Hostage Zero

Navarro slapped his blinker and drifted to the right shoulder. “I know the guy. It’s Jerry Soaring Eagle. He’s sheriff around here.”

Gail’s mind raced, but came up blank. What else was there to do but pull over? “Do you like him?”

He gave her a look. “He’s the sheriff. It’s his job to know everybody. Mine was to keep from being known. We’re not buddies, but I think he’s a decent fellow.” Bruce rolled down the window and waited for the sheriff to arrive. “I left my wallet inside the house,” he mumbled.

Gail turned in her seat to watch the cop approach. She noted that his weapon was holstered, and that his gait was easy. He didn’t have a face from her angle-not until he got to the driver’s window and bent at the waist to look in.

“Mr. Planchette, how are you?” the sheriff asked. Gail had almost forgotten Navarro’s alias.

“I’m just fine, Sheriff,” Navarro said.

The sheriff looked beyond the driver to lock eyes with Gail. His Indian blood was obvious in his features, and his face was set hard. “That so? I think if everything I owned was on fire, I’d be a little, I don’t know, something other than ‘just fine.’”

Navarro paled and shot a look to Gail.

Before she could say anything, the sheriff asked, “Are you Gail Bonneville?”

Her jaw dropped. “I, uh, yes.”

He fixed her with a stare. “Uh-huh. Well, could I ask you both to step out of the car?”

Gail’s stomach tumbled and her mind raced, but options still evaded her. Obviously, the guy was really a cop. But how could he know who she was? She pulled the door handle as he opened Navarro’s door for him. “Sheriff, I need to tell you that I’m armed,” Gail said.

“I figured as much,” the cop replied. “Don’t touch yours, and I won’t touch mine. How’s that?”

Oh, this wasn’t right at all. At the very least, he should have asked to see a carry permit. She let Navarro leave the car first and then took her turn, so as not to overload the cop’s senses. Her door opened over a ditch, so she lost six inches in height on her first step. She walked around the right front fender and positioned herself directly in front of the worn Ford medallion. Ahead and to her right, Navarro looked terrified.

The sheriff looked from one of them to the other and winced a little as he shook his head. “You know,” he said, “I just got the damnedest phone call about you two.”

Navarro shot her a panicked glance. “Is that so?” Gail asked, trying her best to look unmoved.

“It is, indeed,” the sheriff said. “I’ve been in this business for a long, long while. I’ve seen and heard a lot of strange things. After a while, given the nature of the job, you get used to being surprised. But this phone call beat everything else combined.”

He took a deep breath, and his scowl deepened. “It’s just not every day that you get a call from the director of the FBI.”

Isabella reemerged from the hut with Harvey and joined the others in the center. He had his helmet crooked on his head, his MP-5 in his hand, and his pack slung over his shoulder. He looked like he needed a very long nap.

Isabella made a shooing motion with her hands-the exact same gesture Mama Alexander would use to chase away pigeons when Jonathan was a boy-and the villagers dispersed, leaving the table for Jonathan’s team and Isabella.

“I’m sorry for your daughter,” Jonathan said in Spanish.

“She is just one of many,” she said. “The soldiers are very bad men.” She looked uncomfortable. “Not you. Them. You saved my daughter. I am very thankful. Are you here for the white-haired boy?”

The directness startled him-more so because this was a culture known for obfuscating everything from the weather to the color of the sky. Slipping a question like that into an unrelated discussion was an old interrogator’s trick, and Jonathan was pissed at himself for showing a reaction. With the option of a bluff gone, he said, “Yes. What makes you ask?”

Isabella smiled ruefully, exposing a set of well-worn teeth, from which several were missing. “I notice things,” she said. “Sometimes those things are hard to see, sometimes they are easy. A white boy with white hair is easy to see. Soon after, white soldiers with guns are easy to see. I think maybe one has something to do with the other.”

“His name is Evan,” Jonathan said. “He was taken from his home, and we are here to take him back.”

Isabella’s eyebrows scaled her forehead. “Just three people?”

Jonathan shrugged.

“They are many,” Isabella said. “Thirty, maybe forty.”

“Holy shit,” Boxers grunted.

Jonathan ignored him. “Thirty or forty total, right? Not thirty or forty soldiers.”

Isabella nodded. “Twenty soldiers. But many people with guns. Men and boys with guns keep men and boys without guns from running away. Keep enemies out.”