Double Danger

by Trilby Plants

  Chapter 12

  Alyssa was silent for several moments. If she allied herself with this man, her situation might be precarious. In her idealistic world, there were always solutions – maybe not for her own personal problems, but certainly for circumstances such as this.

  She glared at him, determination building inside her. “Maybe you’re ready to give up, but what about me? It hardly seems fair for you to drag me into this and then abandon me to these, these vultures.” She spat the word.

  “I’m not abandoning you –”

  “Well, if you quit fighting them, you certainly are, Mr. Nick Trammel, or whatever the hell your name is.” He winced, and she felt a momentary satisfaction that her barb had struck a sore spot. “You must have gotten yourself out of trouble before. There has to be a way around this. When I can’t get through to a student, I look for another approach.”

  “Teaching little kids to count to ten is not at all similar to the mess we’re in.” Nick’s words were heavy with sarcasm.

  Alyssa’s anger flared. “I don’t just teach them to count. I teach them to make sense of their world. I teach them to make connections between what they know and what they’re learning, and I try to help them grow in wisdom and in spirit and to rely on their own strength. I use all the things I know about kids and teaching and learning. And when I can’t reach a child, I’m not too proud to ask for help.” She tossed her head. “So you may be willing to give up on your life, but I have a lot more of mine to live. If you won’t look for a way out of this mess, I’ll just have to find one on my own.”

  She set her jaw and gave him what she hoped was a determined glare. She was taking a gamble, goading him, trying to make him angry. Anger might be the only way to drag him from his lethargy.

  “Dammit,” he said. “You’re a stubborn woman. If I let you take them on yourself, it would be with sticks and stones and your bare teeth.” He turned away from her and watched the rain.

  His jaw muscles flexed as if he chewed on something.

  “The Marshals?” she said. There must be someone they could ask for help.

  He shook his head. “They may be involved. How else was I outed?”

  She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he said, “All right, there may be someone ….” He turned to her. “I’m not sure …. At least, it’s worth a try.”

  Alyssa allowed herself a secret smile of satisfaction as he reached behind his seat for the messenger bag. Velcro ripped, and he held up a cell phone. He must have disposed of the other one somewhere, maybe one of the stores where they had stopped. If she had known, she might have been able to retrieve it and call for help. The thought of leaving him alone now retreated further into her mind.

  “Can’t they trace those?” she said.

  “They can locate you after the fact, if they have a reason to look and they have the number. I have a couple more of these, good for a few hours each, and the batteries are all charged. Except for the actual location of the call, there’s no way to trace me. All bought with fake IDs.”

  He turned the phone on and waited a few seconds while it cycled through its opening screen. He held it up to the window. “Not much of a signal. I hope it works.” He tapped numbers, the Send button, and waited, his fingers drumming lightly on the steering wheel.

  “Hi, can I talk to Jim in shipping?” His voice had assumed the clipped tones of a native of northern Michigan. “He’s where? In with Roger, eh? Well, okay.” It sounded like okee. Very Yooper. Pause. “No, no. It’s personal. I’ll call him back later, eh? Half an hour? You betcha.” He punched the End button.

  “Nick, what –”

  He gestured her to silence. “Now I know Jim still works there. Next call.” He dialed again. “Hah there.” He spoke with a thick southern accent in a voice with a lower register. A totally different voice. His accent was convincing.

  The spy at work. Fascinated, Alyssa watched him.

  “This is Jim Roberts down in shippin,” he drawled. “We have a little problem.”

  That was an understatement.

  Nick held the phone away from his face and pressed it against his other arm.

  “Guy’s from Alabama. Still has the accent.”

