Chapter 18 #2
Detective Harper immediately sends alerts for all three vehicles and forwards Linsey’s photograph to every officer in the area.
Highway patrol covers the interstate entrances while license-plate readers search across two counties for those plate numbers.
They put out an Amber Alert for Noah and local law enforcement begins checking traffic cameras for vehicles that fit the descriptions I gave.
Within minutes we get word that all the license plates are stolen.
Traffic cameras pick up the white van traveling north on Harbor Road.
It leaves the commercial district and enters a residential area without camera coverage.
I head out to Harbor Road and find that Siege and Rigs have beaten me there.
They found the van and gray sedan. Both have been abandoned along the side of an isolated road.
Officers show up within minutes. We have no idea what vehicle they were transferred to, if they’re together or still driving separately, or if they’ve been injured.
The situation is infuriating in every imaginable way.
“I’ll get the crime lab out to go over the vehicles. We’re not giving up until they’re found. The Amber Alert will stay active. If we’re lucky, someone will report seeing them. Rest assured we’ll follow up on every lead that comes in.”
I feel like I’m digging through mountains of information desperate for any clue I can grab onto that will help me find them. Every new clue leads nowhere and it’s dispiriting. I can only hope and pray that they are at least together.
By the time I get back to the clubhouse I see it’s been turned into a command center.
Zen covers the back wall of our meeting room with maps, property records from Linsey’s entire family, and a family tree that keeps getting more complex with each new bit of information he adds.
Zen’s got his old lady involved. Lexi is drawing lines connecting her family members to churches, phone numbers, vehicles in their name, and addresses.
Video feeds run across two screens while brothers call hotels, campgrounds, bus stations and every Savage Legion ally who might be able to help us between California and Montana.
It’s moving and a bit overwhelming to see it all playing out in real time.
Sometime in the afternoon one of the prospects drops his head around the door to let me know that my bike’s been fitted with new tires.
Not that it’s much fuckin’ use when we don’t know where Linsey and Noah are.
Instead of being able to do anything useful, I just pace from one end of the room to the other, going over everything in my mind and wishing I could turn back the clock.
Siege eventually pulls me into the hallway. “Talk to me straight, brother. How are you holding up? Can you be useful or do you need to take a time out to get your head together?”
“I can hold my shit together and be useful. You’re not benching me, Prez. Nobody knows Linsey’s family, her history or her boy better than I do. Noah addressed that message to me because he trusts me to follow his trail. I’m not about to let them down.”
Siege studies my face before answering. “Alright, if you’re sure.”
“I’ve never been more fuckin’ sure of anything in my life.” Pausing for a second, I add, “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
“You’d best get it out. What’s up? Did we miss somethin’ important?”
I tap my chest pocket. “I just found out that Linsey is pregnant. That means we’ve got three to protect now.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Siege swears under his breath. “As if this shit weren’t real enough already. Do her family know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. She hadn’t told me yet, I think she was planning to later today.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll let everyone know. Why don’t you go help Zen and Lexi sort through the information on the family. We need to start ranking properties in terms of how likely they are to be used as a place to stash your old lady and kid.”
“Sure thing, Prez.”
***
Every property, cousin, and church member we cross off the list narrows the search. It’s necessary work, but every dead end represents more time Linsey and Noah are spending with their kidnappers. I stand in front of the map and study the vehicle switch point until the roads begin to blur together.
Sometime after two in the morning, Zen makes a strangled sound behind his computers. I turn and find him staring at a gap in the family tree.
“What did you find?”
“There’s a hole in this family’s history.”
Zen turns one screen towards us and explains that he mapped everything Linsey’s known relatives currently own in Montana, but her father’s family didn’t begin there.
Her great-grandparents homesteaded in California before moving north during the Fifties.
Most of their land was sold, but one parcel has remained in the family.
“The old survey shows one hundred sixty acres in the Estrella Hills with a farmhouse, barn and several outbuildings. The land belonged to his grandmother and has been tied up in probate for years. A lawyer in Billings pays the taxes from an account that has operated automatically for decades. This is it, Sabre. The property is fifty-one miles from the point where they switched vehicles. That can’t be a coincidence, right? ”
I look at the map and that’s when my excitement starts to mount too. “They could even reach it from the switch point without touching the freeway or passing any known traffic cameras. You’re right. This is the best lead we’ve found so far.”
“I’m gonna call Shelly,” I tell him. “We need intel instead of going into this blind.”
Shelly answers on the second ring at two in the morning. She whispers because she can’t risk anyone hearing her talk to us. When I give her the location and describe the property, she knows it immediately.
“The family calls it the Home Place,” she tells us. “I went there twice when I was little for reunions. There’s no electricity, so they use lanterns and a generator. The farmhouse has a root cellar that scared me as a child.”
“Does Linsey’s father go there much?” Zen asks.
“Yeah, he drives down to inspect it and make sure the groundskeeper is doing his job. He used to say it was the only place where family business stayed family business.”
I ask Shelly a few questions about how to best approach the property from the road and then thank her for talking to us.
I don’t tell her about Linsey and Noah being abducted and she doesn’t ask why I called at two in the morning.
That tells me that either she knows what’s happened, or she knows something’s up and doesn’t ask for details in case her uncle tries to beat the information out of her.
Poor kid.
Siege and the other club officers crowd around Zen’s computer and look at the evidence spread across Zen’s screens.
Siege announces, “That’s got to be the place.
We need to move right away. Remember the group text I sent about Sabre’s old lady being pregnant.
That means we need to be extra careful and prioritize getting her out first.” Stopping for a second to look around at all the brothers, he says, “I want everyone to gear up. We’re wheels up in thirty minutes. ”
And just like that, every brother in the room jumps into action.