“Yeah. Come in.”
She entered and was about to say something but stopped when she saw him. A warm smile spread on her lips. “You don’t look like you.”
“I’m afraid to ask if that’s a compliment or not.”
“You look less … forgettable.”
“Please. Stop. All this flattery is going to swell my head.”
She’d changed too. Francis realized she wore the same yellow sundress from the photograph. Except with combat boots. On her it worked. Angry punk girl goes on a picnic.
“Come on,” she said. “I need your help.”
Francis followed her down the hall, past a myriad of family photos on the wall. Some were more pictures of Emma’s sister and Dwayne. Others were old and faded, previous generations and distant relations. One of the photos caught Francis’s eye, a broad-shouldered man in an army uniform, buzz cut and sergeant’s stripes. Two little girls stood on either side of him, waist high.
“Was your dad in the army?” Francis asked.
She glanced back without stopping. “Yeah.”
The door at the end of the hall opened on a narrow stairway that twisted down into a basement. At the bottom of the stairs, Emma groped above her head in the darkness until she found a pull string and yanked on the single bulb. The walls were bare natural rock, floor smooth and wooden, thick beams crossing the ceiling overhead. A threadbare easy chair, a small desk, a single bed. Cave-like but livable.
“My sister said I could stay as long as I wanted after Dwayne died,” Emma explained. “She travels a lot. She’s in Mexico with some new guy right now. Anyway, I don’t get mail delivered here or anything, so it’s not likely I can be tracked here. Not yet anyway.”
“Can’t they find you through your sister?”
“Maybe, but not so far. She didn’t divorce her first husband, just ran off. Found Dwayne and moved in with him, not getting legally married or anything, no paperwork at city hall. When Dwayne choked on a chicken bone, she just buried him in the woods out back of the barn. Dwayne’s disability checks are direct deposit and all the bills are on auto pay, so she just let it ride.”
Francis waited for her to say she was joking.
She didn’t.
“Help me with this.” She headed for a lump against the far wall, covered by a blanket. “It’s heavy.”
She flung the blanket back and revealed a large footlocker. It was shut with a sturdy-looking combination lock. She grabbed the handle on one end. “Get the other side, will you?”
She hadn’t lied. It was heavy. They muscled it up the stairs and back down the hall, pausing in the kitchen to set it on the table.
Francis said, “I hope you appreciate I’ve traveled halfway across the nation and am now lifting this heavy-ass box of lost Nazi gold or whatever it is, and that I’ve been gentleman enough not to pester you for a lot of details about where we are, where we’re going, what it is you’re trying to do, why a suitcase full of underwear is so important, why thugs want to kidnap you, and why the government wants to arrest you.”
“Well, Frankie, if you recall, it was your idea to tag along, not mine.”
“Francis.”
She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a six-pack of Coors Light. She broke one off and handed the can to Francis. “Empty that can, please.”
“But—” He shrugged and took the can, popped it open, and sipped.
“Jesus, gun it, will you?” She popped one for herself, titled it back, and chugged it until it was empty. “Like that.”
Francis took a deep breath and began chugging the beer. He finished, turned his head and burped, tried to stifle it, and it came out his nose. “Damn. Again.” It didn’t burn as badly as the Wild Turkey, but it still made his eyes mist up.
“Okay, grab your end of the footlocker again,” Emma said. “And bring the empty can.”
She put the rest of the six-pack on top of the footlocker, and they carried it outside. They set it on a wide stump near the line of rusted cars. She broke off another can of beer and handed it to him. “Go.”
He balked. “Uh…”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Geez, okay, I’ll help.”
She popped it open and guzzled half, then handed the rest to Francis, who finished the can. She took the three empties and headed for the cars. She lined them up on the hood of a pickup truck from the early sixties, the Chevy logo prominent between the headlights. When she came back, she bent and spun the combination lock until it popped open.
She opened the footlocker and came out with a pistol. Francis looked past her and into the locker. Guns. Lots of them.
