Chapter 39 Ingrid
Ingrid
“After you called, asking about Maggie, I swung by here and found her truck, with all this stuff lying on the ground,” said Mike.
He looked down at the two fallen bags and the spilled groceries.
A stray onion had rolled a few yards away and now sat in the glow of a parking lot lamp, like a star performer highlighted by stage lights.
He pointed to the four grocery bags in the back of Maggie’s pickup truck.
“Looks like she was in the middle of loading up these last two bags when she was interrupted.” Mike turned to Lloyd. “When did you last see her?”
“It was eight o’clock,” said Lloyd. “That’s when she left to go shopping.”
“And you’re all staying at her farm?” Mike looked at Ingrid and Rodrigo.
There was a pause, then Rodrigo answered smoothly: “It’s a reunion. You know, old friends from way back.”
Ingrid crouched down to search inside one of the fallen grocery bags, and she stirred up the scent of basil and cilantro as she dug through Maggie’s purchases. She didn’t find what she was looking for in the first bag, so she began digging in the second.
“Ingrid,” said Lloyd. “It’s not safe for you out here. We need to get you inside.”
“It has to be in one of these bags,” she said.
“You’re out in the open here.”
“Maybe it blew away.” She rose to her feet and turned to the bed of Maggie’s pickup. The next bag was heavy with bottles of wine and whisky. So much booze. Maggie knew her friends well.
“Mrs. Slocum?” said Mike. “Can I help you with something?”
“No need,” said Ingrid. “I found it.” She pulled out the grocery store receipt and shone her cell phone light on it. “Eight forty-nine. That’s when she checked out.”
“Two hours ago,” said Rodrigo, and he looked at the unlit store. “Didn’t any of the employees notice this truck when they left for the night?”
“They park around the side of the building,” said Mike. “They wouldn’t have come out this way. I called the manager, asked him to come back and open his office, so we can view the parking lot CCTV. He lives twenty miles away, so it’ll take—”
“We already know who you’re looking for,” said Ingrid. “Her name is Hannah Murray. She’s fifty-two years old, five foot five, brown hair, brown eyes. She drives a black Honda sedan with Massachusetts license plates. And she’s almost certainly armed and dangerous.”
Mike stared at her. “How do you know all this?”
“Just trust me,” said Ingrid. “We do.”
“They’re on their way home now,” said Ingrid, reading Ben’s text message as they drove out of the grocery store parking lot. “But they’re still more than three hours away.”
“In the meantime, we can’t sit still,” said Rodrigo at the wheel of his rental car. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Lloyd, who was sitting in the back seat. “Eyes on the road, Lloyd. Make sure we’re not followed.”
“I’m on it.”
“We need a plan,” said Rodrigo.
A plan, thought Ingrid as they left behind the lights of the village.
Outside, the landscape changed to dark woods and fields.
At this late hour, most people were already in bed, and she saw only the occasional glow of a porch light or a television set.
She had never been afraid of the dark; there was safety in the shadows, and so many places one could hide.
But there was peril too. Invisible snares. Jaws, waiting to devour you.
“We can’t go back to the farm,” said Lloyd. “She took Maggie, so she knows that’s where Ingrid is.”
“She’d also know it’s a fortified location,” said Rodrigo. “That’s why she went after Maggie, not Ingrid. She’s been watching the farm, waiting for one of us to leave. Maggie’s her bargaining chip, and I expect we’ll soon be hearing a demand.”
“What she wants is me,” said Ingrid.
“And there’s only one response to that,” said Lloyd. “No.”
“Then your friend Maggie will die,” said Rodrigo.
“What are you saying? That Ingrid should just give herself up?”
“Calm down, Lloyd. We need to be strategic about this.”
“Not with my wife!”
“Lloyd,” said Ingrid, turning to look at him from the front seat. “We have to think about how to get Maggie back.”
“I’m thinking about you. We’ll find a way to get her back, but forget any talk about an exchange. There has to be another way.”
