Of course, there’d also been that unfortunate run-in the previous summer that landed him in prison, but he should have been the one mad about that, not her.
No, she was just playing her cards tight to the vest, not wanting to show the others she had a favorite right off the bat. He had no doubt that as soon as they found some time to be alone, she’d be all over him. “Oh, Ricky, it’s so good to see you.” “Oh, Ricky, I’ve missed you so much.” “Oh, Ricky, take me here.”
Admittedly, those probably weren’t the exact words she’d use, but something similar.
He allowed himself to muse about his once and future girlfriend for another few seconds before turning his attention to the job at hand. He had a vested interest in its success, after all.
“Just so we’re clear, Mr. Orbits,” Miss Marsh had said after filling him in on the job during their private flight to California. “Your continued freedom is contingent on the children being found alive.”
“A few lost kids? No problem,” might have been what he’d said, but what he’d been thinking was, he would never allow himself to be taken back to prison no matter the outcome of the mission.
Miss March turned out to be some kind of mind reader. “And in case you decide not to honor our deal…” She motioned to someone sitting at the back of the jet.
Up walked the bruiser who’d been with her at the prison, and his clone who’d been waiting for them on the plane. The former was carrying a leather pouch that he set on the table in front of Miss Marsh. He opened it so that it lay flat. Strapped to one side was an odd-looking gun, sort of Buck Rodgers meets vaccination gun. The man inserted a tube from the other half of the pouch into the barrel.
At the same time, his partner moved next to Ricky. “Take off your shirt.”
Ricky snorted. “Huh. Right. I don’t think so.”
“Do it,” Miss Marsh said, “or we’ll return to Crestridge and put you back in your old cell.”
“Hey, just joking. No problem. I’ll take it off.”
He removed the polo shirt she had given him before they left the prison, and flexed his toned arms, showing off his pecs. Prison had been useful in that respect.
“Not bad, huh?” he said to Miss Marsh. “Go ahead. You can touch—”
A small circle of cold metal pressed against his right side below his pectoral muscle, and bam! Something shot painfully under his skin.
“Hey!” he yelled, jerking away. “What the hell?”
He looked down at his torso and saw a red circle where the gun had shot him, surprisingly tiny for the amount of pain that had come with it.
The circle of cold was on him again, pressing below his shoulder blade.
Bam!
Twisting sideways, he tried to knock the guy’s arm away, but his tormentor had already moved out of the way.
“Seriously! What the hell?”
The big man jabbed the gun into Ricky’s bicep and pulled the trigger.
“Ow! I swear to God, if you do that again—”
“Pants off,” the second man ordered.
“Are you kidding? Not a chance.”
“Pants off.”
“You can go ahead and turn this plane around, because they are staying on.”
“Very well,” Miss Marsh said. She rose and moved into the aisle. “I’ll inform our pilot.”
Ricky let her get almost to the cockpit door before he closed his eyes and said, “Wait.”
She turned back, an eyebrow raised.
“Okay, okay,” he said.
She didn’t move.
He unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants to the floor.
“Thank you,” she said, heading back to her seat.
“Underwear, too,” the talking half of Tweedledee and Tweedledum said.
“Hold on. Where are you thinking of shooting me?”
“Underwear.”
Again, he had but one choice.
Before he could pull them down, the man added, “Face the window.”
Ricky turned begrudgingly and lowered his Fruit of the Looms.
“Bend over.”
“I’m flattered and all, but not everyone who goes to prison is into this kind of thing.”
“Bend over.” This time the words were accompanied by a shove to Ricky’s back.
Reluctantly, Ricky leaned toward the window. In rapid succession, he was shot twice in the butt, first in the right cheek and then the left.
“You can get dressed now,” the talker said.
Once clothed again, Ricky sat—gingerly—back in his chair and glared at Miss Marsh. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Our insurance in case you decide to disappear. Consider yourself Lo-Jacked.”
“Tracking bugs?” He figured it was something like that.
“As I said. Insurance.”
“But why five, for God’s sake?”
“You could deal with the pain of digging one out. Five, less likely. But even if you were inclined to try, you might have noticed some of them are really hard to reach. We’d find you long before you removed them.”
As much as he wished otherwise, she was right. He had to see this thing through. Good thing he was the best hunter in the business. If he knew himself—and he did—he’d find the kids and have them home to mom and dad within twenty-four hours.
First, though, he needed to pick up the trail. He went to the spot all trails had in common—the starting point.
The Conifer Lodge was located not too far west of Yosemite National Park, in a shallow vale between tree-covered ridges on the north side of the highway. The lodge itself had seventy guest rooms, a popular restaurant on the ground floor, a gift shop, and an area for activities such as horseback riding and archery.
Ricky parked the Silverado in the lot among a group of SUVs, and then spent the next fifteen minutes watching the front of the lodge.