“What is that?” He nodded at the pistol in her hand.
“Sig Sauer P-250 subcompact .380.”
“Oh, that’s … Is that good?”
“We’ll see.”
She reached into the footlocker for a magazine, checked to see if it was full, then slapped it home into the butt of the pistol, chambered a round, and spread her legs into a shooter’s stance. She flipped off the safety and squeezed the trigger.
The sharp crack of the gunshot made Francis flinch. He looked at the beer cans. They hadn’t budged.
Emma’s lip curled into a snarl. “Shit.”
She spread her legs another inch apart, squeezed one eye shut tight, sighted down the barrel with the other. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The pistol bucked in her hands, and the first beer can spun away off the truck’s hood with a metallic tink. She fired twice more quickly, and the other two cans leaped into the air.
“That’s more like it.” Emma reached for another Coors Light. “We need more cans.”
She and Francis finished the six-pack, and Emma blasted them off the hood of the truck without missing a shot. She went and picked them up and lined them across the hood again.
When she came back to Francis, she offered him the pistol, butt first. “Your turn. Get a fresh magazine out of the footlocker.”
Francis didn’t reach for it. “I’m not sure how to work the thing.”
She made a trigger-pulling motion with one finger. “Pull the trigger here.” She gestured toward the end of the barrel. “Death comes out that end.”
Francis wasn’t convinced.
“Hold on.” She went back into the footlocker and came out with a revolver. “Smith & Wesson .38 police special.” She swung out the cylinder to check the load, then snapped it back into position with a flick of her wrist. “You just cock the hammer back and then shoot. Revolvers are a bit simpler for rookies.” She handed it to him. “Just make sure you keep it pointed downrange.”
He took the gun tentatively. As with the pistol he’d held briefly in Central Park, Francis was surprised by the weight of it. The gun was old but obviously well cared for. He spread his legs a little, trying to copy Emma’s stance, and held the revolver out with both hands. He aimed for the middle can, thinking if he missed a little, he still might hit one of the others.
The gun kicked when he squeezed the trigger, an unexpected adrenaline rush of pleasure surging through him.
He missed the cans.
And instead shot out the headlight of the next junk car over, a mint-green Buick Skylark with plenty of body damage.
Emma gave him the side-eye. “You were aiming for that, right?”
Francis smiled weakly. “Yes?”
He shot until he’d emptied the gun, sometimes digging up the turf in front of the pickup, other times the shots going high and vanishing forever into the forest. Emma reloaded the revolver for him, advised him on his stance, breathing, grip. Francis shot an entire box of ammo and never hit a can.
“For crying out loud, don’t they have guns in Ohio?”
Francis shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly a hobby in my family.”
“Let’s try something else.” She went to the Ford and reached into the tall grass between junk cars. She came out with a rusty paint can and set it on the pickup’s hood amid the beer cans.
Emma came back and sai
d, “Okay, first thing is a bigger target.” She knelt in front of the footlocker. She removed the top shelf, revealing a compartment underneath. With the shortened barrel and folding stock, the shotgun still barely fit into the footlocker. She took it out and began thumbing in double-aught shells.
“That’s a little big, isn’t it?”
Emma grinned. “Nothing exceeds like excess.” She handed him the shotgun. “This is a Remington Model 870 Express twelve gauge with a six-plus-one-shell capacity.”
“Yadda yadda numbers and blah blah is what I just heard.”
“Pay attention,” she said. “Pump a shell in, and then thumb the safety forward to fire. F for forward and F for fire if that helps you remember.”
“Got it.”
“Brace it against your shoulder firmly,” she said. “It kicks like a son of a bitch. Take a couple of steps forward.”
He took three steps toward the paint can.
“More.”
Francis took two more steps.
“Now aim,” she told him. “People think you don’t have to aim a shotgun, but you do. Squeeze the trigger, don’t jerk it.”
Francis squeezed.
