The Hiding Place

by Karen Harper

  Before dark, they had made two six-inch plaster molds of the best indentations of bike tire treads. They were going to let them dry overnight before trying to pry them out. Tara was betting she might find something else online to implicate Getz, or at least put him in the area. Motive, means and opportunity, the police always said. Getz had the motive. And a mountain bike taken up and down Black Mountain or Shadow Mountain could be the means. If he was traveling out of California again, would that mean he had the opportunity?

  She went to the mountain bike Web site she’d used to find Getz in the first place.

  “Yes!” she said.

  “Yes, what?” Nick asked, and came to lean so close over her shoulder she could smell his tart aftershave. It was something fresh and free, like the pines in the alpine forests here. Yet it reminded her of some secret scent hidden deep within her memory, a smell sharper than that. Something close, clean, astringent—but her brain would go no further. It was like her deepest fears roused by Psycho, the black blood that seemed scarlet to her.

  “What is it?” He repeated his question so close to her ear that she startled, and came back from her agonizing.

  “He’s definitely in the area,” she said, pointing at the monitor screen. “He’s on the competitor list for an Extreme Bike Rally—tomorrow, no less—just about fifty miles from here, see?”

  Nick leaned closer and read aloud:

  “X-Treme MB Race and Rally

  Conquer the Divide

  At the Continental Divide

  Loveland Pass, Colorado

  SW of Denver

  Join us at the Loveland Pass S of Route 70, Arapaho Basin Entrance to Grays Peak Park. 10:00 a.m. till 4:00 p.m., race at noon. Vendors, food, money prizes, sponsored by—

  “That’s a long list of sponsors, so there must be some good money to be won,” Nick went on. “But where’s his name?”

  “Here,” she told him, scrolling down the page, “under the maps of the location and the layout of the race.”

  “Which I see is through mountainous, wooded terrain. Getting up to and then down from the land above this property would be a piece of cake—German chocolate cake—for this guy.”

  “Here’s his name—and what’s evidently a nickname,” she said, pointing.

  “Yeah,” he said, so close that his cheek brushed the hair along her temple. “Dietmar (Whacker) Getz, San Jose, CA.”

  “I hate that nickname, Whacker,” Tara said, sitting back a bit. She had the strangest desire to turn her head and rub her lips against the light gold stubble on Nick’s face.

  “‘Whacker’ doesn’t mean what it does in cop and mafia lingo here,” Nick told her, “not a hired gun or sniper. To extreme bikers it’s short for bushwhacker, which means somebody who pushes ahead through the worst risks, whether on or off the marked trail. I had a couple of college friends who were into X-treme, as they called it. The opposite of a bushwhacker is a backtracker, somebody who’s supposedly more sensible and rational.”

  “Like me—once,” she whispered.

  “I was going to say, like me, despite the fact I learned a lot living with some of the best, most skilled fighters I’ve ever seen. They almost always got their man. They were efficient, purposeful and disciplined, not mavericks or rebels. I was proud to be a part of their unit, even if…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “If what?” she asked as she hit the print button to run off the race information.

  She saw him shake his head as if to clear it. He straightened up, towering over her again. “I think I’m off to the races tomorrow morning,” he said, in an abrupt change of topic. “The X-treme races. One thing I’ve learned is that the best defense is often a strong offense, so—like with Rick—I’m going to have at least a chat with Herr Dietmar Getz, alias Whacker.”

  “Not without me there, you’re not,” she said, standing to face him as the printer hummed the material onto paper. “And you promised Claire an outing for all three of us. If you’ll go with me, I want to face him down, to let him know we’re onto him. After all, what’s he going to do with all those other people who know him standing—riding—around? We need to cart one of those concrete impressions of the treads with us and see if his bike tires match.”

  “You’re something,” he said with a tight smile as his gaze went over her like a firm caress.

  “I will not be threatened by another one of the despicable moral cowards who snatch their children. Lately, I’ve come to understand a bit more how Alex could have been so obsessed with getting Claire back, even if she had to lie and steal from me and face Clay alone.”

