The Shadow Tracer

by Mg Gardiner

  “Feel it?” he said.

  The girls stepped forward, one on either side of him. The wind lifted Reavy’s pale hair from her shoulders. She wet her lips. Her eyes, always suspicious, scanned the terrain. Far to the west, toward Texas, a line of storm clouds blackened the horizon.

  “This place is lost. And they don’t know it,” she said. “That gives us the advantage. They won’t be expecting us.”

  Fell’s gaze swept past the airport control tower and the pecan trees where locusts thrummed, toward the smattering of lights in downtown skyscrapers miles away. Her near-black hair blew across her face.

  She said, “The woman will be expecting us. Keller.”

  Grissom said, “So we don’t go straight at Keller, do we?”

  Fell shook her head. “From behind.”

  That pleased him. “Come on.”

  He rented an SUV, using an Arizona driver’s license that said Barry Briggs. It belonged to his brother, who looked like him and who had a perfect driving record because he’d been dead eighteen months.

  Accelerating onto the freeway, he turned to Reavy. “First stop?”

  The glow from her phone lit her face, shadows around her eyes. “Half a dozen attorney services in the metro area. Two with skip tracing capability.” She looked up. “Head downtown. Start with DHL.”

  18

  The hailstorm came as they ran to the truck. Lightning split the air. The temperature dropped, the trees slashed under the wind, and the sky spilled a torrent of ice. Pebbles bounced off the ground and pinged Sarah and Zoe in the back of the neck.

  “Oww, hurry,” Zoe said.

  They jumped in the cab and slammed the door. The hail turned to ice cubes and golf balls. The clouds seethed overhead.

  They couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t possibly camp. This could turn into a night of tornadoes, and Sarah wasn’t going to take shelter in a rest area bathroom with her child, while Danisha’s truck flew away to Kansas.

  The noise increased, the hail thrumming down.

  Zoe said, “Mommy, go.”

  Sarah whipped out of the parking space. Hail stuck to the windshield wipers and formed a ledge of ice. She drove toward town, looking for a safe haven, listening for tornado sirens. She turned on the radio.

  “… Oklahoma City police have issued a bulletin about a possible child abduction. In a bizarre case, a kindergartner involved in a school bus accident this morning was discovered not to be the daughter of …”

  Sarah lowered the volume.

  Zoe said, “He’s talking about my school bus.”

  Stupid. Inevitable. “Maybe.”

  “The child and the woman who claimed to be her mother have now disappeared. Sarah Kel—”

  She turned the radio off.

  You knew this was coming.

  “Mommy, he was talking about you.”

  The hail clacked against the windshield. “I know, honey.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get …” Idiot. “Let me get out of this hailstorm.”

  “But the clouds are everywhere,” Zoe said.

  At Will Rogers station, detectives Dos Santos and Bukin watched the TV news bulletin.

  “… Keller is believed to be driving a beige Nissan truck with Oklahoma plates …”

  On-screen flashed Sarah Keller’s driver’s license photo and the tag number of her pickup.

  Bukin tapped her pen relentlessly against her desk. “It’s a start, but it’s not an Amber Alert.”

  Amber Alerts were intended to mobilize the public and rescue children kidnapped by predators. But before an alert could be issued nationwide, law enforcement needed to be certain a child had been abducted—and that she was in imminent danger of death or serious injury. In Zoe Keller’s case, Bukin and Dos Santos weren’t there yet. They were waiting to hear back from California officials, particularly the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department, which had investigated Bethany Keller’s death.

  In the meantime they had obtained Sarah Keller’s cell phone number. They’d requested information from the phone company on Keller’s recent calls and the phone’s location. And they’d learned that Keller’s skip tracing equipment included a satnav system—DHL had coughed up for a portable dashboard GPS whose location could be tracked. They were waiting for a callback from the satnav company.

  Bukin tapped her pen. Dos Santos paced, biting his thumbnail. Bukin said, “What else is eating at you?”

