Under the Radar. Fern Michaels

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      While the members of the second string were scrambling and scurrying, the Sisters were gathering around the circular table in the War Room on Big Pine Mountain to plot their strategy.

      Chapter 3

      Pearl Barnes looked like anything but what she was: a retired Supreme Court justice. She was dressed in baggy cargo pants, a sweat-stained oversized T-shirt, and combat boots laced up to her ankles. Her iron-gray hair was cut short and slicked back. These days her skin was bronzed, dry, and wrinkled. And she could smell her own body odor. A far cry from the way she looked when she was in court: immaculate, coiffed, and perfumed in her judicial robes.

      She’d been driving for hours in a special bus with a special engine that promised never to give out on her. It looked like her, old and decrepit, but that was what she wanted, part of her MO so that she didn’t draw attention to her illegal activities.

      The people she worked with—“volunteered” was a better word, and more to her liking—didn’t call her judge because they didn’t know about that other life. They called her many names, like Savior, Angel, and Mama. The name that stuck more than any other was Missy. Not Missy something or other, just Missy. But for the most part she answered to just about anything including, Hey Lady!

      Pearl looked at the passengers in her bus and winced. She had thirteen pregnant young girls, and if she was any judge, none was older than fourteen. An unlucky number no matter how you looked at it. Then she looked at her two novice volunteers, who looked scared out of their wits, the same way the three other women and their seven children looked scared out of theirs.

      They were all looking at her expectantly, wondering what magic she was going to unleash. Her destination was a small rural town called Sienna, where she planned to drop off the women and children, where they would wait in a very special barn until the next relay team surfaced. Now she had fourteen girls and one dead bus driver. The driver she had to forget about for now because when you were dead you were dead, and there was nothing one could do about that. Sooner or later, the Highway Patrol would come along and take the man to the county morgue.

      Before Pearl climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus, she took one last look at the dead driver and blessed herself. She hated leaving a body alone and unattended, but she had no other choice. She took another few minutes to think back over what she’d done when she’d rescued the young girls. What had she touched? Had she wiped everything clean? She thought she had. Well, she couldn’t worry about that. She had to get all her passengers safely to the welcoming barn, a mere twenty-two miles due east.

      Pearl turned on the ignition and listened to the engine purr to life. She loved the big old bus. Really and truly loved it. It had carried hundreds of women and children to safety.

      As the bus lumbered down the road, Pearl’s thoughts were all over the map. She knew very little about the polygamous sect that these children belonged to. She should have known. She was a judge, for God’s sake. She defended her lack of knowledge by trying to convince herself she’d never had to deal with polygamy. Men with a dozen wives were too obscene even to think about under normal conditions.

      What she’d found really strange was how quiet the young girls were. Even though they were scared out of their wits, they didn’t part with any information. With the exception of the one named Emily, a truly chatty youngster, who had told Pearl about the polygamous sect and indicated that she’d miscarried in her fourth month. Mentally, Pearl agreed with her earlier assessment, she had fourteen young girls but only thirteen pregnant ones. It had taken only three minutes for her to come to the conclusion that the youngster named Emily was the talkative one of the group. And even she had not really given up much other than that they were all being moved from a compound in Nevada to Utah. If Emily knew or understood why, she hadn’t divulged that information.

      Pearl risked a glance in the rearview mirror. Everyone was either dozing or sound asleep. She wanted to cry for all of them.

      Such a dark night, she thought, out there virtually in the middle of nowhere with a crisis on her special bus. And no one knew anything about this situation except for the Sisters on the mountain, Lizzie Fox, and Nellie. All she had to do was be patient and wait.

      The cell phone Pearl had removed from the girls’ bus, when they weren’t looking, vibrated in the pocket of her shirt. She’d also helped herself to the driver’s wallet just to make it marginally more difficult for the authorities to identify him. She was tempted to answer the vibrating phone but thought better of the idea. Wherever the bus carrying the girls was headed, surely someone must have alerted someone else that it hadn’t arrived. The girl named Emily said they had been sitting in the ditch for almost three hours. Five now since Pearl had gotten back on the road. Yes, it was time for the people at the girls’ final destination to get worried. Nellie and the others would have to deal with that end of things.

      God in heaven, what was she going to do with the girls? Sooner or later, without a doubt, someone would try to charge her with kidnapping. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, she thought grimly.

      “C’mon, c’mon, someone call me. Like now would be a good time,” Pearl muttered over and over under her breath. When nothing happened, she continued driving. With any luck she’d hit the barn just as the sun came up. At best she had fifteen minutes to go.

      A rickety pickup passed her going the other way. The driver tootled his horn, something the people in Utah did out of habit. Pearl tootled back, a cheerful sound in the very early morning. She wondered if the driver of the pickup would be the one to call the Highway Patrol about the bus in the ditch. Then, of course, he would mention seeing the other bus, and the hunt would be on.

      It probably wouldn’t be a problem since she had magnetic signs and extra license plates to switch out, all compliments of Charles and his network. Also, thanks to Charles, she had several sets of new identities. This driver’s license she was carrying said she was Harriet Woonsocket and lived in Burlington, Vermont. She even owned a small Cape Cod house there, where she paid taxes yearly and got junk mail delivered. The other identities were available in case of need.

      In the back of the bus under the last row of seats she had boxes and boxes of books, including Bibles, and other reading material that she passed out to churches and youth groups.

      Pearl Barnes, aka Justice Pearl Barnes (Ret), also known as Harriet Woonsocket, alias Missy something or other, was a woman of many names and talents.

      She saw the huge yellow sign proclaiming that Snuffy’s was the best bar and grill in the state of Utah. She turned off onto a gravel road, drove two miles, and there was the barn straight ahead. She was grateful George was waiting and had lowered the spikes across the road that otherwise would have shredded the tires of her bus into a hundred pieces. The doors were opening as she slowed and drove right into the cavernous space. The doors closed almost immediately.

      “You cut it pretty close, Missy,” the big, bald-headed man said cheerfully. “Got some hot breakfast ready for everyone, and the hot water is running full blast for anyone who wants to take a shower. Full load this time, I see. Gonna have to have Irma fix some more eggs. She’ll love that. That woman just loves to cook for a crowd.”

      Two volunteers stepped into the crowd and shuffled half the women and children to the kitchen in back of the barn and the other half to СКАЧАТЬ