Chapter 28

28

QUILLON

T he FBI had set up their command post in the community center in Forestville, which had been the closest town to where the attackers had executed their ambush. Four agents were still fit to work. Two were about to be medevacked to Seattle, and to my shock and sorrow, three agents had died, all three of them in the lead car, which had been blown to bits. More agents were on their way to Forestville, including Coulson, who was flying in from Washington, DC.

"Special Agent Dalia Johnson," the lead agent introduced herself to Auden. "I'm the team leader for the Seattle office."

"Sheriff Auden Frant with the King County Sheriff's Department. Are you in charge?"

She nodded. "Until Special Agent in Charge Padman arrives from DC, yes."

And just like that, she'd assumed command. Auden had told one of his deputies to get the map of the area from his office and tack it to the wall. Markers identified the location of the ambush. Auden had called in all his deputies and had asked surrounding towns for assistance. Roadblocks were being set up, SeaTac had its airport police on the lookout, and the Seattle PD was sending officers to check the train and bus stations.

The problem was that they didn't know what to look for. None of the agents had seen the vehicle the attackers had used as a getaway car. FBI agents and deputy sheriffs were making call after call, searching for a lead. The easy cooperation between them filled me with gratitude. At least they weren't engaging in a pissing match over jurisdiction—not that I had doubted Auden, but Dalia was also eager to work with local law enforcement, and I knew from experience that wasn't always the case.

"Let me have a look at you."

I raised my head when I recognized Fir's kind voice. "I'm fine."

"How about letting me decide that?"

"There are others that need your care more than I do."

He put a soft hand on my shoulder. "The two agents were just airlifted to Seattle, and I've already treated two agents for gunshot wounds, both through and through. My nurse practitioner is monitoring them until ambulance transport arrives, but they're not critical. You're up."

"I need to…" I vaguely gestured, but Fir grabbed my hand.

"What you need is to sit down, take a deep breath, and let me check you out."

I sighed, too exhausted to fight. "I have a concussion."

Fuck knew I'd had them enough to recognize the symptoms: the nausea, the blinding headache, the dizziness.

"I'm sure you're right, but I'm gonna check you out anyway." Fir set his doctor's bag down and put on a pair of gloves. He was gentle as he checked the laceration on my forehead.

"Glass," I said. "There's a bump the size of an egg on the back of my head. They knocked me out cold."

He gingerly felt for it, and I winced at that light touch. "Nausea?" he asked.

"Yeah. Almost threw up at the scene. And a headache and dizziness."

"Then this won't be pleasant." He pointed a light at my right eye, then my left.

Unpleasant was an understatement, as it felt like he'd stabbed me in the eye with an ice pick.

Auden's phone rang, and he answered. "Hold on. Let me put you on speaker," he said after a few seconds. "This is Vincent Mortimer, a deputy who lives in Gainesville, one town over," he said to Dalia. "Go ahead, Vincent."

"I have a witness who saw an unknown white van blazing through Gainesville at seven past eleven," Vincent said. "She didn't see a license plate, but she said it was a van from a plumber's company she didn't recognize."

"How did she know the time that precisely?" Dalia asked.

"She'd fallen asleep in front of the TV and was just getting up to go to bed when a van revved its engine so loudly she looked out the window. She lives on Main Street, right across from the First Baptist church, and there's a stop sign right in front of her house, so she had time to check the van."

"They must've been careful not to blow through a stop sign," Dalia said. "They can't afford to be pulled over."

A plumber's van. That was a solid lead.

"Only one road out of Forestville," Auden said. "If they traveled that way, they were going west, toward Seattle."

"Are the roadblocks in place?" I asked.

"They're being set up now." Dalia checked her watch. "But they have half an hour lead, so if they drove straight to Seattle, they're halfway there. We're setting one up in Monroe, which is where Route 2 splits, so if they're traveling that way, they have to pass through Monroe. Hopefully, we'll catch them there."

"I'm gonna check with other residents of Main Street," Vincent said. "See if anyone else saw anything."

"Thanks for letting us know, Vincent," Auden said. "Check in if you have anything new."

Fir had kept working during the call, cleaning the gash on my forehead and putting a Steri-Strip on. He handed me a bottle of water and two pills, which I assumed were painkillers. I didn't ask. The man was a doctor, for fuck's sake. I took them, closing my eyes. Under any other circumstances, I would've had to lie down, but that wasn't an option. I'd tough it out. I'd been through far, far worse.

"I know you can't take it easy until York is back, but promise me you'll let me know if any of your symptoms get worse," Fir said quietly. "You know concussions are risky."

I nodded, wincing at the pain flaring up. "I will."

The room was a whirlwind of activity, but I had a hard time concentrating. All I could think of was York and how scared he had to be. Where would they be taking him? Back to Russia? That was hard to pull off, though, with SeaTac being monitored. Airport security wasn't perfect, but it wasn't exactly easy to smuggle a man out on a plane, not even if you flew private. No, my money was on driving him across a border. Mexico, maybe? Though that was a hell of a drive.

Auden was discussing possible routes the van could have taken with Dalia when his phone rang again. He picked up, then muttered a curse. "I'm gonna put you on speaker with the FBI, Tommy. This is Sheriff Tommy Lipinksi of Halford, about half an hour west of us. Tommy, can you repeat what you just told me?"

