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Bitter Waters (Ukiah Oregon Novels) PDF

314 Pages·2003·0.975 MB·English
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ALSOBYWENSPENCER ALIEN TASTE TAINTED TRAIL B I T T E R W A T E R S Wen Spencer A ROC BOOK This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Bitter Waters (Ukiah Oregon Novels) A ROC Book / published by arrangement with the author All rights reserved. Copyright © 2005 by The ROC Publishing Group. This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability. For information address: The ROC Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com ISBN: 0-7865-6101-7 A ROC BOOK® ROC Books first published by ROC Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New Yor- 10014. ROC and the "ROC" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc. Electronic edition: September 2005 To James Larkin, who taught me not to waste daylight Thanks to D. Eric Anderson, Barbara Carlson, George Corcoran, Starr Corcoran aka Lady Jade, Amy Finkbeiner, “Agent” Joan Fisher, Nancy Janda, Kendall Jung, James and Carol Larkin, Heidi Pilewski, Dr. Hope Erica Ring, June Drexler Robertson, Lara Van Winkle, and all the Snippet Hounds of sff.net And special thanks to Ann Cecil CHAPTER ONE Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania Sunday, September 12, 2004 Ukiah Oregon peered up the city street that climbed the steep hillside; normally so narrow that passing cars risked clipping side mirrors, it was now lined with television news trucks and police cars. Red and blue strobe lights were reflected in every raindrop. Nations of people gathered in the islands of light generated by the streetlamps: curious bystanders with um- brellas, tired cops in rain gear, and TVcrews trying to ignore the drizzle as they prepared for the eleven o’clock news re- port. “Well, this is certainly the right street.” Ukiah scanned the row houses stepping up the hill on either side of the street. “2197 would put the house at the top of the hill.” “Ah, Christ, what a circus,” Max Bennett, Ukiah’s partner, muttered as he threaded the Cherokee up the slick paving bricks and found a parking space. “Are you really up to this?” After two grueling weeks in Oregon solving a missing per- sons case, Ukiah and Max had flown out of the Pendleton Air- port at dawn, West Coast time. Bruised, battered, and bone-weary, they had planned to go straight home once they landed at Pittsburgh International Airport. Ukiah had looked forward to seeing his fiancée, Special Agent Indigo Zheng, and his son, Kittanning. An urgent call about a missing boy, however, caught them at the layover in Houston, and reluc- tantly, they agreed to check out the case. 2 Wen Spencer Ukiah eyed the confusion of people and vehicles. “Yeah, I should be fine—this is Pittsburgh.” There was a tap on Ukiah’s window, and he lowered it to find Pittsburgh policeman Ari Johnson standing beside the Cherokee. “Hey, Wolf Boy!” Ari grinned at him. “How’s that kid of yours?” “Kittanning?” How did Ari know about Kittanning? Con- sidering the alien Hex created Kittanning out of Ukiah’s blood without benefit of a woman or the normal nine months of waiting, they kept the baby a family secret. “Ukiah. Kittanning. I get it. You named him after the town.” Ari guessed correctly. “He’s what? Like three months old now? Hopefully it’s been a quiet three months, not like when he was born.” Ukiah’s memory clicked in: Ari had been at the shoot-out the day Ukiah recovered Kittanning; the officer had provided them with diapers, clothing, and formula. “Um, yeah, three months,” Ukiah said. “Is he sleeping through the night yet?” Ari asked. Max scrubbed at his face. “Jeez, Ari, you sound like an old woman.” “Triplets do that to you,” Ari said. “My life is all about ba- bies and guns at the moment. You look like shit, Bennett!” “Eight hours on a plane will do that.” Max tilted his head in puzzlement, and then squinted at Ari. “You put them on to hiring us?” In “you,” Max meant the cops, not Ari as a per- son. “You’ve been out of town,” Ari said. “We’ve had too many kids go missing lately.” “How many is too many?” Ukiah asked. “Personally, one is too many, but the count is higher than that. This makes