Called Home

by Melissa F. Miller

  Markham pressed her lips together in a severe line then said, “She stopped showing up, and I don’t expect her to show her face around here again. But if she does, she’ll certainly be terminated.”

  “Sure. Insubordination,” Aroostine agreed.

  “Insubordination is the least of Ms. Truewind’s problems. Your old Army buddy’s daughter is looking at time in a federal prison. She stole company property that contained top-secret information critical to national security.”

  Holy mackerel, Dahlia. Really?

  Markham watched Aroostine’s face closely for her reaction.

  Luckily, Aroostine didn’t have to feign her shock. “That doesn’t sound like the girl I knew. Janice would never stand for that sort of behavior. There must be some mistake.”

  “There’s no mistake, Ms. Jackman. And don’t forget, Dahlia Truewind’s not a girl, she’s an adult woman. One who’s going to spend the rest of her life behind bars for committing treason.”

  “I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding, Ms. Markham. Do you happen to have Dahlia’s home address handy? I’ll swing by there and talk to her.”

  Markham opened her mouth to respond then thought the better of it. She flipped open her briefcase and fished out a cell phone. Aroostine craned her neck and spotted a second phone nestled inside the bag.

  Work and personal?

  Markham rattled off a building address and apartment number. Aroostine raised her empty hands in a sheepish gesture and repeated the information aloud. Markham rolled her eyes and fished a legal pad out of her bag. She scrawled the address on a sheet of paper and added a telephone number beneath it. She ripped the sheet off the pad and handed it to Aroostine.

  “Here. That’s my cell phone number. If you find her, which I doubt you will, call me to arrange for the return of the stolen property. If you do that, I promise I’ll do my best to minimize the fallout. As a favor from one Scarlett to another.”

  One Scarlett to another? It had to be a military thing. She nodded.

  “Appreciated. I’ll do what I can.” She folded the paper into eighths and shoved it into her front pocket then gave Markham a nod and walked across the parking lot at a deliberate pace.

  She wanted to give Markham plenty of time to get in her vehicle and drive away before she reached the pickup.

  Roxanne idled her SUV in the alley across from the office park and peered through her windshield. She watched as Rue Jackman’s pickup truck pulled out from Allied’s parking lot and merged into the flow of traffic. After she scrawled the Ford F-150’s license plate number onto her pad, she called Arnetto.

  “Uh, Roxie. I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything new for you yet. Your boys from the government are getting in my way. But I’m sure—”

  “Save the excuses. I’m calling because I’ve got something for you.”

  “You do?”

  A slow, satisfied smile formed on her mouth. “I do indeed. I was just leaving work and—”

  “It’s seven-thirty on a Saturday night. You need to take it down a notch. Don’t you ever just kick back and have a beer? Get laid?”

  “Arnetto, I’m not looking for a life coach,” she snapped.

  “Sorry.”

  “I was leaving work and a Native American woman approached me in the parking lot.”

  “You think she’s connected to the girl?”

  “I know she is. She said she was an old Army buddy of Truewind’s mother, just passing through town, and thought she’d look up Dahlia.”

  “Huh. This Army buddy have a name?”

  “Rue Jackman. She’s driving a blue Ford pickup truck with Iowa plates. Write this down.” She waited for him to get a pen then read off the license plate number. “Run the plates and her. See what you can find.”

  Arnetto was a very good field man. But he was an even better hacker—when he wanted to be. He resisted it. She figured he saw himself as an action hero, not some mild-mannered computer jockey. But the truth was there were plenty of guys who could do what he did on the ground and very few who could match him at a keyboard.

  “Will do. I’ll run her through the civilian databases first then hit the Department of Defense.”

  “Don’t bother with the DOD. She’s not former military.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “That’s what she said. But she’s lying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know how some infantrymen call each other joes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do infantrywomen call each other?”

  “I dunno. Bitches?”

  “Nice, Arnetto. Real nice. No, joes. Same as the dudes. It’s short for GI Joe. Every once in a while, some smart guy would try to call a female solider a scarlett.”

  “Why?”

  “Because apparently old GI Joe came with a bunch of friends and the chick was …”

  “Right, right. I remember Scarlett. So?”

  “So, no self-respecting woman calls herself a scarlett. It doesn’t happen.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure,” he said in a doubtful tone.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ll get on this right away.”

  “Do it fast because I have another job for you. I sent her to Dahlia’s apartment. Get over there. When she leaves, follow her.”

  “But … the girl’s not at her apartment.”

  Arnetto’s confusion was both palpable and mildly entertaining. She shook her head.

  “I know that. But Rue Jackman doesn’t. She’ll go there, poke around, maybe wait for a while. Eventually, she’ll give up and leave. When she does, tail her. She might lead us to Dahlia.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know. But here’s what I do know. The boys from Homeland Security are already running down every lead you and I might come up with. If we’re going to find her first, we need to think outside the box. And this random Native American woman who showed up lying about her military service is definitely outside the box.”

  Arnetto considered this for a moment. “I suppose you’re right. It’s worth a shot, at least.”

  “Didn’t ask for your opinion, Johnny. Get busy.”

