Torched (19 page)

I only stayed in the shower for a few minutes, just long enough to rinse my hair and run a washcloth up and down my body. The towels were so thin it was basically a waste of time trying to dry myself off. I couldn’t wait any longer, so I pulled my clothes on over still-damp skin. I went outside and paced the sidewalk, watching the corner where Blue and Coyote would turn to go down the hill to the motel.

And there they were. It was hard to miss Blue’s orange Volvo as it rounded the corner two blocks away. I waved both my arms over my head. I saw Coyote raise his hand to wave back.

Then the car exploded.

The sound of the explosion rolled over me, so thick I staggered backward. The car lifted straight up from the ground, landed, bounced and finally came to a stop. The pavement vibrated under my feet. Black smoke rose in a pillar from the engine compartment.

I sprinted toward the car, or what was left of it. The Volvo sagged forward on flattened front tires. The roofline had been bent up to a sharp point, and both doors hung open. The driver’s side door buckled outward.

I could hear Coyote screaming. His head was pressed back against the passenger seat, and he shook it from side to side, his teeth gritted in pain. But Blue was absolutely still, her face a mask of blood. They were both covered in pale blue-green pebbles of glass.

“Where are you hurt?” I screamed, too.

“My leg! My leg!” Coyote panted.

I leaned in the open door and tried to help him out, but when he stood up, his leg gave way. I grabbed at him, desperate to hold him upright, but his weight was too much for me. We both fell to the ground. Coyote held his right leg with hands that looked like they had been dipped in red paint. His leg was crooked, and his jeans were shredded. I saw the gleam of white bone.

I pushed myself up to my knees. So much blood! Was it all his, or was some of it Blue’s? What could I do?

I stripped off my sweater, thinking maybe I could use it as a tourniquet. I looked past Coyote to Blue. She looked like a broken, bloody doll. I was only sure it was her because of her stubby ponytails.

Dead. She had to be dead. My own heart felt like it stopped beating.

I heard sirens. Someone grabbed my arm and tried to pull me to my feet.

“No!” I shouted, twisting away. Then I saw it was Hawk. Behind him were Grizz and Liberty.

“Come on!” Hawk shouted. “Gary Phelps must have had his Mafia buddies do this.” He tried to pull me to my feet. “We have to leave before they get us, too.”

“I have to stay with Coyote,” I said, breaking free of his grasp.

“You can’t help them!” Liberty screamed, tears rolling down her face. “You can’t do anything for them! We’re like sitting ducks here!”

An ambulance skidded around the corner, followed by a cop car. I looked back down at Coyote. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he went limp.
Please don’t let him be dead. Please don’t let him be dead.
I pressed my ear against his chest. Thank God! His heart was beating, fast but strong.

“Come on, Sky, let’s get out of here,” Grizz urged. By now, three or four people had gathered around what was left of the Volvo.

I don’t remember making the decision, but suddenly the three of us were running back to the motel room. Hawk slammed the door closed. The small room amplified our breathing. “Come on,” he urged, throwing supplies back into boxes. “We have to get our things and get out of here. We could be next!”

Liberty’s eyes were huge. “They warned us and warned us to stay away from the forest. And now they’ve killed Blue.”

As Hawk lifted a box, he said, “Watch the news. I’ll bet you anything they’ll claim Coyote and Blue were carrying the bomb. They’ll try to blame the two of them, when it’s really Phelps who had them killed.”

“But they’re not dead,” Grizz said. “Coyote is still alive.”

I thought of all the blood and prayed Grizz was right.

“I’ve got a possible.”

Liberty’s voice crackled in my earpiece, one of a set of high-tech walkie-talkies Hawk had gotten. It had a separate earpiece and a microphone I could activate by pressing a tiny button clipped on my collar. “I think he’s here.”

I straightened up from my spot next to the elevator in the parking garage
.
Thirty seconds later, the black Escalade with the green rental sticker on its bumper glided through the entrance. At the wheel was Gary Phelps, his hands at ten and two. He stared straight ahead, his face expressionless. This was the man who, according to Hawk, was responsible for the bomb that had left Blue dead and Coyote with a mangled leg.

