“No, sir, I mean the FBI agent who came here Wednesday morning and showed you these pictures.”
“Ain’t no FBI been here. First time I seen them pictures.”
“An FBI agent didn’t ask you about these men and the girl? You didn’t talk to him about UFOs? Tell him you drank?”
Tucker was clearly taken aback. He spat. “Only time I talked to anyone about the girl was when you called me. Hell, my phone’s been out of order ever since.” He picked up the phone and held it out to Ben. There was no dial tone. He gestured outside. “Phone company’s fixing it now, said the line was cut clean through. Figured kids.”
“Did the men say where they were headed?”
“The north country. Vehicle was burning oil like a refinery, asked me could it make another five hundred miles. No way, I says, rings is burned up, lucky it made it this far. Oil gets in the combustion chamber, bad news. Sent ’em down yonder to the motel.” He gestured down the access road. “They drove down there, big fella come back, left the truck. I got in about six the next morning-that’d been Monday-started tearing that engine apart, finished late that night. Big fella picked it up the next morning-that’d been Tuesday. Paid cash.”
“Idaho plates?”
“Yep.”
“Five hundred miles north of here, but still in Idaho?”
“That’d put ’em right near the border, up in the panhandle.”
“Where they grow Christmas trees?”
“Yep.”
“Where it’s snowing?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve got a map,” Ben said.
Ben spread the Idaho map out on the counter. Tucker said, “You know, I seen something on TV about them militias and Ku Klux Klan and Nazis, how they got camps in the mountains up north.”
“Any particular place?”
Tucker leaned over and put a finger on Idaho Falls and ran it north, tracking I-15 then 90, all the way to Coeur d’Alene; his finger left a slight trail of fresh grease on the map. Then his finger turned north, on state highway 95, all the way to “Bonners Ferry,” he said, tapping the map.
“She’s alive, Ben.”
Back on the highway, images of his daughter were racing through John’s mind like a DVD on fast forward; his heart was trying to punch through the wall of his chest cavity.
“I gotta call Elizabeth.”
He dug the cell phone out of his pocket.
“Son, we don’t need to be pulled over by the highway patrol, not with what we’ve got in this vehicle.”
“What?” John’s eyes dropped down to the speedometer. “Shit.” He had the Rover doing ninety. He pulled his foot off the accelerator. When the Rover and his heartbeat were both down to seventy-five, John glanced over at Ben. “You were right.”
Ben just nodded and held his hand out. “Here.”
John handed the phone to Ben. “Home number’s on the speed dial, push-”
Ben rolled down his window and defenestrated the phone. John watched in the rearview as the phone bounced on the highway and splattered into pieces.
“Cripes, Ben! Why’d you do that?”
“Because from now on, we don’t call home, we don’t call the FBI, we don’t call anyone.”
“Why not? We need to tell them she’s alive!”
“They already know it.”
“How? We just talked to Tucker.”
“John, I didn’t need Tucker to tell me she’s alive. I knew that. But he told me something I didn’t know.” He turned to John. “The FBI lied about coming to see him.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means they know she’s up here.”
“Why would the FBI lie about Gracie being alive in Idaho?”
“Because they don’t want us up here, getting in their way. That’s why they cut Tucker’s phone line. They’re after the men that took Gracie, but for some other reason. And they’re willing to sacrifice her to get them.”
“ Sacrifice her? You mean… Jesus… What could those men be doing that’s so bad the FBI would sacrifice Gracie to get them?”
Four hundred miles due north, Junior said, “Lemme clean up this mess, then I’ll show you your big surprise. After that I’ll show you around my mountain, before I go to town to pick up your, uh, girl stuff.” He smiled real big. “I mean, our mountain.”
Gracie gave him a weak smile then wandered around the room; she was trying to sort things out.
This was way strange. Mountain boy kidnapped her, but he treated her totally nice. Cozy bedroom, hot bath, new clothes, good breakfast-well, except for eating Bambi.
Gracie pointed at the door that Junior had come out of earlier. “What’s in there?”
He smiled. “Your big surprise.”
Uh-oh, Gracie thought. The bridal suite. She quickly continued her tour. On the short wall by the kitchen were photographs, pictures of a woman, a girl really, with an older man who looked like Junior and a small boy who was Junior.
“That’s my mama,” Junior said from the kitchen.
“Wow, she was beautiful.”
“Yep. She died real sudden when I was just a kid. She’s buried out back.”
“You buried your mother in the backyard?”
“ No… the major did.”
She turned the corner and started down the long wall: more photographs, one of the man who looked like Junior with medals on his uniform and a green beret on his head, like the picture of Ben on her desk. His nametag said WALKER. And photos of soldiers in a jungle and in a city with pretty women who looked like Ms. Wang, the math teacher; they were smiling, but their eyes were sad.
And Junior was real considerate for a boy. He actually knocked on her bedroom door before entering! That never happened at home. Mom just barged in whenever she felt like it.
Next on the wall were big knives and a fancy sword and a leather cord strung with shriveled up… ears? That is so totally gross! She pulled her eyes off the ears and looked at the map of the United States that was next on the wall. Various places were marked in black, with dates and names: Kelly, Epstein, Goldburg, Garcia, Young, Ellis, McCoy.
And Junior swore he didn’t touch her or look at her and said he’d kill anyone who tried to. Which seemed strange for a kidnapper. Like, if he didn’t take her for that and he didn’t take her for money, what did he take her for?
Next to the U.S. map was an aerial photograph like the one Dad had shown her of their neighborhood- Catoctin Mountain Park, the label read-with everything marked: the entrance, a big lodge named Aspen, smaller cabins, stables, swimming pool, skeet range, bowling alley, gym and sauna, horseshoe pit, chapel, heliport, trails, security checkpoints. That would be a really cool place to go camping. Maybe they could take their postponed first annual Brice family camping trip there. Black lines were drawn from each security checkpoint to a smaller photograph tacked on the wall, photos of little buildings and soldiers with rifles and dogs on leashes. Wow, they’re way serious about making sure everyone paid their camping fee! Another black line was drawn from the entrance location to a photograph of the entrance with a big metal gate and the name of the place in white letters on a board hanging between two posts: CAMP DAVID.
This was all like, really weird, but she couldn’t help thinking that maybe Junior wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Our mountain, he had said.
