Utter funereal silence greeted this pronouncement, and Martin decided the baby sheep would stay in their seats at least as long as he needed them to, which was only a few seconds anyway. He used the pistol to nudge his angel down the steps and then followed her out the door of the bus into the intense May heat, slipping the gun into his pocket as he did. A couple of people glanced suspiciously at the bus but obviously did not see the gun as they made no move to run or scream or do anything other than take a quick peek and then retreat back into the comfort of their own lives inside their insulated cocoons.
Parked directly in front of the bus, two car-lengths away, was a maroon Toyota, nearly brand new, clean and shiny. Martin had jacked it specifically to impress Carli. It was slightly more conspicuous—newer and more expensive—than the type of car he would normally steal, but it was still fairly unassuming, so it was nearly invisible. Besides, it seemed appropriate to let his angel know how much she meant to him. The car had been sitting in the lot for a couple of hours now, but, with a set of stolen license plates on it, Martin had known it would still be here when he needed it, and here it was.
He fumbled for the key fob in his pocket, finally locating it and flipping the automatic locks. “Get in the driver’s door and then slide over to the passenger side,” he muttered under his breath to Carli, who complied without argument.
“Just don’t hurt anyone,” she said again as if Martin were some sort of monster, an implication that cut him to the quick. He choked down the anger that rose like bile in his throat, resolving to show his little angel how deeply he cared and how hurtful it was that she didn’t trust him or understand his motives.
The instant she had begun sliding over the center console, Martin climbed in behind her, pulling the gun out of his pocket and training it squarely on her back. He didn’t think she would try to burst out the other side of the car and run, but he wasn’t completely convinced. He needn’t have worried. His angel settled into the passenger’s seat and stared resolutely out the side window as if silently imploring someone, anyone, to come along and save her. Fat chance. Martin had gone to a lot of trouble and taken more than a few chances to maneuver Carli Ferguson to his side where she belonged; he wasn’t about to let her slip away now. He used the button on his side to lock all doors.
The Toyota started up on the first try and rolled smoothly forward. In seconds, Martin and his precious cargo had reached the parking lot’s exit. He flicked his left turn signal, waited for an opening in the passing traffic, and then accelerated onto Main Street. In the rearview mirror he checked on the school bus, a big, yellow, beached whale alone in the parking lot, its red hazard lights flashing an automatic warning with the door hanging open.
The bus steadily shrank in size as Martin sped away, until it disappeared from view. The maroon Toyota passed the high school on the right and continued out of town, moving toward the interstate and anonymity. In five minutes, Martin and his reluctant passenger had left Stockton behind.
CHAPTER 29
BILL WANDERED THE AISLES of his Stockton store, ostensibly looking for customers to assist, but in reality pondering the significance of the awful dreams that continued to interfere with his attempts to get a decent night’s sleep. When his cell phone rang and he recognized the number as Agent Canfield’s, he knew immediately something was wrong.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Bill? It’s Angie—Agent Canfield.”
“Angie. What’s going on?”
“It’s about Carli. Something’s happened, and you need to get to her mother’s home as soon as possible, she—”
“What happened? Is she hurt?”
“As far as we know, she’s okay, Bill. Just get to Sandra’s home and we’ll go over everything we know.”
An icy dread settled in Bill Ferguson’s gut as he raced past the registers at the front door, slowing only marginally to let his assistant manager know he was leaving, then leaping down the stairs and sprinting to his van. He flipped on his emergency flashers and broke every rule of safe driving, taking ten minutes to make the twenty-minute drive to Sandra’s home, screeching to a halt behind an impossibly long line of emergency vehicles, all of which seemed to have been abandoned in front of the Mitchell home in a more or less random pattern. One was parked with its entire left side on the front lawn. His heart in his throat, Bill pulled into a space on the lawn, leapt out of his van, and sprinted to the house, entering through the front door without knocking.
Inside the air was palpably tense. To the left of the door, Sandra sat on the living room couch, weeping, a damp towel pressed to her forehead by her husband. A police officer stood nearby, uncomfortable and clearly unsure of what to do next. In the kitchen, Agent Canfield stood with a mobile phone pressed to her ear in the center of a cluster of officers and plainclothes people Bill assumed must be other FBI agents. He walked down the hallway, and no one paid him any attention.
Bill shouldered his way through the group of people surrounding Canfield. “What happened? Where’s Carli?”
Canfield mumbled something into her cell phone and snapped it shut. She turned her dark eyes on Bill, and he knew.
“Oh no,” he said.
“We’ll find her.”
“How did he get her?”
“He stole a school bus and impersonated the driver, drove it away from the school grounds filled with kids, then abducted Carli.”
Bill stared at her in disbelief. “He stole an entire school bus? Filled with kids? He was parked right outside her school? How is that even possible? Where is the real driver?”
“Slow down,” she said, holding up her hands. “We sent a squad car to the home of the bus driver a little while ago, so the officers should be reporting back soon, but beyond that, yes, it appears he waited outside the high school in the line of buses. After it was fully loaded, he simply drove away with the bus full of kids.”
“Is anyone else missing?”
“No. When he got about a mile away from the school, he pulled into a parking lot and took Carli off the bus at gunpoint. He hustled her into what we assume was a stolen vehicle and drove her away. No one else was hurt.”