Every Precious Thing (A Logan Harper Thriller)

by Brett Battles

“I screwed up.”

  Sara froze. “What…what are you talking about?”

  “Have you seen anyone? Anyone at all?”

  “No,” Sara said. “Not since Richard came by two weeks ago. Why?”

  “Stay inside. Don’t go out.”

  “Diana, what’s going on?”

  “I’m taking care of it. That’s all you need to know. Just hold tight.”

  Hold tight? “What happened?”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “Diana! What happened?”

  Dead air.

  “Diana? Diana?”

  Nothing.

  “Dammit! Diana, can you hear me?”

  It was no use. The line was dead.

  Immediately she’d called Diana back. That was the first time she’d received the out-of-service-area message. She’d lost count how many more times she’d heard it since.

  Movement through the window caught her eye. Panic almost choked her as she stared out at the trees that surrounded the cabin. If someone was that close already, what would she do? Run? Hide? Could she really hope she wouldn’t be caught?

  There it was again, a few feet above the ground.

  She let out her breath and closed her eyes in relief. A deer. It was only a deer.

  She quickly walked over and pulled the curtain shut, temporarily denying the existence of anything beyond the cabin walls.

  Even though they had stuck to the plan, something had obviously gone wrong. It should have worked. It had worked to this point.

  Not knowing what else to do, she tried Diana again.

  “The caller you are trying to reach is not—”

  She hung up, waiting five seconds, then hit redial.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  NOT WANTING TO leave Harp and Barney without transportation, Logan arranged for a rental car through the manager at the Desert Inn, then headed east on I-40, fifty minutes behind Dev. As he passed through Kingman, Arizona, his father called.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Logan? Barney and I want to go back to the hospital. You’ll need to give us a ride.”

  “Just take the Cherokee.”

  Harp paused. “I thought you said we weren’t supposed to drive it.”

  “It’s fine now, Dad. The others are gone.”

  “Gone? Where did they go?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “Well, do you want to meet us for dinner?”

  “I’m…um…following them. Not sure exactly when I’ll be back.”

  “Following them? When were you going to tell me this?”

  “Sorry. Had to move quickly. Didn’t have time.”

  “Still not an excuse.”

  “You’re right.”

  Harp said nothing for a moment. “What about the letter?”

  Logan cringed. “I said I’d give it to you the next time I saw you. I haven’t seen you yet.”

  “It’s still with you?”

  Logan could tell his father’s anxiety level was rising. “It’s still in the glove compartment. No one’s touched it.”

  “It’s just…okay, the next time I see you.”

  Logan hesitated, then said, “Do you want to talk about what’s inside it?”

  “You didn’t look, did you?” Harp said quickly. “That’s my property. You shouldn’t look. You didn’t, did you?”

  Out of reflex, Logan said, “No, of course not.”

  Harp took a couple of loud breaths. “All right. Sorry. Um, if you need our help, you know where we are.”

  “Thanks.”

  An hour later Dev called.

  “How far does this thing go when the needle’s on empty?” he asked.

  “I try not to let it get there,” Logan said.

  “Well, I’m about a hair’s width away from it. Kept hoping they’d pull over, but their car doesn’t eat as much gas as this one.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Almost to Flagstaff.”

  “You still have them in sight?”

  “At the moment, but I’m going to have to stop soon.”

  Logan frowned. “You’ve got probably about twenty miles. Will that get you to Flagstaff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay with them until you know if they’re stopping there, or heading farther east, then fill up.”

  “Got it.”

  Logan inched the rental’s speed up a few miles an hour, knowing it would never be enough to catch up with Dev in time.

  Fifteen minutes passed before Dev called back.

  “They got off in Flagstaff.”

  Logan could feel some of the tension in his shoulders easing. “You know which way they went?”

  “Yeah, not that it’ll do us much good. This place isn’t huge, but it’s big enough to get lost in. I’m filling up now. When I’m done, I’ll see if I can spot them, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Don’t waste your time,” Logan said. “Turns out Diana used to work in Flagstaff. I have the address where she used to live. Give it a drive-by and see if there’s anything interesting.”

  “You think that might be where she is?”

  “I doubt our luck is that good, but we have to check.”

  “Want me to knock on the door?”

  “No. Not until I get there. If you have time, try to get an address for Harkin Services. That was her employer. I should be there in forty minutes or so.”

  __________

  AS THE LIGHTS of Flagstaff came into view, Logan checked in again with Dev, who suggested they meet at Diana’s old address.

  “It’s not exactly what you’re expecting,” Dev said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The first thing Logan spotted as he turned onto Diana’s old street was the El Camino parked at the curb with Dev standing next to it on the sidewalk. As Logan got out of his rental, he checked the addresses on the buildings until he found the one Diana had used.

  It wasn’t a house. It wasn’t even an apartment building.

  It was a business called Burrage Copy Box.

  He walked over and looked through the window.

  “Told you it wasn’t what you’d expect,” Dev said, coming up behind him.

