Page 60 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
He paused. “I can’t speak for the staties, but I know my colleagues, and I’ve worked with the sheriff’s department more than once. None of them are guns-blazing kind of people.”
“So then we get a standoff that lasts how long? How much food and supplies do they have up there? And we still don’t know what they’re planning and how many more losers have latched on to this militia bullshit. We don’t want to pin down fifteen guys on a mountain and leave fifteen more free to go on a shooting spree.”
Paul made a noise of intense frustration. “What then? What? We just leave Van Alstyne and the other guy to rot? Hope for the best?”
“No. We just need to be thoughtful and precise about how we move forward.” She pressed her folded hands against her lips. “I need to talk to Lyle MacAuley.”
4.
Clare left Ethan plunked beside Karen’s six-year-old, absorbed inRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,while his mother sat nearby finishing her online shopping. “Not a problem,” she had assured Clare. “Go. I’ve got him.”
Yesterday’s snow had left the trees and hills along the Northway as fresh and pristine as the cover of a Christmas card, and Clare would have enjoyed the rare chance to absorb the scenery as a passenger ifshe hadn’t been so worried about Tiny. If she had met up with her husband, was she still there? What if he had taken the baby and left Tiny behind? And if they could find all the Marches together, would she and Yíxin be able to convince Tiny to go with them? Despite her robust assurances, she wasn’t so sure they were going to pull this off. Russ had said, many times, that walking into a domestic fight was the most dangerous thing a cop could do.
The counterpoint to stealth and secrecy is bold action,her Search, Evade, Resist, Escape instructor said.No one’s ever moved their objective forward without taking bold action.
Okay, then. She always did best with jumping in feetfirst.
Off the state highway, the first mile was regular, two-lane pavement, but once they branched onto the northern road, it narrowed into little more than a one-car track. It had been plowed, and the snow thrown up on either side and the heavy forest closing in gave an impression of a dark tunnel sloping upward through the mountain. “Do you want me to take over driving?” Clare asked.
“No, it’s good practice. If I’m going to advance at the Albany office, I’m going to wind up traveling to places like this.” Yíxin rolled her eyes. “Not going to lie, though, I’m definitely feeling even more motivated to get a job in DC.”
“Yeah, I thought I was going to go back to Virginia after a few years.”
“What happened?”
“What didn’t happen?” Clare laughed. “You know, when we get hired by the vestry of a church, we say we’re called. I was called to this place. I feel needed here. Not just by Russ and Ethan. This is where I’m supposed to be, and this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Chasing after Tiny March?”
Clare smiled. “Today, yeah. Other days it’s more meetings and fundraisers.” She glanced down at the GPS tracker on her phone. “Slow down, we’re close.”
Yíxin went from a sedate thirty miles an hour to a near-walking pace. “I don’t see any sign of a car.”
“There.” Clare pointed ahead. “That break in the trees. It’s been plowed out.”
There was no indication if it was a driveway or another road, but it was wide enough for two vehicles to pass comfortably. Clare leaned forward. “Be ready to stop as soon as we see something.”
They crept along for a nerve-cracking half mile before she spotted, through the screen of trunks and bare boughs, an expanse of bright red that didn’t belong in nature. “I think that’s a truck,” Clare said. Yíxin braked. Clare rolled down her window. A crow cawed, and somewhere beyond it, a redwing took up the warning, but otherwise, everything was still. She nodded to Yíxin. “Okay, let’s get closer.”
The first thing she registered as they broke the cover of the trees was her car, sitting empty to one side of a small hunting shack. On the other side, two trucks and two SUVs crowded together in a parking area twice the size of the building. Each was nose out, ready to go, and had been brushed off since yesterday’s storm. Like the drive they had just come up, the ground was cleared down to a layer of hardened snow. “Oh, shit.” Yíxin took a deep breath. “If I die in a redneck shoot-out, my parents will never forgive me.”
“No one’s come out yet.” Clare twisted in her seat to look behind her. “Circle around—slowly—and put us facing toward the road.”
Yíxin did as Clare asked. Staring down the drive, she gripped the steering wheel. “Knowing they’re behind me isn’t making me feel any better.”
“Put it in park but keep it running.” Clare opened her door. “I’m going to see what’s up.”
“This seems like a really, really bad idea, Clare.”
Yeah, it does to me, too. Why wasn’t she at home with her little boy? Why was she still running off toward trouble without thinking things through?
Well, she was committed now. She shut the door and crunched toward the cabin. No sound. No twitches from the curtains covering the windows. She glanced up. The roof was bare except for a radioantenna. Approaching the door, she could see each of the oversized vehicles were hitched to two-sled snowmobile trailers. Enough to move sixteen men up and down the mountain.
She sucked in a lungful of cold air and rapped on the door.
Nothing.
Oh, damn.Maybe Cal had taken his wife and baby back to their home. Maybe they were heading to friends or family. Maybe Tiny was lying inside, cold and still, one of the over four hundred women killed each year by their husbands and lovers. Clare twisted the knob and shouldered the door open.
