by Sharon Sala
She went upstairs once to check on Merlin, and found him in the kitchen, having soup.
“Hello, Jade! Are you hungry? There’s more noodle soup.”
“No, but thanks. I’m working a case and just wanted to check on you. Do you need anything?”
“Crackers. I forgot to get them out of the pantry.”
“Done,” Wyrick said, and opened the pantry door, then stopped and grinned. The lineup of cracker boxes was impressive.
“Saltine, pretzel, wheat or rye?”
“Old-school saltines, please,” he said.
She grabbed the box and slid it onto the table in front of him, then went back to the pantry and got a jar of peanut butter, too.
“Just in case you want dessert,” she said.
“You must be psychic,” he said.
She grinned. “I must be,” she said, and then went back down to start running a search on the info Wanda had given her.
Within an hour, she found out why the mother quit contacting Wanda all those years ago. She was dead. She had remarried, to someone named Andy Delgado, but they were both killed in a car accident when Katrina was seven. At that point, Katrina disappeared into the foster care system.
Wyrick sighed. This was bad news. Once a kid was logged into the system, the paper trails were often buried, which meant more digging. But Wyrick was a master at research and buried info, so she went back to work. Katrina would be twenty-six years old now. Wyrick knew she could find her, but there was no way to predict the outcome.
* * *
Charlie slept all afternoon, and woke up just as the sun was going down. He got up and stepped outside long enough to gauge the falling temperature and the gathering clouds, and got a whiff of burning wood and charcoal, and the scent of cooking meat. The residents in other cabins were making dinner on their grills, but he wasn’t cooking.
He went back inside, made himself a sandwich with some cold cuts, opened a bag of chips and popped the top on a longneck beer and settled down in front of the TV to eat.
There was one brief moment when he started to call Morning Light to check in, and then remembered. His vision blurred slightly as he blinked back tears, took a drink of the cold, yeasty brew, then upped the volume on the television and ate his food.
Later that night, after he’d gone back to bed, it began to rain. Charlie roused enough to hear it coming down on the roof, and then rolled over and went back to sleep. It rained off and on all night, and when he woke the next morning, the cabin was cold. He got up to turn up the thermostat, and when he glanced out the window, he noticed the raindrops had frozen onto the bushes.
No wonder it was cold in the cabin. It had fallen below freezing last night. The plus side was that the ground was too warm to freeze, so the only ice was on the trees and the grass.
But it prompted him to think about building a fire. Wood had been laid in the fireplace, complete with kindling below it to start the logs to burning. He took the grill lighter from the mantel and set the kindling ablaze, then went to make coffee.
By the time the logs were ablaze, he was on the sofa with a cup of coffee and a honey bun. He turned on the television again and watched mindlessly as he ate, but it was hard for Charlie to relax. He didn’t know what to do with the day. He thought about packing up and driving on to somewhere else, but was beginning to realize there wasn’t anywhere to go to get away from his truth, and so he sat, staring into the fire.
By midmorning, he was antsy from doing nothing, and decided to go out and get some air. He put on his coat, then, because he was in the mountains, slipped his handgun into the inside pocket of his jacket and locked the cabin on his way out.
He thought about driving down to the lake, then changed his mind and took off walking up the road, passing other cabins as he went. Some had been rented, but more were standing empty. If this had been summer, they would have been full, with people everywhere.
He soon wandered off the road and up into the trees, crunching leaves and kicking pine cones as he went. Squirrels scolded. A hawk screeched from somewhere up above the canopy. The air was cold on his face, but he was warm beneath his coat.
It wasn’t until he began hearing a lot of vehicles, and people talking loudly back up on the road, that he began to wonder what was going on. Then he caught a glimpse of what looked like state police cruisers and realized something serious was happening.
And the moment he walked out of the trees, a vehicle from the park department stopped.
“Sir. Two inmates have escaped from the McAlester Penitentiary and were sighted in the park about an hour ago. We’re asking everyone to get back to their cabins and stay there until we sound an all clear.”
“Damn,” Charlie said. “Are they dangerous?”
“Reported to be armed and dangerous,” the ranger said. “What cabin are you in?”
“Number One.”
“That’s a good distance away. Hop in and I’ll give you a ride back.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said, and got in, glad for the lift.
As soon as they arrived, Charlie got out, unlocked the front door, carried in some more dry firewood, then went inside, locking it back behind him.
He laid his handgun on a table in the living room, added a couple of logs onto the burning embers in the fireplace, then set the alarm on his Jeep and went through the cabin checking windows to make sure they were locked.
After that, he turned on the television, found a local station that was covering the search, and then grabbed a cold pop and a bag of chips for the lunch he’d missed and settled in.
The police factor increased as the ensuing hours passed. He kept hearing choppers flying over, and knew finding them by air would be hard, considering the heavily forested mountains around them. He hoped they found them before dark, because no one in the park would be sleeping tonight if they didn’t.
