Runaway (16 page)

Drecker stepped in closer and leaned toward Jan. “Believe me, lady. We are not worried about what the local sheriff might find. If you can get the judge to get you a warrant on a Sunday, by all means come on back and I’ll give you the tour. Until then, I’ll ask you to leave our property.”

The corporal was standing right behind Drecker, ready to act if necessary. Jan sighed and slipped one of her cards into Drecker’s shirt pocket. “I can see you’re going to force us to do this the hard way. We’ll be back.” Jan and Catherine turned to leave.

Drecker turned back toward the trail, breaking into a double-time trot. The corporal took up a post at the trailhead.

Catherine followed Jan to her Jeep.

“I don’t know what sort of reactions you got at the other camps you visited,” Catherine said, “but it feels to me like they know who she is.”

“Yep.” Jan unlocked her car and started to climb in.

“Wait! What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in my car. Get in if you want.”

Catherine settled herself in the passenger seat and looked around the inside of the car. It was spotless.

“Pretty spic-and-span for an investigator’s car,” she said.

Jan didn’t reply. She picked up her phone and hit the speed dial for Peet. The call went to voice mail. “Peet, it’s me. I’m sitting up here in Michigan with Catherine in my car. Interested to hear from you how the fuck that happened. Call me.”

“I thought I just explained to you how this happened,” Catherine said.

“Excuse me if I don’t take your word for much right now.”

Catherine looked dismayed. “I know we need to talk. I’m not sure what happened, but between the time I last saw you in the conference room, which was so lovely, and now, something has become very tangled. But we need to decide what to do here about Maddy. What do you think?”

Jan’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, as if she were maneuvering a Grand Prix course instead of standing still in a parking lot. She took a deep breath.

“Do you feel like a walk in the woods?” she asked.

Catherine smiled. “That would be brilliant. Let’s go find our girl.”

Chapter Seven

David joined Maddy and Kristi’s squad for the afternoon session on hand-to-hand combat. They were covered with mud after a half hour of practicing break and rolls, their cammies still wet from a disaster in the wetlands ambush session earlier in the day. Maddy lay on the ground and thought if she had to stand up one more time, she’d find a way to take a rifle butt to Sergeant Cooper’s head.

David lay sprawled next to Maddy, a smile on his face as he looked over at her. “Isn’t this great?”

“I’d rather be coding,” she said.

“Come on, Maddy. You can’t live your whole life in your head. This is good for you. We’re going to be a cohesive unit out in Idaho.”

She looked at him and shook her head. “If you say so. It seems to me we’d be better off learning how to chop wood and plant seeds than learning about choke holds and pressure points. But call me crazy.”

Sergeant Cooper ordered them up for the next round of exercises. Kristi groaned and hauled herself up. “All I know is I could eat an entire elk right now. I already know how to field dress and butcher it, so I’ve got that covered for us.”

She leaned over to give Maddy a hand up. “Come on, you wimp. Let’s practice some more of that close quarters stuff. It’s fun.”

They lined up facing each other, half the people with dummy knives in their hands, the other half crouched to ward off the attack. Maddy worried a little at the gleam in Kristi’s eye as she stood across from her. Tommy was next to her, standing more slumped than crouched. He stared at David across from him and looked like he was just waiting to be impaled.

Kristi was just moving in with her knife when Sergeant Drecker ran up to their group and pulled David out of the line, holding him by the elbow.

“Sergeant Cooper, dismiss your squad.”

“What?” Cooper said.

“You heard me, Sergeant. We’re bugging out.”

Drecker dragged David a few yards away and began to speak to him. Maddy could tell he was furious. Behind them, they could see Major Jacovich approaching. Something was up.

“Okay, form up. Time to break down and clean weapons,” Cooper said.

The squad picked up their rifles and lined up behind Cooper, who led them back across the field to the weapons van. As they walked near Drecker and David, Maddy saw David look over at her. He didn’t look happy.

“What the fuck is going on?” asked Kristi.

