She hit the
Send
button. Then she glanced up at the cabin door—still expecting any minute now for someone to start tugging at it from outside. Susan looked at the flare gun—within her reach.
She pulled up Google.com and typed: Cullen, Washington, police emergency. But the closest she got to that was a
CONTACT US
option for the police department on a
Welcome
to Cullen!
Web site. Susan e-mailed them anyway, telling them pretty much what she’d told Chris at Bayside Rentals.
Standing, she grabbed the flare gun and peered out the narrow window again. She didn’t see anyone, but she was convinced he was still out there. She kept hoping to hear that
click
sound from the computer, signifying a new e-mail—and perhaps an answer to her distress call. But the guy at Bayside Rentals was probably at lunch. Susan glanced at her wristwatch: 1:05. For all she knew, Cullen might have a police force of two—and with her luck, they were both at lunch, too.
She wondered if there was any connection between Allen’s disappearance and this strange man now lurking around their rental house. It was strange that they were both happening at the same time.
Suddenly, the boat tipped toward one side, and she heard a scraping against the hull. Had the man just climbed aboard? Susan clutched the gun tighter. She glanced out the window once more, and then up at the cabin door. The boat rocked—and the vessel grazed against something a second time. She realized it must have been a wave. The craft was bumping against one of the dock pilings.
The gun poised, Susan stood at the bottom of the cabin steps until the boat steadied itself again.
“Mommy?” Mattie whined from the other side of the bedroom door. “I want to come out now!”
“In a minute, honey!” she called back. “You’re doing really well so far. I—I’m so proud of you!”
She spotted a pair of binoculars with a strap, dangling from a hook by the operating panel. Grabbing them, she hung the binoculars around her neck and moved up the steps. The flare gun ready in one hand, she unlocked the cabin door’s dead bolt. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open and stuck her head out the opening. They seemed to be alone on the boat. Yet she couldn’t stop shaking as she climbed up on deck. She nervously glanced around and then put the binoculars up to her eyes. She gazed out toward the house and the forest around it. She kept waiting to catch that creepy man in her sights, but there was no sign of him.
Her heart was still racing as she returned below. She couldn’t stay aboard this claustrophobic vessel any longer—with her poor, scared son locked in the V-berth. Their best bet was making a run for the car, then driving into town—or at least to the grocery store so she could call the police from the pay phone. She only hoped once they got to the car, the tires would be okay.
Turning off the boat’s main power switch, she called to Mattie, “You can come out now, sweetie.”
“’Kay,” he replied.
She moved to the door and heard the lock jiggling. On the other side, he seemed to be tugging and tugging at the door, but to no avail. She realized he must have locked himself in.
“Sweetheart, can you—”
The lock clicked, and the door finally opened.
Susan swept Mattie into her arms. “C’mon, we’re going for a ride,” she announced. She carried him up the steps to the deck.
Eyeing the house and grounds, Susan set down Mattie and the flare gun so she could lock up the cabin. “You’re my lookout, honey,” she said nervously. She tried to find the right key for the lock. “You need to tell me if you see that—that
soldier
again, okay?”
With his Woody doll tucked under his arm, Mattie nodded and gazed over toward the woods.
Susan finally got the cabin door locked. She grabbed the flare gun and then picked up Mattie. The vessel started to rock again as she carried him onto the dock. Even off the boat, her legs still felt unsteady and wobbly. She set Mattie down again.
She wouldn’t be able to fit him into the car’s child safety seat while he was wearing the bulky vest, so she took it off. Then she shed hers as well. “Okay, piggyback,” she said, turning her back to him and squatting down.
“Yippee!” Mattie cried. His arms went around her neck, and he jumped on her back. “Gimme up!”
Leaving the life vests on the dock, Susan hurried up toward the house, Mattie bouncing against her back the whole time. She had the flare gun ready. As she came closer to the driveway, she could see only the front of her car. But the tires looked all right. She was already digging into her pocket for the keys.
