Torched Page 7

  “But why do you need me? I’ve been doing some reading about MED. It’s just a bunch of independent groups—you’ll only ever know about what’s happening in this one.”

  “Cedar’s group is willing to go a lot farther than most,” Richter said matter-of-factly. “More than just pickets and protests. They’re willing to destroy to make their point. It’s only a matter of time until they turn to violence. Have you heard them talk about anything like that at all—even if it’s just a hint?”

  I shook my head. “I can tell there are still things they don’t talk about in front of me. But hurting somebody, it really doesn’t seem like something they would do.”

  “Did you know that a cleaning woman was scheduled to be in the car dealership office the next night?” Ponytail asked. “What if she had gotten caught in the fire?”

  The hair on my arms rose. “But Coyote and I staked it out.”

  “Staked it out?” Ponytail echoed sarcastically. “Dropping by for a couple of hours for a night or two doesn’t count as professional surveillance.”

  I shivered. Had they followed us?

  “If you can tell me everything that happened, why do you even need me, anyway?” I said, taking a step toward the door.

  Richter grabbed my wrist. “We do need you. We can’t always follow them, not without their knowing it. We need to be able to stop them before somebody gets killed. Not come in when it’s too late and mop up the blood.”

  I shook myself free, but I stayed put. There was something in his voice, desperation, fear. A raw honesty I hadn’t expected.

  Ponytail leaned down and picked up a black case off the floor. He opened it up to reveal a device about as big as a full-sized iPod, with wires leading off it instead of headphones. “That’s why we need you to wear this.” He slid it into a black case that had a wide strip of elastic that looked like it was meant to go around my waist.

  I took a step back. “It’s almost summer. It’s not like I’m going to be wearing heavy sweaters. If one of them finds that thing on me, there’s no way I’ll be able to talk myself out of it.”

  Ponytail slapped his hand down on a box, making me jump. He turned to Richter. “Well, that’s just great. If she’s not going to wear a wire, how are we going to be able to tape-record anything?”

  “She’s a girl,” Richter said calmly. “She’s got a purse. We can use that.”

  “A purse?” I said. “No one in MED carries a purse.”

  “We can put it in a backpack, then,” Richter said. “Something.”

  Ponytail made a face. “Not nearly as good, you know that. We need something on her person.”

  “We’ve got to work with what we’ve got,” Richter told Ponytail. He turned to me. “We’ll get you something no one will notice and arrange another meeting.”

  A weight settled on my chest. I didn’t want to have any more meetings. I just wanted this to be over. But all I could do was nod.

  “So, what is it they call you again?” Richter asked.

  “Sky.”

  It was a pretty word, open and blue, made even more special by the fact that Coyote had chosen it for me.

  But now it tasted like ashes in my mouth.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Three days later, I climbed the worn wooden steps of Hawk’s sagging rental house in a rundown section of North Portland. As I did, I hit the record button on my watch—the little “gift” Richter had given me.

  The door flew open just as I pressed the button. I gasped. Hawk stood in the doorway. He looked at me with his bug eyes and a trace of what might have been a smile. It didn’t seem friendly.

  “Just leave your things here,” he said as I followed him inside into a hum of people laughing and talking in loud voices. There was already a pile of rain slickers, denim jackets and backpacks in the small foyer. Hawk turned into the kitchen, leaving me on my own.

  I dropped my backpack and shrugged out of my jacket, glad that I didn’t have to worry about anyone finding a recording device in either. After much discussion, the FBI had decided to give me the watch, with its special built-in recorder.

  “Here she is!” Jack Rabbit yelled when I walked into the living room. “Sky—one of the Hummer Three!” He led scattered applause, joined by Seed and Grizz.

  Blue raised an open bottle of wine. “Woo! Sky! Woo!”

  Even Cedar gave me a nod, which felt like high praise.

