“Whatever you say.”
“We’ll talk about your choices later.”
The man stood up and carried his chair out of the room. For a second, Jake thought he was going to leave him shackled to the chair, but then the guy returned and grabbed Jake’s left wrist firmly in one hand. With his other, he unlocked the cuff, then tossed the key on Jake’s lap.
With surprising agility, he released Jake’s wrist and stepped back out of range.
“After you finish unlocking yourself, slide the key under the door,” he said.
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you never see me again.”
The man started to close the door.
“Wait,” Jake said.
The man looked back, silent.
“Do you have a name?”
A moment’s pause, then, “Call me Durrie.” With that, the man shut the door.
Jake unfastened his other wrist and his ankles, then did as the man — as Durrie—instructed, scooting the key through the small space under the door. He wasn’t sure if Durrie would follow through with the threat, but Jake felt now was not the time to test him.
He lay back on the bed, replaying the conversation in his mind. When he boiled it down, Durrie had basically told him three things besides his name: 1) that Jake would have been dead if Durrie hadn’t kidnapped him, 2) that he had little sense of humor, and 3) that Jake was going to be given some kind of choice.
Of the three things, the only one Jake was sure of was the lack of humor. Beyond that he had to assume it was all just talk. But talk was better than no talk at all, and the longer Jake could keep it going, the better the chance the man would make a mistake. Jake just had to bide his time, and not make a lot of waves.
Easier said than done.
“How?” Durrie asked.
Jake had no idea what time it was. There were no windows in his room. The only thing he knew was that this was their third conversation since his headache had passed, and that he’d slept several hours since the last one.
“What do you mean, ‘how’?” Jake said.
“You found the matchbook at the site. Fine. You followed it back to the hotel. That makes sense. You then convinced the hotel manager and the head of security to allow you to view camera footage from the night in question. But how did you pick us out?”
There was no easy answer to that since Jake himself wasn’t sure how he’d done it. “Just…a feeling, I guess.”
“A feeling.” Durrie stared at him. “You’re telling me you did it based on a random feeling?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jake was trying to be cooperative. Ultimately what they talked about was unimportant. If it helped increase Durrie’s trust in him, that’s all that mattered. But he could tell his captor wasn’t satisfied. “Well…um, the two other men — they kind of stood out.”
“How do you mean?” Durrie asked quickly.
Jake thought back. How did he mean it? “They were…trying…too hard to blend in, I think. I just got the sense that they didn’t really belong.”
“You could tell they were trying?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Jake blurted out, then regretted it immediately. Cooperation. Remember! “Sorry, it’s just I’m…”
“Being held against your will?”
The words surprised Jake. “Yeah. I guess that would be it, wouldn’t it?”
“I know you still won’t believe this, but this was the only way to keep you alive.”
It wasn’t the first time Durrie had said this, and as much as Jake wanted to push for more, he knew it would be better to wait.
When neither of them said anything for a moment, Durrie asked, “Is that how you spotted me?”
“No. You, I wouldn’t have picked out on my own. It was the other guy, the light-haired one who gave you away.”
“How?”
“He was in the elevator coming down from his floor. It stopped on number three, and you got on. The other man gave you a look that made me think he knew you. But you didn’t respond. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were involved or not until the parking lot.”
Durrie looked away, seemingly lost in his thoughts. Then, without another word, he got up and left the room.
Terminate him. Now, Durrie thought.
That was survival mode kicking in. Any identified threat needed to be dealt with immediately and permanently. It took everything he had to keep from running upstairs, grabbing his gun, and returning to put a bullet in Jake Oliver’s head.
Calm down. He was a threat. But not now. Or, at least, not at the moment.
What Oliver had proven once more was that he was gifted. Granted, he lacked training, but his raw skills were impressive. Given the right guidance, who knew what the kid might achieve?
That, of course, was dependent on a couple of factors. Would the kid be open to it? Really open to it? And even if he were, would Durrie have the patience to see it through?
The survival part of him was pushing for the kid to be turned over to Peter if Durrie wasn’t going to finish the job himself. While the rest was saying, “Isn’t this why you brought him here in the first place?”
So, what’s it going to be?
Jake was visited twice more by Durrie before he fell asleep again, but never to talk, only to bring in meals. It wasn’t that Jake didn’t try to engage him, but no matter what he said, Durrie never replied.
When he awoke the next morning — or what he assumed was the next morning — Durrie was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, staring at the bed. Behind him, the door was open.
Jake sat up quickly, startled.
“Tell me about the marks in the sand,” Durrie said.
“What?”
“The marks in the sand, outside the barn. Describe them.”
Jake took a second to realize what he was talking about, then thought back to the night of the fire. “Which ones? By the tank, or in between the tank and the building?”
“Start with the tank.”
“Okay. The dirt was disturbed.”
“All the dirt was loose in that area. How could you tell it was disturbed?”
“The patterns. There was a portion of the dirt that looked like it was moving in the same direction, but askew to the pattern of the dirt around it. I guess it looked like it had been pushed there.”
Durrie nodded for a moment. “I was in a hurry. If I’d taken more time, you would have never seen it.”
Jake stared at him. This was the first direct confirmation that his theory of the men being involved with the Goodman Ranch Road murder was correct. “You were there.”
“Don’t get all excited,” Durrie said. “I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.”
“But one of your friends did.”
“They aren’t my friends.”
“One of the men you were with, then.”
“Tell me about what you found between the tank and the building.”
Jake said nothing for a moment, then, “All right. It was less than an inch long, a kind of rounded cradle in the sand that might have been created by a rope or a thick wire.”
“A cable,” Durrie said.
Jake looked at him, his brow creased. “For what?”
“Video monitoring.”
“Of…what was going on in the barn?”
“How did you find it?” Durrie asked, ignoring the question.
“I…uh, found traces of more disturbed dirt, followed it, and found the mark. I guess it was a spot you missed.”
“I guess it was. That’s what happens when you work with fools and are forced into a hurry-up situation that should have never occurred.”