  Nick spoke into the phone, “There’s a discrepancy in an order from a while ago, and the company rep is mad. It’s in an order from three years ago that hasn’t been dealt with, and he’s threatening to cancel next year’s entire order. It looks like there might be jobs on the line there. Who’s this?” He paused. “Ms. Millie. You shore can help, ma’am. Jim Nordquist told me to try you personally. He said you helped him out of a jam once in inventory. He said you were a pure angel. Yes, ma’am. He said that. Anyway, we think this order business might be something Mr. Travis was working on just before he, well, you know.” He grimaced and glanced at Alyssa. “Yes, ma’am, terrible tragedy. You could be a pure angel again if you could find Mr. Travis’ original notes. You know how he always saved everything on flash drives. Could you dig those up and send ’em down here pronto? Maybe one of ’em has what we need. If not, well, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. This guy’s hopping mad –”

  He stopped and listened for a few seconds. Then he continued. “No, ma’am. No trouble. I’ll check with billing and get back to you. We’ll have this thang straightened out in a day or two. Y’all can be sure I’ll note your name in my report. Until then, Ms. Millie, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about it. You know how it is. The less said the better. Yep. Yep. Thank y’all again. Bye.”

  He hung up. “They’re not there.”

  Alyssa’s stomach lurched. “Where are they?”

  “All the things from my office went to the Sheriff’s department. Evidence. And my friend Will isn’t just a deputy anymore. He’s the County Sheriff.”

  Nick reached down and pulled up a neatly folded grocery bag. Another contradiction, Alyssa thought. A spy who folded and saved paper bags.

  “Pen?” he said.

  She dug one from the glove box and handed it to him.

  He unfolded the bag. She frowned.

  “Method to my madness,” he said. “You make the next call. I’ll write what you should say.”

  He tapped numbers on the phone and handed it to her. “It’s on speaker phone.”

  “What’ll I say?” Alyssa fumbled the phone and almost dropped it. Her hand trembled.

  Sheriff Stevens, Nick scribbled.

  “County Sheriff,” a slightly nasal female voice cut in.

  Alyssa drew a shaky breath. “May I speak to Sheriff Stevens?”

  “The Sheriff’s in a meeting just now. Is there something someone else can do for you?”

  “No,” she said without waiting for a cue from Nick. He was writing. “This is really urgent. I need to talk to him.”

  “One moment.”

  There was a double click, and a hearty masculine voice spoke. “Will Stevens. What can I do for you?”

  Nick held up the bag. He’d written: Ask if he remembers a book we read in high school: Alas, Babylon.

  She relayed the question. There was a protracted silence on the other end, then, “Who is this?”

  Nick tapped the book title and wrote: alas, Escanaba.

  “Someone wants me to tell you, alas, Escanaba,” she said.

  The silence was so profound Alyssa thought she had lost the connection. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m thinking.”

  Nick scribbled: Turn off recording.

  Alyssa nodded. “My friend says please turn off the recording.”

  “I already did,” Will said. “What the hell’s going on? Who is this?”

  “Uh.” Alyssa hesitated.

  “Hello?” Will prompted.

  “Alas Escanaba,” Nick mouthed.

  Spy talk, secret codes – Alyssa took a deep breath and repeated, “Alas, Escana –”

  “I got it the first time. How do you know that?”

  “A friend told
me.”

  “Damn,” Stevens’ voice was a hoarse whisper. “It can’t be.”

  Alyssa didn’t know what to say.

  Nick held up the bag. He’d written “My stuff. Flash drives.”

  “A while ago,” Alyssa said, “your department gathered evidence from an office. Flash drives. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.” Will said, his voice husky.

  “Can you get them?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need them,” she said. “We’d like to pick them up.”

  A beat of silence. “Okay,” he said slowly. “They’re not in evidence. I kept them.”

  Nick raised his eyebrows and wrote: Still live in same house?

  Alyssa relayed the question.

  “Yes,” Will said.

  Nick scribbled. Alyssa read as the words appeared. “Your place tonight, after ten. No cops, just you, or we won’t show. Good-bye.” She started to tap End.

  “Wait.” Will’s voice rose. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure I know,” Alyssa said. “Please just do this for him.”

  “Is your friend all right?” Stevens said.