“I have no idea,” Maddy said. But she did. She saw Jacovich look over at her too, and his face was murderous. They must have found out she was a runaway. But how? She couldn’t imagine her parents tracking her to a militia training camp in Michigan. She may as well be on the moon as far as they were concerned.

All around the camp the various small groups were packing up whatever they were doing and moving toward the mustering point. People sat on the ground to break open their weapons and begin cleaning them, while sergeants moved from group to group and told them to speed it up. She looked over to where she’d last seen David and saw Drecker and David running toward her. Fast. For a second, she thought of running away from them.

“Maddy,” David said, as he stopped in front of her. “You have to come with us.”

“Now,” Drecker said, reaching for her arm to pull her up.

“Whoa, there,” Kristi said. “What’s going on?” She stood and moved toward Drecker.

“Not now, Kristi. We have to get Maddy out of here,” David said.

Drecker and David got on either side of Maddy and started back across the field, each holding an elbow. Kristi trotted behind them.

“I don’t know where you dudes think you’re taking her, but I’m going with.”

They didn’t respond. Maddy stayed quiet and tried to figure out the best approach. Then she realized there wasn’t one.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” she asked David. “Have I done something wrong?”

“Do you mean other than lie to us, Maddy?”

She stopped walking. “Lie to you? What do you mean?”

“Keep walking,” Drecker barked.

“Someone’s come looking for you,” David said. “Said you’re a minor. I asked you that specifically, Maddy. You lied to me. To us.”

Maddy’s heart sank. They were kicking her out. Or maybe they were taking her into the woods to shoot her. She wasn’t entirely sure which would be worse. As messed up as her little group seemed, she was surprised to feel panic at the idea of not being a part of them.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Who came looking for me?”

“Shut up,” said Drecker.

They reached the edge of the woods farthest from the entrance to the training field and started down a slim trail. Drecker led, with Maddy behind him, then David and Kristi. They moved at a clip, and whenever Maddy tried to ask questions, Drecker told her to shut up. She turned to David several times, but his face was frozen and he stared down at the trail in front of him. After a half hour’s hike, they came out on a small access road that cut through the woods along a row of electrical towers. A pickup truck waited for them there with Corporal Watson behind the wheel.

“The two of you, get in the back,” Drecker ordered. Maddy and Kristi scrambled into the truck bed and he threw a tarp over them. “Don’t move until I tell you to.” Drecker and David climbed into the cab with Watson and they drove off.

Maddy was laying flat on her back with the cold and heavy tarp draping her face and the handle of a sledgehammer wedged under her hip. Kristi was lying on her stomach beside her, her chin propped on her hands like they were having a chat at a slumber party. She didn’t look very happy, though.

“What the fuck, Maddy?”

“What?”

“Is it true you’re a minor? I knew it. There was something weird about you just showing up like that.”

“I didn’t just show up,” Maddy said. “I’ve been helping David plan this whole thing all along.”

“Well, he didn’t know you were a kid. This is fucked up. We could have police swarming all over the place now.”

Maddy stayed still. She didn’t like Kristi being unhappy with her. And David had looked ready to throw her into the pond. She could hear voices arguing in the cab of the truck. She didn’t know if they were driving her to a police station or to someplace where they could handle the situation on their own, whatever that might mean.

“Where do you think they’re taking us?” Maddy asked.

“Hell if I know. I hope it’s somewhere close and they have a toilet. I have to pee something fierce.”

Maddy rummaged in her pants pocket and pulled out a Snickers bar. They shared it while bouncing around under the tarp. When the truck hit a bump in the road, Kristi ended up with the candy bar smashed into her forehead. They got a very serious case of the giggles over that and Kristi moaned that she was about to pee in her pants. By the time they pulled off a main road and started bouncing again up a dirt path, they’d nearly forgotten what had started the journey in the first place.

The truck finally stopped and Drecker pulled the tarp off them and ordered them out. They were in a small clearing in the woods. Watson was walking toward a tiny cabin while David stood with Drecker.

“What is this place?” asked Maddy.

“This is where we’re going to hide you until we can figure out what to do,” David said. “I don’t know if you realize the position you’ve put us in, Maddy.”

