Strong Light of Day (5 page)

“Cry me a river, agent man.”

“You were special ops in the first Gulf War?”

Cort Wesley nodded. “Long before it came into fashion.”

“So, does the fact we're cut from the same cloth irk you at all?”

“Different tailors, though,” Cort Wesley said, and noticed two of Gribanov's thugs, including the biggest one, whose shoe imprints he was currently wearing on his ribs, emerge from the same exit and light up cigarettes as they clung to the slight shade provided by an overhang.

“You mind giving me a minute here?” Cort Wesley said, easing the door open. “I think I left something inside.”

*   *   *

Cort Wesley looped the long way around the parking lot, clinging to the edges and approaching the two thugs from outside their line of sight. Add that to the distraction of them making small talk, probably joking about the loser whose ass they'd just kicked, along with the fact that each had a hand occupied working a cigarette, and this was going to be over very quickly.

They didn't see Cort Wesley, even at the last, didn't see him at all until he'd angled himself to sweep in off their rear. The one closest to him—not the one who'd done the kicking—must've caught a hint of motion out of his peripheral vision. He swung, both hands coming round with him to leave his cigarette dangling free in his mouth. Cort Wesley hit him so fast with a blow to his face that his mouth gaped and he swallowed his cigarette, gagging and retching when he slammed back against the side of the building.

By then, Cort Wesley had taken the other thug's leg out, the leg attached to the very same foot that had pummeled his ribs. Turned out the cliché about the bigger they are, the harder they fall couldn't have been more accurate. The bigger thug went down with a force that seemed to rattle the very parking lot, coughing up a thin cloud of gravel and dust on impact.

“How's it feel, bub?” Cort Wesley asked from over him, before bringing his boot down against the side of the same knee, feeling something in the joint snap.

The bigger thug was screaming, rolling back and forth across a swatch of the parking lot that was now cleared of debris, sticking to his suit instead. His flailing hands seemed to have trouble grasping his wounded knee.

The smaller thug's guttural roar alerted Cort Wesley he was coming, a millisecond before he would've realized it anyway. The man lashed out with one wild strike, and then another, the second missing so badly his momentum actually cracked him against the same wall he'd already struck once. Ready to hit him again, Cort Wesley simply watched as he slumped to the asphalt, one side of his face riding the brick the whole way.

Cort Wesley made sure to free the still-writhing thug's gun from its holster and toss it into a nearby Dumpster, which stank to holy hell. Then he cut a straight line across the parking lot, back to Jones's SUV, not noticing or caring if anyone saw him.

“You are one piece of work, cowboy,” Jones said, shaking his head when Cort Wesley closed the door behind him.

Cort Wesley opened the glove compartment and felt around for the cell phone he'd left in there. He had six missed calls and two voice mails, all from Luke's school, which had come in while he'd been getting his ribs worked on inside the Pleasure Dome and then had paid the kicker back in spades.

“Okay if we leave now?” Jones asked him, starting the engine again.

“You mind shutting up for a minute?” Cort Wesley said. “I got a call I need to return.”

 

8

A
RMAND
B
AYOU,
T
EXAS

The empty school bus sat in a cordoned-off area of the parking lot, surrounded by more law enforcement officials than students who'd been inside the bus when it departed the Village School thirty minutes away yesterday. Luke Torres, just short of his sixteenth birthday and a sophomore now, had chosen the Houston-based prep school himself, after his older brother, Dylan, had been accepted to Brown University. Luke wasn't half the athlete his older brother was, but he was twice the student, and he knew he'd need all of that to follow Dylan to an Ivy League university, maybe Brown too.

And now he was missing, along with thirty-five of his classmates.

*   *   *

“Could you give me that again, Captain?” Caitlin had asked, once the helicopter was airborne over Christoph Russell Ilg's farm.

