Edge of the Heat 2 (Westwood Harbor Corruption) (14 page)

Nothing. Of course not. Craig tore his eyes from the last house they had surveillance on that Norman had ties with and glanced up at the clock. An hour had passed since they arrived and they still weren’t any closer to finding Emma. They didn’t even have anything to go on.

“
Damnit Hawk! I can’t sit here for one more second! I gotta go do
something
. I’m going to go walk Emma’s neighborhood and start asking the neighbors questions.”

“
Dennis is already there. He has only found two people who are home and neither of them saw anything. He just texted me.”

The cordless phone on the counter rang, startling Craig, who jumped up to grab it. “
Masterson,” he said into the receiver.

“
Hey Craig, one of the cops who used to work with Norman called me and gave me some information that might help you.” It was Carruthers. Up until this morning he had been undercover in the police department.

“
Yeah, what?” Craig could taste his excitement. He grabbed a pen and paper.

“
He says that he’s known Norman was dirty for years now and he’s been keeping a file on him, trying to get people to listen. He said he has to be careful of who he told because the first time he tried to go to Norman’s boss he almost got fired. Anyway, he went back through his file and found 3 vehicles that Norman or his team confiscated on search warrants but the vehicles never actually showed up in the yard. A brown, 2007 Winnebago Adventurer, a red, 2010 Honda Civic, and a black 2002 Maserati Gran Turismo.”

Craig scribbled the vehicle names on his paper. “
What is a Winnebago Adventurer?”

“
I think it’s a big motorhome, you know, like a RV.”

Lights bloomed in Craig
’s mind. They were looking for an RV. “You got license plates?”

“
No, no license plates. The best he could do was the names on the search warrants.”

Craig
’s excitement waned a little. That probably wasn’t going to help them, but at least it was something to check out. “You tell that cop thanks from me. What’s his name? I’m going to want to thank him personally someday.”

“
Huff. Jared Huff.”

“
Got it, thanks!” Craig hung up the phone. “Hawk we got a little break. I bet you 100 bucks we’re looking for a big brown RV. Have we seen anything like that yet on any of the street cams?”

Hawk looked up, interested. “
Nope, nothing, what you got?”

Craig explained the situati
on. Hawk lapsed into silence, his thick, dark eyebrows screwed together tight.

Craig paced behind the row of monitors, thinking hard. They could put out a roadblock. No, if Norman was leaving town he
’d be long gone already. They could notify the state cops, put out an APB on a brown RV and see what came back. Risky though, state cops might push Norman over the edge. It would be better if he and Hawk could get a visual on the vehicle somewhere and go get it themselves. He kept pacing, his options getting smaller and smaller. He peeked at Hawk, whose fingers were dancing over the keyboard again.

Hawk was the computer master. He didn
’t need Craig’s help. There had to be
something
else he could do. He couldn’t just sit here.

“
I’m going to the police station, I’m going to start asking questions.”

“
The Chief will throw you out when he finds you. He was livid when I didn’t notify him this morning that we were going in hot on Norman. I still haven’t decided if he would have tipped him off or not.”

“
Let him throw me out! Maybe I’ll find something first. Maybe a look at this file Huff was keeping would help us.” Craig headed for the door. He stopped short. “Wait, give me your phone. Norman took mine.”

Hawk
’s head tore away from the computer screen to stare at Craig, his eyes wide. “Norman has your phone,” he breathed in excitement.

His whipped back around and his fingers tore at the keyboard.

Craig ran to him. “What, what? Can you trace my phone?”

“
Yep, it’s got a tracker in it. All your phones do,” Hawk said, referring to the other agents on the team.

Craig watched Hawk
’s fingers fly over the keyboard, hope finally blooming full in his chest.
Come on, come on, find it
. His hand reached out and grabbed the truck keys off the counter. As soon as he had the slightest inkling of a location he was gone. Hawk could catch up later.

Craig watched a map come up on the screen. Hawk groaned and Craig
’s heart sunk. “I’ve only got a last known location. That means he smashed the phone I bet.”

“
Well where is it?”

“
A playground 6 blocks from Emma’s house on Centurion Street.”

“
Do we have any Cams on the playground?”

Hawk thought for a second. “
Good thinking. I doubt it but I’m checking now.” Two more maps popped up on the closest monitor. Then some street view pictures. “Nope, but just let me try something.”

The constant click-clacking of the keyboard with no results was enough to drive Craig batty, but he gritted his teeth against the irritation. They had to find
something
. They
had
to catch a break.

