The Camp (24 page)

“It’s alright…”Claire looked over at Amy, who was interrupted.

“What about the guy—what happened to him?”

Suddenly, it was as though the two teenagers were the only ones in the bus.

“He made me go back. There was this tree. I had just climbed down it, and, like, my hands and legs were all scraped and stinging and I wasn’t sure what to do. And then this card floats down. It was, you know, a business card.”

Rye gently rapped two knuckles on the table, looked at Claire, and pointed at his watch. “He’s twenty minutes late.”

Amy stood up to let Claire out then scooted back onto the seat until she faced Ellen.

Claire turned to face the girls. “Both of you stay put. We’re going to check on agent Link If we’re not back in an hour, go in the store and use their phone to call the Highway Patrol.” She looked from one girl to the other. “Not the police—the Highway Patrol.”

Rye reached into a pocket, fished out the keys, and slid them down the table toward Amy. “Just in case you have to move the bus.”

Amy got out from behind the table and watched her two favorite people in the world jog down the road, then slid the door shut.

Chapter Thirty-nine

When the first shots rang out, Jane touched Cindy on the arm and caught Frank’s attention. “That’s our cue.”

The three moved back down through the forest toward the teepee burner.

Link woke to a splitting headache, shortness of breath, a pain in his chest, and the realization that he was probably having a heart attack.

He fell to his shoulder reached out and pushed the door with just his fingers. It was enough movement to warrant a shot.

At the sound of shots being fired, Claire moved into the trees that ran parallel to the road, Rye right on her heels.

She crouched low, head swiveling left to right. Her voice came out as a faint whisper. “What do you think?”

Rye shook his head and held a finger to his lips. As a youth, he hunted with his father who had taught him to wait out the animal. Minutes passed and he heard someone clear his throat.
 

He held a hand to his ear, looked, and pointed. Claire followed, stepping where he stepped. When they could look out through the trees and see the office, they stopped. There were no other sounds.

Claire was looking ahead hoping to see movement in the trees when a hand on her shoulder brought her around. Rye brought two fingers to his eyes then pointed at the motel, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to look at.
 

She leaned forward and felt his breath on her ear. “Bullet holes in the door, room five.”
 

When she saw them, she looked up at Rye and waited. She knew he had a plan.

It came in a faint whisper. “Link is in five. I’ll cross to the office and draw fire, you find the shooter.” He reached over, squeezed her leg, and gave her a wink. “Before he finds me.”

Before she could protest he was high-stepping between trees and moving into the parking lot.

She watched him not realizing she’d been holding her breath until he reached the office without a shot being fired. Then she let it out in a near-silent whoosh.

Link was beginning to sweat. Josh was confused, Frank hadn’t mentioned two people. He leaned forward just enough so he could look past the trees and up the road, expecting a carload of police to arrive at any minute. Then he stepped back. He’d wait until the new guy walked down a little further.

Rye stepped out of the office and was just in front of the boarded-up window of room six, when the first shot rang out.

Claire was moving as quickly and quietly as possible in the direction of the shot.

Diving into a roll, Rye smashed through the door and slid to one side. The second shot punched a hole high through the hollow-core door.
 

Then silence.

Claire stopped. She still couldn’t see the shooter, but knew she had to be close. Wait. That’s what Rye would do. So she squatted down and began counting breaths.

The dust and grime was thick, so Rye rolled on his back and began to push to the back of the room in search of the source of the breeze. When he reached the bathroom, he slowly stood. There, a tiny window was pushed open. It was too small to get through. He squatted in the furthest corner.

Soft retching and coughing followed by a low moan repeated themselves a few times before he could identify the source as human. Turning, Rye rapped on the common wall and softly called out. “Hello?” Nothing.

There it was again. Then he recognized the tone. It had to be Link shot.

Rye pulled out the longest blade on his little pocketknife, holding it so it came out from the bottom of his hand. Then he began to stab at the wall.

Back in the bus, Amy suddenly froze. Ellen was getting scared. “What? What?”

