We angled closer to where we thought the driveway was. When we spotted it, we had our guiding star. We stayed near the unpaved stretch and continued on our way. A few minutes later, Rachel stopped. I nearly bumped into her. She pointed ahead.
A structure.
It looked like a barn of some sort. We were more careful now. We kept low. We darted from tree to tree and tried to stay out of sight. We did not speak. After a bit, I started hearing music. Country, I think, but I’m no expert. Up ahead, I spotted a clearing. There was indeed a barn that appeared to be in mid-demolition. There was another structure too—a ranch or maybe extended trailer.
We moved a little closer, right to the end of the woods. We pressed ourselves against trees and peeked out. There was a tractor in the yard. I saw an old Trans Am up on cement blocks. Directly in front of the ranch was a white, overly sporty car—some might call it a “hot rod,” I guess—with a thick black stripe up the hood. It looked like a Camaro.
The woods had ended, but we were still at least fifty feet from the ranch house. The grass was high, knee level. Rachel took out her gun. I still held mine. She dropped to the ground and began to commando-crawl. I did the same. On television commando-crawling looks pretty easy. You simply crawl with your butt down. And for about ten feet, it is pretty easy. Then it gets a lot harder. My elbows ached. The grass kept getting caught up in my nose and mouth. I do not suffer from hay fever or allergies, but we were kicking up something. Gnats and the like rose vengefully as we disturbed their slumber. The music was louder now. The singer—a man hitting nary a note—complained about his poor, poor heart.
Rachel stopped. I crawled to her right and pulled up even. “You okay?” she whispered.
I nodded, but I was panting.
“We may have to do something once we get there,” she said. “I can’t have you exhausted. We can slow down if you need to.”
I shook her off and started moving. I was not going to slow down. Slowing down was simply not on the menu. We were getting closer. I could see the Camaro more clearly now. There were black mud flaps with the silver silhouette of a shapely girl behind the rear tires. There were bumper stickers on the back. One read:GUNS DON ’T KILL PEOPLE,BUT THEY SURE MAKE IT EASIER .
Rachel and I were near the end of the grass, almost exposed, when the dog started barking. We both froze.
There are several varieties of dog barks. The yap of an annoying toy dog. The call of a friendly golden retriever. The warning of a basically harmless pet. And then there is that guttural, junkyard, rip-out-the-thorax bark that makes the blood thin.
This bark fit into the last category.
I was not particularly scared of the dog. I had a gun. It’d be easier, I guess, to use it on a dog than a human being. What did frighten me, of course, was that the barking would be heard by the ranch’s occupant. So we waited. A minute or two later, the dog stopped. We kept our eyes on the ranch door. I was not sure what we would do if someone came out. Suppose we were spotted. We couldn’t shoot. We still didn’t know anything. The fact that a call had been made from the residence of Verne Dayton to the cell phone of a dead man did not add up to much. We didn’t know if my daughter was here or not.
We knew, in fact, nothing.
There were hubcaps in the yard. The rising sun gleamed off them. I spotted a bunch of green boxes. And something about them held my gaze. Forgetting caution, I started moving closer.
“Wait,” Rachel whispered.
But I couldn’t. I needed to get a better look at those boxes. Something about them . . . but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I crawled to the tractor and then hid behind it. I peered out toward the boxes again. Now I saw it. The boxes were indeed green. They also had a graphic featuring a smiling baby.
Diapers.
Rachel was next to me now. I swallowed. A big box of diapers. The kind you buy in bulk at a price club. Rachel saw it too. She put her hand on my arm, warning me to stay calm. We got back down on the ground. She signaled that we were going to make our way to a side window. I nodded that I understood. There was a long fiddle solo blaring from the stereo now.
We were both on our stomachs when I felt something cold against the back of my neck. I slid my eyes toward Rachel. There was a rifle barrel there too, pressed against the base of her skull.
A voice said, “Drop your weapons!”
It was a man. Rachel’s right hand was bent in front of her face. The gun was in it. She let it go. A work boot stepped forward and kicked it away. I tried to discern the odds. One man. I could see that now. One man with two rifles. I could conceivably make a move here. No way I’d make it in time, but it might free up Rachel. I met her eyes and saw panic in them. She knew what I was thinking. The rifle suddenly dug deeper into my skull, pushing my face into the dirt.
“Don’t try it, Chief. I can splatter two sets of brains as easy as one.”
My mind scurried, but it kept hitting dead ends. So I let the gun drop from my hand and watched this man kick away our hope.
Chapter 36
“Stay on yourstomachs!”
“I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Rachel said.
“Shut the hell up.”
With our faces still in the dirt, he had us both put our hands on top of our head, fingers laced. He put a knee in my spine. I grimaced. Using his body for leverage, the man pulled my arms back, nearly popping my shoulders out of their sockets. My wrists were expertly bound together with nylon flex cuffs. They felt like those ridiculously complicated plastic ties they use to package toys so they can’t be shoplifted.
“Put your feet together.”
Another cuff fastened my ankles together. He pushed down on my back to get up. Then he moved over to Rachel. I was going to say something stupidly chivalric likeLeave her alone! but I knew that this would be, at best, futile. I kept still.
“I’m a federal agent,” Rachel said.
“I heard you the first time.”
He put a knee in her back and pulled her hands together. She grunted in pain.
“Hey,” I said.
The man ignored me. I turned and took my first real look at him, and it was like I’d been dropped into a time warp. No doubt about it—the Camaro belonged to him. His hair was eighties-hockey-player long, maybe permed, the color a strange offshoot of orange-blond, tucked back behind his ears and styled into the kind of mullet cut I hadn’t seen since a Night Ranger music video. He had a cheesy blond mustache that could have been a milk stain. His T-shirt readUNIVERSITY OF SMITH AND WESSON . His jeans were unnaturally dark blue and looked stiff.