By the time she reached the car, Susan was out of breath. Her throat had dried up, too, and sweat glistened on her forehead. She kept glancing around to make sure they were alone. She set the gun down on the hood so that she could secure Mattie in his safety seat in back. She worked quickly, but still took the time to kiss Mattie’s forehead once he was strapped in. “You’ve been so good,” she said.
“There he is!” Mattie declared excitedly. He pointed his Woody doll at something beyond the windshield. “There’s the soldier!”
Susan snatched the flare gun off the car’s hood, and she swiveled around in time to glimpse the man as he darted behind a tree at the edge of the forest—not far from the driveway.
“I see you!” Susan yelled, the anger rising up in her voice. “Who are you? Answer me!”
“Mommy?” Mattie cried.
“Stay there, honey.” She shut his door, but didn’t move away from it.
She could hear twigs snapping and the rustling of bushes. A figure scurried through the trees, but he wasn’t running away. She could tell; the sound wasn’t fading. He was just as close—only in a different spot. It was as if he were playing a game with her.
“Damn it, I’m going to fire this thing if you don’t speak up right now!” She had both hands on the gun now.
The bushes moved behind an old wooden rain barrel about twenty feet away—just past the driveway. “I see you there!” Susan screamed. She pulled the trigger and felt an electric-like jolt course through her hands and arms.
With a hiss, the flare left a tail of smoke in its path as it hit the rain barrel. The wooden barrel burst into flames, sending fiery splinters and cinders into the air. Susan heard a howl—as if the intruder might have been hurt or, at least, startled.
She quickly dug into her pocket and pulled out another flare cartridge. Her hands still tingled with reverberations from the blast. But she managed to pull out the spent cartridge and load another into the gun. All the while, she heard bushes rustling. The sound grew fainter, and she could tell he was running away.
Catching her breath, Susan stood guard by Mattie’s door, ready to fire again. Considering the blast and the inferno, she was pretty sure the guy was well on his way to the Canadian border by now.
She opened Mattie’s door, expecting her poor son to be traumatized. “Sweetie, it’s okay now—” she started to say.
“Do it again! Do it again, Mommy!” he cheered. His legs kicked at the back of the passenger seat, and he clapped his hands. Wide-eyed, he watched as flames engulfed the empty barrel and spread to the bush behind it.
“There will be no encore,” Susan muttered, shaking her head, “God willing.”
Shutting his door, she retreated from the car for a moment to retrieve the garden hose, on the same side of the house. Susan managed to douse the fire. All the while, she kept a lookout for the return of their uninvited visitor.
She was watching out for him on the way to Rosie’s Roadside Sundries, too. Checking her rearview mirror every few moments, she didn’t see any cars behind her. But as Susan got closer to the store, she saw an empty car pulled over to the side of Carroll Creek Road.
It was a dark green Honda Civic, the same car those teenagers had been driving yesterday. She remembered how that nice, handsome young man had acted a bit strange when she’d asked how to get to Twenty-two Birch.
He seemed to know the house very well.
Frowning, Susan took another long look at the empty car in her rearview mirror, until she took a curve in the road. Then she couldn’t see it anymore.
Jordan stopped running to glance over his shoulder. Between all the trees, he could see slivers of the road in the distance—and a car approaching. His lungs were burning as he gasped for air. Sweat rolled off him, and his clothes were soaked. The splattered orange juice had made the legs of his jeans sticky and itchy. Burrs clung to his socks.
He was accustomed to running several miles a day—but not in his street clothes, and not along a crude forest path. He’d had to navigate around fallen branches, rocks, divots, and tree roots. He already had a few scratches on his hands and forehead from brushes with low-hanging branches.
Jordan had just chalked up seven miles through the woods in less than forty minutes. Though he’d figured it would be okay to leave his car for a while along that lonely stretch of Carroll Creek Road, he didn’t want to push his luck. And forty minutes was pushing it.
