“Hey, you got to eat,” Jake said. “Remember what I told you.” He looked from the guard to the cook, who had turned his back to them, wiping out the pot with a rag and eventually tying the handle to a string hanging between two trees. “Our dads are still trying to get us out.”
T.J. sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Big Baby and T-Mac are going to kill us when we get back, if
they
don’t kill us here.”
“We’ll worry about Big Baby when we have to,” Jake said. “But now you have to eat everything they give us.”
“Jake’s right,” Bee Dee said, leaning in to join the conversation. “Eat it all.”
“Try to just let it slide down your throat without tasting it,” Henry said. “It’s easier that way.”
T.J. sighed, picked up the spoon, and touched it to his lips, like a little kid. He recoiled at the first taste and gagged but managed not to throw up. After another minute they were all shoveling the porridge lumps into their mouths until the clink of the metal spoons alerted the cook they had finished. He retrieved the cups and commenced cleaning them. The guard dropped his cigarette and crushed it with the ball of his shoe. “We go.”
He directed them to retrieve the shovels and the pickaxes as well as bags of fertilizer, several lengths of the coiled black hoses, and balls of the twine. The cook exchanged his utensils for a second automatic weapon, and the two men, the cook at the front and the guard in the rear, led them out of the camp along what did not appear to be a designated trail, pushing back tree limbs and stepping over fallen logs and boulders. Occasionally the cook would lower his weapon and use the machete to hack through the undergrowth or at a low-hanging branch.
Fifteen minutes into their excursion, Jake heard the sound of
babbling water, a nearby stream or a creek. The cook pushed through brush, and they stepped into an area perhaps twenty feet square that looked to have been partially cleared of the immature trees, the ground dimpled with stumps. It seemed an irregular pattern; some of the smaller trees remained. The taller pines created a broad canopy but still allowed streams of sunlight.
The guard instructed that their job would be to dig up rocks and throw them in a pile as they had done working in the garden. Within minutes Jake felt sweat trickling from his temples. As the temperature warmed, the guards let them lower their coveralls to their waists and remove their T-shirts. Bee Dee showed them how to fashion their shirts around their heads like turbans and said it would help them keep cool. The work was hard, but Jake actually found it refreshing not to be under Atkins’s thumb, and the guards allowed them to talk freely, something Atkins never would have allowed. The sound of their voices mixed with the sound of the pickaxes and shovels digging in the ground and the occasional ping indicating they’d struck another rock.
When the sun crossed high in the sky they broke for lunch—hard bread, a hunk of cheese, and water. The food was bad enough to make Jake miss the Fresh Start cafeteria. While they ate, the guard and cook stood off to the side smoking and speaking Spanish. After lunch, the guard instructed Jake and Bee Dee to load some of the unearthed rocks into one of the backpacks along with several of the hoses. When they had, he indicated they were to follow him. Jake slipped back on his coveralls and hoisted the backpack on his shoulders. It was heavier than the night before and the dense foliage through which the guard led them tugged at his coveralls and left scratches on his arms. They walked perhaps fifty yards, until coming to the stream Jake had heard earlier. The guard took a deflated plastic water container, the kind that when filled held five gallons, and waded out into the knee-deep stream, instructing Jake and Bee Dee to follow carrying the hoses and pack with the rocks. As hot as Jake had been, the stream offered immediate relief, but within minutes his feet were going numb. The guard directed them to dump the rocks and use them to create a
crude dam along the bank beneath a crop of bushes, the branches of which hung out over the water. As they built the dam the water began to pond deeper. The guard used a knife to cut a hole in the top of the plastic container and submerged it, wedging it with rocks to keep it at the bottom. In the shadows created by the overhanging branches, among the speckled rocks, the clear container was nearly undetectable.
