“It has to be yours,” she said, “in case of caller ID.” She slid his BlackBerry across to him. “We’d like it on speakerphone, please. Take the position that the ransom call has come in and you’ve been told it’s going to be paid.”
Sumner held the BlackBerry in his hand, briefly looking at it as if he’d never seen it before.
“God, what a mess,” he mumbled.
He looked up a number on the device.
“This wasn’t part of the agreement… a call from me. The idea was, no contact.”
“You’re concerned about your daughter, plans have changed. Be strong with him. Remind him you’re holding a card nearly as strong as his. If you turn yourself in to the police, there’ll be no money.”
“But why would I do that? That puts Summer in the middle.”
“She’s already in the middle. If you can negotiate her release ahead of the ransom, maybe they’ll take it. It’s all we’ve got.”
In Fiona’s opinion, Sumner wasn’t up to it.
But he punched in the number and hit the green button.
85
First came a radio call from his father. He’d located the camouflaged Learjet, ignored Walt, and entered the lodge without backup, and found evidence of a fight, some wet clothes, and no people. A radio had been destroyed, and there were signs that a room and a closet had been sealed up.
“Given that we found only two sets of prints at the zip line,” Jerry said, “they must have split up. That means they went with the river, as far as I can tell, but I’ll scout the woods.”
“You were going to wait for backup, Dad.”
There, he said it.
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda… he’s my grandson.”
Jerry ended the call.
Within minutes, Walt’s phone interrupted his chasing scuffs through the pine straw.
The call was the second from the office in the past fifteen minutes, this time rehashing Sumner’s contact with Cantell, a conversation that had gone poorly but which netted them Cantell’s lat/long coordinates, putting him less than a mile due west and moving in the same direction as Walt, south-southeast. Summer clearly was part of the ransom package. Cantell hadn’t budged from his demands.
Walt marked Cantell’s position on the map, being no pro when it came to the handheld GPS in his backpack, and determined he had a fighting chance of intercepting the hijackers. Cantell’s refusal to negotiate with the girl’s father, his original partner in the Learjet theft, sent up a flare. There would be no negotiating ever.
The position on the map seemed to imply that their destination was Morgan Creek Ranch as Walt had guessed. The Middle Fork ranches were all accessible by plane, and with the ranches being open during the summer, there likely was a plane on the property.
Given the remote location, the plan no doubt was to scout Morgan Creek Ranch and then escape by plane.
He couldn’t rule out the possibility that they might try to cross the river at the next zip line, in which case he was being handed an ideal setup for an ambush. But, then, why hadn’t more of them used the zip Kevin had?
The contradiction confused him. A possible explanation was that Cantell had split up his team and hostages to circumvent capture. Two different teams, each with a hostage, each with a different route out.
Was that it? Or was Kevin being lured to his grave in the woods.
The only solution was to keep following the tracks. Kevin’s rescue came first. Sumner’s daughter’s would have to wait.
Walt radioed Brandon, got his location.
“You left a dirt trail half a mile back,” Walt said, consulting the map.
“Affirmative.”
“Turn around and find that trail again. Follow it east to Morgan Creek Ranch. Cross the river however you can. Incapacitate any aircraft or ATVs, then evacuate the ranch. If there are any horses, take them.”
“Copy.”
“If you’ve got time, change into civvies and head out on horseback, north-northeast. Maybe there’s a trail you can pick up. You want to make a line for Mitchum’s.”
“Got it.”
“If you make contact, play dumb, and do your level best to stall them. Kevin will recognize you, so signal him if possible. Buy me some time to come up behind them, but don’t overplay your hand.”
“I’m with you.”
“If we have to hit them-and likely we will-then we’re going to hit them hard. You’ll have to turn off and hide your radio once you are on the trail, so this is our last contact. Hopefully, I’ll see you on the trail somewhere. If not, we go back on air in two hours.”
When Walt popped out of the forest, he was looking at another old zip line. The tracks led to the edge of the gorge, and the wobbly-looking chair on the far side was empty.
Walt glanced down at the roiling water some fifty feet below. Pulling on the rope, he moved the chair toward him.
86
The morning sun was beginning to bake as Kevin lay back in a crevice in the rock. With only the most minimal of movement, he lifted the binoculars for the umpteenth time and surveyed the lightly trod trail.
There!
Sounds of the forest came from behind Kevin: pine boughs sighing, magpies cawing, obnoxious squirrels chattering-all underscored by the river’s timeless advance. As the birds’ whitewash coating of the rocks warmed in the sun, stench surrounded him, overpowering the sweet smell of sage nearby and even the bitter trail dust at the back of his throat. All around, insects alighted, wings abuzz. Up ahead, blackbirds darted in and out of the boggy marsh across the trail, the red chevron on their wings a designation of rank.
The cowboy lay on his belly hidden in the waist-high grass at the edge of the marsh. Even though Kevin knew where to look, he couldn’t see John with the naked eye. He had to use the binoculars to work from one landmark to the next until he found the place. When he did, he saw John’s binoculars trained back at him. Kevin held up three fingers, and the cowboy nodded. Kevin held up his fingers again to make sure the message was clear.
Three people, he had signaled, not the four they had expected. The small guy-crazy, unpredictable-was nowhere to be seen.
The cowboy fashioned his hand into a gun and squeezed the trigger, then nodded. Game on. Kevin was to go ahead with the plan.
Kevin practically shit his pants. His mind suddenly cluttered up with all the stuff the cowboy had told him, all the stuff his uncle had told him, all the stuff his mother had told him-half a dozen voices competing for his attention.
Where was Matt? Had he been left behind following a climbing accident? Had he gone elsewhere? Or was he out there just waiting for him?
Strange things happened to time when Kevin was like this. Summer and her two abductors were a hundred yards off, now they were just sixty. Adrenaline charging through his system would not allow him to focus.
Forty yards.
His mind clouded. He wasn’t up to the challenge, didn’t deserve the trust the cowboy had placed in him. It was just him, after all, just Kevin.
He reached for the revolver. The cowboy had warned that its nickel plating might spark in the sunlight, so Kevin wrapped it in a handkerchief with only the dark hole at the open end of the barrel showing.
Yes, now he had it. It all came back to him. Not so hard, not so much to remember. The cowboy had kept it simple for him.
“Can you do this?” John had asked.
“Yes.”
“Say it. I want to hear it.”
“I can do it.”
Focus.
They were now within thirty yards of him, close enough to hear scuffing of weary boots on the trail. One of them coughed lightly.
The copilot was in the lead. He carried the shotgun in both hands. Next came Summer, a two-foot length of climbing rope tied around both calf muscles like a horse’s hobble: she could walk but not run. The pilot was last, three yards behind her, carrying the handgun in his left hand and watching her ass.