  She was about to end the call. He managed to squeeze in one last parting shot first.

  “Seriously, Markham. A cold beer. A thick steak. And a warm body. Look into it.”

  She powered off the phone and tossed it into her bag. Johnny misunderstood her just like everybody else did, she mused, as she put the SUV into drive and eased out from her hiding spot. She didn’t care about earthly comforts or physical gratification. She cared about the job. And only the job. She got off on protecting this great country, undeserving though some of its citizens might be. Sometimes she grew tired or the job was ugly. But she had to do it. She couldn’t sit back and count on somebody else to do it. It was on her.

  And right now, what was on her was getting that blasted box back and getting rid of Dahlia before it compromised her mission to protect the pipeline from potential saboteurs. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.

  20

  Saturday evening

  Vermillion Bus Depot

  Dahlia hustled into the restroom weighed down by three big shopping bags in addition to her duffel bag. She had to hurry or she’d miss the bus back to Sioux Falls. She banged into the big stall in the end—one of those combined handicapped/family stalls with a changing station, a sink, and room to move.

  She dumped the bags onto the floor and rifled through the bag from the edgy, downtown salon until she found the pink wig. She pulled her hair back tightly with one hand and tucked it under the wig then shook out the fake hair.

  She eyed herself in the mirror. She looked stupid, and it was only about to get worse. But she had to do something. Her hair was almost jet black—way too dark to dye a different color without several rounds of bleaching first. She didn’t have time for that. And cutting it short wouldn’t dramatically alter her appearance. So a stupid pink wig was her best op
tion. Correction, a stupid pink itchy wig.

  She reached back into the salon bag and dug out the faux gold nose ring. She tore it free from the cardboard packaging then clipped it to her right nostril. She scooped the armload of makeup from the bag and spread it out on the sink.

  Then she kicked off her shoes and wriggled out of her jeans, unbuttoned her shirt and let it slide to the floor, and took the new outfit from the fast fashion department store bag. She ripped the tags off with her teeth and pulled on the black leggings. She tugged the black tunic dress over her head carefully so as not to disturb the wig and wound a long black scarf around her neck. Then she reached into the final bag and pulled out the hot pink combat boots.

  She shoved her feet into them and clomped back over to the mirror to check herself out. She laughed. She actually didn’t look half-bad. Sure, she was a total poseur. But she looked kind of bad-ass. She definitely did not look like Dahlia Truewind from East Shannon, South Dakota. And that was the important thing.

  She picked up the lipstick and lined her lips. She’d burned a lot of cash on this new look—and she had one more new outfit to stuff in the duffel bag. She couldn’t afford a whole new wardrobe.

  This disguise better work, she thought as she lined her eyes with purple liquid eyeliner. Because she was going back into the belly of the beast. Back to her apartment in Sioux Falls.

  It sounded like a really bad idea, she realized that. But the truth was, nobody was looking for her in Sioux Falls. They’d managed to track her to Vermillion—all of them, whoever they were. So they’d definitely already checked her place and seen that she’d split. The next most likely place to look for her was back home. So going to Pine Ridge was still not an option.

  As scary as it was, the smartest thing to do was to hide in plain sight.

  She smiled at her unfamiliar reflection. Hiding in plain sight was one of her mom’s favorite stories—one of the only stories she’d told about her time in Afghanistan. She’d gotten separated from her unit during an IED sweep in a busy village market. Some local rebels—an offshoot of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, she never specified—rolled through the market with their AK-47s, looking for the woman soldier they’d heard had gotten lost.

  Mom knew she’d be lucky if they killed her—rape and torture were the more likely outcome. She thought fast and grabbed a long heavy blanket from a merchant’s stall. She wrapped herself head to toe in the thing and covered her hair and mouth with the end so all that was showing was her eyes.

  She lowered her gaze to the dirt ground as the rebels passed by, like all the other women did. She always said she’d never been as grateful for her brown skin as she was that day. The men strolled right past her without a second glance. If she’d have been a porcelain-skinned White woman with blue eyes, she’d have been a goner. But Mom had hidden in plain sight.

  So that’s what Dahlia would do, too. She gathered up her old clothes and the cosmetic packages then stuffed them in the trash can near the changing table. She shoved her change of clothes into her already-bursting duffel bag and squared her shoulders.

  Then she walked out of the bathroom a different woman, leaving Dahlia Truewind behind in the stall.

  21

  Aroostine got turned around once during the drive from the office park to Dahlia’s apartment building. Night was falling, and she’d been distracted by the expanse of open space to the right of the highway. A sign identified the spot as ‘Falls Park.’

  Sure enough she glimpsed the city’s eponymous Falls as she exited the highway and got back on course. Even in the fading light, she could tell the park was well-maintained. All rushing waterfalls, trimmed green grass, and groomed paths, watched over by a tall observation tower and an enormous granite statue of a bison.

  She felt the tug of the slice of nature plopped down in the middle of an urban environment but ignored it. This wasn’t a sightseeing trip.