The explosion made the earlier pistol fire seem like popcorn farts, the kick pushing him back a step. The paint can erupted in metal chunks and paint, spinning and splattering the pickup white.
Emma came up behind him, patted his back. “That’s your weapon. Aim directly for the middle of your target’s torso. If you’re off a little, you’ll still hit something.”
“Something?”
Emma shrugged. “An arm?”
“I don’t want to shoot anyone.”
“You’re a nice guy, Frankie,” she said. “Whoever’s trying to kill you probably won’t be.”
16
The charter flight landed in Sioux Falls with a dozen of them—Cavanaugh, Ike, and Ernie plus the extra gunmen Cavanaugh had hired on for the gig. Bryant’s information had been incomplete, but he’d told Cavanaugh that what they did have was solid.
Bryant had tried to explain how some computer program something something certain parameters and something something narrowing a search radius. Bryant had sounded very impressed with what he was saying. Cavanaugh wasn’t.
“Just cut to the chase,” Cavanaugh had told the man.
According to Bryant, the girl had a sister in Elk Point, South Dakota. She left the usual footprint on the grid—credit card charges, mail delivered to a small ranch home, checking account, phone bill, the works. Then about fourteen months ago, everything went dark. Like the sister fell off the face off the earth.
Her final week on the grid included multiple ATM withdrawals in Canton, South Dakota, leaving her checking account balance at $1.56, two meals at Laurie’s Café on Sixth Street, a fill-up at a gas station three miles north of town. She’d also used her Visa to buy $144.78 worth of cleaning supplies at the area Walmart.
Okay, you don’t buy that much cleaning stuff if you’re on vacation, Cavanaugh thought. And there were closer Walmarts and gas stations to Elk Point. So that begged the question: Why Canton?
And so Cavanaugh and his crew found themselves in a three-car motorcade, heading south on I-29. Bryant had purchased a sedan and two SUVs through a dummy corporation to avoid messing with a rental car company again.
An hour later, while Ike and Ernie questioned some of the shop owners on Main Street, Cavanaugh found himself in Laurie’s Café, talking to a haggard woman in jeans and a South Dakota State Jackrabbits T-shirt. A name tag said BRENDA. She leaned on the lunch counter, considering the photos Cavanaugh had given her, chewing her gum like she was trying to punish it.
It was between lunch and dinner, and all the tables behind him were empty. The only patron was an old-timer in a feed cap, three stools down at the counter. He nursed a cup of black coffee and read a newspaper, a pair of half-glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“I don’t know this one.” Brenda tapped the photo of the girl. “Maybe the other one. Picture’s not too good.”
“Yeah, it’s a few years old,” Cavanaugh said. The photo of the sister had been a not-very-good driver’s license photo. Did anyone ever really like their driver’s license photo? “Take another look.”
Brenda squinted at the picture with renewed effort.
Cavanaugh’s crew had copies of the photo and were showing it around other places. Cavanaugh had a good feeling about the café, so he forced himself to be patient.
“I think yeah, maybe,” Brenda said. “But not for a while. I don’t remember ever having a conversation with her or anything.”
“About how long ago?” Cavanaugh asked.
She tsked. “I dunno. Not recent. Gary, look at this fella’s pictures.”
The old-timer grunted without looking up from his newspaper.
Cavanaugh moved down the counter next to Gary. He laid the pictures next to each other near his cup of coffee and tapped the one of the sister. “Brenda says she’s been in here.”
Gary glanced quickly at the picture, then back to his newspaper. “Never seen her.”
Cavanaugh frowned. “Maybe take a better look, huh, friend?”
“I looked enough. Never seen her.”
Shit.
Cavanaugh looked down at his watch and wondered if the others were having better luck. The longer they putzed around, showing pictures to the yokels, the longer the girl would have to run off to wherever she wanted. Sure, maybe she was holed up somewhere. Or maybe she was halfway to Mexico. Maybe anything.
“Seen the other one, though.”