As Phelps drove past me, I studied his handsome, empty face. Even if he hadn’t set the bomb, he was the one behind the demolition of a forest, the destruction of the Old Man and what would surely be the death of the lynx and her kit.

Should I still try to follow the plan I had sketched out in my note to Matt and Laurel? Or should I let the events Hawk had already set into motion take their course? Did Phelps deserve to die?

“I see him. Over.” I pushed the
Oregonian
I had been pretending to read for the last ninety minutes through the swinging metal lid of a trash bin.

Once we had arrived at PacCoast’s headquarters, we had taken up our positions. Trying not to show how badly I wanted this particular assignment, I had volunteered to stand by the entrance to the parking garage in an alcove by the elevator. It was clear I hadn’t been the first person to think this was a good place to hide out of sight. The corner stank of urine.

In front of the building, Liberty sat on a bench by a fountain. Her prop was a paperback novel, but she was really watching both the main doors to the building and the side street that led to the parking garage. In case Phelps entered or left through the building’s back door, Grizz had bought a pack of cigarettes and blended in with the smokers there.

On the second floor of the parking garage, Hawk was in his car wiring the pipe bomb to a prepaid cell phone. The electrical charge that activated the cell phone’s ringer would now also trigger the bomb.

As soon as I told the others that Phelps had entered the garage, Hawk’s voice was in my ear. “Okay, Sky, see what floor he parks on. But don’t let him see you. Over.”

Glancing briefly out at each level, I ran up the stairs. The first two floors of the parking garage were full, so Phelps wasn’t able to find a spot until the third floor. By the time I got to the third floor, he was nosing the Escalade into a space. Once he parked, he got out and headed toward the elevator.

I ran back into the stairway and up the stairs.

Earlier, I had been too afraid to leave my post, worried I would give the game away. Now I prayed that my parents had managed to park the decoy Escalade on the top floor like I’d asked them to.

Finally, I reached the top floor. And there, parked in the corner furthest from the stairs and the elevator, sat a black Escalade. It looked identical to Phelps’s rental, right down to the green
e
on the bumper. There were only two other cars on this floor, and both were parked well away from the Escalade.

Now I felt like I could breathe. Matt and Laurel had played their part. Now I just had to play mine.

I pressed my mike. “Top floor. Over.”

“Roger that,” Hawk said.

A few minutes later, we heard Liberty’s voice. “He’s entering the building. Over.”

“Let’s give it five, people, in case he forgot something in his car,” Hawk said.

Without a watch to gauge it, it seemed like the longest five minutes of my life. My elation had already dissipated, and my thoughts chased themselves. Was Coyote still alive? Had the doctors been able to save his leg? Did he think I had abandoned him? Had Blue felt anything before she died?

Finally, Hawk said, “Is it clear, Sky?”

I moved out of the stairwell and looked around. The top floor of the parking garage was quiet. “It’s good. No people, just a few cars. Over.”

A few seconds later, Hawk rounded the corner of the stairwell. With his backpack, he looked like the college student he had been when Blue met him.

Once he reached me, Hawk pressed the button on his collar. “On site. Stand by. Over.” For a minute, he just stood in the doorway and scanned the nearly empty floor of the parking garage.

Then he nodded, just one quick nod. Everything we had been through in the past few days seemed to have sharpened Hawk. His eyes glittered, his movements were quick, and his skin was drawn tight over the bones of his face.

“Keep watch,” Hawk instructed all of us on his mike. “I’ll need about five minutes.”

He hurried over to the Escalade and set the backpack next to the driver’s front tire. Pulling out a roll of duct tape, he pushed it up his arm like a bracelet. Hawk knelt and gingerly lifted out the pipe bomb and the cell phone it was connected to. He shimmied under the car, and I heard the zipperlike sound of tearing duct tape as Hawk stuck the bomb to the underside of the car. The plan was to follow Phelps on his way back to the airport, wait until there were no other cars nearby and then detonate the bomb with the cell phone.

I heard a whisper behind me.

“Ellie?”