  “Something’s off about this,” he said. “It should have been big news long ago.”

  “Meaning, a young mother’s murdered, dad and the baby disappear—it should have made national headlines.”

  “The news channels, Court TV, tabloids …”

  But it hadn’t. On Bukin’s desk lay a slim stack of news articles about Beth Keller’s death. Their gist: “Bear Creek woman dies in house fire.”

  Dos Santos stroked his goatee. “Special Agent Harker was certainly gung-ho to point blame at Sarah Keller and light a fire under our feet. What’s his real angle?”

  “You’re saying it’s either a cover-up or a stitch-up.”

  “Either the California cops were completely clueless, or we’re being played like yo-yos at the end of a string.” He checked his watch. “Still business hours on the West Coast. I’ll call the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Department again, try to talk to the investigating officer on the case.”

  “Detective?”

  Bukin looked up. Across the room, the desk officer was waving at her. “Southwest Security’s on the line—they’ve located the Keller woman’s satnav.”

  Three minutes later Bukin dropped her desk phone back in its cradle. “Sarah Keller’s portable GPS is live and headed east on I-40. It just passed through Lonoke, Arkansas.” She found the number for the Arkansas State Police. “I’ll call the troopers.”

  As she punched the number, Dos Santos’s phone rang. He answered, listened, and abruptly straightened. He snapped his fingers to get Bukin’s attention. Into the phone he said, “Is that so?”

  In the parking lot outside Burger King, the Topeka police officer put away the radio. The patrol car’s lights flashed in the hot evening sun. Traffic rolled noisily along the road nearby. In the blue station wagon parked outside the restaurant, the family was hunched and nervous. A baby squalled in the back seat.

  The mother stood beside the car, arms crossed, rocking back and forth. “Go on, search the car. I told you, that’s not my phone. I don’t know how it got into my diaper bag.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The phone belonging to Sarah Keller was bagged and in the officer’s hand. The baby in the back seat kicked and screamed.

  “I have no clue what’s going on,” the mother said. “We’re on our way back to Kansas City. My name’s Kelly Hardwick. That’s my crying baby and my two-year-old boy. I don’t have a five-year-old girl. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you people?”

  19

  The motel lobby was crowded. A bus carrying a high school marching band to a Memorial Day competition had pulled in, the driver and band director deciding not to risk the road in the thunderstorm. Around Sarah four dozen teenagers talked at high volume. Perched on a chair by the plate glass windows, Zoe took in the scene, backlit by headlights on the highway and rain blowing sideways in the wind. Another bolt of lightning sliced the sky. The teens gasped and laughed.

  Sarah finally got to the desk. She handed the clerk a prepaid card in the name of S. C. Keller and smeared her signature.

  “You’ve got your hands full,” she said. “But better safe than sorry.”

  The clerk nodded distractedly and handed her the room key. “Enjoy your stay, Ms. … Keiler.”

  She parked the truck at the farthest corner of the lot, front end out, hiding its Oklahoma plate. Motel owners sometimes snuck out at night to write down the license numbers of guests’ vehicles, but Sarah hoped the manager might be unwilling to slog through pouring rain into soggy grass and weeds to copy down the numb
er from the back.

  Cops would be another matter.

  The room décor was concrete breezeblock painted gray. The bedspreads were gold nylon. A placard said nonsmoking room, but a stale tang of smoke permeated the drapes and carpet.

  Zoe hopped on a bed. “This one’s mine.”

  “As you wish, Buttercup.”

  She drew the drapes and threw the dead bolt. Zoe set Mousie on the pillows and said, “I’m tired.”

  “Brush your teeth and put on your PJs.”

  While Zoe was in the bathroom, she turned on the TV news. Movie star attacked by chimpanzee. Court to hear arguments in Second Amendment case. Sarah no longer knew where she fell on the issue of gun control. Destroy all firearms, except the ones she needed to defend Zoe? Bus crash child may be missing baby.

