by J. A. Jance
“Maybe they’re looking for a place to turn off,” Robson said. “What’s out there?”
“Not much,” Ali returned. “A couple of Forest Service roads. That’s about it.”
“Can I see that thing?” the pilot asked.
Bypassing Agent Robson’s outstretched hand, Ali handed her open computer directly to the pilot. For a minute or so, he punched commands into the keyboard. Then, satisfied with that, he punched another series of numbers into his onboard computer.
“I put in this set of coordinates,” he said, handing the computer back to Ali. “That’ll give us somewhere to start. If you get another one, let me know.”
Nodding, Ali kept quiet while the pilot relayed the information from his computer to people on the ground. That was what they needed, she realized. People on the ground and people in the air.
“How long to get there?” Robson asked.
“Forty-five total,” he said. “ETA is twenty minutes from now.”
“You can’t do it any faster than that?”
“If you want to disregard the laws of physics, that’s up to you,” the pilot told Robson, “but you and I will get along a hell of a lot better if you get used to the idea that it’s going to take as long as it takes.”
My sentiments exactly, Ali thought.
She was coming back. She had thought it was over, but evidently it wasn’t, not quite. She was still here. Sort of. And Hal was here, too, standing next to her bed.
She needed to tell him what she remembered. If only she could speak. If only she could get rid of this damned machine that blocked her throat. Then she’d be able to tell him. Hal would know what to do. He always knew what to do.
“Win and Serenity are still outside,” he said. “I can let them back in if you’d like them here. If you want to see them. I think they’d like to see you.”
No, she thought. I saw the look of shock on Win’s face when he saw what I look like now. And I heard Serenity. They may think they want to see me, but they don’t. I don’t want them to remember me this way. I want them to remember me the way I used to be. The way I was, not the way I am now.
Two blinks, then. Two blinks for no.
“I know there’s some bad blood between you and Serenity,” Hal said, “and between Serenity and me, too,” he added, “but don’t push them away. They’re both here. They’ve both been here all day. Let’s be kind. Let’s let them in again. Please.”
It was surprising to Mimi that Hal really didn’t understand. Not at all. She was trying to be kind to her children just then. She didn’t want them to have to suffer by seeing her this way. That was too hard on them, especially on Serenity, the one who thought she was so damned tough.
So Mimi blinked twice. Twice for no.
Hal sighed. “All right, Mimi girl,” he said. “We’ll do it your way. Is it time to push the button?”
Almost, but not quite. I could stay a little longer. I could stand it a little longer, if you’d just lean down and kiss me.
But he didn’t do that. Instead he punched the button, and she went sliding away. And she realized as she drifted away that she still hadn’t told him what she needed to say.
Because he hadn’t asked. Maybe he never would.
Another e-mail showed up in Ali’s in-box. Another e-mail from Sister Anselm. “They’re moving at three miles per hour,” she said, “and they’ve turned east.”
“Where?” Robson asked.
“Looks like Forest Road one forty-three,” Ali answered.
The pilot nodded in agreement.
“Look,” Robson said. “I’m not from here. Where does it go?”
“Nowhere,” the pilot answered. “Off into the Four Peaks Wilderness Area. There’s nothing out there but nothing.”
Ali stared at the pin on the computer with a feeling of dread. Whoever had Sister Anselm was taking her to a place where there would be no witnesses and no turning back. Even if Sister Anselm survived a ride imprisoned in an overheated trunk, she might not survive what came next. Ali’s computer offered their only hope of finding her.
On TV and in the movies, pursuits were always fast and exciting. This one seemed slow as mud. Ali looked at her watch for the third time in as many minutes and wondered if it was still running. The pilot had said they were twenty minutes or so out, but if the car they were after had already turned off the highway, whatever was going to happen was going to happen soon. Sooner than they could get there. Sooner than any of the ground units could get there.
Closing her eyes, Ali murmured a small prayer. “Please keep Sister Anselm safe. Please.”