A man cleared his throat. "Yes, of course. We just located an abandoned white van parked at the church in Halford. Taylor and Sons Plumbing, located in Seattle. I ran the plate, and it was registered as stolen but belonging to a different vehicle."

"Good work, Sheriff. Have your men searched the vehicle?" Dalia asked.

"No, ma'am. They only did a quick check to make sure it was empty. We figured you Feds might want to process it as you have far more experience than I do."

"Excellent. I'm sending agents over. Please make sure no one touches the vehicle, Sheriff Lipinksi."

"You got it, ma'am."

"They switched cars," I said once she'd ended the call, dread pooling in my belly. A white van stood out, but now law enforcement had no idea what to search for. Fuck.

"Sounds like it." Dalia turned around and ordered two agents to head to Halford to process the van and two more to ask if anyone had noticed anything.

"Let the sheriff or one of his deputies come with when you canvas the area," Auden said. "No offense, ma'am, but locals are far more likely to talk to one of their own."

"Good point."

As she made call after call, ordering her agents around and making sure every incoming lead was checked, I sat down in a chair, tears close to the surface. How had we lost him? I'd never lost a client, but the one time when it mattered most, I'd failed. Even though I could reason that I'd been helpless against Russian terrorists, I still felt awful that I hadn't been able to keep safe the one person who meant more to me than anyone.

Auden sat next to me. "They'll find him."

"You don't know that."

"They have enough leads to follow. It's not a dead trail, Quillon. Not by far."

"I know." I buried my head in my hands.

His warm hand landed on my shoulder. "I bet he's thinking of you too…when he's not figuring out how to escape."

I raised my head. "You think so?"

"This is York Coombe we're talking about, the smartest man I've ever met. Did you know he won a national robotics competition when he was in tenth grade? And our school doesn't even have a robotics program. He built a robot that could navigate this labyrinth, and he did most of it himself with the help of one teacher who did it as a hobby. And he won. He's brilliant."

The smile stretching my lips must've been sappy, but I didn't care. "I know. It's almost magical watching him work."

Crap. I hadn't called his parents. Should I? "Do his parents need to know?"

"I already called them, a brief courtesy call."

"Thank you. He hasn't spoken to them since the scene at the cemetery."

Auden sighed. "That was so rough on him. I've never wanted to hug him more than I did then."

"I wanted to slap his parents…and I'm not a violent man and have never hit a woman."

"It's so hard because they're nice people, you know? Their home was always open to us, and we played there a lot, riding our bikes down the mountain. The Coombes were fine with it all, maybe also because they were always busy with The Lodge. But knowing what I know now, I question those memories, wonder if I missed something back then, if I should've seen something."

"York said the teasing started when he was six or seven, so when you guys were thirteen or so, but it didn't get bad until the last two years before Essex joined the Marines."

Auden sighed. "Essex changed those last two years and not for the better. He was always cocky, but it got worse, and we had to rein him in all the time to prevent him from doing something stupid. My dad caught him joyriding once and put the fear of god in him, which worked for a while. I was glad he was joining the Marines. Figured that would straighten him out. I just don't understand why he went after York so hard."

I had wondered about that too, and I had a theory. One I'd never shared with York, for whom the subject was too painful, but I could talk about it with Auden. "There's a bit of an age gap between Essex and York, so Essex was an only child for a long time, enjoying the sole attention of his parents."

"What little attention they had for him, you mean? Like I said, they were mostly focused on running The Lodge."

Another piece of the puzzle. "That actually fits my theory. I think Essex was jealous of York, of the attention he was getting, especially if Essex already got so little of it to begin with. And once York was a little older, Essex must've noticed how smart he was. Maybe he thought his parents would come to prefer York over him, or maybe they even did for a while, and he took it out on York."

"Hmm, I can see that. I mean, he often complained to us about his annoying little brother, but my half-brother wasn't born until I was fourteen, and both Marnin and the Banner twins didn't have other siblings, so we had nothing to compare it to. I guess we figured it was normal for him to dislike his brother. It's ironic that Essex is getting in death what he never had in life—his parents' full and undivided attention."

Yeah, the irony was thick and added another sad layer to the whole situation. I'd encouraged York to talk to a therapist, but he'd stubbornly refused. Would he ever get the chance now…or would he maybe need a different kind of therapy if he survived this ordeal? God, I hoped he was okay. Please let him be okay.

"We have another lead," Dalia said, and we both rose. "Witnesses in Halford saw men carrying something heavy from the white van into another van, a darker one. Dark blue or black, they said. It turned out the first plumber's van was stolen, so we checked for more stolen vans in Seattle and got a hit. The day after that white van was stolen, a dark blue Ford Transit belonging to a bakery disappeared. They probably changed the plates, but we at least know what to look for."

"That's great work," Auden said. "Nothing at the roadblock yet?"

Dalia sighed. "Unfortunately, the local sheriff's department in Monroe didn't set it up in time. They were arguing jurisdiction, and by now, the van must've passed that point."

"Fuck," Auden said, and I heartily agreed.

"It's a sad example of a pissing match between various agencies and local law enforcement harming an investigation," Dalia said, the frustration in her voice clear. "So, unfortunately, we have no idea where to look now. Obviously, we'll monitor traffic cam footage, but there are a lot of roads around Seattle, and they may not take main roads. Anyway, wanted to update you."

"Thank you," Auden said, and I nodded, unable to get words past the tightness in my throat.

Please let York be okay. He had to be because a life without him was…

I couldn't bear to finish that thought.