The Buried

CHAPTER 21

Stevens and his team stayed at the interstate junction outside Ellensburg for three hours. During the first two, Stevens had hoped they would spot the girl’s abductors, but by the end of the third hour, he knew the targets hadn’t come their way.

There were only three possibilities for what had happened. One, the targets had circled back and returned to Seattle. Two, they were holed up somewhere between Seattle and the junction. And three, they had turned off I-90 and gone in a new direction.

He could speculate all he wanted on which was the most likely, but what he needed were facts. And though he had hoped he and his team could wrap up this mission without any assistance, he reluctantly admitted that was no longer the case.

He called his bosses in Los Angeles and enlisted the tech department to see if they could track down the car the targets were using. At five p.m., he received word that the vehicle was a khaki green Jeep Grand Cherokee, last sighting two hours and twelve minutes earlier right outside Yakima.

Stevens and his team piled back into the helicopter and made the quick flight due south. It angered Stevens that somehow their targets had made the transition onto the I-82 without his team spotting them, but there would be time later to assess where the error was made.

They touched down at the airport and arranged for three vehicles so they could split into teams and search for the Cherokee more effectively.

It was nearly nine p.m. when the Jeep was located behind an A&W restaurant. One touch of the cold hood told Stevens all he needed to know. The SUV hadn’t moved in hours. The targets were driving something else now.

The techs went back to work to identify the new vehicle. The task was tedious and time consuming, but at 11:14 they had it. A blue Audi A4 sedan. Fourteen minutes later, they’d traced it as far as Walla Walla, and Stevens and his men lifted into the air again.

The flyover of Yakima had proved useless, so Orbits resorted to an old-fashioned ground search and finally discovered the Grand Cherokee in the A&W lot at 7:50 p.m.

Hoping to find out what vehicle Quinn and his friend were now using, he had Donnie hack into the local police department’s system and search for cars stolen that afternoon. It had turned out to be a slow day crime-wise. Only two vehicles had been reported missing. One was a three-year-old Ford F-150 crew cab truck taken right out of the driveway of the owner’s home. Not the kind of theft an operative would usually undertake. The second stolen vehicle was textbook tradecraft. An hour and a half earlier, a blue Audi A4 had been reported missing from a hotel parking lot not far from the freeway.

Using a time range of two hours prior to the report, Donnie hunted for the Audi. By 8:20, he spotted the car on archival footage, heading southeast on the interstate. He tracked it all the way to Kennewick and then east toward Walla Walla, where the trail once again stopped.

Orbits was already driving his rental car back to the airport when Donnie shared this news. As he pulled in, Orbits was momentarily surprised at the sight of the California team’s helicopter sitting not far from his ride.

Its presence meant the team had identified the Jeep, but since no one seemed to be around, he assumed they were in town looking for it. He briefly considered sabotaging the aircraft, but he could neither risk the time it would take nor the chance of getting caught.

He hurried into the building where he’d left his pilot, only to find that the man wasn’t there.

He looked around until someone pointed him in the direction of Security.

“You Orbits?” the night supervisor asked when he inquired about Sutter.

“Yeah.”

“Operations sent your pilot to a motel to get some sleep. Apparently he was over his hours.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m just telling you what I was told. He can’t go up again until morning.”

“Is there anybody else?”

“You mean like another pilot?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean,” Orbits said, not hiding his frustration.

“Not my area, but I doubt it at this time of night.”

Orbits stormed out of the building, fighting hard not to punch every wall he passed. The girl was right in his sights, but if he didn’t catch up to her and her friends soon, the Californians would get her first.

“Goddammit!” he shouted into the darkness.

There was only one thing to do. Walla Walla was about a hundred and thirty miles away. He could drive that in less than two hours.