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“I’m taking my squad into the woods,” she said, heading for the door. She knew Mason wouldn’t call her back.
“Harvé is only twenty minutes out,” Mason reminded her as her foot hit the top step.
“That’s twenty minutes of additional terror for Fleet,” Talia growled. “If I can spare him that, I will.”
She flew out the door and sped across the pavement joining her squad while hearing Mason give a sit-rep in her ear to every team member, explaining what they’d just determined. Almost before he’d finished, her squad was joined by all the others at the edge of the woods.
“Listen up,” Mason’s voice clipped again over everyone’s mics. “I’ve sent satellite imagery on your phones with areas gridded out. I’m assigning a two-acre deep section to each squad. Take things slowly, and look for signs of disturbance in the undergrowth. Since Mr. Eggers was unable to move, our perp had to have carried him. So footprints, scrape marks in the dirt, broken branches; they’re to be examined and recorded with coordinates and pictures. You copy?”
“Copy, Chief,” all the squad leaders affirmed.
“Okay. Go. And just in case our perp did drive Mr. Eggers off-site, I have the State Police blocking off all main roads to do a quick search of every vehicle attempting to leave the area.”
Talia figured that wouldn’t be such a daunting task. It was just after three in the morning, and traffic would be almost non-existent.
The team’s job, on the other hand, would be like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Fleet had been taken at approximately one forty-five, which meant if Mason was correct about the rocuronium, Fleet was still out there somewhere, paralyzed, and wouldn’t be able to call out to anyone or answer their hails.
“Let’s move,” Talia ordered her squad, having just received their search-grid.
Thank God Doug was choosing to keep his mouth shut and play nice. There was no way she could have calmly listened to any of his back-talk.
The ten squads spread out so that each person who entered the dense woods could spot the team member who walked in to their left and right, all approximately twelve feet apart. It would do no good to puttoomuch room between them, because a comatose Fleet might be bypassed without being spotted. Thankfully, they had some very good trackers on the team, Amos being the best of the best. It certainly wasn’therforte, but she lowered her head, scrutinizing every bit of dirt. She’d be damned if she missed even the slightest clue tonight.
Talia used her flashlight to examine each square inch of ground as the line progressed. She called over to Cisco, her squad lieutenant on her right. “Cisco? How far do you think you could carry a two-hundred-pound deadweight through the woods?” She picked him over others since he was the closest to her besides Doug.
She heard Cisco grunt. “I don’t know. Two hundred yards? Maybe three?”
It’s what she thought. And Cisco was no slouch. She’d seen him during drills, fireman carrying their large test-dummy which weighed-in comparably to Fleet, down a flight of stairs and well away from a building they’d been told would eventually blow up.
“I could do four,” Doug boasted from her left, and didn’t the asshole sound like he was enjoying himself? Why did he have to be such a prick? Talia wasn’t in the mood.
“I’ll make sure we put that to the test during our next drill weekend,” she growled. “Now, minds to the ground, people.” And by people, she meant Doug.
* * *
Fleet had been tryingand trying to get bits and pieces of himself to move. So far, he’d managed a pinky-finger wiggle, but that was about it. How long had he been working on it? Would it matter? Was anybody looking for him or was he on his own? He side-swiped his digit again.Left, right. Left right.He dug a small path through what felt like dirt to his returning senses.
Had his toe just twitched? It was possible, but he couldn’t look at it to find out.
He hated that his face remained covered. Fleet wanted to see where he lay now that he could blink his eyes. More than that, he wanted to open his mouth and call out for help, but fear that the leaves—because that’s what he’d finally decided were on top of him—would fall into his open cavity and choke him before he figured out how to get it closed again, prevented him from trying. Because how badly would that suck? Aspirating a leaf before he had control over his body again?
He tried to calm himself again, and while he attempted working his smaller muscle groups, he couldn’t help but churn over the reason he found himself in this situation.
There was really only one thing that came to mind, and as he catalogued his recent behavior, he became more and more certain that his current predicament had to be related to the attention he’d been paying to Talia. And that wasn’t just his paranoia speaking.
Fact: Many people didn’t like a black man showing interest in a white woman.
Fact: Bigots often thought it was their right to take matters into their own hands when they didn’t agree with something they thought was wrong.
Fuck.
Fleet should have been more careful. He knew better. Similar circumstances had nearly derailed his life when he’d been young. Why had he imagined things would be different now just because he was older. Had becoming an established and well-respected business owner in Maine made him forget?
Probably. But…
There were prejudiced assholes everywhere.
Fleet gave an internal sigh, but couldn’t afford to dwell on that now. It might all be moot if he couldn’t get himself out of the woods. Had the person who’d brought him here meant for him to die, or simply wanted to scare him? If it was the latter, the strategy had been successful. Fleet had suffered severe panic waking up to find that his muscles didn’t work. And now, as he was slowly regaining feeling, he was terrified that before he could actually move his entire self, he’d end up freezing to death in the October chill, or get eaten by a bear.
