16
San Diego, California
The trip from the Scotts Flat Reservoir to San Diego took more than ten hours. Mina stopped for gas only once, in Bakersfield. She worried that Brenda might awaken when the vehicle came to a stop and start bumping and thumping around in the trunk. Fortunately that didn’t happen.
Back outside, there was still no sound from the trunk as Mina filled the gas tank and drove away. Once she was on I-5 heading south, Mina kept herself awake by thinking about Richard Lowensdale.
When Mina waved the hammer in front of Richard’s face, he must have known that it wasn’t an empty threat. He had fallen still and silent just as Mina had known he would. That was what most people did when they were faced with an unanticipated threat: they complied.
That was exactly what Mina’s family had done all those years earlier when a gang of marauding Serbs had invaded their home in Bosnia. In hopes of surviving, they too had done exactly what they’d been told. Not imagining that people who had once been their neighbors would turn against them, Ermina’s family had allowed themselves to be herded into the living room, where a gang of armed thugs had opened fire and gunned them down.
That was the first defining moment of thirteen-year-old Ermina Vlasic’s life. Hidden in the stone cellar under the barn with her flickering candle and her precious books, she had heard the arriving vehicles first and then the shouting and finally the gunfire. Staying hidden was the only thing that saved her life that day. And only later, long after silence returned and as the sun set, she finally crept out of the cellar and went in search of her family.
She had found them, slaughtered in a bloody heap in the darkened living room, all of them riddled with bullets. Crumpled and dead, they had been left where they’d fallen to send a message to other Croats in the neighborhood-leave or die. It was a scene that was forever indelibly inked in her consciousness, and standing there in the carnage she had made the first decision of her new life: she decided to leave.
Leaving her loved ones where they lay, Mina went to her room, packed a bag with a few clothes and as many books as she could carry, and went in search of help. It was a group of Bosnian Serbs who had murdered her family. Ironically, it was another group of Serbs, a family whose farm was just down the country road, who took her in, cared for her, and who finally took her to the orphanage that had eventually led her to her adoptive home in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Mina had always supposed that was the difference between her and people like Richard Lowensdale and Mark Blaylock. She was tough. But for the first time in as long as Mina had known Richard, he had surprised her. He had stood up to her. She had thought he would cave, but he hadn’t. In the grand scheme of things, the fifty thousand dollars she had paid Richard was chump change, but it was Mina’s chump change.
Had she been able to keep on looking, Mina probably could have found Richard’s stash, but by then Mina’s other guest, treated with a hefty dose of Versed and bound with the same transparent packing tape she had used on Richard, had been left alone in the trunk of her parked Lincoln on a city street for far longer than she should have been. Still Mina waited until it was over, until Richard’s pitiful struggles ceased completely, before she rose from the chair and walked away.
And even though she walked away without her money, Ermina Blaylock had left Grass Valley with something unexpected-a grudging respect for Richard Lowensdale.
There was very little traffic as she made her way up and over the Grapevine, but by the time she hit L.A., rush hour was starting. Just past eight o’clock in the morning, Mina pulled into the shipping/receiving bay of Rutherford International in Clairemont Mesa Business Park and closed the rolling garage door behind her.
She had given Mark a strict set of instructions. Once he finished installing the programming fix, she had told him to pack the UAVs in shipping containers and put them in the shipping/receiving bay. When they weren’t there, Mina’s heart went to her throat.
Then she turned on the lights in the assembly area. Much to Mina’s relief, the UAVs were there, locked in the parts cage. They appeared to be properly boxed and labeled, so maybe moving them to the shipping bay was the only part of Mark’s to-do list that he had ignored.
Luckily Mina had her own cage key on her key ring. It was inconvenient for her to have to do all the moving and lifting herself, but she finally managed to lug all the boxed UAVs into the shipping bay. When she popped open the trunk of the Lincoln, a cloud of urine-permeated air rose up out of the trunk. It struck her as funny that she had cut off Richard’s fingers without a qualm but the smell of Brenda’s having wet herself made Mina want to gag.
Brenda was still asleep. After donning her gloves, Mina used a box cutter to slice through the tape imprisoning Brenda’s ankles, although she left her wrists firmly bound. Then, after removing the tape from Brenda’s mouth, Mina shook the unconscious woman’s shoulder.
“Wake up!” Mina ordered. “We need to get you out of there.”
Brenda’s eyes popped open. She looked around fearfully. “Where am I?” she rasped. “What’s happening?”
“I need you to walk with me,” Mina said. “It’s not far. Let me help you.”
She reached into the trunk, grabbed Brenda’s shoulder and wrestled her into a semi-sitting position.
“Please,” Brenda begged. “Not so fast. I’m dizzy.”
The slight pause seemed to bring more clarity to her thought processes. “Wait. I remember now. We went to lunch. That’s the last thing I remember. What are you doing?”
“Tying up a loose end is all,” Mina said. “Now come on.”
Eventually she was able to lever Brenda up and onto the edge of the trunk. Leaving Brenda’s arms taped behind her, Mina walked her prisoner from shipping/receiving into the assembly room, where she shoved her into an old desk chair they hadn’t managed to unload with the rest of the furniture. Mina used that to wheel Brenda the rest of the way into the cage.
“Let me go,” Brenda said.
“No. That’s not possible.”
“I’ll scream.”
“Go right ahead,” Mina said. “Be my guest. No one will hear you.”
She turned and walked away. Brenda was screaming after her as she left, but Mina paid no attention. After locking the cage, she set the alarm, turned off the lights, and let herself out. She was weary, almost to the point of exhaustion, but she didn’t linger. Instead, she headed for the cabin in Salton City with every intention of giving Mark Blaylock a piece of her mind.
17
Sedona, Arizona
On Saturday morning, the Sugarloaf Cafe was an absolute zoo. By eight a.m. there were people standing outside in the cold because there was no room to wait for a table inside. By ten o’clock they were on the last tray of that morning’s sweet rolls, and Ali’s feet were killing her. Things had lightened up a little and she was finally grabbing a cup of coffee when her cell phone rang.
Hoping it might be B. cut loose from his morning conference sessions, she answered without glancing at the caller ID.
“Is this Ali Reynolds?”
She didn’t recognize the man’s voice and she wondered how he’d gained access to her cell phone number. “Yes, it is,” Ali said. “Who’s calling, please, and who gave you this number?”
“My name is Camilla Gastellum. I’m Brenda Riley’s mother. Have you seen her or heard from her?”
Obviously the gravelly voice that sounded like a man’s wasn’t.
