“You’ve got enough personnel to cover all this?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” Chief Grimes said. “We got help from the state police and the county sheriff’s office. The FBI is on its way.”
Jake thanked the police chief and then hauled Lori outside. They had taken a taxi there and had it wait for them, but now Jake realized they needed a vehicle of their own. He really needed to get back to Missoula to pick up a few things, yet he wasn’t sure how he would do that right now, especially if the police chief was correct and they had been able to keep the kidnapper and Professor Tramil somewhere in Flathead County. However, he also knew that there wasn’t a blockade that could not be beat. He’d proven that many times himself.
“What are you thinking?” Lori asked him on the drive back to the airport.
He didn’t want her to know what he was really thinking. That he needed to get a gun. That Professor Tramil had perhaps twenty-four hours before that man killed him, assuming he could hold out that long. And there was more. Instead of the truth, he settled on something else. “I’m thinking we need to get a vehicle and then a proper breakfast.”
“Agreed.”
They did just that. The only vehicle left at the airport was a Ford Explorer with four-wheel-drive, a ski rack, and beefy tires. A lot of folks used this area as a jumping off point to Glacier National Park in the summer. But the winter was limited. Most of the roads were closed in the park. Snowmobiling was banned. But some hearty souls used cross country skis to access some of the lower elevation trails. There were other areas in the county to snowmobile, though. And, considering the fresh snow, Jake guessed many were taking advantage of that this weekend.
He drove them to a family restaurant in downtown Whitefish, where they sucked down eggs, hash browns and burnt coffee. They were in a back corner booth, Jake hoping nobody would recognize the congresswoman. So far nobody had.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked him and then took a sip of her coffee.
“I don’t know.” That was honest. “They could be anywhere.” Jake stared at his phone and wondered if he knew someone who could help them. But it wasn’t like he could have the NSA redirect satellites like they do in the movies, and pinpoint their location. Well, he might know someone.
“Maybe we should drive down to Missoula,” she suggested.
That was one possibility. He would be able to stop by his storage unit and pick up a few things there. Like a gun. Or two. He checked the internet on his cell phone and quickly found what he was looking for before shoving the phone back in his pocket. He threw cash for breakfast onto the table and got up.
“Let’s go, Lori,” he said. “I gotta see a man about a horse.”
She got up and said, “This better be a euphemism. Because it’s too cold to ride horses.”
Jake drove to the edge of town to a gun shop and bought a Glock semi-auto handgun in 9mm Luger with two extra magazines, along with a conceal holster for his right hip and three boxes of jacketed hollow points. In and out in an hour, including the background check.
Back in the Ford Explorer now, Lori said, “You’ve got to love America. A quick breakfast and buy a handgun all before noon.”
“That’s right, Lori. And don’t let those assholes in Washington try to change that.”
“Oh, I won’t. You gonna let me shoot that?”
“I was hoping you’d ask,” he said and started up the rental. Then he drove out of town to find a place to shoot. With wilderness all around, it wouldn’t be a long search.
11
The killer had brought Professor James Tramil from the police station directly to an isolated home a few miles north of Whitefish, Montana. Tramil had feared for his life the entire time, his whole precarious future streaking through his mind, wondering if this was how it would end for him. Who would care if he died? Would his obituary simply state the facts of his brief life? And what about a legacy? He had no wife, no children. He made a pact with himself, then and there, that if he somehow got out of this mess, he would try to work on a relationship. What were humans without the lineage of DNA, he wondered.
Now he sat on a small mattress on the cement floor of a dark, damp basement, his right leg shackled with a chain to a metal support post. He thought if he had a tool he could release the top part of the post from the wooden cross beam. No, the chain was attached to an immovable welded section. It wouldn’t rise up or down.
The room wasn’t entirely dark. A couple small windows were mostly covered with snow, but a sliver of light came through giving him a view of his surroundings. Someone liked to hoard. The room was stuffed with everything from lumber to old furniture, topped off with newspapers that probably dated back to the Nixon administration. Every now and then he would hear rustling in the junk, followed by a flash of movement. He guessed mice. Maybe rats. He wasn’t fond of either. One of his female colleagues at Oregon State would be trying now to determine the species. She was single, Tramil thought. And highly intelligent. Also, considering she wore no make-up, she was not unpleasant to look at. Her only detractor was the fact that she would probably never consider reproducing. The planet, after all, ‘had far too many people for continued sustainability.’ Her exact words.
Tramil shifted his position to keep his extremities from falling asleep. Realistically, he figured the more he moved the less likely the vermin would find him interesting. For that same reason, he would often talk to himself about perfectly inane subjects.
“I need to go on a long run,” he said aloud to himself. He looked at his running shoes on his feet and smiled. “Maybe I should find a nice open road and just keep running.”
The man with the buzz cut sat at the kitchen table, his gun in front of him, and his cell phone at his ear. He could hear the muffled voice again coming from the basement below.
“Hang on a second,” the man said. He got up and stamped on the floor until the man shut his mouth. He was afraid this scientist was unstable. No matter. Once they got what they wanted from him, his life wouldn’t be worth the price of a bullet. “Go ahead.”
His contact continued, “Make sure you don’t kill the man. We need his research.”
“You weren’t able to get the research from his server in Denver?”
“No. It was scrubbed clean.”
“Then where did he hide it?”
Silence on the other end as the caller and another man in the background talked in their native tongue. Then he said, “We don’t know. Are you sure you searched him? It’s not on him?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I had him strip down naked. I checked his clothes and his backpack. Everything but a cavity search.”
“Maybe he dropped it somewhere on the train.”
“I don’t think so. I had my eyes on him the entire time. Besides, he would never leave his work behind.”
“Well, then he could have left it somewhere in Oregon.”
“No way. This guy is a control freak. He would keep his baby close to him. I’ll find it.”
More discussion on the other end. This time muffled by the man putting his hand over the phone. Finally he came back and said, “We’re on our way there.”
“Why? I can handle this,” the man protested.
“We are not worried about a scientist,” the other one said, his accent really flowing now. “We are thinking about who else might want this scientist. We will be there by end of day.”
The man gazed outside into the back yard at the snowy scene. A couple of flying black devils, ravens from hell, kept sweeping around, too curious for their own good. He picked up his gun and rushed toward the back door, ending up on the stoop and waving his arms in the air. “Get the hell out of here.” He aimed his handgun at one on the ground, pecking its beak into an area exposed. His finger slid onto the trigger, but he hesitated and took it off and lowered the gun to his leg as the raven decided on its own to fly off into the wind.