In her room she began to review her situation. She was alone hundreds of miles from New York, and she hadn’t even seen a telephone in the house. She got out her iPhone, but couldn’t get a signal. Rummaging in her bag, she found the throwaway cell phone that Van had given her, but she couldn’t get a signal on that, either. She got up and walked out onto her deck. She found that she could get a weak signal if she stood in a corner on the seaward side.
She sat in a lounge chair for a while, then she walked back to the corner, took out the throwaway, and pressed the button that called Van’s number. No one answered, but she had been told to expect that. Instead, she heard only a beep.
“Van,” she said hesitantly, “this is Sherry. I’m sorry about the other night. I was under a lot of pressure. I was sure they were after you, so I’m glad you didn’t show. I’m at a house in Maine, near Rockland, owned by the Thomases. It’s deserted, except for a handyman and a housekeeper, who seem to be watching me closely. I don’t have a car, and I’m starting to worry about what could happen to me here. I’m getting a very weak signal from one spot on a deck outside my room. Will you call me on this phone tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp? I’ll stand in this spot and wait for your call.”
Bob Cantor got the message in the late afternoon and tried to call Sherry immediately, but the call wouldn’t go through. He made a mental note to try her at ten the following morning, then he went down to Stone’s office.
“What’s up, Bob?”
“I’ve heard from Sherry, the girl from H. Thomas. She left a message saying they’ve got her stashed at a house in Maine, near Rockland, and she’s nervous.” He explained about the cell signal.
“Could this be another attempt to smoke you out?”
“Smoke me out in Maine?”
“Do you think she’s in trouble?”
“I think she thinks she’s in trouble, and she doesn’t have a car.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Here’s what you tell her.” He gave Bob detailed instructions for the girl.
“I’ll tell her tomorrow morning at ten,” Bob said.
“If, after talking to her, you think she’s in imminent danger, we’ll fly up to Rockland immediately and find her.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Bob said.
12
The following morning Sherry had breakfast in her room. Then, when Heather returned for the tray, she said that she wasn’t feeling well and needed to sleep some more. Approaching ten o’clock, she got up and took the throwaway to the deck.
She had been waiting for a couple of minutes when the phone vibrated. “Van?” she asked.
“Yes,” Bob replied. “Do you want to get out of there?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But you have no transportation?”
“I have a golf cart available.”
“Electric, or does it have an engine?”
“Electric.”
“All right, here’s what you do: you take the golf cart to somewhere out of sight of the house, where you can get a signal. Then you google a cab service and have yourself driven up the coast to Lincolnville, which is just a wide place in the road, but it has a ferry service that runs every hour or so to an island called Islesboro. When you get aboard the ferry, call a cab in the village of Dark Harbor, and have them meet the ferry. Tell the driver you want to go to the house next door to the yacht club. And when you get there, go to your left around the house, and you’ll find the caretaker’s cabin. His name is Seth Hotchkiss. He will let you into the house and give you a guest room. When you’re settled, call me. Have you got all that?”
She repeated the instructions without error.
“All right, now I’ll give you a plan B. If, for any reason, you can’t get to Lincolnville go to Camden — to Wayfarer Marina, on the north shore of the harbor. Look for a large motor yacht called Breeze, and ask for Captain Todd. He’ll know what to do. Have you got that?”
“Yes, both plans A and B.”
“Call me when you’re safe.”
“Thank you, Van.”
He hung up.
Sherry got into her bathing suit, then packed her single rolling bag. She opened the door of her room and looked up and down the hallway, then walked quickly down the hall and found a door leading to the back stairs. She knew the golf cart was kept behind the house in a shed.
She went back for her case and let herself out onto the stairway, then stopped and listened. She heard a sound like a lid being put on a pot, and she froze. Then she heard Hurd’s voice.
“Where is she?”
“Still in bed, said she wanted to sleep some more.”
Hurd seemed to leave the kitchen because they stopped talking. Sherry picked up her bag, slung her pocketbook over her shoulder, and walked carefully down the stairs, staying near the wall to avoid squeaking steps. At the bottom, she opened the rear door and looked around. She thought she heard the van start up at the front of the house.
She trotted to the shed, put her bag on the rear seat, then got into the golf cart. There was no key in the ignition. She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself, then got out of the cart and began looking for the key. She heard the van drive away from the house.
She made a complete circuit of the shed’s interior and found the key hanging on a nail behind the door. A moment later she switched on the cart, put it in gear, and eased out of the shed. She was at the corner of the house before she figured out that she was going toward the beach, not the road. She stopped, realizing that to get to the road she would have to drive past the kitchen windows.
She wasn’t sure which way the van had gone, but she made a U-turn and drove slowly around the house, stopping at a corner to take a look out front. The van was nowhere in sight.
She got back into the cart and drove, not too fast, toward the road to the main highway. Halfway there, she came to a hard stop. Ahead of her perhaps fifty yards, the van was parked at one side of the road. She heard the sound of a chain saw, then she saw Hurd come out of the woods and load some cut wood in the back of the van, then return to the woods.
She started to move again, but then she saw something she needed beside the road. She got out, picked it up, and placed it on the seat beside her. The chain saw started again; this was her opportunity. Hurd was wearing ear protection, so he wouldn’t hear her. She floored the golf cart and was disappointed when the speedometer registered only fifteen miles an hour, apparently the cart’s top speed. She thought for a few seconds about stealing the van, then thought better of it. As she drew close to the other vehicle, she could still hear the chain saw. She couldn’t see Hurd, but as she passed the van he stepped into the roadway, holding an armload of wood.
“Hey!” he yelled as she passed him, then he started to run after the cart. To her consternation, the cart began to slow down. She looked at the dashboard and saw the low-battery warning light flashing, then remembered that the cart had not been plugged into a charger in the shed.
She looked into the rearview mirror and saw Hurd running and gaining on her. She stopped the cart and grabbed the rock she had picked up from the road. It was the size of a softball but heavier. She got out of the cart, drew back, and threw it at his head. She hoped it would connect because she didn’t have another one.
The rock struck Hurd on the left side of his forehead, and he went down like a sack of beans, then lay still, blood trickling from his forehead. She picked up the rock and threw it into the woods, then moved her bag from the cart to the van, got it started, and drove on toward the highway.
She wanted to separate herself from the van as soon as possible, so when a service station with a Subway sandwich shop attached came into sight, she pulled off the road, drove behind the building, and got her bag out. She googled taxi services, found one, and asked to be picked up at the Subway, destination Lincolnville.