“Luke Torres, thirty-five other students, two teachers, and three chaperones are missing from an overnight field trip in the Armand Bayou Nature Center,” Tepper told her, moving his mouth as if he were chewing gum for want of a Marlboro. “Parents reported receiving phone calls and texts right up until around midnight, when the adults likely got fed up with all the chatter. After that—nothing. They were camping out on the preserve farm at the time. According to reports, their stuff and supplies are gone, too, like they just flat-out vanished into thin air and took everything with them.”

“What else, Captain?”

Tepper took off his hat and scratched at the bald patches of his scalp that looked red and scaly. He sucked in some breath and let it out as a sigh that dissolved into more of a growl. “That's all we really got right now. The Ranger chopper was available, so as soon as I got the word Luke Torres was one of the missing, I commandeered it and headed to pick you up. Just do me one favor when we get to the scene, Ranger,” Tepper said, glancing down at the scene below, where the big trucks had arrived to tote Christoph Ilg's stolen cattle away. “Stay away from anything that even looks like a camera.”

*   *   *

The chopper's landing pod settled with a
thunk,
Caitlin needing no coaxing to throw open the door and step down, starting toward the lot where the bus was parked without waiting for Captain Tepper.

“There's been no ransom demands,” he said, breathing hard from the mere effort of keeping up with her.

“Not yet,” Caitlin told him, the school bus square in her sights. “How about we go have a talk with the driver?”

 

9

A
RMAND
B
AYOU,
T
EXAS

The Armand Bayou Nature Center boasted an ideal and beautifully bucolic setting in which to fulfill its mission statement, which was to open the door to numerous elements of the natural world, cutting across various disciplines. It was situated in its own little world, right on the Texas Gulf Coast, which didn't feel like Texas at all. Essentially, the 2,500 acres the center now claimed was an outdoor classroom rich with virtually every ecosystem imaginable, available for study. Amazing how so much of the food chain that made up the world and helped define civilization was contained in various parts of the grounds, from the coastline and further in. All a mere thirty-minute drive from the city of Houston.

A bit more for a school bus.

Nestled in the Clear Lake area, Armand Bayou strove to make visitors appreciate the various wetlands, prairie, forest, and marsh habitats enough to join the fight to preserve them in their pristine form. A trio of sophomore science classes from the Village School had taken a field trip to learn about plant and animal inhabitants, bird-watch, hike on the trails lifted from another time, or view live animal displays of snakes, alligators, turtles, hawks, and bison.

From the itinerary D. W. Tepper had explained to her, the day had finished with a visit to the center's Martyn Farm, which elegantly recreated the lifestyle just as it had been in late-1800s Texas. They were to set up camp in an open field and sleep under the stars. The next morning they'd take a ride on the
Bayou Ranger,
a pontoon boat moored at the nearby docks, prior to heading back to school, with a stop for lunch planned on the way. The students, faculty, and chaperones were to rendezvous at the bus promptly at eleven o'clock and, toward that end, the driver made sure she was back in the lot by ten thirty.

“Bad weather would've brought me back here earlier,” the woman explained to Captain Tepper and Caitlin from the school bus's shadow.

Her name was Sara Ann Hoder and she had mousy blond hair that looked fashioned from thin string, reaching just past her ears. She had a big, round face and blue eyes that looked too small for it. She was dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a baggy top that couldn't quite hide the muffin shape of her midriff. Caitlin noticed she was wearing worn sneakers that looked like a man's and smelled of a combination of musty clothes and cigarettes that might've been Marlboros, just like Captain Tepper smoked.

Caitlin checked the bus's markings again. “So you don't work for the school.”

“No, the bus company. First Student. We've got a contract with the school for sporting events, field trips, and the like.”

Caitlin glanced at Tepper, making a mental note of that. “So who would know you were coming out here?”

“My gosh, all kinds of people. Places like the Village School reserve buses long in advance. Of course, they may provide the itineraries later, closer to the ride in question. But to answer your question, let's see, the dispatcher for sure, the booking office—heck, pretty much anyone at the company who's got a computer.”

“Let's turn our attention back to the events of today, when you came to pick the kids up, and yesterday, when you dropped them off. Did you notice anything that sticks out in your mind?”

