I’ll never know how Gunner smelled the handkerchief from more than a winding quarter mile away, but somehow, with the reversal of the airflow, he had. Was it Summer’s sweat? Her perfume? Or was it the fresh blood? I don’t know. I just know that he did. As I stood there staring in disbelief, I tried to force my mind to click into gear.
Think, Murph. Think.
The blast had not blown it in there. The blast would have incinerated it. That could only mean the handkerchief had been placed inside that lid—by hand and probably in haste. Its location was purposeful. No accident. Summer must be trying to tell me something, but what?
Was she alive? Was Ellie? Angel? Casey? If she wasn’t, then who put the handkerchief in that location? Why? I tried to block the questions as I ran back through the tunnel. I found Bones in Den 2, which had been converted to Command Central. He was hovering over a cup of coffee, his Sig hanging in a chest holster, and he was staring at video replays of Main Street looking for clues. He, too, was dead on his feet. I threw open the door and spoke to Eddie while pointing at the screen. “Bring up all of yesterday’s video of the delivery gate.”
Eddie’s fingers sounded like horses’ hooves pounding the keys.
At 10x speed, starting with the morning of the wedding, which was now nearly forty-eight hours ago, Eddie began playing the video. Several trucks rolled in, then through the tunnel where our cameras captured them along every inch of the route. Each one circled the roundabout, then backed up to the loading dock and offloaded their delivery. Then our folks checked the contents and signed the papers, and the trucks returned down the tunnel and out the gate. Everything worked as it should.
Then a large propane truck appeared around 10:45 p.m. I spoke out loud to Bones. “Does that strike you as strange?”
He nodded at the driver of the truck. “Those guys are local. Nine to five. They’re not long haul.”
Bones was tracking with me. Long-haul drivers make deliveries when they reach a destination. No matter the time. So almost 11 p.m. wouldn’t have been too unusual. But guys who punch a clock deliver on a more regular schedule because they’re part of a route. More like a mailman. I spoke to the team of guys who had gathered just over my shoulder. “What time is that normally?”
More keys clicking. “Over the last six months, between 9:45 and 10 a.m.”
“Like clockwork,” I said.
“And how long do they normally stay?”
“Forty-five minutes max.”
Bones looked up at me. “What are you getting at?”
“Eddie, bring up my toast at the reception.” Eddie complied and the video began playing. “Can you slow it down?”
Eddie slowed the video. Summer appeared. Glass in one hand, handkerchief in the other. “Stop.” I pointed at the screen, then unfurled my fingers, allowing Summer’s handkerchief to hang from my hand. “I found this tucked inside the lid where the trucks fill the tank.”
Bones eyed it. Then me. “That means . . .”
I spoke for both of us. “They may not be dead.”
Bones was now firing on all cylinders. Problem solving. “But why there?”
“Unless it blew in there mysteriously, which I doubt, it was placed there purposefully. Which suggests intention. Which could also mean she’s trying to tell me something.”
He nodded in agreement. “But what?”
I pointed at the truck on the screen. “When did that thing leave?”
We watched as the truck exited the gate at 12:02 p.m.
“And when was the explosion?”
Bones spoke from memory. “12:04.”
“Does it strike anyone as strange that our unscheduled propane delivery enters and then exits what is normally Fort Knox just two minutes before an explosion blows half the mountain away?”
Silence enveloped Command Central.
Bones looked at me with both anger and tears in his eyes. I glanced at Eddie, who rewound the video of the truck leaving the gate. Four cameras had captured it coming and going. Everything looked perfectly normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. “Bones, how many people do you think could fit in the tank of that truck?”
He weighed his head side to side. “Properly outfitted? Maybe a dozen. Packed like sardines?” He shrugged. “Twenty-some.” He turned to me, the picture clearing in his mind. “That thing would make an excellent Trojan horse.”
I nodded. “Which is the only reason I can imagine Summer would tuck that handkerchief inside the lid. She knew, sooner or later, that Gunner—who runs around this place at will—would find it.” I shook my head. “How else would she tell us?”
Bones stood and pointed at Eddie, whose fingers immediately produced a map of Colorado. Bones looked at me. “If he clicks that button, it’s T-minus seven days. Track them too soon and we can lose them in transit because we haven’t given them time to get to a destination.”
I finished his sentence. “And track them too late and they’re gone forever.”