Over the microphone she heard Robson talking to someone else. “Excellent,” he said. “According to what I’m hearing, that road has only one way in and one way out. Have them block it and lay down spike strips. Whatever happens, the guy isn’t going to get away.”
“What’s going on?” Ali asked.
“Units from the Gila County Sheriff’s Department are still on the way, but it turns out the Arizona Department of Public Safety had a vehicle in the area. That DPS unit is already at the intersection where the forest road comes back out to the highway. The officer has blocked the road with his vehicle and is laying down tire strips on either side of where he’s parked. If the bad guy tries to make a run for it and go around him, it won’t work.”
Ali nodded. Setting a trap to catch the guy at the intersection sounded good as far as it went, but it wasn’t nearly good enough. If the guy’s vehicle was stopped on the way back out to the highway, that would most likely mean whatever was going to happen to Sister Anselm would have already happened.
Too little, too late, Ali thought.
The e-mail alert sounded on Ali’s computer. Another new e-mail from Sister Anselm’s address had appeared in her mailbox. When she opened it, Ali’s heart fell. The speedometer read zero miles per hour.
“They’ve stopped,” she said. “The pin puts their latest position a couple of miles or so beyond the intersection.”
“Crap!” Robson muttered. He turned to the pilot. “You keep flying,” he said. “Can you tell me how to key in this last set of coordinates? If he dumps her there, that’s the only way we’re going to find her.”
Ali didn’t need to ask what would precede the dumping. Agent Robson knew, and so did she.
Robson held out his hand, and Ali passed the ATF agent her computer without a word of objection.
For the time being at least, Ali Reynolds and Gary Robson were both on the same side.
CHAPTER 16
The helicopter sped swiftly over a harsh desert landscape—spines of rocky ridges spiked with saguaro and dotted with low-lying grayish-green shrubs. Ali stared out of the aircraft’s glass windshield at the seemingly empty desert, hoping for a glimpse of blacktop or even a sliver of dirt road—something with a moving vehicle on it that would let her know they were getting closer. Something that would give her hope that they weren’t already too late.
A radio transmission laced with static came through the earphones. Ali didn’t hear what was coming through the radio, but she did understand the string of obscenity-laced invective that spewed out of Gary Robson’s mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Ali asked.
“That was the DPS. A car moving westward started down the road toward the state patrolman who had his car parked along with the spike strips. When the driver saw that the road was blocked, he pulled a U-turn and raced back in the other direction.”
“As you already mentioned, there’s only one way in and one way out,” Ali said. “At least that’s how it looks on the map.”
“Let’s hope so. A Gila County deputy is due on the scene in another five minutes. He’ll probably get there at about the same time we do, or maybe a little before. The deputy is driving an SUV that’ll be better suited to that kind of road than an ordinary DPS patrol car. The deputy will go after the guy, and so will we.”
“Did he see what kind of vehicle?”
“It was too far away. An Ame
rican sedan of some kind. That’s good for us. If the road’s as bad as I think it is, that should slow him down. With any kind of luck, we’ll be able to lead that deputy right to him.”
Ali thought of how many high-speed pursuits she had reported on during her days as a newscaster in L.A., always with the voice of the eye-in-the-sky helicopter providing the narrative. They had often lasted for hours—endless hours of stultifying boredom, punctuated by appalling crashes and spectacular spinouts, with a dozen police cars converging on the resulting wreckage. But this lonely stretch of desert wasn’t a place where dozens of police cars could be summoned as backup.
Whatever happens will be up to us and that one deputy, she thought.
“If it comes down to him or us,” Ali told Robson, “I’m carrying a Glock and I know how to use it.”
Robson gave her an appraising look. “Don’t go all Annie Oakley on me. I thought you were strictly media relations.”
And I thought you were strictly a jerk, she thought, but that wasn’t what she said.
“I’m wearing a vest. I’m a decent shot, and beggars can’t be choosers. I have a feeling you’re going to need all the help you can get.”