Sara Ann Hoder tucked her hands into the pockets of her smock Caitlin had taken for a shirt, waiting for her to continue. “No, Ranger, I didn't.”

“On either occasion, especially yesterday, did you notice anyone lingering about, maybe in a way that made them stand out in your mind?”

The woman puckered her lips, features squeezed taut as if she were searching for just that, and looked disappointed when she didn't find it. “No, ma'am. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry, Sara Ann. You're doing great here. This isn't your doing in any way whatsoever. But that doesn't mean there wasn't something that sticks out, something maybe just a little off, that could help us get to the bottom of things.”

The bus driver swallowed hard. “You figure something bad happened to those kids?”

“It's too early for speculation of any kind, but they're missing, and that's bad in itself. What about vehicles?”

“Vehicles?”

“In the parking lot, when you pulled in yesterday.”

“I didn't pull in then. I let the kids out at a drop-off point, like a staging center.”

“Okay,” Caitlin said, keeping her tone reserved and gentle. “There then.”

“Other vehicles, you mean?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Hmm, let me think some more on that. It's all I've been doing since the kids didn't show up when they were supposed. Running things through my head, knowing somebody'd be asking me these very questions.”

“Take your time, Sara Ann.”

The woman buried her face in her hands, starting to break down. “It's so darn hard. My brain's all seized up like a bad bearing.”

“Then let's leave it for now. Try again later. How's that sound?”

The woman nodded, sort of. Caitlin tried to look reassuring before she slid away with Tepper in tow.

“Any security cameras, Captain?”

“Not a single one back out on the road, and just four to cover all these grounds, one of which is inside the souvenir shop that just opened.” Tepper ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, pushing it about as if feeling for something. “Guess shoplifting around here is considered a bigger crime than thirty-six missing students and their chaperones.”

“Let's go have a look at the campsite where they were last seen.”

 

10

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RMAND
B
AYOU,
T
EXAS

The Martyn farmhouse offered a perfect re-creation of the past, specifically life on an 1890s farm. One of the few trips her father had taken Caitlin on was highlighted by a stop in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, featuring an actual working farm and exhibit residence that, like this, was period perfect. No electricity or running water, which was also how the Amish continued to live today.

The Martyn farmhouse reminded Caitlin of that. Only a bit too staid, perfect, and clean—more like an exhibit lifted out of a museum. The actual farm displays, including various gardens, were scattered through other areas of the grounds that, in Caitlin's mind, made for the possible routes the perpetrators had used to make forty-one hostages vanish into nowhere. The lone exception was a single interactive field a stone's throw from the farmhouse, laid out to allow visitors to work the crops as if they were real farmers. Only there were no crops, just a dead field with only dried, untended soil where whatever had once grown here had been. The field was rimmed on three sides by trees known as desert willows, which looked weak and sallow, as if starved of nutrients by the parched ground.

“There's rooms upstairs you can arrange to sleep in,” Tepper told her when they entered the stuffy confines of the replica farmhouse, the windows closed against the day's building heat. “School administrator I talked to told me that was the plan for the kids.”

“Probably too hot, too steamy. And it was a beautiful night to sleep out.”

“They all had sleeping bags with them, part of the stuff everyone was supposed to bring.”

“You got that list, D.W.?”

“Why?”

“Because it may be helpful to our cause. Won't know exactly how until I see it.”

“I'll order it up.”

“Let's check out where the kids did end up sleeping, first.”

*   *   *

The field between the Martyn house and the sample farmland reminded Caitlin of the one where the chopper had landed, except the grass was browning here as well. The entire perimeter where the kids had bedded down had been sectioned off by yellow crime scene tape looped between sawhorses arranged in a de facto circle. Police, both uniformed and plainclothes, swarmed the area, along with crime scene technicians covering every square inch of area. Several of these held high-intensity lights that could detect blood or other secretions. Others dabbed at the ground with brushes that made them look like some kind of artists. Still more were taking samples of grass and soil at regularly spaced junctures, clacking off photograph after photograph, or measuring some impression they'd found in the grass.