The Dark

by Valentina Giambanco

  After Maple Falls a bend in the road opened onto the North Fork Nooksack River: deep green flowing past a white-pebble bank before the woods closed in.

  Pretty, Madison thought.

  Peter Conway’s old picture from Fred Kamen’s file had been handed out together with a brief but comprehensive catalog of his achievements as a human being. John Cameron’s photo had also been released with the warning that there would be a second abductor working with Conway. The sheriff’s office had called in off-duty deputies, and the search party was spread out over three counties.

  The first cabin on their list was ten minutes’ worth of negotiating a steep, narrow lane toward the border. They couldn’t just roll up to the front door without an excuse, and the sheriff had come up with the pretext of a missing hiker who might be injured.

  Madison held back. She scrunched her hair up into a ponytail and threw a WHATCOM COUNTY CITIZEN ON PATROL green T-shirt for camouflage over her new ballistic vest. The old one could not be saved after its last engagement. As she tightened the side straps, the flutter of a memory came and went. Madison checked her piece in its holster and exited the pickup.

  The car parked in front of the cabin was a brand-new silver SUV. The deputies knocked on the door, and a minute later a woman opened it with a toddler in her arms. They spoke briefly, and then the deputies came back.

  The SUV had been a giveaway by itself: whatever Conway was driving, it would not have see-through windows. They were looking for a van or a small truck with darkly tinted windows—it was not going to be a showroom model with kiddie toys in the backseat.

  Back on the highway Madison listened to each and every word that came through on the radio as, one after another, the cabins were checked and crossed off the list. The sheriff had dispatched one unit to each airstrip known to be in the area, and so far there had been no unusual traffic.

  Madison kept watching the sky: every dot that could be a plane, every cloud that might mean rain and a delay in the flight. Her brain was in ticker-tape mode and would not stop: an airstrip up in the mountains required a small, agile plane and an experienced pilot; a small airplane wouldn’t have enough fuel to fly up from California and back without refueling; a small airplane might take off from a British Columbia airport fully fueled, pick up its cargo, and continue on to California. And if the big payoff for Conway was the price of selling his hostage, then that was how Jerome McMullen had been able to afford his services—he wouldn’t be paying Conway; the LA drug dealers would. McMullen. Sweet Jesus, it was McMullen.

  Madison left a message on Dunne’s voice mail to check McMullen’s contacts within the jail and see whether there was a chance he had met someone inside who was connected to the right people. Forget the gardening groups and the compulsory probation period: if McMullen got out, he would be gone.

  Nathan Quinn picked up his cell and called Conrad Locke. Locke picked up on the second ring.

  “Nathan, is there news?”

  “No, not yet.”

  The kidnapping had been all over the media since the early morning.

  “Conrad, I need to ask you something,” Quinn continued. “It’s something the boys talked about that Fourth of July, back in 1985, when we were at your estate. I know it’s a lifetime ago, but you might remember about this.”

  A beat of silence. Conrad Locke, friend and colleague of Quinn’s father, had been present and part of all the bleak and dreadful moments of that year.

  “Anything I can tell you, Nathan, I will, of course.”

  “Jimmy had overheard his dad making a threat on the phone. As if someone unwelcome had come around the restaurant, and Jimmy’s father was going to make sure they wouldn’t do it again. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Locke thought about it. “I remember asking your father whether everything was all right with Sinclair, who had looked very disturbed, and your father said there had been work issues. He didn’t say more than that, and I didn’t press him. Maybe I should have.”

  “I know you were interviewed by the police at the time, like everybody else, but were names mentioned between you two? Did my father mention anybody just between the two of you?”

  “What’s going on, Nathan?”

  “I think we’re getting close. There are links between two men who were in Seattle at the time and one of the kidnappers.”

  Locke sighed. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think names were ever mentioned.”

  Quinn wasn’t really expecting a different answer, but he’d had to ask.

  “Nathan, what’s happening about Jack? Are the police doing anything useful?”

  “They’re looking,” Quinn replied, and even to him his words sounded dead and empty.

  Madison drove up and down the Mt. Baker Highway as they spoke to locals and checked the cabins on their list, and one after another all the addresses were cleared. She felt gritty and raw from lack of sleep.

  There were so many unknowns: maybe Sullivan had been wrong, and Conway didn’t hire a rental from that agency, or maybe he did, and it was one of the empty ones they had found. Empty because the transaction had already happened and John Cameron was on his way to California or wherever his fate awaited him.

  The red pickup and the patrol car parked by the side of the road. The deputies were busy on their radios, and Madison stretched her legs and thumbed through the papers sent by Spencer.

  Conway was a prudent man: he had gassed up in Bellingham, where his trace would be quickly lost, and he’d bought groceries at the Kmart on East Sunset Drive—too big a store for anyone to remember him. The only possible bone he had thrown them was a single transaction for bottled water—a pack of twelve—at the Cross Roads Grocery & Video in Maple Falls. And all this had happened before the remains of David Quinn had even been found. McMullen had gone into damage-control mode as soon as the police had started sweeping the area where he knew the body to be buried.

