That was good; the situation was already complicated enough.
Since there were only two chairs, they dragged the table over to the bed. Toxtel sat on the bed, while Goss and Teague took the chairs. They spent an hour leaning over the map, with Teague pointing out topographical details.
“I’ll have to reconnoiter, make sure the land lies the way I think it does, but I think this is a doable plan,” Teague finally said. “Trail Stop is a dead end for the utility lines, the phone company and power company might not know service has been interrupted—and even if they do, taking out that bridge means they won’t be able to do anything about it. So we put up ‘bridge out’ signs here”—he pointed to where the road to Trail Stop joined the large road—“and block the road with construction sawhorses, and we should be good. This won’t take forever, probably just a day or so. Put enough pressure on that woman and she’ll cave. Hell, the rest of them there may throw her to the wolves; you never know. You said she’s got a kid?”
“Toys were lying around. Never saw one, though.”
“Could be in school. So we make sure the kid is at home, start this dance late in the afternoon or on Saturday. People tend not to risk their kids. After you get what you want, you gotta disappear fast. My men and I can slow them down, but at some point I’ll have to pull out and fade into the woodwork, too. If you aren’t gone by then, that’s your ass on the line.”
“Understood,” said Toxtel. Then he frowned. “If the bridge is out, how will we get what we came for?”
“The creek can be forded at other places. What we have to do is keep people from crossing at those places until we want them to. Now, let’s talk money.”
* * *
When Teague left the motel room an hour later he had his money, and he was both satisfied and so amused it was all he could do to keep from laughing in their faces. Toxtel’s plan was one of the most idiotic things he’d ever heard in his life, but if Toxtel wanted to pay him a small fortune for making this Rube Goldberg farce work, he was glad to take the man’s money.
The plan was workable, with a lot of trouble and expense. It was also unnecessarily complicated. If it had been left up to Teague, he would have taken two men with him and gone in on foot about
; the woman would give up whatever it was she had or her kid would die. Simple. Instead, Toxtel had dreamed up this elaborate scheme to hold the entire community hostage.
Toxtel and Goss must have gone in there and had their asses handed to them. Teague had no doubt those two were bad men to cross, but they were out of their element. They were probably used to being the only ones with weapons; out here, everyone and his grandmother had a weapon. Now, wounded ego and hurt pride had come into play and clouded their judgment, which was never good.
On the other hand, making this work would be a challenge, and Teague dearly loved a challenge. There was so much to consider, so many pieces that had to fall into place, that he’d have to be at the top of his game. Maybe Toxtel and Goss weren’t the only ones who’d let pride sway their decisions. The difference between them was, Teague recognized the element of pride in his motivation, and would allow for it. His biggest motive, though, was greed: he liked the numbers they’d been talking.
He was familiar with the Trail Stop area. The land surrounding it was rugged, almost impassable. In places the jagged mountains were almost vertical, with sheer rock faces and treacherous ravines. On the other side, the river blocked the way, and it was a bitch of a river. He didn’t know of anyone, even white-water rafters, who put a raft in this far upriver. Trail Stop existed only because it had been needed by miners who excavated for gold in the mountains in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leaving the place riddled with abandoned mines. That jut of land between the river and the mountains was the only reasonably flat piece of land for miles, so that was where a general store to serve the miners had been based. The general store was still there, the miners were long gone, and other than the handful of people who didn’t have better sense than to live there, the only people ever there were tourists, hunters, or rock climbers.
Hmm. Rock climbers. That was something else to add to his list: he had to make certain there were no visiting rock climbers staying in the bed-and-breakfast, because they could conceivably offer a way out that he couldn’t block. He didn’t think so, because even if someone scaled the rock faces of the mountains to the northeast, they were still miles and miles of rugged territory away from help, but he preferred to cover all possibilities.
The way he saw it, his biggest problem would come from Joshua Creed. There weren’t many people Teague respected, but Creed topped the list. The former Marine major had a cabin in the Trail Stop area, so it stood to reason he’d get some of his supplies there rather than drive thirty miles to another store. If anyone could throw a monkey wrench into the works, it would be Creed.
