He took the ramp onto the interstate, goosing the accelerator. The double headlights followed. He switched lanes, crossing over two and watched in the rearview mirror. The double headlights followed, keeping a car in between. Traffic raced around them but the car stayed with Platt. He drove a few miles then crossed back to the right and at the last second swerved to take the first exit. Not so discreetly, now, his tail followed, provoking a horn blare from another vehicle that had to slam on its brakes.
Platt turned into a gas station and pulled up next to a credit-card-only pump. He didn’t get out. He waited, ready to floor it if the vehicle followed. It’d be impossible to pretend here, especially after pulling up to one of the pumps. But the double headlights, which he now saw belonged to a black Suburban with tinted windows, didn’t even slow down as it passed the station.
Platt sat back, released a sigh. Ran a hand over his face. Relaxed his jaw. Okay, so Bix’s paranoia was contagious.
He topped off the Land Rover’s gas tank, though he didn’t need it to get back home. Then he took several more minutes to wash his windshield, the whole time watching every single vehicle that pulled into the station as well as those passing by on the access road.
Back on the road Platt stayed off the interstate and wound his way through side streets where he could see if he picked up another tail. The amount of traffic surprised him for this time of night, but still, he believed he would notice a black Suburban with tinted windows. Finally deciding it was safe, he backtracked to his parents’ house.
They would be up, watching the late-night shows. They’d have Digger between them and all three would have a bowl of ice cream. They doted on the dog like he was one of their grandchildren. Platt’s mom would try to talk him into staying overnight, but he’d convince her that Digger would keep him company on the two-hour drive back to D.C. She’d pretend to pout but give him a peck on the cheek and his dad would tell him to call when he got home.
Platt parked and before going in took a few minutes to check his voice, text, and email messages. There were several but none from the one person he was hoping to hear from— Maggie. He knew her plane had landed safely in Denver without any delays. He checked the flight number online to make sure.
He slouched back into the leather seat and shook his head. He had been doing just fine before Maggie O’Dell came along. He had finally found contentment, burying himself in his work, coming home and sitting with Digger on the back porch. He tried not to spend too much time indulging in memories of his daughter, Ali, but Digger was a constant reminder.
In the beginning it was difficult to even have the dog around, but quickly Digger became Platt’s shadow, his buddy. He knew the dog missed Ali as much as he did. They had been inseparable or as Ali always said, they were “bestest friends.” Now Platt was grateful for the dog’s company and for reminding him of the best memories of Ali and not those dark weeks, months, years that followed her death.
Caring about Maggie was a luxury he hadn’t allowed himself since Ali’s death. Moments like this he questioned the wisdom of it. Being with Maggie, just talking to her— hell, just hearing her voice—made him feel like a college kid again. It was exhilarating. But not hearing from her could make him feel equally miserable. He hated the roller-coaster ride.
So what the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t a kid. He was a colonel, a medical doctor in the United States Army. He was logical and practical and thrived on structure and discipline. He made decisions, solved problems. He went into war zones and hot zones. He had performed surgeries on soldiers while bombs rattled around them. He had treated victims with Ebola working from a tent outside of Sierra Leone. At only thirty-two years old he had seen and done incredible things. Yet nothing compared to the feeling of Maggie sitting on the sofa with him, sockless feet in his lap, while they spent a rare evening watching classic movies or an even rarer Saturday afternoon watching college football.
He looked down at his smartphone again. No new messages in the last five minutes. He pushed Contacts and keyed down to Maggie’s number. He clicked on Text Messages and tapped in MISS YOU. XXOO BEN. Then he paused before hitting Send.
Too much?
He tapped Backspace and erased XXOO BEN.
Hesitated again. Tapped Backspace and erased MISS YOU.
Flipping the phone shut, he said out loud to himself, “Coward.”
Just as he reached for the SUV’s door handle he saw it.
