ARKEN

Reunion

Alyssa never answered a call so fast than when the phone started buzzing in her pocket. She put it on speaker for Alex to hear. "Hello?"

"'Hello', that's cute. Who the hell else would this be?"

"Wendell, where's my sister?"

"I'm disappointed. I honestly thought that Mr. Vance had dealt with you. I'll have to tell Stavish to invest in better hitmen in the future."

"Where is Audrey?" Alyssa's patience was more than gone, if Bowden had been here in front of her now, she'd be beating him senseless.

"Here's how this works, Alyssa. You're going to go to the LaBagh Woods. I'm sure you can figure out where it is. You'll be there, at Picnic Grove #1, by five am, or Audrey's dead, plain and simple."

He hung up before she could say anything else. Alyssa tossed the phone aside. "What time is it now?"

"It's almost 4:30."

"We better hurry."

They left in the Ranger. Alyssa knew Stavish too well. He wasn't just going to hand Audrey back to them, it was some ploy to try and get her back. If the hitman was a sign of anything, Stavish was just going to have Audrey and Alex killed so he could have her to himself. If he thinks I'd ever go back to him, he's not as smart as he seems.

Along the way, they were stopped when their route was cut off by a National Guard checkpoint. Alyssa punched the wheel in frustration, "We don't have time to sit here at a checkpoint."

She checked behind them. More cars were coming up, but she still had time. She backed the truck up and took a left, to go around. It was 4:50, they were running out of time to get to the woods.

When they got there, neither of them were expecting such a large forested area. They turned off North Cicero Avenue and went across the bridge over the freeway to the LaBagh Woods. Almost immediately upon crossing over, they came to a four-way split in the road. A path directly to the left, the paved road went ahead and forked in two, then another path on the right.

On the side of the road, a notice board had a map. Alex pointed to the orange square in the middle of a field of green on the north part of the map, "Picnic Grove #1, right there. Take the left fork. It was a good idea on Stavish's part to have them meet out here. The woods were a public attraction, but they would be deserted at night, allowing him all the privacy he needed to kill them.

Not much further and the road opened into an empty parking lot. Alyssa drove to the far end of the lot. From there, they could see the little covered structure and surrounding field. Just ahead of them was a gravel path to the structure. Twenty feet down the path, it forked, and a side path led off to another covered area behind a large tree. Alyssa turned off the truck.

"I don't see them anywhere. It's 4:56, they should be around."

There were several vehicles parked across the trail from them at the other corner of the lot, they had to be the vehicles Stavish and his people had taken here. Alyssa and Alex left the Ranger and started walking the path, looking around for any sign of people. They approached the covered area and searched. A dozen different things were running through Alyssa's head when there was a whistle from off to the right.

"It came from the forest," Alyssa said.

"I guess we'd better follow it." Alex was about to take a step forward when Alyssa blocked her, "You know, whatever they might say, you can't trust them."