"Corey?" It was her aunt. She would know the voice anywhere. A shock. They hadn't spoken in two years, and then it was about a dying cousin. She hadn't cared then, and she didn't care now.
"What?"
"I know you don't like us bothering you, but we thought you should know."
"Know what?"
"A few weeks ago a man came here. A private investigator. He wanted to know all about you. He was very nice. He said it was about an inheritance and they were trying to locate you."
"And you had to talk to him." She knew her aunt would talk with anyone if they made her feel important. Corey hated her all over again. "What did you tell him?"
"Well, everything in general, about… you know."
"About Max, his drinking, his suicide, the rest?"
"More or less."
"Yes or no?"
"Yes."
"You told him about me. About my real father."
"Well, it seemed pertinent to the inheritance."
"Shit." Corey slammed down the phone, cracking the handset There was no use talking. It had been some henchman of the German. Immediately she understood how he knew to lock her in the closet. To pump her. She wasn't stupid! She wasn't stupid!
She flung her coffee cup against the wall. It left a dent in the Sheetrock where it shattered. Goddamn manipulating bastard. He had made an ass out of her. He wasn't anything to her. Not a goddamn thing. And he had worked his way into her. Coddled her. Told her how wonderful she was. Humiliation burned in her, then turned to rage. She promised at that moment to reverse everything or die, and then spent a good hour figuring what she would do.
Corey planned to go along with the German until an opportunity to do otherwise presented itself. She detested the Spaniard who followed the German everywhere, but one thing, the only thing, she now appreciated about the German was his penchant for meticulous planning.
Corey checked out the equipment in the van, as she knew the German would. She had to admire Jack's handiwork. Gutting the interior of the van had been easy, but Jack had gone to some effort to arrange for the installation of the round table bolted to the floor-one of those Formica and plywood creations found in cheap cocktail lounges. Behind the table, likewise bolted to the floor, a gray vinyl bench seat faced the rear doors.
Resting the Colt AR-15 on the pile of sandbags she had arranged on the table, Corey assumed a firing position. The rifle's green-camouflaged plastic stock felt smooth and businesslike against her cheek. The lightness of the way it felt in the firing brace, close to her, an extension of her, came from the thousands of times she had fieldstripped, assembled, and fired rifles like this. Like a ritual, a mantra. Ivan the Terrible had taught her well. When you pick it up, it must become you: you think through it, breathe through it, live through it.
She pressed the foot pedal and watched with satisfaction as the rear window lowered-all the way down in just four seconds. None of it was terribly fancy or high-tech, but it was all sturdy and would serve its purpose well. If anyone followed the van, they would get a surprise.
She drove to Jack Morgan's place, forty-five mind-numbing minutes of twisty driving to the sounds of the local country-western station. The house was dark, and only a sliver of light shone from the barn. She headed straight there and parked by a white Ford Taurus with absolutely nothing memorable about it save a small antenna protruding from the back window.
In the barn she found the familiar fifty-five-gallon drums and the tractors; at the far end near the hayloft was the German in his black hood. No way was this man ever going to let any of them identify him. The Spaniard waited off to the side, running his eyes over her body as obviously as he could. She approached the German and stopped about ten feet short. She felt unnerved and knew that was precisely what he intended. Jack sat in a folding chair about ten feet away, jiggling his knee like a nervous kid.
"Are you ready?" the German asked.
"I am."
"Fischer will come out of the Palmer Inn on Saturday morning, as usual. We have reason to believe she's going on an outing. Follow her. If you get a good opportunity, take her. If not, bide your time. I don't want any screwups. Make sure no one is watching when you grab her. The rifle is a last resort. If we haven't got her by Saturday evening, we've devised a ruse to get her out of the hotel very early Sunday morning. But that's the end of the time window, so we want to try to take her before that. Jack, you do what Corey tells you."
They then proceeded to go over the details of the plan. Over the weekend Jack had completed the remodeling of the barn, finished the Sheetrock, and installed a solid wood door and a two-way mirror, all to the German's specifications. From inside the interrogation room, it was impossible to discern that you were in a barn. Maria would see only white walls, fully carpeted floors, fluorescent bulbs, and the large mirror. As the German and Jack had planned, the room could be dismantled in minutes, leaving no trace of its presence save a few nail holes in the rafters.
Corey knew she would get only one chance to double-cross the German, and if she failed, she could end up dead- or worse. She had to get all the evidence he had on her, and then she had to kill him.
''Hi,'' Maria said as Nate climbed into her old Jeep Cherokee.
"Hi." He sat there, arms crossed and a grim look on his face.
"Nate, I think I understand how you feel. I'll bet that drag boat sounded pretty good. If you don't want to go somewhere today, I'll understand. We can stay home and you can play around the house."
He shrugged. "Maybe we should go someplace."
"Did you bring your boots?"
"Uh-huh." He pointed to his pack, which he'd tossed in the backseat.
"Your father didn't fill you in on what we're doing, did he? It was supposed to be a secret." Nate just grunted, a "no" from the sound of it. "Well, we were going fishing, but you can stay home. Really, it's OK."
"I wanna go," he said, making it sound like a groan.
''I suppose you don't like trout fishing,'' she said casually as they entered the National Forest. "So would you like to leave the fishing poles in the car or take them with us?"
"I don't care," Nate said, looking straight ahead.
Something has got to change, she thought. She went to the back of the car to get her pack. "We were going to scout places to fish. That was my big surprise. But I guess we don't have to do that."
Nate's eyes flickered at her for just a second. ''We could take the pole," he said.
"Who would use it?"
"Well. Um. I would."
The boy squelched his enthusiasm masterfully, she thought to herself. Poor kid.
Soon they started up a steep incline through the forest, mostly second growth that had filled in since the early 1900s, the redwood trees some four and even five feet thick at the base. They climbed quickly, Nate with his head down and a determined look on his face. After a time the path came to a rushing stream, then followed it up the hillside. Eventually they came to a fork in the trail. To the left the trail continued alongside the stream, toward a waterfall, from the roaring sound in the distance. To the right the trail moved off into the trees, up the mountain. "This way," Maria said, pointing left.
Finally they came to the end of the traiclass="underline" a small gorge with a roaring cascade at one end, which sent a cool mist floating through the rays of sunlight pouring down from overhead. Spanning the gorge was a thick log, which from the look of the damp green stuff covering it would be quite slippery to walk across.
"Pretty nice place, huh?" Maria whispered, looking at the crystal-clear water from the falls as it poured over some boulders in the gorge below. A shiver of pleasure ran through her; there was nothing like this, the feeling of being closed in by lush green-the trees, the moss, the lichen.