The black Suburban, its headlights off, was stopped at the corner. The vehicle’s occupant must have thought it was safe to pull this close, must have thought Platt had already exited his vehicle and gone inside. The Suburban stayed there for only a few seconds longer, just enough time for whoever was driving it to take note of the address. Then it rolled through the intersection. Platt watched it go a full block before putting on its headlights.
Great. Platt had taken some goons to the front door of his parents’ home.
He got out of the Land Rover and went around to the backseat to grab a duffel bag. It looked like he’d be spending the night after all.
FOURTEEN
NEBRASKA NATIONAL FOREST
The rain became a downpour just as they carried the last body bag over the hill. The wet grass and sand made the climb treacherous. Maggie nearly fell and she wasn’t even carrying a body bag. It was the last compromise she had relinquished to Donny—she let the men carry the bodies. To argue at this point would only be annoying, especially since she was totally and completely exhausted.
She had even given in and allowed the men waiting on the other side of the sand dune to enter the perimeter and help carry out equipment they had used to keep the paper evidence bags from getting soaked. Of course, that was only after Maggie sealed and tagged each bag herself.
The sheriff agreed to lock everything up safe and sound. They’d sort through what they had and decide in the morning where to send the important pieces. Maggie realized there wasn’t much of anything to explain what could have caused the teens’ injuries. Only one Taser was found in the pine needles. Although it had been fired, the probes were no longer attached to any target and not even close to the two dead boys.
Right now it was time to get out of the rain, find some warmth, and get some rest before morning brought another barrage of tasks. Yet Donny, Lucy, and Maggie stood in the rain as if mesmerized by the red taillights that bounced along the wet, glistening two-track path, now worn wider by more vehicles than it had seen in years.
Donny switched on his flashlight just long enough to glance at his watch. Flicked it off. They continued standing in the rain. Without the hum of the generator or car engines, the song of cicadas swelled around them.
“They must not mind the rain,” she said.
Neither Donny nor Lucy responded, but they seemed to understand what she was talking about.
Finally Donny said, “It’s after two. I’m not sure what to do with you.”
It took almost a full minute before Maggie realized he was talking about her. Originally she had planned to drive back to Denver after a quick examination of several cattle-mutilation sites. She had a room reserved at the hotel where the conference was being held. She was scheduled to teach her first class of the weekend early Saturday morning. She could have saved herself some time by flying directly into Scottsbluff if she didn’t mind getting on a twin prop. She did, however, mind very much.
“She’ll come home with me,” Lucy Coy said matter-offactly.
Donny nodded as if neither of them expected Maggie to have a say in the decision.
And oddly enough, Maggie didn’t protest. When they moved to leave, Maggie simply followed. She pulled her leather satchel from Donny’s vehicle. Her suitcase was still in the trunk of her rental car, left in the parking lot of a Scottsbluff mall.
“I’ll have someone get your rental in the morning,” he told her. “I’ll call our field office. Make sure the car and all your stuff is secured for the night.”
She wanted
to tell him not to bother. There was nothing of value in the suitcase that couldn’t be replaced. Instead, she simply thanked him and got inside Lucy’s vehicle. Maggie took note of the wood paneling and soft leather seats and smiled. Finally something Maggie might have expected from the woman. Lucy drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee but one loaded with luxury and elegance. There was something comforting about that. Perhaps Maggie had not entirely lost her edge in profiling people.
As they bumped over the rough trail, Maggie stole a glance at the woman’s regal profile in the blue-tinted dashboard lights. Maggie was mentally and physically worn out. Her rain-soaked clothes stuck to her skin. Despite a good rubbing from the towel Lucy had offered, Maggie’s hair dripped into her eyes. The blast from the heater only emphasized the chill that had invaded her body. Never had Maggie trusted a stranger, let alone gone home with one she had met only hours before. Yet there was an undeniable comfort being in the presence of this woman.
Maggie shifted in her seat, pulling up her leg to tuck underneath herself. She thought about Platt and had the sudden urge to hear his voice. She checked the dashboard clock: 2:16. Just after three in the morning his time. She didn’t want to wake him. Instead, she sat back and closed her eyes.
