Then they were out. Beyond the flames. Through the back of the camper shell, Jo could see fire touching the sky, but as she turned and peered ahead through the rear window of the cab, all she could see beyond the windshield was lush woods, dark and cool. The truck bounced wildly over the old road as the man kept pushing for speed, putting distance between his truck and the fire. Jo’s head slammed against the roof. She hunkered down beside Stevie.
They didn’t stop for miles, until they came to a place where the logging road opened onto well-graded dirt and gravel. They were still in deep woods, but by then the fire was only a distant glow against the night sky behind them. The man behind the wheel pulled over and killed the engine. Immediately, Jo slid to the tailgate and tried to open it. The inside latch was broken. She heard the man in the cab cry, “Shit!” and felt the pickup shake as he pounded angrily on the dashboard. He threw the cab door open, and kicked the side of the truck. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” he screamed. Jo slid back to Stevie and took him in her arms.
The tailgate dropped, and the rear window of the camper shell lifted. A flashlight beam shot in at them.
“Here. Your damn medicine,” the man said. He threw a plastic bag into the light.
In the beam of the flashlight, Grace dumped the contents from the bag-several syringes in individual packets and a small box. She took a bottle from the box, opened a syringe, and jabbed the needle into the bottle’s thin membrane covering. Scott offered her his leg and she drew back the cuff of his shorts to expose the top of his thigh.
“Could you hold the light a little steadier, please?” she asked.
“Just poke him, for Christ’s sake.”
She slipped the needle into Scott’s skin and slowly depressed the plunger. When she was finished, she put everything back into the bag, then looked directly into the light. Her eyes were blue and shiny. “Thank you,” she said.
“Give me the stuff.”
She slid it to him across the bed of the pickup. He rolled her the duct tape.
“Now,” he said, “tape his wrists behind him.”
“Please-” Grace began.
“Just do it,” he yelled.
She pulled off a long piece of tape and used her teeth to tear it from the roll. She took her son’s hands, guided them behind his back, and bound his wrists. “Are you all right, sweetheart? Does that hurt?”
He shook his head.
“Tape his mouth.” When she’d done as he’d asked, he said, “Now you.” He jabbed a finger into the light, pointed at Jo. “Tape her the same way.”
Jo did so, bound Grace’s wrists and ankles and put tape over her mouth. “I’m sorry, Grace,” she said.
“Now you. Turn around.”
Jo scooted toward the tailgate, turned, and put her hands behind her. He taped them.
“You come down here, too, boy,” he said to Stevie. Stevie didn’t budge.
“Come here, boy, or by God, I’ll shoot you where you sit.”
“You’d save us only to kill a child?” Jo shot back at him.
Behind the light, the man fell silent. He stepped away from the truck and looked up at the night sky a while. Jo heard him whisper, “Jesus.” When he came back and spoke, the harshness was gone. “I’m not going to hurt you, son, I promise.”
Still, Stevie did not move. The man lowered the beam. Jo studied his face and saw only weariness there. “You won’t hurt him?” she asked.
“I won’t hurt him.”
“Come here beside me, Stevie,” Jo said.
Stevie hesitated.
“Come on,” Jo urged him. “It will be all right, I promise.”
Slowly, Stevie crawled to his mother. The man bound his small wrists with a single loop of tape. He didn’t bother with Stevie’s ankles or his mouth.
“You last,” the man said, and he closed up Jo’s lips with duct tape.
“Everybody scoot together,” he said when he was done. He sounded exhausted. “And hold tight. There’s still some rough road ahead.”
They huddled against one another. The man closed the camper shell, raised and locked the tailgate. A moment later, the truck started off.
They weren’t free, but they weren’t dead either, and they’d come close to that. Jo knew there was a lot of reason to be hopeful. Unfortunately, she knew there was, perhaps, even greater reason to be concerned… For she had looked into the man’s face and had recognized him. And he knew it.
33
NOBODY WANTED TO GO TO BED. Separating, going to their own rooms, lying alone with their fears seemed impossible. The girls brought down their pillows and blankets, curled up at opposite ends of the sofa, and slept. Rose, in her robe, napped in the recliner. Cork sat in the easy chair, but sleep did not come. He couldn’t stop thinking, even though his thinking took him nowhere. He stared at the telephone, hoping Schanno would call with something. The phone refused to ring. Finally he got up and touched his sister-in-law’s shoulder very gently. She jerked awake.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m going back out to Lindstrom’s.”
“What can you do there?” Rose asked.
Cork had no good answer. But Rose nodded and said, “I understand.”
Even with the moon already high in the sky, the night seemed dark. Cork followed the highway around the southern end of Iron Lake, then headed north along the eastern shore. He turned onto the drive to Grace Cove and saw a line of headlights racing toward him from Lindstrom’s place. As he pulled to the side of the road, two dark green Luminas he knew to be FBI vehicles sped past, followed by the Bonneville that belonged to the BCA. Bringing up the rear was Wally Schanno in his Land Cruiser. Schanno’s vehicle skidded to a stop beside Cork’s Bronco. Schanno rolled his window down, and he hollered, “Get in! Things are happening!”
Cork wasted no time complying, and the sheriff’s Land Cruiser shot off, following the others, who were headed north toward the reservation.
“What’s going on?” Cork asked, buckling in.
“The agents that had the Hamilton woman and her son under surveillance reported a visitor about an hour ago. Didn’t get an ID. A few minutes later, their van peels out of the park on the rez and heads to Isaiah Broom’s place. FBI’s had Broom under surveillance, too. Hamilton, her boy, and their visitor all go inside. Five minutes later, Broom rushes out and him and the Hamilton kid load the back of Broom’s pickup truck with what appears to be crates of dynamite. Then they hook up a trailer carrying a Bobcat, and they all head off again, this time to George LeDuc’s place. That’s where they are now.”
“Dynamite,” Cork said. “Are they sure?”
“They seem to be.”
Schanno’s radio crackled. “Come in, Miss Muffet, do you read me? Over.”
Cork heard a voice he recognized as Agent Kay reply, “Loud and clear. What’s shaking?”
“They’re on the move again, headed your way. LeDuc’s not with them. He’s just standing by his pickup. He seems to be waiting.”
“Cordell’s team stays with LeDuc. You follow the others. “
“Ten-four.”
Kay’s voice again: “Earl, Schanno, did you copy that?”
Earl said he did. Schanno spoke into his mike, “We stay on this road and we’ll run into ‘em headlong in a few minutes. We need to disappear. Over.”
Kay was silent on her end of the conversation. Cork said, “Have them pull off at the old landing. It’s just ahead. The aspen will hide the cars.”
Schanno relayed Cork’s suggestion.
“That’s a ten-four,” Kay said.
They entered the turnaround at the landing, the same access that might have been used to take Jo and Stevie and the others off the lake after the kidnapping. An evidence team had got a tire imprint that indicated someone had been there recently, at any rate. They maneuvered until they were positioned to head quickly back onto the county highway, and they killed their vehicle lights.