Cut and Run (34 page)

“There's always that,” LaMoia admitted. “But if they happen to see
you,
it's amazing what kind of felonies take place. The bad guys never love to see SWAT guys dangling from their power lines.”

“That borders on entrapment,” Rotem said, but seeing how easily one thing might lead to another and win them their probable cause.

“That's showbiz.” LaMoia winked. “You want my guys to pull out the Skyjacks, just give the word.”

“Word,” Rotem said, already dialing his cell phone to roust the Assistant United States Attorney in order to push for the power company's cooperation.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

H
unched low to the ground, Larson headed past
the out-of-bounds markers and down the grassy slope toward the barn, now fifty yards away. The urgency of finding Penny only increased as the prospect of an armed federal raid of the Romeros' meeting loomed. Things would likely get ugly, and he didn't want Penny caught in the crossfire.

This end of the golf course hosted the occasional fairway home. It seemed possible the woman might have come from one of them. Perhaps nothing more than a pregnant mare or a sick horse explained her late-night visit in the dark, but Larson had convinced himself the barn was worth pursuing, and there was no turning back.

Below, a set of windows lit up. A tack room, office, or storage room—any one of which would work for sequestering a kidnapped child.

Reaching the barn, Larson moved away from the glowing windows, avoiding what Service field instructors called the “moth syndrome.” He held close to the barn wall, moving quietly. More interior lights switched on directly overhead, the yellow glare spilling out and revealing to his right a thick stand of sixty-foot evergreens. Larson passed an open-ended enclosure where bales of hay were stacked. There was a pitchfork stabbed into one, and for a moment he debated bringing it along. He rounded the far corner and encountered two enormous twin barn doors, a slice of bright light escaping. He placed his eye to this crack and saw the woman—quite the beauty—walk quickly down the stable aisle toward him.

Mid-twenties. Well postured. Mediterranean or Hispanic. A brazen confidence in her dark eyes and pursed lips. She stopped at a stall and slid its door open. She stepped inside.

Larson hurried now, coming fully around the far side of the barn. Alert for guards—for if Penny was here, there should be guards—but saw none. He also failed to spot video or security devices. Reaching the barn's other end, before rounding the corner he saw a trapezoid of light spread out onto a pad of pavers, suggesting opened doors.

It was here that the horses were groomed and washed and saddled, sheltered from the area's persistent rain by an enormous roof overhang. He saw now that the first windows he'd seen lit indeed belonged to a tack room. Still no guards. No trap. It doused his earlier optimism.

But then another thought: Horses meant riding trails. Even on a large estate like this the trails probably led off the property and into the surrounding woods. This meant a safe means of escape for Penny should he find her.

Feeling he'd blown it by following her here, he peered down the stable's well-lit aisle, determined to make something out of it. What he lacked was information. The strong-bodied Italian guy who'd been driving the Mercedes, who was almost certainly the man who'd come so close to him back on the fairway, had shouted at this woman. If indeed she proved to be Katie—his wife? sister? associate?—it implied an intimacy between the two. She could know something of value. He'd wasted too much time not to seize even this small opportunity.

Most of the stall doors remained shut, some with lead ropes hanging outside them. A few stood open.

He ducked inside the first open one he found, hid in the shadows with the potent, but not unpleasant, odor of manure and hay and horses enveloping him. Open stall by open stall, Larson moved closer to her. Was it possible that this woman
was
the guard? That she'd been caught off her post and been shouted at by the boss?

At once, her whispering voice carried in the air. “I'll miss you so much. They'll treat you well. I promise.”

Larson buoyed with hope, riding a seesaw of emotions. First failure, then possibility. Penny's guard might be in the stall with her. Perhaps she was sick or needed an adult woman's attention. Perhaps Larson was closer to finding her than he thought.

He moved to a stall directly across from the one he believed she'd entered. He listened for the sound of a child's voice, twice nearly convincing himself he heard it.

