13. Under the Radar

by Fern Michaels

  Myra panicked. She had to give a name. “Jane. Jane Featherstone.” She picked up the tray and was about to turn around when Allison Barnstable reached out a hand to her.

  “Do…do you have someone here?”

  The panic stayed with Myra. “In a manner of speaking.” She motioned in Charles’s direction. “I’m here with a friend,” was the best she could manage.

  “Then you are in good hands. This place is special. I don’t know why that is, but that’s what someone told me. I think my husband is the only patient here. Someone else told me that my husband was injured in a flight-training exercise. They brought him here, then they came and got me. I’ve been here three days. I wish my mum was here, but they told me she’s taking care of the children. Visitors are not allowed. I just get to see Geoff through the glass. I don’t even know if he knows I’m here. I never met the doctor, either. I told them who our family doctor is, but they didn’t call him. I wish I knew what this place was. Do you know?”

  Myra thought Allison’s voice sounded bitter and cold even though the words themselves sounded caring.

  Myra shook her head. Her heart was breaking for the young woman. Fearful she might say the wrong thing, Myra walked back to the kitchen. After tidying up the mess she’d made, she was about to leave when she turned to see Allison Barnstable in the doorway.

  “Since there is only one patient here in this special place and visitors are not allowed, you and that man in the waiting room must…Are you here about Geoff?” When Myra didn’t answer her, Allison pressed her. “You are, aren’t you? Why? Who are you? I know you said your name was Jane Featherstone, but what is his name? Oh, my God! That man is Geoff’s father, isn’t he?” Allison backed up, an ugly look on her face. “You can’t come here now. Not now when my husband…No, no, this isn’t right. You can’t discard a baby, then show up forty years later and…and…oh, God, no! You have to leave. Right now. How dare you! How dare he…You need to leave. I don’t want you here, and when and if Geoff wakes, he won’t want you here, either. He hates that man for abandoning him and his mother.”

  Myra clutched at her pearls as if they were a lifeline. What she really wanted to do was gather the tormented woman into her arms and hug her. “It wasn’t like that, Allison. You need to talk to…to…Sir Malcolm. There are two sides to everything. Surely you know that.”

  “SIR Malcolm!” Allison spat. “SIR Malcolm! Bloody hell if that doesn’t take the cream!” Allison turned on her heel and ran back to the waiting room, where she went to the love seat and buried her face in the blanket.

  As Myra walked from the kitchen to the waiting room, she could hear the young woman sobbing. From the doorway, she noticed that Charles was oblivious, still staring off into space.

  Myra grappled with her thoughts. What should she do? What could she say? Should she just sit down next to Charles and hold his hand? Or should she go back into the kitchen and call Annie and the other Sisters? The latter, she decided. She walked to where Charles sat and patted his arm. If he noticed, he gave no sign that Myra had even come back into the room.

  Before returning to the kitchen, Myra glanced at the angry-looking young woman. I’d be angry, too, she decided, if I were in her shoes.

  In the kitchen, under the bright lights, Myra calculated the time difference between England and the States. She wanted to cry when every single phone she dialed went to voice mail. There was only one number left to call, Maggie at the Post. If Maggie didn’t pick up, the switchboard would certainly answer.

  Being put on hold nine times forced Myra to rethink her immediate problem. Somebody, somewhere had to have a phone that was turned on. Nellie! Nellie always answered her phone. She hit the speed dial and was rewarded only with Nellie’s voice mail. They all must have been en route or had had to shut down their phones for one reason or another. There was no reason to panic, she told herself. She was on her own for now and would have to rely on her own common sense and offer the best advice she could for Charles, advice that he would probably ignore, anyway. At that moment, Myra knew, she barely existed for Charles. Hot tears burned her eyes.

  Myra walked back to where Charles was sitting. She leaned over and tugged at his arm. “Charles,” she whispered, “I need to talk to you. Come into the kitchen with me.”

  Charles looked up, his gaze vacant. “Is something wrong, Myra? Is the doctor here? Where is he? I need to talk to him.”

