Finders/Keepers (An Allie Krycek Thriller, Book 3) Read online

It had been a long shot (So what else is new today?) when she had quickly scribbled the number onto an order slip and sneaked it into the retired statey’s pocket while she was searching him for a cell phone. But she’d be damned if it hadn’t paid off. Hank Pritchard wasn’t just an ex-trooper; he had a long and distinguished career until his retirement six years ago. Even so, she hadn’t counted on anything coming from it and had all but assumed there was an injured old man out there somewhere trying to figure out why someone had slipped a phone number into his pocket.

  So what else were Hank and Lucy doing right now? Even more importantly, how was she going to use all of this to her advantage?

  Allie sneaked a look at the red and black semitrailer partially hidden in shadows next to them. It hadn’t moved since the last time she looked, and it wouldn’t until Reese made a decision about how to proceed.

  Hold on, Sara. Hold on just a little longer…

  “When it rains shit, it pours poop,” Dwight was saying.

  “Colorful,” Reese said. He crumpled up his sandwich wrapper and flicked it into the bag sitting on the hood behind him.

  Jesus Christ, he’s calm.

  “So I guess this means the authorities know what we have in there,” Dwight said, jerking his head at the semi.

  “That seems likely.”

  “That means it won’t be long before they know, too.”

  “Again, very likely, yes.”

  Allie didn’t have to ask who “they” were. Dwight and Reese were talking about their employers. The men behind all of this. The men who would have the information she needed to find Faith. At least, that was her hope, because if there wasn’t, then it would mean all of this would be for nothing.

  Well, that’s not entirely true.

  She looked over at the semi and tried to imagine Sara and the twenty-two others in there, huddled in the darkness, already hungry after their last (and only) meal earlier today. She glanced down at the half-eaten sandwich in her hand and wanted to vomit it all back up.

  What to do, what to do?

  Sara and the others were here, right now. Meanwhile, Faith might be at the other side of this trip.

  Might. Might.

  She had promised the girl’s mother. She had given her word.

  But one was here, and one was (maybe) out there, somewhere. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t one that was here, it was twenty-three lost, stolen souls.

  You know what you have to do, don’t you?

  So do it.

  No more excuses. No more excuses…

  “Gonna get real tricky from here on out,” Dwight was saying, his voice bringing her back to the shadowy edge of the truck stop parking lot. “Not that it wasn’t real tricky already, mind you, but it just got much, much trickier.”

  “We can handle it,” Reese said.

  “Not the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “The point is, this was supposed to be an easy gig. In and out. Collect money at the end of the rainbow. Head to Vegas. Get a high-priced escort and a suite, and if all goes well, blow the whole thing at the tables. You know, the usual.”

  Reese smiled. “That’s not my usual.”

  “I mean the usual for someone who knows how to have a good time. You were automatically exempted.”

  “Good to know.” He looked over at her. “You’re being very quiet, Alice.”

  “I have to go to the ladies’ room,” Allie said.

  Dwight chuckled. “Sounds like one of your plans, Reese. Full of piss and shit.”

  Reese ignored his partner and said to her, “So go.”

  She looked over at Dwight, expecting him to protest, but he only shrugged back at her. “What, you want me to hold your hand while you do your business?”

  “If you insist.”

  “Ask nicely, and I might think about it.”

  “Maybe next time,” she said, and pushed off the car and began walking away.

  “Promises, promises,” Dwight said after her.

  She could feel eyes on her—maybe Reese’s, maybe Dwight’s, maybe both of them. She kept moving, forcing her legs to stride at a normal pace—one after another after another. Every part of her being wanted to pick up her speed; after that, it wouldn’t be difficult to transition into a jog before finally slipping into a fast run toward the bright lights.

  “Alice,” Reese called from behind her.

  She stopped and looked back at him.

  “Grab me an extra bottle of water, would you?” he said.

  “Anything else, master?”

  He smiled. “No, that’ll do for now. Thanks much.”

  “What about you?” she asked Dwight.

  “Another Red Bull wouldn’t hurt,” Dwight said.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She turned around and resumed walking toward the lights.

  Keep walking, girl. That’s it. You’re doing fine. Now just pretend like your insides aren’t so twisted into knots that you can barely breathe and you’re either about to save twenty-three little girls or get them all killed, along with yourself in the process.

  Yeah, no pressure.

  Ten

  “Allie Krycek,” Jane said over the phone. “That’s how you spell her last name? K-r-y-c-e-k?”

  “That’s what the kid says,” Hank said.

  He did his best to keep the phone as close to his ear as possible without actually letting the device touch him. There were things—sticky, discolored things—smeared on the receiver that Hank would rather not think about, much less let come into contact with his skin. It wasn’t as if he was afraid of ruining his looks—hell, he was beyond that these days—but he wasn’t stupid, either.

  If the motel manager noticed how carefully Hank was being with the phone, he didn’t show it, or care. Of course, getting a ten-dollar spot to use a landline that was covered in God only knew what was probably the best deal he’d made while manning the motel.

