Bait & Switch (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 1) (18 page)

CHAPTER 23

Fog enveloped me like a down comforter, heavy, dense, and so thick I could barely see the junco hopping on the ground, scratching through pine needles to reach tasty morsels. His beady eye kept close watch on me, but I must not have stirred in long enough for him to feel safe.

He was joined by a mate, her head dusky charcoal in color. She reached my outspread fingers, pecked delicately around them, perched on my wrist for a fleeting second, then carried on with her foraging.

The thought that coyotes might be next prodded me into action. I pushed my torso up until I was sitting. Pine needles fell from where they’d been imprinted in my cheek. I was still in one piece, but I felt pulverized and jellied, with the screaming rush of a blinding migraine.

I doubled over, head between my knees, gulping huge breaths to hold back the nausea. The bird whistle Eli had given me swung forward on the leather thong around my neck, and I clutched it. My little bit of home. I was still alive.

I shouldn’t be, but I was.

After a few experimental attempts, I balanced on my feet — hunched over with my hands propped on my knees, but progress at any rate. My body ached, dull and stiff.

I took a breather, and from that awkward position, examined my surroundings, what wasn’t masked by opaque fog. The cinder block hut that had been my prison stood like an outpost at the edge of a cultivated field that had not been tended recently. Bushy winter foliage mounded in overgrown, parallel rows. A dirt track ran by the hut’s open door, with the ashy remnants of my captors’ fire several yards away.

I went over last night’s events in my mind, particularly our arrival — my stumbling, the direction I’d been shoved to get me in the hut — and decided we must have approached from the right.

I might as well be moving. I was cold to the core and starting to shiver. My fingers and toes were tingly lumps that I could barely wiggle.

I walked slowly, keeping to the road which had obviously been designed for tractor use only. Fog had frozen on the surface, dusting the dirt with a crunchy sugar coating like a fancy cupcake. The track took an abrupt turn at the corner of the field, and I stopped. I didn’t remember any sharp turns on the ATV, but we’d probably been traveling cross-country.

I spun slowly, but the fog was a shifting white wall, making it impossible to get my bearings. Suddenly, the scent of toothpaste and cough drops filled the heavy air.

I glanced down — I’d stepped on a plant. I bent and crushed a leaf between my fingers and held them to my nose. The crop was peppermint.

The piercing freshness cleared my sinuses and maybe my brain, and I chuckled. Roads are built for a reason. I’d follow the road.

The only sound was my unsteady footsteps. I was grateful for the frozen ground — otherwise I’d have been slogging through mud. How long had I been gone? Clarice would have noticed when I didn’t show up to help with the dishes. But then what?

I figured the best thing I could do was remember — remember everything possible about last night, about the men who’d taken me, about Numero Tres Joe and his operatives — what they’d looked like, what they’d said, why they’d spared me.

Why? I was still fuzzy about Joe’s motives. Maybe he’d realized I was a dead end with regard to his money. Maybe he thought I was in contact with Skip and would pass along the threat against his life. Maybe he had to assess the situation for himself.

The news articles about him, while sketchy on specifics, had reported third-hand accounts of his tight-fisted management style, but had also said he tended to be reclusive, with hints of growing paranoia. Apparently the higher one rose in the cartel hierarchy, the greater the risk to one’s life, from both outside and inside the organization.

Maybe Joe didn’t think I’d survive out here by myself, that I was as good as dead anyway. Maybe he was right. My stomach rumbled, gnawing in on itself to remind me just how long it had been since my cozy family dinner.

I palmed Eli’s gift and gave it a tentative puff. The same cheerful warble — and a comforting form of companionship.

The road didn’t narrow but felt more closed in as it wound into increasingly dense trees that towered over me, their trunks puncturing and disappearing into the fog. The moisture in the air seemed to carry sounds — solitary chirps and scuttles as small animals went about their daily responsibilities.