  “No, Charles, he isn’t here yet. I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as it turns light out. Doctors always make early-morning rounds. I need to talk to you. Please, come with me.”

  Charles got up, his gaze going to the young woman on the love seat. He knew he was staring at his son’s wife. His daughter-in-law. She couldn’t be anyone else.

  Chapter 9

  Maggie Spitzer’s fist shot in the air for the tenth time in as many minutes. She looked down at the slash-and-burn headline, and her fist shot forward again. Joe Espinosa laughed out loud. “We did it and scooped every other paper and media station! The switchboard is on overload.”

  “Who knew?” Espinosa quipped.

  “You want to join me for some dinner, Joe? It’s the least I can do for this great front page. Don’t worry, Ted won’t kill you if he knows we’re going out to eat together.”

  Joe pretended fear, then laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair. Finally, he was able to come up for air and managed to gasp, “What headline are you going with for the early issue?”

  Maggie chewed on her nails. It was the one fault she couldn’t conquer. Even when she’d had acrylic nails, she somehow managed to chew the horrible stuff down to the quick. “I’m working on it. I have a few hours yet, but I’m leaning toward HELL ON EARTH! You have enough material to point out the HELL side, don’t you?”

  “Damn, Maggie, the more I dig, the more I come up with. What we really need is a witness, a snitch, one of the followers who got away. I’m working that end and have calls out to everyone I know. I have a hot lead, and, believe it or not, our squealer lives in Landover, Maryland, just a hop, skip, and a jump from here.” Joe looked down at his wristwatch, which was big enough to pass for a hockey puck, and said, “I’m heading out there in a few minutes so, no, I can’t celebrate with you. If I can get her to agree, I’d like to bring her back here so you can have a go at her.”

  Maggie chewed on her lower lip. “Okay, I can order in. We don’t have much time, Joe, so text it in as you go, but yeah, bring her in. We can make her famous if that’s what she wants. Go!”

  Maggie looked around at her empty office, then down at the fiery headline. “Sometimes,” she murmured to herself, “I am just so smart I can’t stand myself!” She looked up to see her weary-looking secretary, who was holding out a stack of pink slips.

  “Everyone in town wants to talk to you, Maggie. You’re the woman of the hour!”

  “Hold them off, Sally. How do you like this headline for the morning edition?” Maggie held up a huge cardboard mock-up of a front page with the heavy black headline that read, HELL ON EARTH!

  “That’ll do it!” Sally said, laughter ringing in her voice. “In case you don’t know it, the newsroom is fully staffed. No one went home.”

  “You’re kidding! Okay, order in for everyone, and don’t go chintzy on the beer and wine. Make sure they all know they’re off the clock. We’ll make up the hours some way.”

  “You got it, Maggie. Congratulations!”

  “Thanks, Sally. Hey, is your mom okay with you staying on late?”

  Sally Duval, a minimum-wage employee, was one year out of college and desperate to go on the real payroll but knew she had an uphill road to get to that exalted position of reporter. She’d started in the mailroom, graduated to the position of switchboard operator, and from there to Maggie’s inner sanctum, where she watched over her boss with an eagle eye.

  “She told me to spend the night at the Hay Adams if it was too late to make the trip home. But I could also bunk on that blowup mattress we ke
ep available for the late-nighters. Don’t worry about me, Maggie. I’m here until you don’t need me anymore.”

  Since taking over the helm of the Post, Maggie, through trial and error, had managed to surround herself with the best, the most loyal staff in the business. There wasn’t anything her crew wouldn’t do for her, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for each and every one of them. Plus, thanks to Annie’s generosity as the hidden owner of the Post, her people were the highest paid in the nation and had the best benefits. To get a job at the Post was equivalent to being hired by the White House for top secret work, except that Maggie’s staff had a much more competent boss, who hired only the best of the best.

  Tears sprang to Maggie’s eyes when she held up the paper to look at the sweet faces of the fourteen young girls on the front page of the paper, thirteen of them pregnant. Pearl Barnes, the Good Samaritan, had managed to get exceptionally clear shots of all of them in their old-fashioned clothing, their pregnancy obvious to the dumbest of the dumb. Every parent worth his or her salt had to be outraged that something like that could be going on and that the authorities were looking the other way, according to the calls that were flooding the Post and the television stations. At the last minute, Maggie had their resident artist draw a sketch of the Good Samaritan that purposely didn’t even remotely look like Pearl Barnes—to be added to the front page.

