by Brenda Novak
“What else could it be?” She sounded slightly bewildered. “Are you thinking of coming over this way? Because if you are, I’d love to see you.”
“No. I don’t have any travel plans.”
“What about Boston? Jason said you’re getting married next month.”
“Evelyn and I were getting married here and having a second reception in Boston in the fall, after the baby arrives. But…” His throat tightened, threatening to squeeze off any sound.
He swallowed, trying to force down the lump that was nearly choking him. “But something’s come up.”
“What is it? Don’t tell me you and Evelyn have broken the engagement. From what I hear, you’re deeply in love and perfect for each other. And with a baby on the way…”
Apparently, Jason was telling their mother more than Amarok had realized, but Amarok should’ve guessed he would. Jason remained loyal to her, just as Amarok remained loyal to their father. “Evelyn’s been kidnapped.”
This was met with shocked silence. Then she said, “That’s terrifying. Do you know who has her, where they’ve taken her or even why this happened?”
“She studies psychopaths for a living, that’s why. And I think I know who, as well.”
“Don’t tell me Jasper Moore has escaped.…”
“No. Lyman Bishop.”
“The Zombie Maker?”
He hadn’t realized she’d be familiar with the media nickname. “Yes. You’re aware of him?”
“I follow anything that has to do with Hilltop because … well, I know you’d probably be involved in some way.”
He said nothing.
“I haven’t seen anything on the news lately about him escaping,” she added.
“The hospital didn’t contact the police, didn’t tell anyone.”
“Why not? Don’t they have a duty to do that?”
“No doubt they were hoping to avoid the bad publicity.”
“But he’s so dangerous!”
“They chose to believe he was too diminished to be harmful, I guess. One of their employees has been murdered, though, so I doubt he’s that diminished.”
“You think it was him?”
“It makes sense.”
“Then they’re going to come under fire.”
“Yes. If the scandal hasn’t hit the news yet, it will soon. You haven’t heard from anyone you don’t know, have you? Maybe someone who mentioned Evelyn or asked where I live?”
“Are you talking about Lyman Bishop? What makes you believe he would ever try to contact me?”
“Because I’m fairly certain Evelyn thought she was meeting you at our house when she was abducted. She wrote your name and an odd number on a pad at Hanover House just before she went missing. You haven’t called her, have you?”
“I haven’t. I admit I’ve considered it on occasion. I’ve wanted to meet her, get to know her—beyond what I’ve read about her and seen on TV, I mean. But I was afraid it would only drive you further from me if I tried to enlist her help.”
“What kind of help would you be hoping to get from her?” he asked, taken aback by this admission. “She can’t explain why you did what you did.”
Amarok had purposely not confronted Alistair with this before. He knew she couldn’t come up with an excuse that would satisfy him, so there was no point. But he wasn’t himself right now, was barely coping and knew things could still get a lot worse if Evelyn and his baby were dead.
“There’s no good excuse,” she said. “I admit that. I wanted out. That’s all I remember. I couldn’t take the darkness and the cold. I felt like I was going crazy. And I knew I’d never truly escape if I didn’t make a clean getaway. I didn’t want to be split between two places, especially when one of them was a small outpost in Alaska. It was selfish of me. I see that now.”
“Really.” What else could he say?
She didn’t notice the sarcasm in his tone, evidently. Just went right on talking.
“I justified it by trying to make myself believe I was doing the right thing for everyone involved, that I was being fair to Hank by taking one boy and leaving him the other.”
“What about my feelings?” Amarok asked.
“You were only two and you adored your father. I wanted to believe you’d be happy. I knew Hank would be a good father—”
“I was happy. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t need a mother!” he shouted, shocking himself as well as Phil, whose eyes widened at the outburst. Amarok never raised his voice.
Phil’s eyebrows drew together in concern. “Maybe this isn’t the best time to deal with the past,” he murmured. He sounded worried and yet hesitant to intercede, but Amarok knew he was right. He’d let his control slip. It was the stress, the anxiety, the fatigue, the swollen and painful hand. Those things were coming down on him all at once, because he’d put everything he had, his whole heart, into loving Evelyn. The thought of someone harming her was agony for him.
“I’m sorry, Benjamin,” his mother said.
He could tell she was crying and that only made him feel worse. “I can’t deal with this on top of everything else,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
He hung up before she could respond, and the phone rang almost the second he did. Thinking it might be one of the searchers or Terry Lovett’s wife, returning his call and answering his message, he picked it up right away. He preferred not to face Phil after that conversation with his mother, which revealed more than he ever had, much more than he was comfortable putting out there. “Hello?”
“Sergeant Murphy?”
It was a man’s voice—deep, emphatic, confident. “Yes?”
“This is Ted Bell with the Anchorage Daily News.”
Not one of the searchers. Not Terry Lovett’s wife. Just another fire to put out. Could the hell he was going through get any worse? “What can I do for you, Ted?”
Although Amarok’s voice was clipped, Ted proved unflappable. “I hear you have a problem out that way,” he replied smoothly.
