by Lynn Bohart
“Oh, God,” I said with a laugh. “Well, bingo on the tooth. But I don’t plan on allowing a crazy dentist to drill on me.”
“No. That’s not all,” April continued more seriously. “I saw something else. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but…”
“What?” I prompted her.
April had a sixth sense. She often knew things before they happened or answered the phone before it rang. It was her dreams that often predicted dire events, though, so my heart rate accelerated.
“I was near a railroad track in the dream,” April said. “There were two men chasing me. A girl was crying somewhere. And…”
My heart began to race now. “What? Go on,” I said, eyeing Blair, who was listening closely.
“Like I said, these things are always confusing,” April said. “They’re hard to understand. Anyway, a short dark-haired guy was speaking at a microphone and the two men had a gun. I couldn’t see the girl, but the men started to chase me, and I fell off a cliff and rolled down a hill and into a tree.”
“A cliff and a tree? In the middle of the railroad track?”
Dreams were confusing, but this sounded absurd.
“I didn’t say it made sense, Julia. Anyway, after I hit the tree, I ran through the woods until I found an old barn. The entire time I heard the girl crying. Then, the two men came out of the woods. One of them tripped over a dead guy with a ponytail lying on the ground.”
I’d been holding my breath and finally let it out. “No. He wasn’t dead. Just stunned.”
“What do you mean? How would you know?”
“Because, I’m the one who tripped over him. You were dreaming about me. But…he wasn’t dead. He’s very much alive.”
“No, Julia, he’s not. He’s dead.”
“April, it was a big mistake. We’ve seen him since then.”
“I’m telling you, Julia, the guy with the ponytail is dead. I’m sure of that. There was a hole in his forehead.”
“Yes, I know. He ran into the branch of a tree a couple of nights ago. I…”
“Julia, stop! I had this dream earlier today when I took a break and dozed off in the guest house. You weren’t anywhere in this vision.”
A chill ran the length of my spine. “Seriously?”
“Yes. And you need to be careful. I woke up in a cold sweat, and that doesn’t usually happen.”
“Okay. We’ll be careful. In fact, I’ve talked to David. He’s aware of our situation…well, most of it. Was there anything else?”
“Yes. Just before I woke up the police surrounded that barn with their guns drawn. The girl was still crying. There was a gunshot and the crying stopped.”
“As if the girl had been killed?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“She was shot by the police?”
“I don’t know. It was confusing, like most dreams.”
“But…the girl was killed?”
“Yes. I felt a deep sadness when that happened.”
I paused for a moment, soaking it all in, my heart hammering. “Was the short dark-haired guy Senator Owens? That sounds like him.”
“I don’t know. I just know this all felt very real.”
“Okay, thanks, April.” There was a loud crash on the other end of the phone. “What was that?”
“Oh, damn!” she said. “Please don’t touch that,” she called out to someone. “I gotta go.”
“Well, now you know that our life isn’t any more orderly than yours right now. Take care.”
“You, too,” she said. “I’ll check in with you later. And wait until you get home to get your tooth fixed.”
“Don’t worry. I will.”
I turned off the phone and sat back, rubbing my jaw. “What do you think?” I asked Blair.
“Who knows? She got the guy you tripped over right. And your tooth.”
“And the railroad tracks,” I added.
“Yeah. But what does the rest of it mean?” She watched me massage my jaw. “How’d you break your tooth?”
“I bit down on a piece of candy and felt it crack.”
“Does it hurt?”
“It did when it happened.” I paused and carefully pushed my tongue against the molar. The tooth moved. “Shoot. I think I did break it. I don’t have a dentist anymore. Dr. Pearl retired.”
Blair’s blue eyes twinkled. “I have a great dentist. Dr. Ford. He has an office downtown on Elm Street.”
I gave her a pouty look. “Does he have nitrous oxide, so I won’t feel anything?”
She gave a soft laugh. “Yes, Julia. You’ll have to eat on the other side of your mouth until you get home, though.”
“Maybe I’ll lose a little weight.” I forced myself to stop touching my tooth with my tongue. “Weird though. Chloe must have known I was going to break my tooth, too. Remember the Scrabble letters?”
Blair was tapping her fingers on the cover of her book and didn’t seem to have heard me. “You know, I think you should call David back and tell him about how we chased the Jayco motorhome around Jake’s store. At least the police should know those guys are in the area.”
A nervous jitter skittered down my core. “Um…okay. I guess that’s a good idea.”
I didn’t really want to call David back. Not yet. I hadn’t had time to process his last words. I was afraid that maybe I’d misheard him. But I knew I’d have to talk to him sooner or later, so I reluctantly dialed his number.
“Hey,” I said, when he answered. “I know you’re busy, but we saw that motorhome again. In fact, we chased them around…”
“It’s okay, Julia,” he said in a rush. “That’s why I had to get off the phone earlier. They’ve found the old man’s motorhome.”
“What? Really? Where?”
“In a ravine up on Snoqualmie Pass. There’s a team heading up there now.”
“You’re sure?”
"Yeah. They were able to ID the license plate from up above. It’s down a steep slope, and it will take an entire crew to bring it out.”