Next, the guard directed Jake and Bee Dee to give him a hose, and he wedged a threaded end between two rocks but did not screw it to the spout of the plastic container. He showed them how to lay the hose along the bottom and use rocks to keep it in place. Again, with the flickering shadows and varied colors, the black hose could not be detected. They proceeded downriver, unfurling hose as they went and threading lengths together when necessary. Jake could no longer feel his fingers or toes. His knuckles ached when he flexed them and he was relieved when they stepped back onto the bank. They pushed through brush and found T.J. and Henry still digging in the soil, the cook spreading fertilizer. The guard handed Jake and Bee Dee two of the pickaxes. Jake didn’t have to be told what to do next. He’d figured out the purpose of their excursion. They were creating a crude irrigation system. He and Bee Dee dug a shallow trench to bury the hose that would bring the river water from the stream to the ground. The question was why? Jake no longer believed this was all part of a hops-growing operation for some brewery. Businesses didn’t operate this way. From the moment Atkins slipped black hoods over their heads, to hiking in the dark, the number one priority seemed to be secrecy. And if two Mexican guards and four juveniles working for free were the best employees a brewery could afford, it had some real problems. It only confirmed the urgency of what Jake had been plotting from the moment he watched Big Baby descend the bus stairs and announce his return.
He and T.J. could not go back to Fresh Start. That was no longer an option. They needed to escape when they had the chance, here in the mountains. And now, Jake thought, he might just know how.
T
HE
S
UTTER
B
UILDING
W
INCHESTER
, C
ALIFORNIA
In the end, Sloane had prevailed, which was to say common sense won out. Now he, not Tom Molia, sat in the cab of Bennett’s truck, talking to Alex and watching the entrance to the Sutter Building. He’d parked up the street from the orange glow cast by an overhead streetlamp, but close enough to observe the glass door entrance to the building. Tom Molia’s plan had a simplicity to it that Sloane liked, but it would also require some high-tech help from Alex to pull it off.
“Okay,” Alex said. “Ed Means has received a call at home advising him that his shift has been canceled.” She was referring to the security guard scheduled to relieve the guard at the desk in the lobby at midnight. She’d hacked On-Guard’s computer system to find the schedule, names, and employee information, calling their fire wall
juvenile.
“Let me make a call to the lobby now.”
Sloane watched the guard inside the glass doors while continuing to listen to Alex on his phone. The guard had his feet propped on the corner of the desk, chair tilted back, reading. He glanced at the phone, as if uncertain it had actually rung, which further confirmed it didn’t ring often, if at all. Which could be good or bad. Sloane felt a nervous twinge. If the guard became suspicious he was likely to call On-Guard to confirm. When it rang a third time he lowered his leg and sat forward, picking up the receiver. Alex must have had the call on a speaker because Sloane could hear the guard through his cell phone.
“Sutter Building, Montoya.”
“This is dispatch. Your relief has called in sick,” Alex said.
“Ed’s sick?”
Uh-oh, Sloane thought; they hadn’t figured the two guards could be friends.
“Said he caught a bug and was shutting off his phone to get some sleep. Didn’t want to be disturbed.” She was good. Quick.
“Does this mean I’m working a double shift?” Montoya did not sound happy about the prospect, and Sloane couldn’t blame him,
given that the guards did nothing more than watch the time pass for eight hours.
“We’re sending a standby. He’s new. Go over the ground rules with him when he gets there.”
“Will do,” Montoya said, sounding relieved. He hung up the phone and looked up to consider the clock on the wall, he hesitated, and looked back to the phone, but whatever thought crossed his mind passed and he leaned back and recommenced reading.
“Show time,” Alex said.
Sloane backed the truck into a parking space beside what he assumed to be Montoya’s Toyota Corolla, snowplow facing out in case he needed to quickly exit. He stepped from the cab and adjusted his shirt. It wasn’t an exact copy of the security guard’s uniforms, but Eileen Harper had a full day to replicate it with the aid of Molia’s video and had done a credible job. Sloane didn’t have the utility belt, but he wore a blue windbreaker to conceal that omission, adjusting it as he walked around the corner of the building, backpack slung over his shoulder, and approached the glass doors. Montoya remained in deep concentration. When Sloane tapped his keys on the glass the guard looked up, nodded, and slid a bookmark between the pages before shutting the book. Sloane glanced to the side as Montoya approached and unlocked the dead bolt with several twists of the key, pushing the door open. Sloane stepped in.
“You must be my replacement.”
