Nowhere to Hide (11 page)

All that really mattered was getting away from the mobile home in the Escalade.

Unfortunately, the front end was pointed at the mobile home. King would have to back up and do a half turn to head down the gravel and back to the highway. And MJ was still ambling toward them, unaware of the decisions they were making inside the vehicle.

King knew he had to stay inside the vehicle. He scrambled from the middle row, squeezed between the front bucket seats, and tumbled into the driver's seat. He used the power button to lower the passenger-side window.

“MJ,” King said. “Blake's got a question for you. Jump inside.”

King said it as casually as he could, knowing that Evans was close enough behind to hear it.

MJ shrugged and kept ambling.

King gritted his teeth. He wanted to put the vehicle in reverse but worried that Evans would notice.

Finally, MJ swung inside.

As the door was shutting, King found reverse and gave it gas, half turning to look behind him as he drove.

“Hey!” MJ said.

“Got to go,” King said. “Hang on.”

He saw that Evans had begun to sprint. Not toward the vehicle, but to a point on the driveway ahead of them to cut them off.

And Evans won the race.

As King was putting it in drive, Evans reached the center of the road.

“Bulletproof windows,” Blake said from the middle row. “Already googled it. You're good to go.”

But Evans didn't draw his pistol. He simply crossed his arms and stood in the center of the gravel strip. Not enough room around him on either side to pass without hitting him.

King leaned into the horn and gunned it.

Evans responded with a sad smile.

King didn't make a calculated, intellectual decision. He went with his gut. The subconscious absorbs details and makes nearly instant decisions based on emotions. His nearly instant choice was based on Evans' sad smile and nonthreatening stance.

King swerved to take the vehicle off-road. The tires dropped into soft soil, and the undercarriage of the vehicle crashed onto the ridge of gravel at the side of the road. The vehicle wasn't going fast enough for its momentum to carry it off the ridge. Instead, the vehicle high-centered and lurched to a complete stop.

That's when Evans drew his pistol and walked toward them.

“We're bulletproof,” Blake said. “Lock the doors. I can send an email out for help.”

King hit the electric locks, making a click he was sure Evans could hear.

King cracked his window down.

“Stay where you are,” King shouted. “Blake's about to call 911.”

Evans advanced anyway, taking the last five steps to reach the vehicle. He reached out with his pistol and set it on the hood and then moved to the side, backing away from the vehicle.

“Don't know what's happening,” Evans said. “But the pistol is yours. I'm going to back far enough away so that one of you can jump outside and grab it from the hood. That good enough to keep you from calling 911 until we talk this over?”

“King,” MJ said. “Moore is headed this way too.”

The noise of the vehicle must have drawn him out of the mobile home. Moore's hands were free.

“Bill!” Evans shouted. “We've got a situation here. Set your weapon on the front steps and proceed unarmed.”

To King, Evans said, “Is that good enough to hold off on 911? You take my pistol, get back inside. Bill and I will stand here and have a discussion with you. We'll tell you the truth, and then you decide what to do.”

“MJ?” King said quietly. “Blake? You guys make the decision. I'll trust you either way.”

MJ said, “I'm a little late to this. I have no idea what's happening and why.”

“We'll catch you up on it right away,” Blake said. “Short of it, some emails make it look like Evans and Moore have been lying to us.”

“But he gave us his pistol,” MJ said. “Can it hurt to listen for a few minutes?”

“I hate guns,” Blake said.

“Me too,” King said. “I don't want it in the vehicle with us.”

“Let's listen,” MJ said.

“I agree.” This from Blake.

King spoke to Evans. “We don't want the pistol, so leave it on the hood. And we're willing to listen.”

“Thanks,” Evans said. “You may have just saved a girl's life.”

“Still listening,” King said.

“I have a private YouTube account,” Evans said. “I'll tell you how to sign in. There's a video you need to watch.”

CHAPTER 24

With Evans and Moore sitting on the front porch, King turned his attention to the laptop that was perched between the bucket seats, giving him a view from behind the steering wheel and allowing MJ and Blake to lean in to watch.

Evans had only one video uploaded on his private account.

The hotspot connection was only moderately strong, and King kept glancing over at the front porch as he waited for the video to load.

“We're pretty sure she's underground,” Moore called over from the porch as they waited for the video to come up. “That's why we're looking for tunnel entrances. And Murphy must have been here for a reason. To be close to her. That's our theory.”

“Who is ‘her'?” King asked.

As if on cue, a voice reached them from the screen. A female voice. Frightened.

“Hello? Hello?” the female voice said.

Looking into the screen, King saw a girl—high-school age—on a chair, wearing jeans and a loose Seattle Seahawks jersey. If she'd been a few years older, she could have been a cheerleader for the team. An off-screen light source shone directly on her face. Her hair was a messed-up blonde, and the light showed fresh tears on her face.

“Looks like a recording of a FaceTime conversation,” Blake said. “You can't do it directly in FaceTime, but there are plenty of apps that make it possible.”

“Hello?” she asked again. Her eyes widened in recognition as she leaned forward. “Paps?”

“Yes, it's me, Amanda. Are you hurt?”

King recognized the voice. Bill Moore. The cowboy-hat CIA supervisor who was pretending to be on security detail for the governor's office.

When the girl lifted her left hand to wipe some hair from her forehead, King saw that her wrist was in a manacle, and a chain from the manacle led off-camera. When her hand reached her forehead, the chain snapped tight.

King looked closer. The girl's ankles were bound with duct tape to the front legs of the chair.

