I stepped out of the truck, letting Tellico out and locking Josh in. The dog stuck close to my side. If this turned out to be a confrontation, I wasn’t at all sure what he would do to defend me, but I felt better having him there.
I filed away the license plate number of the parked car. Looked around at the adjacent campsites. A family with two small children was fixing dinner at the next site, paying no attention to whatever was going on here. No practical help from that direction if trouble started, but I hoped their presence as witnesses would keep these men on good behavior.
I slipped Landon’s knife out of my pocket and cupped it in my palm, my thumb resting close to the release button.
“Can I help you? We’ve registered for this campsite. There are a few empty ones farther along the loop.” They looked nothing like campers, but an unrealistic part of me held on to the feeble hope their presence was all just a mistake.
The man on the left—stocky with dark hair, a flashing signet ring, and a machine-gun tattoo along his arm—snorted. The smell of alcohol came off him in waves. “Carl asked us to check on you. Remind you of priorities. Your time runs out tomorrow.”
My comforting belief that Carl’s influence was confined to Memphis, the belief that we’d left him far behind, punctured and deflated like an ill-conceived party balloon. Carl might still be in Memphis, but apparently Colorado was part of his domain. I stuffed my empty hand into my pocket to hide the fact it was shaking, and I clenched the knife hard with the other.
The second man—younger, thinner, but with a harshness in his eyes that chilled me to the core—took a slow drag on his cigarette. “He wants to know the status of his missing investment.”
My heart skipped a few beats and my thoughts raced. I had nothing to offer them. “How’d you know we were here?” I was constantly checking behind us. There was no way they’d followed.
“Magic powers.” He took another slow drag, and our eyes locked. “Where’s your sister? Where’s Carl’s stuff?”
“We’re still looking.” I tried to sound tough, but my voice came out squeaky. I didn’t want to admit we’d confirmed Del had been in Aspen. I didn’t want Carl or these guys finding her before we did. “We’re following up on some rumors.”
“Look faster.”
Tellico growled, the rumble deep in his throat, and I put a restraining hand on his collar. “We’re trying. What if we find her and she’s sold it? Lost it? Used it?”
The stocky man leaned forward, and his face tightened. “You’d better hope that’s not the case.”
The menace in his tone sent me back a few feet.
They both stood and stepped forward, and my whole body tensed. I thought for a moment they intended to hit me, and I tightened my grip on the knife, but seriously? Could I ever use it? Just thinking about stabbing someone turned my stomach.
But the two men shouldered past, the one tossing his lit cigarette butt to the ground, heedless of whether it landed on dirt or dry leaves. It was an uncomfortable reminder of Carl’s fascination with flames.
“Stay in touch.” The thin one tossed the words behind him. They got into their car and drove off in a rattle of gravel without glancing back.
I sank onto the picnic bench, ill and shaking. Tellico licked my hand, either seeking reassurance or offering it, I couldn’t tell which.
I’d been in shouting matches before, arguments with fiery anger kicking up adrenaline on both sides. I’d been in creepy alleys late at night, expecting every shadow to attack. I’d been deep in the woods, following bobcat tracks at home, and I’d felt the weight of watching eyes on the small of my back, my heart racing because I knew I wasn’t hunter, but prey. None of that frightened me the way Carl and his cronies did.
Carl, with his calm voice and his manicured hands and his perfectly polished shoes. These two, with their thinly veiled air of violence. All three were lethal.
Josh tumbled out of the truck and raced over to me. “Are you okay? What did they say? How’d they find us? I haven’t posted a single picture. Honest.” His voice was high and tight and tinged with fear.
I shook my head. “You were right—they’re with Carl. Sent to remind us we’re out of time. I don’t know how they found us. Maybe my phone?” It was possible, but it would be a tricky hack. Far more sophisticated than following a kid on Instagram and checking out his photos.
“So, what do we do?”
Crawl into a hole somewhere. That sounded about right. I was outmatched. Outmaneuvered. An ant trying to fight a bulldozer.
