Earth to Emily (25 page)

Mindful of the razor-sharp objects between my treasure and me, I hefted the bag high. It was light. I heard noises from the front of the warehouse, but I ignored them as I concentrated, using one arm to anchor the saw, and bumped the backpack over to me. As I got it to the edge of the shelf, it knocked into an item I hadn’t seen, sending it crashing to the floor. There was a loud crack, and a shattering of glass. I held myself perfectly still, holding my breath. I strained to hear sounds, any sounds around me.

Nothing. Whatever the noise had been up front, it was silent now.

I exhaled and laughed. Turning toward the door, I raised my voice a little over a conversational tone and a little below a shout. “Ava, I found Betsy’s backpack.”

A whimper came from behind me, followed by a man’s voice. “Ava’s indisposed at the moment, but I’m sure she’s quite happy for you.”

***

Time slowed, seconds seeming to pass between each beat of my heart. Whatever I did next affected Ava more than me, and as much as I wanted to go on the attack, I had to be cautious for her sake. The voice had sounded close. Ten feet? Fifteen? Five? Probably ten, I decided. My hand still held the backpack perched on the edge of the shelf. I released it, hoping it looked like I had only been using the shelf for balance. My baby Glock was nestled in my purse near my stomach. The man didn’t have a light on me, so with minimal movement I slipped my hand between the open sides of my jacket and into my purse. I felt the cold, hard grip and wrapped my hand around it. Using mostly my wrist, I tucked it into the front of my pants, just behind one side of my coat.

I turned toward the voice. All I could see of him and Ava was a shadowy outline, large and ominous. Regardless, I curled my lips into the biggest smile I could muster.

“Sorry.” I stalled by coughing in my hand. “I was looking for the bathroom in here when I dropped my phone.” I held it up. “I found it!”

The shadow advanced on me, and Ava materialized out of the darkness. Blood dripped from her busted lip, and an arm circled her neck. A pistol pressed into her temple. The top of a man’s head appeared, his face mostly hidden by Ava’s head, as was his body.
Coward.

I held up a hand. “Wow, hey, there must be a big misunderstanding here. Look, I’m so sorry I trespassed. I’ve had this really embarrassing stomach problem, and I was desperate, and the front door was unlocked, and—”

“Shut the fuck up.”

I raised my other hand. “Okay, okay.”

“We’re going for a walk.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

He took the gun off Ava’s temple and waved it at me. “Move!”

Just then, Jack’s voice shouted, from what sounded like the reception area. “Emily? Ava? Are you guys in here?”

The man jerked his head toward Jack’s voice and his arm slipped and loosened. Ava and I made eye contact and I shouted, “Go!” as I grabbed my gun and waved my left arm to the side, hoping she would jump in the direction I was signaling.

Ava donkey-kicked as she wrenched herself down and away from her captor. She dove under his arm and rolled to her right. He grunted and bent forward for a second, firing wildly as he did. I heard the bullet ricochet off shelving to my left. My gun was in front of me in my right hand, and I sighted it just like my daddy had taught me, like I’d practiced for the last fifteen years at shooting ranges in Lubbock, Dallas, and Amarillo. By the time my left hand reached its steadying position, I was crouched and firing.

My first shot missed to the right but the second hit the man’s hand. I heard the lovely sound of his gun skittering across the floor. He groaned and staggered to his right. I adjusted my aim, and my third and fourth shots struck their target. He clutched his thigh, screaming as he fell to the floor. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Ava scoop up his gun as I assessed our situation. My magazine held ten rounds, plus one in the chamber for a total of eleven, so I had seven bullets left. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to use them. I kept my gun trained on him and advanced until I was a yard away.

“You’re messing with wrong girl,” I said.

I resisted the urge to blow pretend smoke from the barrel of my Glock. I’d never shot at a person before—never wanted to have to—but I’d always wanted to say the words my father had inscribed around the barrel for me. The man groaned and writhed, cursing in general and at me in particular. As he rolled I got my first good look at his face.

“Son of a biscuit!” I yelled. It was Edward Brown. Suddenly I knew what Jack’s second text would have told me. “Well, Officer Brown, you had me fooled. Checking up on Johnson’s place. More like seeing if there was anything else left out there you could steal.”

“Fuck you,” he spat.

“No, thank you,” I said.

Running footsteps approached. “Emily?” The warehouse reverberated with Jack’s cry.

“Over here. We’re fine,” I yelled back.

Looking at Ava, I said, “I don’t suppose you have any idea how Jack knew where to find us, do you?”