  Madison drank a cup of coffee from the thermos: it was warm and tasted of plastic, but the policeman’s gesture had been the only good thing the day had brought. She showed the map with the highlighted grocery store to Deputy Andrews.

  “This place,” she said. “This is close to the Kendall airfield, right?”

  “Sure, just minutes away.”

  “Okay, so what else do we have around here?”

  “What else?”

  “Yes, I’m looking at the other airstrips, and they are way to the west, so, if we take this grocery store as the center of a circle of, say, twenty miles, what do we have around here that’s a place flat enough and long enough to land a small plane?”

  “We don’t have—”

  “We’ve run out of strips. I’m talking about a field, big and flat and long enough.”

  The deputy narrowed his eyes. “How long?”

  Madison’s knowledge of aeronautics was limited to the air shows her grandfather had taken her to when she was a child.

  “I don’t know. I’d say seven hundred feet if it’s clear and at least double that if you have trees around it.”

  Andrews thought about it for a moment. “North of Silver Lake there’s a field where people camp in the summer,” he said. “The whole place will open up for business next month, but it’s still shut for the winter season.”

  “Are there cabins near there? And I mean really close?”

  “Yes.”

  Madison flattened the map on the car’s hood. “Where is it?”

  “There.” The Deputy pointed at a flash of light green on the map above the blue of the lake.

  A single road dropped from the lake to Maple Falls, and at the end of that road sat the Cross Roads Grocery & Video store.

  Chapter 63

  The Silver Lake Road snaked up between Red Mountain and Black Mountain, heading north toward the Canadian border. The road left behind the residential area and started climbing quickly, thick woods on both sides alternating with fields.

  Madison wanted to kick herself: she had not been thi
nking straight. The most important factor had to be the proximity of the place where they held Cameron to a landing field: Cameron was a dangerous hostage to move and lethal if unfettered. They had to keep traveling time to a minimum, and even then getting him from point A to B was going to be a complex operation.

  She looked out the window: a bright sky, and somewhere not too far away men were preparing to fly a human being toward an ugly death.

  The patrol car traveled fast, and so did Madison behind it. Lights and shadows flickered on her windshield as she drove in and out of the canopy of trees.

  Her cell vibrated on the passenger seat: it was Quinn’s number. She watched the small screen light up and, after a beat, fade back to black. She couldn’t talk to him, not really. There were no words she could offer him to describe what she must do.

  The deputies’ car pulled into a clearing with three cabins lined up and no other cars parked out front.

  “There’s another set of three cabins farther on,” Andrews said.

  Madison and the deputies approached the first: a wooden porch jutted out, and it backed straight onto the woods. Her instincts said it was empty. The door was locked, and there were no lights from the side windows. They moved on to check the second cabin.

  Just then, in the shadow of the firs, the front door of the third cabin seemed to move.

  “Wait,” Madison said, and she pointed.

  There it was again—a quiver. All three took out their weapons. No sound came from the cabin, only a rustle from the treetops and their footsteps on the dirt.

  There were fresh tire marks by the third cabin.

  Madison took her place on one side and Andrews on the other. The door was ajar, and it moved in the breeze as if the house was breathing. Madison leaned the tip of her Glock against it and pushed gently. She didn’t know whether she was prepared for what she would find.

  Someone caught his breath behind her: the room had been almost destroyed—chairs upturned, supplies spilled everywhere, a table pushed over against a wall. Someone had fought a battle on every inch of that floor. On their immediate left another door was open, leading into a basement, and her eye caught the brand-new bolt on it. Madison took the first step down and saw the body; her heart lurched, and she ran down the stairs.

  A tall, heavily muscled man in his late thirties with a gaping wound in his neck and slashes to his chest lay on a stretcher. He was covered in blood, and he was not Peter Conway—she was sure of it. Madison checked his pulse, and the man groaned.

  “Do you have first-aid supplies in your car?” she said without turning around. Behind her someone hurried up the steps.

  The man’s hands were trying to stem the flow of blood from his neck wound. Madison knelt by his side, and his eyes fluttered open.

  “Where are they? Have they gone to meet the plane?”

  The eyes shone unfocused.

  “Where are they?”

  Andrews’s partner came back with bandages and got busy around the wound. Madison stood up: signs of the struggle were all over the basement, too, and plastic cuffs lay in pieces on the ground. Cameron had been cuffed yet had managed to get away. His victim—as far as Madison could see—was not armed, but it probably had not started that way. Cameron had attacked him and freed himself, at least for a while. However, the way the upstairs looked and the absence of Conway’s body did not bode well. The man on the ground could barely breathe; he wasn’t going to tell them anything about anything.

  “I’m going to the field. Is it straight on from here?” she asked.

  “I’m coming with you,” Andrews replied, but she was already halfway up the stairs.

  Madison had reached her car when Andrews caught up. “Ma’am, what’s really going on here?”

  She turned to him. “The hostage is about to be sold to men who will torture him and keep him alive just so they can inflict further excruciating pain and suffering. Right now, this minute— that’s all I have.”

  Andrews backed away one step. “Okay.”

  Madison climbed into the pickup. “Straight on from here?”

  “Yes.”

