Shelter From the Storm

by Peter Sexton

  “He won’t sweep it,” Lee said. “It’s the last thing he would suspect right now.”

  The young soldier handed the briefcase to Lee. “The device has a fifty mile range, Major.”

  “Perfect.”

  “You really think he’ll lead you to the girl?”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  Fifty-Six

  Sarah Gustafson drove slowly past the old and weathered house in Little Rock, California, scanning the yard in front and the yards of those immediately adjacent to it. The street was dark, deserted and quiet. Although she had been here twice before, she recognized it now as the house from the TV news, the house where Edward August’s body had been found in his own car.

  Down the street, she flipped a U-turn to make another pass before finally making up her mind to turn in. Without signaling, Sarah pulled her Mustang into the driveway and drove through to the back.

  The backyard was home to a number of citrus trees, orange and lemon. Sarah parked between a pair of orange trees. Where the car now sat, it could not be seen from the street.

  She got out and looked around, the strong aroma of citrus in the air. At this late hour, the families that lived in either of the neighboring houses were either already asleep, or simply unaware of her arrival. Sarah kept looking from yard to yard, however, unease fueled by the utter silence. It was as though someone had depressed a mute button and all sound had ceased to exist. No crickets, no owls, nothing.

  Sarah reached through the window of the Mustang, grabbed her backpack and pulled out the Beretta. She released the safety and proceeded to the back door. The knob didn’t turn when she tried it, so she knocked and waited, scanning the area for potential trouble. Nothing. She walked around the house, checking each window until she lucked upon one with an inoperative lock. The presence of extensive rust suggested the lock had to have sat broken for months, possibly years. She slid the window open, dropped her backpack into the house, then climbed through the window as carefully and quietly as possible.

  “Hello,” she called out once she was inside. “Anyone home? Uncle Walter? It’s Sarah.”

  The first time Sarah had met Miranda’s uncle, he had insisted that she call him Uncle Walter, just as Miranda does. She had immediately been accepted by Edward’s older brother, and would forever be considered part of the family.

  She had hoped to find Miranda here, this being the only place she believed the girl might feel safe. She doubted that she would have wanted to risk her mother’s safety by going back to her home in Santa Barbara.

  Realizing Miranda’s absence, Sarah made her way to the front room of the modest, single-story house, parted the blinds, and peered out toward the street. The nearest streetlight was two houses down and cast only the faintest illumination in front of Walter’s home. The street was as lifeless now as it had been minutes earlier. She continued through the house, searching each room until she was certain she was alone.

  Sarah went out the back door to the car and brought in the clothes she had purchased in Nevada. Back inside, she set the bags down in the kitchen and proceeded to set up her new PowerBook on the breakfast table. It pleased her to find that the phone line was still live; she had feared Walter might have had it turned off while he was away on his vacation.

  Within minutes, Sarah was online and checking for Miranda, but to no avail.

  “Where are you?” she said to the screen.

  She hit enter again, and again she got the error message telling her Miranda wasn’t online. She fought back the urge to slam her fist down on the keyboard or throw something across the room.

  Sarah left the computer logged on while she carried her bags into the master bedroom. She nearly screamed when a floorboard creaked loudly as she moved through the hallway. In the dead silence of the house, the creak had sounded like a gunshot. She continued into the bedroom and dropped the bags onto the bed, then walked into the bathroom and tried the water. She smiled when it came on. Moments later she ran a bath and proceeded to undress, as the room quickly filled with steam.

  The hot water seemed like the best thing she had ever felt in her life. She hoped beyond reason that the bath would wash away not only the stench of smoke and gasoline that she could still smell on herself, but also the stress and anger she was feeling, as well. She hadn’t been able to relax since the phone call with the metallic beeps and hisses. Sarah closed her eyes and submerged her head, leaving just her nose out of the water. She held herself like that for several moments. After finally lifting her head from the water, Sarah ran her hands through her wet hair, squeezed some coconut-scented shampoo onto her head and worked it in. After she rinsed out the shampoo and worked in some conditioner, she closed her eyes and lost herself for longer than she thought possible.

  She was in the bath so long that the water had begun to cool. She made a final rinse before stepping from the tub. As she was drying her hair, feeling maybe the slightest bit more at ease, she thought she heard a noise coming from outside. Hoping that it was Miranda, Sarah walked into the living room and carefully peered out the window. But she saw nothing.

  “Come on, Randi. Where the hell are you?” she said to the empty house.

  Back in the bedroom, Sarah finished drying her hair and started to get dressed. She had just pulled on her underwear and was pushing her foot through the right pant-leg of her new jeans, when she heard the floorboard in the hallway creak.

  Fifty-Seven

  Trammel drove for several minutes, playing his meet- ing with Lee over and over in his head. For a moment he had been convinced that she knew he had talked with Miranda. It surprised him how close he had come to drawing his gun and shooting it out with her. He might have done it, but he was curious to find out what the hell was really going on. And, truth be told, the thought of shooting it out with that woman scared the hell out of him.