There were two options: bottle Creed up with the others inside the contained area and take the risk he would not only organize them but somehow mount a counteraction, or seal off the area with Creed outside it and hope the pretense of working on the bridge would fool him. Teague figured he’d have to be on his toes to manage Creed if he was with the others, but at least Teague would know where he was. If Creed wasn’t in Trail Stop, then Teague had no way of keeping tabs on him—and Creed could well take it into his head to see what he could see.
Teague decided he was better off with Creed contained. That meant he’d have to take extra steps, bring in special equipment, to make certain Creed
stayed
contained.
Timing was everything. Everyone who belonged in Trail Stop had to be there and anyone who didn’t belong had to be gone when the trap was sprung. An outsider would have people who expected to hear from him, or that he’d return home at a certain time. A local would certainly ask uncomfortable questions if he couldn’t get to his home. Of course, said local could also meet with an accident, so that was more easily controlled than if the trap accidentally caught someone who didn’t belong.
First on his list of things to do, however, was reconnaissance.
Cate overslept and as a result had to rush the next morning to get the muffins baked and ready for the usual onslaught of customers. Of course, after the excitement of the day before, it seemed as if everyone in Trail Stop felt the need for a muffin, even Milly Earl, the best cook in town.
As soon as the twins got up, they started pestering Cate about visiting Mimi’s house, so it appeared Sheila had done a good job selling the idea to them. Cate pretended reluctance, to whet their appetite even more. The last thing she wanted was to have to physically manhandle the boys into her mother’s SUV when they left. At the same time, neither did she want to act so reluctant that they would think she’d be unhappy if they went. Hoodwinking four-year-olds was a balancing act.
Sheila called the airline to see about changing her departure date, as well as purchasing tickets for the boys. The only flight she could get was at
the next morning, which meant she and the boys would be leaving by six in the morning, at the latest. She had to drive to Boise, return her rental, and shepherd the twins and their belongings to the gate, as well as find time to feed them before they got on the plane. She also called Cate’s dad, letting him know she was coming home ahead of schedule and bringing the boys with her. “Brace yourself,” Cate heard her mother say, laughing.
Investigator Marbury was due at eleven, so as soon as the morning crowd was gone, Cate rushed to get the kitchen and dining room cleaned up. The climbers had each grabbed a muffin and left early, eager for another day on the rocks. Cate could remember when she and Derek had been like that, with nothing more on their minds than testing their strength and skill on the rocks. These guests were leaving the next morning, so this was their last day to enjoy their sport.
At a
, she dashed up the stairs to change clothes, brush her hair, and swab on some lip gloss. Halfway up, she heard thuds and the boys shrieking with laughter in their room. Since experience told her they generally found things such as burst pillows and flying feathers hilarious, Cate was at a dead run by the time she hit the top of the stairs.
She skidded to a stop in the doorway, blinking at her children. They were both stark naked, jumping up and down, and laughing so hard they kept collapsing on the floor. Behind her, she heard Sheila running up the stairs, too, calling, “Are they okay?”
“What on
earth…
what are you two
doing
?” Cate asked, completely bewildered. She turned her head and said to Sheila, “They’re fine. They’ve pulled off all their clothes and they’re jumping up and down.” She looked back at the boys. “Stop—boys, stop jumping! Tell me what you’re doing.”
“We’re making our goobies shake,” Tanner said, for once speaking before Tucker could, but mainly because Tucker was laughing too hard to talk.
“Your—” Cate tried to say, then burst out laughing. They looked so funny, jumping up and down and pointing at each other’s “goobies,” and they were having such a good time all she could do was shake her head and laugh with them.
A flash went off beside her, and she jumped. It was Sheila, a digital camera in her hand.
“There,” she said with satisfaction. “Something to blackmail them with when they’re sixteen.”
“Mom! That’ll embarrass them!”
“You bet it will. I’d have given anything to have had something like this to hold over Patrick’s head. I’ll print out a couple of copies when I get home. Just wait; you’ll thank me someday.”
