Cut and Run

“So we’re screwed?”

“No way to tell yet,” she said. “His e-mails aren’t on this machine. He must have erased them as he went. His mail is hosted on a server-another way to reduce the security risk if the laptop was taken. The deleted information may still be on here somewhere, but it will take days, weeks, to drill down in and find it.”

“Then we are screwed.”

“Now wait,” she said, as if talking to Pe

“So Miller can help us.” Larson started the car, a sense of purpose finding him again.

“He read the exchange between me and Markowitz.” She turned her face into the sweep of white light. “My guess is: a guy like him? He’s already on it.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

His right eye had not improved. If anything, it seemed to Pe

Pe

He’d put her onto the comfortable bed in the back, ankles and wrists taped together, but no gag for most of the day. She appreciated having the gag off and didn’t say a word, knowing if she did, he’d put it back on. He’d dragged the dead man into some bushes alongside a deserted road well off the highway, late, late at night. She tried her best to forget about that.

She now lay with her knees bent facing the front so she could see what he was doing, where he was looking. Her nose was still thick with clotted blood, badly bruised but not broken. Inch by inch, she moved her knees up closer into her chest, her sock and the broken shard of pottery nearly within reach now.

She slipped out the broken piece and gripped it tightly and sawed at the silver tape, working only for those few seconds he eyed his outside mirror. As the edge of the tape was cut, it tore. He had country music playing. Its sound covered the small sounds of the tape tearing as her ankles came free.

Working her wrists free felt impossible. Twice she dropped the shard of pottery into the bloody sheets, a jolt of panic flooding her until she came to realize he’d all but forgotten about her. He seemed occupied with staying awake and overcoming the pain in that eye.

She waited three more hours for him to pull over, the digital clock in the truck’s dashboard seeming slower than ever, the expanse of elapsed time excruciating.

He never stopped at rest areas. He peed or did his business in the woods along empty roads that he’d sometimes take forever to find, driving around on farm roads well off the highway, until for one reason or another he settled on a place. He left the truck and did his stuff first, then returned to collect the Tupperware pot he made her use while he watched-the only time he removed the tape allowing her hands and legs to separate. She never left the truck.

Until now.

This time, he glanced back at her on the bed, said, “Same program, little one,” for that was what he called her. “I’ll do mine, you’ll do yours, and we’re out of here.”

She nodded and groaned, since she was now facing away from him, for this, too, had become part of their routine.

He left.

She sat up and pushed aside the black curtain and watched him hurry into the rocks bearing a roll of toilet paper. With two quick jerks, she had the silver tape off her. She couldn’t believe the pain in her limbs from not moving. She rolled and fell into the front seat, slid beneath the enormous steering wheel, and clicked open his driver’s door.

She lowered herself and climbed down onto the pavement, the fresh air the first thing she tasted.

But what now?

Her plan all along had been to get free. Now that she was, she had no idea what to do.

Nothing but vast farm ground as far as the eye could see, with nowhere to hide. The only place to hide was the tangle of boulders and rock into which he’d disappeared. She saw snow-covered mountains in the distance, but they had to be a million miles away!

There! She spotted it. A huge metal tube that ran under the road. Without a second thought she ran over to it and off the road, and tucked herself into a crawl and scurried inside. It was dry and sandy in the bottom, and spiderwebs stuck to her face and hands as she pushed in farther, now centered between the two large openings at either end.

She waited, not knowing what else to do.

It seemed like forever before she heard the clap of the cab door open and close. Then open again. Then close. Heard his feet move this way and back that way again, and she could sense he was searching the underside of the truck’s trailer.

The monster did not call out for her, and this surprised her most of all. She waited to hear him drive off, to look for her. But instead she heard his feet approaching. She heard him… laughing. Chuckling to himself.

Then he called out loudly, “You really think so?” A moment later, closer yet. “You really think this will work? You think I will let this happen, little one? Is there even a remote chance I will let this happen? THERE IS NOT! And the longer you hide from me, the longer you go before your next meal. You HEAR ME? This is your choice and you’re making it! So think about it.” Another long pause. He was closer still. Now his face appeared at the end of the long pipe in which she hid. She shuddered and pulled into a ball.

He dared to smile at her. “We’re not so different, you and me. I like you.”

Pe

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Larson lost most of the day to making arrangements. Dr. Miller had once again come through, this time working through the night to follow Markowitz’s e-mails. Those e-mails, all with encrypted attachments, had been sent from Useppa Island to Mountlake Terrace, Washington, north of Seattle. While the private jet was being refueled early in the afternoon on the outskirts of Denver, Larson sat in a black leather chair in the passenger lounge, speaking on the BlackBerry’s cell phone.

He should have felt a pit in his stomach over the seven thousand dollars it cost for him and Hope to fly charter from Tampa to Seattle. If he was not reimbursed for his expenses over the past twenty-four hours, it would take him a couple years to repay the home equity loan. But with Pe

“I tried Rotem: Got his voice mail. You’re stuck with me,” he informed Trill Hampton.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Hampton complained. “That mess out at the Orchard House flattened us here.”

Larson knew the pall that hung over operations following the loss of a fellow deputy. The double homicide must have been devastating and would have long-lasting repercussions.

“I dropped two of Romero’s men last night, and one of them shot and killed Markowitz in the process.”

“That was you,” he said, as if this possibility had already been raised.