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“So he’s been followingBeckett?”
“Sure as hell seems that way,” noted Gibson.
“But you said you thought they were working together.”
“And I was clearly wrong about that. It’s probably the only way Gosling could see of taking this guy down. He might have jumped at the chance when he found out Pottinger was Langhorne. With his cop connections he could easily have found out that Beckett knew Langhorne back then. He could use that as a plausible basis to ask for his help on this case. And that way get closer to the guy and hope something dropped and he could nail him.”
“So he’s not a bad guy, then. But why was he at Stormfield that night?” asked Francine.
“He lied and said the last time he was there was when he and I were at the place together. And he asked me about the treasure when I met with him.”
“So maybe he really does want a piece of it?”
“Hell, who doesn’t?”
Francine stared at her. “Does that include you, Mickey?”
Gibson looked uncomfortable. “I need money as much as the next person, especially now with no job. But it’s all dirty money, Francine. It would be like stealing.”
The other woman nodded and slowly closed her notebook. “I used to think that.”
“Used to?”
“There are haves and have-nots. I was in the latter group for most of my life. I’m not saying the world owes me anything, but it does owe me the right to make my own way. And if we recover the treasure, shouldn’t we be due a finder’s fee? I mean, isn’t that how those things work? Even Trask offered you and me one.”
“Well, yeah, that makes sense. But I hope it’s a better percentage than ProEye pays. I found them two hundred mill and they gave me a lousy five grand.”
“Oh, honey, we can do so much better than that.”
“How do you know? We’d have to negotiate.”
“Oh, we will.Afterwe find the treasure so our leverage is at its maximum.” Francine rose. “So let’s get working. You on the treasure, and me on finding my mother. We’re clearly going to need one for the other because Rochelle is not leaving empty-handed. And despite all the shit she let happen to me, I would actually like my mother back.”
CHAPTER74
FRANCINE SAT IN HER ROOMwith the lights out and noise-cancelling headphones on. She had been drugged by Rochelle at Stormfield at one forty-five p.m. or close to it. She remembered looking at her watch right before she fell unconscious. When she had awoken in the bed all trussed up she could still see her watch. It was one minute past two. She had to be carried to a car. Two to four minutes to accomplish that. Then an eight-minute drive to where she had been taken and several more minutes to carry her in and tie her up and then she had to regain consciousness.
She closed her eyes and trained her mind to focus exactly on what she wanted it to focus on. She had done this back in Albuquerque when she was with the men who had paid her father, or else with Darren Ender, who loved to hear her scream. She had read about the technique in a book. It was a way of transporting your mind to another place while your body was engaged elsewhere. Prisoners of all sorts often did it, to get by. She could understand why.
It had allowed her to survive without losing her mind.
The roads around Stormfield were winding and the area was not heavily populated. The reality was you couldn’t get anywhere fast. The place she had been taken to had to be isolated so pesky neighbors wouldn’t be around to see her lifted out of the car and carried in. She calculated the time and distance and settled on a two-square-mile area with Stormfield as its epicenter.
She made her mind go blank for a moment and then proceeded to fill it up with as much as she could remember about the room she had been in.
There would have been an easier way to do this, but Rochelle had been smart enough to turn off Francine’s phone so she couldn’t go back and track where she had been taken.
She recited out loud, “Plank floor, small bed, tattered drapes, one window, peeling paint, cold, though the day had not been especially chilly.”
She didn’t remember much sun coming in the window. So perhaps lots of shade trees?
“Wooden two-panel door, looked old. Smell was musty, place was dusty.”
Abandoned house?That would make sense.
Now she focused on sounds, or lack thereof. No nearby traffic. No train rumble or whistle. No aircraft, so not on a flight path, presumably.
But there had been a sound. Consistent, loud. Mechanized.
