by Meg Gardiner
Autumn shook her head, fiercely. “That’s not it. Not at all.”
She grabbed the Western shirt and chaps, picked up the sports bag, and marched toward the river. “This crap can float downstream.”
Jo ran after her. “Don’t. We need the clothing. It’s going to drop toward freezing in a couple of hours.” She grabbed the bag. “Don’t.”
For a moment Autumn held on, like a toddler clinging to a toy. Then she relented and tossed the bag and clothes to the ground. She clawed her hands into her hair and lowered her voice.
“It’s not funny—it’s sick. He’s not a cartoon character. He’s a freak.” She gestured ferociously to her eyes. “He had this white circle around the blue of one eye. Bright white. He said it was a snake eye. He said it would be watching me. It would know if I told anybody about him, and had the power to hurt me.”
She stood with her feet planted, challenging Jo to doubt her. When Jo didn’t, she stalked off, kicking the bag as she went, and gave Kyle a dirty stare.
He raised his hands. “Hey, missy, not my fault.” He shook his head and turned to Dustin. “What was that about?”
“You tell me,” Dustin said. “What did Edge Adventures want you to do?”
“They said the birthday girl had a particular dislike for an ex–rodeo rider she met as a kid. Halfway through the weekend, I was supposed to slip away, put on those clothes, and then burst in on her. See how she reacted.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Dustin said.
“Not my script. Edge cooked it up based on information Autumn’s father gave them. If it’s wack, it’s her daddy’s idea.”
Dustin shook his head. “Man. Her dad’s a piece of work.”
“What does her dad have to do with it?” Jo said.
“She complained to her dad about this guy. The guy gave her nightmares. But her dad pokes fun at it. Autumn hates that.”
Jo turned to Kyle. “And Edge simply asked you to take on the role?”
“I’m the new hire. The rest of the outfit, they all have assigned roles, because of their background and training.”
“What’s your background and training?” Gabe said.
“Needing a job, man. Willing to work hard.”
“You’re not this Red Rattler?”
“I never even been on a horse,” Kyle said. “And now can we stop fussing over Missy Reiniger’s hurt feelings, and get this rescue organized?”
Jo didn’t like the buzz that was vibrating through the air. But she didn’t have time to hash it out. They needed to move.
“Yes. We need to send two people out of here to get help.”
“I’m one of them,” Kyle said. “I ain’t about to hang around and listen to Autumn tell whiny stories around the campfire.”
“I’m the second,” Dustin said.
Gabe stirred, about to speak, but Dustin shook his head firmly.
“Let me do this. I’ll get help.” He turned to Kyle. “We’ll go together. We can make good headway before dark.”
Kyle took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his windbreaker. He started to tap one out, but Gabe shook his head. Kyle thought about it, and put them away. Then he said, “We get back to the road, we can follow it downhill. There was some side roads—driveways, looked like. There’s ranches up here. Few and far between, but we’ll find somebody. Or at least keep going until we get phone reception.”
Dustin waited for Gabe to knock him back. But Gabe said, “Good.”
Jo scouted the path they should take. It was going to be tough.
She was an experienced rock climber who had no trouble with 5.10 climbs. The hillside the Hummer had plowed down wasn’t rock, wasn’t even anything that would be rated by climbers. But it took her ten minutes to climb forty yards back up the slope, around an outcropping of boulders, to a place where she had a comprehensive view of the terrain.
The ground was crumbling and slippery with pine needles. And when she stopped and balanced on the slope, she saw more of the damage the limo had wrought on its sleigh ride to the bottom of the gorge. The Hummer had sideswiped a pine tree halfway down, hard enough to score a bite from the bark. A pale and splintered gash stood out in the waning light.
She looked down at the riverbank. On a rock near the gliding water, Gabe sat whittling inch-thick branches into spears. The buck knife flashed. Close by, Kyle and Dustin peered up at her.
