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Authors: Meg Gardiner

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Romance, #Thriller

The Nightmare Thief (36 page)

BOOK: The Nightmare Thief
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Jo tapped the map with an icy finger. “Here’s the clearing, where we parked yesterday, and where the Hummer stopped.”
She traced the footpath she and Gabe had hiked to the mine. It cut back and forth, up one ridge and down the other side, up again and down a second ridge—a journey of switchbacks and steep changes in elevation.
“We crossed the second ridge, zigzagged to the bottom, crossed the gully, turned east”—parallel to the logging road—“and hiked up the slope to the mine. It was at least three miles. But look here.”
The logging road followed the contours of the river. From the clearing, it kept climbing. But Jo remembered the long, severe turn the limo had taken when they were barreling along before the crash. She remembered the light angling across the Hummer as they swung around hairpin curves and climbed ever higher.
She traced the road on the map. “It crossed the river, then crossed back again—two bridges. And a couple of miles after we left the clearing, the road made a broad, one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. It looped in a semicircle and kept climbing.”
She traced the line on the map. Gabe saw what she was talking about.
“The road climbed over both ridges and doubled back,” he said.
“We’re now on the other side of the mine.” She stood and pointed north. “It’s directly that way. If we took the road it would be a sixor seven-mile drive. But if we cut straight across the hills, it’s less than a mile. Maybe much less.”
They had a shortcut.
She put a hand on Peyton’s arm. “You sure you’ll be okay by yourself, staying out of sight?”
Peyton nodded, quick and tight. Jo said, “All right.”
She stabbed the map. “These two ridgelines here. That’s where those power pylons are. And there’s a bridge that links them.”
Gabe looked at her. “Say what you’re thinking.”
“If we shortcut to the mine and get the kids, we can then use the catwalk to cross the ravine and keep going down to the clearing where I parked yesterday. The clearing’s below the bridge that’s out. That means the bad guys can’t reach it via car. But the authorities can.”
He looked like he was trying not to say the obvious. So she said it.
“I know it’s a risk. I’ll take it. I don’t think these kids have time for anything else.” She paused. “Neither do we.”
He examined the map. His pulse was beating in his temple.
“We can do it,” she said.
Gabe took out his knife. “Let’s go get them.”
52
T
he Gulfstream 5 streaked over the runway threshold and touched down, wheels squealing. In the pre-dawn light of the high desert, the sky in the east was veined crimson. Peter Reiniger held on while the thrust reversers roared and the jet slowed. The air looked cold and clear. The lights of Reno were pallid and shimmering.
He unbuckled his seat belt and headed to the cockpit. Without knocking he opened the door.
“Park it. Refuel. Stay at the controls,” he said.
Both pilots frowned, but the captain said, “Yes, Mr. Reiniger.”
He closed the door and, as the jet taxied, phoned the number his daughter’s abductors had given him.
After a series of clicks and buzzes and delays—which told him the number was being forwarded through a series of exchanges to make it impossible to trace—it rang. A nasal double tone—
ringring—
like a European phone’s.
The voice answered, disguised by the voice modulator, hobgobliny. “Yes?”
“I’m on the ground at Reno.”
“And the money?”
“After I speak to Autumn.”
A beat. “You speak to Autumn when you send me evidence the transfer can be accomplished at the click of a button.”
Reiniger’s stomach tightened. The plane juddered over dips in the taxiway. “Nothing moves until I have proof of life.”
“Phone again when you’ve carried out my instructions. Then we’ll discuss speaking to your daughter.”
The call cut off.
Shaking, so enraged and sick that he could barely focus on the keypad, Reiniger sat in one of the plush seats and phoned New York.
 