“Shooting someone’s no joking matter,” he said. “Target shooting is one thing. Shooting another human being is the very last resort.”
“I know firsthand about that,” she said.
Maybe there was something in her answer that told him she had done that, just as he had, too. When he finally figured that out on his own, he grimaced and gave her a grudging nod.
“All right,” he said, “but not unless I say so, as in giving you a direct order, and not if we don’t need the help.”
Ali nodded back.
“I understand,” she said. “Believe me,” she told him, “Sheriff Maxwell will be furious if I end up being a part of a shooting incident outside the boundaries of Yavapai County. He specifically asked me to avoid that.”
Fortunately Robson didn’t ask where she carried her Glock. The discreet small-of-the-back holster she wore under her tracksuit was none of the ATF agent’s business.
After that, Robson fell silent for several minutes while
he stared at the ground. “There,” he said pointing. “I see the road.”
Ali looked where he was pointing, and she could see it, too—a silver ribbon of highway winding through an otherwise brown and green landscape. Soon she could see the other road, too, a dirt track leading off into the wilderness from the paved highway.
“The deputy just got there,” Robson announced. “They’re moving the spike strips so the deputy can get around.” He turned to the pilot. “Can you take us up higher so we can see more? As slowly as he was driving when he first turned off on that, he can’t have gone far. We should be able to spot him.”
Obligingly, the pilot took the helicopter up.
“There,” Ali said. “That plume of dust has to be him.”
Nodding, Robson went back to speaking to the people on the ground. “It’s looks as though he’s a mile or two away, driving hell-bent for leather.”
Moments later, Ali could see a green older-model car tearing up the road and spewing up a trailing cloud of dust.
“It’s an old Ford Gran Torino,” Robson said into the radio. “A muscle car, but that’s not going to help him on this road. It looks rough. Something’s going to break on that old crate and he’ll be stuck.”
Suddenly, as though Robson’s words carried the power of psychokinesis, the fleeing vehicle stopped abruptly, slewing off to one side as though something really had broken.
“Tie rod, I’ll bet,” Agent Robson diagnosed. “That guy’s not going anywhere.”
But as they watched, a tiny man scrambled out of the vehicle and trotted back to the left rear wheel, where he squatted down to assess the damage. Then, hearing the clatter of approaching helicopter blades, he shaded his eyes with one hand and stared up at them. With barely a pause, he leaped to his feet, flung open the back door, and grabbed something from inside the vehicle. Only when he aimed the weapon at them did the people in the helicopter realize what he was doing.
“Holy shit!” Robson exclaimed. “That crazy bastard’s got a rifle. He’s shooting at us. Take us up! Take us up!”
The highly motivated pilot required no urging. They were rising straight up with stomach-churning speed before the words were out of Robson’s mouth.
Ali didn’t have to hear the sound of the shots to know they had been fired upon or to know the degree of menace involved. The man on the ground was desperate. He had no intention of being taken alive. He was armed and dangerous and prepared to fight to the death.
“Shots fired; shots fired,” Robson reported over the radio. “Looks like a rifle of some kind,” he said to the pilot. “We need to stay out of range.”
“Tell me about it,” the pilot said furiously. “What do you think I am, some kind of idiot?”
Ali was thinking about her Glock. If the guy was armed with a rifle, that meant her Glock wouldn’t be much help, and neither would whatever concealed weapon Agent Robson was carrying. No doubt he was armed with a handgun, maybe even two, but up against a rifle they would be seriously outgunned.
“DPS cars have shotguns in them. They may have rifles as well. Maybe we could borrow—”
“Borrow nothing,” Robson declared. “We’ll bring him and whatever firepower he has along with us.” He turned back to the pilot. “Fly us back to the junction,” he ordered. “See if you can find a spot in this godforsaken place to set this thing down.”