Downstream, the riverbank was nothing but boulders and brush. There was no path on their side.
She half slid back down the hill and shook her head. “You can’t go downstream on this bank. You have to cross the river and climb up the other slope.”
They examined the slope on the far bank. It was dense with ponderosa pine and yellow cottonwoods. The trees lining the ridgeline high above just caught the red embers of sunset, beneath a boil of dark clouds.
“Keep trying your phone all the way up, Kyle,” she said.
He nodded. “We better hit the trail.”
Dustin took a breath. Gabe stood up and handed him the spear.
“Take this.”
Dustin gripped it firmly but awkwardly. He might as well have been handed a lightsaber.
Gabe looked grave. “Before the crash, I heard Von say that the others were a couple of hours behind. Figure you have one hour to get a signal and call nine-one-one.”
Kyle nodded.
“If you get a signal, call the cops first, then text Jo. We need to know if you’ve raised the alarm.”
Jo said, “In twenty minutes I’ll cross the river and head up the slope to try to get a signal myself. Text me your status. I want to know if you’ve reached the sheriffs, if you’re coming back to the Hummer, or if you see signs of civilization.”
“Got it,” Kyle said.
Gabe’s voice was solemn. “If we don’t hear from you in ninety minutes, we’ll have to figure the opposition is closing in. We’ll have to move out on our own.”
Gabe handed Dustin the flashlight, a map, and the compass. Dustin stuck them in his various pockets. Then he walked over to Autumn and put his arms around her.
“I’ll be back. With help, baby.”
She nodded tightly. “Be careful.”
Dustin eyed Gabe. The boy looked on the verge of saying something. Jo hoped it was an apology.
Dustin stuck out his hand. “Take care of Noah, man.”
Gabe shook. “We will.”
Kyle had dug his backpack out of the luggage compartment. He slung it across his shoulders. “We’ll be back with the cavalry.”
They trudged into the river, wading across against the pull of the current. Jo felt time sliding away. Ninety minutes, counting down.
Autumn stood nearby. She clenched her hands into fists and pressed them against her mouth.
“I should go, not Dustin.”
Jo was surprised. “Why?”
“This is my fault.”
“No, it’s not.”
She was pale, but her cheeks were flushed. “The hijackers grabbed everybody just so they could get me.”
“Autumn, this is the fault of the people who hijacked us. You’re the victim.”
She looked on the verge of tears. “I invited Grier. I asked him to come.”
At the mention of Grier’s name, Jo’s throat caught. She spoke quietly. “You’re not responsible for what these criminals do.”
Autumn watched the water flowing in the river. It was slate gray and silky in the dusk. “My dad’s on a flight to New York. When he lands, they’ll phone him. He’ll pay a ransom. I know he will. And he’ll want to talk to me. They’ll have to let him talk to me.”
God, the girl felt completely alone. Jo stepped toward her, intending to put an arm around her shoulder.
Autumn virtually swatted her away. “I’m fine.”
Jo told herself to keep calm. She was the adult here. Autumn was only supposed to be reaching adulthood this weekend. And she was wound up like a piece of tangled string.
“Think positively,” Jo said. “Let’s hope you’re the first one who calls your dad—to tell him you’ve gotten out of here and we’re all okay.”
Across the river, Dustin and Kyle clambered slowly up the steep side of the gorge.
Autumn said, “Please let them find help.”
Jo hoped she’d see them again.
23
Peter Reiniger was first off the plane at JFK. The flight attendants thanked him for flying their ever-more-depressing airline. The captain stood in the cockpit doorway, wanting, what, a tip? Reiniger walked past, head tilted down at his BlackBerry.
No calls from Autumn. Good. That meant Edge Adventures had stuck to their guns and confiscated her phone. And Autumn had not been able to pout or charm her way into wrangling it back.
The terminal was bustling. Outside the plate-glass windows, a jumbo jet taxied across the runway. He scrolled through his phone book for Terry Coates’s number.