  “So that’s what’s been eating at you. Coming to terms with all that, not just worries about a possible stalker.”

  She gazed into his sky-blue eyes. They seemed to bore deep into her. Desperately, she wanted to share her burden with him, ask his advice. But she didn’t want to break down in front of him, for fear he’d really want to get Claire away from her, too.

  Too? she thought. Too, as if you now accept that you had a baby and lost that baby? Do you believe that now? she asked herself.

  Nick was saying, “…so I guess mother instinct is that strong. My mother once dove into an icy cold stream after me when I was screaming for her.”

  Tara felt jolted into some other dimension. “Icy cold,” he’d said. “Screaming for her.” She recalled herself being so cold…in the snow…screaming for someone…some child. But where and when?

  His deep voice went on. She nodded. Her eyes were still locked to his laser-blue gaze, but she wasn’t thinking of his mother. She was thinking of herself. She felt pregnant with the deep, driving need to find, not some stalker who hid outside, but the child she might have carried within.

  8

  “Are we there yet? What does the constant divide divide, anyway? Will we see a big line on the ground?”

  Tara was tense and she knew Nick was, too, but Claire was having the time of her life, asking continuous questions from the backseat of his truck.

  Driving in fairly heavy traffic on I-70W, Nick had let Tara do most of the talking, but he answered Claire’s last question. “It’s an invisible line that marks where rainwater and rivers flow in different directions on the Contin-en-tal Divide, not the Constant Divide. If you had a rock and you poured water on top of it, the water would slide off in different directions. To the east of Continental Divide,” he went on, gesturing broadly so she could see from the backseat, “water flows into the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, it goes toward the Pacific. This pretend line goes through five different states.”

  “Colorado and what else?” came the clear voice from behind them.

  If Claire didn’t have a seat belt on, Tara was certain she would have tried to crawl up into the front seat so she could keep an eye on every nuance of her and Nick’s facial expressions. All of a sudden, the child was not only into matchmaking but gauging how well her aunt Tara and uncle Nick were getting along at any given moment. As if it wasn’t enough, Tara thought, to have a possible watcher outside the house, they had one in their midst.

  She could almost read Nick’s thoughts. Beamer, however excited about their outing today, was content to be a quiet backseat companion. That was what Nick had been expecting from Claire. Nick McMahon had a lot to learn about rearing a child. He’d been successfully training dogs for years and giving or taking orders working with the military. But that did not translate into dealing with a little girl, and he was probably going to have to learn that lesson the hard way.

  Tara saw she was resting her arms protectively on her belly again. When she realized what she was doing, she forced herself to put them on the center and door armrests while Nick dutifully recited the other Continental Divide states. “Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico. We’re going to be really close to one part of the line near the Arapaho Basin at Loveland Pass. And, no, we’re not there yet.”

  “Loveland Pass?” Claire cried with a whoop. “That’s
a good name, right? Maybe the biker guys will want to bring their girlfriends there, and other men who go there will fall in love, too.”

  Nick gave an imperceptible shake to his head and darted a sideways glance at Tara, who was biting back a grin. “Nothing like comic relief,” she told him, “even in the midst of a grim mission.”

  She saw Nick’s smile go taut, then disappear. His lower lip almost quivered, and a frown crunched his forehead and narrowed his eyes. She could grasp why he might be a bit exasperated with Claire, but what had she said? Grim mission? She was starting to think she wasn’t the only one walking around with a hidden trauma, where an innocent remark could set off an explosion.

  In his college days, Nick had been to a couple of X-treme mountain bike rallies with his buddies, but this was a big one. It might be really tough to find Dietmar Getz here, despite the fact Tara had printed an online picture of him from the Denver paper. It was a small, grainy photo, taken when Getz had been indicted for snatching his son. The other one she’d found online was of Getz, alias Whacker, winning an X-treme race trophy in California. But he wore his helmet and body armor and looked like a dust-and mud-speckled storm trooper from an old Star Wars movie. They’d probably have to ask around to find him.

