If anyone questioned her, she would simply saying she was jogging the five miles down to Ca?ada Road—she checked her map and while it was three miles as the crow flies, it was definitely longer with the twists in the road. She was pretty certain they’d had trespassing joggers and bikers on this narrow road—so narrow that there were stretches where two cars couldn’t pass.
She spent so much time on a treadmill at the gym she forgot how much she enjoyed running outdoors in fresh air. She kept an easy pace, not knowing what she might encounter.
She heard no one, saw no cars or people or bikers or joggers. She was twenty minutes from Redwood City, but she felt like she was in the middle of nowhere. It was truly awesome, yet at the same time a bit disconcerting. She’d broken one of her rules—loose as it was—that she’d always let Ben or David know where she was headed when she was following an investigative trail. A few times she’d been in sticky situations, but she’d always managed to get herself out just fine. She was smart and resourceful, and this was her life. She knew it the minute she started the journal when Karen disappeared in Miami. In fact, the anniversary of Karen’s disappearance had just passed while she had been with Marco in Miami. Karen was never far from her thoughts, which both bothered Max and comforted her. If she didn’t forget what happened to Karen, if she was still looking for evidence, still looking for her remains, then Karen would never be forgotten.
The road Max ran down gently inclined, with a few slight hills and steeper dips. Nothing she couldn’t handle, but she had to watch her step. The road wasn’t well maintained and there were potholes and rocks in her path. Worse, there was a steep drop-off to her right. Max wouldn’t say she was afraid of heights—she was more afraid of falling.
Max turned along a forty-five-degree curve and saw a steep driveway up the north side of the mountain. It, too, had a gate on it and no address, but based on her map this was the Cross property.
There was barbed wire fencing along the top of the gate, making it impossible to climb. There was no easy way to get around it.
She walked down the road until the mountainside was less steep. Looking carefully for poison oak—it was common here, she remembered from her youth—she found a place she could scale without too much effort.
There was fencing here, too, but most of it had fallen down. Still, Max was careful as she climbed over the half-buried barbed wire.
Five minutes later she found herself looking down onto the curving driveway. The trees on this side of the mountain were dense, providing a natural canopy, while the mountain side wasn’t as steep as on the south, making the land easier to access.
Max wasn’t an expert on the drug trade, but she knew that pot farms were big business, especially in the far northern reaches of California. Here, so close to a big city, it was rarer to find outdoor farms, which made this area strategically located. They’d need a storage shed that could be used for drying out the plants when harvested. Which meant electricity or generators.
She suspected that there would be some sort of surveillance system unless Cross and Potrero had a caretaker. Or both. She wanted to find evidence of the pot farm, take some pictures, and then get out of here. Confronting drug growers wasn’t a smart move.
She listened to her surroundings. It wasn’t as quiet as she originally thought. Birds mostly, a distant motorbike or quad that faded away to a faint echo as she listened, and the rustling of trees as the breeze gently moved the air. Fortunately, she’d be able to hear any vehicle long before it approached, so she felt confident about walking along the driveway.
Max scrambled down the side and started walking along the narrow, unpaved road, hyperalert for any sounds. She was startled when she soon came upon a small, rustic cabin. She pulled back into the redwood trees and surveyed the place. No cars, no people, nothing to suggest anyone was here.
Confident she was alone, she left her hiding spot and walked up the porch. All the blinds were closed. Through one narrow crack she made out a table and chairs, a couch, a door on the left. She heard a faint hum and, for a time, thought it came from the house—but it sounded too loud to be a refrigerator. She walked around the house then noticed a barn on the far side of an overgrown clearing, half-concealed by redwoods and birch trees of all sizes. She approached the barn and the hum grew loud enough that Max recognized it as a generator.
The windows on the barn were better camouflaged; they were all painted black on the inside. There was also a heavy-duty chain on the door. She walked around and found a second entrance in the back; it was locked from the inside.
But this was her only chance of confirming her theory. She found a rock and broke the window next to the door. Though the window here was also painted, a thick curtain had been nailed over the opening as well. She pulled the curtain from the nails and it fell aside.
The barn housed a full drug operation—thick bunches of marijuana hung upside down to dry under low-wattage heat lamps, fueled by the generator that was operating next to her behind the barn. There were tables for cutting and sorting and whatever else they did with the dried pot.
She snapped several pictures with her phone camera, sent them to her cloud server, hoping they went through with the sketchy cellular connection, then pocketed it. She considered crawling through the window, but she’d then be trapped if anyone came. And what she had documented was good enough for the authorities.
Because she was right next to the generator, she didn’t hear anyone coming until a motorcycle had driven up to the barn. She dropped down from the broken window and flattened herself against the back of the barn.
Shit.
She peered carefully around the corner. Behind the motorcycle was a truck with a camper shell. The motorcycle was a black BMW bike, property of DLE and ridden by J. C. Potrero—confirmed when he whipped off his helmet and started yelling at the woman driving the truck. “We don’t have time,” he said.
“You’re being paranoid,” the female said.