I opened The Ghost and laid Lily in the passenger seat, clipped on her seatbelt, and hopped in. I roared high speed down the two-lane road. Each time it twisted, Lily’s head rolled. I barely braked for the berms of dried mud and kept the gun in my lap. I grabbed my phone. If Hector’s call got through, there was some signal out here. I called Culliton. He didn’t pick up. Which didn’t surprise me because of his prostitution bust.
“Thank you for sending a deputy,” I told his voice mail. “He didn’t see me. But I’ve got another girl.” I glanced over and gave him a description. “Check the list of runaways, first name might be Lily. She’s in the car with me, I’m heading for the medical clinic. Call me ASAP.”
I disconnected the call and braked for a hard turn. My memory said the big hill was just ahead. The hill that took us out of this God-forsaken valley. I shifted gears, pushing the engine.
When I came out of the turn, a white truck was in my lane.
I braked, hard.
Lily’s head rocked forward. She moaned, “Uh-nnn.”
“Sorry,” I said.
The white vehicle wasn’t a truck. It was a wagon of some kind. The black lettering on the back read, Chelan County Sheriff’s Department.
The deputy. He had Kimberly. Excellent.
But my mind stuttered. The other words on the vehicle were Animal Control.
The wagon. I’d seen it before. And Culliton told me to wait. Deputies needed in town. This was a remote area … but Animal Control. It could be here. Animal Control went everywhere.
Right?
The road straightened and the white wagon picked up speed. I stepped on the gas, keeping The Ghost close enough to see the driver’s face in the side mirror.
The driver glanced left.
Seiler.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I stared at the white wagon, and Ezra Sugarman’s words rang in my head.
Someone killed that precious girl like she was nothing but an animal marked for slaughter.
And I knew.
Animal control.
I slapped my hand across the console, searching for my phone. I tapped the screen. No signal.
“Crap!”
“Huhn,” Lily said.
The road curved left, cutting between the basalt mountains. Seiler barreled over the dried mudslide. The Ghost hit the berm hard, undercarriage scraping.
I grit my teeth. “What are you doing, Seiler?”
We started up the hill. I thought about passing him, forcing him off the road. But the wagon took a sudden right. This was not the route back to town. I followed and hit a gravel road. The rocks hammered The Ghost. The washboard surface bounced Lily. Her teeth clacked.
“Lily?” I called out.
Her hands were on her stomach. Like she might puke.
“Hang on,” I told her.
I grabbed the phone again, tapping the screen. The signal came back. I found Jack’s number in recent calls, and hit redial.
“Jack—”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to get the dog.”
“Listen to me—contact the Chelan sheriff. The detective named Culliton. He—”
“Harmon, what’s wrong?”
I gripped the steering wheel with one hand. Seiler was speeding up.
“Remember the animal control deputy who met us on the trail?”
“Yeah.”
“Jack, he’s totally rogue. I think he’s killing these girls. He just kidnapped the third one and—”
“Where are you?”
I glanced out the window. Pine trees. Grainy hillsides. “I’m on a gravel road. Somewhere near Pehashtin.” I leaned forward, looking up at the sky. “The sun’s behind me so I’m heading west but I can’t see—”
“Harmon?”
“What?”
“Harmon? Are you there?”
“Jack!”
“If you can hear me, call back. Your voice is breaking up.”
“Jack?”
“—hear me? Oh. Man. You’re gone.”
I slid my thumb over the screen, glanced up, and slammed my foot into the brake pedal.
The white wagon had stopped in the middle of the road.
The Ghost scudded sideways over the gravel. Lily slumped against the door. The engine coughed. And died.
I peered through clouds of road dust. I sat crossways, facing the forest on the side of the road. Lily’s passenger window faced the wagon’s back doors. I stomped the clutch into the floorboard, shifted the gear into first, and turned the key. I tried again. The acrid odor of gasoline filled the air. I turned the key off. And waited. The engine was flooded.