Bones crossed his arms and started at the screen. “It’s delicate.”
“Currently, whoever has them doesn’t know what we know. He thinks we think they’re all dead. And given that’s what he wants us to think, he’s probably not in a great big hurry, and he’s probably not looking behind him. But sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later, he’ll strip the girls of everything and might even find our trackers.”
“Which means we’re on the clock.”
Bones nodded.
Eddie spoke. “If they’re in that tank, or in anything enclosed in metal or concrete or whatever, the signal won’t initiate the tracker until she’s outside.”
“Unless she’s sitting by a window. And Summer would be.”
Bones turned to me. “What about Angel, Ellie, and Casey?”
“We never told them about the GPS. No need to worry them.”
Bones spoke again. “But if they’re alive, I’d bet most everything I have that Summer has told them by now.”
I spoke almost to myself. “Why take only them?”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems targeted. Why take only Angel, Ellie, Casey, and Summer when sixty-three other women sat defenseless during the moments following the fire and leading up to the explosion? Our attention wasn’t focused on them. We were trying to put out the fire. Get kids out of the hospital. They had us by the jugular. If they really wanted to hurt Freetown, or they were in it for the money, why not back up a tractor trailer while our attention was elsewhere and load it up with as many as they could? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Bones stared beyond me. “Unless it’s personal.”
“Correct.”
Bones continued, “The only reason to single them out and walk away with those four rather than two dozen is because somebody is trying to make a statement.”
“You mean like the statement they made with my boat?”
A nod. “Maybe.”
“You think it’s Mr. Montana?”
Bones shook his head once. “It could be anybody, but I wouldn’t exclude him. I might even put him at the top of the list.”
“So let’s assume for a minute that it’s personal. If it is, then he’s not in it for the money. In fact, he may not sell them at all.”
Bones scratched his beard. “I’d rather he auction them. Post their faces on the black web. That would buy us some time.”
“If he doesn’t, we can be pretty certain this isn’t a business proposition. This is personal. And if it’s personal, and if he’s as wealthy as he’d have to be to pull off an explosion like that”—I pointed to the hospital—“both here and on my island, I can see two possible outcomes. First, he’ll unload them in Canada or Mexico. Wash his hands and either dump them or give them away.”
“Which means their life expectancy isn’t long.”
“I agree.”
Bones raised a hand. Playing devil’s advocate. “Why would he do that?”
“To hurt us.” A pause. “Revenge . . . plain and simple.”
“But would a guy who just went through all this trouble get rid of them that quickly? Whatever happened here took planning. A guy who can plan like this wouldn’t score the winning touchdown only to hand the ball to the ref and jog to the sideline. He’d dance a little.”
“If I was my enemy, I’d do backflips.”
Bones nodded. “Which brings us to option two.”
“He wouldn’t be in a hurry. He’d savor the moment and sit in his smug retreat while the dust settled. Once he felt enough time had elapsed, and we’d accepted their deaths, he’d begin trickling videos to my inbox, which he’d string out over time, depicting the hell in which they lived. Then, just before we lost our minds to grief, he’d dump their bodies where we’d find them or sell them overseas.”
He interrupted me. “Which is the same thing.”
I continued, “If this guy is hell bent on inflicting as much pain as possible on me, then he would want as much time to pass as possible to cause us as much pain as possible. Time for him means pain for us. Death by a thousand cuts. Somewhere we took something from him. Caused him pain. He’s not in this for the money. He probably has enough of that. He’s in it for wrath. Revenge. Somewhere in my past I took the one thing he values more than money.”
Bones spoke without prompting. “Power.”
“Exactly. Which explains all this. What happened here is not some haphazard thing some guy did in his spare time. This took planning, time, and patience. Which means his motivation is power. It’s the only explanation for the deception. For the timing. For taking the four of them rather than a boatload from the reception.”
Bones considered this. “So what’s the play?”
“Make him comfortable. Convince him we have no idea.”
“While we search like crazy.”
Eddie sat at the keyboard, waiting. When I nodded, he punched a few keys and the satellite initiated tracking and began its search. The countdown started. T-minus seven days and counting. A minute passed. Six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-nine minutes. Then another. Six days, twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes. Halfway through the third minute, a single solid red light appeared. When it did, my heart jumped into my throat.
“Where is that?” Bones asked.