It was just after sunset when Charlie stepped out to bring firewood in for the night. He paused on the steps to check out the area, and then began gathering up an armload. He was just about ready to go back inside when he heard a bloodcurdling scream from up the road.
He dropped the firewood, darted back inside, grabbed his handgun from the table and slammed the door shut behind him as he leaped off the steps.
The woman’s screams were getting louder, which meant he had to be getting closer. Three of the nearby cabins were inhabited, but he couldn’t tell where the screams were coming from. And then all of a sudden a young girl came running out of the middle cabin, running barefoot in her pajamas.
“The bad men... Mommy told me to run,” she sobbed, and pointed back inside the cabin.
Charlie grabbed her by the shoulders. “See my cabin at the end of the road? The door is unlocked. Go inside and lock it. Don’t open it for anyone unless it’s me or the police. Now run!”
“But... Mommy...”
“Go!” Charlie said. “And don’t look back.” Then he took his gun off safety.
The little girl ran toward Charlie’s cabin as he ran toward the open door. He didn’t know what he was going to find, but the woman wasn’t screaming anymore.
It was a careless, foolish thing to do, but when Charlie reached their front porch, he didn’t slow down. He went up the steps and into the cabin on the run.
There was an unconscious man on the floor in a pool of blood, and the woman was nowhere in sight. Then he heard something breaking in the back of the cabin and a woman moan, and he slipped down the hall, following the sounds.
A bedroom door was ajar, and he could see two men in prison orange, and the missing woman, unconscious and bloody, lying spread-eagle on the bed.
There was a rifle lying on the floor beside the bed, and both prisoners were taking off their orange jumpsuits and tearing through the man’s suitcase, trying to find clothes that would fit.
One prisoner was
in the act of changing clothes, and the other one was still rummaging through a suitcase. They had taken the cash out of the woman’s purse and the man’s wallet, and it was lying on the bed beside the unconscious woman.
“Hey, Grover, I found the car keys. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Just a minute, Joe. I’m almost—”
Charlie shoved the door inward, slamming it against the wall.
“Get down on the floor! Down on the floor!” he shouted.
Joe made a dive for the rifle, and Charlie fired.
Joe dropped and screamed “My knee! My knee!” while Grover hit the floor screaming “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Charlie could hear sirens now and speeding vehicles on the road outside. Someone else must have heard the screams and called the ranger station. He kicked the rifle out of their reach and then moved quickly to the woman on the bed to feel for a pulse. She was alive, and with a spreading bruise on her jaw.
Moments later, he could hear footsteps, and men shouting “Police! Police!” as they came running into the cabin.
At that point, he called out.
“Back here! In the back bedroom. I have the prisoners subdued.”
The woman was moaning, beginning to regain consciousness as police swarmed the room, and Joe, the prisoner he’d shot, was writhing and screaming in pain. Grover already knew the routine and was belly down with his hands locked behind his head.
Charlie’s hands were in the air. “I have a permit,” he said, and carefully laid the gun on the floor and stepped back. “I’m down the road in Cabin One. I heard the woman screaming and started running up this way. I met their daughter running out of this cabin, and sent her down to mine and told her to lock herself in. The man in the living room was already on the floor. I don’t know what they did to him. The woman was like this, and they were changing clothes when I arrived.”
One of the officers took Charlie’s handgun, as another one was calling for multiple ambulances. Two state policemen headed down to Charlie’s cabin to retrieve the child, while the others on-site handcuffed both prisoners and dragged them out of the cabin.
The first ambulance arrived and took the wounded prisoner, and the second one was right behind it. They took the wounded man from the living room floor, while the third ambulance arrived and began tending to the woman.
Charlie watched from a corner of the room as the woman began talking and mumbling as she came to.
“Ronnie...they hurt Ronnie. My little girl...my Shelby?”
A state police officer pulled Charlie aside.
“Sir, we need to see some ID.”
Charlie pulled his wallet from his back pocket.
“I’m Charlie Dodge. This is my driver’s license and my private investigator’s license. My military ID and my permit to carry.”
“Whoa. This is enough,” the officer said. “You’re a PI?”
“Out of Dallas,” Charlie said. “I was taking a break from the job and walked into this.”
When he mentioned his name, a park ranger joined them.
“Are you the same Charlie Dodge who finds missing kids?”
“Yes, missing people in general,” Charlie said.
“The same Charlie Dodge who just found that missing hiker in Big Bend National Park?”
Charlie nodded.
The ranger smiled and shook Charlie’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you! Ranger Arnie Collins, who you worked with on that case, is my brother-in-law. He’s stationed in the Chisos Mountains area, and he’s still talking about that.”
“Small world,” Charlie said. “What happened to the man in the living room?”
“Head injury. Looks like blunt-force trauma of some kind.”