Now Hawk was looking at google stre
et view of the area, all the way around the playground. “Found one,” he muttered under his breath.

“
Found what, found what?”

“
Just hold on, gotta concentrate here,” Hawk told him. He had a screen pulled up that was nothing but text flying across the screen. “Yes,” he breathed and switched back to a browser view.

“
See this gym across the street? The Better Body. I hacked into their security cameras. There’s a good chance they can see the parking lot. If they can’t, I’ll try the flower shop next door.”

Craig could see grainy, black and white camera images being rolled backwards in time. “
I just gotta go back an hour and a half…” Hawk sucked in his breath. Craig craned his neck to look. A huge, brown RV was rolling out of the parking lot.

“
Oh my God, go back farther,” Craig urged him.

“
There, that’s Emma! And Norman!” We got him! We need the license plate on that RV!”

“
Working on it,” Hawk’s voice was low and tight and his fingers flew. The RV moved forwards and backwards until he got a perfect head-on view. He zoomed in on the license plate but it was too grainy to read. “Just gotta optimize it …”

“
I’ll be right back, I need to get loaded up,” Craig said, jogging out the door. He came back within 5 minutes, wearing tan khakis and a dark blue polo shirt, a sub-compact G27 Glock in his boot and a Glock 23 on his belt.

“
Anything?” he shot at Hawk.

“
Yeah, we got the plate number. I just loaded it into the automatic license plate reader system for all the bridges on every highway within a 30 mile radius. We should get something back any second here.”

The screen flashed. I5, bridge number 483. Craig held his breath. Hawk entered some numbers on a calculator. “
102 miles out, headed south.”

Craig
’s desperation threatened to overtake him. “If he’s headed to Mexico we’ll never catch him before he crosses the border.”

Swirling, down and dark, Emma was pinned in a hot tub, somehow her foot was stuck in the drain and she was
being pulled under, drowning, dying. She couldn’t breathe. She felt desperate for air. She was alone, and no one would care when she died. She had nobody. No wait. She had Craig, and Jerry, and she had Vivian. These people would care when she died. Her breathing came a little easier. Vivian, she had family now. She had a sister.

Emma opened her eyes, her tongue thick in her mouth. She wanted to breathe hard and suck in great gasps of air, but her lungs wouldn
’t respond. The room above her pressed in on every side, dark, so dark, except for a pinprick of light to one side.

“
Em, I’m here, can you hear me?” a whisper came from the dark.

Vivian
’s voice! The room slammed into place, but it wasn’t a room at all. They were in the compartment under the bed in RV, which swayed and rumbled beneath them.

Emma opened her mouth and purposely drew in as much oxygen as possible, still feeling like she was suffocating.

“Shhhhh, it’s ok, it’s the drug he gave you. It’s going to make you feel like that for a few more minutes until it clears.”

Emma tried to relax. She couldn
’t, she still felt like she was drowning.

“
It’s called Lofentanil, it’s like Heroin, but 100 times more potent and it lasts for 2 days. He already pulled over and came back to check your breathing once, so I figured it was safe to wake you up.”

“
Wake me up? How?” Emma whispered back sputtering, trying not to gag on her own tongue.

“
He has Narcan too, in case of an overdose. I gave you the Narcan.” Emma knew what Narcan was. They carried it on the ambulance. If someone overdosed on an opioid like heroin or morphine, most likely it would depress their breathing to the point where they might stop. An injection of Narcan would kill their high and get them breathing again within a few minutes.

“
How, h-how,” Emma tried to ask something, but her mind lost it.

“
How did I get the Narcan? I’ve been working on getting out of my handcuffs since he first brought me in here and I finally did. My hair tie has a long metal piece on it and I used that. I knew how to do it because we got some handcuffs stuck on my friend Theresa at a bachelorette party last year. Then I was able to break out that board at the top and get out into the room. The Narcan was in the same drawer as the other drugs. He’s got a ton in there.”

Emma rolled her eyes towards Vivian, her hands still handcuffed and her muscles as heavy as lead.

“So that’s your ex-husband huh, nice guy. If you don’t mind though, let’s not invite him over for Christmas this year.”

Emma couldn
’t believe her ears. Was that a joke? Norman had kidnapped both of them and had God-knows-what plans for them and Vivian was joking about it? A short giggle shot out of her in spite of herself, but it quickly dissolved into tears.

“
Shhh, shhhh, Emma I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to joke.”

