Wrong Number (29 page)

T
WENTY-SIX

M
ORE SHOTS PUNCTUATED THE
mountain stillness as Aubree ran up the dusty road. Her breath came in short gasps. Glancing behind her, she could see Wyatt by the side of the pickup. He crouched behind his tire, and another shot rang out. Forcing her legs to go faster, she pushed the redial button on the cell phone and kept running.

Adrenaline fired through her veins, and she scrambled up the slope toward the face of the rocky cave. The cell phone still didn’t have service, but she kept pushing redial anyway. Just before she reached the opening of the cave, the screen showed one bar.

“Please, please be enough,” she said and took in another ragged breath. She pushed the send button once more and watched the cell phone’s screen flicker. The phone said it was calling, but she couldn’t hear any rings. Aubree stood still and lifted the phone above her head, but it didn’t seem to change the reception. As she brought it back down to her ear, she heard a voice: “911, is this an emergency?”

“Yes!” Aubree screamed, “Come to the Paris Springs Campground, to the ice caves. They have guns—they’re shooting at us.”

“Are you injured?”

Aubree took a breath and looked at herself—there was blood on her shirt, but maybe it was from the cut on Wyatt’s arm. “I don’t know.”

“How many people are injured?”

“Wyatt was bleeding from a cut on his arm . . . hello?” Aubree looked at the phone and saw that the call had been dropped. She wondered if the dispatcher had collected enough information to find them.

She hit redial again, but then she heard another gunshot. Her heart felt like it was lodged in her throat, and she looked around wildly. There was no one in sight. Wyatt had told her to hide in the ice cave, but what if he was hurt? She looked around once more and then stepped into the cool darkness of the cave.

Dripping water echoed off the walls, and she stepped wide to miss a large puddle of water. The cave looked much the same as before, but she shivered as her breath hovered in frosty clouds. She stared at the narrow opening to the hidden cavern, and her stomach did a flip-flop.

Crouching down to peer into the depths made her abdomen clench even tighter. It was dark, and Aubree only had the light from Wyatt’s cell phone. She hesitated for a minute and tried to decide what to do. Maybe she could climb higher on the mountain and get another call through.

She sat back on her heels and looked at the opening. Her ears pricked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. She scrambled into the opening on her hands and knees, scraping her back on the low-hanging rocks. The frozen ground bit at her palms as she shimmied inside the cavern. Pulling her legs in tight beside her, she stopped to listen. She felt disoriented in the inky blackness of the cavern, and she strained to see the opening she had just slid through. A noise like shattering glass echoed through the chamber, and Aubree knew someone else was in the cave. Whoever it was had stepped on the frozen shards of ice littering the walkway.

She extended her hand above her head to gauge how much room she had to move. There was only a six-inch space before she made contact with another piece of solid stone. Aubree tried to remember what the cavern had looked like when Wyatt pointed his flashlight inside—it was narrow for a few feet, and then it gradually opened up to a small chamber.

Straining to hear any sound, she moved across the rock floor. Every scrape was amplified, and she wondered if she should stay still. There was definitely someone walking through the cave, but if it were Wyatt, he would have called out for her by now. This thought made her pulse race again, and she decided to keep moving away from the opening.

“Aubree Stewart, are you in here? The paramedics are on their way to help your friend. He said you might be in here,” a man’s voice called through the cave.

Aubree tensed and held her breath. Tears stung her eyes as raw fear overcame her. Now she was certain someone had entered the cave, but she also knew he wasn’t here to help her.

“Are you hurt?” the voice called out again.

She didn’t fall for his trick for even half a second. Memories from a year ago assaulted her, and she felt dizzy with fear.

“I think your friend is hurt pretty bad. He was calling for you.”

Aubree thought about the sound of his voice, mentally comparing it to the voice she heard on TV. Governor Ferrin sounded slightly different, perhaps he spoke with a bit of a Midwestern drawl, and this man’s speech was clipped.

The deadpan voice continued, “It’s okay to come on out. I was out hiking and saw the action and said I’d help.”

Aubree listened to him walking through the cave. He had probably made a full search and was surveying for exits.

“Well, I guess if you’re not going to come out. I’ll have to find you.”

As if she’d been cattle-prodded, Aubree scrambled farther into the cavern away from the menacing voice. She moved stealthily, marking every sound and listening for his movement.

“Aubree Stewart, I saw you come in here. It’s dark, but I’ll find you eventually.” The voice rang through the cave. “You’ve messed up my plans Mrs. Stewart—oh, I guess its Ms. now isn’t it? Sorry about that.” He laughed, and Aubree’s muscles froze at the sound. She braced herself as he continued speaking.

“Your friend is out of commission, so you may as well come out now. I mean that in the permanent sense—he’s taken a leave of absence.” The gruff cackle echoed off the walls of the cavern and grated against Aubree’s ears.

She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. He was lying—he had to be. She wouldn’t believe Wyatt was dead—that this horrible monster had murdered another man she loved. She sucked in a breath, realizing he would kill her too.

As if he had heard her thoughts, he continued, “I don’t want to kill you, Aubree. I just need to talk to you.” His voice seemed to move all over the cave. “That cute little baby of yours is probably missing her mommy, don’t you think? Would you like to see her?”

Aubree’s teeth pressed into her lip until it stung, and then she took a shallow breath. He didn’t know where Scarlett was. There was no way. He
was bluffing. She noticed he hadn’t said Wyatt’s name and must not know it, or he would’ve used it to coax her out of the cave. If he didn’t know Wyatt’s name, then he didn’t know Scarlett was staying with the Ericksons.

She continued to crawl as he spoke until she reached the far wall of the cavern. A sliver of light came from a crevice above her and she willed her eyes to see through the thick darkness, but she could barely make out a rock a few feet in front of her.