The wagon didn’t move. And nobody got out.
I pulled the emergency brake. Sig in hand, I stepped out but stayed behind The Ghost’s long door. Another twenty seconds passed. I leaned over to see the wagon’s side mirror. It looked empty. Slowly, I moved around my door and crept toward the wagon. I pointed the gun at the driver’s window.
“Freeze.”
I leaned forward. The cab was empty. I glanced across the bench seat and saw something on the floor. Blue nylon bag. Yellow rope. Metal. Tools. Sunlight glinting off chrome curves.
“Looking for something?” he asked.
I felt the gun jab behind my left ear.
“My dog,” I said. “She ran away.”
“Again?”
“That’s what dogs do.”
“Right,” he said. “Drop your weapon.”
I lifted my right arm but kept my index finger alongside the trigger. My mind scrambled for escapes. Spin. Shoot. Hit—
He slammed me into the truck. Pain fired into my wrist, radiating up my arm. I felt every inch of him pressing against my back. Something sharp bit into my left shoulder. His badge.
“Think you’re real clever, don’t you.” He breathed into my hair. “I’m gonna fix that.”
He threw me to the ground. One shot. That’s all he needed. I closed my eyes. Prayed. Road dust coated my tongue. Lily. She was sitting in the car, right next to my cell phone. Pick up the phone. Press 9-1-1.
He twisted my wrists behind me. My skin burned. Rope. He was tying my wrists. I pulled them apart as he bound them, and wondered why he didn’t use handcuffs. When he was done, he kicked his boot into my right side.
I gasped.
“Stand up.”
I twisted sideways, rolled onto my knees. Gravel dug into my kneecaps. I staggered into a stand.
“Walk to the back.”
I glanced at The Ghost. Lily was gazing through the windshield like somebody watching a movie that made no sense. Pick up the phone. The phone, the phone …
Seiler shoved the gun into my back and snapped open the wagon doors.
Inside, Kimberly sat curled inside one of the metal cages. Her skin looked slick from sweat. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. Her body shook.
“Get in,” Seiler said.
“What about the other girl?” I tried to glance over my shoulder. “You can’t leave her out here.”
“Sure I can.” He gave me another stab with the gun. “They’ll find that fancy car of yours and they’ll know you abandoned her. Now get in.”
I kneeled on the wagon’s bumper. My mind kept flashing scenarios. Mule-kick. Knock the gun from his hand. Every superhero maneuver that got you killed early.
“The cage.” He shoved me forward. “Next to hers.”
The cage door was open. I shifted, making sure I backed into the small space. Seiler stood at the open doors, wearing a cold smile. Now I saw the gun. It was a .38 revolver. A gun for putting down animals. The air stunk of fear fear fear—
“This.” Kimberly sang. Her voice shook with her body. “This … I know.”
Seiler shoved me into the cage and clipped the door shut, making sure no animal escaped.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Whatever shot she took earlier, it wasn’t enough. Kimberly was coming down. She was shaking. Her sweat smelled rancid.
Seiler star
ted the engine. The muffler rumbled beneath us.
“Sing me your song,” I said.
“I … know …” She was breathing oddly, as if suffocating between words. “This.”
She sang those same three words, over and over. I know this.
I kept track of the seconds, counting from the moment Seiler stepped on the gas.
One one-thousand.
I stared out the small porthole window.
Two one-thousand.
Pine trees passed. Blue sky.
Three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five …
When I reached sixty one-thousand, I curled one finger. One minute had passed. At five minutes, I made one fist. Ten minutes, two fists, then started over, and pressed my tongue into the farthest tooth in the back in my mouth. Another ten minutes, my tongue moved forward one tooth.
Kimberly was dry heaving, her face pushed against the cage. The metal cage left indentations across her cheeks.
Twenty-eight minutes later, the wagon stopped. I could see black asphalt shingles through the porthole window. A roof. Gray smoke curled into the blue sky.