He hated flying commercial, but in the current economic climate it was lamentable but necessary. Because the second he signed up for NetJets or stepped off a G5 somewhere, some idiot would snap him on an iPhone and upload it to Twitter and call him the devil incarnate. Financial evil, Satan on wheels. This new century was an era of approbation. The age was off its hinges. But he could not afford to draw the spotlight. Not until people’s acute sense of outrage over their financial losses had faded to manageable tones.
Reiniger phoned Coates as he maneuvered around hordes of slow-moving people who looked lost in the terminal, probably wondering which way Times Square was. His driver was waiting with a card saying P. REINIGER.
Coates’s phone rang.
He and his driver stepped out the doors into a crisp fall night. Clear skies, a cool breeze. Shouting skycaps, touts trying to scam him into accepting an expensive limousine ride. The driver led him to a waiting Town Car and opened the rear door for him.
Coates’s phone continued to ring.
Terry Coates’s cell phone lit up and began to sing.
Sabine picked it up. “Dane. Showtime.”
Haugen pulled to the shoulder of the darkening highway and killed the engine. He took the phone from her. It was playing the theme from Shaft.
“Cliché, no? Black ex-cop, playing action movie games,” he said. “But apropos. The shaft is what he got.”
Sabine’s expression was meant to be flat, emotionless, but her eyes were guarded. “Don’t be so sure. Back at the truck depot, Coates managed to grab Max’s gun and kill him. Or don’t you recall us stuffing Max’s body into the luggage compartment of the Hummer?”
“Max also managed to wound Coates. Coates will bleed to death in the big rig before the weekend is out.”
The phone continued to ring.
“Answer it,” Sabine said.
Haugen plugged the voice modulator into the phone. He took a centering breath and slid a steel door into place over his emotions.
Keep it chilly. They were down two men but still had hours to rectify the mess up the road. Only one thing mattered: preventing Autumn Reiniger from getting away and contacting the authorities. But she was trapped in the bottom of a gorge forty miles from nowhere, and he was closing in on her. Right now, what counted was sticking to the script and keeping Peter Reiniger on schedule.
Haugen answered the phone. “I thought you’d never call.”
In the enveloping quiet of the Town Car, Reiniger held the phone to his ear. The driver pulled into traffic. The voice on the line sounded distorted—a deep basso, stretched beyond normal human range, and twisted like taffy.
“Coates?” he said.
“This is your new reality,” the voice said. “This is your moment of crystalline present tense.”
Reiniger checked the display. He’d dialed correctly. “Who is this?”
“And if you want a future, you’ll listen quietly and do exactly as I say.”
“What’s going on?”
“Let me clarify. If you want a future that includes your daughter, you’ll close your mouth and follow instructions.”
The Town Car accelerated into the New York night. Reiniger watched the road slip by.
Haugen placed Coates’s cell phone on the center console of the Volvo SUV and put it on speaker. Outside, lightning flashed. Wind buffeted the car, but the snaking, forested road was deserted and the voice modulator distorted all sounds, ensuring that Reiniger could not decipher their location from background noise. And he had no means to triangulate their position. Tracing the call would be virtually impossible. Haugen had insured that Reiniger could not pinpoint his geographical position and make a grab to rescue Autumn.
“I take your silence as assent,” he said.
Reiniger said nothing.
“You know this drill. You’ve seen it a thousand times on television,” Haugen said. “You will not contact the police. You will certainly not contact the FBI. Do you understand? If so, say yes.”
“Is this a joke?” Reiniger said.
“Wrong answer,” Haugen said. “I repeat, you know this drill. I am positive you know it from corporate security training. Your firm has kidnap insurance. You have had abduction protection training. It’s impossible that you have not.”
“Where’s Autumn?”
“Shut up.”
Reiniger shut up.
