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“Ready for a little hide-and-seek?”
“Lead on.”
They had little hope of following any footprints in the mud so he and Remi dashed across the clearing and began picking their way through the paths and tunnels formed by the boiler graveyard. Sam found two pieces of rebar and gave the shorter one to Remi and kept the longer one for himself. They’d gotten only fifty feet or so when they heard a faint voice through the falling rain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . what piece?”
It was Ted.
A male voice said something in return, but neither Sam nor Remi could make out the words.
“That thing? It was a piece of a bottle. Nothing important.”
Sam turned his head, trying to catch the sound and narrow in on where it was coming from. Using hand gestures, Sam pointed ahead and to the left, under an arch formed by a boiler that had half collapsed against its neighbor. She nodded. Once they were through the arch the voices became more distinct.
“I want you to tell me exactly where you found it,” the unidentified man was saying. The voice was accented, either eastern European or Russian.
“I told you, I don’t remember. It was somewhere on the river.”
“The Pocomoke River?”
“Right,” Ted replied.
“Where?”
“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand what—”
There was a slapping sound, something hard striking flesh. Ted grunted, followed by a splash as he obviously fell over in a mud puddle.
“Get up!”
“I can’t!”
“I said, get up!”
Sam signaled for Remi to wait as he crept ahead, pressed himself against the wall of the boiler, then slid ahead until he could see around the curve.
There, in a space between a pair of pickup truck-sized boilers, was Ted Frobisher. He was on his knees, arms bound behind his back. His assailant stood a few feet in front of him, a flashlight in his left hand, a revolver in his right. He was pointing the gun at Ted’s chest.
“Tell me where you found it and I’ll take you home,” the man said. “You can forget all about this.”
There’s a lie if ever I’ve heard one, Sam thought. Whoever this man was he hadn’t brought Ted all the way out here only to take him back home and tuck him safely into bed. So sorry about all this, have a nice night. . . . Whether or not the man got what he’d wanted, Ted’s fate was sealed unless they acted quickly.
Sam thought for a few seconds and formulated a rudimentary plan. He would have preferred a more elegant solution, but they had neither the time nor the resources for that. Besides, simple was often the most elegant. He slid back along the boiler and returned to where Remi was waiting.
He sketched out the scene he had witnessed, then his plan.
“Sounds like you’re getting the most dangerous part,” Remi said.
“I have absolute confidence in your aim.”
“And my timing.”
“That, too. I’ll be right back.”
Sam disappeared into the trees for half a minute, then returned and handed her a rock about the size of a grapefruit.
“Think you can climb that one-handed?” he asked, nodding at the rusty maintenance ladder rising up the side of the nearest boiler.