The wagon’s back door opened. A bald man stood next to Seiler. The blue tattoos on his flabby neck made the skin look bruised.
“You said one,” the bald man said.
“There is only one. But she—” he pointed the .38 at me—“found the Jew. So now we gotta get rid of her too.”
The bald guy stared at me. His eyes were full of certainty and wrong answers. “We?” he said.
“Me,” Seiler said.
“What if somebody comes looking for her?”
“Nobody will,” Seiler said.
“Family? Husband?”
“She doesn’t have anybody,” Seiler said.
They pulled us out of the wagon. I scanned the area. The asphalt shingles belonged to a roof on a log cabin. It was large, crudely built, and shaped like an L. Trees had been cleared for other buildings. In the center of the clearing, a large fire burned below a dead animal rotating on a spit.
I glanced into the pine trees. The forest was too thick. I couldn’t read the landscape. The sun’s position said it was still morning, I knew that, but I tried to recall the geological maps of this area. Seiler had driven about thirty minutes. But which direction? Pehashtin was south of the Cascade mountain range. Further south was Blewitt Pass. The roads ran mostly east-west. But that wasn’t enough information. If Seiler drove west, then we were … where?
I glanced at Seiler. He held Kimberly’s arm like she was roadkill. Animal Control, he knew this county. He probably drove back roads to get here. Which meant I really had no idea where we were. Except this was real purgatory. Where the food sucks and—
Jack.
I didn’t call him back. Would he realize something was wrong? No. Because sometimes I didn’t call back. Pride. I kicked myself. My stupid pride.
The bald guy held my elbow. He asked Seiler. “Now, or later?”
“Now. But I gotta figure out who’s going first.”
“You need help?”
“Better not. Anything happens, you can say you didn’t know. And nobody can beat it out of you.”
Kimberly’s body twitched like an electrocuted rag doll. Seiler dragged her across the open area. People were stepping out of the cabin. Men. Women in dirty dresses. Ragged children. Nobody said a word.
Seiler glanced over at Kimberly. He was evaluating her. “You got anything to give her? I don’t want her puking on me.”
“Waste good drugs on a Jew?” the bald guy said. “Get real.”
“You got a point.” Seiler drew back his free hand and punched the side of Kimberly’s head. She dropped like kindling.
He shook out his fingers. “Get the boys.”
The bald man whistled. Two boys came running from a low wooden building beside the log cabin. They looked about twelve years old, with heads shaved like Marines.
“Pick it up,” Seiler said.
One boy took Kimberly’s bare feet. The other boy took her shoulders from behind her head. Her cuffed hands flopped on her concave stomach. The boys followed Seiler.
When I looked back, one of the woman was turning a metal crank over the fire. Fat dripped from the animal, sizzling in the flames. I made eye contact with the woman. She looked away.
The bald man slapped the back of my head. “Face forward.”
Seiler was leading us toward a barn. In the field behind it, horses roamed. Pigs rooted an area beside it. And cows grazed beside the barn. In the distance, I heard metal clanging. Metal on metal. Like a blacksmith. But my senses were so piqued, I could hear the horses ripping grass from the soil.
The soil.
I looked down, and pretended to trip. I dragged the toe of my shoe deep into the dirt. It was that russet red color. Heavy with iron. Basalt, not granite. That most likely meant we were east of Leavenworth. I raised my face to the blue sky again. Help me. The bald guy smacked my head once more. My ears rang.
At the barn, Seiler stopped and pulled a key ring from his utility belt. He keyed open the lock in the galvanized plate and slid back the door.
Sunlight cut between the weathered boards. The sharp beams threw spotlights on the dirt floor. One ladder led to a loft. I could smell the dry hay. And something else. Something bad.
The boys carried Kimberly inside.
“Where you want ’er?” asked the boy holding her feet.
“Where I don’t got to move her again,” Seiler said. “Put her in the chamber. And don’t come back. Tell the rest of them kids, too.”