 
Sabine shook her head. “What a bastard. ‘Proof of life.’ Who uses that phrase about his own child?”
Haugen put away the satellite phone. “Mr. Reiniger is one of a kind.”
His acid reflux burned. Proof of life was the nut of the matter. He couldn’t make Reiniger move the funds until Autumn cried to Daddy over the walkie-talkie. There was simply no way. Reiniger was too much of a hard case.
He and Sabine pulled on gloves and their final layers of clothing. He took a swig of lukewarm coffee from the thermos. Then he got the walkie-talkie.
He clicked the Transmit button, twice.
A moment later Von clicked back.
Understood.
He was in position, ready to close on Ratner when they flushed him from hiding.
Sabine checked her SIG Sauer. The weapon shone dully in the dawn. She shoved it beneath her waistband in the small of her back.
“How do you plan to get to the Reno airport?” she said.
“Really? You don’t know?”
“Even if the bridge were not out, the swarm of cops looking for the deputy would stop us.”
He smiled. “Know how far it is to Reno as the crow flies?”
“At least sixty miles. What are you planning?”
“An airlift. We just have to time it right.” He pulled a backpack across his shoulders. “Let’s go.”
 
 
The sky was a polished blue, the mountains charcoal with shadow and deeply silent. Jo and Gabe eased their way through the trees, cold in the morning twilight, inching their way toward the top of the ridge above the abandoned gold mine. They had left Peyton well concealed amid a field of boulders, clenching one of the carved spears.
They dropped to their hands and knees and crept forward. Cautiously they peered over the lip of the hill at the ravine below.
It was rock strewn and glistening with dew. The night’s manic rains had torn new channels in the hillside, claw marks where frantic water had scored the slope.
The entrance of the mine was about a hundred meters below them. Gabe lowered his head. So did Jo.
“Getting a direct vantage point on the entrance will be impossible,” he murmured.
“We need to find out where Ratner is.”
He nodded at the walkie-talkie. “Keep the volume low. If they’re close, we don’t want them to hear us overhearing them.” He looked around. “Hopefully we’re high enough on this ridge that we’ll have a line of sight and can get radio reception without the hills blocking it.”
They lay flat and eyed the scene below them. A bird chirped. In the chill morning, the sky in the east brightened to gold, etching the crest of the mountains.
They had come at the mine from behind, opposite the way they had approached the day before. Jo hoped that Ratner and Haugen—and his gang—would be approaching the entrance from the front, up the bottom of the ravine, and would not have the situational awareness to think about the high ground behind it.
The ground was cold and damp. The chill seeped through Jo’s clothes into her already-cold body. She crept next to Gabe. He pulled her against his side and rested his arm across her back. Jo let something unwind inside her, an overloaded spring. Just for a moment, this was enough. Reassurance, sustenance, every right kind of warmth.
The walkie-talkie scratched. Two clicks. Then another.
Gabe swept the mountainside with his gaze. “They’re getting into position.” Nothing moved. Nothing rustled. No piece of metal or glass reflected light.
“They could still be a mile away,” Jo said.
Gabe ducked.
Outside the mine, Ratner appeared, leading the horse.
He had removed its saddle and saddle blanket and was brushing its back and flanks with the flat of his hand gently. He propped the shotgun against the exterior wall of the mine entrance.
His shirt was off. Despite the chill, he was bare chested. His arms were covered with tattoos. Even from this distance, Jo could see their outline. Snakes.
A coiled rope hung from his shoulder. He turned, stroking the horse’s neck, revealing his back. The pockets of his sagging jeans bore a walkie-talkie and a handgun. A tattoo Jo recognized as signature state prison technique, in sickly blue ink, covered his back: an iron cross from which hung a noose.
Gabe held motionless. Jo didn’t want to breathe. They were under the trees, in a shadowed nook, but she didn’t want to betray their presence.
“Gotta do something soon if we’re going to do it,” Gabe whispered. “Once Haugen and his gang get here, it’ll be too late.”
How?
Jo thought. Ratner had a semiautomatic pistol, a twelve-gauge shotgun, and apparently the snake-action power of Hangman Christ. She and Gabe had a knife and a sharpened stick.
Then she grasped it. “He’s not going to let Haugen come here. He’s outgunned against Haugen and his gang. And he won’t want them to know where the kids are stashed.”
Below, Ratner stroked the horse’s soft muzzle. From his pocket he took a granola bar. Unwrapping it, he fed it to the horse. He couldn’t have looked more tender and content.
Gabe said, “He has to have the kids immobilized inside the mine. And not just because of injury and fear. He’s too casual. He has them constrained physically.”
They looked at each other. Jo said, “Which means he’ll feel free to leave them here while he goes to meet Haugen.”
“
If
he meets Haugen. He must want money. But Haugen doesn’t have cash. Nobody’s been up here delivering a ransom.”
“He’ll have to arrange getting paid. Getting cash or getting funds transferred into his account.”
“Cash. If you were Ratner, would you trust Haugen to transfer a bunch of money sight unseen—when you’re up a creek without any way to verify it? Besides, he’s a greenback kind of guy.”
“Haugen will demand a meeting. He won’t take phone calls or even photos as proof that Autumn’s alive. Ratner will take proof of life. But he’ll leave the kids in the mine.”
“If Ratner agrees to a meeting, he’ll have to leave them. Anything else is suicide for him, literally.”
They really couldn’t know. They had to hope.
Ratner hitched up his jeans.
“We won’t know how much time we’ll have before he comes back,” she said. “And we won’t know whether Haugen’s going to play straight, or whether he has somebody lurking out there, trying to track down Ratner’s hiding spot.”
“You can bet he does.” Gabe locked eyes with her again. “Yes or no?”
“Yes. We’ll just have to be quick.”
Heart thudding, she rested her chin on the ground and kept Ratner in view.
 
