The Nightmare Thief

by Meg Gardiner

  “The flood channel certainly runs into the mine. I can understand why the sheriffs thought Wylie was swept to his death. Without having access to the satellite photos, it’s a logical conclusion.” She wiped her palms on her jeans. “I need to see the drop-off where his body was found.”

  She put on her climbing harness, tied the end of a rope to it, and handed the rope to Gabe. He slung it behind his hips and held on, ready to anchor her if the floor inside the mine gave way.

  “Shout if you run into mummies,” he said. “Or a mutant with a chain saw.”

  “Jackass.”

  “At your service, chica.” He handed her the flashlight and secured his grip on the rope. He was smiling, which almost allayed her fears.

  Cautiously, sweeping the beam of the flashlight ahead of her, Jo walked into the mine. Though the roof was several inches above her head, she ducked. A rivulet of cold warning ran down her back. Her throat constricted and the old, desperate dread threaded through her, hissing, Small spaces collapse. The wind moaned like a ghostly pipe organ.

  Stop it. Calm down. She forced herself to breathe. The walls were cool rock. Thousands of chisel marks were hammered into them. She wondered if anybody, ever, had gotten rich out of this hole.

  Or if Wylie had thought he might.

  Fifty yards in, she found the drop-off. It was a vertical side shaft, about three feet in diameter, which plunged thirty feet to rocks and crags and mining debris.

  Yes, Wylie could have been swept this far into the mine by a torrent and then over the lip of the drop-off. But what if he hadn’t been?

  She forced away the sensation that the walls were bulging, creaking, bearing down on her. Taking a breath, she continued along the tunnel. Soft dirt mounded beneath her boots, muffling her footsteps. Support beams were hammered into the tunnel’s walls and across its ceiling. She rounded a bend, swept the flashlight ahead, and stopped. A pit was dug across the floor. It dropped at least fifteen feet. It was an emergency drain, in case of flood.

  Directly above the pit, the old miners had inserted a crossbeam—a railroad tie. And above the crossbeam, dirt and rock had crumbled away. The wood was completely exposed. The sight didn’t reassure her. She jumped across the pit and kept going. The tunnel continued to bend. The daylight behind her grew dim and dusty. The walls narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Then, when she thought it couldn’t feel any more constricting, the tunnel branched. Tentatively she explored each offshot until she reached a final, dingy dead end. In the beam of the flashlight she saw only the occasional piece of trash. She turned and walked out.

  “You all right?” Gabe said.

  She nodded. She took off her harness, tilted her head back, and gulped fresh air. At the sight of the sky through the trees, her tension bled away.

  “Somebody killed Wylie,” she said. “I have nothing to back that up, except gut feeling. But I’d put real money on it. I’ll drive up to Reno and lay odds.”

  She got out her camera. “The question is who, and why.”

  Gabe scanned the sky. Cumulus clouds were boiling in the west. “We’re going to lose the light. And we’re going to get rain.”

  “I’ll hurry.”

  She spent ten minutes shooting photos of the mine and hillside. Then she stopped, gazing up the slope. The Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office had searched the mine and flood channel for evidence. But she now believed the flood channel to be irrelevant.

  She looked at the trail.

  Consciously slowing herself down, she walked up it. Creeping along, she scanned the ground, examining it foot by foot.

  It took her twenty minutes, but high above the mine, she stopped. The sunlight kicked again—like a flash from a signaling mirror. Cautiously, keeping her eyes focused, she walked toward the source of the light.

  Ten feet from the path, stuck between two rocks, she saw it.

  “Gabe.”

  He climbed the trail to her side. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Dusty and dinged, half covered with pine needles, it was a cell phone.

  “Yeah. I need gloves.”

  She dashed down to her backpack, grabbed latex gloves and a Ziploc baggie, and ran back uphill.

  “It didn’t move,” Gabe said. His tone was wry.

  She took a clutch of photos showing the phone in situ. “The sheriffs were out here in summertime. The sun was higher in the sky. The phone’s display wouldn’t have reflected the light the way it does now.”

  “You coming up with a reason why they would have missed it?”

