Chapter 27 Doc
DOC
A FEW DAYS LATER
My dearest Elizabeth,
I scribbled the line out and tried again.
My lovely Liz,
I snarled as I scratched it out and balled up the paper. I tossed it into the trash can on the other side of the room that I occupied.
I watched the paper ball bounce off the rim.
I sighed heavily as I went back to staring at the journal paper.
It was hard, being away from the girls. King’s crew was watching over them these last few days, taking shifts and never leaving the general area so that no one could track our movements back to the girls. Now that we knew we were being watched and traced, we had to take more precaution than ever.
Which meant not telling the girls that we weren’t coming back.
My Liz,
I smiled softly as I continued on with my latest letter.
I read all about your escapades with the girls. Sounds like Amanda and Anna are really giving King’s guys hell. Tell them to keep it up.
I chuckled as I continued on with my note.
I miss you, my Liz. I miss our moonlit dinners. I still have one to make up for, if you’ll let me.
It took me a while to find my next words.
On the off-chance that you’re still upset, please know that if there were any other way to keep you girls safe, we would have done it. But when I saw the sniper in that tree over your shoulder…
I had to compose myself for a moment before I continued writing.
…I knew then and there that we were being tracked.
I always wondered, when Marla ran to us, if the trail she left behind would rise up against us.
Her running to us put a target on our backs, and in the process, it put one on you guys as well.
I won’t have anything happen to you, my Liz. I won’t be able to bear it.
The words came easier the more I wrote.
So don’t be upset with King and the guys. They’re just helping. King is worried for Anna’s safety. This ring is pushing too close to their boundaries for comfort. If my sister was still alive, I’d do everything I could to protect her.
A tear dribbled down my cheek and I quickly wiped it away.
I found that I wanted to talk to Elizabeth about my sister.
I wanted my Liz to know everything about her.
I placed my pen back to the paper. Keep their spirits up, and know that you’re at the forefront of my mind with everything that I do and every decision I make out here. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and when I am back, you’ll be all the more safer for it.
I miss you, My Liz,
Your Doc
Sealing up the envelope and handing it to Cap was the only amount of intimacy I’d known in days.
But it was a small price to pay for keeping the girls isolated and safe.
So long as we didn’t go back and forth, there was nothing to track.
The only one going back and forth was one of King’s best stealth operatives, Dagger.
And I swear to hell on high, I wasn’t sure if even Ghost would hear the fucker coming.
But finally, the evening came.
Showtime.
“What time is it?” Brutus’s knee bumped mine as he shifted in the cramped space.
“They’ll be here soon.” Cap’s eyes stayed on the road ahead.
“Geez, the hearing on this guy.” Ghost’s eyes crinkled at the corners above his balaclava.
Cap shot him a look over his shoulder, though it was twinged with a bit of a smirk.
It was a new moon. A completely dark sky, complete with cloud cover.
Perfect for the execution of our plan. We rode around in King’s crew’s van while they were upkeeping our bikes.
Staying away from the loud, roaring engines helped us to move around with a grace that our law firm stalkers weren’t searching for.
I was ready to be back on a bike, though.
“I hear them,” Scout said.
“Hear what?” Wrecker asked.
Then the rest of us heard it.
Off in the distance.
The sound of rumbling engines.
“Showtime,” Cap said as he blinked the van lights twice before turning them off again.
“Ranger,” I muttered as I peered over at him, “you got what you need?”
He smiled and thumbed to the massive backpack on his back. “I’ve got the main gear.”
Brutus held up a small back in his burly hand. “I’ve got the ancillary shit he wants me to haul.”
I nodded. “Ghost?”
He waved his hand through the air. “Don’t worry about me. You just stick to your part, and I’ll stick to mine.”
I grinned. “Uh huh.”
“Ten bucks says he deviates within fifteen minutes.” Scout stretched his neck out with a crack.
“The fuck?” Ghost went still.
Brutus held up a finger. “I’ll take that bet. Make it ten minutes.”.
Ghost balked underneath his balaclava. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“Hey, can someone put me down for thirteen?” Wrecker raised his hand like he was in class. “Gonna squeeze right in the middle there.”
“I’ll kill you all.” Ghost crossed his arms.
“No, you won’t.” Cap rolled down his window for the approaching man.
Cap exchanged a few murmured words with King’s second in command.
The two of them talked for a second. There was some head nodding.
A few questions answered. Nothing that any of us overheard.
But then, Cap readied his hand on the steering wheel.
All was silent for a while with the clouds hanging heavily over our heads, and Ranger dug around in that pack of his already.
“Ready, Ranger?” Cap asked.
I watched him pull out his drone. “Ready when you are, boss.”
“Hand it to Wrecker.”
Ranger handed the drone to Wrecker over our heads and Cap rolled down Wrecker’s window. I heard the revving of the engines before King’s men took off into the woods on their bikes, starting the first phase of our plan that had taken us days to concoct.
“Now,” Ranger said.
Wrecker tossed the drone out the window as the bikes took off.
The loud rev-up of the drone was covered by the roaring sound of the motorcycles.
It took Ranger a bit of time to get his viewfinder up and running.
But when he gave Cap a thumbs up, our president laid his foot on the gas pedal of the van.
Taking off into the woods.
For the first half a mile, just as planned, we were right on their tails. We followed the pathways that the bikes carved out for us, and then we hit the fork. After the first half mile, they quickly darted off to the right, soaring toward the building where we were going to lay the noise trap.
