Chapter 22
“Dad?” Clay places a hand on Judd’s shoulder. “Dad, are you awake?”
Judd opens his eyes and sees a star-filled sky.
A single mayfly hovers a few feet above his face, and he feels a throbbing pain on the back of his head.
The crickets and frogs are in a shouting match, but Judd can hear trout taking bugs off the river’s surface.
He takes an inventory of his body, wiggling his fingers and toes, slightly bending his knees and elbows.
Other than his hurting head, Judd seems to be all right.
“What happened?” says Judd.
“Give yourself a minute,” says Clay. “See if you can sit up.”
Judd takes a couple of deep breaths, then lifts his body into a sitting position. His head hurts like hell. He touches the back of it but feels no blood. He looks around to confirm that he’s still on Moen’s Bridge.
“What the hell?” says Judd. “Where’s the canister?”
“How’s your vision?” says Clay.
“I can see the canister is gone. Did I drop it in the river? And why are you here?”
Clay sits on the ground. “I followed you.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want you coming out here alone.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” says Judd.
“Apparently, you do.”
Judd turns his head to the left and then the right to test his neck’s range of motion. “Fair enough.”
“I was three hundred yards back, watching you through binoculars. You were about to drop the canister into the river, when someone snuck up behind you and bopped you on the head. I gunned it to the bridge, but the person took off in a sprint. I jumped out of my truck and ran to you.”
“When was this?”
“About forty-five minutes ago. I didn’t want to leave you and no one’s driven by yet. I kept checking your pulse. Maybe you just needed a nap.”
Judd looks around. “Then where the hell is your truck?”
Clay sighs. “There was another guy I didn’t know about. He jumped into my truck and peeled out of here. I left my keys in the cupholder.”
Judd looks down at the ground and then up at the sky. “Have you called for help?”
“My phone was in the other cupholder.”
Judd reaches into his pocket.
“Don’t bother,” says Clay. “They took your phone. And your keys.”
“Well,” says Judd, “we’d better start moving.”
“Town’s closest,” says Clay.
“I don’t want anyone asking questions. I know it’s a hike, but let’s head to my place.”
They’ve been walking the shoulder of County Road 21 for almost an hour and have thirty minutes more to go.
“I, uh…” starts Judd. “I screwed up. I should have considered the possibility I was being set up. Of being ambushed. I mean, what kind of idiot hangs out in a river waiting for forty-five thousand dollars to float by? I didn’t think that through very well.
” The gravel crunches under their feet. Judd feels the back of his head and says, “You were right. I’m too close to this.
I can’t think straight when it comes to Teddy.
Hopefully, the kidnappers were just sewing up loose ends by knocking me on the head.
They have their forty-five grand. Now they can return Teddy to us. ”
“I put a tracker in the canister,” says Clay.
Judd stops. Clay takes another step, then also stops. He turns around and looks at his father. “Are you okay? Do you need to rest?”
“You put a tracker in the canister?” says Judd. “It was clear plastic. How come I didn’t see it?”
“I hid it in the lid behind some sheet plastic. The tracker has a triaxial accelerometer, GPS, Bt5, LTE-M, and a ten-day battery. We’ll find it.”
Judd stares at Clay and doesn’t say a word.
“If you didn’t see it, I bet the kidnappers won’t see it either,” says Clay. “I can’t track it without my phone, but we can download the app onto another device. We’ll be able to locate it and—Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I had the strangest feeling earlier today,” says Judd. “You know, when you came over after the ransom note was delivered through my window. You asked a lot of questions and made a few suggestions.”
“Yeah…” says Clay. “What about it?”
“You seem quite current on your investigative techniques.”
“Are you talking about the dog-collar tracker? It’s obvious. Anyone would have thought of that.”
“It’s not just the tracker,” says Judd. He looks at Clay for a good ten seconds before he adds, “Listen, you and I have our differences. Always have. But I’ve known you since you entered this world. I know your expressions. What each little eye movement and facial tic means. I know your tells.”
“Are you okay, Dad? Maybe that hit on the head—”
“My head’s just fine,” says Judd. “Earlier today you talked about running the ransom note through the Message Switch System using Sprout Social on Teddy’s friends.”
“So?” says Clay. The stars and moon emit enough light for Clay and Judd to see each other’s faces. Clay catches a glint in his father’s eye. “What’s going on here?”
“My God,” says Judd. He stares at Clay dumfounded. Lips parted. Brows hanging heavy over his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you how to investigate a missing person? I didn’t think I had to. You’re supposed to—”
“You know,” says Judd, “one thing has never made sense to me. Why would West Point recruit a player good enough to play European soccer? They must have known you’d leave the army as soon as you served your five years. Why make that investment in you if you were going to just take off?”
“They recruited me because they wanted a good soccer team.”
Judd shakes his head. “No, Clay. They didn’t. Tell me the truth. Were you double-timing it over there?”
“Double-timing it?”
“Soccer player by day. CIA by night?”
Clay hesitates, then says, “Dad, let’s get you to the hospital.”
“You’re CIA,” says Judd. He looks calm. Almost happy.
Almost thrilled, even. “Or you’re working for one of the other intelligence agencies.
You didn’t walk away from your country. Professional soccer was your cover.
” Judd smiles. Smiles at his son in a way Clay hasn’t seen since he told Judd he was headed to West Point.
“What were you really doing over in Europe? Eyes-and-ears kind of stuff? Recruiting informants?”
Clay wants to deny it. Knows he should deny it.
But denying it would only make the search for Teddy worse.
