Torched Page 14

  I kept a calm face. But inside I felt frantic. How could I get word to the FBI? My phone was in a Dumpster someplace, and my watch with its GPS unit was in Blue’s Volvo driving down the road.

  “The newspaper finally asked Gary Phelps about the lynx sighting,” Hawk continued, interrupting the frantic buzz of my thoughts. “Of course, he said there aren’t any lynx in the parcel and that we are liars, but he did say he was meeting with PacCoast tomorrow to make sure they continue to harvest responsibly.”

  Hawk’s thin lips twisted. “We don’t know what time the meeting is, but that doesn’t matter. We’ll be there first thing in the morning. And after Phelps parks in the parking garage, what we are going to do, ladies and gentleman, is plant a bomb under his car. A pipe bomb. And tonight I’m going to teach you how to make one.”

  Grizz looked interested, Liberty looked energized, and I tried to look as if I weren’t terrified. How could I short-circuit this plan?

  Hawk had us line up on the long end of the bed closest to the kitchenette. He stood on the tiny square of linoleum. At his feet was a cardboard box filled with a blender, tinfoil pie plates, two open bags of garden fertilizer and a half-empty bag of charcoal briquettes. Plumbing supplies, a drill and what looked like a half-dozen phone earpieces spilled from Wal-Mart bags next to the box.

  “Welcome to Pipe Bombs One-oh-one.” Hawk had a strange look on his face, almost like he was happy. “To make a pipe bomb, you pack an explosive into a closed metal pipe and then detonate it with a fuse.” From one of the Wal-Mart bags, Hawk took a foot-long piece of metal pipe and two metal caps that screwed onto the ends of it. “Once you detonate that material, it doesn’t have anyplace to go. So it ruptures the pipe with a huge amount of force.”

  “So it’s, like, boom!” Grizz said.

  “That’s right,” Hawk agreed. “Boom. And even though Wal-Mart is happy to sell every red-blooded American a gun, you can’t buy explosives or even fuses there. That’s why we’re going to have to make them ourselves.”

  Making a pipe bomb turned out to be a lot of work. Grizz got assigned the manly tasks. He drilled two holes, one through a pipe cap and one into a flat piece of metal. The second hole would be used to size the fuse so that it would fit through the first hole. Grizz also hammered charcoal briquettes wrapped up in a motel towel. Liberty ran the charcoal chunks through a blender and sifted the results through a tea strainer.

  Meanwhile, I became the cook. Most of the ingredients had to be baked to drive out any excess moisture. Following Hawk’s directions, I preheated the oven to two hundred fifty degrees. I put white round beads of fertilizer from an open green gardening bag on a disposable foil pie pan and stuck it on the warped wire shelf of the oven.

  “This oven’s so old,” I told Hawk. “What if the temperature gauge doesn’t work right?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not heat we have to worry about—it’s fire. If this were a gas oven, it might be a different story.”

  After the white beads had been cooked and cooled, they went into the blender, which Liberty had washed and dried. A few pulses of the blender’s blades turned them into powder. Hawk told me to pour the powder back into the pie plate and set it aside. When he wasn’t telling us what to do—and even when he was—he kept pacing.

  The next step involved measuring out some of the contents of the brown gardening bag. It smelled like rotten eggs. Liberty wrinkled her nose as the stench seemed to intensify in the oven. “What if somebody complains?”

  “Didn’t you notice how it smelled like cat piss outside of room number three?” Hawk asked. “I’m pretty sure our neighbors are making meth. This is the kind of place where nobody notices anything.”

  For five or ten minutes at a time, I would be caught up in the minutiae of what we were doing. Then I would remember that all of these ordinary things—the garden supplies, the charcoal briquettes, the metal pipe that looked like the one that ran beneath the sink—they were all going to be used to kill someone. But there didn’t seem to be a way to disrupt the process without Hawk noticing. And even if I did manage to change the proportions or leave some clumps in the powder, the bomb might still work. Or it might all go terribly wrong and kill us instead.

  As my thoughts chased themselves, searching for a way out, Liberty said, “It’s pretty sweet to think that not only will we be taking out Phelps, we’ll also be taking out that monster gas guzzler Escalade he’s driving.”

