Torched (16 page)

Next we were patted down by cops wearing white vinyl gloves. When it was my turn, a woman cop barked, “Put your hands up against the wall and spread your legs apart!” I flinched as her hands ran firmly down the outsides of my legs, up my thighs, against my crotch, over my back, under my armpits and down my breasts. I had thought Liberty had done a thorough job when she frisked me before my first MED meeting, but this was ten times worse. My eyes got hot, but I refused to cry.

From there, each of us was taken away to be “processed.” I was the last female MEDic, and Coyote was the last guy. When they called his name, we locked eyes for a long moment. “See you soon, Sky,” he said, his voice hopeless.

My handler pushed my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

As she walked me down the hall, I actually started to feel relieved. This would all be over by morning. Even though the MEDics hadn’t hurt anyone, they still had been caught red-handed damaging equipment. Surely that had to be enough for the FBI. I just hoped that Coyote wouldn’t get in too much trouble.

In a holding room, I was frisked yet again and told to take off my clothes. In return, the female cop—her badge identified her as Colleen Miller—gave me an orange jumpsuit, black plastic sandals, underwear and a sports bra that had once been white but now were a grimy-looking shade of gray.

As I changed, I tried to make my body as small as possible, turning away from Miller’s unwavering stare. I was shaking from lack of sleep and the come-down from all the adrenaline that had earlier coursed through me.

As I slid my feet into the too-small plastic sandals, Miller interrupted my thoughts. “I need your name, date of birth, address and phone number.” She seemed keyed up with excitement at the success of the raid, bouncing up and down on her toes.

I thought about my options. I could follow Cedar’s lead and just keep giving them my MEDic name. But if I told them who I really was, then my parents could get me out of here even faster. And suddenly I wanted to go home more than anything.

So I didn’t lie. But I didn’t offer any surprising truths, either, like the fact that I was working for the FBI. Instead, I just rattled off the information she had asked for.

Miller escorted me out of the room to get my photo and fingerprints. It was stupid, but as the camera flashed, I found myself thinking how unbelievably horrible my mug shot was going to be. I hadn’t showered since I had left home, three days earlier. It seemed a lot longer.

When we were finished, Miller took me downstairs to the cells. Although it was still night, the cells were lit up from the lights in the hallway. The floors were gray cement, and the walls were made of cinder block. In the first cell, a heavyset blonde was sleeping. She had taken off her jumpsuit and was using it as a pillow. In the next cell Meadow, Liberty, Blue and Seed lay on bunks made of slabs of concrete topped with mattresses no thicker than decks of cards. Everyone but Meadow was asleep. She was curled on one of the lower bunks, her swollen ankle now bandaged and propped up on the metal sink. She watched me go by. Was it my imagination, or did she look at me suspiciously?

By the time I got in my empty cell, I was moving like an automaton. The mattress was hard and smelled like pee, but within seconds I was sound asleep.

 

It seemed like only a minute later that someone was yelling, “Come on, Peterson, let’s go.” When I opened my eyes, I saw Colleen Miller standing on the other side of the bars.

I rolled out of the bunk, feeling groggy and dirty. Miller unlocked my cell door, and I padded stiffly down the hall. We passed the cell with the other female MEDics. This time it was Blue who was awake and watching us.

“Where are you taking Sky?” Blue demanded. She looked fierce, like she wanted to tackle Miller.

“Oh, give it a break with those hippy-dippy names, why don’t you?” Miller said. “Eleanor Peterson’s a minor. Different rules apply to her.”

Miller took me into a little room and gave me back my clothes, cell phone, backpack and watch, making me scrawl my initials on each line of the list I had signed just a few hours before. The only thing I didn’t get back was the knife I had taken from the sit. I checked the watch as I slipped it on. It hadn’t been tampered with.

Even though it meant changing clothes in front of Miller again, I couldn’t wait to be out of the orange jumpsuit. After I got dressed, I slid my cell phone into my pocket and buckled on my watch. “So where am I going, anyway?” I asked.

