by Brad Parks
Fact was, people believed what they wanted to believe, and they did so as fervently as they wished to—whether it was that a man could change water into wine, that something called the United States of America was worth dying for, or that the lyrics of a song were truly life altering.
Was this more right or less crazy than any of those ideas?
“Okay, walk me through this again,” Emmett said.
“You’re still having a hard time believing me.”
“I am,” he admitted.
“Then I’m glad I talked to you first. Sheena was very nervous about involving law enforcement at all.”
“Well, sorry to tell you, but—like it or not—law enforcement is involved.”
“I know, I know. I’m just saying, she’s pretty overwhelmed right now. She’s had this strange thing happen to her, and then two men tried to abduct her. At first, she thought they were cops. She’s still trying to figure out who she can trust, or whether she can trust anyone at all. It might be helpful if you act like you believe her—or at least suspend your disbelief a little bit. I realize this is a lot to take in for you too. But, really, what do you have to lose?”
What little credibility I have with my new boss.
Maybe even my job if he decides I’ve lost my mind.
“I’m just not sure I understand it, that’s all,” Emmett said.
“I’m not sure I do either. Basically, it’s that when she moves, she can sense whether she’s getting closer to him, or whether she’s moving further away. It’s less like quantum ESP and more like a quantum compass.”
As soon as Beppe said the word, Emmett felt an idea creeping up the back of his spine.
“A compass, huh?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Do you think we could use her like a compass?” Emmett asked. “Maybe she could point us toward Professor Bronik.”
“We could try,” Beppe said.
It was probably a stupid idea. If anyone at the barracks heard about it, they’d laugh at him, call him an old fool.
But what the heck. The case wasn’t even his anymore. Captain Carpenter had written him off. Major Crime hadn’t even bothered to call him. No one was expecting anything from the old nag who didn’t even realize he had been put out to pasture.
Maybe he didn’t have anything to lose after all.
The first small flakes of an Alberta clipper were falling, almost immediately sticking to the nearby walking paths.
Emmett was now standing with Sheena in the middle of the Dartmouth Green, the nearest large open space he could find.
“So you can feel Professor Bronik’s presence right now,” Emmett said, deciding he would try to believe whatever came next.
“If I concentrate on the feeling, yes. It’s . . . not as strong as it was last night. But it’s still there.”
“Then I want you to walk in the direction that makes you feel him more.”
Sheena closed her eyes. She took two halting steps north, then stopped. She turned in the opposite direction, which from the look on her face seemed to be better, but still not quite right.
Emmett cast a glance over his shoulder. Brigid and Beppe were watching from nearby, the snow dusting their hair with white.
Sheena veered more easterly, now aimed more toward the end of Dartmouth Row. She left the walking path, opening her eyes briefly as she scaled a foot-and-a-half-high snowbank, then closing them again. Her hiking boots crunched as they broke through the crusty top layer of snow and eventually settled on the softer stuff underneath.
She was walking with determination now, more sure of herself, and had settled into a relatively straight path. Emmett followed her at a short distance, trying to keep his boots quiet so he wouldn’t distract her.
“Yeah,” she said, stopping after she had traveled about twenty feet or so. “He’s definitely this way.”
“The direction you’re facing now?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
Like a lot of cops, Emmett had started out on patrol. Knowing where he was—and what direction he was heading—had become almost second nature, one he kept with him even when he became a detective. So he knew that Sheena was walking basically east, with a little south thrown in. Call it 110 degrees.
It was nearly the opposite direction from where the ambulance had been found in Lyme. But that made sense. The kidnappers didn’t want to abandon it near where they planned to hole up.
“And do you think he’s close, or . . .”
“Not especially,” Sheena said.
“How not close?”
Sheena frowned. “I’d just be guessing.”
“Your guess is going to be better than mine.”
“He’s miles away but not too many miles. Ten? Fifty? I don’t know. Boston is that way, right?”
“More like Portsmouth,” said Emmett, then pointed in a more southerly direction. “Boston is that way.”
“Well, he’s definitely not that far. I don’t think. I don’t know.”
“But he’s that direction.”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, I’m not sure,” she said, exasperated. “All I know is that I blacked out and that when I woke up, my face was a mess and I had this weird feeling on . . . on an almost cellular level. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I’m not ‘sure’ about anything. I’m just doing the best I can.”
Emmett showed little reaction. At least outwardly. Inwardly, he was still thinking, This is nuts, right?
But in for a penny . . .
“You’re doing great, just relax,” he said and then got to the part of the crazy idea that would really have the guys back at the barracks rolling. “Do you think if we got in my car, you could keep pointing me in the right direction?”
Sheena blinked at him through the snowflakes that were pelting her face.
“You mean, like, guide you? Tell you where to go?”
“Exactly.”
She looked out blankly into the distance, toward whatever it was that only she could see and feel.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I could try.”
CHAPTER 30
I rode in the back seat, driver’s side. Beppe sat next to me.