  That was it! As the others nodded in agreement, I suddenly remembered the green e on the back of Phelps’s Escalade. The e meant it was a rental.

  What if tomorrow there wasn’t one Escalade in the parking garage, but two?

  When no one was looking, I snuck a pencil stub from one of the drawers in the kitchenette and stuffed a scrap of paper in my pocket. I went to the bathroom, locked the door and scribbled a note to my parents, telling them Hawk’s plan. I asked them to rent a black Cadillac Escalade and park it on the top floor of PacCoast’s parking garage, as far away from any other cars as possible. It had to be black, and it had to be an Escalade, even if they had to check every car rental place within a hundred and fifty miles.

  If I could get Hawk to plant a bomb under the decoy car, it would blow up, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone. The FBI would have the proof they wanted, Hawk would be in jail, and my parents and I would be free. There were far too many ifs, but it was the best plan I could think of. It was also the only plan I could think of.

  After I tucked the note in my jeans pocket and came out of the bathroom, I made a show of pulling a handful of change out of the other pocket. “I’m going to the vending machine,” I said. “Anyone want anything?”

  Hawk jerked his head around. “Liberty, why don’t you go with Sky?”

  “Don’t you trust me?” I said innocently. My plan depended on it.

  “Of course I do. But this is a dicey neighborhood. I don’t want you standing out there in the dark alone.”

  We pooled our quarters. In the courtyard, every other room was dark. Had my exhausted parents fallen asleep? I had to have faith that they were watching me, even if I couldn’t see them.

  Now I had to figure out how to hide the note under the vending machine the way Matt and I had discussed. I tried to look casual, muttering “crap” under my breath as I dropped a couple of coins. I quickly bent down to retrieve them before Liberty could help. But she was mesmerized by the rows of cookies, candy and chips. I palmed the small square of paper and slid it underneath the machine. Liberty and I each bought a bag of Twizzlers, which Liberty said were vegan.

  Back in the room, we measured the prepared ingredients and carefully mixed them together with a little bit of water until they formed a black sludge. Grizz dipped a length of cotton string into the mixture. He pulled the string through the hole Hawk had had him drill in the thin piece of metal earlier, squeezing out the excess sludge from the string. Then we put the brand-new fuse on a piece of foil and baked it along with the rest of the sludge.

  “Now we turn it into powder again,” Hawk said. “Black powder.” Liberty started to reassemble the blender.

  “Damn it!” Hawk yelled. We all jumped. “Use your head for once, Liberty! If you put that in the blender and it threw the tiniest of sparks, you could cause an explosion. For this last step, we have to use a mortar and pestle.”

  As Hawk turned away to get the equipment, Liberty glared at his back, her eyes huge and shiny with unshed tears.

  Hawk deigned to do the last step himself, using a white ceramic pestle that nested in its own ceramic bowl. He slowly crushed the baked chunks until they were as smooth as talcum, a fine slate-gray powder.

  Finally, Hawk twisted one of the caps onto the pipe. Again not trusting anyone else, he made a paper funnel and gingerly slid the powder into the pipe. “You have to be careful not to pack it,” he said, as if we would all be making pipe bombs of our own in the future. “Don’t even tap the bottom of the pipe to make it settle.”

  He delicately wiped
the uncapped end of the pipe with a damp washcloth. “Don’t want to blow us all up by creating too much friction when I screw on the cap.” He picked up the second cap, the one with the hole in it. Earlier, he had threaded the fuse through, knotting it so that it couldn’t come loose. Hardly daring to breathe, the three of us watched as he gently twisted the second cap onto the pipe.

  When he finished, Hawk looked up at us and smiled.

  “Ladies and gentleman, we have a bomb.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It was nearly three in the morning when Hawk gave us permission to sleep. Grizz began to snore immediately. Hawk himself didn’t even lie down. He kept up his pacing. Liberty tried to talk to him, but it was clear he wasn’t paying any attention to her. Finally she curled up on the bed next to me, with her face toward the wall.