  “Then I don’t have a lot on her,” Jane said.

  “How’s that possible?” Hank asked.

  “I looked, lieutenant. I ran her name through every database we’re connected to, and she comes out pretty clean.”

  “No criminal records?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Military service?”

  “Unless she changed her name, then nothing there, either. Did she change her name?”

  “The kid says no.”

  “Maybe she lied.”

  “Maybe. I’ve just barely met her, so I don’t know what she’s capable of yet.”

  There were voices on the other side of the connection, doors constantly opening and closing, and a general buzz of activity that never seemed to ebb for even a second. All those things told him that Jane was back in the office and not out there running the roadblocks. Which made sense. Jane was a detective now, not a uniformed trooper. She’d be more valuable coordinating the action from headquarters.

  That feeling of pride bubbled to the surface again, and Hank smiled dumbly across at the manager, who gave him a weird look before returning his attention to the game show playing on a TV in the corner of the room.

  “So what did you manage to dig up on her?” he said into the phone.

  “There is something odd about her records,” Jane said.

  “Odd how?”

  “She shows up from the time she was born to when she moves out to southern California for school, followed by graduation. After that, there’s a lot of temp work and some waitressing gigs. A few more stable ones every now and then, but they never last. Her tax returns indicate she kept changing jobs. Either she had a really rough time holding onto them, or she was only taking jobs where she could leave at a moment’s notice. You know what the pattern suggests to me?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That she’s an actor or a singer.”

  “The Allie Krycek the kid’s telling me about isn’t an actor or a singer.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what I’m s
eeing here. Entertainer types. They do temp jobs where they can leave to go on auditions or take work as the opportunity comes up.”

  “Okay, so this is all after graduation?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “That happens,” he said. “Kids don’t know what to do even with a pigskin. They sometimes wander around looking for themselves or some other abstract shit.”

  “I would agree with that assessment, except about five years ago the woman pretty much vanishes.”

  “How does someone just vanish?”

  “Good question. The IRS seemed to lose track of her and there are no more city, state, or government records of her anywhere. It’s as if someone just took a magic eraser and wiped everything away that has to do with Allie Krycek, starting five years ago.”

  “We’re kind of independently wealthy,” Lucy had told him. “Well, Allie is, anyway. We don’t need the money.” And when he asked how wealthy, the girl had answered, “Enough that we can get information we’re not supposed to have.”

  Hank wondered if being “independently wealthy” meant Allie Krycek could hire the same people who got her information she wasn’t supposed to have to also erase information she didn’t want others to find on her.

  Must be nice to have cash lying around.

  “Lieutenant, you still there?” Jane asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “That’s all I have on Krycek. Sorry.”

  “Did she have a sister?”

  “She did, but she passed.”

  “So it’s not Lucy?”

  “You said Lucy was sixteen?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “Well, does she look sixteen?”

  Hank thought about it, then said, “I think so, yeah.”

  “Then she’s not the sister. The girl I’m looking at died over a decade ago, when she was nineteen. Her story’s all on paper.”

  “What did you find on her?”

  “Her name was Carmen, and she was abducted while on a cross-country road trip by someone called the Roadside Killer. Ever heard of him?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “Not really. He did most of his work up north, never got close to us. Some national news coverage, but nothing that stuck. You know how it goes. Anyway, he killed the little sister and a few others.”

  “How is Krycek involved?”

  “I don’t think she was. Or, at least, I don’t see any involvement by her in any of the files. I guess you could call the states where this happened and ask them. I don’t have time to do that right now, Hank.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that later.” He let the information roll around in his head for a moment before saying into the phone, “What about the kid? Lucy?”

  “There is no Lucy Krycek. Are you sure her last name’s Krycek?”

  “No.”

  “So you don’t know.”

  “She never told me her last name.”

  “I can’t really do much with just a first name, Hank. You know that. Can you at least get me a picture of her? I could run that through the system.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to let me take a picture just so I can do a background check on her.”

  “Then my hands are tied on the kid.”

  “It was a Hail Mary pass anyway,” Hank said. “So what’s going on with the roadblocks?”

  “Slow, and dull, and uneventful,” Jane said. “We haven’t come up with anything, and adding semitrailers to the search has just about shut everything down to a crawl. Hank, there are a lot of those bastards running around out there. I was thinking about getting them to expand it, start going into the truck stops, but they’re already looking at me funny, and I can’t keep telling them I’m getting tips from a CI. But I was thinking, what if you let me tell them it’s you…?”

  “That’s going to hurt your cause more than help it, Jane,” he said, and just saying it caused his blood to boil.

  “It might still be worth a shot,” Jane said.

  He wasn’t sure if she was saying that for his benefit or if she really believed it. But how could she? She knew, more than anyone, the situation in which he had left the job. It hadn’t been pretty, and it certainly as hell hadn’t been voluntary.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve worked too hard to get this far, kid. Don’t blow it by getting my stink anywhere close to you. Don’t tell them it was me.”