Less than an hour ago, Jordan had hastily dumped Allen Meeker into the trunk of his BMW. The unconscious man’s cheek had been bloody from falling face-first onto the gravel. And under his wavy black and silver hair, he’d had a cut on his scalp where Jordan had hit him with the tire wrench, but it hadn’t bled much.
With Meeker in the trunk, Jordan had quickly finished changing the tire. He’d figured the old, abandoned Chemerica plant would be the best temporary spot to hide the BMW—and his captive.
Back in the sixties, the facility had been a government-subsidized lab. They’d even had some army personnel on staff. Jordan wasn’t sure exactly what they’d researched or manufactured there. Rumor was they’d been working on something top secret, related to chemical warfare or rockets—hence, the isolated location. At least, that was the story Jordan heard. Apparently, for a while, that part of Carroll Creek Road had seen a lot more traffic, and the deli stop, which was now Rosie’s, had done a brisk business. But by 1977, the army no longer needed whatever Chemerica Corporation provided for them, and the facility was shut down.
The government still owned the now-dilapidated two-story facility and the square mile of neglected land it sat on. A high rusty chain-link fence surrounded the property, and concrete barriers blocked the access drive off Carroll Creek Road. But Jordan—along with some resourceful locals—had found a remote dirt road that merged onto the Chemerica facility’s driveway. There was a lot to explore in the deserted forty-room building—if one could find a window that wasn’t completely boarded up. There were also five old bunkers to attract curious or horny teenagers in the mood for exploring. Yet despite evidence to the contrary—fast-food wrappers, beer cans, and pop bottles littered the Chemerica grounds—these instances of trespassing were few and far between. They were even rarer in daytime.
So Allen Meeker and his BMW would probably be safe—for the time being—at the Chemerica facility. Jordan parked Meeker’s car off an old driveway between the back of the building and a swamp.
There, he had more time to search the car. For someone who claimed to have driven up to Cullen with a four-year-old, Meeker had a pretty immaculate car, devoid of any toys or kids’ books. No child safety seat, no food wrappers, no empty juice boxes. Jordan checked the glove compartment. He discovered maps of Washington and Oregon, a BMW owner’s manual, a flier for Domino’s Pizza with coupons that had expired a year ago, and the vehicle registration. The guy’s name was Allen Meeker, all right.
Jordan verified this again when he checked on Meeker in the trunk. He found him still unconscious and still breathing. The driver’s license in his wallet reconfirmed the name:
Meeker, Allen Lloyd,
along with the birth date, which made him thirty-nine. The rest of the stats were already pretty apparent:
Height: 6-00, Weight: 175; Eyes: GRN.
He had a Seattle address. Jordan also found $140 in cash; a gym pass; credit cards and insurance cards—all for
Allen L. Meeker
; and a punch card for Tully’s Coffee. There were no photos of his alleged fiancée—or of anyone else for that matter.
Jordan couldn’t tell much about him from the wallet. Nor could he find anything in his pockets. He took Allen Meeker’s jacket and tied up his ankles with it. Then he used some twine already in the trunk to bind his hands behind him. Taking a handkerchief from Meeker’s pocket, Jordan stuffed it in his captive’s mouth. Meeker barely stirred through any of this.
But just before Jordan shut the trunk, Allen’s eyes had fluttered open. Past the gag, he’d let out a muffled moan—a pathetic, panicked sound.
Jordan had slammed the BMW’s trunk shut.
And then he’d started running.
He was six miles away now—very close to where he’d left his own car along the shoulder of Carroll Creek Road. But Jordan could still hear that helpless, muted cry in his head. And he couldn’t help wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake.
He ducked deeper into the woods as the car sped up the road. He hadn’t been paying attention to that woman’s car yesterday at Rosie’s, and he wondered if this was her in the old Toyota headed toward Rosie’s. Was she really Meeker’s fiancée?
Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Jordan watched the Toyota slow down as it approached his empty Honda Civic. But then it picked up speed again and finally disappeared around a bend in the road.