  “Same when Evan came up last month—and besides, she wasn’t looking for a cell phone, because a cell phone had already been found on Wylie’s body and the cops didn’t know he had a second one. Nobody did, until she and I compared notes.”

  She pried the phone from its cranny and held it, gingerly, by her fingertips.

  Gabe said, “If it’s Wylie’s, it’s been here five months, exposed to the elements. I wouldn’t worry about fingerprints or DNA.”

  “You never know.”

  “And you don’t want to march it triumphantly into the sheriff’s station unless it actually belongs to the victim.”

  “Let’s check.”

  She pressed the Power key. Nothing happened.

  Gabe took his own phone from his pocket. It was the same, extremely popular brand.

  “Got any more gloves?” he said.

  She handed him a pair. He got his key chain—a carabiner on which hung a Swiss Army knife. From the knife he slid a straight pin. He used it to eject the SIM card from the dead phone. He swapped the SIM into his phone and turned it on. The phone lit up.

  “Yes,” Jo said.

  The SIM was damaged. Only portions of the display showed up—if it had been a piece of paper, sections would have looked washed out from water damage. The entire display was weak and faded.

  “It won’t be stable,” Gabe said.

  Quickly she scrolled through the controls. She found the damaged SIM’s phone number.

  “Write this down.” She rattled it off and Gabe scrawled it on his wrist. “The cops can get started with that.”

  With increasing excitement, she checked the call register. The damaged SIM displayed only partial phone numbers. And there was no identifying information on any of the callers. But the numbers were all in the Bay Area. That strongly suggested to her that it was Wylie’s phone.

  The screen flickered. “I’m going to lose it.”

  She got her own phone. As quickly as she could, she sent it data from the damaged unit. Then she looked again at outgoing calls. A series of three-digit phone numbers had been called in rapid sequence. 6-2-2. 9-4-4. 8-2-1.

  She felt chilly. “I think somebody was trying to dial nine-one-one.”

  “Trying repeatedly to dial nine-one-one, and missing?”

  The wind gusted around them. Gabe’s expression sobered.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Somebody would miss if he was trying to dial 9-1-1 without looking at the display. If he was dialing for help surreptitiously—because the phone was in his pocket or behind his back. If he was in deep trouble.

  The display faded briefly to white. It came back dimmer than before.

  She needed to find everything she could before the SIM died. The sheriffs probably had tech experts who could revive it, but she couldn’t take the chance. Hurriedly she scrolled through the phone’s apps and found a dictation function.

  She tapped Play.

  She heard sounds. Noises. Scratching, muffled—the sound of the phone’s microphone recording from inside in somebody’s pocket.

  She heard a man’s voice. “Where are we going?”

  She glanced at Gabe. His eyes were dark.

  The man’s voice again: “Just tell me that much. How far should I plan to drive? Do I need to stop for gas?”

  Jo closed her eyes. Her heart was beating hard. “It’s him. It’s Wylie.”

  On the phone, a long pause. “Well?”

&nbs
p; Finally, more distant, another voice answered. “Drive.”

  “Please, I just want—”

  “Shut up.”

  The second voice was swaddled in ambient sound.

  “Man or woman?” Jo said.

  Gabe shook his head. “Can’t tell.”

  They listened for another minute. They could hear Wylie breathing heavily.

  “He’s scared,” Jo said.

  Engine noise. Wylie spoke: “Stay on Five-eighty? We’re going to be at Altamont in a minute. How far—”

  A sound like a dull slap.

  Jo clenched her jaw. “Wylie’s driving someplace against his will. And he’s trying to leave a trail, to tell people where he’s headed.”

  Wylie’s voice came through again, shaky now: “Why are you doing this?”

  The other voice, distant, more muffled than before. Words too hard to make out. Jo held the phone closer to her ear.

  “You know what the score is,” the voice said.

  Who was in the car with Wylie? A man, or a woman with a deep voice . . . was it a jealous husband? A former lover? Because the voice sounded on the edge.

  “Shut up. Or”—noise—“punishment.”

  The recording cut out.