  But I only had eyes for Coyote, who was sitting on an old green upholstered chair with leaking seams. Just the sight of him made my breath catch. How many times had I longed to talk to him in the last few days? I felt so alone. There was no one I could tell the whole truth. Not even Marijean. We still walked home from school together, but we didn’t talk nearly as much as we used to. We walked, and she smoked. I had been, too, until she complained about my always mooching from her. Then it went back to just her smoking.

  Coyote scooted over and patted the space beside him. I picked my way between Liberty and Meadow and squeezed next to him. The length of my leg tingled where it pressed against his. Coyote rested his arm behind my shoulder, but I didn’t know if that was intentional or because it was the only place to put it. I thought of the nights we had spent on stake-out, talking about school, books, music, movies. Everything except whether he wanted to kiss me as badly as I wanted to kiss him.

  He had half turned to talk to Jack Rabbit, leaving me free to look at him. One corkscrew curl was wrapped around another, reminding me of the double helix of DNA—and of the D I had gotten on my science test last week. It was hard to concentrate when you were leading a double life.

  A shrill whistle cut through the room. Cedar took his fingers from between his lips. “Okay, people, settle down.”

  “Oh, come on, Cedar, let us have our fun!” Meadow said, waving the wine bottle.

  “Yeah,” Liberty said. “They did it, and they got away clean. Even the cops are saying the only evidence they’ve got is some white melted plastic.”

  “We deserve to celebrate!” Meadow took another sip of wine and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Her face was unguarded, her eyes squeezed by her smile. She looked so happy that I found myself grinning back, forgetting for a minute that I was only pretending.

  Meadow continued, “The operation was pretty much flawless.” She looked at me, and I knew she was remembering the dropped lighter but choosing not to bring it up in front of everybody. “And now the whole world is listening!” Thanks to Google, we knew that Meadow’s communiqué had been picked up by media outlets around the world.

  “So a few newspapers ran the story.” Hawk emerged from the kitchen. At his sarcastic tone, the room went completely quiet, as it hadn’t even for Cedar. “They also said that the dealer was back in business the next day. When I read that, I realized it was meaningless. It didn’t change a damn thing. The only thing that has changed is that now some people are calling us terrorists.”

  I flinched at hearing the same word Richter and Ponytail used. To make sure that no one in the room doubted my commitment, I spoke up. “That’s stupid. It wasn’t an act of terrorism. It was an act of love for the environment. Owning a Hummer—that’s an act of ecoterrorism.”

  “Whatever it was, Sky,” Hawk retorted, “it hasn’t kept people away from the Hummer dealership. It was a symbolic act, nothing more. We need to do something that makes a difference in the real world. Crap, there are probably people who want to buy a Hummer now because it makes them even more macho.”

  Cedar’s eyes narrowed. “We did real damage, Hawk. Millions of dollars’ worth. We hit the corporate machine right where it hurt, in the pocketbook. That’s the only language that’s spoken in this country.”

  “I think Hawk’s right,” Liberty said. “I mean, what did we really accomplish?” Meadow shot her a hurt look, but she didn’t see it. “When we burn a Hummer dealership, we’re not hurting the General Motors of the world. But sometimes you’ve got to ask yourself—what if we took out the president of
General Motors? Then people would listen.”

  I put my elbows on my knees and leaned forward. It was happening like Richter had said it would. I made sure the watch face and the tiny microphone it concealed were pointed right at Liberty.

  “You know what MED stands for, Liberty,” Cedar said, “and what it doesn’t. MEDics don’t harm people.”

  Coyote nodded.

  “Or animals,” Blue said. “Don’t be species-ist.”

  “But I think Liberty’s right,” Hawk said. “The time is coming when we are going to have to go a step further. If someone has their hands around your throat strangling you, would you politely ask them to stop? Or would you defend yourself by any means necessary?”

  This was just the kind of thing Richter had been looking for. Even though it scared me, it also made me strangely excited. It had to be enough to get Matt off!