 
Exhaustion swamped Jo like a wave, and drowsiness hummed in her ears. Just for a moment she shut her eyes. Just for a blissful instant.
The walkie-talkie bleated. She raised her head, powerfully and painfully alert.
“Ratner, come in,” Haugen said.
Outside the mine, Ratner pulled the walkie-talkie from his back pocket. Jo and Gabe saw him put the device to his face and heard his singsong voice on the radio.
“Beautiful morning, ain’t it? Shall we dance?”
“We meet. You bring Autumn, we arrange the division of funds.”
“Nuh-uh. We meet, you give me something that
secures
your promise to pay me, and I’ll bring you … a lock of the little princess’s hair.”
Long pause. “At the bottom of the ravine.”
“On my way.”
“I’ll see you there.”
“You’ll see me there,
what
?” Ratner said.
The pause on Haugen’s end seemed to virtually steam the walkie-talkies. “I’ll see you there,
partner.
”
Laughing, Ratner clicked off. He pulled on a shirt and picked up the shotgun. He strode into the mine.
Jo and Gabe held their breath. A minute later Ratner came back out, tucking something into his pocket. He grabbed the horse’s reins and a handful of its mane, and swung up onto its back. He turned it and, kicking its sides, headed down the vale of the ravine.
Jo and Gabe waited until he was out of sight. They stood and ran down the hill toward the mine.
53
G
abe paused at the entrance to the mine. His buck knife was in his hand, low, the blade smooth in the rising light. He pressed himself against the rocky face of the hill and peered into the gloom inside.
He put a finger to his lips. Signaled for Jo to guard the entrance.
He ducked inside. Jo’s pulse ticked like a watch about to blow its springs. A cold shaft of air funneled past her, drawn inside. She heard Gabe’s feet scuff on the dirt as he edged back into the darkness. She watched the hills and shadowed depths of the ravine. The morning sky was calm, but even so, the trees wafted back and forth, squirrels jumping, birds taking flight. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t spit.
Inside, Gabe turned on the flashlight. She heard muffled crying. A girl, shouting from behind a gag.
“Jo, quick,” Gabe said.
She ran inside. Gabe was around the bend, planted in the center of the tunnel, one hand out warning her to stop. His flashlight illuminated the exposed crossbeam in the crumbling ceiling of the tunnel.
Lark was strung up by her hands, swinging from it. Shocked, Jo said, “Oh God.”
Lark’s eyes glittered. She was gagged with a strip of fabric. Her arms stretched overhead. She looked to be in incredible pain. Behind her on the dirt, Noah slumped against the tunnel wall. His hands were bound and tied to his feet. Jo ran toward him.
From behind the gag Lark screamed, shaking her head and kicking frantically.
Gabe grabbed her. “It’s not safe. Look.”
Beneath Lark, a tarp had been laid across a hole in the floor of the mine and covered with a layer of dirt. Gabe pulled it aside. Lark wasn’t hanging two inches off the dirt. She was hanging above a pit.
BOOK: The Nightmare Thief
6.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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