Charlie pointed to the rifle he’d kicked out of the way.
“Maybe from that?”
They recovered the rifle and gave Charlie back his handgun. Charlie pocketed his weapon, and was walking out with some of the men when two officers came running back.
“The kid won’t let us in the cabin. She’s crying and thinks everyone is dead.”
Charlie sighed. “Ahhh, dammit, I told her not to open the door for anyone but me or the police. And you two aren’t wearing uniforms. She’ll let me in, and if she doesn’t, I have a key,” Charlie said, and took off running toward his cabin while the officers got back in their cruiser.
Charlie was already back at the cabin and knocking on the door when they arrived.
“Hey, honey! It’s me. Your mama said your name is Shelby. You can open the door now. These men are police.”
Charlie heard the lock click, and then the door opened slowly inward.
“Mommy is alive?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “And the officers are going to take you to her, okay?”
She came out sobbing and walked into Charlie’s outstretched arms.
“Is my daddy dead?”
“No, but they hurt his head and he’s already at the hospital where they’re taking your mommy.”
The little girl put her arms around Charlie’s neck, hiding her face against it.
“Are the bad men gone?”
“Yes, the bad men are gone,” Charlie said.
She went limp in his arms. “You saved my life.”
Charlie hugged her.
“You were a very brave girl. You saved yourself when you ran. Now these officers are going to take care of you.”
“Okay,” Shelby said, and let go of him, then stopped. “I don’t know your name.”
“My name is Charlie Dodge.”
There were tears on her face when she looked up at him unblinking.
“I will remember you forever.”
The words were medicine, healing the raw and broken bits of Charlie in a way nothing else could have done. And then they were gone.
He took a slow, shaky breath, then paused on the porch to pick up the firewood he’d dropped and went back inside. He put another log on the fire and then locked the door. The warmth and silence after so much chaos was welcome, but it felt like his time here was over.
He went into the kitchen to make himself one more meal, and then sat down to watch television as he ate. The incident regarding the prisoners being captured and taken into custody was on the news, along with mention of the family who’d been taken hostage, but no mention of his part in it, thank God.
Twelve
Wyrick stopped work during the day to make a food run. She’d cooked all of the frozen pizzas she had on hand, and eaten all of the leftover Chinese food in the fridge. The peanut butter jar was empty and she was out of bread.
Merlin had food and groceries delivered, but she didn’t want too many strangers knowing where she lived. After what had gone on with Darrell Boyington, she was gun-shy in a whole new way.
But she’d done all of the ordering online at Whole Foods, including some fully cooked meals requiring nothing but heat and eat. She grabbed her purse and a cold Pepsi, then put on a coat on her way out the door.
But as she drove away, her thoughts were on Charlie. She knew he was taking a much-needed break. There wasn’t anything to be concerned about, and Charlie was a grown man. He had taken care of himself and Annie long before she knew him. But she needed him to be okay, so that she’d be okay, and that was her hard truth. Only this was the third day he’d been gone and she missed him.
The afternoon traffic on the freeway was heavy, but it felt good to be out of the apartment. She’d spent so much time at the computer that she didn’t even mind the crazy drivers.
What was unsettling was knowing Cyrus Parks had tried to have her killed. It was a big game changer from trying to win her back, then trying to force her to come back.
The fact that she’d been able to shut down Universal Theorem worldwide had obviously scared him. Taking his money
in the way she had would only be a temporary aggravation...and she didn’t want him to think she’d kept it. She needed to find a project she knew he would hate, and donate all of that money in his name. Then figure out what kind of safeguard to put in place between them that would make him back off for good.
She could have taken care of all of this years ago, but it would have meant revealing her truth, and that would have turned her into a science project. There would have been people wanting to study her, and countries trying to buy her skills, and her existence would have been hell. The day Charlie Dodge hired her was the day she gained purpose again, and she didn’t want to lose that.
But that was for another day. Right now she had food to pick up and a lost granddaughter to find.
Her order was ready when she got to Whole Foods, and the pickup went smoothly. She dug a Hershey bar from the groceries and took a big bite as she left, opting out of the freeway to drive through the city, taking backstreets and winding her way through neighborhoods to get back to Merlin’s estate.
As soon as she got the car unloaded and everything put up, she put a chicken tortilla casserole in the oven to bake, set the timer and went back to check the latest search she’d been running. When she sat down at the computer and clicked on the screen, she instantly focused. The last search she’d been running had several hits, and there was one that stood out from all the rest.
* * *
If Katrina Delgado had even an inkling that her grandmother was looking for her, she would have been over the moon. She didn’t remember anything about her birth family, and barely remembered her mother.
Her foster families had been good ones and bad ones, and when she aged out of the system at eighteen, she was on the streets of Philadelphia for a whole year before she made a friend who took her in, and then almost another year before she landed a steady job at a pancake house.