Then silence. Two excruciating minutes of it. He stole a look across the aisle through the wrought-iron bars. Saw nothing. Quietly he drew his weapon, wondering if he was the reason for the sudden change. The gun hung heavily in his hand. He realized how tired he was. He summoned a deep breath, gripped the weapon in both hands, and prepared to cross the aisle.

At that instant, the stall door in front of him slid quickly and loudly shut, a roar of steel wheels on tracks. Larson jumped back, surprised by it. By the time he recovered, the door was now closed. He heard the fading, hurried patter of footfalls on the dirt aisle.

Larson tugged on the door, but it didn't move. Locked, from the outside.

He stuffed the gun away. He'd been jailed.

She would signal the others. He would have an army after him. Any chance of saving Penny was lost.

He jumped up and pulled himself over the stall's eight-foot walls topped with ornamental ironwork. Up and over and gracelessly down.

Larson crossed the aisle, tore open the opposing stall door, and faced a chestnut mare.

The woman had been saying good-bye to a horse.

He sprinted and first caught sight of her again outside the barn. She had a good twenty yards on him and was a fast runner. If he allowed her to reach the top of the hill, it was over. She glanced over her shoulder, and he gained a step or two on her. Agile, and quick on her feet, she coughed as she cut left into the woods. She slowed a step, a sprinter, not a marathoner.

Larson closed on her.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Faint cracks of light were all Penny saw.
Dust in the air, like when her mom shook a bedsheet by a window, little sparks of light like fireflies. Something cold and damp upon which she sat in this new prison. The sweet smell of lumber mixed with other scents foreign to her and unpleasant. Sour. Tangy. The taste of metal in the cool air.

Where was she?

Her ears rang and her toes felt numb, which was to say they didn't feel at all. She had to go potty and she was fiercely thirsty and stomach-growling hungry. Afraid of the dark, she shut her eyes against it, finding her private darkness more tolerable than the blind darkness that faced her. Silence like a sponge, soaking up any hint of life, even the sound of her own breathing.

And then, as she dared to open her eyes again, dared to face that demon of darkness that had for so long made her shut her closet door before bed, there in the swirling grays and formless blacks, a shape slowly took form. And she gasped.

She was not alone.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Larson followed Katie into the woods.
Still running, she gave away her location with the crunching of broken sticks and the thrashing of undergrowth.

Larson cut an angle to intersect her route. Having been raised in a house that bordered nine acres of Connecticut woods, he effortlessly negotiated his way through the stands of pine and fir and cedar, moving like a deer. He sprang as he ran, landing and rebounding, moving far more quietly than his prey, who crashed and banged her way more deeply into the thick.

She did not scream or call out, suggesting to him that for whatever reason, her visit to the barn was off-limits, or there was someone here she feared more than a stranger running after her. And that gave him the chills.

He bore down on her now, able not only to hear her, but finally glimpse her as a darkly moving shadow that strobed between trees. Paired now like rabbit and hound, they darted through the trees, the rare foam of gray light penetrating from the houses beyond. Larson caught a flash of skin as she looked back, her face a reflector. He could hear her panting as she ran.

Larson pushed harder, finding a sudden burst of energy. He vaulted a pile of dead limbs. Again, the woman glanced back, never breaking her stride. She looked behind a fraction of a second too long.

“Look out!” Larson called out, instinctively.

Too late.

She collided with the trunk of a fir tree, a great
whoosh
of escaped air as her chest impacted. Larson skidded to a stop, mesmerized by the surreal effect of seeing a human body in motion so suddenly still and quiet. Her shoulders slumped as if unconscious, yet she remained standing.

A grotesque gurgle arose from her, a wet, sucking sound mixed with escaping air.

Struggling to catch his breath, weapon in hand, Larson reached her and found her eyes open and blinking. Her right foot was angled down, touching the bed of pine needles with the toe of her shoe. She was weightless. Unsupported. Not standing and yet erect. A stain crept out of her, like something living, and spread down her left side. He holstered his weapon. Her mouth opened and shut but no sound came out.

