by John R. Kess
“I wish I could be close with my brother. I mean, Nick and I are twins, but we hardly speak.” Elly picked up a twig and rolled it between her fingers. “We were close when we were younger. I know he doesn’t like having a famous sister, but I didn’t realize how his life has been affected by my career. I found out how much he hates it this past weekend.”
“What happened?” Jay asked.
Elly shoulders dropped. “We had a fight. It happened at our dad’s fiftieth birthday party. Nick had been drinking for a while by the time we got around to talking. I’d suspected that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what exactly. At first he didn’t want to talk about it, but when I pressed the issue, he blew up.
“It was awful. He just kept shouting louder and louder, until the whole room was staring at us. He’s an auto mechanic, and sometimes his customers ask him about me. He said his friends want him to pay for everything and that he’s even considered changing his last name. He brought up the fact that every one of his friends and coworkers had seen the pictures of me on the Internet, the ones I told you about. He told me I ruined his life.” Elly tossed the twig to her right.
Jay put his hand on Elly’s shoulder. “Your brother sounds like someone who is very prideful, and he’s going to have to grow up and accept you for who you are.”
Elly covered her eyes. In the past few years everything had moved so fast. She thought of her brother’s anger, her pills, the deterioration of her voice, how stressed out Laura was making everyone, and the men who’d just tried to kidnap her. Ever since her career as a singer had taken off, Elly had wondered many times: Who am I? The empty feeling had grown, and now she was forced to admit she didn’t know anymore. And now Kevin was dead, and she partially blamed herself for it. It was like she was in a huge endless forest without a guide.
“Hey, look at me,” he said.
Elly’s eyes met his, and she realized she was in a huge endless forest, except she had a guide.
“Sometimes,” Jay said, “people don’t realize what they have until it’s taken away.”
* * *
One of Dexter Quast’s men raised his arm as he knelt in the clearing by the stream. The men had been following what footprints they could find, at Michael Belgrade’s orders, and this seemed like a logical spot for the girl and her companion to have spent the night. One of them had found half of a peanut. And a nearby patch of grass seemed matted down compared to the grass around it.
Dexter pulled out his radio. “This is posse one. Come in, base.”
After a moment, he repeated himself.
“This is base.”
“We have the location of stop number two.” Dexter read the coordinates.
“Excellent. Keep moving. This is base out.”
“Roger that. Posse one out.”
Dexter put the radio away.
“If this is where they were this morning,” one of the other men said, as he checked his watch, “and say they left at sunrise, we’re about three hours behind.”
Dexter nodded. “Let’s move out.”
* * *
The morning dew on the tall grasses had soaked Elly’s jeans all the way up to her thighs. Jay heard her shoes squish like wet sponges with every step.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“Yeah. I hate having wet shoes,” Elly said.
Jay’s hiking boots did their job and kept his feet dry. Elly’s short-sleeve shirt had once been white, but now it was gray and showed how much she was sweating. By midday it was hot, the dew was gone, and Elly’s pants dried out quickly.
Elly slipped on a wet rock and grabbed a pine branch to try to catch herself. Her knee landed on a rock. “Ow!”
“Are you all right?” Jay asked.
“I’m fine.” Elly picked the pine needles out of her hand. “Can we take a break? My feet are killing me.” She swatted at several insects buzzing around her.
“All right, but it has to be short.” Jay set his backpack down, and they both drank some water.
Jay noticed Elly had gotten somewhat skilled at working around her handcuffs to open her bottle of pills. Jay had re-taped her wrists before they broke camp and noticed they were slightly bruised.
Jay watched Elly down two pills, and then he bent down, pretending to tie his boot as he scooped a small rock into his hand. “So, what are the pills for?”
“They’re for my headaches.”
“I didn’t know you needed a prescription for headache medicine.”
“Mine are really bad sometimes.”
“May I see them?” Jay held out his empty hand. He noted her reluctance to give them to him. “I don’t want any. I just want to see them.”
“Why?”
“If you won’t let me see, then I have to assume there’s a reason. Am I right?”
“What are you saying?”
“You’ve got a problem.”
“I don’t do drugs!”
“Okay, then.” Jay held out his hand again. Elly stood up and threw the bottle at him.
Jay ignored the force behind the throw and calmly read the label. “Ah, Vicodin. Those really must be strong headaches. How long have you been taking these?”
“Just a little while,” Elly said and then glared at him. “Why? What difference does that make?”
“It says here to take one to two tablets every six hours, as needed. You know, it’s funny, because I’ve watched you take several just this morning, and I’m sure I saw you take that bottle out of your pocket at least ten times yesterday.”
Elly thrust her shoulders back as she spoke. “I thought you were a Marine, not a doctor.”
“And whose name is this on the label? It certainly isn’t yours.”
“All right, give it back.” Elly extended her arm.
“So, you’ve been taking them a little while, huh? You mean six months? A year?”
“I’m not addicted to them!” she shouted.
“Then you can stop anytime?”
“That’s right!”