The security camera above the main door was easy to spot. From its position, he knew it wasn’t the same one that had recorded the footage Miss Marsh had shown him of the van leaving the lodge. That camera had to be located down at the other end of the parking area. He didn’t see any others, and if there was a guard who patrolled the facility, he sure didn’t get around to the front very often, because Ricky hadn’t seen him, either.
Ricky slipped out of his car and walked a wide arc around the archery range so that he could approach the lodge from behind. There were several outbuildings scattered across the back of the property. He used them to move within forty feet of the lodge’s rear entrance without ever exposing himself. From there, he studied the building.
Stone steps led up to a partially covered deck and several sets of glass double doors to the main lodge. Ricky scanned the structure with his binoculars for more security cameras but saw none.
He sauntered over to the building and let himself in.
Turned out, the night clerk was the only person awake on the entire first floor. The kid, who couldn’t have been more than twenty, sat behind the front desk watching a video on a computer, headphones on.
Ricky had asked Miss Marsh a lot of questions after he was chipped and she finished her brief. Among his inquiries had been one about the layout of the lodge.
He could tell she’d been impressed with that, but that was to be expected. Ricky was impressive. He didn’t know how not to be.
She had floor plans sent to her while they were still in the air, and he’d been able to study them as the plane approached the airport outside Sacramento. So he’d likely find what he was looking for in one of the private offices on the other side of the door behind the front desk. Luckily there was a second way to get there that didn’t involve having to ask the night clerk to get out of Ricky’s way.
Getting to that back door, however, did mean he needed to cross the lobby.
After easing around the corner in a crouch, he crept over to one of the couches that faced a giant fireplace. The night clerk didn’t even flinch.
Ricky slunk al
ong the sofa as far as he could go and then paused. Now came the hard part. Between him and the hallway to the back door was thirty feet of floor that was in full view of the clerk. That was a whole lot more exposure than Ricky liked. The front desk was closer—under twenty feet. If he could get there, he could use it as a shield while he moved over to the hallway.
Or he could knock the kid out.
Kidding. Just kidding, he thought.
Eyes on the clerk, he took a breath and snuck across the stone floor to the safety of the counter. No movement or sound from the other side.
Ricky smiled. Damn, I’m good.
One second later, his shoe caught on a rough spot of stone, causing a squeak. He froze.
From the other side of the counter came the creak of a chair, followed by the tinny, muted sound of music. The clerk had removed his headphones.
Everything’s fine. Go back to your stupid video. Nothing to see here.
Another chair creaked, longer this time.
Then a step.
Crap.
Ricky could feel the clerk standing no more than two feet away, the counter the only thing separating them. If the kid leaned forward far enough, he would see the top of Ricky’s head.
Buddy, just sit down.
A tense silence.
Seriously, man. I said I was joking about knocking you out. Don’t make me do it.
A floorboard groaned. Not a step, more the shifting of weight.
The sound of a door opening was totally unexpected. Even odder, it wasn’t a regular door. The sound was more distinctive, like one for a—
Refrigerator?
A moment later it closed again, and then the hiss of an opening soda can filled the air. This was followed by the chair creaking again, and the disappearance of the tinny headphone music.
After giving it an extra twenty seconds to make sure the clerk had indeed retaken his seat, Ricky continued down the counter and entered the hall.
The door to the management section was locked, but it was one of those off-the-shelf, in-the-doorknob kind of keyholes and yielded to his picks in seconds.
A new hallway, smaller, with four office doors on the right and the door to the front desk area on the left.
Ricky made a quick survey of all the offices. The first two each had a couple of desks and a few filing cabinets crammed inside. The third and fourth offices had only one desk each. On the walls in the third were posters touting workers’ safety and insurance benefits and employees’ rights. The HR office, he guessed.
The fourth was clearly the lodge manager’s. Along with a nicer desk and matching filing cabinets was a large, framed photograph of the lodge from at least fifty years earlier. Also hanging on a wall was a diploma revealing the manager’s name as Scott Larson, and that he had a degree in hospitality management from Washington State University.
Ricky took a seat at the man’s desk and fired up the computer.
As was all the rage, the screen was password protected. Ricky searched the desk area, and found a piece of paper with the man’s login taped to the back of a family picture on Larson’s credenza.
It took Ricky a little over a minute to find the registration information for the missing kids. They had used a total of six rooms: the three chaperones had their own rooms while the kids paired off.
Ricky brought up a list of other guests who’d stayed there at the same time. Since the summer season had yet to begin, there had been only thirty-seven others. Of those, twenty-eight remained at the lodge for at least an additional two days after the kids, while the other nine left the same day. The nine consisted of two families: one of four and one of three, who had both been at the lodge at least a week before the kids’ arrival; and two solo male travelers who had checked in the day before the kids got there.
Ricky took a picture of the list.
Normally his next move would have been to call one of his contacts and have the person do background checks on the guests. But even if Miss Marsh hadn’t explicitly warned him not to communicate with anyone from his old life, he had a feeling most of his contacts wouldn’t have picked up the phone. He was supposed to be in prison for screwing up a job, after all. No one would want anything to do with him.
