ID. He looked up at Knox and slowly shook his head in disbelief. He spoke into a walkie-talkie.
“We got a big problem down here.”
After a minute or so of conversation the man put the walkie-talkie away on a holder on his belt.
“Do we kill ’em here?” one man asked.
“No, we don’t kill ’em here,” he snapped. “We got to get this figured out.” He motioned to his men. “Tie ’em up.”
They shot forward and expertly bound Knox and Stone together. They carried the pair back to the road, where they were laid facedown in the cargo bed of a pickup truck. It drove off while the other men piled into other vehicles that had pulled up behind the truck.
Five minutes later the truck raced off the road and into a clearing, where it spun to a stop in a swirl of dirt and ripped-up grass.
Stone heard it before Knox did.
“Chopper.”
It landed next to the truck, its prop wash so strong that, roped together as they were, Stone and Knox had a hard time keeping their balance as they were pulled out of the truck and loaded into the aircraft. Two armed men climbed in with them and the chopper lifted off.
“Where are we going?” Knox said.
When the men didn’t answer he looked over at Stone. “Any ideas?”
Stone glanced around the interior of the chopper. He’d only seen one other chopper up here before. “I think we’re going to Dead Rock.”
“What the hell is Dead Rock?”
Stone looked out the window. “That.”
Knox crowded next to him and gazed down at the lights of the prison.
“Supermax prison,” Stone volunteered.
“Why the hell are drug runners taking us to a super—” Knox broke off, his face ashen. “We’re screwed.”
“Yes, we are.”
CHAPTER 60
AS THE VAN DRIFTED down the street early the next morning, Annabelle, Caleb and Reuben eyed the people walking by on the sidewalks; several of them stared back with suspicion.
“Not a very welcoming lot, are they?” said Caleb.
“Why should they be?” growled Reuben. “They don’t know who we are or what we want. All they know is that we’re not from here.”
Annabelle nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll have to tread carefully.”
“We may not have time to tread carefully,” Reuben pointed out. “Knox had a big head start. He might have already gotten to Oliver for all we know.”
“There’s an obvious starting place,” Caleb pointed out.
The three of them stared at the sheriff’s office and jail next to the courthouse.
“Stop the van, Caleb,” said Annabelle. “I’ll go in.”
“You want some backup?” Reuben wanted to know.
“Not now. We need to keep something in reserve in case things go to hell.”
“How are you going to play it?” Caleb asked. “FBI or wronged woman?”
“Neither. New angle.”
She checked her face and hair in the rearview mirror, slid open the door and climbed out.
“If I’m not back in ten minutes, pull off and I’ll meet you at that end of the street.”
“What if you don’t come out at all?” asked Reuben.
“Then assume I blew it, just start driving and don’t stop.”
She slid the door closed and walked into the building.
“Hello?” she called out. “Hello?”
A door opened and Lincoln Tyree stepped into the small waiting area.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
Annabelle stared up at the tall lawman resplendent in his crisply starched uniform and highly polished boots with a leading man’s jaw and brooding eyes.
“I sure hope so. I’m looking for someone.” She drew a photo out of her pocket and showed it to him. “Have you seen him?”
Tyree studied the photo of Oliver Stone but made no immediate reaction. “Why don’t you step on in here?” He held open his office door.
Annabelle hesitated. “I just need to know if you’ve seen him.”
“And I need to know why you’re looking for him.”
“So you have seen him?”
He indicated the open door.
Annabelle shrugged and walked past him and into the office. There was another man seated there. He was in a seersucker suit with a red bow tie.
“This here is Charlie Trimble, runs the local paper.”
Trimble shook Annabelle’s hand.
Tyree closed the door and motioned for her to sit. He plopped behind his meticulous desk, still clutching the picture.
“Now why don’t you tell me what this is all about,” said Tyree.
“This is sort of confidential,” she said, looking at Trimble. “No offense, but I’d like to speak to the sheriff in private.”
Trimble got up. “We can talk more later, Sheriff.” He glanced over at the photo. From this angle he could see it was the man he knew as Ben. “Maybe you and I can talk later too, ma’am.”