  She followed the steady traffic to the outskirts of town—to a neighborhood that could generously be described as ‘fringe’—and turned left onto a cul-de-sac. At what would be the two o’clock position on a watch face, she pulled up in front of a pair of squat, tired-looking buildings that shared a parking lot. The buildings were set back from the quiet street by a wide hilly lawn.

  She checked the address Roxanne Markham had given her against the Falls Manor sign. It looked as if Dahlia’s unit was on the third floor of the building to the left of the resident parking area. She refolded the paper and returned it to her pocket as she got out of the truck.

  She took the steps from the sidewalk to the common parking lot by twos then hurried across the parking area to Dahlia’s building. She pushed on the steel entrance door—more to check the box that she’d tried than out of any belief it might be unlocked—but it swung open.

  Just inside the door, a row of metal mailboxes lined the wall to the right. To the left, a windowless door displayed two signs: one read ‘Leasing Office’; the other, ‘Closed.’ A long hallway ran the length of the building. She followed it past a half-dozen metal doors until she reached the center of the building, where a pair of elevators, one on each side of the hallway, interrupted the rows of apartments. Presumably, six more apartments ran from the elevators to the back of the building.

  She spotted an emergency exit sign at the far end then turned in a slow half circle to look back at the front of the building for a second set of stairs. There it was, behind the mailboxes. She’d missed it coming in. Her grandfather had taught her basic situational awareness as soon as she could walk. Learn all the ways into and out of every space you inhabit. It was advice that had served her well more times than she cared to remember.

  She continued down the hall, passing one apartment from which the television was blaring a game show and one in which someone was cooking something that smelled amazing—beef stew and freshly baked bread, if she had to guess. Her stomach growled in appreciation.

  She ignored it and kept walking. The hallway ended at a blind exterior wall. To the left, there was a metal door marked ‘Handyman’s Office.’ To the right, under the emergency exit sign, a door led to a stairway. She opened the door and entered the stairwell.

  A set of stairs led up to the second and third floors and a short hall doglegged to the left behind the staircase. She took a quick peek around the corner. An alarmed exterior door led to the outdoors.

  She took the stairs to the third floor without running into any residents. The third floor was identical to the first—worn institutional carpet, unappealing green-gray paint, and rows of metal doors. A few of the third-floor tenants had personalized their homes. She spotted a door displaying a fall wreath; one that had a dry erase board affixed to it with a marker dangling from a string in case anyone felt like leaving a message; and one with a sternly worded warning for delivery people to leave packages outside the door without ringing the bell so as not to wake a colicky baby.

  She stopped in front of Dahlia’s unit. No custom touches here. A smooth metal door, indistinguishable from the others. She pressed the slim rectangular bell to the right of the door and listened as a chime sounded inside the quiet apartment. She counted to twenty in her head then rang the doorbell again. The bell chimed once more then faded. No other noise came from inside the apartment.

  “Dahlia?” she called.

  Nothing.

  She twisted the doorknob. Locked. She rattled it, but, unsurprisingly, it didn’t magically unlock.

  Dahlia clearly wasn’t home. Or she was inside, unable to answer the door because she was incapacitated … or worse. It was a possibility. The far likelier option was that she’d skipped town. If she really had stolen top secret national security information, she was in the wind.

  But either way, Aroostine needed to get inside the apartment. If not to find the girl, then to study her space and her belongings to get a better picture of who she was as a person. The more a tracker knew about her prize, the easier it was to find.

  She bent and examined the bra
ss knob lock. It looked to be a spring lock—cheap and old. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had been installed during the original construction of the building. There was no separately keyed deadbolt. This door would be dead easy to pick.

  A shiver of worry rippled through her. Aroostine Higgins would never pick a stranger’s lock without permission. But, she reminded herself, Rue Jackman absolutely would if that’s what she needed to do to find a missing girl.

  She sighed and reached up into her thick hair. The only way she maintained a reasonably tidy ponytail was to secure it back with four bobby pins—two on each side. She plucked one pin from each side of her head. Instantly, the first stray tendrils of hair gleefully danced out of place.

  Television shows and movies that showed the bad guy (or the good guy) picking a lock with a bobby pin were unrealistic. But only because the job took two bobby pins. One to serve as the pick, and a second to serve as the tension wrench.

  Making the pick was a snap. She put the straight end of the first bobby pin in her mouth and gnawed off the little rubber tip. Then she removed the pin from her mouth and pulled the two ends apart until the pin was straight, more or less. The bumpy, ridged end wasn’t perfectly straight, but it didn’t need to be. She’d be using the straight end. She stuck it into the keyhole about a third of an inch then pressed up. When she removed the pin, the end of it had bent into a small, upward hook.

  Perfect.

  She’d use the pick’s hook to push the pins inside the lock out of the way, so she could turn the lock with the wrench. Now, she needed to make a wrench.

  She held the second bobby pin by the rubber tips and inserted the curved, closed end into the keyhole. She pushed until it was about one inch into the keyhole. Then she pressed it down, bending it until it formed an “L” shape. Voila. A tension wrench.

  Her heart was beating a touch too quickly and a smidge too loudly. But she smiled with giddy pride. She had a serviceable lock-picking set for the low, low price of forty cents and messy hair.