“If you say so, then you’re stopping right now.” Jay turned his back to her, switched the bottle with the rock he had picked up earlier, and threw the rock deep into the forest past the stream.
“No!” Elly ran to see where he’d thrown it, but it was gone. Jay pocketed the bottle. Elly spun around and shoved Jay, moving him back a few steps.
“I can’t believe you did that! You jerk! How am I …” Elly bent over and put her hands on her knees, looking like someone had knocked the wind out of her.
“I thought you said you didn’t need them,” Jay said.
“You don’t know what it’s like!” she said, in tears. “You don’t know what it’s like being on tour. I’m pulled in so many different directions, I don’t even know where I am half the time.”
“So someone who just spent the last two years in a war couldn’t possibly know anything about stress? Someone who, let’s say, watched some of his friends die. That person wouldn’t know anything about what you might be going through?”
Elly turned away, sat down, and buried her face in her hands.
Jay walked to the stream, giving them both a little distance. He wondered if he’d just made things worse. Getting Elly out of here alive was his main concern, and he hoped she’d continue to trust him after what he just did. Elly put up with him pushing her to walk when he knew she’d rather stop, yet he wanted her to be able to see what he saw, an addict. Until she saw herself as one, she’d never stop taking those pills. A few minutes later, he heard her get up and walk over to him.
“I can’t remember ever having shoved anyone like that,” Elly said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Jay pulled the bottle out of his pocket and examined it. He threw it to her, and she caught it. “I’ll get you out of here. Then you need to get yourself some help. It looks like you have about six pills left. Make them your last.”
* * *
Jay walked behind Elly. Every so often he glanced ov
er his shoulder. Ever since the helicopter flew over he was convinced they were being followed. His ears amplified everything. The distant machine gun was just the sound of a woodpecker. The sound of an approaching enemy was just a squirrel running in the underbrush.
Throughout the day he’d warned Elly they needed to remain quiet, especially today. But after a few minutes of silence, Elly would start talking again. He hadn’t seen her taking any pills since she shoved him, so he wondered if she was already crashing.
“My parents and I get along great,” Elly said. “They helped me buy a small cabin in northern Michigan. It’s on this cool little secluded lake and is absolutely beautiful. This nice elderly couple lives next to me, but otherwise the nearest house is a quarter of a mile away. My aunt’s brother-in-law put it in his name, so no one would know it was mine.”
Jay grabbed her arm and swung her around. “Elly, you need to start equating being kidnapped with dying. If we get caught, they will kill me and take you. And do you know how many people are ever seen again after they’ve been kidnapped?”
“No,” she said, softly.
“Not many, so please be quiet.”
“Sorry.”
The two walked in silence for another twenty minutes. Jay led the way again, through the seemingly never-ending sea of pine trees mixed with oaks and elms. Years of rough mountain storms had strewn the forest floor with large branches and massive trunks along any path they chose. They continued stooping under and crawling over rough logs, and when they weren’t doing that they were dodging prickly bushes.
A pinecone rolled past Jay’s feet. He glanced back in time to see Elly kick another one at him. Jay tried to ignore her childish reaction to his scolding. She needed to hear it. He kept walking, and one hit him in the calf. That did it. Jay bent down and picked up two pinecones and threw them up into the air behind him.
“Hey,” Elly murmured.
He looked back at her with a smirk, and Elly stuck out her tongue at him. They both smiled at each other.
Jay reached the top of a small hill and spotted someone moving in the distance. He turned and saw Elly searching for another pinecone. He wrapped one arm around her in a swift tackle, taking her off her feet, and they tumbled toward a downed elm tree. Jay pulled her down into a low spot under the elm, where they were further protected by the shadow of a large pine tree.
Elly moaned in pain, and Jay covered her mouth. She fought her handcuffs as she arched her back and rolled on her side, moving off the end of a branch that dug into her back.
Jay let go of Elly’s mouth and held up his finger, telling her to be quiet. He maneuvered his rifle under the pine tree and aimed it in the direction they’d been walking.
* * *
All the pain and discomfort Elly was feeling vanished when a man appeared, coming from the direction Jay and Elly had been heading. He carried a shotgun, pointed down, in his beefy paws. The man sweated at the armpits and across the V of his chest and seemed to be struggling to catch his breath, but his eyes, which constantly swept the area, were strong and alert.
Elly’s heart pounded, and she held her breath as the man’s eyes surveyed the fallen elm. For the first time, Elly became fully aware of Jay’s worry about being found. She realized that if the man spotted them, someone—Jay, the man, or both—would shoot.
Elly watched Jay rest his rifle barrel on a branch just above her chest. Then she spotted a second man, who followed a path parallel to the first man, one that would take him on the other side of their hiding place. Every detail about him, from the shotgun he was carrying to his worn face and his dirty flannel shirt, became clear. His eyes scanned the downed elm tree, and he stopped moving.
Elly wondered if this was the man who shot Kevin, and she fought back the bite of acid in her throat. The man seemed to lock eyes with her, but then he continued to look past her and over at the man next to him.