  “All right,” Cedar said, his face looking like it was carved out of stone, “are you looking for an action that is more than a symbol, more than economic resistance? An action that is literally a matter of life and death?”

  “What are you talking about?” Hawk demanded.

  “Have any of you ever seen a lynx?” Cedar looked around the room, clearly not expecting a response.

  Then Coyote said, “Yes.”

  All eyes turned to him.

  “My grandfather’s a big hunter. He’s the kind of guy who has a coatrack made out of deer hooves.” Seed moaned as Coyote continued, “Anyway, I think he’s got a stuffed lynx in his basement.” He took his arm from behind me and measured a space about a foot and a half high with his hands. “Like a bobcat, only with longer back legs, bigger feet and bigger ear tufts, right?”

  Cedar nodded. “That’s right. The last known lynx in Oregon was shot outside Corvallis thirty years ago. Who knows? It could even be the one in your grandfather’s basement.”

  He grabbed a folder off the top of the unlit woodstove and took out a color printout of a photograph. It showed a side view of a catlike animal with thick fur and back legs that were longer than its front ones.

  “Well, for those of you who haven’t seen a lynx, here’s one. In winter, their fur is silvery brown. In summer, it’s reddish. Sometimes they have dark brown spots, especially on their legs. They weigh about twenty pounds. They’re solitary and mostly nocturnal. And they’re listed as a threatened species in those few states where they still manage to live.”

  He took a deep breath. “For thirty years, those states have not included Oregon. Now we have it on very credible information that Oregon may again be one of those states. A lynx has been sighted on land belonging to PacCoast Lumber outside Bend.”

  “That’s great news!” Seed said. When everyone turned to her, she hesitated and said in a smaller voice, “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s a logging company, for God’s sake,” Meadow said. “Not a nature preserve.”

  Seed sucked in her bottom lip and looked down at the floor.

  “For those of you who don’t know,” Cedar said, “PacCoast is a small logging company that has been doing business in the Northwest for seventy years. For a logging company, they have a pretty good reputation. But they were recently bought out by a Texas-based company, Stonix, who thought their assets could be maximized through ‘accelerated logging.’ According to what we’re hearing, that’s Texan for ‘clear-cutting.’”

  I made a face. A clear-cut was just like it sounded, when loggers mowed down a section of forest. No shelter for birds or animals, nothing to keep the soil from running off in the next hard rain.

  “Stonix is run by a man named Gary Phelps,” Cedar continued, “who’s known for skirting the law. He’s even supposed to have ties to the Mafia. The way he works, the forest will be long gone before anyone starts looking too closely at the rules and regulations. But the lynx needs that old growth for denning and hunting.”

  “How do we know the lynx are there?” Coyote asked.

  “One of the loggers who works for PacCoast saw it,” Cedar said. “He used to live up in Canada where they do have lynx. He told some of the guys while they were out drinking at the end of the week, and word’s been getting around, even though Stonix has been trying hard to keep it quiet.”

  Meadow leaned forward. “We could go to the media. That will force the EPA or the Forest Service to do something.”

  “It won’t force them to do anything,” Cedar said. “We can tell the Forest Service, we can tell the EPA, we can tell the media—but we don’t have any proof. And without it, they’ll say we’re lying just to stop the development.”

  “Then we set traps,” Coyote said.

  “Traps?” Hawk echoed sarcastically. “What, we prove there are lynx there by handing them a dead one?”

  Sitting so close to Coyote, I could see the muscles in his jaw clench. “That’s not what I mean. You can make a special trap that catches some of the animal’s fur. Once you have the DNA test done, nobody can deny the results.”

  “That would take weeks,” Cedar said. “And we don’t have weeks. The logging will force the lynx out—maybe even make it starve—long before that. So we’re going up in the trees now.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  As soon as I got off the bus, I called the number Richter had given me. A woman answered, simply repeating the phone number I had just dialed.

  “This is Ellie. I need to set up a meeting with Richter. I’ve recorded some evidence.”

