“Now that we’ve got a working vehicle and plenty of fuel, we should go straight to Warren,” Mom said.
“We discussed this last night, Janice,” Dad replied, his smile disappearing.
“I’m going with Alex,” Alyssa said.
“Even if we did go to Iowa City and this Darla
“Um,” Alyssa said in a tremulous voice, “I have an idea.”
Chapter 77
Dad and Ben thought Alyssa’s idea was genius. I tried to talk her out of it, and Mom still wanted to return to Warren where Rebecca was. Ultimately I relented to Alyssa. I was outvoted, anyway.
We needed a button or switch-preferably something dangerous looking. Dad thought maybe the biggest propane tank would have some kind of control system, and sure enough, we found one buried in a hump of snow at one end of the tank. Under a label that read EMERGENCY SHUTOFF, there was a red thumb-sized button protected by a clear plastic cover. I hacked it out of the plastic control board with a butcher knife. It looked pretty crude with all the jagged, broken plastic hanging off it, but that would add to its menace-I hoped. I reached into the guts of the wrecked control panel and ripped out a pair of long wires, one black and one green. Perfect.
Dad made Alyssa practice her part over and over. He tied her hands behind her back with twine-we’d found a whole roll of the stuff in the UPS truck. Then he stuck a paring knife in her back pocket and made her cut herself free.
On her second practice run, she cut herself pretty badly, a deep slice in the web of her thumb. Alyssa let out a stream of curses while I worked on bandaging her hand. When we’d both finished, Dad said, “Again, preferably without the self-mutilation this time.”
I saw Alyssa’s throat work as she swallowed some retort. Instead she stood and turned, offering her hands to be tied. She was just as tough as Darla in her own way. She’d proposed this crazy plan, and now she meant to see it through, even if it cost her some pride and flesh.
By lunchtime, we were forty miles away, and I was wishing Alyssa hadn’t been so steely. I was trying to shimmy up a downspout at the corner of the Bowman Chiropractic Clinic. It’s not that I was having a hard time climbing the thing-I’m plenty strong. But a climb that looks easy from the ground doesn’t feel easy when you’re trying to reach up from the top of a downspout to get a grip on the gutter at the edge of a roof. In gloves. With a badly bruised right arm.
I had tried to talk Alyssa out of it again during the drive to Iowa City. Mom took shotgun this time, and Ben was behind Dad explaining the Great Turkish War in exhausting detail. Alyssa and I sat next to each other on the propane tank in the back of the truck. She started the conversation by whispering, “Alex, I need a favor.”
“Sure. Anything,” I said.
“If this. . this thing goes badly-”
“You don’t have to do it, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. I want to do it. It was my idea, after all. But in case it doesn’t go right, I need you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“If I can’t, well. . I want you to look after Ben.”
“Alyssa, you’ll be okay. And Ben’s a smart guy. He can look after himself.”
“Just. . make sure he gets to someplace safe. To your uncle’s place in Warren, maybe. And keep an eye out for him, okay?”
I thought her request was a little ridiculous. If she got killed trying to rescue Darla, I’d almost certainly be dead, as well. But I said, “Okay.”
“One other favor?”
“What?”
“You’ll be up on the roof with the rifle. . ”
“Yeah.”
“Save a bullet for me.”
“What!”
“If things go badly, if this doesn’t work and I get captured, I want you to shoot me. I thought I’d do anything to survive, but I’ve gone that route before and it’s not worth it. I survived for Ben. But I don’t want to live that way again. I
“No!” I was talking too loudly. Mom swiveled in the passenger seat to look at me. I dropped my voice. “Why would you even ask me that?” The answer came to me even as I asked the question. She was giving up. That’s why she’d proposed this crazy plan and put herself in this position in the first place.
“Alex, please. I don’t want to live that way again. I can’t live that way again.”
“There are
“You owe me,” she hissed. “I’m risking my ass going after
“Yeah. I do owe you. If the DWBs capture you and I’m alive, I will get you out. Or die trying.”
“But-”
“But nothing.”
She glared at me. “Then you don’t care about me, do you?”
“And I retract my promise to look after Ben. If he needs looking after, then you’re just going to have to stay alive to do it.”
“You’re no different than any other guy. You’re all messed up!” Alyssa folded her arms and turned away from me.
I didn’t know how to respond. I was trying to be nice. There was no use talking more and making things worse. Maybe she was the one who was messed up. Or maybe she was right.
I used the rest of the drive to unpack the ammo and first-aid kit we’d found in Anamosa. Even if we survived this, we might need those supplies in a hurry.
We reached the outskirts of Iowa City and almost immediately saw the glint of a campfire burning in the distance. Dad pulled the truck over, Mom got behind the wheel, and Dad, Alyssa, and I approached the fire on foot, walking in the deep snow on the far side of the berm.
When we got closer, we peeked over the embankment. A sentry was camped right atop the Highway 1 overpass over I-80, which sliced through the north side of Iowa City. He had a tent pitched near his campfire and a motorcycle next to it. It was a good spot: He’d be able to see anyone approaching from I-80 or Highway 1. But the campfire made him too obvious. I wasn’t complaining, though-the fact that we’d seen him first made this whole crazy idea possible. My role in the plan was to shimmy up onto the roof of the chiropractic clinic and get a drop on him.
I pulled myself up with a gasp of relief, flopping in the deep snow. The roof was sloped so that I would be invisible from the far side until I reached the peak.
Pushing through the snow was hard. I worked my way up to the ridge on my stomach so that only my head and the barrel of the rifle I carried were visible. The sentry was still there, sitting atop the overpass, silhouetted by his fire. I’m not very good with a rifle, but even I could probably hit him. That wasn’t our plan, though. We needed this guy alive.
We weren’t even certain he was a member of the Dirty White Boys. But to survive this close to their base, he had to have some connection with them-a connection we planned to exploit.
I looked backward at Dad and Alyssa waiting below. I gave Dad a thumbs up and turned back toward the sentry. I still thought I should be the one down there with Alyssa. I’d argued with Dad about it to no avail.
I knelt and rested the rifle on the ridge, drawing a bead on the sentry. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dad and Alyssa walk slowly into view. Dad had his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Alyssa’s hands were bound behind her back, she was gagged with a strip of cloth, and a piece of shipping twine led like a leash from her neck to Dad’s hand.