She stood—holding Brown’s gun by its trigger guard with two hooked fingertips—and grinned, blood dripping from her temple like she was the bride of Frankenstein. “Collin and I conversating some via text today.” She tossed her hair. “And I might have mentioned what our bad asses up to.”

I groaned. “There’s probably a lot there I don’t want to know, but thank God for whatever it was the two of you were up to last night that saved our bad asses from ending up dead today.”

“What the hell, Emily?” It was an angry Jack, closing in on me fast. “Do you have a death wish? What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”

I shoved my gun into the back of my waistband and raised my hands in the air. “Don’t shoot,” I said.

He shook his head, and I closed the rest of the distance between us in one giant step, landing with my head against his chest and both his arms around me.

I snuck Betsy’s backpack out to the Suburban after we called the cops, past Jack, who shook his head and put his hands over his eyes. Yes, I knew I shouldn’t tamper with evidence, but there was no way I was letting it get tied up in a multiyear court case. The Alamogordo police had plenty left in the warehouse without this backpack, worthless to anyone except one very special little girl.

When the cops did arrive, things got real in a hurry. It’s a sobering time when good cops are forced to process a bad one. Part of me wanted to apologize. Part of me wanted to ask them all politely how the heck the jerkface could get away with this stuff under their noses. I didn’t do either, just answered their questions the best I could.

Ava and I drove back toward Wrong Turn Ranch after the police had finished with us, and Jack left in Collin’s Bronco at the same time, promising to see us after he’d picked Collin up at the NMSP district offices on the way home. I plugged my phone in to the charger the second we got into the vehicle.

Ava was rubbing her neck. She already had a large fingerprint bruise.

“Do we need to stop and have someone take a look at that?” I asked.

“Nah. It good.” She rolled her head. “Things always this exciting round you?”

“No,” I said, then realized that wasn’t true. “Well, yeah, sometimes.”

“Still water run deep.”

I laughed.

A few minutes later, Ava said, “I feeling a little shaky all of a sudden. I call my daughter and mom real quick. Say I love dem, hear their voices.”

The gravity of the danger we’d escaped was starting to hit me, too, now that the adrenaline had worn off. Brown had shot at me. He’d held a gun to Ava’s head. Ava and I had each come a slim whisker from dying. My lips quivered and I pressed them together.

Ava pressed a button on her phone. She spoke to her mother for a moment, then her accent thickened and her voice softened into baby talk. “Mama miss you, baby girl.”

I knew her daughter wasn’t even a year old. I imagined the tiny girl cooing on the other end of the line, and a lump formed in my throat. I wanted that. I wanted a child of my own—I wanted
Betsy
. Somehow, I had to find a way to keep her in the U.S., to resolve the Greg and Farrah situation, and to prevail on my adoption application.

Beside me, Ava blew kisses into the phone to her daughter, then said good-bye to her mother.

She slipped her mobile back into her purse. “I miss her. Home in two weeks, though.”

“I can’t imagine. Time will go quickly, though.”

I turned on the radio and scanned for stations. Christian pop. Talk radio. 70s rock. Mexican pop. Country. Nothing grabbed me. I switched it back off and we rode in silence. As I drove, I thought ahead to our evening at the ranch.

I said, “Hey, I imagine Jack and I will do a gift exchange with Mickey and Laura and the kids after dinner, since we didn’t get to that last night.”

Ava readjusted her headband in the mirror. “Sound fun.”

“You coming back to Amarillo with us in the morning, or heading on to Albuquerque?”

“Oh, I heading on.”

I shot her a look and she avoided eye contact. “Heading on to Albuquerque?”

“Soon. In time for my gig.”

“Do you need a ride anywhere?”

“Nope.” I caught a smile teasing at the corner of her mouth. I had a pretty good idea how she would be getting to Albuquerque, but if she wanted to be cagey, I could play along.

I stopped for gas in Tularosa. While it pumped, I got back in the Suburban with Ava to stay warm and to call Laura about plans for the evening. I pressed Laura’s name in my contacts and my speaker phone connected.

“Hello?” Mickey’s deep voice answered instead of his wife’s.

“Hi, Mickey. It’s Emily. We’re all on our way back to the ranch, and, boy, do we have a lot to tell you about today. But first I wanted to see if we could bring gifts over to you guys and the kids tonight.”

I heard Laura’s voice in the background. It was high-pitched, and she sounded upset. Mickey spoke, but he’d muffled the phone. I caught “It’s Emily.” Then, louder, unmuffled, he said, “We let the kids go out riding by themselves for the first time this afternoon, and they were supposed to be back by now. We’re getting worried. You haven’t heard from them, have you?”