If I could hear them, they could hear me. I could holler, but wasn’t sure my voice would last long, or if anyone was looking for me. Or if they were looking for me, how would they find this patch of woods among the endless acres? I didn’t even know if I was still in May County.

Or I could whistle. I might be mistaken for a bird, but I would be a very persistent and obnoxious bird.

oOo

Blowing on a whistle takes more tongue muscle — and saliva — than one would think. Hours later — two, three? — I was reduced to occasional squeaks, with long bouts of panting in between. It didn’t help that the road was now a steep incline.

My flimsy efforts were becoming ridiculous. I flopped at the base of a tree and leaned against the trunk.

At least there was still a road. Miles and miles of road. Although at my pace I might have only covered a fraction of that distance. What distance? I had no idea.

I groaned and considered removing my boots to check on the blisters that were rising on my heels and left big toe. But the worry that I might not be able to get my boots back on kept me inert.

In ascending, I’d climbed into even thicker fog. I was tunneling through the middle of cloud. I had no idea how many trees surrounded me now since I could only see the ones I could also touch.

Except for the road, I might have been walking in circles. There had been a few slight bends in the track, but I figured whoever put in the time and effort to build this road did so economically, only diverting temporarily from the intended direction for major obstacles that could not be removed.

For being visually impenetrable, the fog sure was fluid — swirling, pressing in on me, distorting even the shape of my own hands in my lap, confusing and lonely, the damp version of a mirage. And ruminating did no good for my situation.

I clawed my way up the tree until I was standing again and set out, one foot in front of the other.

Tweet.

Puff. Wheeze.

Chirp.

Pant.

The whistle and I developed an odd sort of syncopated cadence, but we carried on.

A branch crackled to my right, and I froze. Snap. Crunch.

Something was definitely walking toward me. It sounded big and heavy and clumsy. Not a cougar — didn’t they have soft, padded feet? An elk? A bear? What other kinds of big, scary creatures roamed these hills? Sasquatch?

I peered into the fog, straining to see an antler rack or a bulky, mangy hide. If a wild animal and I bumped into each other and things got ugly, I knew who would win. But I couldn’t take off running in the opposite direction because the road was my lifeline.

However, I could sound bigger and more intimidating than I was. I inhaled and gave a mighty blast on the whistle. It wasn’t made to handle that much air all at once, and the resulting sound was a cross between a squealing pig and a sick chicken. Definitely scary. I blew again for good measure, expelling my entire lung capacity until the screech faded into a staccato gurgle.

A black form — no, two forms — two heads, four legs — came crashing through the brush and white vapor, assault rifles pointed at me.

I thrust my hands in the air and just about peed my pants.

“Nora Ingram?”

I emitted a tiny squeak that was supposed to be a yes.

“FBI. You alone?”

“Very,” I whispered.

“You armed? They strap anything to you?”

I shook my head until my teeth rattled.

Another gigantic form came barreling out of the fog. I jumped out of the way, but not far enough as it squashed me in a suffocating hug.

“I knew it was you!”

His beard tickled my face, and I pushed back for speaking clearance. “Gus?” My voice wavered.

“I knew it was you.” He beamed and gave me another squeeze that lifted me off the ground. “No real bird sounds like that. I knew it. Been trackin’ you for a while, but these boys required some convincing to make their move. We couldn’t tell if you were alone or on a forced march with the bad guys. Didn’t want you gettin’ hit in potential crossfire.”

“You’ve been following me?” My mouth hung open. How could a three-hundred pound man stalk me through the woods without my hearing him?

“You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I was a Green Beret.” Gus sighed and released me. “Back when I was a young buck.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I flung my arms around him this time. He chuckled and held me close. I buried my face in the bib of his overalls and sniffled against the denim.

Gus rubbed my back with his big, warm hands. “I knew somethin’ was up when the feds came to town. Then yesterday’s visitors just had drug cartel written all over them, and I started runnin’ ideas together. Those bozos should know better than to drive a snazzy black Escalade in these parts. Stuck out like the thugs they are.”