Richter was about twenty feet from me, his head cocked as he tried to figure out what was happening. Then he saw Hawk’s feet as he started to wiggle out from underneath the Escalade. Richter quickly drew his gun and went into a crouch.

I dashed forward and grabbed the backpack, pulling it out of Hawk’s reach in case he decided to blow us all up when he realized it was over. But as I did, I heard an enormous grunt and a clunk. Grizz stood over the crumpled body of Richter. In his hands, he clutched the metal top of a trash can.

Panting heavily, Grizz said, “Like, I saw this guy drive up real fast, and then he parked on the sidewalk and took off running. I figured it had to be about what we were doing, so I ran after him. When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw him pull his gun on you.”

I hardly heard Grizz’s words. I couldn’t take my eyes off Richter. He was sprawled facedown, his head turned to one side. Blood trickled out of his left ear, bright red against skin that suddenly looked so white.

Hawk was now out from under the car, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Richter’s unmoving form. Before I could react, he jerked the backpack out of my hands and grabbed my elbow.

“Give me his gun,” he ordered Grizz. He slung the backpack over his shoulder.

Grizz picked up the gun from where it lay next to Richter’s slack hand. Holding it pinched between thumb and forefinger, he handed it to Hawk. Hawk took the gun and held it like he meant it. He still had a tight grip on my arm.

“Now get out his wallet and see who he is. And be ready to hit him again if he moves.” As he spoke, Hawk whipped his head from side to side, making sure we were still alone.

Grizz pulled the wallet from Richter’s back pocket and flipped it open. He stared at the gold shield. “His name’s John Richter. Dude—he’s with the FBI.”

Hawk said, “I heard him say your name, Sky. Or should I say Ellie? Why does an FBI agent know your real name?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Desperately, I tried to think of an answer. But as Hawk’s expression hardened, I realized my pause had been an answer all by itself.

He jabbed the gun into my belly and said to Grizz, “There’s a roll of duct tape under the car. Tape his mouth and his hands together behind his back and his ankles too. Then shove him under the car far enough that no one will see him. And do it fast before someone comes up here.”

“Man, wait a minute,” Grizz said. “Why
did
he know Sky?”

“Because she sold us out,” Hawk said grimly.

“She what?” Grizz’s mouth dropped open. A pink piece of gum lay on his tongue.

“We don’t have time to discuss this,” Hawk hissed. The gun wasn’t pointing in Grizz’s direction, but it wasn’t exactly pointing away, either.

Grizz set down the top of the trash can and began to drag Richter by his ankles. I winced as his head bounced along the pavement. When I opened my mouth to ask Grizz to be careful, Hawk jammed the gun in my belly harder.

“Don’t make a sound or I’ll shoot you right now.” Hawk pulled me back behind a retaining wall so that we were out of sight of the elevator and the stairwell.

Grizz finished taping Richter’s ankles. “Should I hog-tie him?” he asked, looking up at Hawk. “You know, tie his ankles to his hands?”

“I know what hog-tie means!” Hawk snapped. “We don’t have time for that. Just push him far enough underneath the car that Phelps won’t see him.”

“But, man, what about the bomb?” Grizz wrinkled his forehead. “It’s under there.”

“I’ve got that thing duct-taped on good. We’ll do it as soon as Phelps gets back in the car. It will be a two-fer.”

“But this guy is with the FBI, not Stonix!” Grizz looked confused. “What does he have to do with what’s happening to the forest?”

“He was trying to stop us, can’t you see that? Sometimes there are unintentional casualties. Sometimes we just do what we have to do. And we
have
to do this. Now, come on, we need to get out of here.” Hawk shook me. “Who else knows? Does Phelps know?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I don’t think so.”

“You’d better hope that he doesn’t.”

There was a crackle in my ear. I watched the others stiffen as we all listened to Liberty’s voice on our earpieces. “He’s leaving. Over.”

Hawk twisted his head to push his microphone button with his chin. “Liberty, we’ve got a situation. Change of plans. Follow Phelps. Stay close and pretend you’re just going to another car on the same floor. And let me know the second he gets inside his car. Over.”

In my ear, Liberty’s voice sounded more high-pitched than usual. “Why? What happened?”