  Though Copy Box was closed for the night, there were enough security lights on to see inside. The place’s main features were half a dozen photocopy machines, several racks of shipping supplies, and a wall of private mailboxes, one of which had undoubtedly been used by Diana at one point.

  “Just great,” Logan said.

  “I’ve got something else you’ll want to see.”

  “What?”

  Dev tossed the El Camino’s keys to Logan. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Following Dev’s instructions, Logan drove to the end of the block, turned right, and went two more blocks.

  “Park anywhere,” Dev said.

  “Where are we?”

  As soon as they were stopped, Dev pointed at the office building beside them. In bold, white letters affixed to the brick exterior were the words HARKIN SERVICES.

  “Checked out their website when I looked up their address,” Dev said. “They’re a contractor for the National Park Service.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Basically running some of the parks—concessions, tours, in-park motels, that kind of thing. El Portal is right outside Yosemite. And Flagstaff is only an hour or so from—”

  “The Grand Canyon,” Logan finished for him.

  The corner of Dev’s mouth moved up a bit. “Bet she worked as a bartender at motels in both places.”

  Annoyed, Logan looked down the street toward where Burrage Copy Box was located. He was willing to bet a majority of the company’s mail service clients were Harkin employees who worked at the Grand Canyon. A small part of him had been hoping this was Sara’s hiding place. No such luck.

  He got out and gave the building a once-over. Somewhere inside, either in a cabinet or on a server, would be a folder with al
l the information the company had on Diana Stockley—rather, Diana Baudler—including the address where she’d actually lived while working at the Grand Canyon. Maybe that would be another dead end. Still, he would love to get a look at the file.

  For a second, he considered breaking in, but while he was sure he could get through the door, he was equally positive there would be an alarm system he wouldn’t be able to figure out how to deactivate in time. There were other ways to get the info, though. Perhaps Callie could help on that front.

  Hearing Dev take a step behind him, he turned. “I think maybe we should—”

  It wasn’t Dev.

  In fact, it wasn’t just one person. It was two.

  And both were aiming guns at his chest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WITH EACH PASSING hour, Diana’s sense that she’d missed her opportunity to find out what Logan and his friends were doing grew, but then the truck returned to the Desert Inn parking lot—not only with the tough guy inside, but Logan, too—and all those thoughts of failure disappeared.

  After Logan got out, the other guy took off again. She didn’t even consider following the El Camino. Logan was the one who’d been asking questions about Sara. That’s where her focus needed to be.

  She watched as he went up to the second floor and into one of the rooms. For a few seconds, she considered following him up and confronting him, but she knew that would give her no more than temporary satisfaction. If he was involved with whom she thought, best to just observe for now.

  For a while nothing happened, then Logan exited his room carrying a duffle bag and walked downstairs. On the first floor he entered another room, came out holding a second bag, and went into the motel lobby. He stayed there until a white, generic-looking sedan pulled into the parking lot. As he exited the office, the man who’d been driving the car climbed out. The driver was wearing khakis and a bright blue golf shirt, and he was holding a tablet computer. Using a stylus, Logan wrote something on the computer screen, and the man handed him a set of keys.

  A rental, she realized.

  As Logan threw the bags in the trunk, Diana started her car.

  Her weak point was obviously following people, but she knew if she lost him this time, she might never find him again. Given that he’d brought the bags, she guessed he was probably leaving town, and the only way to do that was via the interstate.

  The freeway entrance was a straight shot down Center Street. She pulled out of the lot and headed in that direction before Logan even got behind the wheel of his car. A block shy of the overpass, she pulled into a gas station to wait.

  Thirty seconds later, the rental sped by. When its blinker came on indicating it was about to make a right turn, the skin on her arms went numb.

  East. He was heading east.

  Sara was east of here. Could he know that?

  Having no choice, Diana shifted the car out of park and took off after him.

  She quickly found that freeway following was a hell of a lot easier than doing so in town, and she was able to keep Logan in sight with little trouble. As they headed through Arizona, she tried willing him to turn down US 93 to Phoenix, but he blew right past the transition, staying on the I-40.

  Every mile her concern increased. When they neared the exit to Williams, she could feel her pulse pounding in her neck and arms. But Logan kept going, driving right by the off-ramp that would have taken him to the cabin where Sara was.

  Could it just be a trick? Did he know she was following him, and was trying to throw her off? Having no confidence that the situation was any better than it had been, she stayed with him.

  When he exited at Flagstaff, she felt her blood pressure rise again. She had a connection in this town, a connection that could possibly lead in Sara’s direction. She tried to follow him into town, but once more was defeated by her lack of experience and lost him within minutes. Worse, Flagstaff was at least a dozen times bigger than Braden, so he would be much harder to find.

  Her only choice was to do a methodical search for his white sedan. At least she’d been able to memorize his license plate number, making her task of spotting his amongst the hundreds of other white sedans marginally less impossible than it could have been.