  “Okay, we’re going to have a few ground rules today,” Nick announced to Tara and Claire as they walked through the parking lot. It was loaded with vans and cars with bike carriers attached to the tops or back bumpers.

  “Rules for when we’re on the ground, but not if we go higher up?” Claire asked.

  “No,” Nick said sharply. He realized he was sounding testy, but the kid had not let up. “Ground rules means basic rules.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” Tara said, and gave him a mock salute and a look that he read as lighten up. Didn’t the woman realize this was serious stuff today?

  They had a good hold of Claire’s hands as she bounced along between them, and in Nick’s outside hand he had Beamer on a leash. The dog knew the difference between being on a working lead, though he sniffed at the mingled smells and still stayed out in front as if pulling Nick along. As the crowd got thicker, Nick said, “Beamer, heel,” and the Lab instantly fell in behind him.

  Tara wore big sunglasses and had pinned her bounteous, distinctive red hair up under a Denver Broncos cap, so there’d be no possibility Getz could spot her first. Despite her desire to face the guy down, Nick didn’t want her talking to Getz, not unless they could confront him together. He was going to try to locate and ID him first. Locate and ID: it was starting to sound as if he worked for Tara’s Finders Keepers.

  In his backpack, he carried a small piece of plaster with the reverse impression of the mountain bike treads they hoped to compare to Getz’s. Mountain bikes were expensive and often customized. Though Whacker could certainly have more than one set of tires, or could have changed them, the X-tremers Nick had known had been picky about their bikes. A lot of them were superstitious. They might like occasional new gear, but they were almost sentimental about keeping what had won races for them.

  Despite Tara evidently siding with Claire about Nick making rules for the day, he went on. “We’re going to buy some lunch, then put our blanket in a good place to watch the bottom of the race course, the end of it. I may go up a little higher, but I’ll come right back.”

  “Why can’t we go up with you?” Claire asked. “You mean that part’s not for girls?”

  “Every part of watching this race is for girls,” Tara put in, “though it is only guys in the race today. Still, there are women racers at other meets I’ve read about. In America, girls and women can do whatever they want and need to do.”

  Nick lifted both eyebrows, but said only, “That’s right. But it will really be fun for you to see the end of the race, and I won’t be gone long. Now, let’s get something to eat.”

  As they walked deeper into the grounds, men pushed bikes everywhere, hemming them in. Nick and Tara tried to scan faces, most of which might as well be masked. Some already wore big, scuba-diving-type goggles or helmets with attached mouth guards that hid the lower halves of their faces. Those still barefaced had daubed black paint under their eyes to cut sun glare or wore green/brown camo face paint like some of the Special Forces guys did.

  In the center of the area, from booths or tents, vendors sold water and energy drinks, and high-carb food. Tara got a pasta salad and Claire some mac and cheese, but Nick went for a good old American cheeseburger with onion rings. Again, he thought of how much his Delta unit—even the dogs—would love to bite into this instead of MREs. He’d been cautioned about the devastating results of survivor’s guilt after what had happened on their first mission. He supposed he had that in common with Tara, maybe even with Claire. Unlike them, he figured he didn’t need counseling.

  They passed another row of tents as they walked with their food to find a good place to eat. Here men and women bent over the tasks of selling or repairing goggles, body armor and pads, tire tubes—but not the tires themselves—bike saddles and something called rescue indexes. Then, bingo! Nick thought, and pointed out to Tara a booth selling granola and candy bars, including expensive, dark chocolate ones.

  “I’ll take one of those Cacao Reserves,” Nick said, and passed the money over to the man for the purchase of a candy bar with a wrapper identical to the one he’d found in the old hunter’s cabin. “A lot of X-tremers like this kind?”

  “Oh, yeah, man,” the vendor told him. “That stuff’s full of good antioxidants and good vibes. Dark chocolate’s just another kind of vegetable ’round here.”