Despair seeped into every cell, my body heavy and my brain fogged.
My eyes fell on my truck, and a thought managed to find a clear path. When he was at the homestead, Carl had been out of sight for several minutes. Maybe he’d been busy doing something other than killing my pet chicken.
“There’s something we should check. Grab the flashlights from the tent.” I moved the truck into its proper parking spot and took one of the lights from Josh. “You take that side, I’ll take this one, then we’ll switch. It would be simplest if he put something on the outside of the truck, but if we don’t find anything, we can search inside too.”
Josh tossed his flashlight from one hand to the other, his brow furrowed. “You think some kind of tracker?”
“I don’t know. Just look for anything out of place.”
I started inspecting every inch of the truck, squatting to look underneath, but it took Josh less than a minute. “Found it. Come look.”
He’d found a small box made of thick black plastic, about the size of a deck of playing cards, with a short, fat antenna and a red on/off switch. A strong magnet on its underside held it securely inside the rear wheel well. It was inconspicuous, designed for secrecy, and we would never have noticed it if we weren’t looking.
“Is this gadget how they found us?” Josh looked more intrigued than worried.
“I would guess it’s a GPS tracker. I think it sends a signal to an app. All Carl had to do was pull it up on his phone, and he could see where we were and where we’d been.”
Josh nodded. “So, he could see we drove this way today and spent time here setting up camp.”
“Exactly.” This little gadget pissed me off even more than the Instagram trick. Carl—or his men—were following us after all. Watching what we did. The idea of them watching an electronic dot on a map, knowing our every zigzag, creeped me out. I ripped the tracker from its magnetic mooring, dropped it onto the asphalt and picked up a sizable rock, ready to smash it.
“Wait, Bryn. Don’t.” Josh grabbed my arm, pulling it down to my side. “Maybe there’s a way we can use it later.” He let my arm go and picked up the tracker, turning it over to find the power button. He switched it off. “Now he can’t find us until we want him to.”
I should have thought of that. “Thanks. You’re right. Maybe, if we end up going to the police, they can follow that signal in some way. Maybe this gadget could help find him.” Josh stuffed the inactivated tracker into the glove compartment. “We’re going to pay Carl back for all this. For Annabelle, for scaring us, for following us. I don’t know how yet, but we’re going to find a way.”
Tough talk, and it was a pleasant change to think about fighting back, but even as I spoke, I knew the words were hollow. Pay him back how? And what was going to happen when our deadline passed?
“Tomorrow, we do exactly what we’d planned. Go to the Games. See if we can find your mom.” I tried to sound hopeful for Josh’s sake. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
I checked the neighboring campsites again. The family with their kids, and a bunch of college students, newly arrived, unpacking their tent. This visit from Carl’s thugs had propelled me back into a state of watchful fear, looking for hazards even in a peaceful campground. It was one more thing I needed to pay Carl back for.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bryn
The next morning brought cloudless skies and short-s
leeve weather, an odd feeling when snow was so visible on the adjacent peaks. Josh and I shared a quick breakfast of fruit and granola, both of us lost in our own thoughts, then we headed to town for the festival.
Vail was a stretched-out spaghetti noodle of a town, running along the length of its narrow valley, a place where you could swoosh down a manicured ski slope and practically walk straight into a bar on Main Street. The annual Mountain Games, an attempt to promote summer activities to counterbalance the winter ski season, were scattered across multiple venues in town.
I’d heard about the Games before, and I’d seen the preparations going on the previous night, but it turned out to be an even bigger deal than I expected. Bewildering signs hung at every intersection—this way to the climbing venue, that way to the music amphitheater. PortaJohns hulked everywhere, with lines already forming. The only good thing about the crush of people was that Carl’s men would have a hard time finding us in such a crowd.
We parked in a rapidly filling town lot. An endless stream of cars and SUVs flowed in behind us, and I was glad we’d come early. Everywhere we walked, there were souvenir booths and food trucks, open-air bars and outdoor gear for sale. The smell of grilling bacon mingled with the smell of fresh coffee, and crowds already clustered, waiting for food.
