“Christ!” Lindstrom dropped the phone and grabbed the wheel with both hands. He swerved left, just missing the buck, and nearly ran off the road. Cork slammed against the passenger-side door. The cellular Agent Kay had given him whacked the window hard. “My phone,” Lindstrom shouted. “I lost my cell phone.” While he brought the Explorer back under control, Cork was on the floor, groping for Lindstrom’s phone. He grasped it from where it had lodged under the accelerator pedal, and he put it to his ear.
“He’s gone,” Cork said.
“Shit.”
“Did you get the next instruction?”
“South on Shipley Road, I think.”
“That’s coming right up. There!” Cork hollered, and pointed at a narrow dirt lane almost invisible beneath a canopy of arching pines.
Lindstrom hit the brakes. The Explorer went into a slide. He brought it around smoothly, however, in a clean one-eighty that ended with the nose of the vehicle pointed back in the direction from which they’d come. Without hesitating, Lindstrom leaned on the accelerator, hit the turn onto Shipley Road, and, to make up time, kept the speedometer just above forty.
Cork tried the cellular with which he’d been communicating with Agent Kay. He couldn’t get a dial tone. “It’s dead,” he said. “We’ve lost them.”
“Remember, they can still follow us via the transmitter.”
Cork considered the kidnapper’s directions thus far. “He’s working us southeast, toward the back side of the Sawtooths.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I wish I knew.”
They crossed a major road, County 13.
“Are you sure we weren’t supposed to turn there?” Cork asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say anything about it, but then I was worried about not killing us right about then.”
The phone rang. Cork was beginning to hate that noise. Lindstrom picked it up. “No, I didn’t hang up. We almost hit a deer, for Christ’s sake.” Lindstrom listened. “Yeah, I understand.” He put the phone down. “Next left. Private road.”
The wooden sign at the crossroads indicated they were headed toward Black Spruce Lodge on Goose Lake. Cork didn’t believe that was their ultimate destination. Too many people around. He was right. Within two minutes, the kidnapper called again.
“I understand,” Lindstrom said after he’d listened a moment. He put the phone down. “Logging road on the right.”
It wasn’t much of a road, and keeping the speed at forty tested both the suspension on the Explorer and the durability of Cork’s spine. But they weren’t on it long. Lindstrom got another call, and in a moment, they turned onto a paved county road. Almost immediately they were confronted with a long bridge. Cork knew the place. The bridge spanned the Upper Goose Flowage, a wide, slow sweep of water that connected Goose Lake with Little Red Cedar Lake just south. Lindstrom pulled into the parking area of a small picnic ground along the flowage.
“What now?” Cork asked.
“He said to wait.”
Almost immediately the call came. Lindstrom listened, then turned out the headlights but kept the engine running. A moment passed as Lindstrom listened further. “It’s only Corcoran O’Connor,” he said into the phone. “No, you said no cops. O’Connor’s not a cop. And, Jesus Christ, you have his family… All right, all right.” Lindstrom put the phone down. “He knows you’re with me.”
“He’s here somewhere. Watching.”
“He says to leave the money behind the trash cans.”
Cork had seen them in the flood of the headlights when Lindstrom pulled in, two cans side by side, painted green and bearing the U.S. Forest Service emblem.
“I hope you don’t want to try something,” Lindstrom said.
“No. Do as he says.”
Lindstrom took the cases from the backseat and got out of the Explorer. He walked to the trash cans, put the cases behind them, and returned to his vehicle. The phone rang. Lindstrom answered and listened. “Yes, I understand.”
“What about the exchange?” Cork asked.
“What about our families?” Lindstrom said into the phone. He got an answer and replied, “What assurance do we have?” He closed his eyes and then he hung up. “We drive away. Just keep driving east. If everything’s okay, he’ll call with their location in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s it?”
“What else can we do?”
“We sit. And when he calls again, we negotiate until he gives us our families. The money’s almost within his reach. He’ll be greedy.”
“Cork…” Lindstrom began, then stopped. “All right.”
They sat a minute. The phone rang.
“No deal,” Lindstrom said when he answered. “No more threats. No more promises. Just give us our families, now.” Lindstrom listened, then he looked slowly down. “Cork?”
Cork followed Lindstrom’s gaze. Dead center on Lindstrom’s heart was a small red circle not much larger than a BB.
“Laser sight,” Lindstrom whispered. “He says we head out now or we both die and he takes the money anyway.”
Cork looked hard at the dark outside the Explorer.
“The beacon.” Lindstrom sounded a little desperate. “The others can follow the beacon, Cork.”
“All right,” Cork said.
Lindstrom backed the truck out of the parking area, turned onto the road, crossed the bridge, and kept on going. After a quarter of a mile, the highway curved, and a small private access cut off to the right.
Cork said, “Pull in there and park.”
“What?”
“That private road.”
“He said to keep moving.”
“He can’t see us. And we’re too far for him to hear. Unless he’s got radar or something, he won’t know.”
Lindstrom turned onto the narrow dirt road and parked among thick pines.
“Call Agent Kay. Find out about movement of the case.”
“What if the kidnapper tries to call?”
“He said fifteen minutes.”
Lindstrom dialed the number Kay had given him. “It’s Lindstrom. We made the drop. Is the case moving?” He looked at Cork and shook his head. “We’re about a quarter mile past the drop site, pulled off the road. The kidnapper said he’ll call in fifteen minutes with the location of our families.” Lindstrom nodded at something that was said. “All right.” He hung up. “They’re stopped a half a mile short of the bridge, waiting to see which way the case moves. They’re positioning cars above and below us to stop him if they decide to make the arrest now. They’ll call us when they know.”
Cork looked at his watch a dozen times over the next few minutes. He seemed to be in a warp where seconds dragged out into hours. After five minutes, he opened the door to the Explorer.
“Where are you going?”
“I can’t sit.”
He walked to the road and looked at the empty curve behind them. The moon hadn’t yet risen above the Sawtooth Mountains, and the night was dark. Tall pines walled the highway on either side. When he looked up at the narrow swath of sky above him, he felt as if he were looking at another road, one across the heavens and covered with a dust of stars. Where is this all leading? he wondered. Where is the end?
He didn’t feel comfortable with the time. He hurried back to the Explorer. “Any word?”
