“What the hell are you doing?” Parrish snapped.
“Unlike you, I haven’t had a chance to sleep.”
“There’s a place not far from here where we’ll be stopping for supplies. We can all sleep then.”
“That’s great, but I’ve only had about four hours of sleep in the last forty-eight, and I’ve hit a wall. Someone else is going to have to drive.”
Kai, who had awakened when the car stopped, stretched and said, “I could do it.”
Parrish stared at Donovan through narrowed eyes, then said, “I’ll drive. Donovan will be back here, with Irene. Kai, I need you to take charge of my weapon. You must be on your guard.”
Kai eagerly accepted this responsibility. The doors were unlocked. Donovan moved to the backseat, Parrish to the front. I considered trying to use that moment to escape into the darkness and rejected it-with my ankles bound, I would get no more than a few feet from the car, and Kai was clearly hoping I’d do something to justify making his assignment a brief one.
Parrish locked the doors and began to drive. Kai shifted his attention to Donovan.
I watched Donovan almost as carefully as Kai did, and noticed Parrish angling the rearview mirror so that he joined Donovan’s audience. But almost as soon as Donovan had taken his place in the back, he closed his eyes. His breathing grew slow and rhythmic. I waited to see if he was faking it. If he was, he was convincing.
Parrish moved the mirror. Kai returned to staring at me the way a six-year-old might stare at a batch of cooling cookies. I broke eye contact with him, and only then did I catch movement nearby. Donovan’s left hand was on his knee, near the back of Kai’s seat. His index finger was moving. His hand could not be seen by Parrish or Kai.
I stretched as much as I could within my bonds, movement that, as intended, kept Kai’s eyes on me. Under the cover of rolling my head from side to side to as if I were getting the kinks out of my neck, I watched Donovan’s finger tapping on his knee.
If I hadn’t just spent hours honing my skills with Violet, I might have failed to recognize his use of Morse code.
…– ….-……-. -.- --…- -.-..- -.
Sleep if you can.
Right. It was so relaxing being in a car with two serial killers and a kidnapper, I was going to go off into dreamland and let them take me wherever they wanted to go. I wasn’t going to pay attention to where I was being taken or watch for any opportunity to escape before they took me there.
He could not be serious.
I watched Donovan more openly, without any need to feign my wariness of him. He stopped signaling me. His breathing slowed. I was nearly certain that he was truly asleep.
I looked out the window into the blackness of the desert and considered the other side of the question of sleep. I had spent most of the last twenty-four hours feeling terrified. I had done the physical work necessary for the care of Violet and Kai. I had engaged in two short, futile fights with Donovan. I was tired. I could feel the effect on my judgment and emotions.
If I did manage to escape, I would need to be as rested as possible to stay free from Parrish. I wasn’t going to be able to change anything about where I was being taken. Knowing the general direction we were headed, I had little doubt that we’d end up in the Sierras, where Nick Parrish had spent plenty of time before he was arrested.
I wasn’t sure that Donovan was an ally. I felt uneasy about the idea of sleeping while Kai pointed a gun at me.
But I wanted to be able to fight and run and do whatever else was required to survive, and I’d stand a better chance of doing all that if I conserved my energy now and rested. If I was too exhausted to think clearly, escape was even more unlikely.
Nick Parrish glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
I closed my eyes and leaned against the cold glass of the window. The last thing I remember telling myself before I fell asleep was that if Nick Parrish was watching me, it would be safer to stay awake.
FORTY-ONE
In the end, they had taken two vehicles, knowing that it might be necessary to split up for a while, and now, about an hour before dawn, their caravan had reached their destination-or near it, parked about fifty yards from the partially open front gate of what appeared to be a private camp. Signs posted at regular intervals along a tall iron fence warned that this was private property, “Keep Out.” A large wooden sign at the gate carried more specific warnings about prosecution. “An unlocked gate and a no trespassing sign,” Jack said. “I hardly know what to do with myself.”
“Could have saved the time it took me to get the lock picks from Rachel.”
“Never know-still might need them.”
They got out of the Jeep Cherokee and walked back to where Ben and Ethan and the dogs-Bingle and Bool-waited in Ben’s SUV.
Jack had made arrangements with Travis to be waiting with one of their Sikorskys at a nearby location. If Irene was here and needed medical attention, they’d be able to fly her to a hospital faster than they could ever make the trip down mountain roads. Travis had already called to say he had landed the helicopter at the field and was ready to help in any way he could.
This address, in an unincorporated area of the San Bernardino Mountains, was the only recent out-of-town destination Frank had found on the GPS in the Ford Escape.
Frank asked the others to wait in Ben’s SUV, with instructions on whom to call at the first sign of trouble. At first all three refused to be left behind, but after a brief but intense argument, it was agreed that Jack would go with Frank while Ben and Ethan stayed back. At Ben’s insistence, Frank called Ben’s phone from his own and stayed connected to that call, using his wireless headset.
“You understand I’m not going to narrate every step I take?” Frank said.
“Yes, and I’m not going to distract you by constantly talking to you,” Ben replied. “But we’re not going to be able to see you and Jack out there in the dark, and if you’re in trouble, I want to know right away.”
Despite his sense of urgency, Frank waited and watched for several minutes before moving closer to the gate and the small house just inside it. The house was clearly a gatekeeper’s or caretaker’s lodge, painted in the dark hunter green color that must be sold by the tanker truckload to mountain camps.
He gave more than a moment’s thought to a set of names engraved on a granite memorial in front of the Las Piernas Police Department, all murdered on the same date, all slain by a trap set by Parrish. Good friends, some of them.
He told himself this had all the earmarks of a similar trap. He didn’t know who had sent the text messages. Parrish could have sent them himself. He considered, not for the first time, calling in the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department. It would be the smart thing to do. The right thing. But he knew the result would be calls made to Las Piernas and questions raised there and, in all likelihood, his own detention. He had friends in the San Berdoo office, but even if they responded immediately, it would take time for them to contact their bomb squad and get it up here.
He told himself this was foolishness that might end up getting him killed-and Jack, Ethan, and Ben along with him.
Then he thought of his wife spending even another ten minutes under Parrish’s control.
He looked at Jack. His friend’s facial features were barely visible in the darkness, but Frank felt as if Jack had read his thoughts. His eyes held a look of determination-and a hint of impatience.
Frank smiled. “You sure you don’t want to wait here, Jack?” he said quietly. “If something happens to you, the whole economy of Las Piernas is going to be fucked.”