“Well, I don’t even understand what all is happening. Who came looking for me? I can’t believe it was my parents.”

“Worse. It was a private investigator,” Drecker said. “That means she’s paid to find you and she probably won’t go away just cause we ask her to. You two aren’t at a pay grade privileged enough to know just how much this can fuck us up, so no more questions.”

Drecker marched up to the cabin after Watson. Kristi ducked into the woods to pee. Maddy looked up at David and saw a mix of anger and fear on his face.

“I’m sorry, David. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“Drecker and Jacovich are really pissed off.” He looked down at Maddy and she saw that he was more afraid of them than mad at her.

“I don’t understand what they have to do with it anyway,” she said. “What do they care whether I’m a minor or not?”

“They care because they want to see us set up in Idaho. They don’t want their organization to draw heat for harboring a minor, especially a girl.”

“How much do they have to do with Idaho?”

David looked behind him at the cabin and then over where Kristi was emerging from behind a tree, zipping her pants. “Did you honestly think that your twenty thousand dollars and the six of us were going to be able to set up a homestead in Idaho?” he whispered.

Drecker yelled at them from the porch of the cabin to come up. The cabin was so small that he looked odd standing there, as if he were in front of a deluxe doghouse. Watson came out of the cabin and stood next to him and they watched with hooded eyes as David, Kristi, and Maddy walked up.

“You two girls are going to stay here until we come back to get you. There’s water and MREs inside, outhouse in back. Don’t try to leave. If you hike out, we’ll find you and then I will turn you in to the authorities.” He was glaring at Maddy.

“Wait a second. You’re going to leave us here without a car?” Kristi said. “I’ve got places I gotta be.”

“Yeah? What places?” Drecker asked.

Kristi shrugged. “Places. Not here, anyway.”

“You can come back with us, Kristi,” David said. “It’s Maddy we’re keeping out of sight.”

Maddy looked at Kristi and tried to keep her face still. She felt panicked at the idea of being left alone.

“Forget it,” Kristi said. She put her arm around Maddy. “I’m not leaving her alone here. Are you crazy?”

Drecker moved off the porch. “We’ll be back within twenty-four hours. Be ready to move.”

The three men went back to the truck without another word and drove off. Once they were gone, the silence almost overwhelmed Maddy. She felt like she was in a fairy tale, left in the middle of a forest, with who knows what sort of creatures hiding behind trees. She spun in a slow circle, but other than the tiny road out of the clearing, there was nothing but thick woods all around. Winnetka seemed very far away.

“This is totally crazy,” Kristi said. She stomped up the step to the cabin and banged in through the door. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

Inside was an eight by eight foot room with a fireplace, two cots, a wobbly table, and one chair. Two crude windows had been cut in the wood siding, but the room was very dark. A rusty lantern stood on the table, with a bottle of kerosene next to it. Kristi opened a metal footlocker between the cots and found some blankets and camp pillows and she set about making up the cots. Maddy stood by the door and watched her.

“Ed and Warren kept telling me you were going to be trouble, and I didn’t believe them,” Kristi said.

Maddy felt the same way she always did when she learned anyone had been talking about her. A hot flash of something—indignation, shame, fear—shot through her and made her face heat up.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” she said. “It’s not like I’m twelve. I know what I’m doing.”

Kristi turned to her with her hands on her hips. Maddy guessed she was trying to look stern, but she wasn’t quite able to pull it off.

“Listen, men freak out when an underage girl is found with them. They can get into big trouble, even if you think you’re all grown up and know what you’re doing. And these guys are rabid when it comes to anyone knowing what they’re up to.”

Maddy sat on the chair while Kristi stretched out on one of the cots and put her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling.

“How old are you, anyway?” Kristi said.

“I’ll be seventeen next week.”

“Seventeen going on forty. I totally believed you when you said you were eighteen.”

“I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“Why’d you run away?”

Maddy paused. She knew it would be hard to explain leaving Winnetka and her new car and her hands-off parents. But the idea of going back there made the little cabin seem like heaven. Its stark furnishings felt warmer to her than the sterile environment at home.