FIFTEEN
NORTH PLATTE, NEBRASKA
Dawson Hayes opened his eyes. Plastic tubes shot out of his arms and nose. He startled and gasped and somewhere a machine hissed and gurgled. He’d been dreaming about birds with scalding white eyes perched over him in the tops of the forest’s highest pine trees.
He searched for the woman’s eyes—the soft brown—that held him above the pain and promised not to drop him. Where was she?
His eyelids fluttered despite his panic. He tried to keep them open. A shadow over him said, “I think he’s waking up.”
Two blinks means “yes.”
But Dawson couldn’t blink. He couldn’t hold his eyelids open.
Half a blink was all he could manage but it was enough to see the shadow insert a needle into one of the tubes.
“No, no … not,” he stuttered, his throat suddenly raw and dry. Something was stuck down it. He couldn’t swallow. It hurt to breathe. Unfamiliar hums and beeps assaulted his ears.
Then he saw the fiery red eyes across the dimly lit room. The creature had followed him. How was it possible?
He struggled and strained but couldn’t move. Something clamped him down. He opened his mouth to scream but the contraption in his throat choked him. He tried to open his eyes beyond the half shutters that blurred his vision.
Then he felt it, warm liquid sliding into his veins. But it was pleasant and soothing. Whatever the shadow had injected into the tubes had started to invade his insides. He felt it seeping into his brain and he imagined it racing along his arteries, replacing cold blood with soothing liquid warmth that made his mind fuzzy and his heart stop exploding.
Another shadow stood over him. This one leaned down and he caught the scent of pine needles and river mud mixed with sweat. Dawson felt hot breath on his ear as he heard the shadow whisper, “You’re gonna wish you hadn’t survived.”
SIXTEEN
“The sheriff’s a man who means well,” Lucy Coy said.
She handed Maggie a tray that held a bowl of steaming homemade chicken noodle soup, half a sandwich with layers of deli slices on a plate garnished with fresh strawberries and blueberries, and a mug of spiced tea. It took discipline for Maggie to wait for her host to get settled.
“He’ll make sure those teenagers are properly taken care of,” Lucy continued. “Even the dead.”
They sat on the screened-in porch off the second-floor loft of Lucy’s contemporary A-frame house that looked like something out of Architectural Digest. The porch looked into treetops and over Lucy’s backyard. When the moon broke through the clouds Maggie could see rolling hills dotted with pine trees, the landscape unbroken for miles by fences or another homestead.
The rain had turned to mist. Once in a while it came in on the breeze. But Lucy had turned on an electric fireplace in the corner and the outdoor room became a cozy retreat. Behind the sliding glass door was the loft with a queen-size bed waiting for Maggie. She felt too tired to sleep and when Lucy offered a bite before bed, Maggie gratefully accepted. She hadn’t eaten since morning, a banana and a Diet Pepsi on the flight from D.C. to Denver. She’d forgotten about crossing back and forth over three time zones. Her head and stomach were still set on eastern time. No wonder it felt like days.
Besides, for months now Maggie had been unable to shake a bad case of insomnia. As an FBI agent she had learned to compartmentalize her mind, carefully stowing away the awful images she had seen and all the brutal experiences she had survived. Lately those compartments had started to spring leaks and it usually happened after dark.
Nightmares played a loop in her mind, reliving the experiences, sometimes in freeze-frame, sometimes in high-definition. She hadn’t discovered a remedy. Nothing worked. Not warm milk or alcohol, exercise or quiet. The only thing that had ever worked—but only once—was Benjamin Platt’s strong, soothing fingers working the tension from her shoulders and back. Although it was only a massage and hadn’t led to anything more, just the memory of it still made her flush.