“I'm not hurt, Paps. But he put me on this chair. There's an iPad in front of me on a stand. It's so good to see your face. I love you.”

“Amanda…” The recording of Bill Moore's voice was low and urgent. “I'd step in front of a train for you. I'm going to do whatever needs to be done to get you back.”

“He told me you have to follow his instructions,” she said. Desperation was in her voice. She lifted both hands and showed how the chains to manacles on both wrists restricted her movement. “There's a hose. He…”

She sobbed for a few moments and then regained the strength to speak.

“I'm in a tunnel. He turned the hose on and let it fill this chamber to my neck,” she said. “Then he drained the water. He says next time he'll let the chamber fill up to the top. That's why he let me take this call. To tell you that. And to tell you that he's tired of waiting for something from you. He says that starting right now, you only have seventy-two hours until he turns the water on again.”

“Amanda, I love—” Bill Moore's anguished voice didn't have a chance to complete the sentence. The video came to a jarring end, and the screen went black.

CHAPTER 25

“We misled you,” Moore said to King and Blake and MJ. He sighed. “No, we flat-out lied.”

King and MJ and Blake sat in the mobile home, away from the heat and inside the air-conditioned space. The blinds were closed, which blocked enough light for King to pretend that the interior wasn't as ratty as the exterior.

Unfortunately, the near darkness didn't disguise the smell of stale cigarettes and body odor. How could anyone have endured living in this trailer?

They sat on kitchen chairs they had pulled into the living room area. King's mercifully brief first view of the interior—from the sunlight through the door as they entered—had shown a brown couch splotched with stains that gave it a giraffe-skin appearance. The carpet was littered with broken potato chips. Everything was old and grimy except for a magnificent flat-screen television, and even that showed dozens of greasy fingerprints.

“We had no choice but to hide,” Evans said. “We can debate the morality of when to tell the truth and when to lie, but time is ticking on the seventy-two-hour deadline to save Moore's granddaughter.”

“Granddaughter?” MJ asked. “Granddaughter?”

“I'm her paps,” Moore said. “Her own father didn't return from the war in Afghanistan. I'm almost like her father. Delamarre knew I would do what it takes to get her back. She disappeared, and he got a message to me. Clear him of false terrorism charges, or she never returns.”

Evans jumped in. “We
did
have to do this off the books. Delamarre made it clear that if Moore brought anyone into this on an official level, he'd never see Amanda again.”

Moore nodded. “Only one person that I'd trust with my life in the organization. Evans. He lied about the governor's security detail, but he
did
tell the truth about our time together on a Navy SEAL team. I knew Evans would keep the operation entirely secret and whisper proof. He suggested bringing in you three to help us track Jack Murphy. Nobody would ever connect you to the CIA, and he said you could get the job done. Jack's the one we think is or was holding her.”

Moore straightened in his chair. “And you guys
are
good. How did you figure out this wasn't what it appeared? What tipped you to try to run just now?”

King pointed at Blake, who was holding the laptop and all the cell phones.

Blake pointed at King, who wanted to hold his nose. The smell in the mobile home was like roadkill that had been in the sun for days.

Blake said, “King thought a few things were odd about your stories and asked me to do some quick searching. I wouldn't have been suspicious otherwise.”

King said, “Blake hacked into Evans' department emails and—”

Moore's jaw went slack with surprise. “You hacked the CIA server?”

“Just Evans' account,” Blake said. “His password wasn't that strong.”

“Told you they were good,” Evans said to Moore.

“We learned Don Mundie is a deputy inspector general. We found emails that you were both supposed to meet with him. And that when you didn't meet, he suspended Evans without pay and would file criminal charges.”

“What I don't understand,” Evans said, “is how he knew about you three. I thought I had covered all traces.”

“Maybe the slush fund,” Moore said. “Maybe the drone.”

Evans rubbed his face and looked at King. “You didn't run me down in the middle of the road. Why not, after reading those emails?”

“You didn't bring up a weapon to stop me. I went on a hunch. If Mundie was right about you, first thing you would have done, I suppose, is pull out your pistol. The windows are bulletproof, but you couldn't know we knew that. From your point of view, a pistol should have been enough to make me slam on the brakes.”

“It
is
from the governor's vehicle pool,” Moore said. “I called in a huge favor on short notice when Evans told me to find a way to meet you guys on the highway.”

“Just so I understand…” MJ said. “Moore, you are Evans' supervisor. Delamarre is trying to force you to clear him of false terrorism charges, so he arranged for your granddaughter Amanda to be kidnapped. You brought Evans in on this to find Murphy, who you think took her. Evans is using us off the books to help him. Mundie somehow found out about it. Now Mundie wants you and us. Is that about it?”

Moore nodded.

“How much time left on the deadline?” MJ asked.

“The FaceTime conversation took place about a day ago. As proof for me that she was still alive. We've already chewed up twenty-four hours.”

“Forty-eight hours left then,” MJ repeated. “We found Murphy, and they pulled him out of here without searching for Amanda because they have no idea that Amanda's been kidnapped and that she's the reason you've gone rogue, and if that leaks out, Delamarre promises to make sure you never see her again.”

Moore nodded again.

“Then why are we sitting around?” MJ asked. “She could be in a tunnel anywhere within a hundred yards from here. I know you and Evans were taking this place apart to find anything that points to where she is. First thing we need to do is save her life, and once we do, you should be able to clear things with Mundie. Right? So Blake and King and I will head back out with the metal detectors.”