Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

Rolling swales of bleached and dying field grass gave way to slate ponds stitched together by meandering streams the color of old steel. A pair of mallards rose and crossed the road, their wings beating so fast they seemed to fly without them, veering away from the Explorer and up into a guncotton sky.

Hope sat stone-faced in the passenger seat, a knot of concern worn on her brow like a birthmark. “How do we know that will work?”

“Because we’ve done it before,” Larson answered.

“But it hasn’t rung.”

“It will.” He’d call-forwarded her cell phone to his secure BlackBerry, and had then shut her cell phone off, to prevent any chance of her phone being triangulated, a sophisticated method of radio telemetry. If Penny had been kidnapped, and if her captors called, if an effort was made to negotiate, Larson believed it would only be to hold her on the line long enough to electronically track her location. He dared not underestimate the reach of the Romeros. If they could corrupt the federal court system-and some said they already had-then cell phones weren’t going to inhibit them.

“This drive is bringing back all sorts of stuff for me,” she said.

“Yup. Good stuff.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“What’s her name?” Hope asked, out of the blue.

“There is no ‘her.’ There’s a friend, Linda. It got heavy for a couple months, a long time ago, but it’s friends now, and that’s good.” He said, “You?”

“No.” She offered a mocking smile. “Not even close.”

She’d overheard Larson’s call to Linda, suggesting she stay with her mother for a day or two. The incident at the hospital and the kidnapping had rattled him. It seemed unlikely the Romeros would connect him to Hope, then his dog to Linda, but he’d never forgive himself should anything happen to her because of him.

Unsurprisingly, Linda had reacted calmly, her primary concern that he make sure he was taking all necessary precautions for himself.

“Did you come to St. Louis looking for me?” Larson asked. Why he couldn’t bring himself to ask the real question, about Penny, he wasn’t sure. The moment he’d heard the child’s age, he’d known. So why the indirect questioning?

She almost smiled. “Yeah, I did. Had no clue there’d be no way to find you once I got here. You’re not in information, not in any phone books. Nothing on the Internet. You’re worse than I was in protection.” She hesitated, as if ashamed to admit it. “I even sat outside the Federal building a couple different days looking for you. How’s that for sick?”

“Not at all.” He thought a moment. “ Much Ado About Nothing? Was that your laugh I heard?”

“Don’t miss the turn,” she said, indicating the left.

As if he would have.

“Are you sure there’s no way they can detect that I’ve call-forwarded my number? Why haven’t I heard from someone?”

Good job changing the subject, he thought. But at that very moment Larson’s BlackBerry chirped at his side to save them both.

Rather than answer himself, he pulled over sharply and caught a quick look at the caller ID: OUT OF AREA. Calls from anyone inside the Service came up PRIVATE on caller ID. Believing this could be intended for her, he passed her his phone, still ringing. He switched off the car as she cradled the BlackBerry awkwardly and pressed it to her ear.

“Hello?” Her eyes darted first to Larson, then out toward the landscape.

Larson leaned across to listen in and for a moment their heads touched and he felt that same sense of burning he had felt all those years ago. He withdrew quickly but now it was she who angled toward him, and again, he leaned to meet her.

“You are missing a package,” the voice said. “A very pretty little package.”

But the way the words were drawn out and strung together convinced Larson that the call was nothing but a ruse to buy time to trace Hope’s location. Larson’s BlackBerry was untraceable; and though it housed a GPS chip, that chip had to be switched on manually.

“You leave her out of this!” Hope blurted out, contrary to what she knew was required of her.

“Oh… but it’s a little late for that now, don’t you think? I wonder what Social Services would have said about you locking her out like that?”

Tracing calls worked both directions. The Romeros had to know that the full technological might and power of the Marshals Service would be summoned to locate this girl. So why play so loose with time? Caller ID was nearly instantaneous, whether the caller believed the line blocked or not. This caller had already stayed on much too long. Larson suspected that a reverse trace was under way: The caller had been advised to keep Hope engaged for as long as possible. But by remaining on the line, the caller was in fact leaving his own foot squarely in the bear trap.

Larson drew a fast circle in the air, indicating she should keep the caller talking.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“It’s not about what they-what we,” the male voice immediately corrected, “want. If you want to recover the missing package, I suggest you keep your phone close by your side. Instructions to follow.” The line cleared.

Larson found the caller’s slipup telling-from “they” to “we”-and the choice of language intriguing. It sounded as if the man had been reading from a script at the beginning and end but had improvised in between.

He took back the phone, expecting to hear from the Clayton office within minutes. The call had lasted plenty long enough for them to trace, even if some kind of switching device were involved. Sitting upright behind the wheel again, Larson turned the key.

Hope’s face was streaked with tears, her arms now crossed so tightly he wondered if she could breathe.

“Don’t,” he cautioned. “Don’t let them win. They want this kind of reaction from you.”

“Shut up!” she said, ratcheting her head away from him, gazing out at the patch-quilt geometry of some farmer’s labors.

“It helps them.”

“Leave it,” she told the tilled fields. After a moment she asked, “What now?”

“They think if you leave your phone on they’ll find you, and that will end it. But, we won this round. We’ll trace them. Maybe they know that, maybe they don’t.”

“So, what now?” she repeated.

“We’ll get you settled in at the farm. Normally a couple of our guys would join me, but Rotem and I think that’s too risky right now. Soon enough. Until then, basically, you’re missing and I’m AWOL. My boss has to plug a leak. Until then, you and I remain on our own. It’s best. I have some stuff to work through once you’re okay.”

“I am okay,” she said.

He had the car going again. “There’s a psychology to this-to abductions. I’m not expecting you to be able to detach. Of course not. But their plan is to play with you-to manipulate you into making a mistake and offering them a chance to kill you. That’s all they want. They don’t care about Penny the way we do,” a slip he covered by talking more quickly now, “and nothing they say one way or the other about her is the truth. What we know-what we absolutely know-is how important she is to them right now. She’s their passport to you. That’s all that matters, all there is. She’s a means to an end, and as long as we, I, the Service, keep them from getting you, Penny retains her value. Do you understand? It’s important you understand this. You don’t do anything without me knowing it. Nothing . I don’t know how, but they’re going to try to push you into something-we don’t know what it is yet-but what I need you to keep in mind is that denying them is the key.”