Page 54 of Vanish From Sight

“Of course you won’t, as you aren’t going to speak to them.”

“Teresa. A word over here,” another male said. He was a stringy-looking fella with an angular face that was weathered and lined from years of working in the fields. His hair wasgreasy, with grey intermingled with dark brown. He reminded Lena of a rat with his slanted forehead and beady little eyes set deep within his skull. He was wearing a tattered denim jacket with frayed cuffs and a ripped collar. Underneath, a faded plaid shirt that had seen better days, a few buttons missing. His jeans were stained or covered in muck with one of the knees torn.

Lena strained to hear the conversation.

While they talked about her and the situation they found themselves in, she could tell that the one called Patrick wasn’t going down for something Teresa wanted to do.

“You are as much in this as I am. If we let her leave now, we are screwed. Forget this little side business. Forget retiring. The only view you will see will be from behind bars,” Teresa told him.

“We move the dogs. We’ve done it before,” he said.

“Yeah, and you know how much that delayed things? No. Not this time. It’s one woman. We stay the course. It’s taken us this long to make connections. This place is prime pickings. No one is looking for missing dogs around here. Tourists, residents, this region is the armpit of Upstate New York, millions of acres of wilderness, plenty of mountains, more than enough space for dogs and people to vanish from sight.”

Lena wanted to protest but among the many aches and pains, her head was starting to throb hard. She kept fading in and out of consciousness.

“You might be trigger-happy but not me. I say we put it to a vote with the others. We can destroy her phone and camera. Then she has no proof. It’s her word against ours.”

“She knows where we are, bonehead!”

“Fuck you, Teresa!”

“Hey, guys, chill.”

“Don’t tell me to chill. She’s a problem,” Teresa said. “One woman. That’s all.”

“One woman whose phone will be tracked here if we don’t let her go. Haven’t you ever watched any crime shows? They will ping that phone off the towers and triangulate on this place. Then try explaining that,” Patrick said.

Teresa seemed overly confident. “That’s simple. We sell dogs. We are a legal breeder. Just like anyone else. Just people don’t know where we get our main dogs from or the high-priced ones that sell. The rest, they are just a litter. So, she came out to see me about a dog. I showed her, she couldn’t make up her mind and left. You take the phone and dump it in a lake, off a cliff, I don’t give a fuck. But anywhere but here.”

Patrick laughed. “You must think cops are stupid. The last place she was seen was us. Even if they don’t arrest us, they will stick a cop in an unmarked car outside the farm and watch us day and night. Then how are we going to conduct business? Huh? Yeah, just like I thought. Who’s the bonehead now!”

Teresa lashed out, cracking him with a right hook and knocking him to the floor. He bounced up about to retaliate but the third guy intervened. “Stop. Enough. This isn’t helping. You’re both right and wrong. What’s done is done.”

The front door creaked open. “Hey Teresa.”

“What is it, Magnus?”

“I think I found her vehicle. It’s parked down the road, off to the side.”

Teresa marched over to Lena and dug her grubby little fingers into her pockets, searching for keys. Lena couldn’t have resisted even if she tried.

“Please, I work for the newspaper. People will be looking for me.”

“What?” she asked, pulling out a set of jangling keys then tossing them to someone off to her left.

“TheAdirondack Daily Enterprise.”

Teresa looked back at the others.

“Fuck!” Patrick said as he kicked the coffee table then plowed a fist into a photo frame on the wall, cracking it.

Teresa grinned. “So? You think that changes anything?”

“My ex works for State Police.”

Lena tossed everything and anything she could at them, realizing that this wasn’t going to end well if she didn’t try. They would have to work fast and get rid of her. They had no intentions of keeping her around. Time was their enemy and as long as she was alive, they could go to jail.

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