  He saw a Denny’s along the freeway and pulled off the road so he could use the restroom and make a few phone calls. There were questions that needed to be answered.

  He sat in a back booth facing the door and ordered a cup of coffee. He pulled out his cell phone and confirmed it had an adequate charge.

  The first call was placed to the home of Gillian Blackwell. The look on Lee’s face when he told her he had just come from there concerned him. The call went straight to a recorded message telling him the number had been disconnected or was no longer in use. He called Puckett and got a message saying that the user was not available.

  He reached Anderson’s voicemail as the waitress arrived to refill his coffee. He pulled the phone from his ear for a moment and mouthed a thank you to the young woman.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  He shook his head and waved her off.

  Into the phone, he said, “It’s Trammel.” He hesi- tated as he tried to determine what he could say that would persuade Anderson to get back to him right away. “I can’t talk now. But I think we’ve got a serious problem.”

  He closed the phone and waited for several minutes. When Anderson still hadn’t called back, he punched in a number he had for Miranda’s uncle in Little Rock, California. He couldn’t think of any- where else the girl might go.

  Almost instantly Trammel’s ears were filled with a busy signal, and he smiled to himself. “Oh, thank God.”

  He took a last drink of his coffee, then pulled a five dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it on the table. He left the restaurant at a brisk trot.

  Little Rock was less than two hours away.

  Fifty-Eight

  At the explosive sound of the creaking floorboard outside the bedroom, Sarah Gustafson let go of the jeans she was slipping into and lunged for the gun she had left next to her backpack on the bed. When she turned back to face the door, there was a man stepping into the room with her.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, the Beretta .380 pointed at his head.

  His hands immediately shot into the air.

  “Don’t shoot,”
he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “No kidding,” she said, “You happen to notice which one of us is holding the gun?”

  “I mean I didn’t come here intending to hurt anyone. I’m here to help.”

  “Yeah, right,” Sarah snapped.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” the man said. “I came here to warn Miranda. Help her if I can.”

  His hands were still in the air, and he seemed to be staring at the gun, rather than Sarah’s near-nakedness.

  “Who are you?” she repeated.

  “My name is Steven Trammel. I’m, uh...” he hesitated for a moment. “I’m Maren’s father.”

  Sarah let out a sharp, brief laugh. “Uh huh.”

  “It’s the truth,” Trammel said. “You have to believe me.” He sounded desperate, pleading. “We don’t have time for this. Miranda’s in real danger.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Listen. I’m going to put my hands down and—”

  “Keep them where they are.”

  “So now what? You going to shoot me, or are we going to figure out how to move forward from here?”

  Sarah thought about it through a beat of silence. “Tell you what. I want you to slowly go down to your knees. Slowly. Don’t make me have to shoot you.”

  Trammel, complying, went first to his left knee, then to his right.

  “Now down to your stomach.”

  “Listen...”

  “Just do it!” Sarah yelled.

  She watched as the man first dropped forward onto the palms of his hands, then eased himself the rest of the way to the floor. “Now slide your arms out as far as they’ll go.”

  He did as he was told. “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Just don’t move,” Sarah instructed. She waited, making sure the man wasn’t going to try anything. Then she walked over and knelt down beside him, pressed the muzzle of the gun to the back of his head. She was shaking. It took effort to hold the weapon still.

  “Please don’t make me have to kill you,” she told him.

  Trammel said nothing more.

  Sarah had only begun searching him when she found his weapon: it was a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum. She slid it behind her on the worn wooden floor and continued the search. There was a pair of handcuffs and FBI credentials, showing him to be Special Agent Steven Trumbell.

  “Oh shit,” Sarah said.

  “What?”

  “You’re a fucking fed? You sort of failed to mention that before.”

  “Because I’m not,” Trammel said. “That ID’s a fake.”

  Sarah studied the identification closely.

  “This doesn’t look fake to me.” She hesitated. “Listen, after all I’ve been through the last few hours, you really don’t want to fuck with me.”

  “I didn’t mean the ID and badge were fake, those are the genuine article. I meant I’m not with the FBI. Those were supplied to me by the people I work for.”

  Sarah flashed back to the results of her Internet search, the fact that the email address she had been tracking down was linked to the Department of Defense. She had a pretty good idea about whom this man might be working for. But she still needed to narrow it down even more, maybe come up with some actual names.

  “And who exactly is that?” Sarah asked.

  Trammel appeared to consider the question. “Actually, I’m not sure I know anymore.”

  “Oh, that’s convenient.”

  Sarah tossed the ID onto the bed, picked up the cuffs, and looked around the room.

  Trammel said, “Miranda knows I’m not with the FBI.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Sarah wasn’t listening to him. She scanned the room, looking back and forth for several moments. Then she spied the thick pipes jutting out of the wall under the antique sink in the bathroom.

  “Crawl in there,” she told Trammel. She used the gun to point toward the bathroom.

  “What?”

  “Just do it.”

  Trammel reluctantly obeyed the instruction. He stopped inside the bathroom and said, “Now what?”