“You’re probably wondering how we found you.” He chuckled, and his voice sounded a bit closer. “Cell phones—that’s how this whole mess got started, and that’s how it’s gonna end.”

She wrapped her arms around her legs and pressed her face to her knees to keep from shivering in the icy darkness of the hidden cavern.

“You must have some kind of a lucky charm, because you weren’t supposed to make it this long.”

She heard him step around a pile of rocks and a few pebbles scattered down the trail beside the hidden cavern. Holding her breath, she shivered and prayed he wouldn’t find her.

His voice rose a notch. “You thought you were pretty smart there using someone else’s cell phone to call your mom, but you messed up. We picked up a general location on your cell phone signal when you got in touch with her. It’s a device I had embedded in her home. See, the Feds were looking for a human leak, not an electronic one. Smart system, but I guess you know that now.”

Aubree flinched and then lifted her head from her knees to listen better. He had stopped moving, and his voice carried through the cavern.

“I thought the FBI had you under their thumb, but you were holding out on them weren’t you? How long did it take you to figure out what GREANE meant?”

Biting her knuckle, Aubree curled her shoulders inward, wanting to cover her ears to get away from the voice. It seemed the FBI still had a leak, even though Miranda was gone, but it sounded like he was unsure of how much she had told them.

“My brother got pretty excited when the government came up with GREANE. His ethanol plants were starting to feel the crunch from the economy, and then Uncle Sam came up with a brilliant plan.”

His brother. So the man speaking
was
Chief Ferrin. Aubree shook her head. What chance did she have of escaping a police officer? He
was still talking, and his voice echoed against the walls of the cave.

“The Corn Belt was chomping at the bit to get in line for grants, and then the secretary of defense came up with his part of the plan. He was good friends with the Ohio state representatives and figured he’d offer GREANE to their state exclusively. Pretty low-down if you ask me, but nobody did, so I decided to help Secretary Walden out. My brother pays well for work-for-hire.”

Aubree flipped open the cell phone—still no service. She could see only a few feet around her, and the blue glow from the phone confirmed her fears. She was trapped. He kept talking, and although she wanted to cover her ears, she didn’t move.

“Then I made a stupid mistake. I dialed the wrong number and shot off my mouth before I realized what happened. I hurried to clean up my mess, but you just kept making the mess bigger.”

Aubree’s head spun as she tried to digest all the information he was giving her. Why was he telling her so much? If the FBI knew about GREANE, it wouldn’t matter if he killed her. He and his brother would still go to jail. Unless he thought she knew more than she really did. The roar of blood pumping in Aubree’s ears did nothing to alleviate the chill settling over her body. She tried to think what to do, but he was talking so much she couldn’t concentrate.

He was quiet for a moment, and Aubree heard footsteps on the path again. She hoped he was second-guessing himself and that he would consider looking for her somewhere else. Every sound was augmented, and her body felt as cold as the stone around her.

After a few minutes passed in silence, she began to relax—maybe he really was gone. She thought about what she should do next. How long could she stay in this freezing cavern? At first the adrenaline had kept her body warm as she had struggled to crawl to her hiding place, but now the chill of freezing temperatures was taking its toll. She hugged herself and rubbed her arms to generate some heat.

She was just stretching her legs when she heard footsteps returning. Her heart sank, and she swallowed the tears rising to the surface. She prayed for strength, begging God to spare her life for Scarlett’s sake and pleading for Wyatt’s safety. She heard a groan and some curse words, and then he started talking again.

“Aubree, come out, come out, wherever you are.” He laughed, and the
familiar gruff cackle that had haunted Aubree’s dreams for the past year echoed through the cavern. Aubree’s skin crawled with goose bumps. “This isn’t a game. I really need to talk to you. Now where could you be hiding?” Then she saw a beam of light. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and her throat constricted as she watched the light from his flashlight trying to break into the darkness.

She had scooted her way into the far corner of the cavern, and the light illuminated a large boulder to her right. She ducked behind the boulder and her shoes scraped against the rocks. The light danced around the rocks. He must have crept along the crevice of the cave and knelt down to look in the opening. Aubree hoped he was too large to fit through the narrow opening. The Internet only showed pictures of his brother, and he was of average height and build.

“If you want something done, apparently you have to do it yourself. So I’m not going to waste a lot of time here. I realize it was my fault. I’m the one who dialed the wrong number, but you should’ve spoken up sooner. I had it all set up so my brother and I could cash in.

“We just needed someone to get the secretary of defense out of the way. I was going to take an early retirement and head to the Bahamas. But now I guess Europe will have to do. A private investigator can do pretty well over there.”

He grunted and cursed again. “I’m surprised you were able to put everything together.” His voice bounced off the walls of the cavern, and Aubree couldn’t tell how close he was or if he’d tried to crawl through the opening.

“I’m a betting man, and I’m betting that you haven’t filled anyone in on that last detail you figured out. You were waiting to do it in person, so the information wouldn’t get into the wrong hands, right?

“Well, they might find enough evidence to convict my brother of some bribery scandals, but unless you identify my voice in a line-up, there’s not enough evidence against me, and they can’t really line up Robert Walden’s death with any of the GREANE business you know about.”

With a shudder, Aubree realized her hunch was correct—Chief Ferrin thought she knew more about GREANE than she did. She wished she could cry out that she didn’t know, but he would never believe her, and it would give away her hiding place. Aubree tried to curl into a tight ball behind the rock.

Chief Ferrin coughed. “You should’ve known the fall-out would be too big from something like this. Hank would’ve found you if I hadn’t. His best buddy is cold, hard cash. I told him I bet I could find you before the Feds.”