  It seemed like only a few seconds later when a ringing phone woke me. I sat up, automatically expecting Hawk to answer it, but he wasn’t in the room. I groped for the battered tan telephone on the small table between the two beds.

  “Hello?” I croaked.

  Hawk came out of the bathroom, running a gray-white towel across his face. Outside, dawn was just breaking. Liberty pushed herself up on one elbow and swiped her dreads out of her eyes. Grizz groaned but didn’t move.

  It was Coyote, talking fast. “We did it, Sky! We saved the lynx!”

  “What?”

  “Tell everyone we found fur in the trap.” Coyote’s voice was jubilant.

  “Fur?” I echoed.

  “Lynx fur. Proof, Sky, proof! We’ll be at the motel in about twenty minutes. And then we can go to the EPA. You can tell them what you saw, and we can give them the fur for testing. Now they’ll have to put a stop to the logging.”

  “Oh, wow!” I said. “That’s great.” I got to my feet. “See you soon.”

  “Who was that?” Hawk said as I hung up the phone. He was wearing only boxers, and his chest was bare and as skinny as a young boy’s.

  “Coyote. He said they found lynx fur in the trap. They’re coming back here so we can all go to the EPA.” I suddenly realized what this meant. “We don’t need to bomb Phelps. We just won!”

  Liberty sat up. “We can save the lynx?”

  “They got the proof we’ve always needed,” I said. “Only this is a lot better than a photograph. We can stop the logging without bombing anyone!”

  “How long until they’re here?” Hawk asked as he pulled a shirt over his head.

  “Coyote said about twenty minutes.” My exhaustion had vanished. Just thinking about Coyote made me aware of how dirty and sticky I was. I hadn’t bathed in days. “Does anyone mind if I take a quick shower?” I asked.

  When nobody said anything, I dug out the last of my clean clothes and locked the bathroom door behind me. Once I was finally alone, I started to plan. I would find a way to let the FBI know about the pipe bomb we had built, maybe even while we were still at the EPA. Maybe I could claim I needed to go to the bathroom and then use a phone in an empty office. The FBI would arrest Hawk, Liberty and Grizz. Nobody else would get in trouble. And I could tell them that it had been Hawk’s idea. Maybe Liberty and Grizz wouldn’t even need to serve jail time.

  I only stayed in the shower for a few minutes, just long enough to rinse my hair and run a washcloth up and down my body. The towels were so thin it was basically a waste of time trying to dry myself off. I couldn’t wait any longer, so I pulled my clothes on over still-damp skin. I went outside and paced the sidewalk, watching the corner where Blue and Coyote would turn to go down the hill to the motel.

  And there they were. It was hard to miss Blue’s orange Volvo as it rounded the corner two blocks away. I waved both my arms over my head. I saw Coyote raise his hand to wave back.

  Then the car exploded.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The sound of the explosion rolled over me, so thick I staggered backward. The car lifted straight up from the ground, landed, bounced and finally came to a stop. The pavement vibrated under my feet. Black smoke rose in a pillar from the engine compartment.

  Coyote!

  I sprinted toward the car, or what was left of it. The Volvo sagged forward on flattened front tires. The roofline had been bent up to a sharp point, and both doors hung open. The driver’s side door buckled outward.

  I could hear Coyote screaming. His head was pressed back against the passenger seat, and he shook it from side to side, his teeth gritted in pain. But Blue was absolutely still, her face a mask of blood. They were both covered in pale blue-green pebbles of glass.

  “Where are you hurt?” I screamed, too.

  “My leg! My leg!” Coyote panted.

  I leaned in the open door and tried to help him out, but when he stood up, his leg gave way. I grabbed at him, desperate to hold him upright, but his weight was too much for me. We both fell to the ground. Coyote held his right leg with hands that looked like they had been dipped in red paint. His leg was crooked, and his jeans were shredded. I saw the gleam of white bone.

  I pushed myself up to my knees. So much blood! Was it all his, or was some of it Blue’s? What could I do?

  I stripped off my sweater, thinking maybe I could use it as a tourniquet. I looked past Coyote to Blue. She looked like a broken, bloody doll. I was only sure it was her because of her stubby ponytails.

  Dead. She had to be dead. My own heart felt like it stopped beating.