Jordan didn’t see any more traffic on the lonely highway. He didn’t think anyone saw him climb into his car and drive away. He didn’t spot any vehicles in his rearview mirror as he turned off the road onto the narrow, uneven dirt trail. It wound through the forest and had an array of dips, puddles, and rocks. At least it was easier to negotiate all the obstacles on this second trip.
But his hands were still sweating against the steering wheel, and he hadn’t quite gotten his breath back yet. Jordan wondered if he’d return to the old driveway behind the deserted Chemerica plant and find nothing—no BMW, no Allen Meeker. It was a stupid, impossible notion. He had the keys to the BMW in his pocket. He’d locked Meeker in the trunk. How could the guy get out or get away?
Jordan went over one last big bump before the dirt trail merged with the old access road to Chemerica Corporation. As far as he knew, it was the only break in the chain-link fence that protected the worthless property.
Though paved, the two-lane access road was full of potholes and divots. Everything from blades of crabgrass to small trees had sprouted through the pavement cracks. Hunched close to the steering wheel, Jordan picked up speed and did his best to avoid these obstacles.
The Chemerica Corporation building finally came into view—just beyond an open gate and the shell of a guard station. It was an old, ugly beige brick structure, decorated with graffiti. The front entrance and all the first floor windows had been boarded up. Nearly all of the second-floor windows were broken—some completely hollowed out so their ragged, brownish-yellow blinds flapped in the breeze.
As Jordan approached the lonely, decrepit building, it was hard for him to imagine there had once been an army guard in that little sentry post—and at least fifty cars parked in the now deserted lot. He followed the driveway as it wound around to the back of the facility. To his utter relief, he saw the BMW just where he’d left it. And the trunk was still closed.
He pulled up behind the BMW, shifted to park, and turned off the ignition. Then he heard the pounding. It was coming from the BMW’s trunk.
Reaching under his seat, Jordan pulled out Allen Meeker’s gun. He grabbed the tire wrench from the floor of the passenger side and climbed out of his car. Gravel crunched beneath his feet, and he knew Meeker heard him approaching. The pounding got more intense and frantic. The muted moaning sounded so pitiful, like a wounded animal.
Jordan tucked the gun inside the waist of his jeans—in the back. He dug Meeker’s car keys out of his pocket and pressed the trunk-lid button on the remote control. The trunk’s lid popped—and then Meeker gave it a fierce kick. He tried to sit up, but Jordan was right there with the tire wrench ready.
Wide-eyed, Meeker recoiled. His feet were still tied up, and his hands still bound behind him. He tried to speak past the gag, but it was just more muffled, indistinguishable pleading. He shook his head over and over again.
Jordan swallowed hard. He hit him with the wrench, the other side of his head this time.
Allen Meeker let out one last moan and then slumped back into the trunk.
Jordan stared at him. The guy was still breathing. But this blow broke the skin, and blood trickled along Meeker’s greying temple and down the side of his neck.
Jordan began to tremble, and tears filled his eyes. He still had some doubt. What if this man was totally innocent?
He gazed at the cluster of scuff marks on the left inside of the hood, where Allen Meeker had been kicking at it.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Jordan noticed similar markings on the right side, too—just above Allen’s head. It didn’t make sense. Meeker couldn’t have shifted positions in that confined space.
That was when Jordan no longer had any doubt about what he was doing.
Now he knew. Allen Meeker wasn’t the first person to be locked inside that trunk.
Jordan had meant to drive the BMW to the edge of the swamp, but he overshot it. The area was so overgrown and muddy, it was hard to tell where land stopped and the marsh began. The front of the vehicle started tilting forward and sinking while he was still in the driver’s seat. Quickly climbing out of the car, Jordan found himself ankle-deep in mud that felt like quicksand. A panic raced through him as he struggled toward hard ground. All the while, Meeker’s BMW sunk deeper into the muddy water. Once Jordan reached the edge of the swamp, he leaned against the car’s trunk and pushed with all his might. The water made a strange gurgling sound as it started to swallow up the car. The front hood completely disappeared below the dark, murky surface. Backing away, Jordan watched as the mire enveloped the windows. It pulled the vehicle deeper into its depths. He couldn’t tell if it was the mud or some mechanism in the car, but he heard a strange, hollow moan as the vehicle finally sank out of sight.