Submission. Haugen glanced at Sabine. In the dashboard lights, her face was eerily lit. She was clicking her tongue against her teeth. He flicked his hand at her, telling her to knock it off. In the backseat, Stringer hunched in the darkness. He knew not even to breathe.
“You have had the training,” Haugen said. “Your corporate muscle told you to phone them in the event anybody is abducted. They told you they would handle any ransom, and the recovery, and that the police need not be involved. This is, after all, nominally a capitalist country. The free market reigns, am I correct?”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to stay in the moment, Peter. Focus your energies on the present. You will not alert your corporate security. No bodyguards, no insurance company flacks, no claims adjusters, or proofof-life mercenaries. This is not about a simple ransom.”
“Then what is it about?”
Haugen listened to the stress in Reiniger’s voice. It was sharp and being suppressed. Either Reiniger was having a mental breakdown, or he was not alone. Otherwise, Haugen felt sure, he would be shouting and throwing things. Haugen had made a study of Peter Reiniger.
“First, I need to impress upon you the consequences of ignoring my directives,” Haugen said. “If you contact anybody—anybody, aside from those I tell you to—people will die. Do you understand? Say yes.”
“Who?”
“Are you asking about Autumn? Or about her friends? Because it’s all related.” He picked up his phone and scrolled to its stored photos. “Starting point. You need proof that I’m serious.”
He selected a photo and sent it to Reiniger. “Take a look.”
In the back of the Town Car, Peter Reiniger felt like he’d taken a two-by-four to the chest. His hands were cold. There was a keening sound in his ears.
He called to the driver. “Privacy barrier.”
The driver eyed him in the mirror, and the glass partition slid up. Reiniger tried to swallow and found his throat too dry. He kept his face blank. Blank and strong. He was good at doing that. It’s how he made his money, at poker and in finance. But his heart was beating too hard, skipping around.
His phone beeped. A photo had been sent. He opened it and stopped breathing.
It was a picture of Autumn. She was on the beach at Candlestick Point. The photo had been taken from the deck of a boat. Autumn was dashing toward the water, accompanied by Dustin. She was laughing. She looked exhilarated.
But behind her were three figures clad in black, wearing balaclavas. Carrying automatic weapons.
/> Reiniger—as the voice on the phone alleged—had indeed been through security training. Anti-kidnapping preparation. He had worked with close-protection bodyguards when traveling overseas. He recognized the weapons the people in the photo were holding.
They were working firearms. Not the decommissioned toys that Terry Coates and Edge Adventures pointed at people.
Real guns. They were aimed at Autumn’s head.
And she didn’t even know it. She thought it was a party. The party he had planned for her. The party he had sent her to.
The party that Edge Adventures had phoned in to the SFPD.
The twisted robot voice warbled from the phone. “Pretty girl. So oblivious.”
“What have you done? Who is this? Where’s Coates?”
The phone pinged again. A new photo arrived. Reiniger opened it and his vision grayed at the edges.
It was a photo of Terry Coates. The Edge Adventures owner was lying on the floor of—what—a tractor-trailer? His hands were bound and he was gagged. And he was covered in blood.
Reiniger tried to focus. “Is this a hoax?”
Ping. New photo.
It was Cody Grier, splayed on the dirt.
Reiniger gripped the phone and tried to convince himself this was a prank, a trick, a massive ruse designed to swindle him. He couldn’t manage it. He dry heaved.
The voice returned. “Threats, I’ve learned, are insufficient. Action is required. Isn’t it?”
“Don’t hurt her.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
The voice, deep and ghostly, so mechanical, seemed to mock him. Seemed to be enjoying this. Reiniger felt nausea and a disintegrative rage, a sense that his center wasn’t holding. He was in a limousine driving down the Long Island Expressway toward Manhattan, his suit pressed, his Rolex gleaming in the streetlights. And death was whispering at him through the phone.
“Give her back to me. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
Haugen tightened his hands into fists. Reiniger was breaking. It was a breathtaking sensation. His heart, dry and knotted, beat faster.