  I heard sirens. Someone grabbed my arm and tried to pull me to my feet.

  “No!” I shouted, twisting away. Then I saw it was Hawk. Behind him were Grizz and Liberty.

  “Come on!” Hawk shouted. “Gary Phelps must have had his Mafia buddies do this.” He tried to pull me to my feet. “We have to leave before they get us, too.”

  “I have to stay with Coyote,” I said, breaking free of his grasp.

  “You can’t help them!” Liberty screamed, tears rolling down her face. “You can’t do anything for them! We’re like sitting ducks here!”

  An ambulance skidded around the corner, followed by a cop car. I looked back down at Coyote. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he went limp. Please don’t let him be dead. Please don’t let him be dead. I pressed my ear against his chest. Thank God! His heart was beating, fast but strong.

  “Come on, Sky, let’s get out of here,” Grizz urged. By now, three or four people had gathered around what was left of the Volvo.

  I don’t remember making the decision, but suddenly the three of us were running back to the motel room. Hawk slammed the door closed. The small room amplified our breathing. “Come on,” he urged, throwing supplies back into boxes. “We have to get our things and get out of here. We could be next!”

  Liberty’s eyes were huge. “They warned us and warned us to stay away from the forest. And now they’ve killed Blue.”

  As Hawk lifted a box, he said, “Watch the news. I’ll bet you anything they’ll claim Coyote and Blue were carrying the bomb. They’ll try to blame the two of them, when it’s really Phelps who had them killed.”

  “But they’re not dead,” Grizz said. “Coyote is still alive.”

  I thought of all the blood and prayed Grizz was right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “I’ve got a possible.”

  Liberty’s voice crackled in my earpiece, one of a set of high-tech walkie-talkies Hawk had gotten. It had a separate earpiece and a microphone I could activate by pressing a tiny button clipped on my collar. “I think he’s here.”

  I straightened up from my spot next to the elevator in the parking garage. Thirty seconds later, the black Escalade with the green rental sticker on its bumper glided through the entrance. At the wheel was Gary Phelps, his hands at ten and two. He stared straight ahead, his face expressionless. This was the man who, according to Hawk, was responsible for the bomb that had left Blue dead and Coyote with a mangled leg.

  As Phelps drove past me, I studied his handsome, empty face. Even if he hadn’t set the bomb, he was the one behind the demo
lition of a forest, the destruction of the Old Man and what would surely be the death of the lynx and her kit.

  Should I still try to follow the plan I had sketched out in my note to Matt and Laurel? Or should I let the events Hawk had already set into motion take their course? Did Phelps deserve to die?

  “I see him. Over.” I pushed the Oregonian I had been pretending to read for the last ninety minutes through the swinging metal lid of a trash bin.

  Once we had arrived at PacCoast’s headquarters, we had taken up our positions. Trying not to show how badly I wanted this particular assignment, I had volunteered to stand by the entrance to the parking garage in an alcove by the elevator. It was clear I hadn’t been the first person to think this was a good place to hide out of sight. The corner stank of urine.

  In front of the building, Liberty sat on a bench by a fountain. Her prop was a paperback novel, but she was really watching both the main doors to the building and the side street that led to the parking garage. In case Phelps entered or left through the building’s back door, Grizz had bought a pack of cigarettes and blended in with the smokers there.

  On the second floor of the parking garage, Hawk was in his car wiring the pipe bomb to a prepaid cell phone. The electrical charge that activated the cell phone’s ringer would now also trigger the bomb.

  As soon as I told the others that Phelps had entered the garage, Hawk’s voice was in my ear. “Okay, Sky, see what floor he parks on. But don’t let him see you. Over.”

  Glancing briefly out at each level, I ran up the stairs. The first two floors of the parking garage were full, so Phelps wasn’t able to find a spot until the third floor. By the time I got to the third floor, he was nosing the Escalade into a space. Once he parked, he got out and headed toward the elevator.

  I ran back into the stairway and up the stairs.

  Earlier, I had been too afraid to leave my post, worried I would give the game away. Now I prayed that my parents had managed to park the decoy Escalade on the top floor like I’d asked them to.