I slumped back against the seat with a heavy feeling of disappointment. “Well, okay, then. I wonder who these people are we’ve been chasing, then.”
“Who knows?” he said. “They’re probably carrying drugs or something, and that’s why they ran. Stay away from them.”
“What about Amy Dunphy?”
“She’s still missing. We’re still looking closely at her boyfriend. We’re bringing him in today to talk to him again. I like him for it.”
“What about her stepdad?”
“There’s nothing yet to suggest he’s involved. There is a text from her older brother that we’re looking into, though.”
“Brad?”
“Yes. How do you know his name?”
“Internet,” I replied. “What was the text?”
“He’s underwater financially because of gambling debts. The text was about that. He wanted to borrow money from the senator, but Owens said no. Might give him a reason to try and extract money from him.”
“You think her own brother would abduct her?”
“He’s only related by marriage. He’s Grant Dunphy’s son, so, yeah, it could happen.”
“All right, then. I’ll let you get back to business. I’ll talk to you later.”
We hung up. There were no words of affection this time. The disappointment inside me turned quickly to sadness, and a tear threatened to form in the corner of my eye.
“I need to use the restroom,” I mumbled.
I slipped out of the bench seat and hurried to the bathroom. Once inside, I grabbed some toilet paper and wiped at the tear. Damn! I always did that–read too much into what people said. Most likely, David had said, “Love you,” just as a way to say goodbye. He probably said it without thinking.
I sighed deeply, flushed the toilet to complete my ruse and returned to the main cabin. As I did, Doe called over her shoulder, “We’re almost out of gas, and it’s getting dark. There’s a Chevron statio
n up ahead. I’m going to get gas now since it’s almost on empty. That way we won’t have to fool with it in the morning. Can you call Goldie?”
“Sure,” I said, happy to have something to do.
I got on the phone and called Goldie to let them know we were taking the next off-ramp to get gas. Doe pulled the big rig off the interstate and slowed down as she entered the small town of Kasson. I was considering getting out when she stopped for gas to buy more Pepsi when Rudy shouted out from the front passenger seat, “Look, there’s the Jayco!”
She was pointing ahead of us and to the right.
Doe immediately took her foot off the gas, drifted to the right side of the road and pulled up to the curb next to a small diner. The Jayco sat thirty feet or so away from us, parked at the side of the diner.
“Tell Aria to pull over,” Rudy said to me.
I gave Goldie the instructions, and Aria pulled to the curb about half a block ahead of us.
“What do we do now?” Blair asked, turning to look through the side window at the motorhome.
The diner faced away from the street and towards a gas station that shared the same lot. The parking slots in front of the diner were full. I presumed that’s why the Jayco had been backed into one of the three parking slots on the street side of the diner, with its nose blocking our view of the diner’s front door.
“We should call the police,” Doe said.
“Wait,” Rudy said. “Not yet. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. If the police show up, those guys could kill the girl, maybe even take hostages inside the restaurant.”
“Shouldn’t that be for the police to decide?” Doe argued.
“What can we tell them?” Rudy countered. “That we think these people are holding a girl hostage and that they’re driving a motorhome stolen from an old man they killed in Washington State? What happens when they ask us for proof?”
“Wait. I just talked to David,” I said. “They found the old man’s motorhome. It’s in a ravine up on Snoqualmie Pass.”
Rudy turned a deflated look in my direction. “So this isn’t even the old man’s motorhome,” she said gesturing to the RV in question.
I shook my head.
“Great.” She slumped into one of the swivel chairs.
“What about the fact they keep running away from us?” Blair asked. “Why would they do that?”
“I still think they’re holding a girl hostage, even if it’s not Amy Owens,” I said. “And she needs our help.”
“I agree that under normal circumstances we should call the police,” Rudy said. “But we’ve already made fools of ourselves with the police in Spokane. I’d like to keep our names off the police blotters in South Dakota if we can. Sorry, Julia.”
“Apology accepted,” I said with a shrug.
“So…what do we do?” Doe asked somberly.
“We need to find out if there is a girl being held captive, no matter who she is. I say we go see what’s inside that camper,” Rudy said.
The rest of us reacted with undisguised shock.
“Seriously?” Doe asked. “We’re going to break into their motorhome?”
Rudy shrugged. “If we call the police with what we suspect, even if they believed us, they would need a search warrant to get inside. We need some proof.”
I realized for the first time that Rudy was enjoying this. As a lifelong investigative reporter, she loved digging deep into things. This was a mystery she wanted to solve.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “One of them could be in there with her.”
Rudy was staring at the white motorhome, her small brown eyes narrowed in thought. I could tell that big brain of hers was running on overdrive.
“You and Doe can sneak around to the other side of the Jayco and watch the front door of the diner in case whoever is in there comes out. Blair and I will go up to the RV and knock. If no one answers, we’ll get inside.”
“What if they locked it?” Doe asked. “If the girl is in there, I’m sure they locked it.”
“We’ll get inside,” Rudy said more firmly. She got up and pushed past me to rummage through the kitchen drawers.
