Dani looked at him and shook her head. “But it was real.”
Horrifyingly real. And it all rushed back. Every terrifying detail. Things she had stored and didn’t know what for. Why it was important. Robertson sitting next to her in the café. The South by Southwest T-shirt he was wearing. The friendliness in his eyes that suddenly changed.
“I didn’t recognize him. He just started to talk. Something seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put it together. I’d only seen that grainy, black-and-white photo on your phone. He had this growth on his face now. He tried to get me to get into one of those black SUVs. I hit him …”
“You hit him?”
Dani nodded. With kind of a disbelieving grin. “With one of those pointy metal napkin holders, as we went out the door. Right here …” She pointed above her eye. “It left quite a welt.”
Hauck chuckled, admiringly. “The guy’s a trained military operative.”
“I can handle myself. Besides, I didn’t have any choice. I knew I couldn’t get in that car.”
The rest she went through, feeling her heart quickening again. The chase through town. How she hid on the garbage truck—“when you called me I was pinned on top of it; they were all around.” How she leaped off and almost made it to the police station.
“They tossed me in the back of one of those black SUVs. I realized I still had my phone on from when you called, so I just hoped, prayed, you’d hear.” Her heart was beating rapidly. “It was the only hope I had.”
“That was smart.” Hauck smiled. “It led me right to you. Then when the kid called …”
“Robertson told me you were dead at first. I thought I would ever see you again.” Anxiousness rose up in her again.
“But I’m not. I’m here. It’s okay, Dani. What exactly was that place they took you? Some kind of water treatment facility?”
“Where they pump the water out of the river and send it up to the wells. You saw the dam?”
Hauck nodded.
“They’re sucking the river dry, Uncle Ty. The one side had water they were capturing. The other … the Templeton side …” She shook her head. “The building there is basically a huge water tank. They locked me inside. Robertson dragged me up a couple of levels and pushed me in. I did my best to fight him off. Then they opened the valves and it started to fill.”
Her eyes filled with fear again as she recalled it, and grew wide. “It was like the whole Pacific Ocean was coming in on me. I somehow managed to get my binds off. And I rode it to the top. He said they were going to toss me down some drainage pipe in the hills where they dispose of the fracking waste.” Her eyes now filled with rancor. “Fuck him …!”
“So how did you get out?”
She shrugged. “He left. He just left me there to drown.” Then she told him how she remembered this one thing, from college, about how water levels balance. And how she went down, her lungs bursting, and swam into the conduits, hearing the buzzers go off again, sure that the valves would close behind her and she’d be trapped.
Hauck put his hand on her arm. “You don’t have to go through anymore. I’m so sorry I put your life in risk.”
“It’s okay. It’s …” Her eyes grew moist again and she sank like a weight across the seat and into his arms. This time she began to cry. He just held her there, against him, telling her over and over he would never let go of her again, that she was safe, and stroking her. His beautiful, courageous goddaughter who had been entrusted into his hands, and he had let her down. “You’re safe.” He just kept stroking her hair. “You’re with me now.”
She just kept shaking. Then she looked up. “They told me you were fucking dead! I thought you were dead!” Her eyes were raw, her cheeks mashed with tears. “I told them you would get them. I said to Robertson, as he was about to throw me in, ‘You know, he’s going to kill you for this.’ That’s why we can’t go back home. We have to do something or arrest them. We know what they did now.”
He took a napkin from out of the console between them and wiped her tears. “Maybe we should leave this part out when we describe how things went to your dad.”
It made her laugh, sniffling back the tears. Then she grew serious again. “Wade’s involved. They basically said that to me. They just never thought I’d be around to tell anyone. When he called the other night he sounded so weird and helpless. Now I know why. Because he knew what they were going to do. He couldn’t protect me any longer if we stayed. They got to him, Uncle Ty. I don’t know how. Money. Kyle. Something. That’s why he didn’t act on any of the evidence. Why he sat on those tapes … We’ve got to report this. I can finger Robertson. And that other man. And Wade …”
“It’s just not that easy, Dani. We can report a crime, but then we’d have to go back. The Templeton Police Department has jurisdiction there. You’d have to make a deposition against them.”
“Damn right I’ll make a deposition. I’d do it laughing in their faces.”
“And we’d have to find a lawyer there who’ll go to trial. And be around there. And face a jury of people from the town. I’m not going to risk that. Not till I know that whoever the state attorney is there will bring charges up. And then you’d have to testify at trial …”
“So what are we going to do? Just let them get away with it? Like they wanted?”
“First, I’m taking you back.”
“No. Uncle Ty, we can’t—”
“That’s all there is, Dani. I should have done this days ago.”
She stared, more fragile than he’d seen her before, the courage and the rancor and maybe even a little belief in him draining from her face. “All we’ve talked about was me. They told me you were dead. What about you?”
Two hours ago, a bullet had narrowly missed his head, plowing into Watkins. Hauck started the car up and backed out of the space. “I’ll be fine.”