Taken

43

Joe Pike

He was parked on the sand a mile north of Coachella, watching distant headlights slide along an invisible freeway across an invisible horizon when Megan Orlato woke. Took a second for her head to clear, then she felt the tape and binds, and stiffened as if she were being electrocuted. She fought and twisted against the binds and tried to scream through the tape. Her eyes were crazy-wide with fear, and should have been. Fear was right and proper. Fear was correct.

Megan Orlato was laid across the back seat. Her wrists, arms, ankles, and knees were secured with plasticuffs. Duct tape sealed her mouth. Pike was behind the wheel, turned to see her, his right arm hooked around the headrest, calm and relaxed. They were alone. Nothing moved except for the distant headlights.

Pike tried to recall how long since he last slept, but couldn’t. Didn’t matter. You sacrificed what needed to be sacrificed.

Pike stared at her until she quieted. He watched her watch him, and listened to her breathe. Her breathing was loud and ragged, but finally slowed.

“Your name is Maysan al-Diri. You are Ghazi al-Diri’s sister. You and Dennis Orlato supply drop houses to your brother.”

He moved for the first time to lift the yellow file box he took from her office.

“The houses where people were tortured and murdered are your listings. Properties for sale or rent, with out-of-state owners.”

He leaned across the seat, and gently peeled off the tape.

She shouted for help, screamed and shrieked, and thrashed again. He simply watched until she was winded. Then she finally spoke.

“I was in the kitchen-”

“Now you’re not.”

She was stirring honey into hot tea. She had not heard him enter. Did not hear him approach. She never knew he compressed her carotid artery, cut off the oxygen to her brain, and put her to sleep. She had not seen him until this moment when she opened her eyes, there in the moonlit desert.

“Dennis is dead. I shot him here.”

Pike touched the center of his right eyebrow.

“Ruiz and Washington are dead. Pinetta and Khalil Haddad are with the police.”

She was breathing hard again.

“Who are you?”

“Where is Ghazi?”

She breathed harder, so Pike touched the files.

“Twenty-two have out-of-state owners, so Ghazi will be at one of them. The time you save me is worth your life.”

She didn’t respond.

“If not, I’ll leave you with Dennis. Ghazi is mine either way.”

“Why do you want my brother?”

“He has my friend.”

“Will you kill him?”

“If I have to, yes. And you. Where is he?”

She wet her lips, a secret gesture in the back seat shadows, betrayed by a glint of blue light on her tongue.

“The date farm. A commercial listing.”

“Where?”

She told him. It wasn’t far.

“Don’t lie. If you’re lying, you won’t get a second chance.”

“I’m not lying. He wanted a bigger place. I had the farm.”

He followed her directions back to Coachella, then south and east into the desert again, well outside the city. The date farm was laid out in a perfect rectangle between paved streets, fifteen hundred feet on the long sides, seven hundred fifty on the width, split down the center by a road of crushed gravel, and crowded with rows of trees. The trees were dead and had long ago dropped their fronds. They reminded Pike of Marines frozen in permanent ranks. A large painted sign stood at the entrance: FOR SALE-READY FOR DEVELOPMENT-DESERT GOLD REALTY. He saw the outline of a building set well back on the gravel road, but nothing more. He saw no lights.

“He’s here now?”

“I guess. I don’t know. He asked for a bigger place, and this is what I had. I don’t help him move.”

Pike studied the building, and realized he was seeing two buildings. He wondered if Elvis Cole was inside one of them, and if Cole was still alive.

“How many buildings?”

“The property is twenty-eight acres, with five buildings, metal-and-wood construction covering fourteen thousand square feet of usable floor space. You have three septic tanks, and it’s fully plumbed with county water.”

Pike looked at her.

“I don’t want to buy it.”

“It was a farm. The buildings were used for processing and packaging dates. Two of the buildings were used for maintenance and equipment storage. One of the buildings has offices and a commissary for the staff.”

“How many ways in?”

“Just the main entrance here. There was a gate on the west side, but the owners put in more trees.”

Pike wondered at the size of the place. The three other addresses had all been small, single-family homes.

“Why bigger?”

“He thought Dennis and the others had been arrested. He wanted to get his crews out of the places Dennis and the others knew about.”

“How many crews?”

“Three, I think. He was using three houses.”

“Everyone came here?”

“This is the only new property I gave him.”

Pike found a spot to park on an unpaved road north of the farm, put fresh tape over Megan Orlato’s mouth, and slipped between the trees. The five buildings were grouped together in the center of the orchard almost five hundred feet from the street. Three were on the east side of the drive, and faced the two on the west. Glints of light showed from the east buildings, but not the west. Pike moved to the lights. He searched for sentries as he approached, but found none.

Pike studied the fronts of the buildings for several minutes, noting the doors and windows, then crept along the rear. Snoring and the occasional low voice came from the first building. A man spoke too loudly in the middle building, and two other men laughed. When Pike reached the end of the south building, he found several pickup trucks outfitted for off-road use parked outside a long sliding door, along with a large box truck. Pike wondered if this was the truck Sanchez used on the night Krista Morales was taken. Pike decided the prisoners were in the north building, the guards were housed in the center building, and the south building was being used as a garage. The garage was likely the only way in or out of the buildings.

Pike stood between the trucks and looked down the length of the gravel drive to the entrance. It was almost two football fields away. Only way in, only way out. Two football fields was a long way.

Pike worked his way back to the Rover, checked that Megan Orlato was secure, and considered his options. He could not see the building through the trees, but he knew where it was and stared at that place in the moonlit shadows. Three crews meant about eighteen armed men and an unknown but large number of innocents. The doors and windows would be reinforced. Pike would have to enter through the garage, fight his way through guard country to the last building, locate Cole and the kids, then fight through the guards a second time on the way out. He wondered again if Elvis Cole was inside.

He said, “I’m coming.”

The odds didn’t scare him, but better odds meant a better chance at success, and Pike believed he had a way to improve the odds. He glanced at Megan Orlato, then phoned to see if Jon Stone was still in jail.