  “So far,” Alyssa said and ended the call. She handed the phone to Nick.

  His jaw was set, but behind the uncertainty in his eyes, there was another look, one Alyssa recognized. It was the look she had seen reflected in her own eyes when she woke from dreams of Uncle Henry and looked in the mirror: a haunted, empty despair. The look passed, leaving her wondering if it had really existed, or if she were just seeing her own fears in his eyes.

  “We have to keep moving.” Nick put the phone in his jeans pocket. “Someone may remember us from our travels yesterday. And, since our pictures are in the paper, we’d better look for disguises.” He rubbed his chin. “The beard goes. And you’d look different with short hair and maybe sunglasses.”

  Alyssa grimaced. She hadn’t had short hair since fifth grade.

  She crossed her arms across her chest. “I’m not cutting my hair. I can pull it back with a clip or something.”

  He grinned. “You look younger with a pony tail.” He appraised her for a moment. “That’ll do. Maybe a hat.”

  She could wear a hat. “Nick, what was that about alas, Escanaba?”

  “You ever read the book? Alas, Babylon?” She shook her head. “Will and I read it in high school. Written in the fifties, during the height of the Cold War. People were scared of nuclear war. The book was about a guy who was involved in some super-secret high level of government. He set up a code with his brother that if he ever said that phrase, something terrible was about to happen, and they should meet at some prearranged spot. He sent him the words in a note. Turned out it was all out war. An extinction level event, started by the Russians.”

  “How’d it end?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. I don’t think it was a good ending.”

  “We need to make this come out good.”

  Nick scowled. “Yeah. If we can.”

  He leaned forward and looked up. The rain had dwindled to a fine mist. “I’ll bring you the stuff from inside the tent – you roll and fold, and I’ll take the tent down.”

  Alyssa looked around, expecting to see men in dark suits creeping up on them.

  He chuckled. “No, we’re not being invaded. I just think it would be safer to move.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I know a place that’s safe and secluded.”

  Nick brought her the sleeping bag and furniture pads, and while she folded them and stacked them behind the seat, he dismantled the tent. He put the stakes and the other detachable parts into their canvas bag, then folded the bag inside the tent and wrapped the ground cloth around the wet canvas. Alyssa held Bella while Nick loaded the bundle into the Suburban.

  Before they left the campground, he stopped at the store. They were the only car in the lot.

  Nick got out of the Suburban. “I’ll go in and get a few things. Maybe the clerk won’t remember me alone.”

  She nodded absently, staring at the newspaper vending box with their faces displayed on today’s paper. She fished in the bottom of her purse and found eight more quarters. She got out and looked around. Nobody was watching. She fed coins into the slot, then opened the door and pulled out the entire stack of papers.

  She was climbing back in the Suburban when Nick returned with two bulging grocery sacks that he set behind the driver’s seat.

  “You got that much stuff in that tiny store?” she said.

  “Well stocked.”

  He pointed to the stack of newspapers. “You boosted them all?”

  “It’s the least of our problems.” She fastened her seatbelt. “Didn’t you say something about moving on?”

  “Right you are. Let’s go.”

  Once out of the campground, he turned south, and a half hour later turned west on Highway 2. He obeyed the speed limit, not seeming to be rattled by slower moving traffic. He slowed occasionally to the posted speeds in unincorporated villages. After about twenty minutes, Alyssa spotted a sign. “Bella,” she said.

  “What about her?” Nick said and glanced in the rearview mirror.

  “Not Isabella.” Alyssa pointed to the sign. “This town is Bella.”

  He chuckled. “You didn’t name your cat after this little town, did you?”

  “No, my kindergartners named her. She was a stray. She showed up one October on the playground a few years ago, scrawny and wet and starved for affection. Such a beautiful gray. She’s a Russian blue. How somebody could lose her is beyond me. One of the little girls smuggled her inside under her jacket. I didn’t have the heart to put her back out in the cold. So we took her in. We were studying Columbus, and the kids wanted to name her Christopher Columbus. I pointed out she was a girl, they chose Queen Isabella. Nobody claimed her, and it wasn’t really appropriate to keep her in a classroom, so I took her to Aunt Ellen who adopted her. Ellen never had mice or spiders in the house or the shop after that.”

