Hiding in plain sight, or some such cliché he had heard before.
While he had no deep-seated need to harm the girl, he needed her to believe that he would like nothing more. For their purposes he needed her compliant, which could be achieved only if she was on the verge of being petrified at all times.
Kidnapping her had been a solid first step, smacking her with the gun a necessary act that had turned out to be an excellent follow-up.
“Keep working,” Cuddyer said to Jasper, the younger man nodding in response, his mouth hanging open, just as it always did whenever he was scared or uncertain or both. It was a look Cuddyer had seen far more times than he would have liked over the years, though he had long since stopped commenting on it.
Some things just were the way they were.
All things considered, putting up with such a tiny quirk was a small price for unfettered loyalty.
Taking up the hammer on the floor beside him, Cuddyer looped around the table and walked toward the girl, allowing the head of the tool to slide from his grasp, gravity pulling it toward the floor before he tightened his grip around the handle. The simple act seemed to have the desired effect, the girl’s eyes opening wide as she pressed herself back against the wall, athletic shoes sliding across the dusty concrete floor in an effort to gain purchase.
A small smile crossed Cuddyer’s face as he moved closer, stopping just a couple of feet away from her. He stood with his weight balanced, silhouetted by the overhead lights, staring down at her.
Twice the girl opened her mouth, unbridled fear obvious on her face. Cuddyer could tell she wanted to ask questions, but no words passed her lips, her throat gripped tight, unable to produce a sound.
“You’re going to do something for us,” Cuddyer said, the look on his face growing more pronounced. Flicking his wrist just slightly, he tapped the head of the hammer against his leg, watching as her eyes traveled from it to him and back again.
“And if you don’t, my friend here and I are going to have some fun with you and then take you for a drive in this blizzard.”
The threat was something Cuddyer had come up with on the drive out, the sort of thing he knew would get her attention, would conform with whatever she already thought she knew about them.
“Do you understand?”
It took a moment for the girl to understand that it was a direct question and that a response was required. Cuddyer could see her mental faculties begin to work, her head nodding up and down, her hair bouncing around her head.
A few hours earlier the girl had not been afraid as he pulled the gun, still fighting with everything she had, even trying to scream at the sight of the weapon. Now, taken far from her element, stripped of anything resembling equal footing, she had regressed into exactly the position he had hoped she would - frightened and compliant.
“Get up.”
There was no movement of any kind, the girl remaining curled tight at the foot of the wall, one shoulder pushed in front of the other as if cringing for an attack she knew was coming.
Taking a half step back, Cuddyer tapped the hammer again along the outside of his thigh. “Get up.”
The words came out just shy of a growl, a command that could only be construed as such. He kept the scowl in place, waiting as she slowly drew her feet up under her and rose, using the wall as a brace.
The uneven sway of her upper body, the grimace on her face as she reached full height, told him she was still feeling the effects of the earlier blow, which was a good thing. The less able she was, the less likely she was to try anything.
Jutting his head toward the corner of the building, Cuddyer grunted softly, motioning with the hammer for her to move.
Using the wall as a guide, the girl kept one hand extended, her fingertips never more than a few inches away, as she inched along.
Glancing to his left, Cuddyer noted Jasper standing in the exact position he had been five minutes before, openly gawking at everything taking place, the same look on his face. Fighting the urge to gesture, or yell, or make any acknowledgement at all, Cuddyer turned his focus back to the girl, keeping equal pace behind her as they steadily moved forward.
Ahead of them a makeshift wall extended out from the side of the barn. Constructed from sheets of plywood, it was just eight feet tall, the wood unpainted, nailed together in a hasty fashion months before. The previous blonde hue of the boards had started to fade, the corners beginning to grey, the crude structure just barely visible in the corner of the huge room, beyond the reach of the overhead lights.
“Door, on the side,” Cuddyer said, keeping his voice clipped, his sentences short, as he directed her around the corner. He could sense her body tense up as she pushed out away from the wall, her body seeming to teeter as she walked an uneven line to the front corner and again tapped a hand against the wood, using it for support.
Circling out wider, Cuddyer watched as she moved a bit further, finally making her way to a faded white door, a brass knob the only fixture of any kind. Taken from an old mobile home at the time the structure was built, it stopped a full foot shorter than the plywood walls.
“Open it,” Cuddyer said, watching as the girl stopped just outside the door and took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling. “Now!”
The word jolted her. He could see her hand tremble as she reached out, turned the knob, and shoved the door open.
“Go on in,” Cuddyer said, waiting for her to enter before following her, stopping just outside.
The space was a simple square, measuring a dozen feet in either direction. Along the side wall was a folding table, whatever supplies he and Jasper had been able to wrangle from the house tossed on it in a heap. On the opposite wall was an old wooden rocker with the varnish rubbed away by years of someone’s backside pressing against it.
Most of the room was taken up by the bed directly across from the door, the frame made of chipped green metal, the mattress a throw-away from one of the motels in town.