The boys carried Kimberly to a wooden box under the hayloft. The box had three sides. On the open side, a leather strap dangled from the rafter. I could see sunlight tracing the small door in the barn wall, behind the box. The fields were beyond that. The animals. Behind that door. And I knew what the three-sided box was used for. Slaughter.
I pulled at the rope around my wrists. My skin burned.
“She’ll have to be second.” Seiler grabbed me and yanked down that leather strap attached to the rafter. He pushed my head into the noose.
“Hang tight,” he told me.
They laughed, and left.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
In the hazy light of the barn, I listened to Kimberly’s labored breathing. She lay behind me in the slaughter box, and her wet snoring that told me blood filled her nose.
I stood on my tiptoes to keep the noose from tightening around my neck. My calf muscles burned, but my eyes were adjusting to the dark. On the opposite wall, I could see farm tools. A rusted scythe. Two winnowing forks. Baling hooks shaped like question marks. My fingers worked at the rope around my wrists. Long ago, when I was a teenager who believed my life would turn out differently, someone taught me about knots. Lanette. Now Lani Margolis. As Seiler tied my wrists, I’d pulled them apart to create some slack. My thumb worked between the knots. My fingernail caught on a strand, tore. I grit my teeth, twisting my index finger into another turn in the rope.
“Most people think knots are knots,” Lanette had written, way back when. “But they’re not.”
I’d written back—telling her to get a life. Now my eyes burned. My shoes slipped on the dirt floor. The leather strap garroted my windpipe.
“I . . . know . . .”
I turned my head. Kimberly’s dirty bare feet hung over the edge of the slaughter box. Her toes moved with her song, her voice wet and snurgly. And sad. On the third time she started it, I realized what tune she was singing. That old Sunday school song. But her drug-addled mind had reversed the words. I know this, she sang.
This I know. Jesus loves me, this I know.
“Kimberly?” I perched on my cramping toes. “Are you with me?”
“Uh-nn.”
“Can you stand up?” I worked my index finger into the knot. The rope gave a little. “I need you to do something.”
She was whimpering. The drugs, wearing off.
“You feel lousy,” I said, rasping against the
leather strap. “We need to get out of here. Right. Now.”
She seemed to be rocking back and forth. Trying to stand up? But I heard the sound. Vomiting. I turned away.
When she stopped, I said, “Kimberly, stand up.” My fingernails were torn. “Please.”
She moved. All I could see was her bare heel.
“I’m begging you,” I rasped.
The heel dropped against the box’s slatted side.
“You can do this.” I gave her directions. Hold the sides. Push up.
She swung one leg over the box’s wall.
“That’s it.”
Across the barn, the metal bolt slid back. My heart sank.
“—and then get back to work,” Seiler was saying to somebody out of view. He spoke over his shoulder. “They’ll be finishing that sting operation, wondering where I am.”
He stepped into the barn, and stopped. Kimberly stood beside me, swaying, her cuffed hands gripping the edge of the slaughter box.
“Look who’s up,” he said.
I heard no surprise in his voice. And no worries. Because where would we go—where could we run?
Nowhere.
I swallowed. My windpipe ached against the leather. Sweat traced down my back, as slow as a painful death.
Seiler walked to the opposite wall. He passed through columns of sunlight, blinking at the bright pieces of sun. The tools waited on the wall. He examined them idly, like a businessman deciding which tie to wear. He took two tools from their hooks and turned. Sunlight glinted on a blade in his right hand.
“Why—” I choked. “Why are you doing this?”
“You want to know why?” He seemed almost glad. Like he’d been waiting for someone to ask. “Purity. That’s why.”
“What purity?”
“German.” He looked surprised. “We’re tainted by the Jew blood.”
I searched his face for the dutiful deputy who came to help. That man was gone. “You killed Annicka.”
The Waves Break Gray (The Raleigh Harmon mysteries Book 6) Page 23