All around us, people were laughing, talking, drinking. They were living ordinary lives without a care in the world, not searching for a missing sister and dodging threatening creeps. I scanned the crowd, looking for Del, looking for Carl’s men, looking for anything suspicious.
The crowd’s standard costume was sunglasses, sun visor, quick-dry clothing, and water shoes. Josh and I looked dowdy by comparison in our ordinary T-shirts and shorts. It was barely mid-morning, but once we left the food trucks behind, the musky smell of marijuana permeated the air, a reminder that, unlike in Tennessee, it was a legal indulgence here in Colorado. This was a festival, and people were here to be festive.
We paused on a street corner and downloaded the Games app, which gave a detailed map and a searchable schedule. I scanned the lengthy list. “Looks like freestyle isn’t happening until late this afternoon, although with this crowd, we’ll want to get there early. What do you want to do in the meantime? Your choice.”
Josh grinned a joyous, uncomplicated grin. He’d had more highs than lows ever since the report of his mother at the airport, and the previous night’s visit by Carl’s men had caused only a temporary dampening effect. He frequently ran one finger over his lanyard bracelet, as if it inspired his confidence. “We’ll find her. She’ll be at the kayak contest. I know it.”
I dreaded the moment when I’d have to let him down.
“Let’s start at the climbing wall.” He pointed.
We headed that way, both of us watching the crowd for Del.
For much of the day, he led, and I followed. He enjoyed every second, and I tried hard to fake it, not wanting to spoil his fun. Tellico stuck close, pausing only to greet the dozens of other dogs we encountered.
We cheered the competitive climbers, who swarmed up sheer walls with the ease of spiders.
We marveled at the goggle-wearing DockDogs, who leaped from high platforms into water to retrieve thrown toys. Compared to them, even Tellico was underdressed.
We wandered past the amphitheater and listened to some good bluegrass while Josh downed four hot dogs and I ate an ultra-spicy falafel pita.
The buoyant energy of the place was infectious, but the crowds hemmed me in, and I couldn’t enjoy myself. I wasn’t here for pleasure. I needed space. I needed quiet. I needed home.
Josh’s unrestrained delight at each new activity reminded me how young he was. By the time we headed toward the whitewater park for the men’s freestyle kayak competition, I was nursing a headache, and he was acting like he could do this forever.
The whitewater venue was filling fast. The park funneled water from a nearby creek into the whitewater stadium, the twisting channel designed to create the sort of large standing waves kayakers liked to play in. Josh wiggled past a clump of laughing women and found us a few square feet of empty bleacher bench to perch on. Tellico sat between his knees, patient in the crush. It was a good location, and I could see the crowd on both sides of the water. If Del was here, I should be able to spot her.
The crowd was noisy, but not noisy enough to drown out the roar of tumultuous water. The sound burrowed into my nerves, echoing my nightmares and flooding me with memories. The joy of all the good times with Sawyer; the terror of my near drowning. It all tumbled endlessly through my head, leaving me even more unsettled and restless. A few more hours. I only had to face all this for a few more hours.
“So, what’s freestyle kayaking like?” Josh asked. He, too, was searching the crowd, but that didn’t stop his fascination with the event.
“It used to be called rodeo, which gives you a rough idea. The playboats they use aren’t standard kayaks like mine. They’re shorter, almost tiny, to let them do flips and stuff.”
“Flips? You mean like in the air?”
I laughed at his amazement, relieved to set my fears aside for a few moments and focus on the technical aspects of the sport I used to love. “Exactly. Some of the tricks are phenomenal. Since the water flow and the design of the park are controlled, the paddlers are competing on a consistent background, and the judges are trained specifically for this event. Each trick carries a certain number of points for difficulty, with extra points for doing it extra well and bonuses for added flare. I can tell you what’s happening once they get started.”
More and more people crammed into the stadium, and we got squeezed in from both sides. Freestyle was always a popular event.
