Karen.
Then he remembered the athletic club. Would she have gone there before coming into the office? Knowing he was waiting? Maybe she would if she was still mad at him. Women!
He got the POAC phone number and asked for them to page her. They obliged, but there was -no reply. But that didn’t mean anything if she was in the pool or out for a run. He looked at his watch. Going on ten.
Damn it!
Karen surfaced in total darkness, surrounded by a strong smell of rubber. Slowly, she realized that it wasn’t really darkness, but that her eyes were blindfolded. It felt as if there was cloth or bandage material pressed against her eyelids, and a strap or tape of some kind wrapped around her head to hold the bandages in place. There was even something in her ears, something that felt like a cotton or Styrofoam plug. She tried to move but couldn’t. She was on her back, her feet and hands bound, probably by tape, from the feel of it. There was even a patch of tape over her mouth, with a small hole cut in the area around her lips. She could breathe through her nose, and partially through her mouth.
She tried to gather her wits. What the hell had happened?
That bright purple light, and something else. The fist, the black fist.
No, a black leather glove. She had a clear image of the glove, a man’s glove with something in it. He had not hit her.. She felt no pain, no sensation of having been drugged. Just that purple-red flash, as if someone had popped an incredibly intense flashcube in her face, and then she had blacked out. She tried to move again, but there was nowhere to go. In fact, she could not move much at all.
With the first flare of claustrophobia, she realized she was in a bag of some kind-a rubber body-length bag. Oh my God, a body bag. She was trussed up in a body bag. She had never even seen a body bag, except on television, yet instinctively she knew what it was.
She tried to move again, tried to roll over on her side.
But there was something on top of the bag-something heavy, rigid, but not hard-edged. And not just on top. There were heavy objects all around the bag, on top, along the sides, and even underneath. She could feel, rather than hear, a scratchy sensation on the rubber fabric of the bag when she moved. She realized that she was breathing heavily now, and she could feel a mist of condensation hovering around the skin of her face.
But there was another smell, something different from the rubber. ‘ Slow down, slow down, she thought. Control. Get control.
Where had this started? In the hay service room. Hay. Bales of hay.
That’s what was on top of her-bales of hay, fifty pounds each. Heavy, although not crushing. She was buried in the haystack. But probably not down in the service room; there had been only ten bales down there. In the hayloft up above, then. Whoever had done this had carried her upstairs into the hayloft, where there were four hundred bales of hay.
And-what? Stashed her?
She fought a rising panic as she grappled with her situation. She tried again to move, to wriggle out of the bindings, but then she realized that each twist and turn was settling the hay bales tighter on top of her. Heavier now, much heavier. The smell of rubber was very strong.
Air.
How was she going to get air to breathe, stuffed in this damned bag? By going slowly, breathing a lot slower than she was now. He hadn’t meant to suffocate her, or else there would not be airholes in the tape over her mouth and nose.
So the bag must have an airhole in it. Or the zipper had been left open around her face. Pay attention. Feel. Yes. The scratchy ends of hay straws against her face. An aroma of last year’s grass just underneath the rubber smell. The feel of a zipper up against her chin.
She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling her lids pull against the gauze.
Focus. Concentrate. Breathe, but control it.
Slower. Force your body to relax, stop fighting, settle into a reduced state. Squeeze the picture of where you are out of your mind. Focus on surviving until the next thing comes along. He had stashed her here. Had to mean he was coming back.
Train would come-when she didn’t show up at the Pentagon. Absolutely. He would come running. Could be coming right now, depending on how long she’d been out. Her eyes hurt, even though they were bound shut. She could still see that purple-red flash. She concentrated on her breathing.
Train would find the dog, and then he would come looking.
Hell, the dog could probably track her down here to the barn. Maybe even find her here in the hayloft. The trick was to listen for signs of a search. Maybe he would call the cops right from the Pentagon. Somebody would find her. Had to find her. Before whoever did this came back. So keep your wits about you; be ready to make noise when you hear someone in the barn.
Except there was cotton in her ears, and tape over the cotton. You’renot going to hear anything!
Despite all her efforts at selfcontrol, she lunged against the bag and then swallowed hard, fighting again to - get her heaving chest and wildly racing heartbeat under control as the weight on her breasts shifted, increased again, ever so slightly. Stop it. Stop it! One thing at a time. Stabilize. Control. Breathe-once, and then hold it. Again, and hold it.
Concentrate on feeling the presence of someone in the barn.
Train was coming. Breathe, and hold it.
By 10:30, Train said to hell with it. He made a diskette copy of the database report to take home and then cleared his screen. He told the yeoman that he was going out to Commander Lawrence’s house to see why she hadn’t shown up for work. The yeoman, curious, asked if he should alert the EA. Train said no, not until he called back in. It could be just a simple niisconnection. He left the number of his car phone with the yeoman in case Karen showed up, with instructions to call him at once. , It was almost 11:30 when he pulled into the driveway and stopped in front of the house. The first thing he saw was Harry coming down the front walk, head down, as if the old dog were apologizing for something.
The second thing he saw and heard was Gutter jumping up on the inside of the front door. Uh-oh, he thought. He headed for the house and let himself in. Gutter was all over him, frantically trying to tell him something. Train called Karen’s name, then did a fast recon of the house. Her uniform was laid out on the bed, but the house was empty. He stepped outside onto the front porch and called her name again-twice. No responses Gutter wanted to go; he was dancing around in a circle and whimpering at him.
“Okay, dog, go find her!” he ordered, and the dog took off down the path between those big hedges, toward the barn.
He stopped to think. When you find a fire, first call the fire department; then do something. He went back inside the living room and picked up the phone to dial 911. He identified himself as a federal agent, gave his name and badge number, Karen’s address, and requested the assistance of a Fairfax County patrol car to secure the scene of a possible abduction. Then he went outside and headed down toward the barn.
The dog was running up and down the aisleway when he got there, and he called her name again, but there was no reply. Gutter couldn’t seem to fix any one spot. She must have come down here to see the horses or something, he thought. But then what? Had she been kidnapped? The dog sniffing hard at a doorway. Train looked at the door wished he had a gun. The Glock was in his car. “That’s’t carrying,” Johnson had said.
Got that right. He thought about going back for it, but then he reached for the door handle. It was unlocked. He snatched it open. A hay room.
Nothing in it but eight or nine bales of hay. Gutter went in and circled the room, then came right back out, obviously defeated. He ran up and down the aisleway again, then back outside. Train looked around the hay room again, but that’s all it was: a hay room. He closed the door and followed the dog back outside. Sure as hell, she’s been kidnapped, he thought.
Gutter ran around sofffe more, even going partway out into one of the fields. The horses were visible at the other end of the field. Three of them, so she wasn’t out for a ride.
Damn. He called in the dog and went back to the house, stopping to get his notebook out of the car. He got Mcnair’s phone number and called it from the car phone. Mcnair was not available. He left a message with the Homicide Section’s secretary that Commander Lawrence might have been abducted and that a police unit was inbound. He hung up and heard the phone in the house ringing. He ran to beat the voice mail and just made it. It
