"She never got that far." Magozzi let that register, then went on to tell him about all the missing people, the dead undercover agents, the FBI taking over Missaqua County. "We think Sharon and the others are somewhere in the middle of whatever the hell is going on, but it's a huge search area. We're on-site, or close to it, but we need your people to narrow it down so we know where to start looking, and they aren't telling law enforcement over here shit. She's your agent, Paul, not theirs. You have enough pull in that organization to get something done that might save her life? Because that might very well be what's at stake here."
Shafer answered quickly. "You have a secure line wherever you are?"
"We're on it."
"Then give me the number and fifteen minutes."
They'd only gone ten miles toward the Missaqua County line when Shafer called back. "Do you know where Beldon is?" he asked without preamble.
Halloran nodded at Magozzi.
"Yes."
"Missaqua County Sheriff's Office is there. They're setting up a command post. Talk to Agent Knudsen. He'll share what he can with law enforcement. Who do you have with you?"
"Rolseth and I are here, Sheriff Halloran, and Deputy Carlson"- he hesitated for only a second-"and a couple others out of Kingsford County."
"I'll give them the heads-up, then. Call from there if he gives you any trouble."
Magozzi released a breath. "What's going on over here, Paul?"
"I don't know yet, but I sure as hell am going to find out. And I want to hear from you people. You're riding on my rep now, and I want to know every step you take before you take it, understood?"
"You got it."
Gino went back up to the copilot's seat and brought Harley and Bonar up-to-date on the word from Shafer. Harley was doing hands-on, eyes-on driving along a tar road that looked about six feet too narrow to accommodate the RV's width. "So punch Beldon in on the GPS and take us there," he told Gino. "Shit. Saturday night with the FBI. I haven't had this much fun since I got mugged and Tasered during Carnival in Rio a few years back."
Gino took a quick sideways glance at the size of the man behind the wheel, and marveled that a Taser would actually bring him down. "One of these days, I'd like to hear the rest of that."
Harley shrugged. "It's an okay story. Nothing epic. Hey, Bonar, grab me a carton of OJ out of the fridge, would you?"
Bonar was still planted on the sofa; Charlie happily sprawled all over him. He turned his head to browse a kitchen area that was bigger than Margie's. It was all wood-teak, if he wasn't mistaken-and not a hint of enamel anywhere. "You don't have a refrigerator in here."
"Third drawer to the right of the sink," Gino said without looking away from the GPS readout. "We've got another two-point-seven miles on this one, Harley, then right on some road-County pee-pee is what it says, but that's gotta be wrong."
Bonar eased Charlie off his lap and went to find drawer number three. "That's County Double-P. All the county roads in the state used to be letters. Great idea back in the 1800s. Sort of went to pot when they built too many and ran out of alphabet, so they just started doubling up."
Gino shook his head. "I am a stranger in a strange land."
Bonar was in deep reverence once he found the refrigerator drawers, completely concealed behind the polished teak fronts. A whole slew of them. One for liquids, one for produce, one for meat, and a big one that held more wine bottles than the cast-iron display rack down at the Municipal Off-Sale. "Amazing," he murmured, snooping without shame, finally grabbing an OJ for Harley. "You mind if I grab a cherry soda for myself?"
"Anything you want, buddy," Harley said, downshifting for a mean curve. "You like the kitchen?"
"Are you kidding? Haven't seen anything this beautiful outside the pagesof Bon Appetit."
Gino rolled his eyes. "Ah, Jesus, next thing you know, you two guys'll be trading recipes and watchingOprah together."
Harley glowered at him. "I loveOprah."
In the back office, Road runner was running multiple programs full-blast, digging as deep as he ever had into closed Federal sites, looking for the tiniest piece of data on whatever operation the dead undercover agents had been running. So far he hadn't found a scrap, which was extraordinary.
Halloran and Magozzi were planted at a small booth next to the windows, alternating between looking over at Roadrunner when he cursed at the keyboard and looking out at what Halloran saw as a quiet country night, and what Magozzi saw as a black landscape of nothingness. "Christ, somebody turned the lights out in the whole state."
Halloran smiled a little. "It's pretty empty up this way. The Silver Dome should be coming up soon, though."
"What's the Silver Dome?"
"Supper club. Dining, dancing, tablecloths and everything."
Another half mile around a long curve, and Magozzi saw what looked like a dollhouse-sized Vegas in the middle of a black hole. Christmas twinkle lights were strung all over a dirt parking lot jammed with pickups, and a pink-and-green sign with neon letters as tall as he was blinked on and off, announcing, "Fine Dining, Dancing, Entertainment." The sign was attached to a Quonset hut.
"What's the entertainment?"
"Bowling." Halloran kept his eyes on Magozzi, who didn't even crack a smile. He liked him for that. He looked back out the window and sighed. There was nothing left to see for miles after the Silver Dome, just trees that blocked the moon and an occasional piece of empty land that didn't. "I don't mind telling you, this is one of the few times on the job I've been seriously scared."
And that, bizarrely, was when Magozzi smiled. "Who are you kidding, Halloran? We're not on the job. What we really are is a couple of frantic guys chasing a couple of skirts. Saving our women. Caveman stuff."
Halloran put his big hands on the table and sighed again. "You, maybe."
Magozzi raised a brow.
"Sharon isn't coming back."
"To you, or Kingsford County?"
"Neither."
"Well, Jesus, Halloran, she took a bullet in the neck. And like it or not, you and the job are all wrapped up in that. That kind of thing shuts you down for a while, makes you afraid to get back out there."
Halloran was quiet for a long time, and then he said, "I should give it some more time."
"Damn straight. You know what, Halloran? Come to think of it, the last time we were together, we were busting into a gunfight, chasing after the same two women."
Halloran blinked. "My God. You're right."
"Maybe we should get together a couple of times between catastrophes, break the monotony."
Suddenly the shriek of an alarm blasted through the back of the rig and Roadrunner exploded out of his chair and stabbed a button on the console. "GRACE!?"
Magozzi was halfway out of his seat, frozen, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. And then he heard the sound of a dial tone buzzing through the big speakers. "What just happened?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"GODDAMNIT!" Roadrunner stabbed another button, and the sound of numbers dialing filled the rig. "We had a sat line rigged on auto-dial to rotate every five minutes on all three of the women's cells. Someone just answered Grace's cell, and then I lost the signal. ... CHRIST, THERE IT IS AGAIN!"
The speakers hissed with white noise, then an earsplitting shrill tone, and then, by God, Grace's voice, garbled and fuzzy and broken, coming through the speakers: ".., need help .., four . ., people dead . . . Roadrunner... ?"
And then, abruptly, nothing. The speakers went silent.
TWENTY MINUTES after hearing Grace's disconnected message, the atmosphere inside the Monkeewrench RV was supercharged, almost electric.
Even working together with all the legal and illegal computer resources they could muster, Roadrunner and Harley hadn't been able to reconnect with Grace or pinpoint the tower that had picked up the call from her cell. Not one of the cell-provider sites they'd hacked into had registered any activity from Grace's cell in the past hour. After fifteen frustrating minutes on the side of the road, Harley was back behind the wheel, driving toward Beldon at an alarming clip on the dark, twisting road, praying that this trip to hook up with the Feds wasn't taking them in the wrong direction.