Jordan hurried back to his own car, still parked behind the old Chemerica plant. He did his best to shake the excess mud off his shoes before climbing behind the wheel and starting up the engine. He drove around to the front of the facility. As he passed the decrepit little shack that had once been a guard gate, he heard a loud, startling wail.
Jordan gaped in his rearview mirror and saw a police car bearing down on him with its strobe lights flashing. It seemed to have come out of nowhere.
“Oh, Christ,” he murmured, a sudden dread overwhelming him. He automatically hit the brake pedal. Frozen, he sat there with a tight grip on the steering wheel, staring in the rearview mirror.
The patrol car pulled up behind him. Its eardrum-splitting siren ceased, but the strobe lights kept swirling. The cop sat in the front seat for a few moments. That seemed to be their routine: sitting in the cop car and letting the busted driver sweat it out for a spell. Jordan could see it wasn’t Cullen’s sheriff, Stuart Fischer. That was one solace, because Fischer was an asshole—and useless, too.
The Cullen Police Department consisted of Fischer, his deputy, and a clerk. So this had to be the deputy, who had been around for about two years. Jordan didn’t know him. And he didn’t know how long the deputy had been parked there in front of the Chemerica building. Had he seen anything?
Earlier, Jordan had stashed Meeker’s gun under his front seat. The tire wrench lay on the floor of the passenger side. If the deputy asked him to get out of the car, how would he explain the mud all over his shoes?
His stomach in knots, Jordan rolled down his window all the way. He watched in the side mirror as the deputy finally climbed out of his patrol car and moseyed up toward him. He was about thirty, with short, thick dark blond hair. He had the slightly worn good looks of an ex-jock just starting to let himself go soft. He still possessed a fairly muscular build—and the swagger that came with it. He had one hand poised on his gun holster as he approached Jordan’s window. “Hey there, dude,” the deputy said. “Turn off your motor, okay?”
Squirming in the driver’s seat, Jordan switched off the ignition.
“How about coughing up your license and registration for me?”
Jordan took his driver’s license out of his wallet and handed it to him. “Um, the registration is in my glove compartment, okay?”
“That’s where most people keep it, ace. Go for it.”
Jordan glimpsed down at the tire wrench—and hoped the deputy didn’t notice. It was too late to try hiding it. He quickly retrieved his registration from the glove compartment and gave it to the cop. He stole a glance at the deputy’s nametag:
Dep. Corey Shaffer
. “Is there—is there a problem, officer?” he asked.
“So you’re Jordan Prewitt,” the deputy said, grinning at him. “Well, I’ve heard your name bandied about. Your family has that place on Cedar Crest Way. Are you staying there this weekend with your mom and dad?”
Jordan cleared his throat. “Um, I’m here with—”
“Oh, excuse me,” the deputy interrupted. He shook his head. “I mean your dad and your
step
-mom. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jordan replied. He managed to smile up at him through the open window. “I’m staying at the cabin with two friends of mine. Is there a problem here, officer?”
Deputy Shaffer glanced at the large, wrapped present and the bakery box in Jordan’s backseat. He leaned against the roof and sighed. “Well, yes, Jordan, as a matter of fact, we do indeed have a problem. See, this is private property. It belongs to Uncle Sam. You’re trespassing here.”
So are you
, Jordan wanted to say.
You’re not with the feds
. But he decided not to be a smart-ass. His best bet was to suck up to Deputy Shaffer and try to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “I’ve always been kind of curious about this place, and today I decided to go exploring.”
Deputy Shaffer handed him back his license and registration. “Could you step out of the vehicle, please?”