In the limited light that reached into the forest, she seemed cut into several long pieces.

Another step forward and he saw it. She had impaled herself on a stub of a broken branch that held to the tree like a dagger, a jagged, splintered, six-inch blade of weathered wood. The wet gurgling coincided with the slight rise and fall of her shoulders. It had pierced her blouse, cleaved her ribs, and punctured her lung.

“Federal agent,” Larson whispered, simply to identify himself. Fear was their biggest enemy now. She could live through this, but she needed medical attention immediately. “I'm going to get you help. Do you understand?”

Her dark eyes moved slightly.

He realized that by helping her he would likely get himself caught, perhaps killed. Penny would be lost. For a moment, he considered leaving her, resentful that a stupid accident—her own damned fault—would cause him to lose everything. But he could not pull himself away.

He slipped off his belt and withdrew his handkerchief from a back pocket in advance of grabbing her around the waist from behind, lifting her slightly and pulling her off the stub. She shuddered and fell into his arms, and he laid her down on her back.

He tore open her blouse, and mopped around, finally finding the wound at her ribs. He held his handkerchief there, and used the belt to secure the handkerchief, applying pressure.

“Okay?” he asked, their faces only inches apart.

Again, her eyes moved vaguely. In shock, she was barely with him.

“He would have left me,” she said hoarsely. When the words came out of her mouth some blood did as well, and Larson felt himself flinch.

Whomever she meant, Larson thought not. No man would leave this woman.

“There's a girl. A little girl,” he said, knowing that his chances were slim to none, but clinging to hope. Perhaps he could pass something along to Rotem or Hampton before he was caught. “She's my daughter,” he said, his throat constricting.

Her mouth moved, but he heard no words.

He scooped her up and carried her in his arms, amazed by how small and light she was. He navigated out of the woods, carefully up the incline, the dense forest giving way to the clipped grass of a fairway.

She grew heavier in the silence. Larson felt his legs and back straining.

“A boy,” she said so breathlessly he thought he might have imagined it himself.

Larson paused.

“They have a boy,” she said.

He continued climbing, reaching the crest and moving across the fairway. No one approached him. No one arrived to detain him.

“A young boy,” he said, thinking of what Markowitz had written to Hope.

Her eyelids closed and opened—her way of nodding.

“Where?”

“They'll kill you.”

“Probably,” he said.

She shook her head and went silent.

“Where?”

She managed to point out a medium-sized home that bordered the golf course, one of the ones he'd seen earlier. Her home clearly. There would be a road on the far side of the house. A car in the garage. A way out for her.

She shut her eyes and grew much heavier. She'd passed out.

He walked through low bands of ground fog that had appeared in just the past few minutes. The fog shifted like chimney smoke and swirled at his waist. The air felt noticeably cooler.

His shoes and socks soaked through, he reached the cart path and crossed it, into her backyard. He saw a swing set and a toy lawn-rake and a wheelbarrow heaped with leaves.

She came awake in his arms, risen from the dead.

“Leave me . . .” she muttered. “The porch. A . . . housekeeper.”

He carried her to the back porch where a porch light shone. “Okay. You're here. Now tell me: Where's the boy?”

He stepped toward the porch doorbell. He looked at her for a response before ringing it.

“The bunkhouse,” she said. “It's down the hill from the manor.”

Larson rang the bell, then pivoted, hearing footfalls approaching the door. He had to leave and yet couldn't tear himself away until he was sure. “The double-wide.”

Katie's eyelids fluttered and closed.

He heard the lock come off the door.

He ran.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Hope's maternal instincts soon drove her out
of her hiding place and toward the back of the catering truck. If she didn't get inside, she told herself, she had no chance of finding Penny.

Larson's BlackBerry buzzed yet again—area code 314, St. Louis—and again she ended the call to keep the device from vibrating and giving her away. Wedged between the Dumpsters, she was in no position to strike up a conversation. Had it been area code 206, Seattle, any possibility of being the kidnappers, she might have dared answer.