  “Time to step up to the plate,” Maggie chortled as she buzzed Sally to ask her to call the local sheriff’s office in Sienna, Utah. “Yes, I know what time it is. It isn’t that late in Utah. Get a number and wake him up. We want a comment for the early edition. ‘No comment’ is as good as a comment. We want his ass on the line, and our first question is: Is he a member of that sect? The second question is: What is he going to do about those girls? And I don’t want to hear any crap that we’re trampling on their religious freedom, either.”

  “Got it! I’m on it, Maggie.”

  And Maggie knew she would be. Sally never gave up. One way or another, Sally would track down the sheriff and have him on the line as quickly as she could.

  Maggie went back to work for another hour until Sally buzzed her to say that the food had just been delivered to the newsroom. Maggie hightailed it down the hall and was the first to hold up her bottle of beer to a resounding cheer. The crew fell to the pizza, the burgers, the fried chicken, and everything that had come with them.

  Maggie was on her way back to her office when her special phone rang. It was Pearl Barnes.

  “Don’t say anything, just let me talk.”

  Maggie felt her shoulders tense up at the panic she was hearing.

  “I’m okay for the moment, but someone is on to me. That man Jess had to dump me for his own good and the safety of the other two he was traveling with. He said he was too important to the cause—that’s what he called it, Maggie, ‘the cause.’ I couldn’t argue with that. I hitched a ride with a trucker, gave them Kathryn’s name and handle, and they got me this far. Tell Kathryn some guy named Lucky Louie says hi. I’ve been followed, but I think I eluded whoever it was at the last truck stop. Lucky Louie met up with some fellow truckers and they…uh…took matters into their own hands. They found a trucker going my way, so I hitched a ride.

  “Those polygamy people are like snakes, Maggie. This is exactly where I am right now, so listen carefully. Just for the record, George and Irma Ellis are long gone. I doubled back because something wasn’t feeling right to me. I’m the only link to those girls, and once you ran your special edition, even with that doctored-up picture of me, I wasn’t safe. I saw the paper in the truck stop. That’s all anyone was talking about, all the way here from Washington, Maggie.

  “I’m actually thinking about pulling George’s motorcycle out of the barn and taking off, but let’s face it, I’m old, and I don’t have the spit and the nerve I once had. If it comes to that, I’ll take a shot at it, but it won’t go well.”

  Maggie wanted to ask a million questions, but she bit down on her tongue. For someone as savvy as Pearl, why hadn’t she stayed with the men Avery sent to take care of her regardless of what Jess had said? Maggie had long ago given up calling Pearl ‘Justice Barnes.’ When you were breaking the law, somehow a title, no matter how important or distinguished it was, didn’t seem to matter. More importantly, Pearl didn’t care.

  “Listen, Pearl, Lizzie Fox is due to land in Utah any minute. She’s with Ted Robinson, Jack, and Harry. I’ll call them now. Stay put. Exactly where are you—at the Ellis place?”

  “In the damn root cellar.” Pearl quickly explained about the spiked road and warned Maggie to tell the others. “It’s a little tricky if you don’t know exactly where the switch is. I’d do it, but then I open myself up for visitors. That man Jess gave me an education on what goes on around here, and it isn’t pretty. He said no one is who they seem to be, and that goes for the cops and the judges.”

  Maggie copied down the exact location of the switch, how to operate it, and how to turn it back on from the barn.

  “For whatever it’s worth at the moment, Maggie, I am Rosa Sanchez from Juarez, Mexico.”

  “Got it. Go back to the root cellar and keep your cell on. Can you keep it charged?”

  Pearl laughed, or made a sound that sounded to Maggie like a laugh. “Believe it or not, this root cellar has electricity, so I can do that. George thought of everything when he built this place. He’s a good man, I hope he’s safe.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say about the Ellis couple, so she simply said good-bye and cut off the call. She started to text message then, faster than a drug addict on speed, even while she chomped on a cold pizza crust.