“You need medical attention?” one of the FBI men asked.

I tried to smile through my tears. “I’ll soak my feet when I get home.”

“Your face doesn’t look too good.” He gently placed a thumb on the edge of my jaw and turned my head to the side. “Who hit you?”

“Giuseppe Ricardo Solano.”

The FBI agent’s brows arched, and he slid my sleeves up a few inches, exposing the raw gouges in my wrists from the straps. His serious brown eyes returned to meet mine. “You’re lucky.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“She’s also shakin’ like a leaf,” Gus said. “Let’s get her warm.”

CHAPTER 24

They radioed ahead and hiked me a short distance, where we were met by a windowless cargo van and driver. At the command post, they wrapped me in blankets and poured coffee from a Thermos into a foam cup for me. I took a sip and scalded the roof of my mouth. I made a little nest with the edge of a blanket so I could hold the cup without exposing my fingers to the chilly air.

More members of the extraction team materialized. They all looked the same — dark clothes from head to foot, helmets, assault rifles, radios. And they’d been looking for me. I suddenly felt very small.

I gathered from their banter as they stashed their gear that Gus had suspected where I was being held because he’d seen taillights on the track to the mint field and knew the farmer had no reason to be checking on his dormant crop at dusk in the middle of winter.

And Gus had only seen the taillights because he’d been at one of his favorite viewpoints all afternoon, before the fog rolled in. He’d been scanning the skies for a peregrine falcon he was worried about since he hadn’t seen her overhead for a few days. Gus was getting ribbed by the men in black for his hobby, and he quietly shuffled out of the group.

He sidled up to the van’s open side door where I was huddled in a passenger captain’s chair. “Her name’s Mattie. Short for Matilda. She probably wouldn’t like that name, but it was the best I could come up with. As close as I can tell, she’s eleven or twelve years old, has raised fledglings on a cliff face a few miles north of town the past several years.”

“Just Mattie, or do you keep tabs on other birds too?” I asked.

“376,” Gus said proudly. “That’s my life list count so far. Not many, but I figure I have a few more years to add to the total.”

“That’s crazy.”

Gus sighed. “Some people collect postage stamps, but that was too easy, considerin’ what I do for a livin’. So I decided to collect bird sightings. It’s crazy, but the hunt has its talons in me now.” He shrugged.

“I meant crazy good. That’s amazing.” I wriggled an arm free from the blankets and squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks for your vigilance and keeping tabs on me too.”

“What are neighbors for, ‘cept to be nosy?” Gus winked at me.

Matt joined our tête-à-tête, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his overcoat.

“I didn’t know you were here,” I said.

“I found someone else to babysit the lab work. Unfortunately, you’re my responsibility, and I hate it when my charges get kidnapped.”

“Happen often?”

“Nope. You ready to go?”

“Can I keep the blankets?”

Matt’s grim look lightened a little. “Sure.” He ushered me into the backseat of a nearby sedan.

Violet joined Matt in the front, and he eased the big car onto the paved road. The backseat was broad and cushy and I was incredibly tempted to tip over and doze, but I wanted to see where I was. Every once in a while, I felt Matt’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror.

While none of us spoke, icy resentment rolled off Violet in waves, as though my involuntary escapade had inconvenienced her at a most inopportune time. Matt relaxed in the driver’s seat, his knees almost touching the steering wheel, and he corrected the car with minor touches of his thumbs and forefingers.

After half an hour of curvy country roads, the area started looking familiar. Then we rolled through the intersection between the store and post office, the hum of the sedan’s tires on the pavement providing lulling background noise.

Matt zipped past the secret gate to Mayfield. I leaned forward, my hand on the back of his seat, my mouth open to point out his error.

“We’re going to the Gonzales’s place,” he said with a quick glance in the mirror.

“Is something wrong?”

He shook his head. “Clarice insisted. Said it’d be easiest to keep an eye on you there, since she’s also watching after the little girl.”