  They found a good place to lay out their blanket. Nick put Tara against the trunk of a big aspen so no one could see her from behind. They not only had a great view of the last couple of meters of the race from here, once the riders broke out of the stony, heavily treed terrain above, they had a stunning view of the mountains. They could clearly see Grays Peak and Mount Evans, two of the so-called fifty-four Fourteeners of the front range of the Rockies, which stood over 14,000 feet. Though it was a fairly clear day, both snow-topped mountains had snagged massive cumulous clouds.

  Later, at Tara’s urging, Nick walked Claire over to watch the bikers start out on the uphill climb of the race while Tara stayed with their things. Fingering the wrinkled photocopies of Getz’s photo in his jacket pocket, next to the candy bar, he turned around to check on her. He could see her on the blanket with Beamer, who wasn’t pleased that Nick had walked off without him. Hell, was everyone he loved mad at him today?

  Loved? The word echoed in his thoughts. Everyone he loved? He loved Claire, sure, out of family duty, affection and his need to protect her. In a way, he loved all the dogs he trained, Beamer most of all. But he hardly knew Tara, though he wanted to, in all kinds of ways.

  And then, as they got close enough to see the start of the race, it hit him. Riders were going off three minutes apart in groups of four while a man with a bullhorn was announcing their names alphabetically. And they were already to the E’s.

  Wishing he hadn’t given in to bringing Claire with him, he held tighter to her hand and scanned the faces of the racers waiting to go next, then the four after that. Tara had given him some ID indicators that didn’t involve having to see the racers’ full faces. She’d said Getz had a goatee and hair almost to his collar. He was thin and lanky, but that was hardly a distinguishing feature with X-tremers. Their heights might vary, but they all looked gaunt and rangy to him. He could not pick the guy out.

  But the man with the bullhorn looked familiar. Nick startled, not because the man resembled Getz, but because he reminded him of Tony Morelli, who had been one of the first Delta handlers Nick had trained to work with a trail dog in Afghanistan. Tony, who talked about his mom’s Italian cooking until they all wanted to chuck their MREs in the dirt…Tony who had a terrible voice but like to sing opera…Tony who had been killed because Nick decided to let the men take a wrong turn to make a point—and then…boom!

  He jolted, jerki
ng Claire’s hand. That bullhorn again. Damn, they were almost to the G’s. “Dom ‘the Cannon’ Iocono!” the announcer shouted. “Chuck Isaly! Lou ‘the Flyer’ Gardner! And Dietmar ‘Whacker’ Getz!”

  Yes, that bastard, all in bright yellow and black on an all-black bike. With the other X-tremers around as those four took their places at the starting line, he’d never be able to match the treads with the piece of plaster he’d brought along. But the race was supposed to take around two hours. He hoped Getz lost, but win or lose, he’d be waiting for him at the end.

  “Claire, will you wait on the blanket with Beamer?” Tara asked. “You have to promise to sit right here. Nick and I are going to talk to someone who just finished the race. We’ll be real quick.”

  “Did he win? Can’t I go, too?”

  “Don’t argue. You’ll be able to see us and we’ll be able to see you, too. And we don’t know if he won, because that depends on how long it takes each rider, and there are lots not finished yet.”

  It had come, Tara thought, to the moment of truth. She and Nick had decided to confront Getz and tell him to keep clear or else. About ten minutes ago, after he’d finished the race, Nick had sidled up close behind him and managed to match their piece of concrete to the tire itself. The V and bars seemed identical, although he’d noted some other riders had the same tire tread.

  What really got to Nick was the shirt the guy wore. It was a metallic yellow with a black, double-headed eagle on it, like some kind of old German flag he’d seen. “A double-headed eagle, like the two-faced bastard I’ll bet he is, pretending to look one way in his own life, but spying on you,” he said to Tara. “At least, I don’t think my time under fire in Afghanistan has made me so paranoid I can’t put two and two together.”