  And that was when all hell broke loose as Espinosa’s texts started coming through. Maggie screamed for Sally, who then yelled to the crew in the newsroom. They worked like the well-oiled, well-paid team they were. Not only did they have a full interview with a young woman named Marion Jennings, they had a picture of her—actually, they had two pictures of her—one in her Heaven on Earth garb and one of her in regular clothing. Maggie thought Marion was beautiful, but she had the saddest eyes of anyone Maggie had ever seen. Espinosa had captured the young woman in a vulnerable moment.

  Marion Jennings was eighteen, with three children—the oldest was five years of age—all of whom she’d had to leave behind. Not because she wanted to leave any of them, Maggie discovered as she read Espinosa’s interview. The children were taken from her and passed on to the group mothers. The reason she had cut and run was because the Prophet issued a declaration that she was to marry her cousin and produce three more babies if she wanted to earn eternal salvation.

  Maggie was so furious at what she was reading, she wanted to reach out and strangle someone. How could something like that happen? Right there in the Southwest. The country’s heartland.

  An hour later, with no answers to any of her questions, Maggie wrapped up the front page and put the paper to bed.

  Maggie looked up, her eyes half-closed, when Sally rapped on the door.

  “I’m going if that’s okay. I couldn’t locate that damn sheriff. I’ll keep trying, and I’ll do my best to put the fear of God in him. I’ll be at the Hay-Adams if you need me. Just call my cell. Everyone else is gone. You should go home, Maggie, and take a long, hot bath and have a big glass of wine. You deserve it.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s time to wrap things up here. Sometimes I feel like I’m married to this place. I love it, though. Thanks, Sally. Take a cab to the hotel and bill the paper for it and the room. See you in the morning. Take your time coming in, and be sure to have a good breakfast. I have a feeling things are going to start happening even faster around here when the morning edition hits the street.”

  Maggie reached for her purse and jacket. That was when she realized how tired she was. She eyeballed the sofa in her office with deep longing. Should she go home, or should she stay here? She had a change of clothes, her own private bathroom where she could shower. It was a no-brainer. She t
ossed her jacket and bag onto a chair and made it to the couch, her eyes closing as she lowered herself and pulled up the blanket she kept for just such an occasion.

  Joe Espinosa, with Marion Jennings at his side, took one look at Maggie asleep on the sofa and backed out the door. “I’ll drop you off at the Post’s apartment” he told her, “and pick you up around nine. Things will get wild once the paper hits the street. Every news channel and reporter in the business will be after you. Everything you need will be at the apartment. Is that okay with you?”

  The pretty young woman with the sad eyes nodded.

  “Good, then let’s hit the street. It’s late, and you look tired. I am, too, it’s been a hell of a long day. God alone knows what tomorrow will bring.”

  Chapter 10

  Jack Emery looked left, then right, before he steered the SUV onto the gravel driveway that would take him to George Ellis’s barn, where Pearl Barnes was waiting. “This has to be it,” he said, but his voice sounded dubious. “This is in the middle of nowhere. The mailman must get paid overtime to deliver all the way out here, wherever here is.”

  Ted Robinson climbed out of the backseat the moment Jack steered the SUV through the dense shrubbery. “Where’s the switch? I don’t see anything that looks like a lever. Don’t move that truck unless you want your tires shredded.”

  Both Harry and Jack climbed out and gingerly walked around, looking for the switch. Pearl had said it was underground, by an ancient Joshua tree. Meanwhile, Ted examined the road to find the raised spikes.

  “Holy shit!” Ted said when he found them, then snapped a picture of the deadly spikes. “Wonder how that guy did all this. Maggie said that Pearl said there’s a grid every eighth of a mile for the first mile and a half. Must have been a labor of love.”

  “Found the switch!” Harry shouted triumphantly.

  Five seconds later, the mechanism that controlled the spikes had been switched off, and the spikes were back underground. The three men climbed back into the SUV and made their way down the winding road.