I put my hands on the steering wheel so they could see I wasn’t holding a weapon.
“Out of the car,” Blonder shouted again. He raised the gun in his right hand, steadied by his left. Something moved out of the corner of my right eye. Agent Other stood in front of the Jeep, his gun also raised to firing position.
I got out, slow, hands high. And stupid. “Call Till. I know where the bombs are.”
“Palms on the hood,” Blonder yelled.
Agent Other came around, holstering his gun. He pushed me against the hood of the Jeep. I managed to push out my palms in time to break my fall as I hit. Other kicked my legs apart and patted me down, then pulled my arms behind me, sending my chin onto the metal. Two snicks and I was handcuffed, trussed, wings back, like a Christmas turkey. Other pulled me up. “Back to our car.”
They marched me to the Crown Victoria. Agent Other openedthe rear door, put his palm on the top of my head, and gave me a quick nudge. I fell sideways onto the cold vinyl of the backseat like meat.
I pushed with my feet, managed to struggle upright, found a tinny voice. “What the hell are you guys doing?”
But I knew. I’d made the moves of someone trying to flee, and, when cornered, I’d made it worse by announcing that I knew where the bombs were, sounding every bit like the person who had planted them. They were rookies, but they knew to get me bundled up and neutralized in a heartbeat.
Other got in behind the wheel. Blonder took the front passenger’s seat and pulled out his phone.
My shoulders felt like they were slowly being torn from their sockets. I shifted on the seat until I could lean against the door and ease the pressure off my arms.
“My wife’s trapped inside-”
“Be quiet,” Other said from the front seat.
Blonder had reached whomever he called. “Yes, sir, I think he was attempting to escape.” He listened, then said, “He said to tell you he knows where the bombs are.” He’d called Till. There was another pause. “We’ll be right there.”
Blonder clicked off and nodded to Other. Other started the car and nailed the accelerator, throwing me back against the seat like a bottom-heavy punching dummy.
He sped west on Thompson, toward Gateville.
As on the night of the last house bombing, the road was blocked just past the crest of the hill by a Maple Hills squad car and white sawhorse barricades. Unlike the last time, there were no flames shooting into the sky at the base of the hill. From a distance, Gateville was a cluster of trailer searchlights, surrounded by a halfmile-wide ring of dark landscape. Till had cut the power to the area all around Gateville.
Two blue-uniformed young police officers, holding yellownosed flashlights, stood in front of the barricade. Agent Other slowed to a stop and held his I.D. out the window. One of the officers approached the car.
I rocked forward as best I could. “Can you tell me if a brunette in her midthirties tried to get through here in the last couple of hours?”
The officer bent down to peer through the back-door window, saw the way my arms were pinned behind me, and looked at Agent Other. Other shook his head. The Maple Hills officer nodded and handed back Other’s I.D., ignoring me. Other put the car in gear and started down the hill.
Blonder was back on the phone. “Yes, sir. Still cuffed.” He listened for a minute, nodded at nobody, and thumbed off the cell phone.
Agent Other had to pull off the road well before the entrance. Ahead of us, fire engines, ambulances, several squad cars, at least three tow trucks, and, at the very end, a lone yellow cab were lined along both sides of the blocked-off highway. Forty or fifty people milled around on the pavement, talking. A couple of them smoked. Most were in uniform: firemen in opened yellow slickers, police in dark blue, paramedics in white or light blue. Those wearing civilian clothes I guessed to be forensic technicians waiting for orders, or reporters with enough connections to get past the police barricade. I scanned them all slowly. Amanda wasn’t there.
I twisted on the seat to look at the compound to my left. Behind the brick wall at the east end, the sky and the tops of the houses were white, almost colorless, from the glare of the portable searchlights.
I pressed my face against the glass. The lights were all at the east end. I turned my head to check the northwest quadrant, where I’d told Stanley to tell Till to begin the search.
The sky above Amanda’s house was black.
They were searching at the wrong end.
I pushed myself forward and tried to sound calm. “Till is looking in the wrong place.”
Blonder spoke without looking at me. “Agent Till will come out when he can.”
“The bombs are at the west end, in the tunnels.” I spoke to the back of Blonder’s neck, slowly, making each word distinct.
This time both of them turned around.
I wanted to scream at their young, unmarked faces. “I left a message for Stanley Novak to search for tunnels in the west end. The bombs are there.”
Blonder’s eyes were unblinking. “How would you know that?”
“Get Stanley Novak.”
Blonder and Other looked at each other. Other shrugged. Blonder got out of the car and hurried across the highway to two Crystal Waters security guards standing a few feet from the entrance. He said something to them, and the two guards turned to look at our car. Blonder said something more, and then all three walked quickly across the highway to the Crown Victoria. One of the guards bent down to look at me through the side window. I recognized him from last Halloween. He’d been the guard that had pulled off my Wendell Phelps mask.
He moved to the open driver’s window. “Mr. Elstrom,” he said.
“Get me Stanley Novak.”
“The agent here tells me you know something about tunnels?”
“I left a message for Stanley.”
“What tunnels would those be, Mr. Elstrom?” the guard asked.
“Has my ex-wife been here?”
He made no secret of studying my red I LOVE ARKANSAS sweatshirt. “Are you here because of a marital issue?”
“Has Amanda Phelps been here?”
“No one’s been allowed in since five this morning.”
The other guard bent down. “Actually, that’s not true,” he saidto the first guard. “Miss Phelps phoned the guardhouse from the barricade a couple of hours ago, demanding to be let through. Said she had to remove some paintings. She insisted we call Stanley. We did, and he OK’d her coming through. He said he’d meet her at the guardhouse.”
“Where are they now?”
The guard shrugged.
“Let me out. I need to talk to Stanley.”
Blonder bent down to the window. “In a minute. You told Stanley Novak to search the west end first?”
“I left a message on his cell phone early yesterday morning, telling him about the abandoned tunnels at the west end. Then I talked to him. He was going to tell Till. Let me out.”
Blonder straightened up, and he and the two guards stepped away from the car. Blonder got on his phone and spoke for a minute. I heard the word “tunnel” three times. Blonder came back to the car. He opened the rear door.
“Agent Till wants you to wait for him in the guardhouse.”
I slid out of the car and wobbled to stand up. “How about the handcuffs?”
Other looked at Blonder, who nodded. Other took out his key and removed the cuffs.
My arm throbbed as I raised my hand to point at the end of the row of cars and trucks parked along the road. “Is that my wife’s cab?” I asked the Gateville guards.
“Don’t know,” the first one said.
“Amanda may be inside.” I started for the cab.
Blonder held out an arm to stop me.
“She can tell us where Stanley is,” I said, thinking no such thing, hoping she’d gotten rebuffed at the gate and was fuming in the cab, with a dead cell phone.
Blonder dropped his arm. With him at my left, Other on myright, and the two security guards following, we moved quickly down the line of vehicles.