Emma pulled herself together, and dragged in more deep breaths. “
No, I’m sorry. You’re right. Norman shouldn’t come for Christmas this year.” Emma tried to smile but only grimaced. “Did he give you the drug too?” she asked her sister.

“
Yep.” Emma could barely make out in the dim light that Vivian was smiling.

“
Then how come you aren’t unconscious? Were you faking earlier?”

“
Yes, I was faking. Remember my tumor? Well I take a medicine every day that competes with opioids like Lofentanil for receptors in the body, so they don’t affect me. When he injected me I wasn’t sure what he expected to happen but I thought pretending to pass out was a safe guess. When you passed out and your breathing was so slow I figured it must be an opioid. I was so happy to find the Narcan, although Norman seemed to think you were breathing fast enough.”

“
Maybe I need some more Narcan, I still feel really out of it.”

“
I don’t think so, it just needs another minute or so to work fully. But you will need more in an hour or two maybe. I’m not sure how long Narcan lasts, but Lofantanil can last for 2 days.”

“
2 days!”

“
Crazy, I know. We could be deep in the heart of Mexico by then.”

“
Do you think he’s taking us to Mexico?” Emma whispered frantically?

“
Oh yeah, after he injected me he said ‘I sure hope you can speak Spanish,’ and laughed.”

“
Oh man, we gotta get out of this bus. If he gets across the border with us, who knows what he’ll do with us! And Craig will have a harder time getting to us in Mexico too, I bet.” Emma tried hard to think. “Can you get these handcuffs off of me?”

“
Yeah, but maybe we should have a plan first. If the RV stopped right now, I would put mine back on and pretend to be passed out,” Vivian motioned to her handcuffs above their heads, still fastened to the metal ring.

“
Where is the empty syringe?”

“
I ripped a little hole in the carpet next to the board and shoved it in there.”

“
Good thinking.” Emma was a little in awe of her sister’s ingenuity. And very glad for it. If they were going to get out of this mess, they would need all the good ideas they could come up with. As much as Emma would like to imagine that Craig was hot on their heels and about to swoop in and save them, she knew the reality was probably very different. She took a moment to hope that he was OK, where ever he was, and then she turned her mind back to their problem.

“
Ok, how about the window at the back of the RV, just over the bed. Can we get out it? We could wait until Norman had to slow down or stop for something and then jump out and just run.”

Vivian thought for a second. “
Maybe. I didn’t look closely at it. Should I go look, or should I get you out of the handcuffs first?”

“
You should get me out of the handcuffs. Just in case.” Emma was starting to feel a bit better. Her muscles felt lighter, like maybe she could stand and lift things.

Vivian fished a hand into her pocket and came out with a heavy duty purple hair tie with a small metal clip holding it together. Or at least it had been a
hair tie. Vivian had pulled it apart so now it was just a piece of fabric with the clip at one end. She stuck the metal clip in the keyhole of Emma’s handcuffs and levered it up just a bit. After a few tries, she was able to pull first one cuff off, and then the other.

“
Ok, I’m going to go look at the window, stay here.” Vivian low-crawled to the top of the compartment, near the metal rings and pushed the board she had broken fully out of the way, then levered herself out, pushing with her feet on the metal rings.

Emma watched her go, then brought her arms down to her sides and massaged them, her ears alert for any sign that the RV was slowing.

After a minute, Vivian crawled back in, feet first, and wiggled down to lay next to Emma again. The excitement on her face gave Emma hope.

“
It’s an emergency exit. There’s a big red handle to pull and the whole window pops off. That’s our plan. He’s going to have to stop and get gas soon. We pop that window off and run. We’ll have to be quick though, because only one of us can fit through it at a time.”

“
Ok, that’s the plan then, let’s get out of here.”

Vivian crawled out first and Emma followed. Her legs did
n’t want to support her at first, they felt weak and rubbery. But boy did it feel good to stand up! Sunlight streamed through the windows. It was hard to believe they had just been handcuffed to the floor under a bed by a madman.

Emma stretched a little an
d bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, trying to get some circulation going. She eyed the window. It was very small. She put one knee on the bed and read the instructions on how to get it open, and then tried to see how far the drop was on the other side. She thought maybe she saw a ladder that they could climb down but it was hard to tell from this angle.

Vivian reached past her and pulled the little dresser drawer open. Inside was a red drawer organizer, with over 20 syringes inside.