“Children’s Services wants to talk to you to see if it’s safe for us to release you into the custody of your parents. Otherwise you may go into foster care.”

Foster care. Of course the words reminded me of Richter and his threats the night my parents were arrested. So when Miller led me into a small conference room, I wasn’t entirely surprised to see Richter and Ponytail sitting there.

This was it—it was finally over.

“What are you doing?” I whispered as soon as the door had closed. “Somebody says the wrong thing and they’ll know I’m working with you.” Although I couldn’t wait to leave, I wasn’t ready for Coyote or Blue or even the others to learn the truth.

“Relax,” Richter said. “The local cops don’t know who we are. We even have ID to prove we’re with Children’s Services.” He didn’t look relaxed, though. He looked as exhausted as I felt. Ponytail seemed as fat and happy as ever. He smirked at me.

“Sit down,” Richter said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m all right,” I said. “But what’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to the rest of the MEDics?” I tried to keep my voice from trembling. “It’s over now, right?”

“Over?” Ponytail echoed. “It’s far from over.”

In shock, I sat down. I had to do something to make this be finished. But what?

Then I put my hands underneath the table for a second, where they couldn’t see them. Without looking, I pressed the record button on the watch.

I put my hands back on the table and leaned forward. “But don’t you have enough proof now to keep these guys here in jail? You caught them red-handed trying to destroy that equipment. Now that they’re locked up, you don’t have to worry about them hurting anyone.”

Richter shrugged. “The problem is that the local boys showed up before any real damage was done. It’s only a misdemeanor. They’ll lawyer up and claim it was youthful high spirits, no worse than graffiti. The only one we can hold for any length of time is Cedar. He’s served time before for ecoterrorism. But the rest will be bailed out by their parents or sympathizers, and then they’ll meet up again with Darryl Denigan—Hawk. We need you to be there when that happens, because Hawk’s the one we’ve always been the most worried about. We think the crap is about to hit the fan.”

“It’s already starting,” I said. “Did you see that flyer? Blue said it was on every telephone pole in town. Hawk said he didn’t put it out, but it had to be a MEDic, and it sounded just like Hawk.”

Doing a really bad Elvis impersonation, Ponytail said, “Thank yew, thank yew very much.” He made a little mock bow.

“What?” For a minute, I felt outside of myself. Was this really happening?

Richter hesitated before saying, “Actually, Hawk was telling the truth. We created that flyer, Ellie.”

“We needed to turn the heat up a little bit,” Ponytail said, dropping the Elvis drawl. “Get the pot boiling.”

“But isn’t that, like, entrapment or something?” I said.

“The flyer only said what the MEDics are thinking.” Richter looked at me with his tired blue eyes and then down at his folded hands. “You know that yourself, Ellie.”

“But you’re the ones who put their backs against the wall! It sounds like you
want
them to turn violent.”

“Face the facts, Ellie,” Richter said. “It’s already in their DNA. We know they’re going to do something—we just need you to alert us
before
it happens.”

“But you don’t get it—there really
are
lynx where Stonix is trying to log!” I was so mad I was shaking.

“There aren’t any lynx anymore,” Ponytail said dismissively. “Must have been a bobcat.”

“No! I know what a bobcat looks like, and this was a lynx. The markings are different. It was a mom and a baby. A kit.” I saw them again in my mind’s eye and was filled with the same sense of awe.

“But that’s not the point, Ellie,” Richter said. “The point is, the group—” He was interrupted by a chirping sound. Unhooking his phone from his belt, he looked at the display. “I have to take this. Excuse me for a minute.” He went out the door, leaving me alone with Ponytail.

Looking at Ponytail, plump and smug, all my uneasiness rose up full force. Nothing I did for the FBI would be enough. Unless I could think of a way out, I would be forced to do their bidding for years and years.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said.

“You don’t have a choice.” Ponytail leaned forward and said in a voice so soft it was nearly a whisper, “You know why Richter cares, Ellie? Because he knows all about how dangerous domestic terrorists can be. You ever heard about the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995?”

