The sound had spurred Joule to keep running. She had no idea if the family had gone down into the cellar, or into the crawl space themselves, or if they'd counted their bricks of cocaine. Had they seen that their stash was all still there?
Her heart had pounded the whole time, waiting for a shot to ring out in the dark. While Joule thought she was doing a relatively decent job of being stealthy, Jerry had crashed through the forest like a Sasquatch.
“Running” was too strong a word for what she and Jerry had been doing. The night was pitch black, and though he carried the phone, she’d batted his hand quickly, making him put it out. It was a beacon to their location. When the light went out, she breathed a little easier that she hadn’t made it easy for the Larkins to pick them off—but she still didn’t breathe easy.
Her heart had pounded for possibly two solid hours as they slowly and quietly picked a path away from danger and hopefully toward safety. At least, that’s what she hoped. Joule didn’t know where they were going. She wasn’t even confident they weren’t scribing a circle through the woods and heading straight back to the Larkin Farm/Drug Ring.
But after a few hours and who knew how many miles of dark path—maybe only a few? She wouldn’t be surprised if they’d covered virtually no ground—they’d found the big red barn.
It looked to Joule like every other one she’d seen when she drove the back roads. But Jerry said he knew this farm, too, and he deemed the Wilbert family almost definitely safe from the plague of drug running that had hit the area some years ago. Joule appreciated now that the barn smelled of manure and hay. That meant there were animals in it. And it meant that the farmland was functioning as a farm—unlike the Larkin place.
Though she'd managed to get some sleep once they’d laid down with the hay and blankets, her tension was back with a vengeance now.
As Toto romped around the loft they’d secreted themselves in, her brain ran wild in a way her cornered body couldn’t. She'd wanted to leave another sign for her brother, but she couldn’t leave any path for the Larkins to follow. Now, she even regretted the first four she'd left.
If the Larkins found one, they had her initials. They probably wouldn’t immediately think of her—she wasn’t even sure if she’d ever met them—but it would make it much easier for them to track her down in the future.
She’d not left an arrow at the Larkin farm, thank God, as both her entrance and exit had been under extreme duress. But she’d left one at the first farm she'd been at, before she saw Jerry. She’d left one at the edge of the field and basically tagged herself at each turn.
She probably hadn’t covered as much ground as she’d like to believe she had… so it wasn’t a stretch to think the Larkins might come across one of her arrows as they searched. Given that they’d seen virtually no one else so far, and that the arrows were an indicator that someone was hoping to be found, it wouldn’t be hard to connect that to the people who had been in their basement with their cocaine.
But there was nothing she could do about any of that now. She whispered to Jerry. “That first farm we were at—are they involved with the cocaine running?”
He nodded this time. They'd skirted this conversation before, but now he clarified, “I think. I don't know for sure, not like with the Larkins.”
Well, they both knew for sure about the Larkins now.
“But Tommy, he got a new truck last year.”
Joule almost laughed. In this area, new trucks were the measure of misplaced wealth.
“But then he got another new one this year. And the farm isn’t doing well. Not at all, not enough for that.”
“Interesting, for a farm that’s not producing,” she whispered back. Her own understanding was that the inability to hide the money got a lot of criminals caught.
“Interesting for a family farm around here at all,” Jerry replied, and she followed as he explained. “Farms pass a lot of money through—lots of cash, lots of credit, lots of e-transactions. Some very big and some very small.”
She must have frowned at him, because he continued to explain.
“They do contracts whenever they can. Large batches of produce to a single distributor or buyer can bring big money in. But then there’s large amounts out for farm equipment and supplies. It runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes.”
“Really?”
Jerry nodded. “But the margins on a farm are slim—very slim most of the time. It's easy to be negative a couple years in a row, even though the farm made close to a million dollars or more.”
Had she ever heard that?
“If a farm is profitable, maybe providing something no one else does,” Jerry said, seeming to appreciate being the one in the know for once, “you can make bank. But right now, that’s organic and heirloom produce. Not many around here going that way. They cling to the old methods that don’t work anymore.”
Joule didn’t comment about him not appreciating the irony of that statement. He just went on…
“But it's gotten harder and harder for family farms to be profitable at all. The commercial farms took over. Lots of these families have been living on a few tens of thousands of dollars a year, even though hundreds of thousands are passing through their fingers.”
Joule was starting to see a pattern. “Do you think they're money laundering?”
That seemed to surprise him. He shrugged.
She added, “I don’t know all the details of money laundering, but I know the more cash you move and the more transactions you have of a wider variety, the more easily you can hide the extra. A failing farm sounds like a prime operation for somebody who needs their money laundered.”
“Interesting,” Jerry said.
Joule was growing even more concerned about what they'd stepped into. This might not be just a family distributing cocaine, but a network. Then again, while pot could be run as a solo operation, no one was growing coca plants and running the vats to create the powder around here. The very fact that there were plastic-wrapped bricks in the cellar was enough to indicate a full network.