Cavanaugh’s head jerked up again. “Excuse me?”
“Weird hair and the nose ring and all,” Gary said. “Don’t see a lot of that around here. Sort of left an impression.”
“Sir, this is really helpful,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s important I find her. Anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated.”
Gary sipped coffee, still didn’t look up from the newspaper. “You police or something?”
“Nothing like that.” Cavanaugh had learned his lesson and had prepared a story. “I work for a law office in Sioux Falls. The girls are sisters, and their mother has unfortunately passed away. We’re trying to locate them before the reading of the will.”
Gary shook his head. “Sad stuff. Sorry to hear it.”
“Can you tell me how you know her?”
“Wouldn’t say I know her, but I saw her when I was delivering furnace oil down at Dwayne Truman’s place. She was there. Like I said, sorta stood out.”
“Could I get that address?”
“Not really an address kind of place,” Gary said. “They live in the sticks down near Newton Hills.”
“Newton Hills.” Cavanaugh pulled his notepad and pen from his jacket. “That’s a town?”
“State park,” Brenda said. She was at the other end of the counter but still listening.
“Could you show me where it is?” Cavanaugh asked.
“Draw you a map, I guess,” Gary said.
“That would be fantastic.” Cavanaugh flipped over a paper place mat. “How about this?”
Gary took Cavanaugh’s pen, paused before he began to draw. “Might ought to be worth a slice of pie, wouldn’t it?”
“Brenda, bring the man a slice of pie on me,” Cavanaugh said. “And I’ll have one too.”
* * *
The four men in the blockhouse were all cops. Guard duty was easy work. These rich guys, all of them thought they needed protection. Because the universe revolved around them, right? And 99 percent of the time, nothing happened, and Ron Kowolski could simply catch up on his reading. He liked novels with guys wielding swords and wizards and all that junk. Anything that was an escape. After twenty-five years on the force, he wasn’t in the mood for realism.
The other three guards were all still serving. The guard duty gig was a bit of moonlighting. They were younger and unmarried and stashing away some extra cash. Ron had never married either, and while extra ca
sh was nice, it was just good to get out of the house and do something.
Just not something strenuous.
The blockhouse setup was pretty simple. Three rooms. A lounge with chairs and a TV. That’s where the other three guys were now. A bathroom. And the monitor room where Ron sat now. He’d read a few pages in his novel, then look up at the security monitors that showed various areas around the property, and then go back to his novel. Repeat until one of the other guys came to take a turn.
Ron glanced at the monitors and saw the JetVan entering the main gate. He watched a moment, knowing there were only two ways through. Anyone pulling up to the gate could call. Ron—or whatever guard was on duty—would answer the phone. If the visitor was on the list, they got through. If not, then not.
The list was god emperor general grand pooh-bah of who got through the gate. If the pope showed up and wasn’t on the list, he didn’t get through. Not rocket science.
Or if the car had the right kind of electronic thingy, the gate would open automatically. People who were supposed to be here had the electronic thingy. There was technically a third way through the gate. Next to the phone was a keypad, and if somebody had the right code, they could get through. But the codes were only for people who had been approved for an electronic thingy and were waiting for the thingy to be installed, and according to Ron’s list, there was nobody waiting to have a thingy installed.
The gate opened, and Ron watched the JetVan pass through. He followed it from monitor to monitor as it passed the vineyard and finally rolled up to the big house.
It let out the primary resident—Middleton—and that woman who was his sidekick. Ron snapped his fingers, trying to remember her name. Meredith Vines. Yeah, that was it, real ball-breaker. Those young female corporate types were all ball-breakers, trying to prove whatever they were trying to prove. They all bent over backward to look nice, but if you mentioned it—whack—broken balls.
The Vines woman paused in the driveway as Middleton headed into the house. She took out her phone and began to punch in numbers. A second later, the phone rang next to Ron.
He picked it up. “Security.”
“Hi, this is Meredith Vines. May I ask to whom I’m speaking?”
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