Eddie stared at the screen and clicked the mouse twice. “In a plane. Thirty-nine thousand feet. Final approach to Miami International.”
“That’s not good.”
Bones agreed. “He gets them on an international flight, we may never see them again.”
Neither of us took our eyes off the solid light. Eddie read our concern. “It takes it a minute to read pulse.”
Ninety seconds later, it held solid. No flash. Eddie tapped the screen with a pencil. “These things have been known to malfunction.”
My tone changed. “Whose is that?”
Keystrokes sounded. Eddie looked up at me. “Ellie.”
“So either she’s dead or it’s not registering.”
Eddie nodded and said nothing.
“What would happen if it weren’t next to her? If it was, say, hanging on something?”
“The satellite would pick up the track but not the pulse.”
“So it would do exactly what it’s doing.”
Another nod.
I turned to Bones. “If you were locked in a solid metal tube flying close to the speed of sound and you knew the satellite couldn’t read your tracker, what would you do?”
“Hang it near a window.”
I leaned against the wall and pleaded with the solid light to flash. It did not. I stared at the ceiling and spoke as much to myself as him. “All we have is supposition and assumption. For all we know, those girls are in Tahiti or Kosovo.”
Bones agreed. “All we know is that the tracker is”—he tapped the screen—“right there.” He stepped closer. “What do your instincts tell you?”
“Not sure. But something doesn’t feel right.”
In these high-altitude parts of Colorado, Freetown was known as a private rehab and addiction facility. That’s all. People who worked here were screened relentlessly and most had either military or government backgrounds. Many of them had worked in intelligence. Our reason was simple—they knew the value of keeping a secret. We weren’t naïve enough to think all our secrets were safe, but it helped. You can’t rescue people from bad people and then expect to keep them safe if you’re constantly airing your laundry. This was why we’d never told anyone’s story, which made Casey so different.
To ensure a cone of silence, Bones insisted on conducting all final interviews. So he could sniff out a fake. This bubble of self-protection meant we were very careful when the press started knocking on the gate and poking their nose in our business. Most often we responded with “No comment,” but tomorrow needed to be different.
I stared at the solid red light. “I need to get to that light. And if they’re anywhere near it, get them out of wherever he’s taking them before he knows they’re gone. And I need his guard to be down more than it is.” I turned to Bones. “Which means I need you to buy some time. That smoke cloud won’t go unnoticed. It would help us if you put on your collar and fed the press what we want them to know.”
“You want me to lie?”
“I want you to lie your face off and tell them that a talented and gifted off-Broadway dancer gave up a career in sold-out shows to care for her daughter, who was recovering from an opioid addiction, plus two adopted daughters, both recovering from multiple issues, not the least of which was ritual sexual abuse.”
Bones saw the ripple effects play out in his mind. “Which means I need to conduct a funeral this week.”
“We need to publicly bury four memories.” I considered this. “Actually, make it five. Tell them Gunner died in the fire. All we found was his scorched collar.” I slipped Gunner’s collar off and handed it to Eddie. “Make this look burned.”
Bones smiled. “You should write fiction in your spare time.”
I continued, “Further, this selfless mother and her three daughters volunteered in the neonatal ICU taking care of and feeding premature babies born to other recovering mothers.”
Bones sat down and crossed his legs. “You have real skill.”
“You need to leak the video of them running into the building followed by the explosion. And, Eddie, you need to edit it in such a way as to leave no doubt that all four are buried beneath the rubble. More importantly”—I pointed to the dot moving westward across the screen—“we need whoever that is to believe that we believe they’re gone. End the video with Gunner racing into the flames followed by a fireball and the video goes to black.”
Bones raised a finger. “All four ran into the hospital looking like they just came from a wedding. That may raise a few questions.”
I shook my head. “All four had changed into their dancing dresses. Spin it that they were at a going-home party for one of the girls when they smelled smoke.”
Bones nodded. “That’ll print.”
I turned but Bones stopped me, pointing at one of the screens, a live feed from the gymnasium where mattresses had been brought in. All of Freetown was huddled in groups while armed men stood outside guarding the perimeter. “They need to hear from you before you disappear.”
I nodded.
“Do we tell them?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“But we said we’d never lie to them.”
“You’re right. I said that.”
“And you’re going to anyway.”
“Yes. I am.”
“We may never recover from that. They may leave Freetown in mass exodus when they learn the truth.”