Sloane shook the man’s hand. “Steve Venditti,” he said.
“So you’re new, huh?”
“Just a couple weeks.”
“Where’ve they had you working?”
“All over,” Sloane said. “Mostly as a replacement.”
Montoya patted his shoulder. “Well you’re in for a treat tonight.”
“How’s that?”
Montoya laughed. Bushy eyebrows knitted together. “Let’s just say I hope you brought a good book with you.”
“Yeah, I figured this time of night it would likely get pretty boring?”
“Paint drying is more interesting. I’ve been asking off this detail for weeks. Another month and I may hang myself just to break the monotony.”
“So nobody ever comes by?”
Montoya walked to the desk and held up a clipboard. The blank document contained signature lines for anyone entering and exiting the building along with a space for the date and time. “All we do is sit.”
“What about rounds? Do I need to keep a log?”
“You want to walk around outside, be my guest, but this square patch of tile is pretty much it.”
“What’s upstairs?”
Montoya shook his head. “Don’t know.”
“We don’t go up to do rounds?”
“We don’t even have a key.”
“The elevator?”
“Turned off. Don’t have a key for that either.”
Sloane tried to look surprised. “So, no idea what’s up there, huh?”
“Nobody knows.” He showed Sloane where the bathroom was, behind the elevator, then picked up his backpack. “Have fun. I’m going home.” He started for the door, turned back. “Almost forgot.” He took the key off the ring and tossed it to Sloane. “You have to lock me out. When your relief comes, you give him the key. Nobody else gets in.”
Sloane shut the door behind Montoya and locked it. Then he went behind the desk, waiting for the sound of a car engine. A minute later the blue Corolla drove past the front entrance, the sound of its engine fading as it sped off down the street. Sloane pulled out his cell phone and called Alex. “I’m in. Any traffic?”
She continued to monitor the calls into and out of On-Guard’s security center. “We’re good.”
Sloane unzipped his backpack and pulled out the cigarette lighter and the chunk of tar shingle that had been atop the roof
of the outhouse. He held the flame to the tar until it began to smoke, knelt, and slid it halfway under the door that presumably opened to a staircase to the second floor. He left it to smolder and went back to the desk, calling the Winchester County Volunteer Fire Department. He gave the woman who answered the building address and said he smelled smoke in the stairwell. She asked Sloane to put his palm on the door and feel for heat. Sloane didn’t.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It might be warm, but it’s hard to tell. I’d open it but I don’t have a key. The smell is pretty strong, though.”
The woman said they’d send out a truck. Sloane hung up and spoke into his cell. “We still good?”
“Still good,” Alex said.
Sloane ditched the tar shingle along the back of the building. The fire department arrived in good time, thankfully different men than those who’d responded to the fire at Dave Bennett’s ranch the prior evening. He held the glass doors open as they pulled the truck to the curb and exited in full apparatus.
“I can smell it in the stairwell,” Sloane said to the one who appeared in charge.
The firefighter put his hand on the exterior of the door, feeling for heat.
“Can you smell it?” Sloane asked.
The man would have to have the mother of all colds not to be able to smell the burned tar. He sniffed at the door then dropped to a knee. “Yeah, definitely. Did you call the owner?”
“My first night,” Sloane said. “Not really the way I want to get started, you know? I thought I’d call you guys first and see if it’s anything to be concerned about.”
“You don’t have a key to this door?” The firefighter sounded incredulous.
“Just the front door, but I think I saw a Knox-Box on the side of the building.”
The firefighter directed another one of the responders to check the Knox-Box before turning back to Sloane. “Why don’t they give you a key?”
Sloane shrugged. “Like I said, my first night.”
When the second responder returned with a ring containing three keys, Sloane felt a great sense of relief. Molia’s intuition had been correct. The firefighter felt the door again before slowly opening it. When no flames leaped out he stepped into the stairwell. Sloane followed, feeling the weight of the metal reinforced door. They proceeded to a second door at the top of the stairs. The lead firefighter again placed his palm flat against it before he inserted the key. The lock did not turn. Sloane felt a twinge of anxiety, but the firefighter flipped the ring to the third key, inserted it, and the handle turned.