Elias lay motionless, still buried beneath the pillows and blankets, not having moved since they deposited him there upon arrival.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” Cuddyer said, reaching into the room and grasping the door by the handle. “Fix him.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ferris’s original projection turned out to prophetic. Almost an hour to the minute after walking into the hospital we left, me with at least one new piece of data, hoping he had even more.
After releasing Shek from our discussion, my next interview was with Sandy Watson, a middle-aged mother of two who served as Chief of Medicine for the hospital. She had even less information than Shek, having arrived only a short time before the abduction, calling 911 when it was discovered that Yvonne had been taken.
Like Shek, she had displayed the correct amount of trauma to the incident, asking more questions than she answered. Most of them were inquiring how or why such a thing could happen, the most common responses from someone who had lived a pretty ordinary, if not somewhat sheltered, life.
To most people, things like abductions were something they saw on television or read about in the newspaper. They occurred in exotic, far-flung locales such as Miami or Los Angeles, not in their own hometown.
Certainly not on a snowy night in April, when most people should be home, either in front of a fire or already curled up in bed.
If only.
I finished my pair of interviews before Ferris, releasing Watson back to the break room and taking the opportunity to step outside and look things over for myself. I had already read the original statement from the guard, had seen the overhead video, but wanted to take a glance to see what I could determine.
The storm showed no signs of letting up as I stepped out the front door of the hospital, taking two small paces away from the entry. Behind me the glass doors slid shut, the squeaking of their frozen metal tracts adding to the sound of the overhead heater pushing hot air down from above.
Once the doors were clo
sed, the world became silent, snow continuing to blow at a diagonal in the strong wind. Every so often a gust would whip up the icy crystals from the ground, pelting the exposed skin of my face and neck.
I raised my head, spotting the camera that had taken the video of the incident. Tucked high beneath the soffit overhead, a small red light indicated it was recording.
Stepping around a squat trash can, I pressed myself against the building, a snow embankment tight against my calf, and stared out at the scene, superimposing the video onto the view before me.
The actual expanse of the area was larger than it had appeared on screen, the breadth of the camera’s angle being close to 20 feet. Closing my eyes, I imagined Yvonne standing where I had been a moment before.
Judging by the way things were situated, the car had come from the north. It would have turned into the parking lot, causing the flash of light that caught her attention.
Over the last few years I had spent precious little time in Glasgow, but I knew that most everything in the town limits lay to the south of the hospital. Whoever had approached Yvonne had not been coming from town and had access to a vehicle powerful enough to handle country roads despite the weather.
Neither point would narrow the field a great deal, but it was a start.
Stepping away from the building, I walked to the edge of the sidewalk, peering down at the path Yvonne had taken. In the hours since the incident several fresh inches of wet snow had fallen, filling in the bottom part of her tracks, rounding out the edges.
It would be impossible to see any shoe or tire treads, get a clear read on sizes either.
Placing my feet in the same spots as Yvonne, I moved out from beneath the awning, snow hitting my exposed scalp, stinging slightly as it touched my warm skin. Away from the protection of the building the wind struck me head-on, sucking the breath from my chest.
The tracks seemed to bear out what the video had shown, as it moved away from the sidewalk. It went in a straight line for about 20 feet to the parking lot before the trail became a bit muddled from lots of foot activity.
The tire tracks told me that the abductors had come in at the northern corner of the lot and moved through in one sweep. Their only stop had been to grab Yvonne, before exiting the opposite corner of the lot.
Whether they turned back north or went on into town, I didn’t know, though would make a point to check as we drove away.
Again, not much, but something.
Tracking was a skill I had been taught in the navy, but had honed to an art working in Yellowstone. Following someone or something across the forest floor had become second-nature to me. More than once I had managed a successful hunt based on nothing more than a few disturbed pine needles or the outer edge of a print in the soft earth.
This was different though, the snow a temporary trail that changed with the temperature, the wind and the continuing deluge constantly shifting things.
Shoving my hands into the front pockets of my coat, I held it closed in front of me, my gaze dancing over the scene.
A young woman had been standing in front of the hospital. She spotted an approaching vehicle, presumably a large truck or SUV, and stepped out to help, realizing too late that it wasn’t help they were after.
The video proved she had resisted, meaning that they must have subdued her in some way. The fact that Shek said nobody had even known she was gone meant it must have been fairly quick and quiet.
Behind me I could hear the metallic wail of the doors opening, followed by the heaters blowing hot air.
“You find anything?” Ferris called, his voice sounding far away, carried by the wind.
Holding a hand up to give him pause, I kept my attention turned to the crime scene. Zeroing in on Yvonne’s tracks, a few long trenches showed where she had tried to retreat, had been pulled back by the attackers.
I tried to envision everything, picking out the individual trails of the converging parties, seeing the indentations where the three came together, the snow mashed flat.