I pointed at the solid red light. “Is she worth it?” A pause while the satellite searched for the other three. “Are they?” Bones and I stared at the screen. “Right now they’re probably sitting in the dark. Scared beyond hope. No telling what’s been done or is being done to them. So is there anything you or I wouldn’t say or do to get them back?”
Bones shook his head.
I turned to Eddie. “You got a video camera?”
He held up an iPhone.
“Turn it on. I want you to record something. We may need it later.”
Eddie stepped back and began videoing with burning Freetown as the background. With Bones standing next to me, I stared into the video. “It’s late. Freetown is burning, Clay is on life support, and Angel, Ellie, Casey, and”—I stuttered—“and Summer are gone. Initially, we thought we lost them in the blast.” I held up the handkerchief. “Now we’re not so sure. We think this was a coordinated attack to kidnap them for the purpose of revenge. I can’t go into all the details, but I need you all to understand what Bones and I are dealing with in this moment. We’re about to create a false narrative, which all of you are going to live out. You will suffer by the lies we’re about to tell. We’re going to sell it to the media that they’re all dead, including Gunner.” I waved to Gunner, and Eddie moved the camera, showing the dog with his tongue hanging out.
“This week all of you are going to mourn and go to a funeral with five caskets, and you’ll put stuff in each because we’re going to talk about how their bodies were incinerated, and all of you will hurt and cry tears and your hearts will break. All the while, we in this room will know it is a fabrication.” I pointed to the screen. “We think they’re alive. But we don’t know for how much longer, so we’re trying to buy some time. Unfortunately, all of you are puppets in that play. I wish I could tell you I’m sorry, but . . .” I shook my head. “I can’t be. I’ve got to—” My voice cracked. “Try to find . . .” My voice trailed off.
“When you came here, we told you we’d never lie to you. Until now I haven’t. But I’m about to. It’s a big lie. And when it’s over and you learn all of this, I’m asking that you forgive me. Why? Not because I deserve it but because I’d do the same for every one of you.”
Eddie clicked off the video and I wiped the tears trailing down my face. I spoke to Eddie. “Make sure you save that someplace safe. If he blew us up, he can hack into most anything. And we don’t need him seeing that.”
Eddie slid his phone in his pocket. “Check.”
I walked into the gymnasium to muffled sobs and groups huddled and hugging one another. They’d spread out sleeping bags. A giant slumber party. Pajamas all around. Minus the smiles.
They were scared. A few were shaking. I knew each one: Beth, Tilly, Ray, Tracy, Sally, Cindy, Billy, Amanda, Margaret, Jennifer, Ashley, Kristen, Simone, Lisa . . . Sixty-three girls were staring back at me. Along with several of their mothers and more than a few sisters. I knew their stories. Their horrors. And I’d seen them laugh. Seen joy return. Each one of these women had suffered the feeling of drowning, of some giant unseen hand holding their head beneath the water. They’d been dominated, manipulated, intimidated, and controlled—and in most cases, by a man who looked like me. They huddled in a circle. Or rather, lay across one another like pick-up sticks. Interwoven. Three strands are stronger than one. Their faces were puffy. Eyes red. Makeup smeared. The dresses of dance and celebration had been replaced by the comfort of sweats and pajamas. Something soft to counter a granite world.
Bones read my hesitation. He put his hand on my shoulder. “If you were hiding Jews in your basement and the SS knocked on the door, what would you tell them?”
I turned a chair around backward and sat leaning my chin on the top and studied their faces. Each was looking at me to rescue them again. To make the bad man stop. To drive a stake in the world and declare to the evil, “You will come no farther.”
To tell them the truth.
The faint smell of smoke wafted on the air. A reminder of what had been lost. Flashing red lights reflected off the foyer glass while men on extended ladders shot giant rainbows of water across the wreckage. Bones stood off to one corner.
I hated myself for what I was about to do.
When I studied each face, each story returned. I rubbed my hands together, willing my soul to spit out the lies. “We have yet to find Angel, Ellie, Casey, Summer, and Gunner.” A single shake of my head. “The video shows them running in, followed by the explosion. The heat melted metal and glass. So . . . it might be a day or two before . . .” The implication was clear: we might never find their bodies.