“Did you hear that? Gun shots.”

Amy looked down the road. “What do we do now?”
 

Without saying a word, both teenagers knew that they weren’t going to call Highway Patrol.

Amy got up from the table, walked over, pulled out a drawer, and inserted her hand, groping at the underside of the lid. She turned around smiling and holding up a Glock-24.
 

Ellen was suddenly energized and on her feet. “I’ll need shoes.”

Two pair of socks and moccasins slipped on, the girls were sliding the side door open but then shut it again instead of getting out.

“Who’s that?” Ellen was looking out the rear window, watching a stretch limo pass as it headed down the road. Amy came up next to her. “Not the cops, that’s for sure.”

Rye punched, peeled, and cut at the rotted pressboard until he could get his shoulders through. Leading with his hands, he managed to squeeze through the common wall connecting the bathrooms.

Once through, he sat and waited. The only light came from where the tiny window in the bathroom had been pushed open, casting a dim glow through the door where it illuminated a figure on the floor, curled in the fetal position.

He scrambled into the larger room and next to the agent But when he rolled him over, there was no blood. The man was pasty and sweating profusely. He opened his eyes and blinked several times.

“We’ve got to get out of here, get you medical help.”

Leaving him, Rye went back in the bathroom and began to dig at the wall just below the little window.

Chapter Forty

Leslie Toms waited in the lobby of the Media Club, watching the entrance to the building. Two agents were at the front desk getting the emergency key for the bank of elevators. The cars on either side of the private elevator were already at lobby level and when the doors opened, they were empty. They had to call down the private car.

“Toms, you’d better come see this.”

Two bodies lay slumped on either side of the private car.

She practically spit in her anger. “I can bet that Alto is long gone.” She turned and marched out of the lobby onto the sidewalk. “Link, where the hell are you?”

The hole
was waist high and shoulder width. Rye’s hands were scraped and bleeding.
 

Walter Link was standing on his own, leaning against the bathroom doorframe. “I can’t climb through that little hole.”

“Sure you can.”

Leaning against the back wall, Rye clasped his hands. “Step here and I’ll give you a boost up. The agent looked doubtfully at the big man. “You’re joking.”

Rye stepped over and pulled one of Link’s arms over his shoulder. He guided him over so that his upper body leaned out through the hole, then reached down and pulled at his pant leg.

“Give me your foot.”

With a groan, Link lifted his leg and grabbed the edges of the hole, pulling as Rye lifted. Then he was through.

“You alright?”

Crumpled in a heap, he lay unmoving. In a moment, Rye was next to him, taking his pulse. He’d passed out again.
 

When the
driver guided the stretch limo around the curve that revealed the motel, he turned the large car so as to block the road. Alto’s two bodyguards got out.

Josh kept looking over his shoulder for Jane. Two men pinned in rooms six and five, and now this. Tinted windows all the way around except for the windshield. He would bet that the two men with the slicked back hair and sunglasses and suits were FBI. But he’d never heard of the Feds going around in a limo. The spoken spanish was the give away. Someone in the car was giving the other two instructions.

He squatted down and watched. Both men had guns. They moved with precision from door to door. He couldn’t imagine what would happen when they found the two men trapped in the motel. But nothing happened. One kicked the door open while the other faced the parking lot, gun at the ready.

Josh would let them get to room four then pin them down, just like he’d done with the other two. He rolled from a squat to a solid sitting position, steadied the gun against the tree, and aimed at the boarded-up window of room four. When they passed that point, he’d open fire.

Walter Baker was awake and moaning when Rye heard someone step into the room. Sitting tall, he peered through the hole in the bathroom wall and got a glimpse of a suited man with a gun. Hooking his hands under Link’s arms, he dragged the agent behind two stumps and into a circle of trees. When he checked, the agent was unconscious again. He desperately probed for a pulse. Still alive. Maybe it was better this way—at least he wouldn’t make any noise.