Once he’d left Annabelle said, “My name is Susan Hunter. Here’s my ID.” She handed him across a professionally done and totally fake driver’s license. “The man in the photo is my father. He might go by Oliver or John, or maybe another name.”
“Why so many names?” asked Tyree as he studied the license before handing it back.
“My father worked for the government many years ago. He left under somewhat unusual circumstances. Ever since then he’s sort of been on the run.”
“Unusual circumstances? Is he a criminal?”
“No, these unusual circumstances are that enemies of this country are looking to kill him because of what he did to them.”
“Enemies? Like who?”
“Like governments, the names of which you would recognize. I don’t claim to know the whole story, only that between the ages of six and when I started college, we moved fourteen times. Different names, histories, jobs were lined up for my parents, we had handlers.”
“Then y’all were sorta like in witness protection?”
“Sort of, yes. My dad was a real American hero who did incredibly dangerous work for his country. That work came with a price, though. We’ve been paying that price for a long time.”
Tyree rubbed his chin. “That might explain a lot.”
Annabelle leaned forward eagerly. “So he has been here?”
He leaned back in his chair. “He was, yes. Called himself Ben, Ben Thomas. How’d you track him up here?”
“Something he managed to send me, a coded message. But it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been to just about every small town in the general vicinity. I was running out of hope.”
“Well, like I said, he was here, but he’s not here now.”
“Where did he go?”
“He was in the hospital the last time I saw him.”
“Hospital? Was he hurt?”
“Got himself nearly blown up. He was okay, though. I went by the hospital early this morning to see him but he was gone.”
“Gone voluntarily?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“You said he was nearly blown up?”
“We’ve had some strange things happening here. Haven’t gotten my arms around it. Your dad was helping me. And he’s not the only one missing. Fellow named Danny Riker was at that hospital too. Had a guard posted to watch him because some folks tried to kill him. But Danny slipped by my guy and he’s gone too.”
“And you have no idea where my father might be?”
“No ma’am, I don’t. Wish I did. I’m a one-man police force in over my head. But if he was in protection why is he on the run now?”
“A few weeks ago an attempt was made on my father’s life. He made sure I was okay and then he left. The way the attempt came I believe he thought it was an inside job.”
“Well, if he was looking to hide out here and get a little peace and quiet, he was sorely mistaken.”
“What are you talking about?”
>
Tyree took a few minutes to sketch out what had happened in Divine since Stone arrived there.
Annabelle sat back, thinking fast. She didn’t want to get bogged down in whatever was happening in Divine. Yet if these events were connected to Oliver’s disappearance it also might be the only way to find him.
She rubbed her hands nervously over the arms of her chair. “Has anybody else been in town, another stranger, asking questions about my father?”
“Not that I know of. He was staying over at Bernie’s, that’s a little rooming house right around the corner from here. You could check there.”
“I will, Sheriff, and thanks.” She rose and so did Tyree. “Anybody else in town you think I should talk to?”
“Well, there’s Abby Riker. She owns Rita’s just down the street. She and Ben seemed to get on right good.”
Was it Annabelle’s imagination or did she detect a note of jealously there?
“Thanks.” She handed him a card. “Here’s my phone number in case you think of anything else.”
She left Tyree standing in his office looking troubled.
Outside the jail the man had obviously been waiting for her.
Charlie Trimble said, “I couldn’t help but see the photo of the man you were looking for. I interviewed him in connection with some of the things occurring in town. Perhaps the sheriff explained that to you?”
“Murders and suicides and people getting blown up, yeah, he filled me in. You say you talked to him? What did he tell you?”
“Well, perhaps we could have a bit of negotiation there.”
“Excuse me?”
“I own a newspaper, ma’am. I thought when I moved here and started running the little town paper that the most exciting thing I’d have to report was when someone drove his truck off a mountain road or a mine cave-in. Now with all that’s going on I feel like I’m back in Washington.”
Annabelle looked impatient and felt more than a little disgusted at his gleeful tone. “What exactly do you want?”
“You tell me things and I tell you things.”
“Like what?”
“Like who Ben really is.”