  “Hold, please.” When the woman returned after a couple of minutes, she said, “You will be contacted at this number at eight tonight.”

  That evening, time crawled by. I couldn’t concentrate on my homework. Some of my teachers had asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about. I just played dumb, shook my head and said I had been really busy. That I promised to concentrate from then on.

  Finally, I gave up and went into the living room to watch an old rerun of Star Trek with my parents.

  “Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a magician,” Matt said, settling down in his recliner. I saw him slip a Snickers bar out of his shirt pocket.

  Laurel caught him. “I thought your doctor told you to stay away from that junk! You know what candy does to your triglycerides!” She had finally persuaded Matt to see his cardiologist, and he had come home with a long list of foods he wasn’t supposed to eat. Since he was already a vegetarian, the order to cut out red meat was no problem. Candy, ice cream and chips were another story.

  Matt’s good mood vanished. “It’s just a little treat.” He curled his fingers around it as if she might try to snatch it away.

  “It’s a seventy-five-cent heart attack.” She crossed her arms.

  Talk of Matt’s heart made me look at my father more closely. He looked better than he had the night we had been arrested, but he had aged in the past few weeks. His skin was still sallow and oddly loose-looking. In prison, there probably weren’t candy bars or Star Trek reruns. Certainly not Laurel to nag him. And if I was in a foster home in a different city, how would I even get to visit him?

  I got up and hugged him so hard that I could feel the bones in his shoulders. “What’s that for?” he asked, looking pleased.

  Before I could answer, my cell phone rang, making us both jump. I took it into the kitchen. It was Richter, although he didn’t say his name. He instructed me to meet him at Gabriel Park on Saturday at noon.

  “But I’m babysitting then.” I occasionally sat for our next-door neighbor’s child, a curly-haired three-year-old named Cinda Jane.

  “We know,” Richter said. “I’ll meet you at the children’s playground.” And then there was a click.

  “Rock!” Cinda Jane said. She leaned over to pick up a completely unremarkable black rock—one of hundreds along the side of the road—and pressed it into my hand.

  “Rock,” I agreed. “But honey, we can’t stop for every rock. We’re late.” My goal had been to be least a half hour early to see if I could pick out anyone besides Richter watching me. Now I wo
uld be lucky if it was fifteen minutes.

  The good thing about being with Cinda Jane was that she wouldn’t ask questions. The bad thing was that she liked to pick up every pinecone or rock we encountered, admire it and then hand it over for safekeeping. Even though I surreptitiously dropped half of what I had been given, my pockets were still bulging with rocks. In the end, we got to the park only a few minutes before noon.

  I had wondered how Richter would manage not to stand out among the parents and kids. Would he bring his own prop child? But instead, five minutes after I arrived, he appeared with a dog, a black Lab. He sat down on my bench, with my backpack between us. Cinda Jane was about fifteen feet away, clambering up a plastic play structure.

  “What have you got for me?” he said as he leaned over to rub the dog’s ears.

  My words were barely above a whisper as I, too, leaned forward to pet the dog. “I managed to tape the latest MED meeting. Hawk said they had to fight back by any means necessary. And Liberty said that if burning the Hummer dealership didn’t bring change, then maybe they should kill the president of General Motors.”

  Richter sat back without saying anything. I had expected him to be excited, but his expression didn’t change. He pretended to watch the children as they played on the swing set. Cinda Jane was now crawling through a turquoise plastic tunnel. On other benches ringing the play area, moms—and a few dads—sat with their hands around Starbucks cups or talked on cell phones.

  “And the others?” he finally said, taking a stick of gum from his pocket and unwrapping it. “Did they agree with Hawk and Liberty?”

  “No,” I had to admit. “There were some side conversations afterward, but they shut up when I got near. I do know what their next plan is, though. There’s some land near Bend that’s slated for logging. Cedar says someone saw a lynx out there. So they’re going to build tree-sits. They’ll spread them out to try to save as many trees as possible so the lynx has enough forest to den.”