  The pickup screeched its way out of the clearing and back into the road. In her rearview mirror Madison saw Andrews’s patrol car speeding after her and the man talking quickly on the radio.

  If there were decisions to be made, then she should make them now, because later—should there be a later—in the midst of things she would only have time to react, not to think and certainly not to feel the ragged pain in her chest. Anything that might slow down her reaction time had to be put aside, because one thing she knew for sure was that they were going to be outnumbered and outgunned.

  They made it there in minutes: Madison glimpsed the field behind rows of firs and pulled in on the side of the road, almost into a ditch. The field was a long, thin, rectangular swath clear of trees, and the sky above it was just beginning to darken.

  Andrews pulled in behind the pickup. Madison racked back the slide on her Glock—one bullet in the chamber and ready. Through the trees she caught sight of the van parked at the bottom end of the field, and a sound hummed in the air around them: it could have been the engine of a small plane.

  She looked at the young man in the olive-green uniform: Andrews wore his ballistic vest and shouldered a sniper rifle with a scope. It wasn’t the soft-armor protection worn by most: it was hard-plate reinforced, just like her own. They were a hostage-rescue team of two. The engine buzzed louder above them.

  The white plane glided onto the field and came to an easy stop after a turn that left it in position for takeoff, about fifty feet from Conway’s vehicle. Madison, belly on the cold ground and elbows digging into the dirt, crawled across the last few feet to get into place in the shadows. Conway’s van was fifteen feet in front of her in the open, and she had a clear view of the back and the driver’s side. She tucked her head behind a barberry shrub. Her eyes had not moved from the truck: no trace of Conway or his hostage yet. The windows were rolled up, and it was impossible to see inside. Madison guessed Conway was in the driver’s seat and Cameron bound in the back. She had briefly thought about rushing in and storming the van before the plane landed, but there hadn’t been enough time, and the mirrors covered the back view of the vehicle. Conway would have spotted them straightaway and cut them off at the knees.

  The plane was a smart six- to eight-seater, and whoever had landed it knew what he or she was doing. The question was, how many men would be escorting the prisoner? Madison was a veteran of drug busts and stakeouts since her time in Vice and had seen all sorts of modifications made to the inside of planes. If they took out some of the seats, they could easily strap in a stretcher, which would be the safest way to transport Cameron. It meant the plane could carry the pilot and three to four men, all carrying weapons. And Conway would be armed, too—one gun in his hand and at least one backup. He was alone now, handling both the deal and the prisoner at the same time. It wasn’t ideal, and he would be wary of being jumped. Wary and watchful.

  Madison reviewed her thinking: Conway was already in the back with the hostage, waiting, and they’d come out together; otherwise, the dealers could waste Conway on sight, pick up their prisoner, and take off without paying a cent.

  The doors opened at the same time, and Madison held her breath. There he was, Dead Eyes, tall and skinny like a malevolent eel. He moved awkwardly—maybe Cameron had gotten to him, too. He guided his hostage out of the van, the prisoner blindfolded, cuffed behind his back, and barely able to walk. Madison thought of the inside of the cabin, saw he could stand on his own two feet, and let herself be glad of that simple fact.

  Three men came out of the plane: one had a narrow face and wore a suit; the others were wide in the shoulders and looked like bodyguards in matching long leather coats and jeans. Madison shifted on the ground to get a better view—the van stood between her and the group.

  She trained her binoculars on the guards, and, sticking out from the leather folds of thei
r coats, she saw the tips of two MAC-10s with suppressors pointing at the ground. Madison forced herself to breathe and listen. This was the job right now—just to breathe, listen, and be ready. She felt a spike of fear like a bitter taste in her throat.

  There were no introductions and no greetings; it wasn’t a coincidence they were all in that field. The buyers had clocked that Conway was alone but didn’t overplay it; nevertheless, Madison was sure they were wondering if he could be taken without killing their prize in the process.

  The man in the suit took out a cell phone from his breast pocket. Madison had asked herself how Conway would receive his payment, and the easiest method seemed to be a call from the payer to someone somewhere who’d do the electronic transfer once the merchandise had been inspected, and the bank would send Conway a confirmation message. The merchandise.

  Madison scanned the four men and saw the body language of power, threat, and the straightforward trading of goods between businessmen. She read them like players at her father’s table and knew which bodyguard couldn’t wait to get his hands on Cameron and which couldn’t care less.

  Their California tans looked out of place in Washington State, and they seemed too bulky to move fast, but they did carry heavy-duty gunmetal. The man in the suit was the deal maker: Madison watched and listened.

  Conway moved Cameron forward with the muzzle of his gun against his temple and guided him toward the three men. The man in the suit approached them, and Madison steadied herself. He pulled off Cameron’s blindfold. Conway’s gun pressed against his skin, and Madison hoped Cameron wouldn’t do something idiotic because he thought he had nothing to lose.

  Maybe he was strong enough in body and mind to stay still and bear it, strong enough to look Suit in the eye and not react. Cameron looked pale and weak, but he didn’t so much as blink, and for a surreal moment Madison felt proud to know him. Suit examined him and looked pleased with his condition. He replaced the blindfold.