“And if I do, what can you tell me?”
“We have to have a bit of good faith there. But I can tell you that he struck me immediately as not being your typical drifter. He was too well-spoken, too cunning. And his physical abilities spoke for themselves. According to what I’ve learned, he beat up three men on a train, saved a man’s life using battery cables and fought off three other men wielding baseball bats. Not your typical wandering soul.”
“He had some special skills, yes.”
“And your relation to him?”
“My father.”
“Excellent. I’d heard he was in the military.”
“Vietnam.”
“Special Forces.”
“Very special.”
“And does he make a habit of wandering the countryside?”
“He had a job in the government for a while but got tired of sitting behind a desk.”
Trimble gave her a patronizing smile. “I doubt your father ever sat behind a desk. If you don’t tell me the truth, I have no reason to accord you any.”
“Well, it seems like I’ve told you a lot already. How about some action on your end?”
“All right, that seems fair actually. Your father has been spending a lot of time with Abby Riker and her son Danny. He’s a troubled youth. Sort of the epitome of the high school poster boy who reached his prime when he was eighteen and everything’s been downhill since.”
“Is he a druggie? A boozer?”
“Not drugs, but he does like his alcohol. His mother won a big lawsuit against a coal company involving an accident that cost her husband his life. So they have a lot of money, live in a big house, but Danny’s life has been off track for a while.”
“The sheriff says he’s missing too.”
“Your father struck me as a good man trying to do the right thing. My advice would be to not assume that anyone else here has those same intentions, including Danny, even though your father saved his life.”
“Would that caveat include you too?” she said.
“I’m a fairly recent arrival here. I called Washington home for forty years. I still have a lot of friends there, get regular updates. And—” Trimble broke off, his eyes seeming to look right through Annabelle and on to something of far greater interest.
“Mr. Trimble?” Annabelle did not like that look at all.
He seemed to refocus on her, but his eyes showed his mind was still elsewhere. “Excuse me, I have something I need to check right now.” He hurried off.
Annabelle raced down the street to the van and climbed in. She quickly filled them both in on what Tyree had told her and her run-in with the reporter.
“You think he suspects who Oliver really is?” asked Caleb.
“I wouldn’t bet against it. And right now our margin of error is zero.”
“Damn, Oliver can’t buy a break, can he?” exclaimed Reuben. “The one town he picks turns out to be teeming with killers.”
“Let’s hit the rooming house fast. The clock is running.”
A few minutes later Annabelle had charmed the entire story out of Bernie Sandusky.
She got back in the van. “Knox was here. He found out about Oliver. Bernie told him that Oliver was in the hospital or else he could try Abby Riker’s place, A Midsummer’s Farm. If Knox went to the hospital and found Oliver gone he might have tried Midsummer. Let’s roll.”
CHAPTER 61
STONE AND KNOX SAT, manacled to metal chairs that were bolted to the slab floor, in a windowless cement block room painted gray. They’d been here for many hours now and the room was so cold that they were both shivering. They jumped when the door banged open and the group moved in. There were five of them, all in blue uniforms and all armed with pistols and billy clubs dangling from thick belts. They formed a semicircle of flesh behind the pair of prisoners, arms folded across their muscular chests.
So fixated were Stone and Knox on this little army that they didn’t hear the other man come in until he closed the door.
When Stone turned to look at this new arrival, he flinched.
It was Tyree. Only it wasn’t Tyree. Not Lincoln Tyree anyway. It was a shorter, stouter version of the man.
In an instant Stone made the connection—Howard Tyree, the older brother who was also warden of this place. He wore a navy blue polo shirt, pressed khaki pants and tasseled loafers; wire-rimmed glasses covered his clean-shaven face. He didn’t look like a rottweiler warden at a supermax. He looked like an insurance salesman on a golf holiday.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Tyree.
Stone’s heart sank with the words. It was the voice he’d heard when he’d made the call on Danny’s phone. He and the sheriff sounded nearly identical.
Son of a bitch!
The other men had instantly come to attention when Tyree walked in. He sat down behind a small table opposite Stone and Knox. The warden held