Ridley Pearson - Cut and Run

Rotem connected the threads of the sergeant’s logic. “You’re saying if we get the power company’s permission to use their lines, we’re good to go?”

Forsyth caught on. “No one ever actually touches foot on the soil below those lines…”

Rotem met eyes with LaMoia in the dim light of the glowing communications console.

LaMoia grinned. “No trespass. No probable cause requirement as long as you keep to surveillance.”

“How very creative of you.”

“It wasn’t my idea, but I’ll pass along your appreciation. Once you’re in, if you’re lucky, you use the surveillance to find probable cause, and then you’re really in.”

“Providing you get lucky and happen to see something.” Rotem wasn’t complaining, but it wasn’t a gimme.

“There’s always that,” LaMoia admitted. “But if they happen to see you, it’s amazing what kind of felonies take place. The bad guys never love to see SWAT guys dangling from their power lines.”

“That borders on entrapment,” Rotem said, but seeing how easily one thing might lead to another and win them their probable cause.

“That’s showbiz.” LaMoia winked. “You want my guys to pull out the Skyjacks, just give the word.”

“Word,” Rotem said, already dialing his cell phone to roust the Assistant United States Attorney in order to push for the power company’s cooperation.

Hunched low to the ground, Larson headed past the out-of-bounds markers and down the grassy slope toward the barn, now fifty yards away. The urgency of finding Penny only increased as the prospect of an armed federal raid of the Romeros’ meeting loomed. Things would likely get ugly, and he didn’t want Penny caught in the crossfire.

This end of the golf course hosted the occasional fairway home. It seemed possible the woman might have come from one of them. Perhaps nothing more than a pregnant mare or a sick horse explained her late-night visit in the dark, but Larson had convinced himself the barn was worth pursuing, and there was no turning back.

Below, a set of windows lit up. A tack room, office, or storage room-any one of which would work for sequestering a kidnapped child.

Reaching the barn, Larson moved away from the glowing windows, avoiding what Service field instructors called the “moth syndrome.” He held close to the barn wall, moving quietly. More interior lights switched on directly overhead, the yellow glare spilling out and revealing to his right a thick stand of sixty-foot evergreens. Larson passed an open-ended enclosure where bales of hay were stacked. There was a pitchfork stabbed into one, and for a moment he debated bringing it along. He rounded the far corner and encountered two enormous twin barn doors, a slice of bright light escaping. He placed his eye to this crack and saw the woman-quite the beauty-walk quickly down the stable aisle toward him.

Mid-twenties. Well postured. Mediterranean or Hispanic. A brazen confidence in her dark eyes and pursed lips. She stopped at a stall and slid its door open. She stepped inside.

Larson hurried now, coming fully around the far side of the barn. Alert for guards-for if Penny was here, there should be guards-but saw none. He also failed to spot video or security devices. Reaching the barn’s other end, before rounding the corner he saw a trapezoid of light spread out onto a pad of pavers, suggesting opened doors.

It was here that the horses were groomed and washed and saddled, sheltered from the area’s persistent rain by an enormous roof overhang. He saw now that the first windows he’d seen lit indeed belonged to a tack room. Still no guards. No trap. It doused his earlier optimism.

But then another thought: Horses meant riding trails. Even on a large estate like this the trails probably led off the property and into the surrounding woods. This meant a safe means of escape for Penny should he find her.

Feeling he’d blown it by following her here, he peered down the stable’s well-lit aisle, determined to make something out of it. What he lacked was information. The strong-bodied Italian guy who’d been driving the Mercedes, who was almost certainly the man who’d come so close to him back on the fairway, had shouted at this woman. If indeed she proved to be Katie-his wife? sister? associate?-it implied an intimacy between the two. She could know something of value. He’d wasted too much time not to seize even this small opportunity.

Most of the stall doors remained shut, some with lead ropes hanging outside them. A few stood open.

He ducked inside the first open one he found, hid in the shadows with the potent, but not unpleasant, odor of manure and hay and horses enveloping him. Open stall by open stall, Larson moved closer to her. Was it possible that this woman was the guard? That she’d been caught off her post and been shouted at by the boss?

At once, her whispering voice carried in the air. “I’ll miss you so much. They’ll treat you well. I promise.”

Larson buoyed with hope, riding a seesaw of emotions. First failure, then possibility. Penny’s guard might be in the stall with her. Perhaps she was sick or needed an adult woman’s attention. Perhaps Larson was closer to finding her than he thought.

He moved to a stall directly across from the one he believed she’d entered. He listened for the sound of a child’s voice, twice nearly convincing himself he heard it.

Then silence. Two excruciating minutes of it. He stole a look across the aisle through the wrought-iron bars. Saw nothing. Quietly he drew his weapon, wondering if he was the reason for the sudden change. The gun hung heavily in his hand. He realized how tired he was. He summoned a deep breath, gripped the weapon in both hands, and prepared to cross the aisle.

At that instant, the stall door in front of him slid quickly and loudly shut, a roar of steel wheels on tracks. Larson jumped back, surprised by it. By the time he recovered, the door was now closed. He heard the fading, hurried patter of footfalls on the dirt aisle.

Larson tugged on the door, but it didn’t move. Locked, from the outside.

He stuffed the gun away. He’d been jailed.

She would signal the others. He would have an army after him. Any chance of saving Penny was lost.

He jumped up and pulled himself over the stall’s eight-foot walls topped with ornamental ironwork. Up and over and gracelessly down.

Larson crossed the aisle, tore open the opposing stall door, and faced a chestnut mare.

The woman had been saying good-bye to a horse.

He sprinted and first caught sight of her again outside the barn. She had a good twenty yards on him and was a fast runner. If he allowed her to reach the top of the hill, it was over. She glanced over her shoulder, and he gained a step or two on her. Agile, and quick on her feet, she coughed as she cut left into the woods. She slowed a step, a sprinter, not a marathoner.

Larson closed on her.

Faint cracks of light were all Penny saw. Dust in the air, like when her mom shook a bedsheet by a window, little sparks of light like fireflies. Something cold and damp upon which she sat in this new prison. The sweet smell of lumber mixed with other scents foreign to her and unpleasant. Sour. Tangy. The taste of metal in the cool air.

Where was she?

Her ears rang and her toes felt numb, which was to say they didn’t feel at all. She had to go potty and she was fiercely thirsty and stomach-growling hungry. Afraid of the dark, she shut her eyes against it, finding her private darkness more tolerable than the blind darkness that faced her. Silence like a sponge, soaking up any hint of life, even the sound of her own breathing.

And then, as she dared to open her eyes again, dared to face that demon of darkness that had for so long made her shut her closet door before bed, there in the swirling grays and formless blacks, a shape slowly took form. And she gasped.