When she’d first woken up after the first tornado dropped her in a field, Joule thought her sole job was to find people. Instead, she discovered that finding people could be her worst nightmare. She reminded herself that she'd not survived a tornado to get caught and murdered by drug runners. But she was more than aware that absolutely was an option.
It was up to her and Jerry to keep themselves out of the hands of the people whose business they'd already disrupted. With what Jerry had added, she was now very concerned this was a bigger and more entwined network than just the Larkins and the other farm up the street.
“Do you know anyone else who's involved?” she asked, her voice low.
He shook his head, shrugged, and replied, “I have my suspicions. But I don't know anything for certain.”
Absorbing that, she nodded. This time she threw the blanket aside and stood. It was time to get going. They no longer needed to find people. They needed to find the right people. One or two of a very limited set of people that either she or Jerry could absolutely trust. Her task had just gotten infinitely harder.
As Jerry stood up, the hay bale crinkled underneath him, and Toto darted over to attack it. Joule stretched and was trying to think what she needed to gather to leave when she stopped still.
The barn door slowly creaked open beneath them.
53
Cage steered the sedan around the fallen trees with much greater ease this morning. The roads weren't miraculously cleared, but it was obvious others had been out and about and had moved the biggest hindrances out of the way. It was also helpful that no other tornadoes had swept through and undone the work that people had put in.
The day was clear and bright. If he only looked up, there was no evidence of the mayhem that had come through yesterday. Now if he could only find his sister…
He and Deveron headed north again, weaving their way through the debris. As he pulled slowly a
round a particularly large, fluffy tree top that covered three quarters of the road and blocked his vision, Cage hit the brakes. The tires squealed in protest and Dev reached forward to brace himself against the dash.
“What?” his friend asked, as if the word had just slipped from his mouth in surprise.
But it was evident in a moment as they found themselves staring down the grille of a large Jeep coming the other direction. As Cage watched, the Jeep driver waved them off and slowly backed up, though it was Cage on the wrong side of the road. However, he was much further around the curve the tree created and he appreciated the politeness.
As he wove past the now-stopped Jeep, the man rolled down the window and flagged him down. Cage put his own window down, curious for only a moment before it came clear.
With very little introduction, the man launched into, “We're looking for my daughter.”
He held up a printed eight-by-eleven picture. But Cage and Deveron both shook their heads. He hadn’t seen the woman. But even as he was thinking it, Dev was already pulling out the picture they’d stolen from the frame on Sarah’s night stand and held it out across Cage toward the window.
Cage showed the picture to the driver. “We're looking for the woman on the left and the one on the right. Joule Mazur and Izzy—Isabelle—McAlister.”
But the man responded as they had, with a sad shake of his head.
“What's your daughter's name?” Cage asked, in case they got so lucky as to find her.
“Julie Jones. Julie Jones McGee.”
They all mutually agreed to look for each others’ lost loved ones, and Cage wondered now how many more encounters like this they might have.
“Get in the glove box,” he ordered Dev. “Write that all down. Add a few identifying characteristics, too. She’s blond, blue-eyed, thirty?”
Dutifully Dev transcribed everything onto the back of a long receipt. But with that job done and possibly pointless, they continued north once again. Still not fast, still hindered by the damage, they passed a half-dozen other cars. Each time, they all slowed down and exchanged pictures and info. So far, nobody had seen Joule or Izzy.
They hadn't gotten out of the car at all.
One of the cars had been a state trooper who'd taken a photo of Sarah’s photo. At least he had the photo. The cell phones were only good as storage units while there was still no wi-fi signal, but Cage filled out forms just as they had at the community center and added Joule and Izzy to what must have become a very long list.
They passed the point where Sarah’s car had gone off road nose-first, in the ditch. Though there were tracks scraping dirt and grass all over where other cars had gone into ditches. But he could tell this one was from their own accident. They'd stopped and looked over the edge and seen the car was still there, nose down and waiting. Nothing had happened—no Samaritan had come by and towed it, but they weren’t surprised. This wasn’t anyone’s priority. They didn't check out the pipe, as no good could come of that.
Then they’d gotten back in the car and driven onward. They stopped for three more cars before Dev got excited and pointed. “Cage, look. That's the tornado path. We can see it now.”
They hadn’t been able to see it clearly yesterday, because there was simply too much debris in the road and along the sides. Now, with the daylight and the cleanup begun, they could catch glimpses. This time, they had a trail to follow, and they tracked it for five miles, Cage watching the odometer as they went, trying to be more methodical than frantic.
“Turn here!” Dev called out excitedly.
The track of the tornado hopped a road that crossed theirs, and on other side, it took an obvious turn and veered toward the east. Cage swung a right onto the small road that wasn't quite as cleared as the highway but was still far more drivable than what he’d seen the night before.
They traced the path of damage as best they could. And when the tornado track crossed the large field, Cage pulled the car to the side of the thin shoulder. They couldn’t just drive through the field. “What do we do now?”
“Maybe we can loop around and pick it up on the other side of the field,” Dev speculated. “It looks like there's a road about a mile up that way.”