“What about Sidonie?” I blurted. “That means—”

“Mrs. Gonzales went into labor shortly after everyone realized you were missing,” Matt said matter-of-factly.

I groaned and slumped back against the seat.

Violet shifted and spoke for the first time. “She was due any second as it was. She’ll be fine. She strikes me as the sturdy sort.”

I glared at the back of Violet’s head.

Clarice greeted us in front of a clapboard-sided, boxy ranch house with peeling gray paint. She had the tiny hand of a tutu-clad CeCe clasped tightly in her own. She pulled me in for a long hug with her free arm.

“I’m saving the lecture for later,” Clarice said.

“Thanks.” I chucked CeCe under the chin, and the little girl beamed at me. “Any word?”

“Hank promised to call once the ordeal’s over.” Clarice’s hints at subtlety are hardly that.

“It’s probably a good thing you skipped over motherhood and went straight to grandmotherhood,” I said, smiling into Clarice’s eyes.

She chuckled and pirouetted a delighted CeCe. “No doubt.”

“Shall we?” Violet lugged a briefcase out of the car and strode toward the house with it banging against the side of her thigh.

Clarice sneered and rolled her eyes, but turned and followed Violet with CeCe tippy-toeing in her wake.

We entered the kitchen, passed a table littered with sheets of paper covered with tic-tac-toe grids and homemade dot-to-dot drawings and the leftovers of an egg salad sandwich, carrot stick and peanut butter cookie lunch, and settled in a cozy living room with antimacassars draped over the backs and arms of every overstuffed piece of furniture.

Clarice announced her intention to read stories, and CeCe happily shadowed her down a narrow hallway, leaving me with the two FBI agents.

Violet set a recorder on the coffee table, clicked it on, and propped an open notebook on the arm of her chair. I tucked my legs under me on the sofa and folded my hands in my lap.

Matt’s serious look was back. “Let’s go through your past twenty-four hours.”

So that’s what we did — forward, backward, chronologically, random impressions, descriptions of every man in the party, descriptions of vehicles and ATVs, the cinder block hut, word-for-word repetitions of what each person said, my decision to start walking instead of waiting to be found.

I riled at his insinuation that I had hindered the rescue by leaving the scene. “How was I to know you were coming? I considered it very likely I would freeze out there, and I had a road to follow.”

“How could you think we wouldn’t come?” Matt’s jaw clenched.

“Remember when I asked for protection?”

His eyes narrowed. “The situation’s changed.”

“I’d like to know why I was let off easy.”

“Easy?” Matt’s brows shot up. “Forcible abduction is not an outcome we were hoping for.” He exhaled and ran a hand through the short hair on the back of his head. “Solano — Joe, as you call him — is under pressure from his bosses. They do that — put the screws on subordinates, all the way down the line. Reports are they’re not thrilled about how much money he lost by trusting Skip, nor are they pleased with how he handled the hit on Rojas. It appears that his judgment in general has been called into question by his superiors, which does not bode well for his longevity, either professional or personal. He might have thought your body would be one too many on his résumé just now.”

“But he could have killed me and left me.” I leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Who knows how long it would have been until someone found me.”

Matt blew out an exasperated sigh. “Are you going to argue about this?”

I smiled ruefully and shook my head. “Why did the agent who found me ask if they’d strapped anything to me?”

Matt slumped in his chair, his head tilted against the padded back, his eyes directed toward the ceiling.

Violet glanced at him and frowned. “Because they’ve been known to booby-trap their victims with suicide vests. That way, they take out their target and maybe a few law enforcement personnel at the same time.”

I bit my lip. It was a good thing I hadn’t known that earlier. “Do you know where Joe is now?”

“We have all his known haunts under surveillance.” Violet retrieved the recorder and packed her things in the briefcase.

In other words, no, they didn’t know where Joe was. On the other hand, I doubted he’d return any time soon. The more pressure he faced in his own business, the less I expected he’d interfere with mine. Maybe I could help keep it that way.

