Elly's Ghost (9 page)

“What happened?”
Jay asked.

Elly shoulders dropped.
“We had a fight. It happened at our dad’s fiftieth birthday party. Nick had
been drinking for a while by the time we got around to talking. I’d suspected
that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what exactly. At first he didn’t
want to talk about it, but when I pressed the issue, he blew up.

“It was awful.
He just kept shouting louder and louder, until the whole room was staring at
us. He’s an auto mechanic, and sometimes his customers ask him about me. He
said his friends want him to pay for everything and that he’s even considered
changing his last name. He brought up the fact that every one of his friends
and coworkers had seen the pictures of me on the Internet, the ones I told you
about. He told me I ruined his life.” Elly tossed the twig to her right.

Jay put his hand
on Elly’s shoulder. “Your brother sounds like someone who is very prideful, and
he’s going to have to grow up and accept you for who you are.”

Elly covered her
eyes. In the past few years everything had moved so fast. She thought of her
brother’s anger, her pills, the deterioration of her voice, how stressed out
Laura was making everyone, and the men who’d just tried to kidnap her. Ever
since her career as a singer had taken off, Elly had wondered many times:
Who
am I?
The empty feeling had grown, and now she was forced to admit she
didn’t know anymore. And now Kevin was dead, and she partially blamed herself
for it. It was like she was in a huge endless forest without a guide.

“Hey, look at
me,” he said.

Elly’s eyes met
his, and she realized she
was
in a huge endless forest, except she had a
guide.

“Sometimes,” Jay
said, “people don’t realize what they have until it’s taken away.”

* * *

One of Dexter
Quast’s men raised his arm as he knelt in the clearing by the stream. The men
had been following what footprints they could find, at Michael Belgrade’s
orders, and this seemed like a logical spot for the girl and her companion to
have spent the night. One of them had found half of a peanut. And a nearby
patch of grass seemed matted down compared to the grass around it.

Dexter pulled out
his radio. “This is posse one. Come in, base.”

After a moment,
he repeated himself.

“This is base.”

“We have the
location of stop number two.” Dexter read the coordinates.

“Excellent. Keep
moving. This is base out.”

“Roger that.
Posse one out.”

Dexter put the
radio away.

“If this is
where they were this morning,” one of the other men said, as he checked his
watch, “and say they left at sunrise, we’re about three hours behind.”

Dexter nodded. “Let’s
move out.”

* * *

The morning dew
on the tall grasses had soaked Elly’s jeans all the way up to her thighs. Jay
heard her shoes squish like wet sponges with every step.

“You okay?” he
asked her.

“Yeah. I hate having
wet shoes,” Elly said.

Jay’s hiking
boots did their job and kept his feet dry. Elly’s short-sleeve shirt had once
been white, but now it was gray and showed how much she was sweating. By midday
it was hot, the dew was gone, and Elly’s pants dried out quickly.

Elly slipped on
a wet rock and grabbed a pine branch to try to catch herself. Her knee landed
on a rock. “Ow!”

“Are you all
right?” Jay asked.

“I’m fine.” Elly
picked the pine needles out of her hand. “Can we take a break? My feet are
killing me.” She swatted at several insects buzzing around her.

“All right, but
it has to be short.” Jay set his backpack down, and they both drank some water.

Jay noticed Elly
had gotten somewhat skilled at working around her handcuffs to open her bottle
of pills. Jay had re-taped her wrists before they broke camp and noticed they
were slightly bruised.

Jay watched Elly
down two pills, and then he bent down, pretending to tie his boot as he scooped
a small rock into his hand. “So, what are the pills for?”

“They’re for my
headaches.”

“I didn’t know
you needed a prescription for headache medicine.”

“Mine are really
bad sometimes.”

“May I see
them?” Jay held out his empty hand. He noted her reluctance to give them to
him. “I don’t want any. I just want to see them.”

“Why?”

“If you won’t
let me see, then I have to assume there’s a reason. Am I right?”

“What are you
saying?”

“You’ve got a
problem.”

