Stranger in Town - By Cheryl Bradshaw Page 0,60

until it’s all over,” he said. “They’ve been following me around ever since I got here.”

Perfect.

“I’ll be waiting for your call,” I said. “Good luck.”

Thankfully Cade was too preoccupied with the feds and all their minions to consider it odd that I’d so easily backed off, allowing him to see it through to the end on his own. I passed Falcon, opting for an alternative side road to turn on instead of the street the kidnapper suggested. According to the map the next road circled back at some point, leading me to the same place. I had to assume Eddie might already be there waiting. An alternate route was my best chance to go unnoticed.

The area around me looked like some kind of national forest. Several roads had no signage of any kind. Luckily, Falcon was marked with a wooden stake, its letters painted yellow. I passed it and took the next left, picking a cluster of trees and hiding my car behind them. I’d walk the rest of the way.

It took over an hour, but I finally reached the end of Swanee Bridge Road. The shack looked more like a one-hundred-year-old pile of abandoned wood. As for the window the kidnapper said he’d leave open—it was open all right—it was broken, shattered completely.

I took my time inspecting every angle of the area around me before taking a step closer. I listened for sounds coming from the house, for any sign of the girls or their abductor, but it was silent. The only noise I heard was coming from the birds in the trees around me. No one was there. Not yet.

I pushed open a wood door that had a hole where a handle had once been and looked around. There was nothing to the place at all. It was a simple, square room with no bedrooms and no other doors. It looked like there had been a kitchen at one time, but all of the cabinets had been ripped out. Some of the wood planks lining the floor were gone, maybe because of old age. I wasn’t sure. They appeared to have rotted and fallen through to the ground below.

In the corner of the room was a wooden box, the only accessory left in the place. I assumed it had been used for firewood at one time. I pulled the lid open and looked inside. There was still wood in it, but not a lot. I shifted a few pieces of wood around thinking insects would come crawling out of every orifice, but none did.

The box didn’t appear to be the most comfortable place a person could hide, and it wasn’t as sanitary as I would have liked, but I didn’t have much choice. I considered taking the wood out, but didn’t want to leave any clues that the box had been recently opened. Instead I turned the wood over splinter-side down, rearranging it into a smooth pile all the way across. Then I climbed inside.

I sat in a squatted position for two leg-numbing hours before I heard movement outside. The front door to the shack opened and footsteps walked inside. It was quiet for a moment and then a man yelled, “It’s empty.”

Another person said, “Let’s get in position before the sonofabitch gets here.”

Orders were called out, positions were assigned, and the door closed. There was a lot of rustling around while everyone got into place. Because the shack only consisted of one room, no one remained inside. I didn’t know if they were cops or SWAT or what. Jackson didn’t strike me like the kind of place that had a SWAT team on hand, and to call one in from Salt Lake would have taken time, even if they flew there. Wherever the kidnapper was, I hoped the presence of the FBI had gone undetected.

A vehicle drove down the path and parked in front of the house some time later. A car door shut. According to the time of my watch, Cade wouldn’t arrive for another ten minutes. The front door opened again. Someone walked in, closing the door behind him. He sounded out of breath, or nervous, or both. But he was alone. If it was the kidnapper, where were the children?

The man paced back and forth for several minutes, stopping only when a second car came to a halt. Cade. The car door opened and closed. I heard footsteps ascend the stairs and then the sound of something hitting the floor inside the house.

“I’ve set