Primary Valor by Jack Mars (smart books to read .txt) 📕

“I’ll tell you what I know. Okay?”

“I thought you didn’t know anything?”

“I don’t,” Clare said. “But I canguess.”

“So guess.”

“Someone sold the girl out. It wastoo easy to take her. Whoever did it knew where she was going to be. That’sinside information. They knew everything she was doing. You can’t anticipate akid like that unless you’re close to her, real close. They had her texts, theyhad her emails. They knew what she was up to.”

“Who are they?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Ed let his grip on the rope slipthe tiniest amount. Clare’s body lurched forward over the water. He made ananimal sound, like a grunt. It was the sound of fear.

“Guess.”

Clare was speaking quickly, hiswords a torrent.

“I don’t know. Hired hands. Probablyfreelancers. Someone wanted a kid like that one. People have their preferences.Sixteen-year-old girl, that’s pretty vanilla. Maybe they wanted that specifickid for some reason. I don’t know. Anyway, they brought people in,professionals. They did the job, passed the kid along the line, and moved on. Inand out in a few hours. Some guys like to work that way.”

“Where did they take her? Wheredoes the line go?”

“I have no idea.”

Ed nearly let him go again. Thistime, Clare made something closer to a squeal.

“Last chance, Lou. You’re goingin. We’re out of patience.”

“Wait! Wait. I know of a building.I can give you that much. It’s a safe place. People temporarily park kids theresometimes, or they used to. I don’t know if it’s still in operation. It’s acouple hours from here. It’s all I know. I’m out of that life. Okay? You’retalking to the wrong guy.”

“Where is it?”

Clare shrugged, but didn’t sayanything.

“Lou…”

He breathed deeply. “You don’tknow the kind of trouble I could get in.”

Luke shook his head. A memoryflashed in his mind of Big Daddy Bill Cronin. This was Bill’s domain, makingpeople talk. Luke thought of all the times he had winced inwardly whilewatching Big Daddy work. Big Daddy would get angry with the interview subjectssometimes, treat them badly, hurt them.

“They’re weasels,” Bill had toldLuke one time. “And they will always try to weasel out if you let them.”

Luke hardened. He felt it comingover him suddenly, almost as if someone had dipped him in quick-set concrete. Thisman, who had been a very bad man and might still be one, was going to try toweasel out. But they weren’t going to let him do that.

“I’d say you’re in the biggesttrouble of your life right now.”

He took his gun out of itsshoulder holster. He slipped a long sound suppressor from the pocket of hispants, fit it to the grooves of the barrel, and began to mount it. He felt coldnow, outside of himself.

“The alligators will eat yourbody. They just won’t have to drown you first.”

Clare was looking back at Luke. Heeyed the gun warily. He seemed to go limp. He knew what a silencer looked like.He knew what it was for.

“All right. Look. It’s up inFlorence. Not that far. I don’t know the address, but I can tell you how to getthere.”

With a sudden burst of violenteffort, Ed yanked Clare back in. Clare collapsed to the porch, his bodytrembling.

“We’re going there tonight,” Edsaid. “Right now, in fact. You live here until we come back. If we get there,and it isn’t real, I swear…”

“It’s real,” Clare said from thefloor. “It’s more real than you could ever want.”

“Good.”

“I hate you guys,” Clare said. “Youknow that?”

Ed squatted down next to him onthe deck.

“I hate you, too.”

CHAPTER TEN

March 28, 2006

12:25 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Florence, South Carolina

“We got a van earlier today,”Swann said.

He was still awake, and on thejob. He had guided them to this spot, locating it from satellite images, basedon the information Clare had given.

Now he was murmuring into Luke’sear. Luke held the phone close. In his other hand, he held a large pair of boltcutters. On the way here, he had stopped at a twenty-four-hour Walmart andbought the cutters for cash.

Swann droned on. “Your typicalFord van, white, unmarked, the kind of thing people carry junk around in allthe time. It was spotted on a private security camera in the Wrightsville Beachneighborhood where the party was held the night of the abduction. It was alsoon camera footage taken from inside a restaurant on the main drag of the town. Thecamera was pointed out the window of the place, at the street. The van was at ared light for a couple minutes, a little before two in the morning. Carefuldriver, didn’t risk running the yellow, had his left turn indicator on. Nosense getting pulled over for something minor.”

“Yeah,” Luke said, walking with Eddown a back street in a deserted industrial zone just a few miles from thefamous Darlington Motor Speedway. Swann said that when looking at the area fromthe sky, the race track was easily the biggest man-made thing for a hundredmiles in any direction.

Luke would like to go there. Hehad loved auto racing when he was a kid. But he filed that thought away. Nottonight.

“Here’s the kicker,” Swann said. “Thevan was parked outside the girl’s high school for half an hour in the afternoonearlier that day, right around the time school let out. Video cameras caughtthem there, too. There are video cameras everywhere nowadays. These guys werestalking their prey.”

“Where’s the van now?” Luke said.

“It’s a rental van. Not a U-Haulor anything like that. A small business, local to the area. I’m going to giveyou the details of the place once you finish up there. Maybe in the morning youguys can stop in and have a chat with whoever’s on duty.”

“All right,” Luke said. “That’ssounds good.” And it did. The van sounded promising, but he was focused on wherethey were at this moment. “We’re almost at the building. I’m going to hang upnow.”

“Good luck,” Swann said.

Luke hung up and put the phoneback in his pocket.

They had left the car a fewparking lots away. The road here was closed, blocked by a weather-beaten,crazily leaning wooden fence. The fence was easy to walk around, but to bringthe car in, they would have had to ram the thing