  Sarah tossed the handcuffs onto the floor in front of him. “Slide your arm through the pipes and put those on.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  Trammel started to answer but stopped. No doubt he had been about to comment on Sarah’s lack of clothing, standing there braless wearing only her underwear.

  “Put ‘em on,” Sarah said again.

  “I don’t think so,” Trammel replied.

  And Sarah fired a single shot that just missed Trammel’s head and tore into the tiled floor in front of his face.

  “Christ! What’s the matter with you?”

  “The next shot’s going into your head.”

  “All right, all right,” Trammel said, as he finally complied with her order.

  He put his arm through the exposed pipe and fastened the handcuffs. Sarah moved closer now and tugged on them to make sure they were secure. Then she turned and walked back into the bedroom to finish getting dressed.

  Fifty-Nine

  Maren held eye contact with Miranda, unblinking, a smile enveloping her little face. Miranda was aware of the muscles holding the smile on her own face. She pulled the pink jumper carefully over Maren’s head, slipped her little arms through the sleeves. She touched her daughter’s left cheek with her fingertips, ran the fingers down the side of her face, neck, and arm all the way to her fingertips. Miranda took each of Maren’s fingers into her hand, one at a time, touched the tips to her lips, then kissed Maren’s entire little fist.

  “You know how happy I am right now?” she said. “I love you so much.”

  Miranda snapped the button of the clean jumper secure, picked Maren up, and lifted her over her head. Maren giggled and reached her tiny hands down toward her mother.

  Then the child’s face turned to a frown, and she yelled, “Miranda, watch it!”

  Miranda’s eyes shot open to the sound of a blaring car horn, just in time for her to jerk the steering wheel to the right and narrowly avoid colliding head-on with the oncoming SUV. Miraculously, they never left the road. And in the rearview mirror Miranda saw that the larger vehicle had slowed and swerved only slightly before continuing on its way.

  “Jesus Christ!” she said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I fell asleep at the wheel.”

  “Just pull to the side of the road. I’ll drive the rest of the way.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda said. “I’ve never done that before.”

  “Let’s just stop the car and make the switch.”

  “I could have killed us.”

  “You’re exhausted,” Lawrence told her. “I never shouldn have let you drive in the first place.”

  Miranda nodded absently. She remembered the dream she had been having, and tears filled her eyes. She said, “I was dreaming about Maren.” But that was all she was able to say before the tears turned to sobs. Lawrence reached over and gently squeezed her shoulder, and Miranda wiped hot tears from her eyes.

  They sat in the idling car for several minutes. Silent. Thankful. Then Lawrence said, “You can try and sleep while I drive.”

  “What we need is to get to my uncle’s house so I can go through this stuff I got from my mother, see exactly what we have there.” A pause stretched out before she continued. “And I still need to get in touch with Sarah.”

  Miranda caught Lawrence’s frown.

  “I agree,” he said quickly, “but first things first: You need some sleep.”

  “I can sleep when we get to Little Rock.”

  “That’s where they found your father’s body, right?”

  “It should be clear by now; it should be safe.”

  “You don’t think anyone could be watching the place? Waiting to see if you come back?”

  Miranda thought about the question for a long moment. Would they have someone there watching for her? she wondered.
It was certainly possible, though she doubted it. “We’ll be careful,” she said.

  Sixty

  “I could be helping you,” Steven Trammel said, “instead of sitting here like this.” He shook his hands, rattling the handcuffs to illustrate his point.

  Sarah stood at the open doorway, staring at the man shackled to the piping.

  “I’d make myself comfortable if I were you,” Sarah told him. “You might be there a while.”

  “Wait,” he said, when she started to walk away.

  At the door, Sarah turned back. “What?”

  “How can I convince you that I’m really here to help?”

  Sarah simply shook her head.

  “You’ve got to trust me,” Trammel told her. “We’re running out of time. Every minute you keep me cuffed like this is a minute lost.” Then after a moment, he added, “You don’t know where she is, do you?”

  “You wanna prove you’re trying to help, then tell me who blew up my house and tried to kill me.”

  “Who did what? What are you talking about?”

  Sarah couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. “Last night. Some kind of hit squad. Well organized and heavily armed. Within minutes my house was gone. Gone!” Sarah paused, sensing oncoming tears. She fought them back as best she could. “Tell me who’s responsible and I might start to believe you.”

  “I don’t know. I swear to you.” He shifted his weight and moved his arms a little. “But here’s some- thing I can tell you: Whoever it was, they’re calling the shots now. I think Anderson might be completely out of the loop.”

  “Who’s Anderson?”

  “The man I work for at Earth’s Own Flavors, the man I thought was behind all this.”

  Trammel tried to sit up but his shackles pre- vented the move.

  “Before they locked me out of my computer,” Sarah said, “I tracked one of the emails back to the Department of Defense. Whoever originally sent it did a really good job of covering his tracks, redirect- ing it, bouncing it from server to server all over the country.”