Here, the ground was flat for a distance, though Cage seriously thought “a mile” was a big overshoot on Dev’s part.
They tried driving the perimeter of the field, searching for where the tornado path exited. Probably an hour later, they gave up and turned around. “We've got the track right there, but we've got nothing out here.”
They’d never found the other side where the path of destruction exited the field. Had it stopped in the middle? Hopped away? Cage didn’t know, and he still didn’t have cell access to look anything up.
He motioned to Dev to check his phone, which Dev looked at again and nodded. “It’s all good.”
They’d plugged it into the car as soon as they got in, which at least maintained the battery until they got out. They had what they needed.
“I say we go back and we track it,” Cage sighed. It seemed the only option. “We've got the bikes.”
He was glad now that he'd stolen yet one more thing from the bike shop. He had to remember at some point to go back and pay the man for everything. But for now, he was grateful.
“Here, then we need this.” Deveron turned around, rummaging through the bags in the back and producing two water bottles. “We should drink these now and eat now, because we don't know how long we'll be on those bikes.”
Once again, Sarah had set them up with food and rationed out eight water bottles for them. Because his friend was forward-thinking, they were fed by the time they got back to where the tracks gouged the dirt on the other side of the road.
“We just pull off and park here, I guess.” The car wasn't made for off-road driving, and it rocked and bounced as he brought it to a stop in the grass. Cage could only hope the ground was solid enough that, when he got back in and put it in reverse, the tires would grip and get them out.
Dev was already at the trunk, pulling the bikes from the rack and setting them into the grass, where they tipped precariously and threatened to topple. “Water!” he called up to Cage and waited until his friend tossed the bottles over. Cage put an extra in the pocket in his pants.
“More? I think we have enough,” Dev said.
But Cage shook his head. “I hope that we don't need more, but that maybe Joule and Izzy do.”
His wishful thinking was shining through, and he knew it. There was absolutely no scientific or logical reason to believe that this would lead them to his sister. But as Cage straddled the bike and prepared to follow the tornado tracks, he had a good feeling that he was finally heading the right direction.
Fifty yards later, that feeling turned to stone.
54
Dev jumped back. “No!”
Cage didn't answer his friend. What could he say? Except Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is.
They’d almost biked right over the body.
Face down, it wasn’t easily identifiable. The dark, curly hair had made his stomach clench. Though Cage fought the urge to turn around and throw up, Dev made it reality.
As he listened to the sounds of his friend retching behind him, Cage took another look. Was it Izzy?
Dev barfed again behind him, making Cage wonder just what Dev had seen before coming to Alabama. It seemed these days, they'd all seen something—but whatever Dev had been through, it appeared he hadn't had to deal with dead bodies much before. Cage was unfortunately getting far more comfortable with the dead than someone his age should be.
“Give me your phone?” He reached out, but nothing happened.
Turning from the sad sight, he found Dev a few yards away, holding his hand up as if to ward Cage and his needs off. “No, not my phone.”
“We don’t have another option. We need pictures. And then we need to roll her over and get her face.”
As he watched, Dev’s body contracted again, hi
s mouth opening as his chest and head whipped over for another round.
Cage looked away. Vomit was worse than a dead body.
He was pretty certain this was a she… or had been. Though none of that mattered until the person was identified. He closed the distance to his friend rather than asking Dev to come closer. “Dude, I really do need your phone.”
This time, though Deveron didn’t look up at him, he fished the device out of his pocket and handed it backward before returning to his hands-braced-on-knees position of defeat.
Cage walked back and snapped several shots from different angles, his own shadow getting in the way. He told himself the clothes didn’t match Izzy, but he also couldn’t remember for certain. Without the phone connected to a tower nearby, the metadata on the pictures wouldn't include the GPS location.
“Dev. Where are we?” he called over his shoulder as he took a few more pictures, doing his best to collect evidence.
“We're in a field, man.” Dev was still bent over and not even looking, letting Cage do all the foul work.
“I mean, what highway were we on?”
“Ah, I think State Road 34. That’s where the car is.” He pointed behind him, back the way they came. “Maybe a mile and a half that way.”
Cage only nodded, but mentally dialed the estimate back to half a mile. For an engineer, Dev had a solid tendency to overestimate.
With everything else done, the only thing left was the worst task. He needed to roll her over and see her face. There seemed no easy way to do it, and he wasn't quite willing to reach down and touch the person's clothing. Aside from the ick factor, it simply felt disrespectful to him.
Walking a slow circle around the corpse, he tried to make a decision. With his toe, he nudged one arm inward. It didn't move quite right, and his stomach pitched again as he figured there was a break somewhere in the long bones, or several somewheres. She looked beaten up.
Using his foot was even more disrespectful than using his hand, but he had no way to wash up, not even hand sanitizer. So, with his shoe, he pushed the arm up flush against the torso and then snapped another picture. He hated using the phone and using the battery. He still worried that this might be Izzy, though he’d basically talked himself out of that by now, because the clothing didn't match.
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