That meant he’d have to hand the names over to Ananke. That bummed him out. Even if she was apparently in charge of their little gang, he would rather present her with fully researched information, or even better, with the kids themselves. How she’d love him for that.
C’est la vie.
He brought up the records for the kids again. According to the database, they and their chaperones checked out at 8:27 a.m. Getting into the security camera footage required an additional password.
Ricky typed in the manager’s screen password and let out a quiet “ha!” as access to the security camera system was granted. It was amazing how many people didn’t take the time to create different passwords, but he wasn’t complaining. It sure made his job easier.
Whoever had set up the camera footage database needed a lesson in organization. The thing was a mess. Ricky figured it out, though, and tracked down the footage for the morning the kids had left. First, he verified that the clip Miss Marsh had shown him had indeed been recorded on the camera at the west end of the parking lot, at the time she had told him. Next, he switched to footage from the camera directly above the lodge entrance, and started watching at the 8:25 a.m. mark. The kids began trickling out by 8:28. They seemed bored, or maybe they were still tired—Ricky was willing to admit he wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to anyone under twenty. By 8:33, all six kids and two of the chaperones were standing near the curb with their bags.
A white passenger van pulled up at 8:35, driven by the third chaperone. Luggage was loaded into the rear and everyone climbed in. The van departed at 8:41.
Ricky reached to stop the playback, but paused his finger above the space bar as a trio of motorcycles passed into frame, heading in the same direction the van had gone. It might have been a coincidence, but in a hunt, one could not afford to ignore anything.
He tried enlarging the image of the bikers, but the picture became fuzzy pixels. He zoomed the image back out and noted what he could. Big bikes, with cargo bins straddling the rear wheels. The kind of bike you might want on a camping trip, and probably a common sight in places like Yosemite.
The bikers appeared to be all men, though they were hidden under leather jackets and sunglasses and helmets so he couldn’t be sure. One had skin far too fair to be anything but Caucasian. The other two probably were also, but again it was impossible to tell from the crappy footage.
Ricky reverse it to when the kids were leaving the lodge and watched the whole thing again. As everyone was climbing into the van, Ricky paused the scene.
He scrubbed the video back a few seconds and played it again, and then repeated the process.
At the start of the section Ricky was reviewing, one of the chaperones, a middle-aged guy with bushy salt-and-pepper hair, had not joined the others inside the van. By all appearances, he was shutting the rear doors. That’s how Ricky had interpreted it on previous viewings. But as the man went through the familiar motions this time, Ricky saw the guy glance over his shoulder in the direction the motorcycles would come from a few moments later. Not only that, the man appeared to nod in their direction, like he was acknowledging them.
Or telling them he was ready.
Miss Marsh had shown Ricky photos of all those who were missing. Though he hadn’t been allowed to take the documents with him, she had let him use his phone to photograph each image. He shuffled through the images now, and stopped on the one that matched the man in the video.
“Hello, Mr. Andrew Carter,” he whispered as he looked back at the computer screen. “What’s your story?”
A door opened in the hallway outside the office.
Ricky shut the computer down and ducked below the desk.
What the hell is someone doing here already?
He checked
his phone, sure it couldn’t be much past four a.m., but it was almost five. He’d spent more time looking through the computer than he’d realized. This being a hotel, five in the morning was not particular early. He just hoped it wasn’t the manager. Putting lousy-password-protecting Scott in a quick sleeper hold would severely compromise the team’s low-profile mandate.
He could hear footsteps moving down the hall and then a door opening. This was followed almost immediately by the sound of voices. Ricky guessed whoever had just arrived was talking to the night clerk.
Was this the replacement clerk? If so, Ricky should be able to get out of there without anyone being the wiser, as soon as things settled down again.
But the new person did not stay in the reception area for long. The footsteps headed Ricky’s way for a moment before stopping. Ricky heard another door open and the person step inside. He crept over to the wall the manager’s office shared with the HR room and placed his ear against it.
The musical tone of a computer turning on confirmed the person had entered the neighboring office. Knowing this might be his best opportunity to get out of there unseen, Ricky snuck into the hallway, peeked into the HR office, and then scampered past when he saw that the woman sitting at the desk had her back to him. Moments later, he was once more in the public area.
He spent the next thirty minutes correlating the locations of the kids’ and chaperones’ rooms with those of other guests on his list. Interestingly, the room for one of the solo travelers was right next door to the one Andrew Carter had used. The hotel had been half empty at the time so it couldn’t have been a coincidence.
God, if Ricky could just make one phone call and have someone look into the names, he knew he’d break this thing wide open before Ananke and the others had even had breakfast.
His stomach growled.
Breakfast. Now there’s an idea.
It turned out the lodge restaurant didn’t start serving until six a.m. Which meant Ricky had to wait. Which made him cranky. Which meant when the restaurant did open, the Denver omelet he ordered didn’t arrive at his table until 6:17.
The Excoms Page 13
