Chương 6
“Six people?”
She looked at the countdown.
Hollis said, “You want me to trust you, give me something.”
“I don’t want you to trust me. I want you to make useful decisions while distrusting me.”
Despite himself, Hollis almost smiled. It vanished quickly.
His phone rang.
He answered, listened, and swore under his breath.
“What?” Mason asked.
Hollis looked at Harper. “Your father’s truck just crossed an automated toll camera eastbound on Highway 24.”
Harper checked the receiver.
The arrow pointed west.
Maddox said, “Two vehicles.”
“Or a cloned plate,” Hollis said.
“Or old footage injected into the system,” Harper said.
Hollis gave her a sharp look.
She held up the receiver. “This signal is moving toward Verona.”
Mason said, “What’s in Verona?”
“Warehouses, salvage yards, a closed textile plant, subdivisions,” Hollis said. “And a lot of empty road.”
The lieutenant authorized the unmarked response but refused to delay the vehicle alert. Procedure had already begun moving, and procedure was difficult to reverse once names entered databases.
Hollis drove the rental because he would not allow Harper to control the pace. Harper sat beside him with the receiver. Mason and Maddox took the back seat. A second unmarked county vehicle followed at a distance of nearly a mile.
The prepaid phone remained silent.
The receiver distance dropped steadily.
11.2 miles.
9.6.
8.1.
Hollis drove five miles over the limit and no more.
Mason watched the countdown.
“You can go faster.”
“I can also put us in a ditch.”
“My father has eighteen minutes.”
“Your father needs us to arrive.”
Mason turned to Harper. “Say something.”
“Hollis is right.”
“Of course he is. Everybody’s right except me tonight.”
Maddox leaned back against the seat. “You want a job?”
Mason looked at him.
“Watch for repeat vehicles. Tell us if you see one for more than three turns.”
“I know how to—”
“Then do it.”
The task steadied him. He began studying mirrors and side roads.
Harper watched the green arrow.
The receiver’s distance stopped falling.
6.4 miles.
Hollis continued driving.
The number rose.
6.5.
“Turn around,” Harper said.
Hollis braked, reversed into a church parking lot, and headed back.
The arrow pointed toward an unmarked road on the left. A chain hung between two posts, but one end had been cut and laid carefully in the grass.
Hollis slowed.
A weathered sign read PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO DUMPING.
The younger deputy called on Hollis’s secure phone. The support vehicle would hold at the highway.
Hollis turned onto the dirt road.
Pine branches scraped the roof. Water-filled potholes pulled at the tires. The receiver dropped below one mile.
The countdown showed eleven minutes.
Ahead, a faint light appeared through the trees.
Hollis stopped the car.
“From here, we walk.”
Harper studied the surroundings.
“No.”
“You suddenly prefer driving into an unknown site?”
“They expect the car. If it stops this far out, they know law enforcement took control.”
Hollis glanced at the receiver. “How far?”
“Point eight miles.”
“Could be on the other side of the property.”
“It’s ahead.”
“How do you know?”
“The arrow isn’t adjusting for road curves. It’s direct bearing.”
Hollis put the car in gear.
Mason exhaled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
They drove another half mile before the trees opened around a rusted agricultural warehouse. The structure had once stored fertilizer or equipment. One wall sagged inward. A security light burned above a wide sliding door.
Thomas’s truck sat outside.
Mason reached for the door handle.
Harper caught his wrist again.
“I am getting tired of that,” he whispered.
“Someone’s in the driver’s seat.”
They looked.
A figure sat behind the wheel, head tilted forward.
Hollis killed the engine.
The receiver showed 412 feet.
The countdown showed eight minutes.
Harper opened her door.
Hollis grabbed her arm.
“You stay behind me.”
“The message was sent to me.”
“I have a badge and a gun.”
“They’ll shoot the badge first.”
Maddox spoke quietly. “Let her approach the truck. We cover from here.”
Hollis looked back at him. “You armed?”
“No.”
“Then you cover nothing.”
Maddox’s gaze did not move. “I cover her decisions.”
“That phrase does not mean anything to me.”
“It will.”
Harper eased her arm free.
She walked toward the truck with the envelope in her left hand and the receiver hidden against her palm. The security light flattened her shadow across the mud.
No one moved inside the warehouse.
At twenty feet, she recognized the jacket worn by the person in the driver’s seat.
It belonged to her father.
At ten feet, she saw the face.
A department-store mannequin had been dressed in Thomas’s clothes. A printed photograph of his face had been taped over the blank plastic head.
Mason swore behind her.
The truck’s interior light came on.
A phone on the passenger seat began playing a video.
Thomas appeared on the screen. He was no longer gagged. He sat against a concrete wall with his hands bound in front of him.
A man stood behind him, visible only from the chest down.
“Open the envelope,” a voice said through the phone.
Harper looked at the warehouse.
The voice continued. “You have six minutes.”
She returned to the envelope, though she had already removed the photograph and receiver.
“There’s nothing else inside.”
“Page twelve.”
Harper thought of the library book.
The locked room was never locked from the inside.
Mason came closer despite her warning.
“Dad’s book.”
Harper looked at him.
“Page two-twelve,” he said. “You said it was folded.”
Hollis whispered, “The book’s back at the house.”
“No,” Harper said.
She had brought it without consciously deciding to. It was tucked into the rear waistband of her jeans beneath the field jacket, an old habit of taking a clue rather than leaving it where another person could alter it.
She pulled out the paperback.
The voice from the phone said, “Tear out page twelve.”
Harper opened the book to page twelve.
May you like
Nothing had been underlined. The paper felt normal.
Maddox moved beside the truck, eyes on the warehouse door.