Dusk was falling outside, and my stomach started gnawing on itself. “I haven’t.”

“You don’t think they would have run off, do you?” Mickey’s voice sounded tight, stressed.

Would they? I knew they didn’t want to go back to Amarillo, but the time hadn’t come for that yet. “I don’t. They love it there. They love you guys. They feel safe.”

Anxiety started gnawing at my gut. If the kids hadn’t run off, where were they? Sure, they could just be running late, like normal kids. Or a horse could have gone lame. Or one of them was sick or hurt. And there were worse things. Things I didn’t want to imagine. I shuddered.

I spoke fast. “Mickey, I need you to know something. Last night I got a call that someone thought I had the kids and reported it anonymously to CPS. I don’t want to overreact but—”

Ava gasped and put her hand over her mouth.

He finished my thought. “But we have to find them, now.”

“Exactly. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“And Jack?”

“Longer than that, I’m afraid, but he’s on his way. Collin, too.”

Mickey grunted. “I’ll start getting the horses ready.”

“Wouldn’t four-wheelers be faster?” I knew they had a platoon of them.

“A little, but they’re too noisy. We need to be able to hear if they call out, especially since it’s dark. They could be injured.”
Or worse,
I thought.

“We’ll meet you at the stables.”

My heart triple-timed as I called Jack.

***

Twenty minutes later, I’d dropped Ava at Jack’s and was assembling lights, energy bars, first-aid kits, and canteens of hot chocolate in saddlebags. Packing the bars made me realize it was dinnertime, and I hadn’t eaten. Jack and Collin probably hadn’t either. Nor would we. Laura and Mickey were saddling up four horses for our search party. They had saved Jarhead for last. The horse was amped up. He could probably sense our own tension.

Mickey threw the blanket and saddle onto Jarhead’s back, then said, “Laura’s gonna stand by in my office.”

Laura said, “You guys can stay in touch with me by walkie-talkie, and if the kids come back, I’ll call you off.”

I had noticed that they’d placed a walkie-talkie by each bag. “Why walkie-talkies? Why not our phones?”

Laura shifted from saddling horses to helping me with assembly. “Lot of dead zones up there.”

Bouncing lights on the stable walls announced the approach of a vehicle. Doors slammed and Jack and Collin came trotting in.

“We’re about ready,” Mickey said.

“What’s your plan?” Jack asked.

“We’ve saddled horses for each of us, and we put together supplies.” He pulled out a map of the ranch and tapped a circled area. “They took off in this direction. They like to go up by the cemetery. I was thinking we’d go in twos for safety—Emily with me, Collin with you, Jack, since you and I both know how to track—and that we’d take these two routes.” He traced lines equidistant from the middle of the circled area and its outer edges. One was highlighted in yellow, the other in green. “Emily and I will take the green route. I told the kids the first day that if they heard this call”—he demonstrated the ca-caw of a raven—“to come on back, we were looking for them.”

Jack nodded. “Like the parents used to use with us.”

“Yeah, it carries a lot better than shouting.”

“And just in case of bad guys, doesn’t give us away,” I said.

“Yes.” Mickey looked at Collin and me. “Is everybody dressed warm enough? I’ve got more gear in the tack room.”

“I’m set.” I’d already grabbed heavy gloves, a hat, and a scarf to go with my jacket, since most of my things were at Jack’s house. Luckily, I had on good cowboy boots that I’d re-waterproofed this winter, with jeans and a sweater.

“Me, too,” Collin said. “But I think it’s time to call for backup.”

Mickey stuffed his map inside his coat and zipped it up.

“I’ll call now,” Laura said, her face pale and pinched. She walked toward Mickey’s office, then ran back and threw her arms around Mickey and kissed him. She turned to all of us. “You guys be safe.”

“We will, babe,” Mickey said.

Laura disappeared into his office.

Jack walked over to me and touched my shoulder. I turned, and he caught my chin in one hand and kissed me.

“Be careful,” he said.

“You, too.”

He shook his head. “You’re reckless. Please.”

I reached for his gloved hand with mine and squeezed it. “I promise.”

I led Jarhead out of the stable and mounted up, along with the guys. Jarhead snorted puffs of steam as he trotted in place. All the horses seemed especially eager, actually. Mickey swung a leg over his big roan horse and allowed the animal to take off at the same time. Without another word between us, I squeezed Jarhead with my heels. He squealed with excitement and I held him to a frothing lope as we followed Mickey into the deepening twilight. Behind me and to our left, I heard the hooves of Collin’s and Jack’s horses as they peeled off toward their route.