  At the second mention of her name, the cat minced between the seats and jumped onto Alyssa’s lap. Nick reached over and petted her. “No wonder she’s not shy with strangers. She’s had lots of practice.”

  “She wasn’t much of a watch cat, though,” Alyssa said, remembering the break-in. She burrowed her fingers into the cat’s fur and soon felt the vibration of her purr.

  An hour later, just before Escanaba, Nick turned west on a poorly paved county road. They bounced along for a few miles, and then he turned north. The forest closed in to the edges of the road. A few more turns and Alyssa lost track of directions. He turned onto a gravel road and slowed to a crawl, scanning the forest on either side.

  What was he looking for? An old hunting camp? There had been no houses for miles. They were surrounded by wilderness.

  With a suddenness that startled her, he braked. An overgrown road – little better than a path – led into the forest. Alyssa peered into the shadows, but couldn’t see more than a few yards. A hand-lettered sign nailed to a post declared it private land, and trespassers would be prosecuted. Several No Hunting signs had been nailed haphazardly to the trees.

  Nick turned onto the road and leaned forward. “We might not be able to get all the way in if the trees have gotten too big.”

  Branches scraped against the sides of the Suburban, and water from sodden evergreens rained on the roof. Alyssa had the distinct impression the forest was closing behind them as they bounced over the uneven dirt. The track went slightly uphill. There were no visible landmarks by which to judge distance. She suspected they went about a mile.

  Abruptly, the trees thinned, and the Suburban coasted down a gentle slope toward a stream that wound its way through a shallow, heavily forested valley. Nick stopped in a stand of maples and spruces beside a bend in the stream where the water eddied deep and clear. Alyssa opened her door. A light breeze sighed through the sheltering pines.

  She turned to Nick. “How –?”

 
“It used to be the local lovers’ lane and party place.” His face reddened, and he turned away.

  A weathered wooden picnic table sat beneath the trees.

  “How in the world did a picnic table get here?” she said.

  “I can’t believe it.” He walked over to the table and brushed away pine needles and leaves. “Will and I hauled it up here when we were in high school. We, ah, sort of borrowed it from the county park. We used to come here with our buddies to swim.” He ran a hand over the eroded surface. “We even sealed the wood. It’s in pretty good shape.”

  “It’s so desolate,” Alyssa said. The only sounds were birds and the breeze sighing through the pine needles.

  “They won’t find us here.” Nick went to the back of the Suburban and opened the doors.

  Alyssa kept a firm grip on Bella while he hauled out the camping supplies. She thought about what he had said. If she had trusted an evil person, he could kill her and leave her body here. From the looks of the place nobody had been here in a long time. She had thrown her lot in with him, and there was no turning back.

  Once the gear was out of the Suburban, Alyssa put Bella inside and helped set up camp. She still limped, but the pain in her ankle had subsided to a dull ache. Finally, the tent was up and drying in the sun, the sleeping bag and blankets inside. Nick got the grocery sacks and set them on the table along with the propane burner and nesting pans.

  Alyssa sat at the table and looked at him expectantly. “So, what have you got there?”

  He put one hand inside a sack and paused.

  “Disguises.” He rubbed his chin. “The whiskers go.” He grinned maliciously at her. “And the hair ….”

  Horrified at the prospect of hacking off her hair, Alyssa watched dumbly as he hauled items from the sack. Several disposable razors and shaving cream – she cringed at the appearance of a pair of scissors – a small hand mirror, two towels and two pairs of sunglasses.

  “You got all this at the tiny store?” she said.

  “Yep. It was amazing what they had.”

  He fumbled unsuccessfully with the nesting pans, and Alyssa held out a hand.