Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(88)

“Had to,” Max said. “That would be the logical way. That’s how we’re going to do it anyway.”

They circled around the off-ramp and popped out on West Seventh Street. A Super America station was straight ahead; a warehouse sat directly to their right.

“Where are they?” Max asked. He scanned both directions, sounding surprised that they hadn’t bumped up on Thacker and Jasper’s tailpipe.

“Maybe we passed them. You were driving pretty fast.”

“Huh.”

“Darden was instructed to drive to Sims and Weide,” Afton said, consulting a hastily printed map. “In what’s known as East Saint Paul. That would mean a left turn. Here on West Seventh. Then heading across a couple of bridges.”

“I don’t know,” Max said. But he turned north anyway, heading toward Payne Avenue. They passed Red’s Savoy Pizza on their left and shot across a freeway bridge.

Afton couldn’t remember the last time she’d been over on this side of Saint Paul. The labyrinth of streets, the lack of sequential numbering, the lack of familiar landmarks made everything seem foreign. A former celebrity governor had once complained that Saint Paul’s streets had been designed by “drunken Irishmen.” His pronouncement—while crude and not terribly politically correct—wasn’t all that far off base.

“Where the hell are we?” Max muttered. His windshield wipers were struggling to keep up.

“Careful,” Afton cautioned. “We don’t want to overshoot anybody.” What she really meant was, We don’t want to overshoot Darden and blow everybody’s cover.

“Now what?” Max asked, clearly flummoxed. “You’re the one with the map.”

“Left. Hang a left right here. We need to go up Payne Avenue.”

Max made the turn and swept north again, the whole of Swede Hollow Park, dark and deep, just off to their right. “Now what?”

“Now pull over,” Afton said. “Because Darden just started talking.”

Max pulled over to a curb that was delineated only by a huge ridge of plowed snow. “Hope we don’t get stuck,” he grumped. Saint Paul snow removal was often sketchy at best.

Afton goosed the volume on their communications equipment. “Shush. Listen up.”

They put their heads together and listened.

Darden was talking now, his voice sounding low and cautious, giving a kind of play-by-play for the benefit of the FBI and SWAT teams.

“Okay, I just pulled up at the corner of Sims and Weide,” Darden said. “There’s not a living soul here that I can see. Just a few houses, not many lights on. One quadrant of the intersection leads off toward a playground, although it’s covered with snow. I think maybe a ball field.” He hesitated. There was the sound of his car door snicking open. “I’m getting out now.” There were slight crunching sounds. “Nothing. I think this might be . . . Wait a minute.” Now they could hear his breath sounds, hoarse and a little panicked. “I hear something.” More crunching. “There’s a phone ringing. A pay phone over there.” Now there was wild excitement in his voice.

“Holy crap,” Max said. “That must be the last pay phone left in existence.”

“Kidnapper really plotted out the route,” Afton muttered.

“Hello?” Darden had answered the ringing phone, his voice high and reedy. “Yes,” he said. “I know where that is.”

There was more crunching and then the sound of his car door opening and closing. When he was safely inside, Darden said, “Same voice. This time he told me to head over to that old nightclub by the Wabasha Street Caves. I’m supposed to look around the parking lot for a pop can. Inside is supposed to be another set of directions.” He swallowed hard, and then said, “I hope you guys are listening in because this feels very dangerous. Like I’m walking into a trap.”

“We’re listening,” Afton said, even though she knew Darden couldn’t hear her.

Max shook his head. “This is like a bad scavenger hunt that . . . Oh, holy shit.”

“What?”

“I’ll bet the kidnapper is leading him toward those old beer and mushroom caves.”

“It’d be hard for SWAT to follow him in there,” Afton said.

Max pounded a fist against the steering wheel. “No, it’s going to be damn near impossible. That’s a terrible place. Those caves are dug right into the hillside. You’ve got a bluff that rises nearly eight hundred feet high above them and is nearly impossible to scale. And the Mississippi River dips within fifty yards of those caves. It’s mostly dense woods along there. There are no streets . . . no lights . . .”

“And if those new directions send him farther back . . .”

“The farther back you go,” Max said, “the more deserted it gets. Just a tangle of trees and underbrush. And if the kidnapper tries to lure Darden inside one of those caves, all bets are off ’cause it’s dangerous as hell. There are drop-offs inside, noxious gasses.”

“What are we gonna do?” Afton asked. She remembered that some high school kids had died in those caves a few years ago. They’d crawled in to drink beer and smoke pot, but ended up breathing deadly carbon monoxide.

Max worried his upper teeth against his lower lip. “I can’t imagine what the SWAT team will do.”