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Bill Hardy concentrated on his job in the air-conditioned cab of his thirty-five-ton excavator.

The behemoth’s 500-horsepower diesel engine roared as Bill pivoted his machine. Deftly handling the controls with the skill of a surgeon, he lowered the claw, closing its jaws on an Audi, plucking it like a toy from the yard.

This was a step in a process continually replayed at Green Auto Revivers, a salvage and recycling company at Houston’s edge. A large operation, it stretched over dozens of acres. Ranges of neatly stacked, flattened and cubed cars towered alongside various heaps of components, all rising like latter-day monuments in a graveyard. But Bill saw it as a place of rebirth because the metal was shredded, then processed to be used in new cars or appliances.

This Audi could be someone’s new fridge soon.

Keeping it in the claw, swaying gently, like a baby in a cradle, Bill swung the Audi toward the baler. Carefully, he lowered it into the steel-walled compression box, large enough to hold two cars.

Then he turned to another control console in his cab, tapping it to begin the command sequence. With a loud, smooth, hydraulic groan, the massive thick steel door cover lowered slowly, until the Audi was swallowed. Bill then engaged the main push cylinder and side push cylinder, applying more than four hundred tons of synchronized compression. The Audi’s death throes came in a cacophony of crunching and snapping.

In less than a minute, a metal bale, in the shape of a cube, about four-by-four feet, was pushed out of the press box, ready for stacking and, later, shredding.

Bill reached for his thermos, enjoying ice-cold lemonade, and thought about the roll of cash in his pocket from Ray, his pal from Clear River.

Ray had come to the yard earlier today with a rush job.

Bill looked over at the blue Challenger Ray had hauled in. Drained and stripped, ready to go. Ray insisted it be processed today after paying Green Auto’s recycling fee.

“I might not get to it. I got a backlog,” Bill had told him.

“I need it to go today.” Ray put six hundred dollars in Bill’s hand. “Off the books.”

“Was it used for drugs from the border?” Bill joked, then saw that Ray wasn’t smiling.

“Do it today.”

Bill stuffed the money in his pocket and grinned. “I think we can manage, partner.”

Bill replaced the top on his thermos, then wiped his mouth. His backlog done, he moved on to the Challenger. Diesel growling, his excavator approached where he’d staged it after unloading it earlier that day from Ray’s truck. Bill noticed that he’d creased the rear when he first moved it.

I musta been a tad overzealous with Ray’s deal. Not that it matters now. Bill chuckled to himself.

Because now, manipulating the controls, he lowered the claw, the jaws clamping tight around the Challenger, hoisting it and turning smoothly. The diesel whined, and the excava tor’s tracks clanked as Bill guided it to the baler, the Challenger rocking gently in the jaws of the claw.

Positioned at the baler, Bill eased the Challenger into the steel compression box. Moving to the control console, he initiated the sequence. With an earsplitting hydraulic groan, the steel door cover began lowering over the Challenger, until it disappeared. As Bill engaged the main push and side cylinders, he glimpsed flashing lights in his periphery.

Police vehicles materialized, converging on the excavator, sirens wailing with the grinding and crack-snapping of the Challenger being compressed as the sequence completed.

“Shut it all down now!” a voice commanded from a bullhorn. A police helicopter hovered above, news choppers close behind.

Bill cut the power to his excavator and the baler as everything unfolded with furious urgency. Officers swarmed the yard, scanning and searching vehicles. Police ordered him from his cab at gunpoint, handcuffing him, patting him down, reading him his rights.

Stunned, Bill looked to the distance, saw the panic-stricken faces of his boss and his boss’s boss, the white shirt and tie managers, running from the office toward him.

Then an officer got in Bill’s face. “Where’s the blue Challenger that was delivered today?”

Emerging from the group were law enforcement people from Clear River. They encircled Bill, demanding, “Where’re the women?”

“Women? What?”

“Where’s the Challenger from Clear River?”

Swallowing hard, Bill pointed his chin at the metal cube that had been disgorged from the baler.

A dog team was brought in, working hastily as news helicopters recorded the scene from overhead.

The German shepherd sniffed around the entire cube, which was still warm to the touch. A liquid substance trickled down the tangles of one side. Tail wagging, the dog barked. The handler turned, nodding soberly at the indication of a human presence in the brick of metal.

Staring in disbelief, the earth trembled under Vern’s feet. Choking back a breath, wiping tears from his eyes, he looked to Luke beside him.

He wasn’t there.

Overwhelmed with an aching terror, Luke had fallen to his knees, confusion and horror filling his face.

Raising his head to heaven, he screamed out.

“CARRIE!”

Luke’s cry lifted skyward, into the whipping winds of the helicopters, his agony captured by news cameras pulling in for dramatic footage.

One chopper, with a Houston network affiliate, had flown over Clay Smith’s property, where it picked up a crew. The TV reporter invited Denise Diaz, who knew the most about the story, to ride with them to Houston.

Flying from Clear River to Harris County, the journalists, using a combination of sources, texts and an onboard police scanner, kept up with the unfolding drama. The unbelievable sequence was clear—police feared Carrie and Joyce-Anne Gemsen, a missing Oklahoma woman, had been abducted, held hostage, then bound in a vehicle transported to Houston to be crushed and shredded.

Now, circling the scene above Green Auto Revivers, the TV reporter stared at their camera’s small screen.

“Did you hear the scanner?” he said as their camera pulled in on Luke. “It’s horrifying!”

Her hands and the chopper making for a jittery view, Denise, using binoculars, studied the scene of Luke on his knees near the cube, as police transmissions indicated Carrie and Joyce- Anne had been killed. Bouncing suddenly, Denise’s view shifted and she glimpsed movement at the base of a rust-colored heap.

“Hey!”

Focusing, steadying, Denise clearly saw two people— two women .

“Hey! It’s them!”

She alerted the others. The camera operator locked on to them, going live.

Carrie and Joyce-Anne, stumbling, staggered out of the wreckage, clothes filthy, remnants of tape trailing, stepping toward investigators, who rushed to them.

Paramedics steadied and comforted Joyce-Anne.

Luke took Carrie into his arms.

They held each other for a long time, and Carrie, in his embrace, reached for Vern, squeezing his hand before moving to hug him as hard as she could.