Amarok rested his forehead on his fist. Thank God he’d told Evelyn’s parents.
17
Hanover House, Hilltop, AK—Sunday 2:00 p.m. AKDT
Jasper could feel Roland’s eyes on him but refused to look over. Winters in Alaska were so damn long they didn’t get much yard time. In such a cold climate, it was too expensive for the government to provide the necessary outerwear—that was what the guards said—but Jasper knew it had more to do with the difficulty of policing a large group of inmates in the dark, especially those housed at this facility. And in Alaska during the winter, it was almost always dark. Since he planned on making the most of summer and the added rec time they received because of the longer days, he wasn’t about to let Roland or anyone else cause a problem for which he could be thrown in the hole.
What was it with Roland? he wondered as he took in all the men who were playing basketball or chess or just working out. Roland’s interest in Jasper seemed to have grown since Evelyn disappeared. It was almost as though he resented Jasper for slitting Evelyn’s throat, even though he’d done it more than twenty years ago, and wanted to make him pay for it. But Roland wasn’t anything to Evelyn, had barely come to know her.
Or maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe now that he’d been at Hanover House for a couple of months, he’d grown comfortable enough to become bored. He was a patient man, evidently, liked to wait and watch and think things through. Could be he’d had it in for Jasper from the beginning, ever since he learned Jasper’s history, but was only starting to make his move.
Jasper had worked in corrections; he knew some inmates were like that. They felt it was their responsibility to mete out punishment to those they considered worse than themselves—as if that changed what they were.
When Roland didn’t shift his attention after a reasonable length of time, Jasper had to return his gaze. In prison, staring was almost as bad as shoving. If he didn’t respond, Roland would know he was reluctant to become enemies, and
then he’d be forced to put Roland in his place.
Otherwise, he’d become Roland’s bitch, and Jasper couldn’t let that happen. If he lost status at Hanover House, he’d be far more vulnerable than he was now. Everyone in this place preyed on the weak.
Making sure he gave no sign of the intimidation he was feeling, he glared back so Roland would know he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He hoped that would be enough and Roland would go pick on someone else. He was one of the very few who’d ever made Jasper feel unsure of his own ability to come out on top.
He was just so damn confident.…
Roland didn’t back off, however. He smiled as though Jasper’s response amused him and sauntered over, going so far as to sit at the cement-like table where Jasper had his legs outstretched and his face turned up toward the sun.
“Enjoying yourself today?” he asked.
“I was until you decided to be a prick,” Jasper replied.
Roland chuckled.
“You think that’s funny?”
“No. What I think would be funny is to see how you behave when I have my knife at your throat and my dick up your ass.”
Watching him warily, Jasper sat up straight. “What have I ever done to you?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” He started scraping the dirt from beneath his fingernails. “I have a problem with men who victimize women and children. It’s a fucked-up thing to do.”
“What I’ve done or haven’t done is none of your business,” Jasper growled, but Roland didn’t get angry in return.
“According to what I’ve read online, you’ve murdered at least thirty women. Some you raped and tortured for days or even weeks. That true?”
Jasper could hear his own blood roaring in his ears. He was tempted to lash out, to teach Roland he was no one who could be messed with. That was how he’d met every challenge in the past—by coming right back at whoever stood up to him, louder and fiercer. But he was no longer in the outside world where most people played by the rules. No longer had the advantage of being the only one willing to go to any lengths necessary. “Why do you ask?”
“Thirty’s a lot.”
“I’m not saying it was thirty.”
“Well, we know there was at least one. Dr. Talbot has that scar on her neck to remind us. And you’re the one who put it there.”
Jasper could see where this was going. He just couldn’t see how to derail it.
“Don’t you ever wonder how they felt?” Roland asked when Jasper didn’t respond.
“No.” He didn’t care. It wasn’t about them. They didn’t matter. It was about the pleasure having that much power brought him.
“Well, maybe you should.”
“Are we going to have a problem, you and I?”
Roland didn’t so much as blink. “You catch on quick.”
Jasper narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to do anything to me, not if I get to you first.”
“We’ll see how well that works out for you.” With another smile, he got up and walked away, and all through the rest of their time in the yard, Roland wouldn’t quit staring at him. The other inmates were catching on to his interest, murmuring that he was Roland’s next target and even placing bets as to who would survive in an incident between them.
If they were betting on Roland, they were betting on the wrong man, Jasper told himself. He never let anyone beat him.
Anchorage, AK—Sunday, 3:30 p.m. AKDT
Lyman Bishop hadn’t had a second’s trouble getting license plates for the van. He’d taken the ones he needed to get rid of with him in the rental car and, on his way back from running errands, when he was no longer in a parking lot where there might be surveillance cameras, he drove down street after street until he found an old truck in a quiet neighborhood and made the swap.
No one else had been around; no one had seen him or tried to stop him. He doubted even the owner would notice the difference. License plates weren’t something most people paid attention to, except cops. So once he got back to the chicken ranch, painted the van and put on the new plates, he’d return the rental car and be fairly safe.
