Free Remote by Donn Cortez Page A

green plaid curtains.   
    There were other cars in the lot, but nothing that looked like it was being used for surveillance.  Buildings with line-of-sight included a one-level storefront, a two-story made of brick with no facing windows, and a service station.  No obvious places for someone to sit and watch.
    He returned to the motel and got the SUV, then drove back through town the way he’d came.  He’d scoped out a prime location for the drop-off on the drive up, the entrance to a National Parks campground that was closed for the season.  There was a pull-through for campers right in front of the gate, and tucking the U-haul in there made it almost invisible from the road.  He unhooked the trailer and drove back to the motel.
    Once in his room, he shucked off his coat, propped himself up on the bed with a few pillows and opened the bag of pretzels.  He didn’t know for sure that the van was the vehicle he was looking for, only that it was parked in the right spot.  The Closer didn’t know what sort of car Tanner was driving either, only that he’d need a trailer hitch on his own.
    He ate a few pretzels, then grabbed his laptop from the bedside table and logged on to the motel’s wireless network.  As he’d expected, there was a message waiting for him: the van was indeed what he was looking for, and the keys to it were in a magnetic case above the right front wheel well.
    He sent a message of his own, relaying the location of the trailer.  The Closer could come and get Goliath whenever he was ready. 
    Then it was time to pick up his own delivery.
     
    ***
    Tanner approached the van as casually as he could.  The keys were exactly where they were supposed to be.  He went around to the back of the vehicle and got a thrill just sliding the key into the door lock—what if the whole thing went up in a ball of flame when he turned his wrist?
    That didn’t happen.  He chuckled, then looked around for any possible witnesses.  It was the middle of the day, but there was nobody nearby.
    He pulled the door open, just enough to see inside.
    Just as promised, there was a man inside.  Naked, mid-thirties, shaved head.  Shackled to eyebolts in the floor at wrists and ankles, with a blindfold over his eyes and his mouth sealed with duct tape.  He jerked and made frantic noises against his gag when he heard the door open. 
    Tanner climbed into the van, never taking his eyes off the man.  He shut the door behind him, then inspected his prisoner at great length.
    Shackles were solid.  The key that opened them was supposedly right next to the van’s ignition key on the ring he’d retrieved.   Nothing hidden nearby—no weapons, no keys, no signaling devices.  That was only a start, though; he dug into the bag he’d brought with him for more sophisticated assistance. 
    He used a Spy Hawk Pro bug detector to scan the entire vehicle for tracking or recording devices; it could pick up anything broadcasting between 1MHz to 8 GHz, from a wireless bug or concealed video camera to a GPS transmitter.  When they found nothing, he switched to a SpyFinder optical camera detector; it used ultra-bright LEDs in a ring around a viewing port to enhance reflected light off the lens of any concealed camera—no matter how well hidden, the lens of a camera always had to be exposed for it to function.
    The vehicle was clean.  Satisfied, Tanner turned his attention to his prisoner.
    He had been systematically tortured.  His forearms were covered with chemical burns in a precise grid.  His earlobes had been removed.  It looked as if a taser had been used repeatedly on the inside of one thigh, while the other had a large third-degree burn.  His chest was striped with thin, perfectly straight cuts, his belly crusted with dried blood.  Tanner suspected more work might have been done on his mouth, but he didn’t want to remove the gag until he’d relocated to a more secluded spot.
    He climbed out of the back and got in the