“Interesting way to park,” Blair said, peering at the motorhome. “Backing in, I mean. I guess they want to be able to get out of there fast.”
“We’d better hurry,” Rudy said, coming back with something in her hand. “They could just be ordering take out, and we don’t know how long they’ve been in there.”
The gas station and mini-mart sat at the rear of the big lot, facing the road, with two lines of gas pumps in front of it. The diner sat to its left.
The four of us hustled out of the Hulk. Doe and I scooted around the rear of the Jayco and moved into the space between the diner and the RV.
The diner was small, with only a single window on the street side next to us. No light shone from inside, so it was probably an office or storeroom, keeping us safe from prying eyes. As I poked my head around the front corner of the building, I saw a car pull up next to one of the gas pumps in the middle of the lot. On the far side of the convenience store was a motorhome and a couple of cars, all with for sale signs in their windows.
By now it was early evening and the sun was low on the horizon, leaving the two of us in a heavily shadowed tunnel between the Jayco and the building.
While we watched for the burly guy they called Monty, Blair and Rudy went to the street side to access the door of the RV. I heard a short knock, followed a minute later by the creak and sway of the RV.
“What are we going to do if they come out?” I asked Doe, as we peered around the corner.
“I don’t know. We didn’t figure that out,” Doe said. “It’s not like we do this for a living.”
A moment later, Rudy tapped me on the shoulder, nearly making me jump out of my skin.
“No one is in there,” she said in a hoarse whisper. Blair loomed behind her.
“Then let’s see if she’s inside the diner with them,” I said.
“How do you propose we do that without them seeing us?” Doe asked in a raised voice.
I could tell this covert stuff was putting a strain on her sense of orderliness; after all, you didn’t do this sort of thing in a boardroom.
“Listen, I’m the shortest. I’ll sneak up to that front window and peek inside. The cars in front of the building will block me from the street and anyone at the gas station.”
“What if they’re sitting right next to the window?” Blair asked.
“I’ll be careful. I can do this. If she’s not with them, then this was all a big mistake and we can leave.”
Rudy put a hand on my shoulder. “Wait a minute. Call Goldie. She and Aria have never been seen by this group. They can go inside and let us know who is in there.”
“Good idea,” I said.
I pulled out my phone and called Goldie to explain the situation. Within seconds, the two of them hustled around the back of the white motorhome to join us. Now there were six of us crowded in the small space between the Jayco RV and the wall of the restaurant.
“They’re inside?” Goldie asked. “This is so excitin’.”
“No, it’s not,” I chastised her. “The girl might be in there with them. All we need you to do is find out if we’re right.”
“And you’ll need to hurry,” Rudy said. “They could come out at any minute. So be careful.”
Goldie nodded and the two of them went inside. We waited impatiently as we peeked around the corner, only to flinch back when the restaurant door opened and an elderly couple appeared. They got into a small pickup by the front door and pulled out. We flattened ourselves against the wall of the building to avoid detection.
“This is ridiculous,” Doe said. “I feel like I’m in a bad movie.”
Finally, my cell phone pinged.
“Yes?” I said, answering it.
“We see two men at a table eating,” Aria said. “One is a big bald guy. He’s wearing a plaid shirt. The other one is kind
of a beefy guy with a beard and a bad eye.”
“That’s them. No girl? No woman with red hair?”
“No,” she said. “But we’re seated at the counter. Oh, wait a minute.” There were several seconds of excruciating silence. “She’s with them!” Aria whispered into the phone. “The woman with the red hair just came out of the restroom. She’s holding onto the girl’s arm. God, she doesn’t look good. In fact, she looks drugged. But, Julia, she has blond hair. I thought you said the girl had dark hair.”
“She’s there,” I said breathlessly to the others. “They must have put a blond wig on her or dyed her hair.”
Rudy exhaled in exasperation. “Then we’re right back where we started. For all we know, that’s their niece or something. Tell Aria to get out of there and go back to their camper to wait for our signal.”
I relayed the instructions to our new cohorts. A moment later we heard the restaurant door open and close. Goldie and Aria appeared in the parking lot. They glanced our way but kept going towards the street.
“What do we do now?” I asked Rudy. “And where’s Ponytail Guy?”
“I don’t know, but let’s get back to the Hulk and move it so they don’t see us,” Rudy said. “We’ll have Aria follow them when they leave, and we’ll hang back.”
We started back the way we’d come, when I stopped them. “Wait a minute. What’s that?” I said, pointing past Rudy to the side of the Jayco.
Everyone turned toward the motorhome.
There was something dripping onto the pavement just below where the sewer hose was kept. My nose crinkled in disgust considering what it might be, but I pushed past Rudy and leaned down to zero in on it more closely.
“Oh, my God!”
“What is it?” Blair asked from over my shoulder.
I extended a finger toward the liquid.
Blair slapped my hand away. “Don’t touch that!”
“Something’s wrong here.” I rose up, scanning the perimeter of the compartment. There was a gap at the upper right corner, as if something inside was pushing against it. I reached out and released the latch.
The door popped open, and something heavy fell out, making me jump back as it hit the pavement with a thud.
I screamed.
