working on the keyboard with the other. “But the horse came back alone. If CANARY had tried to sneak back through the woods and ended up here somewhere, no way Arapahoe would have left her alone. He would have gone through the woods and brush with her.”
“All right, so what do you have?” I asked. “Where is she?”
He moves the laptop around and says, “Damn it, I had a good signal earlier …”
“To hell with showing me something on the laptop,” I say. “What did you find?”
He nods, tries to catch his breath, and then says, “I went back to the river.”
Tanya says, “The river was a bust. You know it, I know it, Homeland Security knows it.”
“But everyone assumed she had fallen off the horse,” Brian said, slowly walking backward, gazing at his keyboard, looking for that elusive carrier signal. “Or had slipped in. Or based on that note, maybe had committed suicide. So everybody was looking downstream. Who was looking upstream?”
Scotty says, “Some of the Homeland Security units went upstream, I know that for a fact.”
“But did they search the buildings?”
Scotty says, “Yes, they did. At least two miles upstream.”
Brian smiles. “But they didn’t go far enough … okay, here we go.”
I say, “Brian, I don’t care if the Death Star is beaming you down instructions. Tell me—right now!—what’s going on.”
He nods, takes another breath, and says, “Real estate records. I got into the local tax assessor’s office, started looking up and down the river, looking to see if there was someone out there, a friend or somebody, a place where she might have sought refuge.”
Tanya says, “Wait a minute, the ransom note and the severed finger, how can—”
I hold up my hand. “Go on.”
Brian says, “None of the names looked familiar, and none were connected to the First Lady … but I saw that one little remote farmhouse, about three miles upstream, it belonged to something called the Friends of Lake Erie Association … it’s a charitable group. Based in Ohio.”
“Ohio …,” I whisper.
“Ah, here we go,” he says, turning the screen around. “Look! Look who’s the chairman of the Friends of Lake Erie Association.”
I note the name, the photograph, and with as much quiet authority as I can muster, I say, “Brian, you take the lead. Find the quickest route between here and that farmhouse, and let’s haul ass.”
As we start moving, Mrs. Westbrook yells out, “Hey, who’s going to pay for this broken doorknob?”
I yell back. “Send the bill to Homeland Security.”
Then we all start running.
CHAPTER 61
PARKER HOYT IS leaning back in his office chair, dozing, when a ringing phone wakes him up.
He lurches forward, automatically picks up his standard office phone, says, “Hoyt,” and realizes he’s talking to a dial tone.
The phone keeps on ringing.
It’s his other phone.
He tries to put his standard phone back into the cradle, misses, and it clatters across his clean desktop. Parker lunges for the other phone, grabs it.
“Yes?”
“We’re checking out a small farmhouse, about three miles upstream from the horse farm. She might be there. It’s within walking distance.”
“Wait—you’re still working the case? Grissom was told to stand down!”
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t listen well. We’re out freezing our asses off, ready to get moving.”
“Give me the address,” he says, and he fumbles for a pen, grabs it, doesn’t see anything to write on, picks up a crumpled poll report from last night—Harrison Tucker’s polling collapse is deep and widespread—and he flattens it out, says, “Go.”
“Fourteen, that’s one-four, East Dominion Road, Walton.”
He scribbles the numbers and words and says, “Why do you think she’s there? What’s the evidence? Could it be a safe house for terrorists?”
The voice laughs. “Only if the terrorists are environmentalists. It belongs to a conservation group from Ohio.”
“Ohio … why in hell does that matter?”
“Gotta go.”
Parker sits up straight, like every bone in his spine has just fused together in one hard column. “No! Damnit, tell me why it matters!”
“Because of the guy who’s the chairman of the conservation group.”
And he mentions the name, and before Parker can react, his hired contact hangs up the phone.
CHAPTER 62
WHEN HER PHONE rings, Marsha Gray answers it before the second tone chimes through.
“Yes,” she says, flipping on the recording function on her phone.
“You know who this is,” comes the voice of the President’s chief of staff.
She yawns. “We’ve shared so many intimate moments, how can I forget?”
“Stow it,” he says. “I’ve got information—what you call actionable intelligence.”
She swings her legs out of her bed, grabs a pencil and