Emma’s eyes grew wide. She lifted a few syringes to read the labels. Lofantanil, Heroin, Narcan, Oxycontin. What was Norman doing with all of these? Remembering what Vivian said, she slipped a couple of Narcan syringes into her left pocket. As an afterthought, she grabbed a handful of Lofantanil and slipped them into her other pocket.

Emma looked around the room for anything else they could use. The door was closed tightly, so there was no way Norman could know they were up, as long as they didn
’t make too much noise. She got up on the bed and opened the cabinets above it. They were full of Norman’s clothes. She started pulling clothes out and feeling through them, looking for anything that could be a weapon. If she knew Norman, he probably had a full cache of guns and knives hidden somewhere.

Finding nothing, she moved on to the small closet on the side of the bed. More clothes, shoes, boots, empty holsters. Emma checked every holster and felt every piece of clothing. She even got down on her hands and knees and looked
for secret compartments in the floor of the closet, but came up empty.
If only Norman had stored a gun back here. She was pretty sure she could shoot him if she had to.

She cast her mind back to the open area behind the driver
’s compartment. Would Norman store his guns in one of the cabinets up there? Likely the big one next to the fridge? Or was there a secret compartment somewhere else in the big vehicle.

She looked out the window. Dry, flat land flew past. One car was behind them far off in the distance
. Occasionally a car passed them going the other way. Were they on I-5? This stretch of road didn’t look very heavily traveled. If they were on I-5 they must already be south of all of the big cities.

She craned her neck, trying to see a street sign or som
ething that would give her a clue as to where they were. Vivian got up on the bed next to her and whispered “I’m just going to get into position here. As soon as we pull over or start slowing way down I’m going to pop this window.”

“
Ok.” Emma kept watching out the window. For miles and miles it seemed like she saw nothing but flat, dry, empty land. The signs on her side passed too quickly for her to see what they said, and the signs on the other side were too far away on the divided highway. She felt sleepy and dull, the swaying and constant noise of the RV lulling her into a relaxed state. She tried to fight it but found herself wanting to lay down and curl up on the bed…

Vivian pinched her arm, hard. Emma sat straight up, alarmed. They were slowing down! S
he jumped up and crammed her face against the side window, trying to look in both directions at once. No sign of civilization, just miles and miles of empty, dry land like before. Were they coming up on a gas station?

The RV took an exit ramp, turning onto
a side road, then an immediate hard right onto a dirt road. Dust flew everywhere, partially obscuring Emma’s view. No gas station this way for sure. Norman kept slowing. Oh no! If he just pulls off onto the side of this road and comes back here there will be nowhere to hide! No cover, no people, no nothing. It was at least 3/4s of a mile back to the freeway where there would hopefully be cars zooming by. He could pick them off easily if that’s what he decided to do. He probably could even catch one of them and pull her back here. But what could they do? They didn’t have time to get back under the bed. They had to go for it. He couldn’t catch them both. Emma was determined to give her sister a fighting chance at getting out of this mess.

“
Do it, open it!” she hissed to Vivian. Vivian pulled the red metal bar, putting all of her weight into it. It gave, and the window popped right off, falling onto the bed. Vivian stuck her head out and looked around.

She pulled back in. “
We can climb down the ladder, it’s on the far side but we can reach it.” she whispered to Emma. The RV was slow enough now that there wasn’t any road noise to mask their voices.

“
Go, go.” Emma made shooing gestures with her hands. Vivian turned around and stuck her feet out the window first, holding on to Emma to steady herself.

The RV came to a full stop.

She felt for the ladder with her foot, finding it and reaching a hand out to grab the ladder with. Emma flipped her feet around and poked them out the window. She could hear Norman’s footsteps in the RV. Frantically, she felt around with her right foot for the ladder. She couldn’t find it. Screw it, she didn’t have time for this. She pushed with all her might, trying to heave her body backwards out the window as the door opened. Norman’s placid face erupted, eyes going wide as he saw her almost all the way out.

Emma wiggled her hips and pushed harder, raking her shirt up and bruising her breasts on the window. But she got it, her head was out, she was falling to the ground.  Ooooph, the air wa
s knocked out of her lungs as her legs collapsed beneath her. A sharp pain shot through her left ankle. Puffs of dust exploded around her. Vivian was there immediately, helping her up. They ran around to the side of the RV where Norman couldn’t see them. Emma didn’t see anything to run towards except the highway. “Vivian, the road, we have to run to the road.” She could hear Norman pushing his way out of the window after them.