The doorbell rang downstairs, and Cate looked at her watch. If that was Marbury, he was early, and now she had no time to freshen up. Groaning, she said, “Will you get them back in their clothes while I answer the door? It’s probably the county investigator.”
She ran back down the stairs and pulled open the front door. Calvin Harris stood there, a box from Earl’s Hardware Store in one hand and his toolbox in the other; beside him stood a stocky guy she didn’t recognize, but since he had a holstered pistol on his belt she was certain this was Marbury. He had medium brown hair, and he wore jeans and a polo shirt, with a dark blue windbreaker. “Mrs. Nightingale?” Without waiting for her to answer he said, “I’m Seth Marbury, investigator with the sheriff’s department.”
“Yes, come in, please.” As Cate stepped back, she cast a harried glance up the stairs, where childish peals of laughter were still unabated. She could hear her mother, though, sounding increasingly frustrated, as she told the boys to stop shaking their goobies and put their clothes back on, and evidently was being ignored. The thuds from their jumping echoed from the ceiling.
Both men looked upward.
Cate felt color heat her cheeks. “Um…I have twin boys,” she explained to Marbury. “They’re four.” And that should definitely have been all the explanation needed.
“Tannuh, look!” she heard Tucker say in his clear, piping voice. “I can make mine
zigzag
!”
Zigzag?
Evidently losing patience with the unproductive cajoling, Sheila said in her sternest voice—which was drill-sergeant stern—
“All right! I don’t want to see any more zigzagging goobies. I don’t want to see your goobies shake, dance, skip, yodel, or anything else you can make them do. I want to see those goobies inside your shorts. Got it? If you’re going home with me, we have to make plans, and I can’t do that if I can see your bare goobies.”
Truer words had never been spoken, Cate thought, as she swallowed a bubble of laughter. She tried not to look at either man’s face, because if she did she knew she’d lose it completely. Yodeling goobies? Sheila was in fine form.
Evidently she wasn’t the only one trying not to lose it. Calvin sidled toward the stairs, carefully not even glancing at her. “I—uh—I’ll just go put this lock on the attic door,” he said, and all but bolted up to the second floor.
Cate drew a deep breath, then blew it upward in an attempt to cool her hot face. “Let’s go into the den. My mother should have the uproar quieted in a minute.”
Marbury was chuckling as she led him into the back den. “They must keep you on your toes.”
“Some days more than others. Today is one of those days,” she said ruefully. Thank God, the uproar from their bedroom had subsided as the lure of making plans to go to Mimi’s house must have outweighed the entertainment of shaking goobies.
To her everlasting gratitude, Marbury didn’t ask what had been going on upstairs, but then that must have been fairly obvious. He’d also been a little boy himself, once. She didn’t want to think about him doing anything even remotely like that. She wanted to think of Marbury strictly as a law enforcement officer.
“I’ve already taken Mr. Harris’s statement,” he said, and abruptly Cate saw the pitfalls of making any statement at all, because she didn’t know exactly what Calvin had told him. Had he told about bashing the other guy, Huxley, in the head? She took a gamble that he hadn’t, and in fact she hadn’t seen him do it, so she started at the beginning and even told about having thought someone was listening to Neenah and her talking about the two men and her suspicions about them.
When she finished, Marbury sighed and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, she realized; he must have had a lot on his plate, but he’d still taken the time to come out here and take their statements. “These two are probably long gone. You didn’t see anything else of them yesterday, did you?”
Cate shook her head. “I should have called you sooner yesterday,” she admitted, “but I just didn’t think of it. We were okay but kind of stunned, if you know what I mean. Everyone stood around talking about it, and the twins were listening, and I—” She spread her hands helplessly. “If I had, you could have cut them off at the pass, so to speak.”
“I could have brought them up on charges, yeah, but they’d have made bail, walked, and we’d never see them again. I hate it, but the county doesn’t have the resources for us to spend a lot of time looking for out-of-state felons, especially when no one was hurt and nothing was taken except a suitcase that didn’t belong to you anyway. Are you sure nothing of value was in the suitcase?”