Sheena was up front.
Detective Webster was both driving and talking, but since I was directly behind him, I had basically no chance of hearing him. I caught stray words here and there. He seemed to be either giving directions or asking for them.
In response to whatever he said, Sheena simply replied, “Okay.”
We traveled in silence. I kept looking at Sheena, who mostly had her eyes closed in concentration, only opening them every now and then to take a peek at where we were going.
I felt a strange sense of jealousy. Why hadn’t I been infected? I slept with Matt every night. Couldn’t he have passed me the virus so now I’d feel a connection to him?
As we neared Interstate 89, Webster started talking again.
Sheena said, “Take the highway.”
Soon enough, we merged on Interstate 89 South, joining a steady stream of cars and trucks that had no idea what odd science experiment was happening in the unmarked dark-gray police sedan next to them.
The speed limit was sixty-five. The snow, which wasn’t sticking to the roadway, had no impact on the driving of New Hampshire folks who were, by that point in the winter, inured to it.
We continued for a few miles. Beppe hadn’t spoken. Like me, he didn’t want to distract Sheena. Webster kept his hands fastened at ten and two on the steering wheel.
As we neared the first exit, he started talking again. A full paragraph came out of his mouth, of which I heard only a few syllables.
When he was done, Sheena said, “Yeah, this one.”
Webster slowed and we exited the highway, then wound around a cloverleaf that spat us out to the right. A sign said we were traveling toward Enfield, a town twenty minutes from Hanover that I had pass
ed through many times on my way to Mount Cardigan.
We climbed a steep hill; then the road bent left.
The moment it straightened out in the new direction, Sheena said, “This isn’t right. We’re going the wrong way.”
Webster said something that must have mollified Sheena, because she just closed her eyes again.
We plunged downhill again, passing through a patchwork of forest and farmhouses. Webster began talking again. I got the sense he was familiar with these roads and was narrating what would come next, asking Sheena which way she wanted to go.
Except this time, Sheena didn’t reply.
There was a right-turn lane. Sheena still hadn’t answered.
Webster spoke again.
“I’m sorry, I . . . I don’t know,” Sheena said. “Could you pull off for a second?”
Webster gently applied the brakes and nudged the car onto the shoulder. Two of his wheels remained on the pavement. The other two were up on the brown-black glacier that had been shoved to the side of the road by plows from storms past. That dirty snow was starting to get a fresh coat of white.
He wasn’t talking, so I looked anxiously toward the passenger seat.
“I feel like I want to go that way,” Sheena said, pointing in a direction that was neither straight, nor right, but in the middle.
Webster said something that seemed to annoy Sheena. “Okay. Go straight, I guess,” she said. “But remember this spot. We may have to come back and go the other way.”
We started rolling again, passing through Enfield, which consisted of a disjointed string of houses and commercial establishments. There were numerous auto repair shops, all of them strewn with old cars out front. A Family Dollar. A thrift store. The markers of semidepressed rural America.
Eventually, the buildings petered out, and we passed back into the countryside, frozen and forested.
More silence.
Then this from Sheena:
“I want to go right, except . . . I’m getting this weird . . .”
Webster said something.
“Nothing,” Sheena said. “It’s just . . . it’s almost like . . . I don’t know, there are two of him all of a sudden. One is stationary and the other is getting further away.”
Further away? That wasn’t right. Unless the kidnappers were on the move?
I clenched my fists. Beppe saw it and shot me a sympathetic look.
We kept going, passing a large meadow on our right. Sheena’s eyes were open, and she was looking out at the open area like she wished to go that direction.
She said something to Webster—with her head turned away from me—and Webster replied.
Another mile or so down, just past a large yellow building with some U-Haul trucks parked outside, Sheena said, “Take a right here.”
We were now leaving Route 4 and the way to Mount Cardigan, taking a road I had never been on before. It was called Potato Road, just a narrow country lane cutting through the woods.
We crossed a small wooden bridge, then reached a four-way intersection with another, even smaller road.
“Straight,” Sheena directed.
Soon the pavement was replaced by packed dirt. The snow had painted it with a thin layer of white, such that our tires were leaving vivid brown marks as we rolled through.
At the intersection of the next small dirt road, Sheena again said, “Straight.”
Then she added, “I feel like . . . I could be wrong, but like we’re definitely getting closer.”
I sucked in my lower lip, electrified by this development. Not knowing what else to do with the sudden spurt of nervous energy, I reached out and grabbed Beppe’s hand, squeezing it hard. He shot me a strained smile.
The road narrowed further. The trees formed an arch over it, blocking enough of the snow that the dirt was barely covered in spots. Now and then we passed a house or trailer. Otherwise, it was just forest.
Webster slowed as we approached another intersection. Sheena pointed diagonally to her left and said, “I wish I could go that way.”
I looked where she pointed. There was no road in that direction.
We continued straight instead. Webster had slowed to twenty-five miles an hour. A dirt road went angling off to the right. Sheena didn’t even look at it.