The two men exchanged a glance before they both moved on to the next patch of forest. The barrel of Jay’s rifle followed one of them the entire time while he glanced at the other. Soon both men were gone.
“Let’s go,” Jay whispered. He helped Elly up, and they ran over the next hill.
* * *
“It was right over here.” Henry Dunquist rested his paddle on his lap and pointed to the middle of the small lake. The canoe glided along as his voice echoed off the shore.
“I’m starting to smell it,” game warden Doug Peterson said at the hint of petroleum and paddled from the back of the canoe a few more times. The lack of any wind had turned the lake into glass, broken only by the ripple of the canoe’s wake and, now, large, rainbow-colored rings on the surface of the water.
“Nobody would bother to put a motorboat on this small of a lake,” Dunquist said, as he motioned toward the densely wooded shoreline. “How would they even get it here? Shoot, the nearest public road is miles away.”
“Well,” Peterson said, “wouldn’t be the first time someone threw a gas can in a lake.”
“What idiot would do that?”
The distant rumble of thunder caused both men to look off to the north.
“Unfortunately, the world’s full of complete idiots.” Peterson shook his head. “Who knows what it could be, but we need to check this out. Hell, the USS Arizona resting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor is still leaking fuel. I don’t want whatever is here leaking for sixty-some years.”
* * *
At a thick patch of bushes, the first good cover he’d seen in a while, Jay dropped to the ground and aimed his rifle back the way they’d come. Elly flopped down next to him.
“How did they find us?” Elly spoke between deep breaths.
“I was stupid.” Satisfied that no one was immediately behind them, Jay pulled out his GPS device and brought up a map showing all the markers he had made as they walked: where they left the floatplane, where they spent their first night and then their second night, all forming a straight line to where they had just been intercepted.
Jay put the locator away. “They sent in a second team. We’ve been walking in a straight line, giving away our position. We’re dealing with a larger group than I thought.”
The sun was now partially behind the distant mountains. He knew the peaks as if they were part of his own backyard. The dark clouds wrapping around the mountains were already showing flashes of lightning. Jay knew the darkness of a storm was a blessing, as it would serve as the protection they needed right now.
“Let’s move,” Jay said, leading the way.
Chapter 9
Beckholm held his phone in one hand and jotted notes with the other as Agent West began.
“Elly’s pilot, Michael Albert Belgrade, has very little on his record after a teenage rebellion that started with shoplifting and ended with a six-month stay in juvenile detention for grand theft auto,” West said.
“After that his record is clear?” Beckholm asked.
“That’s correct. He moved to Los Angles at age twenty-four, went to flight school, and got his commercial pilot’s license. No wife, no kids. He was hired on at Myers Aviation at twenty-seven. Myers has provided all the flight services to Revolution Records for over twenty years. Belgrade’s employer has nothing but good things to say about him. I asked if Belgrade had ever left off anything from his flight plans before, and he was adamant that Belgrade always went by the book. The boss also told me each pilot is issued a company credit card for fuel and other expenses. Myers then bills Revolution Records at the end of the month, including fuel and flight service. Belgrade’s card was used last Saturday at 10:37 AM Eastern Standard Time in Baltimore to buy 548 gallons of aviation fuel. That was the last recorded transaction on the card. We checked his personal cards, and the last activity on them was also Saturday in Baltimore before he flew to Seattle.”
“This is messed up,” Beckholm said. “I have Big Sky telling me the plane couldn’t make it, I have a flight plan showing no fuel stop, and the pilot didn’t use the company card to buy an
y fuel. I also have a plane that crashed three hundred miles off the coast of Seattle.”
“Let’s do this,” West said. “Let’s come up with a list of possible scenarios and then rule them out one by one. I think we can both agree the plane stopped to refuel.”
“All right. So possibility number one would be what?”
“Easy. The plane had an accident involving some kind of malfunction that allowed the door to come off.”
Beckholm scribbled it down and then said, “Number two would be foul play. Someone sabotaged the door, killing everyone.”
“The pilot could have killed everyone in-flight and parachuted out. We doubt the perp was Wittenbel’s bodyguard since they got along so well.”
“But could he jump from 30,000 feet?”
“He could have been lower when he jumped. You can pre-program autopilot for whatever altitude you want.”
“We’ll mark it as number three,” Beckholm said.
“And we’ve already talked about the possibility that Wittenbel could have faked her own death by getting off the plane and then letting it crash, so put that down as number four,” West said.
“What else is possible?”
“What if she didn’t leave willingly?”
“So you’re saying number five would be she was forced off the plane?”
“Sure, and the plane continued on without her,” West said.
“That means the pilot and at least one accomplice,” Beckholm said.
“Number six could be the pilot forced Wittenbel to jump out of the plane with him.”
“Are you serious?” Beckholm asked.
“It would eliminate the need for the pilot to have an accomplice.”
“Well … all right, it’s number six. One thing, though. If this is a kidnapping, why would they make it look like she died, if the whole point was to collect a ransom?”