five.” “Within the last two weeks?” Max looked like he’d bitten into something sour. “Yeah. It’s been one every two days or so. Everyone’s fairly jumpy.” “Shit.” Max sighed, looking out his driver’s window and seeing hidden danger in the night. They had learned the hard BITTER WATERS 3 way that kidnappings usually meant people with guns and the will to use them. In the following moment of quiet, rain lightly tapped on the roof of the Cherokee. Max swore again, and turned to Ukiah. “Well?” “We do it.” “Okay. I’ll deal with the family, kid. Gear up the best you can.” As a result of two layovers, some of their checked luggage had gone astray: specifically the bag with their body armor and some of their more sophisticated electronics. Luckily their guns and basic communications gear hadn’t. Ukiah slid up the window and opened his door to step out into the rain. “Fill me in, Ari.” “The missing boy is Kyle Yonan.” Ari took out his notepad and glanced at it. “He’s white, approximately four-one, sixty pounds, brown on brown.” Meaning the boy had brown hair and eyes. “Last seen wearing a red shirt, blue jeans, and ten- nis shoes. He turned four in July.” So, they were looking for a child of limited abilities except for finding trouble. Ari tucked away his notepad. “The kid has a history of winding up in odd places. Locked himself in a car trunk once. Disappeared at Monroeville Mall and ended up in the mock- up of Santa’s workshop. Weird shit like that all the time. We’re hoping that it will be something like that again and not another grab and run.” “How long has he been missing?” Ukiah lifted the back hatch on the Cherokee. “About ten hours. There’s a small patch of yard in the back. Kyle was playing in it with an older brother this morn- ing. The brother came into the house for a drink, and Kyle vanished. The family looked for three hours before they called us.” Us being the police. “No ransom demand?” Ukiah asked. “None of the missing kids had ransom demands.” Ari went dead serious. “We’re praying you can find this one.” And with four kids missing already, the police had the par- 4 Wen Spencer ents call Bennett Detective Agency to get the legendary Wolf Boy involved. “How long has it been raining?” Ukiah found his rain gear—boots, pants, and coat—and pulled them on. Ari glanced upward, as if noticing the fine rain for the first time. “Maybe about two hours. Off and on. It’s the first time in weeks that it’s rained, wouldn’t you know. The family turned the house upside down, and we’ve combed the neigh- borhood. Not a sign of the kid.” “This rain is going to make it tough,” Ukiah told him. Ari shrugged with a rustle of rain gear. “They say you’re the best at this.” Ukiah knew they said a lot more than just that. He found the bag with the GPS equipment and pulled it out of the pile of luggage. It felt odd threading the tracer into his belt with- out first putting on his body armor. Max returned with a baby blanket as Ukiah pulled on his radio headset. “This is Kyle’s blankie.” Ukiah brushed his fingertips over the worn blue cotton, finding genetic traces of a dark-haired boy with dark eyes and a tendency toward hyperactivity, who would someday be tall and intelligent if he survived his adventure. Ukiah pressed the blanket to his face, closing his eyes, and breathing in the boy’s scent. No blood trace or sign of violence stained the cloth. He came up out of focusing on the blanket to find he missed most of what Max had said, but it was stored in his hearing memory, recorded despite his lack of attention to it. “This is going to be nuts, kid,” Max had said, checking on the tracer’s signal. “This boy sounds like he has less sense than God gave a rabbit. They’ve got two locks on his bed- room door just to keep him in at night.” “He’s not stupid,” Ukiah told Max. “He’s just got too much curiosity, too much energy, and no experience.” “That’s just as bad.” Ukiah considered what he knew of the area. They were on the edge of Wilkinsburg, where it climbed up into the hills that separated it from Penn Hills. Like much of Pittsburgh, the houses dotted the steep hills wherever one could find a foothold to build. Pockets of scrub woods occupied the parts

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.