“I don’t do drugs!”

“Okay, then.”
Jay held out his hand again. Elly stood up and threw the bottle at him.

Jay ignored the
force behind the throw and calmly read the label. “Ah, Vicodin. Those really
must be strong headaches. How long have you been taking these?”

“Just a little
while,” Elly said and then glared at him. “Why? What difference does that
make?”

“It says here to
take one to two tablets every six hours, as needed. You know, it’s funny,
because I’ve watched you take several just this morning, and I’m sure I saw you
take that bottle out of your pocket at least ten times yesterday.”

Elly thrust her
shoulders back as she spoke. “I thought you were a Marine, not a doctor.”

“And whose name
is this on the label? It certainly isn’t yours.”

“All right, give
it back.” Elly extended her arm.

“So, you’ve been
taking them a little while, huh? You mean six months? A year?”

“I’m not
addicted to them!” she shouted.

“Then you can
stop anytime?”

“That’s right!”

“If you say so,
then you’re stopping right now.” Jay turned his back to her, switched the bottle
with the rock he had picked up earlier, and threw the rock deep into the forest
past the stream.

“No!” Elly ran
to see where he’d thrown it, but it was gone. Jay pocketed the bottle. Elly
spun around and shoved Jay, moving him back a few steps.

“I can’t believe
you did that! You jerk! How am I …” Elly bent over and put her hands on her
knees, looking like someone had knocked the wind out of her.

“I thought you
said you didn’t need them,” Jay said.

“You don’t know
what it’s like!” she said, in tears. “You don’t know what it’s like being on
tour. I’m pulled in so many different directions, I don’t even know where I am
half the time.”

“So someone who
just spent the last two years in a war couldn’t possibly know anything about
stress? Someone who, let’s say, watched some of his friends die. That person
wouldn’t know anything about what you might be going through?”

Elly turned
away, sat down, and buried her face in her hands.

Jay walked to
the stream, giving them both a little distance. He wondered if he’d just made
things worse. Getting Elly out of here alive was his main concern, and he hoped
she’d continue to trust him after what he just did. Elly put up with him
pushing her to walk when he knew she’d rather stop, yet he wanted her to be
able to see what he saw, an addict. Until she saw herself as one, she’d never
stop taking those pills. A few minutes later, he heard her get up and walk over
to him.

“I can’t
remember ever having shoved anyone like that,” Elly said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry
about it.” Jay pulled the bottle out of his pocket and examined it. He threw it
to her, and she caught it. “I’ll get you out of here. Then you need to get
yourself some help. It looks like you have about six pills left. Make them your
last.”

* * *

Jay walked behind
Elly. Every so often he glanced over his shoulder. Ever since the helicopter
flew over he was convinced they were being followed. His ears amplified
everything. The distant machine gun was just the sound of a woodpecker. The
sound of an approaching enemy was just a squirrel running in the underbrush.

Throughout the
day he’d warned Elly they needed to remain quiet, especially today. But after a
few minutes of silence, Elly would start talking again. He hadn’t seen her
taking any pills since she shoved him, so he wondered if she was already
crashing.

“My parents and
I get along great,” Elly said. “They helped me buy a small cabin in northern Michigan. It’s on this cool little secluded lake and is absolutely beautiful. This nice
elderly couple lives next to me, but otherwise the nearest house is a quarter
of a mile away. My aunt’s brother-in-law put it in his name, so no one would
know it was mine.”

Jay grabbed her
arm and swung her around. “Elly, you need to start equating being kidnapped with
dying. If we get caught, they will kill me and take you. And do you know how
many people are ever seen again after they’ve been kidnapped?”

“No,” she said,
softly.

“Not many, so
please be quiet.”

“Sorry.”

The two walked
in silence for another twenty minutes. Jay led the way again, through the
seemingly never-ending sea of pine trees mixed with oaks and elms. Years of
rough mountain storms had strewn the forest floor with large branches and
massive trunks along any path they chose. They continued stooping under and
crawling over rough logs, and when they weren’t doing that they were dodging
prickly bushes.