  “Authorities in Oklahoma have instituted an all-points bulletin for a woman suspected of child abduction. It’s a bizarre and fast-developing case …”

  She hit Mute. Her driver’s license photo flashed on the screen. Next to it were her name, description, and last seen. It said she was traveling with a five-year-old girl who answered to Zoe. And up popped her daughter’s class photo.

  Her heart thumped heavy in her chest.

  She wondered if Danisha was watching this. She wondered what the instructors at the Y’s self-defense class were thinking about her. And the instructors at the firing range.

  The bathroom light turned off and Zoe trooped out. She looked sleepy. She’d had a hell of a day. Sarah flicked the TV off.

  When Sarah tucked her in, Zoe gave her the big-eyed, serious look, and Sarah waited for it. For questions about grown-up trouble, or about Nolan Worthe and Bethany Keller, the father and mother she had never once mentioned.

  Zoe sighed. “Where are we going, Mommy?”

  Sarah felt almost relieved. “To San Francisco.” Why not?

  “Really? To the beach?”

  “Really.” She kissed her good night.

  Later, when Zoe lay burrowed in the covers with Mousie tucked lovingly under her chin, Sarah took her burn phone into the bathroom and shut the door.

  Unless she got Zoe to real safety, Beth’s sacrifice would be for nothing. And Why not? didn’t count as a real plan. She paced, tapping the phone against her forehead.

  She could call A. J. Chivers. That’s what Danisha would counsel: Get DHL’s lawyer involved. She brought up his number. Her thumb hovered over it.

  Sarah knew what A.J. could and couldn’t do. Even a shrewd lawyer had limited options. And in her case, they all involved going back to Oklahoma City. They all involved tabloid hysteria, and the cops, and Zoe being taken into foster care. She might as well paint a sloppy red X on the door as a target for the Worthes to attack.

  She sat on the edge of the bathtub. She brought up a different number. She stared at it with trepidation.

  “Screw it.” She dialed.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose and listened for the call to connect. Through the air, across thousands of miles, forging a bridge across the years.

  He had promised this number would always be in service, that he would be there on the other end. She tried to work out what she was going to say.

  It rang.

  The phone rang on the coffee table in the darkened living room. He climbed down the stairs from the loft to get it. The evening dusk of the Cascades was tilting through the plate-glass windows. He’d spent the previous night on duty, caught a flight up here for the holiday weekend, and slept through the afternoon. Daylight was fading. The phone was insistent.

  He picked up. “Lawless.”

  “Michael.”

  The voice sounded distant, and static flared on the line. Like the caller was phoning through an electrical storm.

  He raised his head and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The eastern sky beyond the Three Sisters had fallen to a gray and purple night. The peaks of the volcanoes rose above the green boughs of the forest. The snow was tinged red with the sunset.

  He walked to the windows. “What’s happened?”

  There was a pause. Had he gotten it wrong?

  Then she said, “I’m blown. And running.”

  In her ashen voice, the anguish and the desperation came through clear, and brought it all back.

  In the motel bathroom, Sarah leaned against the wall and spoke in a hush. “I’m headed west, with Zoe.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “For now.”

  “Are you in a safe location?” he said.

  “A motel. Safe from one storm for the moment. Not safe for more than twelve hours, I’d wager.”

  He hadn’t asked who it was. He heard her say his name, and he knew. It both reassured and unsettled her.

  “What do you need?” he said.

  “Help. Backup. A safe place to stay while I sort all this out.” She pushed away from the wall. “A way out. Legal, illegal. A border. New documents. Something.”

  “Give me the story.”

  “Turn on your television, Lawless. I’m the story.”

  He paused. “You don’t think I …”

  “No. I don’t think you had anything to do with this.”

  Not directly. Not in the last twelve hours.

  But five years earlier, he had shifted her compass. Running through the snow, clinging to the baby, she had looked back and seen three dark figures emerge from Beth’s cabin. A man and two women—Grissom and those girls.

