Read Online Blue Heaven by C. J. Box - Free Book Online

find—unless they could have caught them on the move near a road. Swann had shown them their tracks near his pen of hogs, but the pine needles were so thick a quarter mile from his place that the tracks wouldn’t hold. They could be anywhere, those kids.
    Singer had a police scanner in his SUV, and as they patrolled the forest near Swann’s they’d listened to the sheriff’s dispatcher. Monica Taylor had called repeatedly. The dispatcher told a deputy of the calls from the mother saying her children weren’t home yet from school. The calls were treated as routine, the assumption was the kids would likely show up later that night. There was no sense of urgency yet.
    Newkirk felt numb, as if he weren’t really there. He was tired, dirty, hungry. He hadn’t been home all day. The first glass of beer from the pitcher Gonzalez had brought to the table affected him on an empty stomach. He poured another and topped up Singer’s and Gonzalez’s glasses. The beer tasted crisp and good.
    “This is a critical time,” Singer said, keeping his voice low, “before all hell breaks loose. If those kids stop someone for a ride or show up at a house …”
    “We’re fucked,” Gonzalez said, finishing the sentence for his former boss.
    “Yes.”
    “Where could they be?” Newkirk asked.
    Singer and Gonzalez simply stared at him, as they did whenever he asked an unanswerable question.
    “The sheriff probably won’t take it seriously until tomorrow,” Singer said. “He’ll give it some time. It’s obvious they think those kids will show up at home tonight.”
    That was why he’d ordered Swann to go into town and stake out the Taylor house. Swann knew where they lived and could contact Singer via cell phone if the kids showed up. Sofar, there had been no call.
    “I think they’re hunkered down in the woods,” Gonzalez said. “There’s a lot of country out there to get lost in. Nothing but trees all the way to Canada.”
    While they’d patrolled, Gonzalez had kept remarking on the absence of houses, the lack of lights back in the forest. It struck Newkirk as an odd observation, but understandable given the circumstances. Gonzalez and Singer kept to themselves. They rarely ventured out of their trophy homes, and made it a point not to get to know their neighbors. The thick forest insulated them from human interaction, and their locked gates kept out passersby. Both lived in woodland fortresses with satellite television and Internet, wells for water, backup power generators at the ready. The only time they went to town was to transact necessary business—banking, groceries, whatever—and get back. They socialized with each other and the other ex-cops who’d come up together. Newkirk was different, and proud of it. He was the youngest of them, was married, and had kids at home. Two boys and a girl, all involved in school and sports. Newkirk and Maggie had met other parents, other families. They traveled to soccer and basketball games with locals, had gotten to know and like some of them. Newkirk liked to think of it as “making an effort.” In a sense, he felt he was the only one of the ex-officers who actually
lived
here. The others were strangers by choice, although Swann was known to roam around town occasionally. Not Singer or Gonzalez. That’s why they were always asking him where to find things, like the Sand Creek Bar.
    Newkirk often thought bitterly that Singer and Gonzalez, by keeping to themselves the way they did, could create unwanted suspicion. It was as if they were bunkered in their hilltop mansions, looking down on everyone below them. Especially Singer, who rarely ventured out. It was as if he’d done his time with the human race and had no more use forit. And while people up here minded their own business, they didn’t like being held in contempt—they wanted to be liked. Newkirk, for his part, found himself liking them, getting along. Singer, by holding himself above them, could create