Two of Lucy’s dogs, a gangly retriever mix and a three-legged boxer, came in and curled up at their mistress’s feet. Earlier, a pack had met the Jeep and escorted it down the long driveway to the house. Lucy had explained that people kept leaving their castaways at the edge of her property, knowing she’d take them in and thereby assuaging their guilt by not turning them in to the pound for a sure death sentence. When the headlights swept the side of an out-building Maggie had seen a couple more snouts peeking out of the small doors crafted into the shed.
A black German shepherd nudged Maggie’s elbow for a handout.
“Jake,” Lucy scolded in her low, gentle voice and the shepherd lay down by Maggie. “Usually he’s not this friendly. He showed up about a month ago, but he comes and goes as he pleases. He’ll be gone for days at a time.”
“Maybe he has another home somewhere.”
“I don’t think so. He comes back scraped up and starving. Hank thought he saw him in the forest one night. Worries me because they’ve also reported seeing a cougar. No, I think ole Jake just hasn’t decided if he wants to call this home.” Almost on cue the dog laid his head on Maggie’s foot.
“I have a white Lab,” she said. “Harvey. He sorted of ended up on my doorstep, too.”
“So you rescued him.”
“I like to think we rescued each other.”
Lucy smiled, a first since they’d met, then she wrapped long fingers around her mug of tea and sat back in the wicker chair.
“What do you think happened out there tonight?” Maggie asked. “It couldn’t have been just a game of Taser tag, could it?”
“I’ve never seen Tasers do what we saw tonight,” Lucy said, then seemed to consider it as she sipped. “Things aren’t always what they seem. For years ranchers used barbed wire for fencing. Cattle respected the boundary because it hurt to cross it. Intruders respected it because the barbs look vicious and dangerous.”
Maggie listened patiently, remembering the woman’s explanation for bagging the owl. Perhaps this was how she answered classroom questions, with proverbs and folk tales.
“Now some ranchers use the electric fencing. Unlike the barbed wire, the electric wire looks quite harmless. You can’t tell if it’s hot, if it’s dangerous, until it’s too late.”
Maggie quietly sipped her tea. Reached a hand down and petted Jake who released a heavy sigh before flopping onto his side to expose his belly. Without looking over at Lucy, Maggie said, “So what the hell does any of that mean?”
To Maggie’s surprise Lucy laughed, hard and long. She had to wipe her eyes before attempting an answer. And when she finally did, she prefaced it with “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.
“It simply means don’t dismiss someth
ing that appears ordinary. Outsiders come here and they tend to see a simpler life, an uncomplicated people. But human nature is human nature. People out here are capable of the same things as people in cities. You might think it’s easier to hide the mistakes, the evil—if you will—in the city, but sometimes it’s just as easy to hide things in plain sight.”
Lucy set her mug down and reached into her jacket pocket, pulling out what looked like bib lettuce in a Ziploc bag. She held on to it, fingering it carefully.
“I think this is Salvia divinorum. They call it the sage of seers. The non-divinorum is the salvia you find in gardens and flower beds. This is a psychoactive species of mint. It grows mostly in Mexico and some southwestern states. The Mazatec people believed it had spiritual and healing properties. You dry it and smoke it, or you wad it up when it’s still green”—she held up the bag—“and chew it. They say its hallucinatory properties are more potent than LSD. It’s the newest rave for teenagers.”
She fingered the bag and then looked directly at Maggie when she said, “I found this under one of the dead boys when I was examining him.”
“And you put it in your pocket?”
“Sheriff Skylar is a man who means well. Possession, distribution, and sale of salvia is illegal in more than a dozen states. Including Nebraska. There was a young woman whose body was found in the river several months ago. Some say she was tripping on salvia. Thought she could fly and jumped from the Highway 83 bridge. That bridge is a hundred and fifty feet above the water.
“There were friends with her at the time. No arrests were made. There was no mention of drug use. It was said to be an accident. Sometimes it can be devastating for grieving parents to learn bad things about their dead child. I thought it was important that this didn’t accidentally get lost or misplaced because of good intentions.”