need the element of surprise-and we can’t take a chance on a stray shot with Gracie in there.”
John leaned back and sighed. Ben was right; this wasn’t his kind of work. He was such a debbie at man’s work. He remembered his mother’s words: Do exactly what Ben tells you to do, and we might get Gracie back. This is what he knows.
John gulped the foul coffee- haven’t these people heard of Starbucks? Outside, the good citizens of Bonners Ferry were strolling by, oblivious to the fact that at that very moment his daughter was being held hostage in the mountains north of town.
“Ben, do you think Gracie’s okay?”
“She’s alive, John.”
“Do you think those men… you know… did they… with Gracie…”
Ben’s eyes turned harsh. “Don’t say it, John. Don’t even think it.”
“I can’t help thinking it, Ben… or wondering if she’ll ever be the same again.”
“John, listen to me. Whatever they did to Gracie, we’ll get her through it. She’s strong, in her mind. We’ll fix her. I’ll take her to Taos. She’ll live with me until she’s ready to be with people again.”
Ben’s jaw muscles clenched; he turned to stare out the window.
“Ben, I want to kill those men.”
“If there’s killing to be done, I’ll do it. It’s what I know.”
Ben abruptly stood and was out the door before John could open his mouth. He jumped up and dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table. Outside, he looked up and down the sidewalk and spotted Ben, already a half block away. John ran to catch up.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Man up ahead-blond hair, camouflage pants, six foot, two hundred pounds.”
The blond man entered a tobacco shop. John and Ben sat on a bench outside, just two dudes enjoying a fine spring day, not a father and his father searching for the men who had kidnapped his daughter. Ten minutes later, the man emerged with a cigar in his mouth and continued his walk up the sidewalk. They followed.
Two blocks later they stopped in their tracks. Two little girls ran up to the man; he bent over and picked up the smaller child. A woman walked to the man and kissed him.
A family man.
“Mama, I got me a family now.”
Junior stood before his mama’s grave out back of the cabin in a little clearing that he kept real nice. He came out and talked to his mama almost every day. Some days she talked back.
“Well, course I’m gonna let her out, Mama. Tomorrow morning. Two nights in the box ought to break her of running. She’s awful cute, ain’t she, Mama?”
Junior had grown up a mama’s boy wanting to be like his daddy. But the major had left them months at a time-business, he had said. Junior had never gone to school in town; the major wouldn’t allow it. So his mama had taught him almost everything he knew, except what the major taught him about shooting and hunting and hating Jews. Funny, but mama seemed happiest when the major was off on a business trip. Only then could she go into town and see her old friends; she took Junior with her and she laughed and she sang when she was cooking and they sat under a tree and she read poems out loud. Junior and his mama did everything together. She was beautiful.
And then she was gone.
And Junior never read another poem.
“You take this one. I’ll take the one across the street.”
John watched as Ben waited for a car to pass then jogged across the street. John plopped down on the nearest bench. They were staking out every white SUV on Main Street. The three they had seen so far were owned by an old woman, a teenage girl wearing the tightest jeans John had ever seen on a female, and an old coot chewing tobacco.
It was almost five. The sun would soon drop below the mountains, and the fine spring day would turn back to winter for the night. Gracie would be cold.
Gary Jennings had all ten fingers when he had tied one leg of his jail pants around the sprinkler pipe in his cell and the other leg around his neck and stepped off the jail cot.
An innocent man was dead.
Which meant Gracie Ann Brice might be alive.
FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson knew now that Gracie’s abduction had nothing to do with Colonel Brice or revenge over the Vietnam War. It had everything to do with Elizabeth Brice and a son seeking to avenge his father’s death. Maybe Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., figured the federal government killed his father, so he’d just kill everyone responsible. But why didn’t he kill Elizabeth Brice, too? Why did he take her daughter instead? And did he have plans for the president?
Jan Jorgenson was in over her head. She needed experience. She needed Agent Devereaux. But his cell phone put her to the answering service for the fifth time today.
“Eugene, this is Jan again. It’s Saturday, almost seven Dallas time. Please call me as soon as possible. Jennings was innocent. And Gracie may be alive.”
She ended the call.
Jan was sitting on the sofa in the Brice study waiting for Mrs. Brice. More questions filled her mind: If the major’s son was the abductor, where is he now? If Gracie is alive, where is she now? The major and the son had lived in Idaho back then; maybe the son still did. And Colonel Brice thought Gracie was in Idaho because of a call-in sighting in Idaho Falls. But Agent Curry had personally interviewed the Idaho source and reported that the source could not ID Gracie or the men or the tattoo. Odd.
Jan needed to speak to the Idaho source. That required the computer printout of leads which was sitting on her desk in downtown Dallas forty miles south of her present location. There wasn’t much chance of anyone being at the office at this time on a Saturday night-except the security guard.
She got Red on the first try. No doubt he was sitting behind the security desk in the building lobby watching TV, where he had been every night the past week when she had signed out after hours. Red was fifty and lonely. He made sweet with her each night.
“Red, this is Agent Jorgenson.”
“Well, hidi there. I saw from the log sheet you’d left.”
“I have an emergency. Can you help me?”
“You want me to come to your place?”
“Uh, no. I want you to go to my office.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I can get up there in a bit.”
Yep, as soon as Wheel of Fortune is over.
Jan Jorgenson possessed the round face, big eyes, and solid stature befitting a Minnesota farm girl. If she were a horse, they’d call her sturdy. Most guys called her cute. She wore her hair short, stood five-seven, and weighed a rock-hard one-thirty. (Muscle weighs more than fat.) Men often took one look at her and assumed she was lesbian-her muscular legs caused her to walk a bit too manly-but she was hetero through and through. She just hadn’t found a man worth letting between her legs. And Red the security guard wasn’t him; but he wanted to be. Jan wasn’t the type to lead men on, but she needed that printout. She whimpered into the phone.
“You know, Red, when this case is over, I’m going to have more free time, and maybe we could-”
“I’ll go up there right now!”
“Alrighty, then. On my desk is a thick computer printout with a bunch of yellow stickums on pages. Look through those for a listing from Idaho Falls, start at the back. When you find it, use my office phone and call me at this number.”
She gave Red her cell phone number, and he was off, probably packing more than a ring of keys in his pants. She made a mental note to change her cell phone number when this was over.
Red called back in under ten minutes. Clayton Lee Tucker, Idaho Falls, Idaho. With a number. Red said, “Bye, honey.”