As he drove back, he was looking forward to having a chance to rest and recover from all the activity and stress of the past few days—and getting to know Evelyn a bit better. He hoped she’d be friendlier when he spoke to her again. If she wasn’t, if she was too stubborn for her own good, they would both lose out.
The show tune “Let the Memory Live Again” came on the radio, so he turned it up.
Boy, had it been a long time since he’d heard that song. He loved Broadway musicals! He and Beth used to sit and watch them over and over. They were a lot better than the negative crap on television these days. But there was something nostalgic about the lyrics of this particular song. It made him sort of melancholy to hear that line—how did it go?—about the memory of knowing happiness once upon a time.
He’d never known. Sometimes he not only felt estranged from those around him, he also felt estranged from the whole human race. What kind of a kid was so unlovable that even a mother wouldn’t want him?
For the first time in ages, he thought of his mother. He’d believed he’d finally be happy after he gave her what she deserved for choosing her new husband over her children, but he’d never forget the look on her face when he stepped out of the bushes of her yard with that gun. It was almost as if she was glad to see him, but since he’d shot her right away, he had no idea what she was about to say.
Fortunately, his mood became less self-reflective as “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Misérables came on. He was foolish for thinking of his mother. She didn’t deserve the longing that sometimes sprang up.
He was tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the drums when the road curved to the right, but as he navigated that turn and the chicken ranch came into sight his heart jumped into his throat.
Everything wasn’t as he’d left it. There was a white Explorer parked out front, and whoever had gotten out of it had somehow managed to open the gate he’d locked when he left—he distinctly remembered doing it—and gone inside.
Hilltop, AK—Sunday, 3:35 p.m. AKDT
Amarok was so torn. He wanted to fly to Minnesota and take the face close-up from the Quick Stop video around to each and every employee at Beacon Point himself. So much of police work involved reading body language and using his intuition about the people he met, whether they were being honest or not. But he was afraid to leave Alaska for fear the searchers would finally turn up something and he wouldn’t be around to act on it.
He knew Evelyn was probably in Alaska somewhere, too, which also made it hard for him to leave. He didn’t want to go any farther from her than he had to. He wished he could be in two places at once, but Detective Lewis insisted he was handling everything on his end as quickly as possible, and he had remained in close touch.
“The media is about to go crazy with this,” Amarok told Lewis on the phone.
“It’s already been on the news here several times. And I’m being bombarded for updates on the case.”
“It won’t be long before an army of journalists flood into town. They’ll be banging on the doors and windows at my trooper post, plus trying to stop me whenever they see me.”
“That type of thing doesn’t make our jobs any easier.”
Amarok rubbed a hand over his face. “When you’re as small as Hilltop, there aren’t a lot of places to go in order to avoid them.”
“Is there someone else you can refer them to so you can stay focused?”
He’d refer them to Shorty. Shorty could be tight-lipped when necessary; Phil couldn’t. Phil was too kind and gregarious for his own good. “I’ll muddle through.”
“Maybe the media coverage will be a blessing. They’ve been running the video you sent me. I’m hoping it will help us identify him. So far, it’s brought in quite a few dead ends, but I have a lot more leads to sift through.”
“That video is pretty blurry.”
>
“Still, there’s an identifiable person in it.”
“Maybe you’re right. We need to ID him fast. Evelyn has been gone for five days. Her chances dwindle with each passing second.”
So did his hope of getting her back.…
“When’s the last time you slept?” Lewis asked.
Amarok had slept in snatches—a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there when he simply couldn’t go on—but he hadn’t been resting or eating as he should. He could tell by the way his clothes fit him that he was already losing weight. He hadn’t bothered to shave, either. For the first time since he was twenty-two, he had a beard.
The only good news was that the swelling in his hand had finally gone down. He was beginning to think he hadn’t broken it. It hurt when he tried to use it, but it seemed to be healing. “I have no idea. It’s not as though I’m keeping track.”
“Well, I can tell you it’s not enough.”
Shorty, Molly and Phil had been saying the same thing. They were almost as distraught by what was happening to him as by what had happened to Evelyn. They’d already alerted his father to the fact that he wasn’t taking care of himself. Hank had called him twice and begged him not to run himself into the ground. He was threatening to come to Hilltop and stay with him, to try to force the issue, but they all knew there wasn’t anything Hank or anyone else could do.
“I don’t want to talk about sleep, okay? I’m fairly certain this is the last day I’ll have a search party at my disposal. They haven’t found a thing—and that includes someone who’s seen or recognized the man in the video I sent you. There might be a few who’d be willing to go out again tomorrow, but it’s the start of a new week, and this is the fourth day they’ve been at it. People have to get back to their own lives at some point.”
“I understand where they’re at, and I understand the desperation you feel.”
“Right,” Amarok mumbled, but he didn’t believe that anyone could truly understand. Not unless they’d been through something similar.