She wore the beige cable-knit sweater, and baggy blue jeans, no jewelry. The rest of her belongings went in the duffel bag, along with two hundred dollars in cash, the entire budget she had managed to squeeze out of Lundquist. She left her FBI shield and credentials behind in her desk. The gun, a Walther PPK .380, she strapped to her ankle inside her pant leg. It was smaller than her usual Sig-Sauer P-228, more suitable for undercover work.
She left the office during the lunch hour, sneaking out the back so no one would ask her where she was headed or what the new look was about. No one outside the Wheatley kidnapping team, her supervisor, and Isaac would know she was working undercover. It was simply too dangerous to divulge a secret like that, be it to the victim's family, outside law enforcement agencies, or other FBI agents who didn't need to know. As much as she would have liked to assure Gus that she was following up his lead, phoning him was out of the question.
The Greyhound bus left Seattle at 3:10 P. M. She probably could have driven, but the safest course was to stay in her role from the minute she left the field office.
She was one of eleven passengers scattered about the bus. Andie had a window seat in the middle. She rode in silence, save for the occasional outburst from the two young boys with their grandmother up front. The creepy guy across the aisle made eye contact once, smiled, and pulled a big wad of chewing gum from his mouth.
"Want some?"
Andie looked away and ignored him.
It was a four-hour bus ride over the mountains. Seattle was separated from central and eastern Washington by the North Cascades, a beautiful range reminiscent of the Alps, which extended seven hundred miles from northern California to the Fraser River in southwest Canada. The western slope was the windward side, green and lush and given to wet weather. Abundant water only heightened the beauty, creating huge reflecting lakes, rushing rivers, and impressive falls like the one at Snoqualmie, an avalanche of water more than a hundred feet higher than Niagara. Skiing at White Pass had been excellent this winter, and the views were astounding all year round. Mount Rainier near Seattle was the most impressive peak, permanently snow-capped and visible in all directions from two hundred miles. There were six others of note, including Mount St. Helens, famous for having blown its top in 1980. The volcanic ash had drifted for hundreds of miles, falling like gritty urban snow in places as far away as the Yakima Valley in central Washington.
The Yakima Valley was technically a desert on the leeward side of the mountain, where thick forests and green mosses of the windward side gave way to sagebrush and cactus on a brown, dusty plain. It was harsh country, given to extremes, cold in winter and hot in summer. Creeks could run dry or at a trickle most of the year, then gush with muddy torrents of sudden melted snow or unexpected summer rain. That a great flood had once converted the entire valley into a vast lake was both Indian legend and geological fact. The rest of the legend was just legend, there being no proof of the giant canoe that had landed atop Snipes Mountain and the young Indian couple it had brought to repopulate the valley.
Whatever the lore, the Yakamas--not Yakimas, as they were later mislabeled--had indeed roamed the wind-billowed grasslands from time beyond memory, surviving on fish, berries, and camas-root cakes. They had been nomads, the premier horse breeders and trainers of the Pacific Northwest. The white man had arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, bringing cattle and farming and development and conflict. A land once without fences was now neatly sectioned off into huge quadrants of irrigated farmland. Row after row of fruit trees covered the hillsides. Apples in particular put Yakima on the modern-day map.
That, and crime.
Andie had seen the FBI crime stats on Yakima, a city famous for its orchards but notorious for its violence. With roughly fifty thousand residents, it was, per capita, one of the nation's most dangerous cities. At the risk of political incorrectness, some saw the violence as an inevitable offshoot of the daily clash of cultures. Native Americans wrestled with the problems that attended the stresses of reservation life, including a rate of alcoholism much higher than the general population. Hispanic migrant workers arrived in droves for the harvest seasons. They were poor, as in any transient population, and a few were outright dangerous. Most were law-abiding but through no fault of their own brought out the worst in people who didn't speak their language. The white population was divided within itself, with plenty of hardy and longtime residents living in double-wide trailers right across the road from the beautiful new vineyards of the wealthy and visionary landowners who had pioneered Washington's trendy wine industry.
"Yakima," announced the bus driver.