The sobs were no longer muffled. The collective cry was excruciating. Each of these children of God had been exploited. Abused. And lied to ten thousand times over. For many, the idea that there is actually a truth that they can bank their lives on is a fantasy. It’s one of their deepest wounds—those they thought they could trust turned out not to be trustworthy. I scanned the sea of faces, all of whom trusted me. With their lives. It’s why they were sitting here. Until now, I’d never taken that for granted. But in this moment, Bones and I were using their emotions to prove to whoever did this that four people and one dog were dead.
How will they respond to me when they discover otherwise?
I knew that in order to pull this off, to sell it to whoever did this, we needed the girls’ unfiltered reactions. Or rather, that’s what I told myself.
“Clay’s on life support.” I paused. “He’s a tough old man, but nobody knows.” Their faces spoke their stories. Stories of evil run rampant. And here I sat, inflicting more. “I’ve got a window where I maybe can find who did this. So . . . Bones will be here. I hope to make it back for the funeral . . .”
At the word funeral, the floodgates broke loose.
I waited for the wave to pass. “I know you’re scared. You’re wondering how’d they get in? How’d they find us? What will happen to us?” I shook my head. “I can’t answer any of those questions. But . . .” I turned to Beth: “I had no idea how we’d make it out of that trailer park.” And to Tilly: “Or that meth lab disguised as a motel.” And to Ray: “Or that hotel in Vegas.” To Sally: “That beach bungalow in Maui.” To Cindy: “A tractor trailer at a truck stop.” To Amanda: “A houseboat in the Gulf.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know then how we’d ever get here. But I hoped we would . . .” Tears slid down my cheeks. “Hope is what we have. It’s the fuel that feeds us.” I rubbed my hands together. “In ancient times, when kingdoms were attacked and once-impenetrable walls fell, people inside the city would emerge from the rubble, stare at the wreckage, and then ask the only question that remains: Do I stand in the breach, or do I run? Those who ran lived in fear, forever looking over their shoulder. Those who stood climbed up on the remains and spoke to the darkness. And when they did, the darkness rolled back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can’t stand light.”
I glanced at Bones and then stood. “I know your walls are pretty thin and cracking, and disconnected pieces lay scattered. I know you’re hurting. And I know that you of all people deserve to not be in pain. To know joy and not sadness. Beauty and not ashes.” I waved my hands across the carnage spread across the streets below us. “Don’t despair. Any seed that is planted first must die and fall to the earth. Only then do we bury it and trust that what comes up is not the same as what we put in the ground. Nor could we ever have imagined it.”
Tilly spoke for the group. The question on the tip of each one’s tongue. “Murph, are you going to rebuild Freetown?”
I shook my head. “No . . .” The effect of my answer rippled through them. I studied each of their faces. And when I spoke, the ripple died. “You are.”
Bones met me at the door. “I don’t need to tell you to be careful, but . . .”
“I have no intention of being careful.”
He knew that too. “What will you do when you find them?”
“Haven’t gotten that far.”
He prodded me. “What would you do to guarantee that any of these four women wouldn’t make a run for it?”
“Tie up the youngest.”
Bones finished my thought. “Exactly. They’d know what would happen to the youngest one if they bolt.”
I studied the embers of Freetown. “Find this man. I want him.”
Bones’s facial expression was one of deep pain. Torment even. He nodded. Then raised his hand and extended all five fingers, followed by four. Then one finger. One finger. And one finger. 9–1–1–1. Or 91:11.
He will command His angels concerning you.
I shut the door, bounded down the stairs, and began sprinting the trail to my house. Main Street lay to my right, lit up like a runway. Beyond that the hospital smoldered. Three firemen stood atop long extension boom ladders holding water cannons shooting high-pressured streams through the air like rainbows. The smell of burning rubber and chemicals stung my nostrils and eyes. I tried not to think about what was swirling beyond my control.
Running through the night, Gunner matching me stride for stride, my breath exiting my lungs like smoke in the freezing temperature, I had one singular thought. Nothing else mattered. If I didn’t bring them home, then what was the point of all this? Not Freetown, not happiness, not living a long healthy life, not coffee on the porch, not wine at the Eagle’s Nest.
I reached the door and the same echo sounded that I’d heard a thousand times since Bones plucked me from the academy:
We always leave the ninety-nine to find the one.
Why?
Because the needs of the one outweigh those of the many.
I flew down the stairs, ripped off my tux shirt, and punched the code into the keypad: “LOVESHOWSUP.”