A pinecone rolled
past Jay’s feet. He glanced back in time to see Elly kick another one at him.
Jay tried to ignore her childish reaction to his scolding. She needed to hear
it. He kept walking, and one hit him in the calf. That did it. Jay bent down
and picked up two pinecones and threw them up into the air behind him.

“Hey,” Elly
murmured.

He looked back
at her with a smirk, and Elly stuck out her tongue at him. They both smiled at
each other.

Jay reached the
top of a small hill and spotted someone moving in the distance. He turned and
saw Elly searching for another pinecone. He wrapped one arm around her in a
swift tackle, taking her off her feet, and they tumbled toward a downed elm
tree. Jay pulled her down into a low spot under the elm, where they were
further protected by the shadow of a large pine tree.

Elly moaned in
pain, and Jay covered her mouth. She fought her handcuffs as she arched her
back and rolled on her side, moving off the end of a branch that dug into her
back.

Jay let go of
Elly’s mouth and held up his finger, telling her to be quiet. He maneuvered his
rifle under the pine tree and aimed it in the direction they’d been walking.

* * *

All the pain and
discomfort Elly was feeling vanished when a man appeared, coming from the
direction Jay and Elly had been heading. He carried a shotgun, pointed down, in
his beefy paws. The man sweated at the armpits and across the V of his chest
and seemed to be struggling to catch his breath, but his eyes, which constantly
swept the area, were strong and alert.

Elly’s heart pounded,
and she held her breath as the man’s eyes surveyed the fallen elm. For the
first time, Elly became fully aware of Jay’s worry about being found. She
realized that if the man spotted them, someone—Jay, the man, or both—would
shoot.

Elly watched Jay
rest his rifle barrel on a branch just above her chest. Then she spotted a
second man, who followed a path parallel to the first man, one that would take
him on the other side of their hiding place. Every detail about him, from the
shotgun he was carrying to his worn face and his dirty flannel shirt, became
clear. His eyes scanned the downed elm tree, and he stopped moving.

Elly wondered if
this was the man who shot Kevin, and she fought back the bite of acid in her
throat. The man seemed to lock eyes with her, but then he continued to look
past her and over at the man next to him.

The two men
exchanged a glance before they both moved on to the next patch of forest. The
barrel of Jay’s rifle followed one of them the entire time while he glanced at
the other. Soon both men were gone.

“Let’s go,” Jay
whispered. He helped Elly up, and they ran over the next hill.

* * *

“It was right
over here.” Henry Dunquist rested his paddle on his lap and pointed to the
middle of the small lake. The canoe glided along as his voice echoed off the
shore.

“I’m starting to
smell it,” game warden Doug Peterson said at the hint of petroleum and paddled from
the back of the canoe a few more times. The lack of any wind had turned the
lake into glass, broken only by the ripple of the canoe’s wake and, now, large,
rainbow-colored rings on the surface of the water.

“Nobody would
bother to put a motorboat on this small of a lake,” Dunquist said, as he
motioned toward the densely wooded shoreline. “How would they even get it here?
Shoot, the nearest public road is miles away.”

“Well,” Peterson
said, “wouldn’t be the first time someone threw a gas can in a lake.”

“What idiot
would do that?”

The distant
rumble of thunder caused both men to look off to the north.

“Unfortunately,
the world’s full of complete idiots.” Peterson shook his head. “Who knows what
it could be, but we need to check this out. Hell, the
USS Arizona
resting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor is still leaking fuel. I don’t want
whatever is here leaking for sixty-some years.”

* * *

At a thick patch
of bushes, the first good cover he’d seen in a while, Jay dropped to the ground
and aimed his rifle back the way they’d come. Elly flopped down next to him.

“How did they
find us?” Elly spoke between deep breaths.

“I was stupid.”
Satisfied that no one was immediately behind them, Jay pulled out his GPS
device and brought up a map showing all the markers he had made as they walked:
where they left the floatplane, where they spent their first night and then
their second night, all forming a straight line to where they had just been
intercepted.