then he reached out and slammed it. In a few seconds he was driving, jerking the SUV out onto the road, not bothering to wait for a car that had to jam to a stop for him.
With held breath, she watched as the man drove toward her.
He drove a few miles an hour over the speed limit and hit the brakes a little too late for the stop sign. Then he came to a rolling stop and spat snow as he accelerated, clearly unconcerned that he was passing by the front entrance to the county Sheriff’s Office and breaking the law. Passing directly below Patterson’s third-floor perch now, his hands gripped the top of the steering wheel and tapped out a fast rhythm, as if he were excited or nervous, and then he was out of sight, hidden beneath the roof of the SUV.
The baby squirmed inside her as an electric jolt passed through her body.
The man had been wearing purple latex gloves.
“Shit.”
She thumbed the keychain inside her pocket. She had given Rachette her keys and taken his.
She took off down the hall as fast as she could, holding her belly with two hands. The elevator doors opened and a woman stepped inside.
“Hold that elevator!”
Chapter 39
Wolf stood at the corner of the grocery-store building, watching the rapid streams of breath come from Lauren’s mouth at the far end of the parking lot.
The air was frigid, the wind biting, but the sun warmed the bricks behind him, somewhat counteracting the cold. He wished he had a cigarette, because right now his loitering outside on the corner of the building was conspicuous. At least he was in plain clothing.
With so few cars in the parking lot, his unmarked SBCSD vehicle, with its oversized antenna and light bars inside the windshield and rear window, was also conspicuous, so he’d parked it around the back of the building.
A black Toyota SUV turned into the lot from the highway, passed Lauren without slowing, and continued out of sight around the other side of the building.
Lauren watched the vehicle disappear. She glanced at Wolf with a shrug and shoved her hands in her pockets, squinting into the sun.
She was such a beauty, standing
out in the light like that. His heart ached for her. Once again his muscles tensed at the thought of seeing this man. He was proving both resourceful and unpredictable.
Was unpredictable the word? No. The man was paranoid. Only such an ultra-cautious person would put out a decoy like that before making a move to meet Lauren.
Wolf’s eyes relaxed and his heart stopped as a thought came to him. Maybe it hadn’t been a decoy. Maybe he’d known about the plan. It had been a topic glossed over by one of the speakers at the law-enforcement conference on Friday—the prevalence of viruses, bugging software, credit-card cloning techniques, and other cyber threats.
Bugging software. His mind swirled, thinking about the implications. The burner phone could have had microphone-tapping software installed on it too. If so, the man would know about Wolf being with Lauren. He would know everything they’d discussed.
There was a scrape behind him, toward the rear of the building, and a man came around the corner with footsteps squeaking on the snow.
He was muscular and walked briskly with his hands shoved in his pockets. Squinting against the sun, he smiled pleasantly at Wolf.
Wolf pulled his pistol and aimed it at the man’s center mass.
“Whoa!” The man took his hands out of his pockets. One was empty and the other held a cell phone—they were both clad in latex gloves. “You don’t want to do that.”
Wolf held his aim.
The man kept walking. “If I don’t call my friend in a specified amount of time, he has instructions to do to the girl what he did to the nanny.”
Wolf lowered his gun.
“Drop it in the snow there and cover it. And then take out your phone and do the same.” He sidestepped out into the parking lot and let out an ear-splitting whistle through his teeth. “Lauren! Come here! Fast!”
Lauren had already been walking their way. Now she ran at his command.