More difficult. Less focused. And for all of Judd’s faults, Clay knows his father can be trusted.
He is, despite their fractured relationship, a man of honor and a patriot. A man who tries to do the right thing.
He makes eye contact with Judd, and calm blankets the two of them.
“I was in Warsaw playing a friendly,” says Clay.
“Galway against Legia. And my cover was blown. That’s why I had to rush back home.
And it’s why I’m not coaching in Europe or MLS or at a university.
Riverwood, Minnesota, and Dorset-Cornwall is as far from the spotlight as I can get. ”
“I’ll be,” says Judd. “I was right.”
“And you have to keep this to yourself,” says Clay. “It’s a matter of national security.”
Judd looks like he’s going to cry. Cry tears of happiness. “I’m so proud of you, Clay. Just so damn proud.” Judd sticks out his hand to shake Clay’s.
Clay steps back.
“What’s the matter?” says Judd. “Can’t a father congratulate his son?”
“You have judged me on what I do, not who I am, ever since I was a little kid. You didn’t like me because I played soccer.
You gave me no credit for working my ass off to be an elite player.
Same with violin and same with academics.
I didn’t want to hunt so I wasn’t a real boy.
I didn’t want to sit in a boat so I wasn’t a real fisherman.
I read Dostoyevsky instead of Sports Illustrated so I wasn’t a son worth paying attention to.
I went to West Point and all of a sudden, I was the golden boy.
I told you I quit the army to play professional soccer and I was back to persona non grata.
Now you find out I never stopped serving my country and I’m the greatest son a father could ever ask for. ”
Clay looks hard at his father and adds, “Let me know when you decide to care about me as a person instead of only caring about what I do or don’t do. And not one word about this to anyone, including Braedon. He has no idea.” Clay turns and walks away.
Judd walks after him. He feels proud of his son and ashamed of himself because he knows Clay has spoken the truth.
Both about continuing to work for his country while in Europe, and about Judd judging Clay for what he does, not who he is.
He swallows. Swallows the hard truth that he’s been in the wrong for decades.
He can’t just apologize for forty-two years of bad fatherhood and make everything okay.
Regaining Clay’s trust will take some time.
Maybe a lot of time. He’ll have to earn it step by step.
“Hey,” says Judd, “I was thinking about something you suggested earlier, and you’re right. We should bring Zoey Jensen in on the kidnapping.”
Clay keeps walking but says, “You want to bring in Zoey? That’s a big change.”
“I trained her for three months,” says Judd. “She’s a bit of an odd duck, but she’s good police. She’s not as close to the case as you and I are.”
“You don’t have to sell me,” says Clay. “I’m all for bringing Zoey in.”
A pair of headlights crests a swell in the road. Judd stands on the yellow dotted line and waves down the vehicle. It appears to be a sedan, but Judd and Clay can see two headlights and not much else. The car stops twenty feet short of them, and they hear a window roll down.
“Judd?” says a voice.
“Mike?” says Judd. “Is that you?”
Mike Wahlquist leaves the engine running and gets out of the car. He approaches Clay and Judd still wearing his Riverwood police uniform. “What the hell are you two doing out here?”
“We’ll tell you in the car,” says Judd. “That is, if you can give us a ride to my place.”
“Of course I can,” says Mike. “Come on. Let’s get you boys home.”
Judd rides shotgun, and Clay sits in back.
Judd tells Mike the entire story. The rock through the window with the ransom note.
Judd’s decision to give the kidnapper the money without involving the police.
And his own shortsightedness in not anticipating an ambush before dropping the canister of cash in the river.
And how fortunate he is that Clay followed him.
“I mean, Moen’s Bridge isn’t near anything or anyone,” says Judd. “I should have known better than to go alone.”
“You want to stop at the hospital?” says Mike. “Make sure you don’t got a concussion?”
Clay looks at the clock on Mike’s dash. It’s 2:02 AM.
He doesn’t remember the last time he was out and about at 2:02 AM.
The last thing he wants to do is sit in an emergency room under glaring fluorescents next to a cougher and sneezer.
Plus Judd’s brain seems to be just fine—he just deduced Clay’s biggest secret.
“I can check him at the house,” says Clay.
“I’ve been through enough concussion protocols to know the drill. If he fails, we’ll go to the hospital.”
“Whose house?” says Mike.
“My dad’s,” says Clay. “It’s closer.”
The cornfields look black in the passing windows.
Clay sees a ghost of himself in the window.
He can’t help but wonder who that guy is now.
He went from playing professional soccer in Europe where he was also a US intelligence agent.
Both were fairly routine jobs, one serving the other, where Clay lurked below the surface.
That wasn’t his first choice when it came to soccer.
He’d much rather have played for top-tier teams like Liverpool or Real Madrid than Galway United FC.
But in espionage, lurking below the surface served him well.
Unseen. Unheard. No one suspected a damn thing until the game blew up in his face.
The diplomatic explosion that sent him running back to Riverwood, Minnesota.
And yet, here he is once again. Not as an agent, but as a participant in a clandestine mission. So much for the quiet life.
Mike pulls into Judd’s driveway. It’s two hundred yards of winding gravel through river birch and maples. They come around the last bend and Judd says, “I don’t remember leaving all those lights on.”
“No,” says Clay. “You didn’t.” He spots Zoey Jensen’s squad car parked where Judd’s Tahoe usually is. “And I don’t remember the chief of police being parked outside the house when you left.”
“What the hell is she doing here?” says Mike.
Clay feels something gnaw at his gut. He opens the rear door before the car comes to a complete stop.