Джеймс Паттерсон - Three Women Disappear

I unpressed my palms and stood back up.

I had to be careful. This man mentioned others. The rest of his “team,” so I could assume that there were other fine gentlemen in the car that ran us off the road. If he was now in my canyon, shooting at me, what were these “others” doing?

I drew a little map in the dirt with a stick. The river. The highway. The cliff we tumbled over. The spot where our van was sprawled out like a turtle on its back. The waterfall. The crags. The cave containing my husband and child.

As far as I could tell, this guy, this corpse next to me, got lucky finding me out here on the south end of the canyon. Unless he had tracked me in a more sophisticated way than I was aware of, he wasn’t expecting me to be right here. The safer place to look—where I was betting his team was right now—was the area very close to the highway where we were run off.

So my new goal was to get to the main highway we were headed toward. A big eight-lane behemoth of glory.

Tray. Kiss. Kilt. I picked up Mr. SUV Driver’s rifle. It was scratched but didn’t look broken. I tried to cock it, but the gun didn’t cooperate.

Then I remembered— the phone!

I quickly turned back to him. I’d completely forgotten. I dug for his phone in his pocket, found it, and tried to turn it on. It was locked, as expected, but I should at least be able to dial 911, which I did… but got nothing. We were so far away from any signal, even a priority call wouldn’t get through.

I put it in my pocket, to try again later.

Tray. Kiss. Kilt.

I stood up and erased my map in the dirt with my shoe.

Kiss . Maybe I’d been onto something before, and Aaron really had kissed this guy’s wife. That made sense. No. No, it didn’t.

Why would Mr. SUV Driver bring all his friends? His driving maneuver seemed too premeditated for a crime of passion.

Who exactly was this “Jed” we were visiting? He supposedly had a ranch and lovely horses, fine, but why suddenly visit a guy we barely knew? Why had I agreed to this visit I knew nothing about?

Maybe he kissed some girl at work? But no, I didn’t think there were many single mingling types at Drake Oil.

I noticed my shadow on the ground. There was my silhouette, unchanged but for the gun in my hand. I was that woman. The gun woman.

My shadow seemed to belong to a different person.

Armed with a gun, a phone, and a new sense of purpose, I hiked over to the crest of the ridge. Tray Kiss . Maybe it’s actually Drake Is . I was replaying the audio in my head, not just the words. I was scrutinizing the nuances. Tray Kiss. Drake Is . The dead SUV driver was saying Drake Is Something.

“Drake is…” I said to myself, imitating his voice.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t imagine any other possibility.

What I was hoping to achieve was a good view of the back canyon. This was about a two-mile corridor. If Mr. SUV Driver had hiked through here, maybe his teammates were nearby. Fine. As bad as it sounded, I preferred this possibility to its catastrophic alternative: enemies might be heading toward my family , toward my injured husband and my tiny daughter. If they were willing to shoot at me—I mean, no questions asked, just shoot at me—what would they do to my daughter?

No way, not letting that happen. I needed to survey the terrain as fast as possible and plot a countermeasure. I sped up to a run, now among the top crags.

Drake. Is. Kilt. This was about my husband. This was about something he did. Said. I was replaying every aspect of Mr. SUV Driver’s voice in my head. Drake. Is. Kilt. Exhale . And I was now starting to hear the end of his speech a little differently. There was more of a word tucked in there. Drake. Is. Kilt. Something.

I was on the crest now, viewing the expanse of the valley. I could see the arroyo where Mr. SUV Driver first greeted me with his bullets.

Drake is guilty .

I finally heard it for what it was. Guilty. Drake , the oil company, is guilty .

But I couldn’t let the mental gyrations distract me from the puzzle in front of me. If there were other men out there, and Mr. SUV Driver came from the top of the far crest… they probably split up right before the crest. There—tracing his trail upward with my eyes I could see the other path, the one they might have followed. It led back to the crags. And that meant that they were already on their way back toward Aaron and Sierra.

Unacceptable. I needed them to go anywhere but into my nest.

Panic set in, flooding me with nervous, hand-wringing energy. But I already knew what I had to do.

There was no more time to waste.

I raised the rifle upward. I committed myself to a plan that would spur this cat-and-mouse game to its inevitable conclusion. I held it with both hands. Straight upward. Like I’ve seen on TV.

I fired, once. Bam . The recoil nearly knocked me to the ground, and the sound was startling, tearing into the soft silence.

You hear that, gentlemen? Bring it.

CHAPTER 10

DRAKE OIL IS a fine, fine oil institution. A group of nice people who just want to help America and kittens.

That’s what the ads would have you believe.

And that’s what the press would have you believe. The articles. The billboards. The way the cute logo was cutely designed. And, most of all, the way the quiet legal disagreements were quietly settled. Thanks to my husband.

This I knew. He is, after all, one of their lawyers.

I was running as fast as I could. Sure, I was trying to get them to follow me; but I couldn’t let them actually get me. I was going as fast as I could for as long as I could.

Without wind, this was the quietest space you can imagine. It was so still you could actually hear the silence. This was helpful. I should be able to hear anyone coming from behind me. When I stopped, every so often, I could listen.

There was nothing.

“Keep moving,” I whispered to myself.

My mind raced. Jesus, did my husband piss off somebody who settled a suit with Drake Oil? Who then needed vengeance on my family?

I continued this way, running as fast as my burning legs would allow, for what seemed like an hour. There were no footstep sounds behind me yet, but plodding along like the opposite of a ninja, I suddenly, faintly, heard someone yell something in the distance.

I stopped, trying to muffle my own panting. I needed to examine the silence, searching the air for the distinct sound of what I thought was a man’s shout.

Heart slamming against my breastbone, even my pulse became deafening.

I scanned the horizon behind me, the outline of the red columns of rock, searching for traces of a human shape. Probably one aiming a gun at me.

What in the world did Aaron do to get people to coordinate an attack against him? Did he stumble into something dangerous? The silence and stillness held no answers.

I got moving again. My legs were cramping, the stopping and starting becoming harder for my body to execute.

Aaron hadn’t said anything to me, but I imagined that his daily access to the entire legal landscape of Drake must have given him a glimpse of something insidious. He would’ve kept it secret from me, for fear that my unstoppable lungs would have bellowed it to anyone who’d listen. I couldn’t blame him. He was right.

I worked my way back up to a full sprint, capitalizing on the downhill grade, ignoring the cramps and the strains. I was nearing a huge area of boulders nestled near the river, coming around a blind corner, top speed, when the following disaster happened faster than I could process:

1. I heard a pop.

2. I crashed into an obstacle I didn’t think would be there and bounced off.