Shortly after, there was another small dirt road that jutted off to the left.
“Take this one,” she said.
Webster did as he was told, except a few hundred feet later, we dead-ended at a cabin that appeared to be empty for the winter. Beyond it lay a small lake.
“Sorry,” Sheena said as Webster began turning around.
He soon returned us to the small road we had just been on. The snow was coming down harder now, falling on the frozen lake, which was visible through a stand of leafless trees. The road skirted the water for a short while until we reached a T.
Sheena was confident this time. “Definitely left. But I’m still getting this weird split feeling.”
What does that even mean? I wondered.
The road meandered along the south side of the lake; then the water was gone, and it was nothing but woods again. If you were going to abduct someone and then find a really isolated place to hide, you could scarcely improve on where we were now, this seemingly forgotten stretch of wilderness.
Webster had slowed further, probably afraid of sliding off the road into one of the many thick trees that lined it.
Then, to the left, there came a small lane, barely wide enough for a car. It was more rutted and cratered than anything we had seen so far. I wasn’t sure if Webster’s sedan could handle it.
Sheena’s eyes were open wide. “Try that way. I feel like this might be it.”
I caught a glimpse of the sign that marked the path, then had to stifle a small gasp.
It was called Riddle Hill Road.
CHAPTER 31
Emmett felt every rock and pothole as his car lurched along the rough road surface, which sloped steadily upward.
Next to him, Sheena had scooched forward in her seat and was scanning the road eagerly, like she was expecting to see something familiar any moment.
At the top of the hill, the road bent to the right. To the left was a driveway.
It had ruts where tires had pressed down the snow. Unlike the summer places on nearby Grafton Pond, someone had been here recently.
“This is it,” Sheena said in a whisper, eyeing the driveway. “That way.”
Determined to see this through—to wherever it was leading—Emmett didn’t question her. He just turned the wheel.
At the bottom of the driveway was a patch of mud and brown slush. One of his tires spun briefly, but the rest of them maintained enough traction to keep churning onward. There was a reason the New Hampshire State Police only bought four-wheel drive vehicles.
After a few hundred feet he could just glimpse a clearing with a house in the middle. It had green aluminum siding, badly faded, and looked nearly as old as the massive pine trees that grew behind it. The roof appeared to be as much moss as shingle and would probably collapse under the weight of a heavy snow someday soon.
There was a chimney on the left side of the structure. It had a faint ribbon of smoke coming from it.
Someone had a fire going.
He braked. From this spot, about a hundred yards away from the house and downhill from it, still surrounded by trees, with the snow swirling, he was relatively sure no one inside would have noticed him yet.
The engine idled softly. His wipers were still going, sweeping snow off the windshield before it could accumulate.
Sheena wasn’t saying anything. From the back seat, Brigid and Beppe squirmed, shifting position so they could get a better view out.
At what, was the question.
A place that was harboring dangerous kidnappers?
Or just some random shack that was giving Sheena the willies?
He reached for the two-way radio that was fastened to his dashboard. He lifted the handheld tran
smitter off its perch and pressed a button on the side.
“Dispatch, this is forty-seven,” he said.
“Go ahead, forty-seven,” a female voice responded.
“I’m on Riddle Hill Road near Grafton Pond. Are you seeing me?”
Forget quantum GPS. The dispatcher had real GPS. Every car showed up as a number on a map that the dispatcher kept up on her screen.
“I’ve got you, forty-seven.”
“Do you have any units nearby?”
He waited, then heard, “I have three thirty-one patrolling four-A in Springfield.”
That was five, maybe seven minutes away. Not bad, considering how remote they were. Emmett had been thinking he’d be lucky to have anyone within fifteen minutes.
“Can you send it up my way? I’ve got—”
And here he paused. This was the point of no return. This was no longer just his own private wild-goose chase. He was now summoning another officer to his aid. He’d have explaining to do if this turned out to be nothing.
But he had come too far to stop now.
“I’ve got a residence that may or may not contain Matt Bronik, the professor who was abducted,” he continued. “I’d like some backup before I go in.”
“Got you, forty-seven. Hang on.”
His eyes were still fixed on the house, looking for more signs of life or movement.
After a short pause, the dispatch came back on: “Three thirty-one is on his way as fast as he can get there.”
“Tell him to come quiet.”
“You got it.”
“Forty-seven out.”
Emmett rested the transmitter back on its hook but kept the radio on in case the dispatcher gave him an update.
“You really think he’s in there?” he asked.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know anymore. I feel something in there. But I also feel something that way,” Sheena said, pointing off to the right. “And it’s getting further away.”
Emmett barely stopped himself from shaking his head. Seriously, what the hell was he doing?
“All right, can everyone stay here?” he said.
No one responded, so he turned toward the back seat and said, “I need a yes on that. I don’t know what’s going on out there and I can’t be worrying about my back and yours. So you’ll stay here, please?”