Pawnbroker: A Thriller (26 page)

Chapter 118

INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

NORTHEAST MISSISSIPPI HEALTH CENTER

TUPELO, MISSISSIPPI

“I
’m really sorry, Abby,” Margaret said. “I tried.”

“They haven’t heard from Gray at the shop?”

“No. I talked to someone named Larry, said he was the manager. He insisted he hasn’t heard from him in days.”

“What about my father-in-law’s office?”

“Basically the same story. They said he called in several days ago, said he was taking a few days off to take care of personal business. That’s it.”

Abby fought back tears that would do no one any good. There had been enough of her blubbering and feeling sorry for herself. Her family was obviously in trouble. They needed her. She wiped her eyes. “Margaret, you have to help me get out of here. You know there’s nothing wrong with me now.”

Margaret looked at her, thought about what she had seen and heard over the past few days. Abby was right. Her vitals had stabilized, had in fact been textbook perfect for nearly two days. Then there was Satterfeld’s bizarre behavior. Hushed phone calls during which he kept looking over his shoulder, phone calls that always seemed to take place after he had seen Abby or after someone had called about her. And those calls, for heaven’s sake, when he had told a caller she was comatose when she was in fact wide awake. She heard that with her own ears.

Twelve years Margaret had been a nurse, working long shifts and terrible hours much of that time to climb to the head shift nurse position. Bucking a doctor was career suicide. Her family depended on her salary, critically so with her husband, Zeke, laid off. But something was bad wrong with this situation. Could she live with herself if something happened to this woman while she, Margaret Lumford, did nothing?

Chapter 119

R
ocky paced the campsite where he and his family had been since last night.

“I’m scared, Rock,” Linda said.

“Ain’t no need to be scared, Lin. We’re safe.”

Being an all-season hunter (poacher, some called it) had its high points. He knew the hills, woods, and gullies of Pontocola County as well as most folks knew their own backyard, and he wasn’t worried about anyone finding them in this spot, three miles from town and buried deep in a thick woods.

“What are we gonna do?” she said.

Rocky continued to pace. “I’m worried about Ray Earl. He ain’t home and his mama don’t know where he is.”

“Oh good grief, Rock, I swear I’ll never understand why you want to bother with somebody like him.”

“Cause ain’t nobody else will,” Rocky said. “Ain’t that reason enough?”

Linda’s face softened. “Yeah, I guess it is. Still, what are we gonna do?”

“You and the kids are staying right here where it’s safe. I’m gonna go find him.”

“How?”

“I got an idea where he is.”

Chapter 120

W
e docked at Lucas’s pier and transferred the weaponry and ammunition from the boathouse onto the Lady, then headed out. It took only a few minutes to get to the lock, another forty to get through it. The yacht drew a lot of attention, mostly looks and whistles, which was not a good thing. Luckily, no questions from any of the lock officials.

Cruising eastward on the Tennessee River, I piloted the
Lady from the fly bridge up top. The day was gorgeous and we retracted the canopy to enjoy the sunshine. I couldn’t stop glancing at the clock, and the closer we got to the appointed time for him to call, the antsier I got. The redline phone rang at 3:02.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m ready for the details on our meeting, Mr. Bolton,” RoboVoice said.

“Tonight, ten o’clock.”

“Where?”

“Wheeler Lock and Dam, west side, on the water. If I see the slightest hint that you’re not alone, you’re going to regret it.”

“I don’t like threats, Mr. Bolton.”

“And I don’t give one happy damn what you like. Be there. Be alone. Any more questions?”

“No more questions, but I do need to share a little something with you before we finish this conversation.”

“What’s that?”

“Hold.”

The next thing I heard literally stopped my heart. “Daddy!” both of my daughters said in unison over the phone. Dear God in heaven, no.

I managed to say, “Hey, Julie. Hey, Mandy. Y’all being good girls?”

“Yes, sir,” Mandy said.

“Me too!” Julie said.

“Is your PawPaw there?” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I love you, girls, and I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” they both said.

“Let me talk to PawPaw.”

“But Daddy wants to talk to PawPaw,” I heard Julie say just before RoboVoice returned. “Still feel like setting conditions?” he said.

“If you—”

“Save your juvenile, emotional bullshit. If you want to see them again, you be sure you have nothing in your bag of tricks this evening.” He hung up.

Chapter 121

I set the yacht on a straight course and let Penny take the wheel. Standing at the point of the bow, watching the hull split the water like a knife, I tried to stop the awful churning in my gut. I stood there until the sun was almost down. Penny was uncomfortable with the wheel at night, so I took over, this time from inside the pilothouse. We encountered a bit of traffic around Florence, Alabama, but nothing serious.

Being something of a gadget freak, the cockpit was a thing of beauty in the dark. Soft indirect lighting came on automatically around the edge of the floor and ceiling, and the LCD screens shifted colors and brightened. Piloting the craft would’ve been a real treat under any other conditions.

In my present state, however, there were no treats. No joy. Just a soul full of determination, anger, fear. I had picked out a latitude and longitude, then programmed it into the GPS. At present course and speed, the computer said we were a half-hour out. It was not quite nine o’clock, so I backed the throttles down. We didn’t want to arrive on station too early.

“How you holding up?” Penny said.

“Okay. You?”

“Ready, but I’m scared. You’re not?”

“For my kids, yes. For my father, yes. For myself? No. There’s no reason for me to be scared. If anything happens to my kids, I don’t want to live anyway.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them, Gray. This is going to work.”

“I can’t figure out how he found them. I didn’t even know where they were!”

