After getting off the highway and several hours of driving on secondary roads, she no longer could tell if they were going east or west. Just forest and deserted, crackled asphalt. Until there wasn’t even that, just dirt and rocks and deeper forest.
He took a sharp left onto a steep, narrow road, the branches and twigs scraping at the truck until they reached an A-frame cabin in the middle of nowhere.
So that was what going under meant.
He killed the engine, reached in the back, and opened some sort of compartment she hadn’t noticed before, grabbed several duffel bags, and gestured for her to get out.
She remained furiously still.
“It gets very cold up here, and there isn’t a human being for miles. Move it.”
She was angry, granted, but stupid she wasn’t, so she followed him.
“What’s this place?” she asked, as he unlocked the front door.
“Hunting cabin. Generator should kick in soon.” He dropped the bags and produced a flashlight.
She glanced around. No TV. No computer. Heck, no decent sofa either. Two wooden benches flanking a massive table. A fireplace with several O-rings in a wooden beam with some utensils hanging from them, and a mini-kitchen that must have been a century old.
His Pilgrim wife would love to live there, skinning the rabbits he would hunt and cooking over the fireplace, or sewing quilts on the porch, swaying in the rocking chair he would make for her.
“Do we pull water from a well?”
“No. Rain-recycling system. Toilet outside.”
Of course.
Jack went to the back and probably did something, because the lights kicked in. Sadly, the place didn’t improve one bit; it got worse. Now she knew what Heidi had felt, stepping into her grandpa’s cabin for the first time.
“I’ll grab some wood,” he said, striding for the front door.
“So you know, I don’t eat rabbit.”
He frowned, turning to her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled.
While he was outside in what she supposed was the woodshed, she inspected her surroundings. Jack had left the duffel bags in the only bedroom, on top of the hardest bed she’d ever tried. Then again, she hadn’t been in the Siberian gulag. Maybe they had harder ones.
The celestial sound of a phone buzzing almost stopped her heart. Oh God, there was service. That was her ticket out of the Stone Age.
She rummaged through the bag where the buzz was coming from, trying to ignore all the guns in there. On the flip side, if he refused to let her go, she could shoot him.
Finally, she fished out a satellite phone. She didn’t recognize the name on the screen but answered nevertheless.
“Yes?”
“Elle?” said a female voice. “Ronnie here. You guys okay?”
“Define okay.”
“What do you mean? Is my brother there?”
“Yes, the ass is out front.”
A startled pause and then a soft chuckle. “What has he done?”
“Ha! What hasn’t he done would be more accurate. When I finish talking with you, I’m calling 911 and tell them I’ve been kidnapped by the Unabomber.”
Ronnie broke into laughter. “So you are at the cabin.”
“Unfortunately. How do you know?”
“I’ve been there. And Jack sent me an encrypted message, which means he’s disappearing.”
“Lucky you. I didn’t even get three words out of him.” It seemed Elle was the only one left in the dark.
She really didn’t know squat about this guy. Not a damn thing.
“Jack is not big on giving explanations. But he’s damn good.”
“I’m not big on being ordered around and ignored. Why haven’t you been ‘ordered’ to hide?”
Ronnie snorted. “You remember V-2’s huge bouncer? Jack pays him, and his job is not only to watch the door, believe me. He’s on my ass twenty-four seven.”
It figured.
“Say,” Elle started. “If you’ve been here, you could come to pick me up.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t find the place if my life depended on it. And the bodyguard from hell wouldn’t take me. Besides, if Jack brought you up there, it means you’re in deep trouble. You’d better stay put.”
“Sure, what else can a pet do?”
“Pet is good, Elle. Pet is very good,” Ronnie answered.
“Meaning?”
“Before I forget; I left a pair of jeans and some toiletries in the chest of drawers,” Ronnie said changing the subject.
As cryptic as her brother.
Elle was about to push the issue when Jack came through the door and shot a nasty look her way.
“Wait a second, the ass just came in.” Elle handed the phone to Jack. “Your sister.”
A couple of nods and “yes,” and he hung up. Probably reading her mind, he put the phone on the pocket of his jeans, glaring at her.
“How long do you think you can keep me incommunicado here?”
“As long as it takes,” he replied arrogantly.
“So you had the time to stay in contact with Ronnie and talk to Mullen and whatnot but you don’t have the smidgen of decency needed to answer my questions, right?”
“I don’t give a shit about decency,” he grunted, piling the wood near the fireplace. “And you don’t need to know.”
Didn’t that say it all.
She was so angry she turned her back on him while he got the fire started. She wasn’t spending any more saliva on this moron.
“You hungry? There are some MREs.”