  She ducked behind a tree. Their voices carried to her on the wind.

  “Nolan. Yeah, got to be …”

  “… baby. Here someplace. Keep looking.”

  They thought Nolan had run off with Zoe. Sarah stifled a sob. Her hands were seriously bloody. The snow pricked her face.

  She peered fearfully around the tree trunk. She could see no sign of Nolan. The dark figures slid out of sight, headed away from her. This deep in the trees, the snow hadn’t yet covered the ground, so her footprints had died out. Still, she took a breath and ran again, careless of all the things she would learn in the next few years: covering her tracks, leaving false trails. She tore through the forest, barely aware that the axis of her life had radically shifted to spin in dark new directions. She just ran.

  Until he stepped from the trees into her path.

  She drew up sharply. She felt charged with lightning, as if she could blow him out of the forest if he came one step closer. He had dark eyes. A scar ran through one brow and down to his cheek.

  “Stop right there,” she said. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  And he said, “Wait.”

  In his right hand he held a pistol. In his left he held a badge.

  “If you want to stay alive, let me help you,” he said.

  She said, “I need help.”

  Through the phone, his voice was calm. “Take it from the top and don’t leave anything out.”

  It took her twenty minutes. He listened and asked only for clarifications. She wondered if he’d known about her life with Zoe in Oklahoma all along. They’d met only a few times, that day in the forest and in the fraught hours that followed, but he seemed to have gotten inside her skin.

  When she finished talking, he was quiet for a minute. He said, “You could surrender yourself.”

  “You know that’s off the table.” Anger flared in her. “Maybe you had to suggest that, but no. Walk into some police station and submit to a potential murder charge? No.”

  He was quiet another long minute. “Can you get to New Mexico?”

  That meant several hundred miles of driving, with a target painted on her back. “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll arrange to have a friend meet you. What are you driving?”

  “My boss’s truck.”

  “Do the police know that?”

  “Not yet.” Then she said, “Michael … where will this end?”

  “I don’t know. But if we can keep you and Zoe safe, we’ll have time to figure that out.”

  “We?” she said.

/>   “You and me.”

  Her lips parted. He wasn’t adding the rest, the words she loathed and feared and had hoped for: you and me and the U.S. Marshals Service.

  “Thank you, deputy marshal,” she said.

  “Get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

  Then he was gone. She leaned on the sink, hoping she hadn’t just signed her death warrant.

  20

  In the first minutes after dawn, noise droned from the elevated freeway. Fell stared at traffic through a slit in the motel curtains. She had the night watch. She sat in a cheap chair by the window, knees drawn up, knuckles white, switchblade gripped in her right hand.

  “All quiet,” she said.

  From the bed Grissom grunted. “Didn’t think you knew I was awake.”

  “Your breathing changes,” she said.

  She was barefoot, in cotton panties and a white tank top. The tattoo, the cross with the comet’s tail inked on her right hip, looked black in the dim light. She retracted the blade of the knife, her guard duties done.

  Reavy lay in bed beside Grissom, blond hair feathered across her cheek. Her eyes were open. He propped himself on an elbow, pulled down the covers, and ran his fingers across her hip.

  Fell and Reavy were not Grissom’s ordinary wives. They didn’t live with him or carry his name. But when Grissom took them on a job, they were wives of the wind, assigned to bond with him. And Grissom said only lovers could build the link required to know each other’s thoughts, words, moves. If things came to a firefight, having sex could save your life.

  Reavy dug it. Fell didn’t mind standing watch. Fell had been a wife before.

  She and Reavy were Eldrick Worthe’s granddaughters. They were blood of the first blood, sealed in the blessing ceremony, bound, branded, and committed bone and soul to the clan. So said Eldrick, and Isom, and their mothers. They were obedient unto death.

  In other words: fuck with the family, and they’d fuck you back twice as hard and four times as dirty. Fell knew that. That’s why this job was so big. Get the kid back. Make the family whole. Nothing was bigger than that.