Thirty-Two

“The guy’s a fucking liability.” The voice, a low growl, belonged to the man who owned this place. He and the other man, Rick Newman, were in the kitchen.

I have to get out of here, he thought. They’re not going to let me go. They’re going to kill me.

At least he wasn’t handcuffed anymore. He was locked in a small space that had once been a storage closet or a pantry. It was furnished with a narrow cot. At the foot of the cot was a bucket to be used as a toilet, and a couple of large bottles of water. Every now and then a man who didn’t speak unlocked the closet, fetched the bucket, and brought it back empty. A different man, also silent, brought him food and plastic bottles of water to drink.

As they’d brought him from the vehicle to the building, he realized what this was. A pot plantation. He’d heard about these places, read that they were all over Northern California.

He was in an old house. When they’d brought him inside early that morning, he’d had time for a brief look at his surroundings. The front part of the house was a living room–dining room arrangement. A hallway led to the back and he’d glimpsed a bathroom at the end of the hall. The kitchen was a walk-through, and the closet where he was locked up was in back of this, near a back door at the rear of the house.

It was dark when they’d arrived at the house, escorted by the men with guns. But he’d seen enough on the drive up here that he thought he knew where they were.

If I could just get loose, he told himself, I’m sure I could get out of here.

He tested the door. The two men were still in the kitchen. He heard the sound of something sizzling on the stove, smelled cooking meat. The man with the low growl said, “I say we shoot him, and dump the body down at the old mine.”

It was up to him to get away and save himself. He didn’t have much time.