  When she did find the sedan within the first fifteen minutes, she didn’t know if she felt lucky or horrified. It was parked in front of Burrage Copy Box. The very same Copy Box outlet she had used as a mailing address when she worked at the canyon. Oddly, Logan didn’t seem to be around.

  Could he have…?

  With growing dread, she doused her lights, and turned down the street where her former employer’s offices were located. And there, parked right in front, was the electric blue El Camino.

  She pulled to the curb and reached for her phone. She had turned it off after talking to Sara, because she didn’t have any answers, and had no idea what to say. It was a panic move, but now she needed to talk to Sara, tell her she was coming to pick her up tonight. She brought up Sara’s number, but before she could hit SEND, she saw that there were other people on the sidewalk beside Logan and his tough friend.

  Four, in fact. Two behind the friend, and two in front of Logan.

  Even from a block and a half away, she could see the guns.

  What the hell was this?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “DON’T MOVE,” THE shorter of the two gunmen said.

  He was the one who’d been running after Logan in Braden. The guy standing with him was his buddy who’d tried to cut Logan off at Center Street. Over at the El Camino, Logan could see the other two—the woman and her friend—holding their weapons on Dev.

  The speaker stepped behind Logan and searched him, removing Logan’s wallet, keys, and phone. Dev was getting the same treatment.

  With a shove in the back toward the truck, the man said, “Let’s go.”

  Three feet separated Logan from the gunman in front of him, and three and a half from the one behind. Not the best position, but there were at least four different ways he could take both of them out.

  Doable, if he were alone.

  While Dev was more than capable of handling the other two, his positioning was not as favorable. The two training their weapons on him could put a bullet in the back of his head before Logan could vanquish his two.

  Escape would have to wait for a better opportunity to present itself.

  When Logan and his two new buddies reached the others, the man who had searched him handed the wallet and other items to the woman—Dr. Paskota, presumably. She opened the wallet and examined the license, then compared Logan to the picture.

  Once she was done, she said, “This way.” She started to turn.

  “Whatever you want to talk about, we can do it right here,” Logan said, not moving.

  “I’m sure we could, but we won’t. Let’s go.”

  The three gunmen had backed off far enough that even with a coordinated effort, Logan and Dev would have been condemning themselves to death if they tried anything. Reluctantly, Logan gave Dev a nod, and they followed the woman to the familiar gray sedan.

  Six people in a car designed for no more than five meant a tight squeeze in the backseat. This could have been another opportunity, but the others weren’t fools. The two who got in on either side of Logan and Dev gave their weapons to the guy in the front passenger seat—Frisk—preventing the chance one of their guns could be wrestled away. Frisk swiveled around and leaned against the dash to get a clear view of everyone in back. He made sure Logan and Dev saw the gun in his hand.

  “Where are we going?” Logan asked as they drove down the street.

  No one answered. He asked again a few minutes later, but received the same response.

  Soon Flagstaff was behind them, and they were on a quiet, two-lane road, the forest lining each side. This part of Arizona was decidedly not desert.

  For the first several miles, Logan caught glimpses of homes amongst the trees, but it wasn’t long before they dwindled in num
ber and all but disappeared as the road transitioned from asphalt to dirt.

  Logan didn’t like the situation at all. If it were just talk the woman wanted, they would have found a quiet spot in town. This was more an end-of-the-line kind of thing. He shared a quick look with Dev, conveying without words that they would make their move at the first chance. Dev blinked once, indicating he understood.

  They hadn’t gone far on the dirt road when the woman slowed and carefully scanned ahead. She took the first turn that came up. This new path wasn’t so much a road as the memory of one. They weaved between the trees, going no more than a quarter mile before they stopped.

  Leaving the parking lights on and the motor running, Dr. Paskota ordered everyone out.

  “Put them over there,” she said, pointing at a spot about fifteen feet in front of the car.

  Frisk motioned for Logan and Dev to move.

  The tree cover was dense, letting little of the moonlight to filter down. With the exception of the light from the car, everything was in near total darkness.

  “When I make my move, head into the woods,” Logan whispered as he and Dev walked in front of their escort.

  For a second he wasn’t sure he’d said it loudly enough for Dev to hear, but if he raised his voice, the guy behind them would have noticed.

  “Uh-huh,” Dev grunted.

  “Right there,” Frisk said.

  Logan and Dev stopped.

  “Now turn around.”

  As they followed instructions, Logan made out the silhouette of the woman leaning against the vehicle. The other two were standing to either side of him.

  Frisk took a step back toward the vehicle, but Dr. Paskota said, “No. Move to the side, but stay over there in case they try anything stupid.”

  The escort didn’t seem to be too happy about this, but he didn’t protest as he moved several feet to Logan’s left.

  “So, Mr. Harper, you want to tell me what you were doing in my motel room?”

  “I was curious.”

  “About what?”

  “Whether it was your room, Dr. Paskota, or Mr. Frisk’s here.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Frisk flinch at the mention of his name.