We took a hard left with Ranger’s drone following high overhead.
“See anything yet?” Cap asked.
“Not yet,” Ranger said.
With every spiral of the tires beneath the van, we grew closer to our final destination.
“Ranger,” Cap barked.
“Nothing yet, Cap! My drone only flies so fast!”
My leg bounced with nervous jitters until Brutus shot me a look.
“Got ‘em!” Ranger exclaimed. “Seven heat signatures. Two outside, five inside.”
“Perfect,” Cap growled with a smile on his face.
Engines roared in the distance as Ranger gave the countdown. “Four inside now. One driving away.”
“Driving?” Wrecker asked.
“He’s not moving at human speed, so he’s in something,” Ranger said. “Three inside.”
The countdown paused as Ranger squinted and leaned forward, closer to his view finder.
“Talk to me, Range,” Cap said as he took a hard left when Wrecker pointed.
We all had to hang onto something with that particular turn.
“There aren’t any women in this house,” Ranger said.
“What?” we all asked at once.
Ranger looked around at all of us before he shrugged. “All bodies are out of the house, Cap. But there are no women there with them.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“This is ground penetrating to a certain degree,” Ranger said as he motioned to the viewfinder that his drone reported back to.
“I should’ve been able to see them walking up and down steps inside of the building retrieving people to take with them.
But there aren’t even heat signatures registering down there. ”
“If there even is a ‘down there,’” Brutus said.
“There wasn’t in the place where Amanda and I were,” Wrecker said.
“Which is why we need to get inside,” Cap said. “Are you sure they’re all gone, Ranger?”
“Yep,” he said as his attention returned to the screen in his hand. “The last two just drove away. And they’ve left no other heat signatures behind, so unless they’ve got women with them, there aren’t any women in that house.”
“The distraction is working,” Ghost said.
“Showtime,” Cap said as the van came to a halted stop.
There was something gnawing at the pit of my gut that I couldn’t let go of, though.
My gut never fired off. In fact, the last time it fired off the way I felt it at that moment was back when I was on the battlefield.
Out there being bombarded by mines, I failed to put the pieces together that were right there in front of me.
And four soldiers lost their lives because of it.
Because of my brain’s inability to work quickly enough.
They were the first four faces on the tree of death on my back.
I wasn’t about to add more names to its branches.
It took some maneuvering to finally get ourselves parked in a relatively disguised place.
Being so deep in the woods, it wasn’t like we could scout it ahead of time.
We had Ranger’s drone passovers, sure, but it wasn’t like seeing it with one’s own eyes.
Drone footage only went so far, and never gave details that were important.
Like where bushes were to conceal things, or how light penetrated the treetops.
What needed to be avoided. What could be utilized.
Trees where we could perch. All of that took time and scouting.
We had neither on our side.
My gut screamed at me as we unloaded and made our way to the dilapidated structure.
Ranger got to work quickly, rushing to place all of the pinhole microphones and cameras that he brought in his pack.
Brutus walked around with him, handing him things and watching him calibrate his tablet.
It was our job to case the joint slowly, not only looking for vantage points, but looking for any sort of information that we could take back.
Ghost was tasked with taking photographs of anything and everything he laid eyes on.
Wrecker was on the lookout in back while Scout was on the lookout near the front corner of the rundown house we had found.
I didn’t understand, though, why so many of their heat signatures would register here.
I mean, there was nothing special about it.
It wasn’t technologically advanced. It didn’t have any of their women in it.
As I walked around aimlessly, trying to figure out why in the world my gut hated me at that moment, I tried to find why they’d relish this building so deep into the state park.
In some ways, with how things were laid out strategically, it was almost like they were trying to keep this location hidden.
I just didn’t know why.
Until…
“Oh, God,” I said as my arm went up over my nose.
The pieces dropped into place like lightning. Like the smell was the last thing my senses needed to register why Ranger didn’t register any women in the building.
I reached for my flashlight and pulled it off my hip.
“Please be wrong,” I muttered to myself as I slowly migrated toward where the smell emanated from. “Please be wrong. Please be wrong. Please be wrong.”
“Goddamn it, Brutus!” Cap called out in the distance.
I barely heard the commotion. All I could do was dread what I already knew was coming. When I reached a trembling hand out for the door that I found ajar, I didn’t even have to open it to know what I’d find.
The fly that slipped through the crack of the door told me everything just as I eased it open.
“Oh my God,” I heaved out.
There she laid with her clouded eyes wide and filled with fear. They were clouded over. Beautiful blue eyes that would never see the light of day again. Her body, laying on top of another one.
Another woman.
With wide, accusing, clouded over brown eyes.
That’s why no women registered as heat signatures.
They got rid of their merchandise.
My hand found the medical bag at my hip on pure instinct.
The one I packed at the clinic, the one I loaded so carefully because I wanted to be ready for anything.
I had gloves in there. I had evidence bags.
I had the kind of documentation supplies that a man with three doctorates knew to grab when he was walking into a situation that the DOJ was going to need to understand from the inside out.
I had never been more grateful for a stop in Redd Valley in my life.
“Ghooooooost!” I bellowed. “Ranger! I need a fucking camera over here! The best you’ve fucking got!”
This was definitely some shit our contact at the DOJ needed to fucking see.