I remembered Richter asking the same question when we first met. “Sure.”

“Okay. So you know that Timothy McVeigh parked a rental trunk with a homemade fertilizer bomb in front of the Murrah Building. There was a day care on the ground floor that a couple of agents used, so they could go downstairs and have lunch with their kids. Richter was married back then. They had a little girl. A three-year-old. They had to bury her in
pieces,
Ellie, or Sky, or whatever the hell your name is. In pieces!”

He took a deep breath and made his voice go soft again. “So don’t be getting on your high horse and saying you can’t help us. If we don’t do something, there is going to be American blood on American soil again, spilled by other Americans.”

I sat in silence for a second. Richter’s daughter would have been about my age by now.

“So you can see why I said it doesn’t matter what you want,” Ponytail continued. “You can’t get out. Not until we say so. You walk away right now and I will personally make sure that you are charged as an adult with the arson of the Hummer dealership. You’ll go to prison until your hair is as gray as mine. And more than that, I’ll make sure your parents grow old and die in a place just like this.”

“I’ll tell these cops the truth,” I said. “I’ll tell them the FBI planted those threatening flyers, not the MEDics. I’ll tell them that you threatened me, a minor. I’ll tell them you wanted me to set the fire at the Hummer dealership.”

Ponytail looked at me with flat gray eyes. “Hey, have you noticed a bunch of people around when we meet with you? Do you think that’s a coincidence? The only people who can say what really happened are the three of us. And who would be more likely to lie? FBI special agents? Or a sixteen-year-old girl with an admitted history of arson?”

Before I could answer, Richter came back in the room. His eyes swung back and forth between us. “Did I miss anything?”

“No,” Ponytail and I said together.

Richter said, “Okay, Ellie, let’s get you out of here. You’ve got our emergency contact phone number. And even though we can’t get too close until the time is right, we always know where you are.”

The back of my neck prickled. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve got the Ronco-brand watch.” Ponytail slipped into a really annoying voice like a late-night announcer. “It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries! But wait, there’s more! It also records—
and
it keeps track of you.”

I froze. Would Ponytail try to demonstrate? Could he tell I was recording this conversation?

“That watch I gave you has a GPS device in it,” Richter explained. “When we saw that you were on the move last night, we figured something was up. We made an anonymous tip to the local cops, but they were a little too eager and showed up faster than we thought.”

I had to distract them from the watch. “So what about that Gary Phelps guy? Did you let him know that you were going to arrest the only people who are working to save the lynx?”

“The MEDics are the reason Phelps is here, not the FBI,” Ponytail said. “One of the locals here must have looped him in.”

Richter glanced at the clock on the wall. “Your mother is here, Ellie. I told them it was okay to release you to her. Once that happens, though, you’re going to have to make it clear that you must rejoin the others. And then we’ll keep an eye on you so we can get in front of whatever they’re planning, before it happens.”

As soon as I saw Laurel standing in the lobby of the jail, I burst into tears. Not just little sniffly tears, either. These were ripping sobs, the kind that had so annoyed me when they came out of Seed’s mouth. And then my mom and I were clutching each other under the bored stare of a desk clerk.

“Are you all right?” Laurel whispered in my ear.

“Yeah. But let’s get out of here. Right now.”

Once outside, I took deep breaths of fresh air. The air out here was so different—clean and already a little too hot. To the north, the clouds had sagging black bellies full of rain.

When we got to the parking lot, I saw our Volkswagen Rabbit was empty.

“So Matt decided not to come?” I tried to sound like it didn’t matter.

“Let’s talk about it over lunch.” Laurel opened the door. Once we were both inside, she pressed her lips to my ear. “He knows.”

“What?”

Laurel put her hand on my arm, then continued to whisper. “Richter called even before the jail did. He said the cops might contact me, but I couldn’t bring you back to Portland. I thought Matt was asleep, but when I hung up the phone, he was standing in the doorway. He heard enough to guess some of it, and I ended up telling him the rest. He’s very angry with me.” She resumed her normal voice. “Hungry?”