“First, we need to hear what the offer is,” said Ingrid. “Let’s go back to the farm. That’s where she’ll try to contact us.”
“She’s right, Lloyd,” said Rodrigo.
“Who the fuck are you to tell me that?”
“Lloyd,” Ingrid said quietly. “Let’s keep all our options open.”
“There’s only one option, as far as I see it. We handle this. You stay out of sight.”
Out of sight and locked away. A prisoner, she thought, as they drove back to Blackberry Farm.
They didn’t see any cars following them on the road, but then, the killer didn’t need to follow them.
Hannah Murray already knew they were staying at Maggie’s house.
That’s where she would try to contact them.
For the negotiations to begin, that’s where they had to be.
When they arrived at the farm and she stepped into the house, she felt as if she were walking back into her cell.
A comfortable one, with all the amenities, but a prison cell just the same.
When Lloyd turned the dead bolt and armed the security system, he was locking out intruders. He was also locking her in.
In the kitchen, she made a fresh pot of coffee.
They would not be sleeping tonight, so she made a full carafe, enough to fuel them for the next few hours, at least. As it steamed and dripped, she joined the men at the table to consider their next moves.
But they had no next moves. It was a matter of waiting for Hannah Murray to make her demands.
Maggie’s laptop, lying on the kitchen counter, suddenly dinged with a text message.
They looked at each other. Ingrid stood, flipped open the laptop, and typed in Maggie’s password. The text had been sent from Maggie’s own cell phone number. This is it, she thought, and opened the message.
All it contained was a photo of Maggie’s face. She was so bruised and battered that her left eye was swollen shut, but her expression was unflinchingly defiant. She might be doomed, but she was clearly not yet defeated. Most important, she was still alive.
Or she had been alive when this photo was taken.
“It’s proof of life,” said Rodrigo.
“But where’s the demand?” said Lloyd. “There must be a demand. Why send us just that photo?”
“She’s tormenting us,” said Ingrid. “Telling us she holds all the cards. Oh God, we can’t let Declan see this.”
“But it’s information,” said Rodrigo. “We all need to see it.”
“Give that to me,” snapped Lloyd. He snatched the laptop from the countertop, brought it to the table, and sat down. “Maybe there’s another reason she sent this photo.”
“What reason?” said Rodrigo.
“Let me dig into this. See what I can find.” Lloyd began to type, his fingers flying on the keyboard.
He blew up the image and zeroed in on the background.
“This looks like some sort of wooden support post behind her. And there’s a hint of a white curtain on her left.
A residence. Some knotty pine here, on the wall . . .”
“Not particularly distinctive,” said Rodrigo.
“No, this could be any one of hundreds of cottages around here. We can’t even be sure it’s in the town of Purity . . .” Lloyd suddenly went still.
“What?” said Rodrigo.
“There’s metadata still attached. The EXIF is all here! Time stamp 10:05 p.m. Latitude 44 degrees, 39 minutes . . .”
“The photo’s geotagged?”
Lloyd looked up. “It’s on Lake Cameron. It must be one of the seasonal cottages.”
Ingrid and Rodrigo exchanged looks. They both knew the game all too well. They understood that what seemed like a careless mistake could instead be strategic.
“It’s a trap,” said Lloyd.
Rodrigo nodded. “Of course it’s a trap.”
“Then we flip it around,” said Ingrid, and she looked at Rodrigo.
He nodded, a wordless confirmation that he understood what she was thinking.
They had always had that connection between them, the ability to view a problem and simultaneously come up with the same solution.
It appeared that Hannah Murray was trying to lure them into a rescue operation, one that was almost certainly spiked with booby traps.
But what was the plan behind the plan? To draw Ingrid out into the open?
To distract the circle of friends who were now protecting her?
“Let’s finish this,” said Ingrid.
Rodrigo straightened. “I’ll make the calls. Then it’s time for us to gear up.”