Once he had to steer to starboard to avoid a small cargo ship coming down the waterway toward him, but there was plenty of room for him to pass. He was thankful for the clear night and the brilliant moon. Steering the boat through darkness and fog would have been impossible even with Amanda’s aid.
The fuel gauge read full, so he wasn’t going to worry about running out of gas. Hopefully Amanda was right and she wasn’t too far away. There was no reason for her kidnappers to extend themselves that way because they’d have control of him as soon as they told him they had his grandniece. Evil, vicious people. His gnarled fingers tightened on the wheel.
“Don’t you worry, princess,” he thought into the night as he gazed over the bow. “Your Uncle Jake’s going to take you away to where you’ll be safe, and none of these people will ever bother you again. You just wait.” Off to his left, the lights of isolated farms imitated frozen fireflies.
“I’m waiting, Uncle Jake,” she thought back at him. “I know you’re coming for me, I know you’re coming closer all the time. I’m sorry for all the trouble.”
“Why should you be sorry? I’m the one who’s responsible. If it wasn’t for me you’d be home in your own bed now, warm and comfortable. Don’t worry though, princess. You’ll be sleeping there tomorrow night.” He concentrated grimly on her steady mental callings, tried to resonate in time with her own thoughts even as he scanned the western shore for the kind of building she’d described to him.
XVI
“Remember now,” Huddy was saying as he opened the door and started to slide out of the driver’s seat, “all we want to do is get him outside. He may be a little reluctant at first, especially if he recognizes me. I’ll get the parents to one side and you whisper to him that we have the grandniece. He should know about her by now. They’ve had all night to break the news to him. Once he hears that I’m sure he’ll come along quietly.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Somerset exited opposite him. This is the way it should have been handled from the start, she mused. We should have picked up the grandniece as soon as the old man left California. She could sympathize with Huddy’s reluctance to go to such extremes, though. The end justifies the means, however, and Pickett’s now fully revealed abilities certainly justified the abduction of one small-town girl.
He’d been wrong about some things, Benjamin had, but he’d sure been right about Pickett. He’d been right about something else, too: as far as this project was concerned, the sky wasn’t the limit. There were no limits. There was no telling how far Pickett might take them.
The morning came with clouds and humidity; not hurricane weather, but typical of the summer thunderstorms which haunted the South Texas coast. Fat, heavy drops spattered on the windshield of the rented car as it turned up the tree-lined street.
Huddy was first up the steps onto the porch. A stocky, muscular latino answered the door, gazing curiously at his visitors. Huddy was a little surprised. It was his first view of Arriaga Ramirez. From the report of the men who’d bungled the disabling of the van he’d expected a much bigger man. Looking down always made him feel superior.
“Hello,” said Ramirez politely. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re from the Bureau,” Huddy told him. If Ramirez pressed him for further identification they’d be forced to show their bogus FBI ID cards.
Ramirez did not press them and Huddy breathed a little easier. They were still guilty of a number of transgressions, but so far imitating an FBI officer wasn’t one of them. The world was full of bureaus.
The fisherman frowned as he stepped aside to admit them, looking past both toward the car parked at the curb. “Where’s Roeland? The agent who was here yesterday?”
“He’ll be along later,” said Huddy reassuringly. “We’re from a different section.”
That satisfied Ramirez. If these people were not from the Bureau (and where else could they be from?), then how could they know the name of the agent who’d taken the deposition the other day?
“Have you found out anything about my daughter yet?”
“Not yet, sir,” said Somerset. “We’re working on it as hard as we can.” She complimented him on the house as they went into the living room. Pitiful little shack, she thought.
Wendy Ramirez emerged from the kitchen. She wore an apron which wasn’t properly tied. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
“I’m sorry,” Somerset started to tell her. “We just told your husband….”
“They don’t have anything new,” Arriaga said softly to his wife. He walked past them to turn off the television.
“Actually, we’re here to ask a few more questions,” Huddy explained.
“I don’t know what we can tell you that we didn’t tell your compadre Roeland the other day,” Arriaga replied.
“We don’t want to ask you the questions,” Somerset told him. “We’ve been informed that a relative of yours, a Jake Pickett, is visiting from California. It’s him we want to talk to.”
“Uncle Jake?” Wendy looked from one visitor to the other. “He’s terribly fond of Amanda, but I don’t see how he can be of any help to you. He only arrived here yesterday.”
“We know that.” Huddy smiled. “That’s why we’d like to question him. You never know what he might have seen or heard on his way into town.”
“If he heard or saw anything he sure didn’t say anything about it to us,” Arriaga observed.
“Sometimes important details go unremarked upon until you pull them out of a witness,” said Huddy. “We want to be as thorough as possible. It’ll just take a minute.”
“I’m sure Uncle Jake will help in any way he can.” Wendy glanced at her husband, who shrugged indifferently. “I don’t see any harm in it. Try not to get him excited, though. He has a bad heart. I’ll go and fetch him.”
An uncomfortable silence ensued. Arriaga finally broke it, speaking while staring at the floor. “I still don’t understand why anyone would do something like this. Amanda, she’s never done anything bad to anybody in her whole life. Life’s been mean to her, not the other way around. If these people wanted revenge, let them come to me. Why pick on an innocent, handicapped little girl? Sometimes … sometimes I think maybe the world’s going loco.”
“Mr. Ramirez, we understand what you’re going through,” Somerset said soothingly. “In fact, I can say that we have reason to believe your daughter will be returned to you very soon, none the worse for this experience.” Huddy shot her a warning look but she ignored him.
Ramirez glanced up sharply, suddenly alert. “You do? But the other agent said—”
“We have access to certain other sources of information. Don’t be surprised if your daughter isn’t returned as early as tomorrow.”
“Can you promise that?”
“We can’t promise anything,” Somerset warned him. “There are still a number of variables which could complicate matters. But I can say truthfully that things are looking up. Try not to worry quite so much.”
“It’s good to hear you talk like that,” said Arriaga, “because we—”
He broke off at the look his wife threw him as she re-entered the living room. “Arri, did Jake go for a walk this morning? You know he likes to walk. I thought maybe he went out without telling me.”
Arriaga shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since last night.”
Ruth Somerset didn’t stop to ponder propriety. She rushed uninvited past Wendy Ramirez. There was no one in the spare bedroom, the bathroom, or the girl’s bedroom, nor anywhere else in the back of the house. She was back in the living room in a minute.