Numbness began to creep into my toes as I raised my feet high out of the drift and crept forward to stand in the center of the packed snow. There it was no more than a few inches deep, much of it having been kicked aside or trampled, the struggle short and furious.
I lowered myself into a crouch. Extending my hand out, I brushed away the fresh snowfall, leaving only the hard surface beneath.
There, I found exactly what I feared I might.
No more than the size of a silver dollar, already frozen solid, crusted almost black, was a circle of blood.
Chapter Eighteen
Maria’s question had resonated in Wood Arrasco’s mind for the better part of an hour.
What are you going to do about it?
His initial reaction, his very first instinct the moment the call had come in, was to get in his truck and drive straight to Glasgow. There he would survey for himself how extensive the damage was, both to the lab and to Elias. If either or both was beyond repair he would simply wipe away the entire mess and move on.
The only thing that had stopped him was the snow piled high outside, knowing that there was no way he would make it there, not during the dead of night, most likely not for a couple of days.
This was no time for him to be impulsive. As annoying as the call had been, as bad as it could be for his enterprise, there was no need to cut his losses just yet. First, he must step back, assess, see how bad things were and if anything could be salvaged.
Too much time, money, and resources had been expended gaining the foothold that he had. It had been a long and arduous road for him to rise to the head of The Prairie Dogs, the only Latino to ever ride with them, let alone lead them.
Just as difficult had been his struggle to take over as the chief supplier for the burgeoning oil fields, his crystal meth keeping the workers cranked long beyond what the normal human body could withstand, making both the workers and their employers a lot of money in the process.
There were three different subcontractors supplying the drug to him, Wood knowing better than to do it in-house, but none were as good or as prolific as Cuddy. What role the old man had in it he could only guess, everybody knowing that the real talent was Elias, a meth-making idiot savant who could barely read but somehow produce the best product in the western half of the country.
It was that product that had helped seal the deal for Wood, keeping the employers and workers coming back and asking for greater quantities each month.
Leaving Maria curled against his chest, Wood slid his right hand across the table and tapped out a single text message. He knew despite the hour that it would be read and the directive acted upon, something he made a point not to do unless the situation called for it, as it now did.
After sending the message he remained seated for another 20 minutes or so before rising and carrying her into the bedroom, returning her to her side of the bed and pulling the blankets up to her chin.
Not once did she wake, her face serene, her long dark hair splashed across the pillow.
For a moment Wood stood over the bed, staring down at her, before reaching out and grasping a tendril of hair. He rolled the end of it between his fingers, feeling the soft strands against his skin, before dropping it and retreating from the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
He returned to the kitchen to see a flash of headlights appear through the front window, knowing already who it was. Crossing to the refrigerator, he pulled out two Cold Smoke’s and placed them on the table, remaining standing as a light knock tapped at the door, followed by it cracking open just an inch.
“Prez?”
The voice was familiar, barely above a whisper, following the standard protocol for any late night meetings. There were only two people allowed to visit Wood after hours, both of them knowing not to disturb Maria’s sleep or to tell another soul about his deference to her.
“Come on in, Trick.”
On cue the door swung open, bringing with it a twi
rl of icy air, a couple of snowflakes making their way in as well. Along with them came a man who stood a half foot shorter than Wood, snow clinging to his legs.
Stopping just inside the door, he acted as if he might stomp his feet to knock the snow off before thinking better and bending over, using his hands to wipe it away. Once the black denim was again exposed, he stood, shrugging out of a down parka to reveal a long-sleeve flannel with a black leather vest over it.
“Everything alright?” he asked.
Trick Reynolds was Wood’s second-in-command, someone who had made his way up through the ranks at the same time. As recently as six years before both had been nothing more than foot soldiers, muscle for whatever the men in charge wanted done, but a solid half-decade of upheaval had changed things dramatically, creating a void they were both glad to fill.
So far, the arrangement had worked out well for everybody involved, the organization for the first time proving to have some solid business acumen, the enrollment numbers on the rise.
“I got a call earlier tonight,” Wood said, gesturing toward the table. As he did, he circled around and settled himself back into the same chair, reaching out and wrapping a hand around his beer, signaling Trick to do the same.
“From?” Trick asked. He reached out and grabbed the other beer, tilting it to his boss before taking a long pull.
In the dim light of the kitchen, Wood could see his friend for the first time, his face red and puffy from the cold, a faint crease down the side of it indicating he had been asleep when the text came in.
The rest of his head was hidden beneath a black watch cap and a goatee, the tuft of hair extended several inches from his chin.
“Cuddy,” Wood replied, lifting his beer and taking a drink.
“Oh, shit,” Trick said, the words sounding like a groan as he rolled his head to the side. “How bad?”
If there was any concern about being summoned at such an odd hour, any animosity about the intrusion, he did nothing to show it. Instead he cut straight to business, just as Wood knew he would, just as he always did.
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