The Taken

“Two and a half hours might be all this guy has left. Let’s get back up there.”

Childress was shouting into the phone, but Hazel couldn’t make out what she was saying. She hoped there was someone on the other end. The constable hung up and pocketed the cell. She lifted the headset’s mic to her mouth. “There’s one guy there, not attached to our case. But he’s going to nose around and see what might be ready. He’s going to call me back.”

“Thank you,” said Hazel. Childress just nodded.

Qui

35

There was a faint glow coming from the east, a pinkish light that seemed to drive the rain away and limn the early morning darkness with a phosphorescent edge. Qui

Calberson reached the side of the canoe and put an arm in, feeling along Eldwin’s torso with two fingers. He pressed his fingers in hard under the man’s chin, then signalled the helicopter to slide the basket over. It drifted over the surface of Pickamore Lake toward him. The four other officers were crowded on one side looking over, no longer feeling any fear at all. Qui

They watched Calberson sliding his way along the inside of the canoe, keeping his balance and straddling the wrapped man. The water in the boat sluiced over the sides as he made his progress. Hovering over Eldwin’s midsection, the officer leaned forward and felt for a pulse again, but they still could not tell what he’d learned. “He’s not going to be able to get him onto the stretcher from there,” said Tate. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Stay in the bird,” called Qui

“No, I’m going down,” said Tate, and without another word, he yanked the headset off and jumped from the helicopter.

“He worries too much,” said Wingate.

“Worries?” said Hazel.

“You weren’t in that boat with them on Ga

“It’s a stressful business,” she said, watching Tate swimming over to the canoe. They could just barely hear him calling his partner’s name.

“My guess is, there’s more to it than that.”

She turned slowly to him. He shrugged faintly. “Well, I suppose you’d know.”

Tate was at the boat and Calberson was yelling at him, gesturing with his hands. Then he shook his head and unhooked the basket from the front of the canoe and Tate pushed it against the side of the canoe and held it steady. His partner unhooked his leg from around Eldwin and lay down in the water beside him. Then they saw Eldwin sit up, as if in a horror-movie coffin, and Calberson was behind him, levering him over the side of the canoe. Tate threw his arm out and grabbed the front of the white cloth and held the man steady as Calberson got the rest of Eldwin’s body up on the stern of the canoe. Hazel watched, riven. This was one of the ways you threw a body out of a boat. But there were others.

Tate was reaching across the stretcher, Calberson a counterweight in the canoe, and between the two of them, they gentled Eldwin within his cocoon onto the basket. Qui

“Let me bring him in,” said Wingate, his arm on Hazel’s shoulder. She stepped aside as, inch by inch, the white form ascended on the end of the rope. She smelled burning oil as the onboard motor strained to bring the weight up.

Qui

Wingate held tight to the inside of the door and leaned out, pushing against the rope to keep the stretcher clear of the skids. He wondered at his newfound ability to hang out of a hovering aircraft. David would have been proud of him. As Eldwin got closer to the helicopter, Wingate’s heart fell – the man’s face was white. He was surely dead. He held the rope at arm’s length, getting ready to lean down and grab the basket once it cleared the skids, but then there was a flash against one of the skids and the sound of a metal ping and Wingate felt a searing pain in his cheek. He fell back into the cabin, his hand pressed against his face, and he heard the metallic sound again, louder this time, and Qui

The sentence was barely out of the pilot’s mouth when the windshield exploded and the whole craft sheered sideways, giving them a view of the lake beneath them through the door. Eldwin’s form in the basket swung wildly in the air between the helicopter and the water. Wingate felt himself sliding toward the open space as it fell away from them – Qui