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

“You ever hear of D.B. Cooper?” Matt asked in a lazy voice from his still reclined position.

“No.” I frowned.

“You’d have been too young to remember. Hijacker who jumped out of a Northwest Orient plane in 1971 with $200,000 in ransom money. He was supposed to have landed around here.” He stood and buttoned his coat. “I’m just saying you never know what you might encounter in these woods. You need to be more than careful, Nora. We’ll work out a security detail for you.”

At least he hadn’t suggested I return to the city. I preferred my guardian angels in the form of Etherea and Gus.

I showed Matt and Violet to the door then crept softly down the hall. I found Clarice sitting cross-legged on the floor beside a pint-sized bed, leafing through an Olivia the Pig book. CeCe was out cold, resting on her side with her arm under her head, snoring softly as though just minutes ago she’d been peering over Clarice’s shoulder at the pictures.

“Learning anything?” I whispered.

Clarice shot me a glare, closed the book and slowly pushed to standing, her knees cracking so loudly I checked CeCe for eyelash flutters. But the little girl slept on. Clarice covered CeCe with a Winnie the Pooh fleece blanket and flapped her hand to urge me away from the doorway.

After she clicked the bedroom door closed, she muttered, “Why didn’t they have books like that when I was a kid? I would have read more.”

I kept Clarice company while she punched down the rising pizza dough for dinner.

“Don’t you want to sleep?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I can do that later. Tell me about everyone.”

“We all went sort of panicky once we figured out you were gone, and the FBI wouldn’t let us help, just kept asking us a bunch of dumb questions we didn’t know the answers to. Then that fellow, Gus, called and asked after you. When he heard you were missing, he barged in and took over. Never seen such a flurry.” Clarice set her hands on her hips and scowled in admiration.

“Walt and the boys?” I asked.

“Sick with worry. Last I saw, Walt and a few of the older boys were on the roof, cleaning our chimneys.”

I groaned.

“Seems that man takes his emotions out in his work. Also seems he thinks we’re going to be burning a truckload of wood pellets this winter.”

“I suppose we could, to keep up appearances. We’d have to find another place to stash the cash.” I frowned.

“Maybe you should tell him the truth.” Clarice squinted at me from behind her cat’s eye glasses.

“At what cost?” I whispered.

“He’s a grown man. Try trusting him.”

The phone hanging on the wall rang, loud and shrill. Clarice and I both jumped and stared at it. Then we lunged for it at the same time. Clarice beat me to it.

“Uh-huh. Just fine, yes. Right. Yes.” She was nodding vigorously.

I poked her arm. “What?”

She waved me off. “Uh-huh. Got that. You rest now. Hug Sidonie for us. Yes, both of us. Nora’s here. We’re all fine. Uh-huh. Bye-bye.”

“What?” I hollered.

“Shhhh,” Clarice hissed, pointing in the direction of CeCe’s back bedroom, but she was beaming. “Adam and Aron. Over seven pounds each. Healthy and hungry. Sidonie’s elated.”

“More boys,” I murmured.

“Just what we need.” Clarice returned to the stove and the simmering tomato sauce.

oOo

CeCe and I gobbled down pizza slices — sausage and olive for me, Hawaiian for her — in feminine solidarity. Given the fact that two more boys had just entered the world, and this household, we girls were going to have to stick together.

CeCe conscripted me into a game of Chutes and Ladders while Clarice cleaned up the dishes. I had just been dumped back to the bottom of the board by a nasty spin on the dial when a knock sounded.

Clarice wiped her hands on her apron and cracked open the kitchen door. “Didn’t fall off, then?” she grunted.

“What? Oh. No, we’re fine.” Walt craned his head through the opening and grinned at me. “Nora. It’s good to see you.”

I grinned back. “I like your haircut.”

He ran a hand over his bristly top thatch self-consciously. “It’s growing on me.” Then he cast a quick glance at Clarice’s backside. She was leaning over the sink again, elbow deep in sudsy water. “Um, can I talk to you for a few minutes?”