  “Damn,” she said.

  Punishment.

  “We have to get this to the sheriff’s department.”

  She ejected the SIM from Gabe’s phone and sealed it in the Ziploc baggie. They hurriedly gathered their gear, and Gabe shouldered his pack.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  They were too deep in the wilderness to get a signal strong enough for a phone call. But sending a text message required only a weak signal and only for a few seconds. She typed a message to Evan, headed: URGENT. She queued up all the data she’d pulled from the damaged SIM, and pressed Send.

  Message failed.

  She tried again. Messages placed in queue. Will be sent as soon as possible.

  Jo hefted her backpack. The voice on the phone had unnerved her.

  And she knew that Phelps Wylie had not been hiking the mountainside when the floods swept down. He had been dragged to the mine at the mercy of a human tormentor.

  The speedboat tied up at a harbor on Treasure Island. The men in ski masks shut down the engine and leapt onto the dock. In the abrupt silence, the boat bobbed, water lapping against the hull.

  Treasure Island: good omen.

  Autumn climbed onto the dock. The ride had been thrilling. It had rattled her teeth. Lark climbed out behind her, followed by Grier and Dustin. A minute later the Hummer came tearing up, followed by a black Volvo SUV. At the sound of the engines a seagull took flight, squawking.

  The tall man pointed at the Hummer. “Inside, on the double.”

  They ran along the dock and piled in. Inside were Peyton, Noah, and Autumn’s “nemesis,” U.S. Marshal Ritter, aka Kyle the Edge Adventures guy.

  Autumn hesitated. “I thought we were broken into separate teams.”

  “There’s been an adjustment to the itinerary,” said the boat driver. “First, you get commando training. We’re going to an assault course.”

  “I didn’t sign up for training. I get a crime spree. Emphasis on spree.”

  The stout gunman climbed into the Hummer, grabbed their overnight bags and purses, and tossed them onto the dock. “Give me your phones. You’re going to boot camp.”

  Reluctantly they handed their phones to him. He climbed out and slammed the door. Outside, more masked people scurried around. Somebody opened the baggage compartment at the back of the Hummer and began loading gear. A heavy object landed with a thud.

  Haugen watched Stringer and Friedrich shove the heavy duffel bag into the luggage compartment of the Hummer. They slammed the hatch. Autumn leaned toward the window and stared out at him.

  Von came over. “What if they figure it out before we get to the compound?”

  “We’ve talked about this,” Haugen said.

  “They’re not as stupid as I expected, and they’re not drunk enough yet.”

  “You quiet them immediately. You do it in front of the group, pour encourager les autres. You film it, so Peter Reiniger will be convinced that we’re serious.”

  “And then I get rid of the evidence.”

  “Yes. And make sure it’s one of the disposables.” Haugen paused, to be sure Von understood. “Not just the weapon—the one who becomes the lesson.”

  The stout gunman climbed into the driver’s compartment on the passenger side. Another man, wispy and blond, pulled off his mask and got behind the wheel. He cranked the ignition, grinding it until the Hummer finally fired up. They got on the Bay Bridge and headed east, toward Oakland. Finally the stout gunman pulled off his ski mask. A head shaped like a pumpkin sat atop his chunky frame. He ran a hand over his hair.

  “Greetings. I’m Von, your drill instructor.”

  Autumn leaned toward him. “I don’t want an assault course. I want room service.”

  “Assault course and spa,” Von said. “Honey, it’s six-star. Don’t worry.”

  Dustin raised his head. “As long as there’s booze.”

  “There’s always booze,” Von said. “It’s a party.”

  10

  Through the pines Jo saw, at last, the crest of the hill. They’d been hiking back toward her truck for two hours. She was thirsty, and an altitude headache was lurking. The sun darted in and out from between gathering clouds. The air had a nip.

  She was itching to get Phelps Wylie’s damaged cell phone to the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office, down the twisting mountain road in Sonora. She took her phone from her jeans pocket. No signal. The messages to Evan Delaney remained in the queue to be sent.

  “We’re still probably forty miles from the nearest cell tower,” Gabe said.