The first set of five competitors in the men’s division were upstream, warming up. “Each paddler will do two forty-five-second runs, and the goal is to pack as many strong tricks into that time as possible, to score the most points. The paddlers with the best total score in the first round go on to the second round, and so on.”
The waterpark’s huge standing wave churned right in front of us. The starting signal sounded, and the first paddler swept in and began his routine, his tiny boat whipping through the air in flips, twists, and turns that defied both gravity and common sense. I called out the tricks as they happened—Space Godzilla, Phonics Monkey—surprised the crazy names came back to me after so many years. It was a mesmerizing display of balance and raw muscle power, but I watched with one eye while I focused the other on the people swirling around me.
The first three competitors had runs packed with successful tricks, and the rowdy crowd cheered its enthusiasm. The fourth paddler tried a trophy move I’d never seen before—an impossible combination of flip, roll, and spin—and it didn’t work, the paddler scrambling hard to get back into the wave and sneak in a half-hearted finale.
“What happened? Why is everyone still clapping?” Josh tossed the questions my way without taking his eyes off the action.
“They’re clapping because he tried something difficult. Did you see what he did wrong? The angle of his paddle …” My attention shifted to the fifth paddler, still in the warm-up pool, and whatever I was going to say faded into nothingness.
The fifth man looked like all the others. Multicolored long-sleeved jacket. Streamlined life vest. A black helmet, shadowing his face. What caught my attention and froze me to my hard bleacher seat was the paddle he held.
A short, stubby, composite paddle. The sort of paddle any sensible kayaker would laugh at. The sort of paddle I hadn’t seen in more than fourteen years.
I dragged my racing thoughts back onto rational ground. I was reading too much into such a minor detail. Sawyer had commissioned his paddle for specific reasons. He chose it as his favorite because it gave him a competitive edge. That could be equally true for someone else.
But despite my logical pep talk, my mouth grew pasty, and it was suddenly hard to swallow.
The fifth man got the signal to start his run, and an instant later h
e was directly in front of us, playing in the huge standing wave.
Josh watched the man’s routine with the same fixity he’d shown with the previous competitors. I watched with my breath locked in my chest and my heart racing so fast I could feel the throb of each beat in my neck.
The slight twist of his body as he leaned into his flips. The angle of shoulder and arm as he stretched to place his ugly little paddle in precisely the right place for a pivot. The little head nod of self-acknowledgment when he pulled off a flawless series. The hands-over-head paddle wave at the end of his run, acknowledging the thunderous applause surrounding him, embracing the public acclaim that gave a buzz like no other.
Sawyer. It was Sawyer.
It couldn’t be.
It had to be.
Something nameless spasmed hard in the center of my chest, then released with an audible whoosh, leaving me hollow and empty. I’d come here a whole person. Now I was only a human shape with nothing solid inside.
I grabbed Josh by the hand and heaved him to his feet with a harsh jerk. “Come on.”
I dragged him behind me, forcing my way through the endless mass of people, heading for the takeout point, my eyes never leaving that impossibly familiar fifth man. Tellico scurried to follow in our wake.
“Stop, Bryn, stop. I was looking—Mom isn’t here. Where are we going?” Josh pulled back hard, but I yanked him onward. “We’re going to lose our seats. I want to watch!”
I ignored the stream of protest, my fingers steel clamps on his wrist.
The fifth man was pulling his blue freestyle kayak out on this side of the water. Unbuckling his helmet. Loosening his jacket.
I doubled my pace, shouldering people aside without apology, stumbling down bleacher steps, barely hearing the roar of noise that greeted the next set of competitors.
The man reached down to grab his boat, and I was afraid I would lose him, but he stopped before he had his hands on it and stepped aside to talk to another paddler.
Yes, yes. Keep talking. Keep talking.
Thirty feet to go. Twenty. Ten. I turned loose of Josh, abandoning him behind me. I seized the arm of the fifth man and spun him toward me.
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