She took my hand, squeezed it. I looked at her, and she gave me a taut smile. We rode in silence for several minutes, until an artificial voice said, “Final waypoint in one mile. Secondary waypoint in five hundred meters.” I acknowledged the announcement by touching one of the LCD screens. Carefully watching the depth-under-hull readout, I guided the boat to the right side of the river, as close to the bank as I could get, and killed the engines.

The GPS navigation system had been perfect. We were right at a bend in the river, just steep enough to be out of sight to oncoming traffic. “Secondary waypoint achieved,” said the system. I acknowledged, and the voice said, “Engage dynamic positioning?” I touched a big YES icon. “Dynamic positioning engaged. Current position will be maintained.”

I had read about “electronic anchors” like this on cruise ships, but had no idea it was available on “small” private craft like this. By using a system of jets around the perimeter of the hull, the yacht’s computer kept us at that exact GPS position. The jets were silent, but obviously working, because we stayed exactly where we were. At least we should have the upper hand from a techno-perspective.

“Get us linked up with Jimmy,” I said.

Penny dialed, talked for a minute, looked to me and gave a thumbs-up. “He hacked into the manufacturer of the yacht’s control systems, says he has everything.” She started pushing buttons in the cockpit as Jimmy relayed instructions to her, occasionally reading information back to him from the screens.

“Test,” a male voice suddenly boomed from the cockpit speakers.

“Jimmy?” I said, assuming this to be a two-way communication. “Jimmy?”

“He hears you over the phone, but not the link,” Penny said. “He says to find the cabin mike control, and set it to vox...should be on the leftmost control screen, accessed through the icon that says COMMS.”

I found the icon, made the setting. “Jimmy?”

“Reading you now, bud. Jimmy here.”

“Gray Bolton, Jimmy. I appreciate your help.”

“De nada. Let’s finish the setup.”

“Roger that,” I said.

“Penny Lane, got your notebook booted?”

“Yup, ready to go,” Penny said.

“Okey dokey, here’s what I want you to do,” he said.

Chapter 122

TENNESSEE RIVER

8 MILES EAST OF WHEELER LOCK & DAM

T
his bullshit had gone on long enough. Tonight, it would end. Completely. All the loose ends neatly clipped and tied. One man standing. One man in charge: Ricky Ballard. His new adversaries had shown a serious lack of foresight when they failed to sweep the hotel suite for listening devices, and as a result, he knew exactly what their agenda was for the evening. He had to give the pawnbroker credit: For an amateur, he had done a hell of a job setting up the game on the water. Harder to run. Everything takes place in a tightly contained space. Smart. Unfortunately—for the pawnbroker—he had a losing hand and that was that.

The sun was down and the water dark. On the first pass, Ballard overshot the canal that branched from the river and wound back into the thick woods. Dug by the government during the Great Depression to provide waterway access to the CCC work camp, the channel had once been wide enough and deep enough to accommodate a hundred-man crew boat. After decades of neglect, trees and underbrush from both banks had narrowed the canal’s width by half, but it was still plenty wide enough for those who had used it of late, and those who would use it tonight.

Keeping his speed down and his noise level low, Ballard steered a tight circle and ducked beneath the overhanging tree limbs as he maneuvered the small fishing boat into the nearly invisible entrance to the channel. Forty-five minutes later, he cut the engine and drifted into a tiny cove on the right bank. He got out and pulled the aluminum boat onto dry ground and into a patch of tall weeds. The old camp building was a quarter-mile ahead. Ballard hitched up his pants and set out through the woods.

Chapter 123

TENNESSEE RIVER

4 MILES EAST OF WHEELER LOCK & DAM

T
he man leaned on the bow rail of the borrowed yacht, a twenty-year-old but still nice sixty-footer named Aces & Eights. He turned and looked at the artwork on the main cabin’s forward wall—ace of hearts on the left, eight of spades on the right—and smiled at the irony of riding into battle aboard a “dead man’s hand.” If he were a superstitious man, it might have given him pause. But he was not a superstitious man. He had gotten ahead through meticulous planning, by playing by the rules and waiting for the right opportunity. Luck had nothing to do with it. The years in his profession had given him all the right contacts in all the right places. Law. Legal. Illegal. It was all a game, one whose outcome was usually determined not so much by right and wrong as by who had the money and who held the power. He had both, and he was about to have a lot more.

He turned back to the bow and stared straight ahead. Night drew close and the stars were coming into view. The moon was just cracking the horizon. And Gray Bolton was out there. He could smell the sonofabitch. He knew what he and the girl were up to. He also knew about the friend, but he’d be in no position to help them tonight. He looked over his shoulder and saw Docker sitting on a leather bench on the side of the cabin structure.

“Jack,” he said, “come here, please.”

Docker sprang to his feet and walked to him. “Yes, sir.”

“Where are the old man and the kids?”

“That middle room where the couches are.”

“That’s called the salon, Jack.” Docker was dumb as hell, but that’s often what you needed in a lieutenant, someone too dim to ask questions, someone who did what they were told, and at that, Jack Docker excelled.

“Yes, sir.”

He checked his watch. Twenty minutes to go. “Gag them and tie them up in the aft stateroom.”

Docker nodded and turned to leave.

“And be sure they’re tied where they can’t make any noise.”

*          *          *

Before tonight, Jack Docker had never been on a boat. Not a cruise ship. Not a yacht. Not a fishing boat. He had no clue what or where the “aft stateroom” was, but he didn’t want to look stupid to his new boss, so he simply nodded and walked away.

Now he looked down at the old man, who sat in the middle of the couch with the little girls on either side of him. The old man stared right back, no fear in his eyes. Tough old codger. “Let me ask you something,” Docker said.

The old man arched his eyebrows.

“What’s an aft stateroom?”