Rye watched the hole. The man stuck his head out, took a quick look around and then retracted it. He couldn’t leave Link and could only wonder about Claire. Had she found the shooter? But his answer came a moment after the thought. Three shots rang out and then the sound of shuffling feet and voices speaking Spanish The shooter had at least driven the two men into the next room.
 

Rye’s head was spinning. Who was the shooter, and who were the men in the next room? Where were all the girls and where was Claire? He leaned back against one of the stumps and checked his watch. Amy should have called the Highway Patrol by now. All he had to do was wait.

Ellen stared down at the pistol. “Do you know how to use that?” Amy checked the gun’s clip the way her father had shown her, then peeked out the side window. “All clear.”

Ellen pulled the handle and slid the door open. “Who do you think they were?”

Amy stepped out holding the gun close to her body, pointed at the ground.

Ellen followed her into the trees and along what looked like an animal trail, keeping the road in sight. She finally stopped Amy with a firm grip on her arm.

“This is stupid. What are we doing anyway?”

Amy shook her off her and looked out into the forest, then down the road and pointed. “Look, I think I see the motel from the brochure.”

Ellen came up and sighted down her arm. “I see it, too. Do you think your Aunt and Uncle are there?”

Before Amy could answer, the sound of gunfire had the girls hiding behind a tree and then running deep into the forest.

Suddenly, Amy fell headlong, throwing out her arms like she was trying to fly. Ellen was so close that she fell on top of her. When she rolled off, Amy sat up and grabbed her ankle. “Oh God, oh God. I think I broke something.”
 

Ellen gave a little squeal and looked over to see what she sat on. It was a loop of old rusted cable as big around as her wrist. “I found what you tripped on.”

Amy was rocking back and forth. “Get my Aunt Claire. Go back to the motel and find her.”

Ellen looked around until she found the gun, turned, and ran back the way they’d come until she found an animal trail she thought was the one they were on when they’d heard the gunshots.

Traveling through the silence of the forest, Claire could hear the faint sound of voices and began to increase her pace. Ten steps, stop and listen, then ten more steps. She picked out a path that would muffle her movement as much as possible. Watching, searching.

She never found the shooter and became consumed by the voices, and the sound of something else. It seemed that the closer she got, the stranger these things sounded. Finally, she stopped and listened. There were actually two sounds. The voices of two, maybe three people, and a crackling and snapping sound that she couldn’t identify.
 

Slowing her breathing, she held her breath and focused on the voices. Two female, one male. But what was the background noise? She knew she was way past the motel and was trying to remember what Rye had said about an abandoned lumber mill and a teepee burner that used to be a tourist attraction. In that moment, she identified the mystery sound as that of the old wood burner.

Ellen thought she saw somebody and froze when she recognized Josh from the van. Consumed with terror, she took several steps back when she heard a loud bang and saw the shadowy figure of her former captor crumple to the forest floor.

Without thought she began to run down the animal trail, not caring where it led. Just wanting to get away.

Alto was stretched on his stomach across the hood of the limo. When the image he was sighting fell, he slid back to his feet and called out ‘all clear’ to his bodyguards.

Rye tensed at the sound of more gunfire. But the caliber was different. The weapon that had fired on him was a rifle. This had been from a pistol.

Not knowing what to expect he pulled the agent deeper into the trees, but when he braced his feet and hooked under his arms, one hand slipped and his finger caught on something around the agent’s neck.

It was the throat microphone. Reaching around to the back, he unhooked the necklace-like affair that held the mic in place. Bringing it up, he clipped it around his own neck and pressed the button now located at his throat with no idea if it would work.
 

“This is Walter Link, Rye said into the mic. “I’ve found the girls at Wolf Creek. They’re being held in an old, boarded-up motel.” He repeated the message five times, thinking it was better to pose as link than to give his real name and maybe have the task force come after him.

Claire heard the shot that took out Josh as a call to action. Not knowing who these people were, but thinking they might be able to help locate the shooter, she stepped into the clearing, not realizing that the man she’d been looking for was already dead.