I can feel the blood in my veins freeze.My God.
“Remi…”
“…mother’sname is Martha Benjamin, and she was originally from Kettle Falls.”
I’m on an open call with Mancuso, and an intelligence analyst on his team, who is giving us on the spot updates as new information becomes available.
“Is her family connected to the junkyard?”Mancuso asks.
His voice sounds a bit distorted as a result of the headset he’d be wearing in the helicopter.
After I realized my son might be heading straight for trouble, I abruptly hung up on the agent and tried Clem’s phone, which rang and rang before sending me to voicemail.I tried three more times, ignoring the repeated attempts by Mancuso to get through, but all with the same result.There was no use trying Remi’s new phone, since that is still in the kitchen drawer where I put it after Mancuso took my son into protective custody.He hadn’t asked for it yet, and I’d frankly forgotten about it until now.Trying not to panic, I realized reception would be spotty at best going through the mountains, but I could feel the urge to scream building.
Once I got back on the phone with Jason and explained my son and Clem were on their way to that particular junkyard at that exact moment, he jumped into action.He said he’d be on his way with a team and urged me to stay put, but included me in their open call.
“I’m looking,”the agent on the other end responds.“But the Washington State Digital Archives portal was down, and I was only just now able to get in, so give me a minute.”
What Mancuso doesn’t know is that I wasn’t at the office to begin with, and I never bothered to get back there, instead heading straight out of town.Like hell was I going to sit by idly while my kid is out there, possibly in big trouble.I’m keeping my phone muted, so he can’t hear I’m on the move.With any luck, we’ll arrive at the junkyard at the same time and he won’t have a chance to ream my ass out then.
Well aware I’m breaking all the rules, I silenced my radio and have ignored a few incoming calls from the station.I’m in someone else’s jurisdiction now, and there’s nothing my colleagues could do for me here.Trust me, I don’t want to lose this job, but there is no way I’m going to sit by a phone and wait for someone else to get my kid out of trouble.
At this point, I’m about twenty-five minutes into what would normally be a forty-five or fifty-minute drive, but I’m thinking at the clip I’m going, I’ll get there sooner.I hope I do because by my calculation, unless they made some stops on the way, Clem and Remi should’ve already gotten there close to an hour ago.
But only a few minutes later the jig is up when I hear my boss’s voice join the call.
“Is Androtti on the line?”
“She is,” Mancuso answers.
I release a deep sigh before unmuting my phone.
“Yes, sir.”
“Christ, Tessa.I know what you’re doing; I don’t even need to ask,” Hugo comments.
“I fucking knew it.”
This from Mancuso, who sounds predictably pissed.I don’t know how my boss got clued in or how he ended up tapped in to this call, but it shouldn’t surprise me.
“You cannot make a move until I get there, Tessa.I won’t hesitate to have local authorities arrest you before you even arrive.They’re on standby at a self-storage about a mile down the road from the junkyard, where there’s room for us to land.That’ll be in about twenty minutes, so you hang tight.”
“Got it!”The FBI analyst’s voice cuts in.“In 1972, Martha Elizabeth Benjamin married a Wallace James Shirk.A year later they welcomed a son, Everett James Shirk.Wallace Shirk is listed as the owner of the junkyard along Route 395, midway between Colville and Kettle Falls.”
The old lady was close, it’s Everett, not Emmet.
My worst fears confirmed, my foot presses down harder on the gas pedal.
Chapter26
Clem
“Areyou soft in the head, boy?”
I get hit with a stabbing pain when I attempt to open my eyes, and when I try to reach for my head, I discover my hands are tied.
What the hell?
Blinking a few times, I try again, wondering if I cracked my head on something when I went down.I do remember going down, and I’m pretty sure that was the impact of a Taser hitting me.What I don’t understand is why.