The pilot swung the helicopter in a tight circle, returning the way they had come. Below them they could see another towering plume of dust rising skyward as a Gila County deputy roared toward the shooter’s position. Since the bad guy was no longer moving, the distance between the two vehicles was closing fast. Robson, for his part, was trying to send out a warning that the deputy needed to exercise caution in approaching the scene, but due to varying frequencies between agencies, no one seemed to be in direct communication.
When Robson finished with the radio transmissions, Ali touched the pilot’s shoulder. “What about the coordinates you put in from the e-mail?” she asked. “Can you show me where that was? While you guys go after the shooter, maybe I can find Sister Anselm.”
Knowing they were out of range, the pilot nodded and sent the helicopter into a steep dive. “There,” he said a minute or so later. “Isn’t that her, there on the left, down in that gully?”
Ali peered outside, straining to pick out details on the ground. Finally she saw a tiny spot of something that was bright green—not the grayish green of the surrounding desert shrubs and prickly pear. If the figure dressed in brilliant green was Sister Anselm, she was lying in the middle of a deep gully, stretched out on a bed of reddish-brown sand.
“See that big rock back up by the road?” the pilot said. “If you use that boulder as a marker and go straight north from there, you should be able to find her.”
“Good thinking,” Robson said. “You go to her and see what you can do to help her. In the meantime, that DPS officer and I will fly back in to give the deputy some backup.”
Ali knew he was right. From the looks of it, and especially if Sister Anselm had been shot, they were already too late to save the nun’s life, but the deputy was driving solo into an ambush.
Back at the highway, the pilot determined that the only place he could set the aircraft down was on the blacktop itself. Once they landed, Robson leaped out of the helicopter. The man didn’t look like much of a sprinter, but he was. He galloped across the distance between the helicopter and the parked patrol car with surprising speed. Ali hesitated for only a moment before she, too, leaped from the helicopter. By the time Ali caught up with Robson, he and the highway patrol officer, Milton Frank, were already retrieving weapons from the DPS vehicle.
As Frank and Robson started toward the helicopter, Ali stopped them. “While you two handle the shooter, please give me you
r car keys, Officer Frank. We spotted the woman that man kidnapped a mile or so from here. She’s lying in a gully just off the road. She may already be dead, but it’s possible she’s injured. I need to help her.”
Frank turned to Robson. “Is she a cop?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gary Robson said. “She is.”
“Oh,” said the officer, tossing her the keys. “Why didn’t you say so? It’s against regulations, but under the circumstances, I think they’ll give me a pass. Do you know how to use a police radio?”
“I can figure it out.”
“There’s some first-aid equipment in the trunk if you need it.”
“Water?” Ali asked.
“That, too. Be careful you don’t run over the spike strips as you leave.”
With that, he and Robson set off at a run for the helicopter. Once the aircraft was airborne again, Ali looked up and down the deserted roadway, hoping to see some sign of arriving backup, but there was none. Grabbing first one set of spike strips and then the other, she dragged them off to the side of the road and left them there. Then, as she scrambled into the patrol car, she heard the familiar text message alert coming from her cell phone.
Inserting the key in the ignition, she was tempted to ignore the message, but she didn’t. When she looked at the readout, she was astonished to see the text message was from Sister Anselm. It contained one word only: “Help.”
“Coming.” Ali sent her one-word text message reply, then she started the patrol car’s powerful engine and swung it around in a circle and then on to the rutted dirt road.
The surface of the Forest Service road had never been intended for use by ordinary passenger vehicles. The patrol car, which was fine on the highway, had a hard time managing on the primitive surface. Periodically the vehicle would scrape bottom on the low spots, and the wheel base was the wrong size to negotiate the ruts left behind by the heavier vehicles and equipment that usually traveled this way.
Over the police radio, Ali heard the sound of voices speaking urgently back and forth, but she was too preoccupied with concentrating on her driving to listen to what was being said or to guess how much of it applied to the current situation. The only thing she did manage to make out clearly was the single announcement that backup units were en route. Ali’s desperate hope was that those backup units were headed her way.