  He slowed on the trail and took a careful breath. He looked golden in the sunlight. His eyes were warm and full of life. But breathing deeply could still cause him pain, because of scar tissue, gunshot damage, and surgical work. He was trying to get a lungful of oxygen without feeling as if a spear had ripped open his side.

  She ran a hand down his arm and squeezed his hand. “Homestretch.”

  The final two hundred yards of the trail zigzagged around pines and October yellow cottonwoods and lichen green rocks, to a clearing beside the logging road. Through the trees she glimpsed sunlight bouncing off the windows of her Toyota Tacoma pickup.

  She heard music and voices. She and Gabe exchanged a look.

  They walked into the clearing, and Jo slowed. Rock music was blaring from a car stereo, the Kings of Leon promising that your sex was on fire. A gargantuan black Hummer was parked by her truck. Red and yellow flames were painted on its sides. Its hood was up.

  A motley group of young people loitered nearby. Young women with carelessly styled hair wearing tired jeans and expensive shoes. Fit young men trying to impress them. And failing—one guy sat on the dirt with his back against the Hummer, head hanging low. He was almost as green as the splotch of vomit a few feet away. A girl in pink velour lay on the backseat of the Hummer, feet sticking out the open door.

  Gabe murmured, “Early in the day for so much hilarity.”

  Two men were bent over the Hummer’s engine. One wore a baseball cap with EDGE ADVENTURES stitched on it. The other was dressed in black tactical gear. He was wiry and had a dark orange wisp of a mustache, like an overripe peach.

  He straightened and said, “Von.”

  A third man walked out from behind Jo’s truck.

  Gabe didn’t slow or say a word, but as they crossed the clearing he took his hands from his pockets and stepped a foot ahead of Jo. Her internal radar began to ping.

  She said, “Engine trouble?”

  The man called Von nodded. He too was dressed in tactical black. He was wiping grease from his hands with a rag.

  “Hope it’s just the battery, not the starter,” he said.

  Peach Fuzz added, “We’re chauffeuring our young guests on their way
to a weekend outing. One of them got car sick.”

  The young guest in question, the green-faced boy, was, at the moment, crawling alongside the Hummer toward a ditch.

  Von nodded. He had a head like a basketball. “We stopped and then couldn’t restart the engine. You got jumper cables?”

  Jo’s antennae continued to twitch. Was that why he was snooping around her truck? “Yeah. I can give you a jump.”

  She unlocked the truck and got the cables from the crew cab. Nearby one of the girls, a brunette wearing a gold sweater and jeans tucked into what looked like Prussian officer’s riding boots, sulked against the side of the limo.

  “This is six-star?” She crossed her arms. “Where—Appalachia?”

  Von said, “Gonna get back on the road in two minutes, Autumn.”

  She ostentatiously checked her watch. “Two minutes max. Or you get me a helicopter and evacuate us to the Mandarin Oriental.”

  One of the young men from the Hummer, who was wearing a Dean Martin–style hat and a sweatshirt with GRIER printed on the back, wandered near the trees, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself.

  “Weekend church retreat?” Jo said.

  Von smiled. It looked robotic. “Twenty-first-birthday party. Daddy’s picking up the tab.”

  Gabe took the jumper cables. His face was flat and his eyes alert. Jo got in the cab, fired up the engine, and maneuvered the truck grille to grille with the Hummer. Gabe raised the hood.

  It took only a minute to get the Hummer started. The starter ground for a few seconds and then the big engine gunned to life, harsh and whiny in the mountain air.

  The green-faced young man climbed to his feet. Swerving back across the clearing, he opened one of the Hummer’s doors and grabbed a water bottle. He sauntered over to Autumn and nuzzled her neck.

  She pushed him away. “God, Dustin. You smell like puke.”

  Gabe glanced inside the open door of the Hummer. Jo saw it too: a gleaming silver handgun with a telescopic sight.

  Von said, “It’s a replica.”

  The man in the Edge Adventures cap wiped his palm on his jeans and extended his hand. “Kyle Ritter. Don’t worry none about the guns. They’re for show.”