  She sighed, and he thought he could even hear her frustration through the line. That, again, made him smile with pride.

  “I gotta go, Hank,” Jane said. “They’re waving me to the office.”

  “Did something pop?”

  “I don’t know, but everyone’s converging. I’ll talk to you soon!” she said, and hung up on him.

  Hank pulled the phone away and stared at it. The desire to be there, in the thick of all of the chaos, made him grind his teeth.

  Christ, he missed it. After all these years, after all the endless boozing sessions where he cursed everyone involved in his exit from the job, he still missed it in every part of his bones.

  “You done?” the manager asked from the other side of the counter.

  “Yeah,” he said, and hung up the phone.

  * * *

  Kent Whitman’s good stuff was starting to wear off, so Hank had to double the dose. It worked like a charm, and he barely had a limp as he walked. The downside was that adding an extra pill made him drowsier faster. Of course, it probably didn’t help that it was just an hour before ten, which was about an hour later than his usual bedtime these days. Oh, who was he kidding? He didn’t have anything as respectable as a curfew; it almost always depended on whether he had found himself a nice full bottle to accompany him or not.

  Still, the headlights of oncoming vehicles from the other side of the road seemed to be growing in size and he was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be normal. The steering wheel was slightly heavier than he remembered, and although he wasn’t aware of it, the Bronco kept picking up speed and he had to keep telling himself to ease his foot off the pedal.

  “You okay?” Lucy asked from the front passenger seat. Her head was tilted slightly, and it was obvious she’d been observing him for some time now without him being aware of it. The kid was either very sly or he was just not paying attention.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why?”

  “You look kind of weird.”

  “Weird? Weird how?”

  “I don’t know. Like you’re falling asleep.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, and picked up the new can of soda from the cup holder between them, then took a long drink. The taste was disgusting, but at least it was packing enough sugar to perk him up some. “It’s not going to poop in my truck, is it?”

  The “it” was the dog, squatting in the backseat behind them. The big mutt seemed to know he was talking about it and actually looked in his direction for a few seconds before turning his attention back to the outside world of flashing white headlights and red taillights. The idea of a dog in his Bronco, without a leash—or hell, without anything for it to sit on, for that matter—made him a little uncomfortable, but the girl wouldn’t go anywhere without it.

  “Apollo’s way more well-mannered than most people,” she said. “He lived in the city with Allie in her small apartment for years.”

  “Just as long as it doesn’t drop a big one back there.”

  “Nice image,” Lucy said and rolled her eyes.

  He chuckled. “I’m just saying…”

  “I didn’t know old people say that.”

  “What?”

  “‘I’m just saying.’ I thought that was a kid thing.”

  “How old do you think I am, Lucy?”

  “Old enough,” she said.

  He grinned, because he didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t like she was wrong. He was old…enough.

  Hank looked up at the rearview mirror at the dog. “What kind of breed is it, anywa
y?”

  “You need to stop calling Apollo an ‘it,” Lucy said, sounding very annoyed with him.

  He smiled. “My mistake. Him. He. What kind of breed is he?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t it ever occur to you to find out?”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “I mean, what does it matter what kind of breed Apollo is? He’s a dog. He’s Apollo. That’s all that matters.”

  “Where’d Allie find it—him.”

  “He was living in the woods with some hunters. Allie never said, but I don’t think they treated him very well. Probably made him do a lot of bad things. Don’t let his puppy dog appearance fool you, though; Apollo’s way more dangerous than he looks.”

  “Puppy dog appearance?”

  “Doesn’t he look like a puppy?”

  “Uh, no.”

  He gave the dog another look. Apollo didn’t have any “puppy dog appearance” about him, but then again, it also didn’t look too dangerous right now either, unlike the first time he saw the animal.

  I guess they were right; never judge a book by its cover. Or a dog.

  “I haven’t seen any roadblocks so far,” Lucy said. “I thought your buddies were stopping cars all across the state?”

  “You won’t see them because we haven’t crossed the state line yet. And given the direction where that van was headed, they’ll be setting shop mostly along the west end, not south where we are now.”

  “Oh. Makes sense, I guess.” Then, “Thanks for bringing me with you. I was starting to feel useless back there.”

  “Well, I couldn’t just let you stay at that motel all by yourself all night.”

  “I wasn’t alone.”

  “I know, I know, the dog.”

  “I don’t know why you don’t like him. He likes you just fine.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, for one, he hasn’t tried to rip your throat out yet, and he’s usually pretty aggressive around people with guns.”

  “Oh,” Hank said.

  Behind him, the dog continued to perch, as if it was watching for unseen dangers outside the moving Bronco. Hank couldn’t decide if the girl’s stories about the dog ripping people’s throats out was real or just something she made up to toy with him. She was only sixteen years old, but he could tell Lucy had seen and done more than most kids her age. He had suspected that when they first met, and he was one-hundred percent sure of it now.