Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

" Listen up," a stranger's voice demanded over Boldt's cellular phone. He had been expecting the report from Gaynes. The ferry had slowed and was nudging toward the small but well-lighted dock at Winslow. "Badge number six five six four. Your partner, Matthews. Right?"

"I'm a lieutenant. I don't have a partner. Who is this?" Boldt said. He already had LaMoia's attention. He gestured toward the phone and pointed back into the dark of the Sound, toward the city, and LaMoia got the idea; the sergeant pulled out his own phone and made the call to Gaynes. Boldt placed his thumb over the phone's talk hole and whispered, "It could be Daffy's, it could be his."

"Got it!" LaMoia said.

Flek announced into Boldt's ear, "I've got her badge in my hand or I wouldn't know the number. Right? Even a dumb cop can figure that out. You want her alive, you come get her alone. That's the deal. And believe me, I'll know if you're alone or not. And if not, then not. No second chances. A hunter'll find her in a couple years."

Boldt pushed the phone's antenna down, held the device away from his mouth and said, "You're breaking up… I can't hear you. Hang on-" He disconnected the call.

While Boldt was still staring at the phone, secondguessing himself, LaMoia, with Gaynes on the line, said, "What's up?"

"I hung up on him before he could give me the drop point."

"You what!?" LaMoia hissed through his teeth loudly enough to attract attention.

The ferry gently bumped the dock and weary passengers headed toward the exits.

"Osbourne requires fifteen minutes to triangulate the call. I'm trying to buy Daphne some time."

"Or get her killed."

"I'm aware of the stakes, John."

"Jesus, Sarge, I don't know."

"Tell Gaynes that Osbourne has to kill all the towers over here, or at least effect a circuit busy on my line." He repeated strongly, " Circuit busy-not line busy. I don't want Flek thinking it's me. I want him blaming the system." As Boldt's phone rang again, he glared at his sergeant. "Now, John! Now!"

LaMoia relayed the message into his phone.

His ringing phone in hand, Boldt, already moving toward an exit, shouted back, "I'm going below decks for the interference. Handle that and hurry it up. We're out of here!"

"And make it fast!" LaMoia said into his phone. "I don't care what he says-he's got to do it. The guy is threatening to kill Matthews. No, you heard right!" He added harshly, "Now, Bobbie. Now! And if there's any way to keep my phone working, do it!"

" Shit!" Flek shouted, holding the phone at bay, his whole body shaking. For a moment he seemed ready to throw the thing, or to bust it up against the car, but some tiny string of reason fought off the agitating effects of the glow plug, and he restrained himself. "Lost him," he announced. "Second fucking time."

Daphne tried to speak, this time with far more purpose. She leaned forward to kneeling and pleaded with him to remove the gag again.

"No shouting!" he cautioned.

She shook her head. Prayers were not a part of her psychologist's tools, but she prayed silently nonetheless. As long as that gag remained on, she had no way to effect change.

Her prayers were answered. Flek stepped forward and unknotted the rag.

For a moment she said nothing, savoring the fresh air, and not wanting to rush him. When she did speak it was gentle and soothing, almost a whisper, devoid of fear or the trembling rage that she felt inside. She said, "We may be too far away from a cell tower. Maybe if we got closer to town… Maybe then the reception would improve."

Flek surveyed the area. Looked at her. Looked back at the sky.

There were so many places to start with a personality like his-drug-induced and filled with bloodthirsty rage and revenge. But it was a bit like those action films where the hero has to cut the right wire or the bomb explodes-to come after him from the wrong angle was to incite that rage, not defuse it. It was not something one jumped into lightly. She tried to strip away her own emotions, to work past her own agenda, and see this patient clearly. Right now, clarity of thought was everything.

He looked back at her.

She said, "Fresh batteries help. I have a spare battery in the bottom of my purse."

Perhaps he had overdone the glow plugs. Or perhaps on some level he knew the kind of trouble he had just brought onto himself by making contact with Boldt, by announcing his kidnapping of a police officer. Whatever the case, the man didn't seem to hear her, his own internal voices too loud for her to overcome.

"We could try to get closer to town," she said. "You could cuff me to the door. I don't need to ride in the trunk." If the Morse Code had been seen, then police were looking for this car. The closer to town, the better.

If he brought her inside the car with him, then she had a real chance at freedom, cuffed to the door or not. At the right moment she might deliver a properly placed kick to the head and end this.

"I could look for the towers while you drive." She didn't want to mention the phone's signal meter, because for all she knew the signal was perfectly fine out here. She wanted his attention on solving the problem, not assessing it.

She opted for silence, allowing his fuzzy logic to sort out her suggestions. To push too hard was to push him away.

"I'm going to put the gag back on, and you're going to lie back down. We'll drive closer to town."

To beg or plead was to admit subservience, and her job was to convince him of their partnership, to make herself needed and wanted. She fought off the temptation to whine and grovel. She took a breath and said calmly, "But when you reach him, he's going to want to hear my voice. Count on that! You know he will, Abby. And what then? Stop by the side of the road and pop the trunk? What if someone drives by? But a man and a woman in the front seat of a car-what's so suspicious about that? I'm trying to help you, Abby. Obviously, I want to live. I think he'll do what you want. I really do. But he's going to want to hear my voice." She added, "You could make him release Courtney. Have her delivered somewhere. It might take a little time-"

"Shut up!" he roared, his eyes floating in their sockets. Dizzy. Dazed. He shook the phone again, pulled it close to his face and pressed a couple buttons. He held it to his ear, yanked it away in frustration and ended the attempted call with a final stab of a finger.

"You fuck this up," he warned her, "and you will know so much pain you will wish you were dead. You will beg me to kill you." He grinned wickedly. "And I won't. Not until I'm good and ready. Not until I've had every inch of you." He added, "You ask Courtney about that. She knows."

He stepped forward. Daphne could taste her impending freedom.

" Osbourne can't kill the system, Sarge," LaMoia reported from the passenger seat, "but they can lock a phone out from the entire network-all the carriers-and that's what he's done: He's locked out both Matthews' and the number we have for Flek. Both phones will get a circuit-busy signal."

"Flek is known to carry more than one cloned phone," Boldt reminded. "He's got to kill the system." Samway had said he had only the one, but Boldt wasn't convinced.

LaMoia repeated the request into his phone and then listened. "Don't work that way," LaMoia said. "AirTyme's one of three carriers. Only some of the towers are theirs. They attempt an AirTyme handshake first, but if that fails, it's rerouted, first come, first serve-the call's going to go out."

"What about the location?"

"A couple minutes more to pinpoint it exactly, but we know it came from off-island."

"My phone's good to go?" Boldt asked.