Fran stayed stock-still. Santiago started the car and fishtailed on the lawn, heading back up Duck Bill Lane. Duncan opened his eyes, looking confused, then terrified. He hugged Fran, and she hugged him back.
“You took your time.” Stubin removed something small and black from his pocket. “I’ve had this thing on for ten minutes.”
Santiago frowned. “You might have helped us by saying the address.”
“I didn’t know the address.”
Fran watched Santiago check the rearview mirror. He touched his ear, which was crusted with dried blood. “That firefighter cabrón, I have to settle something with him.”
“It can wait.” Stubin squinted at the communicator. “Taylor and Logan have almost located Warren. They’re on Deer Tick Road. Take the next left you see.”
It was tough for Fran to find her voice with her skull being palmed like a basketball, but Duncan reached over and grabbed her hand, giving her strength.
“You found Warren. You can let us go.”
Stubin scrutinized her as if she were something he’d stepped in. “I suppose people only see what they want to see and ignore everything else. That’s why you trusted me. That’s why the U.S. military trusted me.”
Fran let the implications of that last line run through her head.
“The Red-ops team isn’t from Canada,” she stated.
“Of course not. They’re ours.”
The roadblock made a lot more sense now.
“They’re U.S., but the military didn’t order this,” Fran guessed. “They’re going to be angry with you.”
“They think I died in that helicopter explosion. Besides, they’re so busy making sure that no stories leak out that they aren’t even looking for us. Wouldn’t CNN just eat this up? U.S. terrorist cell destroys Wisconsin town. They’ll nuke Safe Haven before they let the word get out.”
“Let Duncan go.” Fran pursed her lips, keeping her tears at bay. “Please.”
Stubin gave an exaggerated sigh. “You don’t get it. You’re still useful to us.”
“Why?”
Santiago laughed. “Doesn’t this dumb puta know Warren is her father?”
Fran didn’t know what to say, how to react. She’d grown up the only child of a single mother who told Fran that her dad died in Vietnam. Mom got married when Fran was seven, and her stepfather adopted her. She hadn’t thought about her birth father in over two decades.
“It gets even better.” Stubin smiled, obviously enjoying this. “I’ve been looking for Warren for a long time. You couldn’t imagine the amount of research it took. The paper trail led me to Safe Haven. When we ran your car off the road a few years ago, we were hoping Warren would come out of hiding to visit you at the hospital or attend the funeral. He didn’t. Not exactly father-of-the-year material. Maybe he’ll show a bit more affection when we’re cutting off his grandson’s fingers outside his front door.”
Fran felt a panic attack coming on. The increased heartbeat. The sweaty palms. The hyperventilating. She thought back to the crash, to being trapped in the car, and flinched at the knowledge that it wasn’t an accident at all, that it was intentional. Her life, and Duncan’s, and Charles’s, shattered because some madman used her family as a tool to find a father she didn’t even know she had.
Fran began to shake. She felt a scream welling up, and she was ready to completely lose her grip on reality when Duncan whispered to her, “I’m afraid, Mom.”
And Fran knew she couldn’t afford to lose control. She had to remain calm, to look for escape opportunities, to be ready to act. For Duncan’s sake. So she stared the panic attack square in the eye and ordered it to go away.
Not this time. Not ever again.
The tremors left, and her heartbeat slowed, and her breathing became steady.
“Don’t be afraid of these assholes,” she told her son. “I’m not.”
Then she held Duncan tight to her chest and tried to be strong enough for both of them.
• • •
Sheriff Streng stopped the Jeep before turning onto Deer Tick Road. He opened the fuse box and used the little plastic pair of tweezers inside to pull out fuses for the brake lights, parking lights, headlights, and interior lights. When he got behind the wheel again he drove completely dark, navigating by feel and by the orange hunter’s moon.
En route, the communicator vibrated again, and Streng read a rambling message that he figured out was a live transcript of a conversation. A roadblock was mentioned, along with taking Fran and Duncan to see a doctor. It had to be Josh talking. Streng knew Josh took one of these communicators off of Ajax and wondered if he’d learned how it worked. If so, he needed to be careful; he was giving away his position.
Deer Tick was less a road and more a trail. It wound around the southernmost tip of Little Lake McDonald, but rather than hug the shoreline where the prime real estate was, it went the opposite way into the woods. Streng knew of only a few residences on Deer Tick: displaced trailers and shacks made of corrugated steel, long rusted out. Homes for the poor, the hopeless, and the crazy.
Wiley was one of the crazies.
He’d been that way since they were children. If there was a thimbleful of trouble to be found in all of Ashburn County, Wiley found it, and usually compounded it. He started young, breaking windows with slingshots, skipping school, stealing candy bars and comics from local businesses. That led to teen years marked by hot-wiring cars and boats for joy rides, running away from home for weeks at a time, selling drugs.
Streng had done his share of stupid things as a youngster, but he was more of a casual participant. Wiley was an instigator. Nowadays people like him were known as adrenaline junkies, and they BASE jumped and rode their bikes down mountainsides and went snorkeling with sharks. Back then he was simply known as a juvenile delinquent and probably would have spent his life behind bars if it hadn’t been for the draft lottery.
It wasn’t Wiley that had been drafted. It was Streng. He had his number called in July of 1972. Wiley enlisted to keep an eye on his little brother.
That plan didn’t work out for either of them—right after basic training they were sent to different locations. Streng went to the Second Platoon, Company B, First Battalion, Fourteenth Infantry, in the Chu Pa Region. Wiley went to the Kontum Province and the Fifty-second Aviation Battalion, where he became a helicopter door gunner and one of the most successful black-market traders of the region.
Streng scowled. He hadn’t spoken to Wiley in over thirty years and felt it was still too soon. But this had to be done, and there was no one else to do it.
The sand road was in such a state of disuse that grass and weeds grew in the center section between the tire treads. Streng heard them scrape against his undercarriage, a soft sound punctuated by an occasional thump when he ran over a fallen tree branch. He hit the brakes when he saw a familiar shape lying in the brush.
The sheriff kept the Jeep running and stepped out to investigate, holding one of Bernie’s lighters. Olen Porrell, on his back, a gas mask on his face caked with vomit. Streng had no idea why his friend wore the gas mask, but it apparently wasn’t enough to protect him. He didn’t want to get too close, so he watched to see if Olen moved or breathed. Olen did neither. Streng took a shallow sniff of air, trying to sense any off odors. He smelled the woods and nothing else.
Wiley liked booby traps. He’d liked them as a kid and really learned to like them in Vietnam, picking up many ideas from the Cong. But gas in an open area dissipated too quickly. Streng decided that this wasn’t one of his brother’s devices. Olen must have been exposed elsewhere, which also accounted for the missing Honey Wagon.