Lisa Gardner - Touch & Go

Made sense to Wyatt. One by one, they agreed.

“Vests?” he double-checked.

They were a good crew. They were prepared. Better yet, they were excited to get out there and do some good.

Wyatt grabbed the handheld GPS tracker. They booted it up, plugged in the coordinates.

And just like that they were ready to go.

WYATT HAD BEEN MARRIED ONCE. Stacey Kupeski. Beautiful girl. Great laugh. That’s what originally caught his attention. Literally, across the room in a crowded bar, he’d heard that laugh and just known he had to hear it more. They’d dated six months, then tied the knot. She owned a high-end boutique that specialized in fancy Western belts and glittery tops and lots of other bling women seemed to think they needed for big nights out. Being retail, Stacey worked holidays and weekends, which seemed a good fit for his job, given that criminal activity inevitably spiked during every major holiday, not to mention most lazy Sunday afternoons.

Except, that became the problem. She was working and he was working, their paths crossing basically on Monday night, when she’d want to go “do something” and he mostly wanted to varnish a piece of wood just so he could watch it dry. They made a go of it for eighteen months. Then she started going out and “doing something” with the husband of one of her best customers. That wife went crazy, trashed Stacey’s store, while the husband got a restraining order, and Wyatt got out of his marriage. Turned out, he only liked drama on the job, not in his personal life.

Besides, he found he wasn’t really that upset with Stacey, which struck him as not a good thing. If your wife was sleeping with some other guy, you should probably care. At least he and Stacey were still friends to this day. Mostly, because Wyatt still didn’t much care.

His only regret: He would’ve liked kids. Not with Stacey. Oh no, that would’ve been a disaster. But in an abstract gain-two-point-two-kids-but-not-an-ex-wife sort of way, he would’ve loved children. Boy, girl, didn’t really matter. Someone to build tree houses and toss a ball and just be with. Maybe a little version of himself he could teach a few things to before it inevitably grew into a teenage version of himself and passionately declared, You just don’t understand me! But even that would be good. A rite of passage. The way the world was meant to go round.

Not going to happen at his age, he figured, so he borrowed his friends’ kids, helping them build clocks and jewelry boxes and once, even a pirate’s chest. Good Saturday afternoon activities. Made the little ones proud to have made something with their own hands, and made him feel like he had something worth sharing other than investigative skills 101.

These days, his mom was trying to get him to adopt a dog. Maybe an older rescue animal. He had a good mojo for that kind of thing, she kept telling him, which seemed to imply that his current lifestyle was one step away from a monk’s.

Sometime soon, he’d go on a date. But first, he wanted to build that wine cabinet. And today, rescue a missing Boston family.

They’d reached the old diner. He and Gina had volunteered to be the turn-in vehicle. Not the biggest undercover operation in the world, given that even an unmarked police car screamed cop and they were both in uniform. Their hats were off for now, making them appear civilian at least from the shoulders up, as Wyatt casually slowed the car, put on the blinker.

No sign of any vehicles in front of the diner. As Gina had said, the old building was boarded up. He drove to the left side, away from the blinking GPS target, as he didn’t want to get too close too fast. Mostly, he wanted to peek behind the building.

Still no sign of any vehicles. Or an open door. Or cracked window.

He looped an easy circle, as if just turning around and now preparing to head back on the road.

Gina had the handheld tracker on her lap. She was looking down at it. “Due north, fifty feet,” she murmured.

Wyatt looked due north. He spotted trees, lined by dense vegetation. He also spotted twin tire tracks, fresh, more deeply rutted, approaching the edge of the woods. A second set of tracks, slightly parallel to the first, showed where the vehicle had backed up, then headed back to the road.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Gina glanced at him.

“Vehicle was here. Looks like it pulled up to the woods, then left again.” He didn’t say the rest. As if to dump something. Perhaps just a jacket, but, more likely, a body wearing said jacket.

Gina reached around for her hat. Wordlessly, she shoved it down on her head, while he got on the radio and relayed their status to their backup car. He heard back from Kevin; ETA on foot in five minutes.

Close enough, Wyatt figured. Action here was over and done. Not even a matter of what he could see, the tracks and all, but what he could feel. The property was abandoned. Plain and simple.

He and Gina got out together, taking a moment to pause with their doors open for cover, just in case. When nothing moved, no shots were fired, no suspects magically bolted from a boarded-up building, they continued on.

Wyatt had out a digital camera. Gina still worked the handheld.

“Watch the ground,” he instructed her. “Avoid tread marks, footprints, any other signs of disturbance. Feds are gonna work this later, and I’ll be damned if they chew our asses.”

She nodded in agreement.

She was keeping a cool face, expression neutral, but he could see a slight tremor in her hand as she held the GPS tracker in front of her. Not fear, he’d guess, though maybe. But either way, adrenaline. He had it crashing through his bloodstream as well, heart rate slightly accelerated as he faced a known unknown. Something and/or someone loomed before them.

They approached together, him in the lead, Gina two steps back, tucked slightly behind him because presenting one target was bad enough; two targets would be just plain stupid.

Wind blew, rippling the low bushes, swaying the trees. Broad daylight, sun shining. A bird, here and there. The sound of a car, rushing by at forty-five miles per hour on the rural road, passing them by.

“Fifteen feet,” Gina murmured.

He placed his right hand on his holstered weapon, as prepared as one could be.

“Ten feet.”

And then, Wyatt didn’t need her anymore. He saw it, plain as day. A darker lump tangled in a sea of sparse green. Not a body, thank heavens, but a large swath of fabric, wadded up, tossed in a twiggy bush.

His hand came down. He approached more briskly, brow already furrowing. Gina had seen the blue material as well. She lowered the handheld tracker and got on the radio to let the others know.

Then they both came to a halt, regarding the lump of fabric, thrown waist high in the bush.

“Doesn’t look like much,” Gina said. “Not even a whole coat.”

Wyatt pulled on gloves, then gingerly untangled the lightweight material, holding the long strip up in front of them. Nice fabric, he thought. Some of that high-tech stuff meant to keep you warm and dry and still look good in pictures at the summit. Cost some dough, he’d bet, as befitting some rich Bostonian.

He felt around with his gloves, until he came across a flat, thin shape in the lower part of the strip, the GPS device. He fingered the edges, where the material was jagged and frayed.

“Kidnappers figured it out,” he said after another minute, glancing around the scene. Kevin, Jeff and the other deputy had arrived, walking the length of the dirt parking lot to meet them. “Maybe Justin Denbe confessed, or the kidnappers discovered it upon closer inspection, but they figured out the jacket contained a GPS device, so they cut it out, looks like with a serrated blade, and tossed it.”