Mickey led the way through the same open series of gates I’d ridden through with Jack and the kids last weekend. The moon was shining so bright that we didn’t turn on our tracking lights, not that we’d be able to track them yet anyway. The area we were traversing was too well and recently traveled by many others. Slowly we increased speed, but not enough to satisfy Jarhead, who nodded his head emphatically in rhythm to his lope.

I leaned forward and whispered to him. “It’s okay, boy. This isn’t a race.”

He shook his head, rattling the rings on the edges of the bit in his mouth.

Emotionally, horses and people often operate on the same wavelength. I thought of the way Jarhead and his pals had picked up on our stress back at the stable, and of how Thunder’s calm had soothed Betsy when we’d escaped from Johnson’s Ranch. Whenever Jib—my college barrel-racing horse—had sensed a race coming up, she’d become so high-strung I was afraid she’d injure herself. I’d learned that singing in her ear and rubbing her neck helped her settle down, sort of like how a snake charmer hypnotizes a cobra with pungi music.

So I tried it with Jarhead, patting his neck and singing “O Holy Night,” a little off-key like my mother, my voice cracking on the high notes. After only a few minutes, he had stopped his snorts and head bobs. His ears twitched as he vacillated between his urgent need to sprint and reluctant attention to my song. It distracted me, too, from thinking about why Greg and Farrah hadn’t come home.

I stopped singing and spoke aloud. “Maybe one of their horses got hurt.”

Jarhead nickered.

“I’m not talking about a permanent injury, here, and I know it’s not ideal, but it’s better than any of the alternatives.”

He snorted softly.

“Okay, how about they were lost but now they’ve found their way home, and we’ll see them any second?”

This time Jarhead blew softly out his nose. I patted him again and resumed singing.

We started up the incline into the treed foothills. The sky grew darker, and the snow less disturbed. I kept Jarhead tight on Mickey’s roan. I had only been up here once—to the cemetery with Jack, Greg, and Farrah—and in the dark I had no idea if we were still headed in that direction. We didn’t need me getting lost tonight, too. The trees and the wind absorbed the noises around us, and in the relative silence, the hoofbeats of the horses sounded like muted thunder. The air smelled clean, and when I breathed it in and licked my lips, I could taste the earthiness of melting snowflakes, even though I couldn’t see the snow falling. The sky looked crystal clear, in fact, and if it hadn’t been for the trees and darkness lit only by moonglow, I imagined I would have seen Amarillo in the distance. As it was, I only saw the snowy forest floor, the trunks of aspens and evergreens, and the rump of the horse in front of us.

Mickey slowed his horse and dismounted as it stopped. He held the reins in one hand and switched on his handheld spotlight in the other, pointing it at the ground. He swept his beam across the snowy forest floor, studying the area, then knelt and touched the compressed snow in the imprint of several hooves and brushed powder out of another. It made my heart ache for my father, the one I used to know, the one who had taught me that a real scout gets close to the ground and puts his hands on the earth.

Mickey said, “Looks like two horses came this way today.” He pointed ahead of us, but to where I wasn’t sure.

I stared at the ground and saw only a mass of hoofprints, despite my dad’s coaching. I’d have to take Mickey’s word for it. He trained the light on the ground around us in expanding sweeps. He stopped and reswept an area. I clucked to Jarhead. He followed Mickey and his horse, calmly walking instead of bouncing like a pogo stick.

“Four-wheeler.” Mickey turned to me. “Also today.”

The four-wheeler tracks were obvious, even to me. “Is that good or bad?”

“I’m not sure. Could have been one of the hands. Nobody else has any business up here. The tracks run parallel to the horses. We’ll follow the horses and keep an eye on the four-wheeler. I’ve got enough light without the spot, so I’m going to turn it off for now.”

“Okay.”

He switched off his light and spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Found two sets of horse tracks and one set of four-wheeler tracks, all recent. We’re following them.”

Our handsets crackled and I heard Jack’s voice. “We’ve got nothing. Assume you want us to stick to the plan?”

“Roger.”

Laura’s voice cracked. “Please find them, Mickey.”

He whispered something in a language I recognized as Apache from my visits to this area, although I didn’t know a word of it, then stuffed the walkie-talkie back into a holster on his saddle. He mounted, leaning back in his saddle, and ca-cawed long and loud. Jarhead snorted. Even I was startled at how realistic Mickey sounded. Wild. Dangerous.

We waited and I listened with every bone in my body but heard no answering ca-caw.