Never Far Away
Page 19
Not tonight.
He watched as the car doors closed and the Trenton family was hidden from view and then he started the Toyota and drove out in front of them. There was only one destination he could anticipate, and if he was wrong, it would be a problem.
He was not wrong.
Two minutes after he reached the Lincolnville general store, Annie’s pale blue ghost cab passed by.
Leah Trenton’s odd afternoon detour was gaining clarity. She’d left her car in a place that would mislead anyone who found it, and Dax was willing to bet that she’d purchased tickets for the morning’s first ferry. They would be pedestrian tickets, promising anyone who came looking for her that she was on the island and on foot. Hardly a sophisticated ruse, but not awful.
Annie’s Midcoast Transit was now going to deposit Leah and her children at the nature preserve trailhead. Fernald’s Neck. She would have a story to explain it to both the driver and the kids. Annie’s cab would drop them off, and if it could actually make it back down that dirt road with the deep potholes without dropping the transmission or cracking an axle, the Trentons would be alone in the woods in the deepening twilight.
Then what?
He sat and waited and thought. Remembered the map of the lake and tracked its shores in his mind’s eye as if with a drone camera. The lake fed into the river and the river fed into the sea. It wasn’t navigable, though, not unless Leah Trenton intended to kayak over a few dams and beneath some bridges and then shoot the waterfall and land in the harbor. The lake was no better than the island would have been. There were houses all around it, but the houses were better reached by road than water.
Someone was going to drive in here and pick them up. That was the only logical option. All this effort for so little ultimate reward. He felt a surge of disappointment. He hadn’t wanted Leah Trenton to be stupid. Be best, Leah.
The blue car appeared again in the dimming daylight, now wearing a skin of dust from the road to the trailhead. The car was empty save the woman behind the wheel. The Trenton family was either hiking to the water’s edge to meet a boat or waiting in the parking lot to be picked up by another car. Neither option was smart. He sighed and started the truck and drove toward the lake, dismayed.
He was just heading down the rutted dirt road when he heard the low whine of an engine. At first, he merely noted the background noise, his subconscious filtering through possibilities and dismissing them—car, lawn mower, boat, chain saw; no, no, no, no—and then he cracked the window and the whine deepened in pitch and he looked skyward just in time to see the glint of red pontoons passing overhead.
A seaplane.
Dax watched it descend, and he smiled. Well done, Leah. Well damn done.
She would lose him now. She would lose anyone who might have been behind her. Only briefly, yes, only a delay, but nevertheless a fine one. He appreciated that.
He pulled the truck into the weeds beside the road, climbed out, and ran for the water. The trail led through a field and into the woods before it returned to the water and he knew that he did not have that kind of time. Instead, he fought his way through the brush and the slapping branches and went straight for the water.
When he reached the shore, he paused only long enough to remove his boots and roll his jeans up over his knees, then he waded out. The rocky bottom was rough against the balls of his feet and the water was chilled without the sun’s warmth. He splashed out until the water was beginning to reach the denim and he had a clear view of the plane. He stopped there, knee-deep in the lake, and memorized the details.
Red plane body, red pontoons, single propeller. An old plane but in immaculate shape. White trim that matched the paint for the tail numbers. He shielded his eyes with his hands and squinted into the darkness. A lean man in an olive field jacket was helping the kids aboard, and the dog was barking and dancing in the shallows, sending spray over them, but Dax did not focus on the man. He focused on the plane’s tail numbers. It was too far away and it was too dark to make it out clearly, but the mind filled in shapes even when the eyes couldn’t, and so he worked on the shapes and the combinations that might make them.
The first part was easy: N. All aircraft registered in the United States started with N. Focus on the following sequence—29T? That looked right. Don’t get cocky with the letter, though. It could be an F, maybe—29F? Or 29P? He thought the last number was the same as the first and his mind could find no other shape that fit. The first number was most likely a 2, with an outside chance of a 7. The last letter was either a T, an F, or a P.
The passengers were all boarded now, and the prop was turning. The load-up process had moved quickly, which suggested that the pilot was aware of the urgency.
The mind was filling in the missing shapes for him. The plane began its taxi and pulled farther and farther from him before losing touch with the water, and as it joined the air, Dax was nearly certain that it was NFR292.
He waded back to the shore, brushed the water off his legs, and put on his boots. As he laced them up, the plane passed overhead again, having banked around the lake and angled back in the direction from which it had come, flying northwest.
Dax waved. He doubted they could see him in the gathering shadows, but all the same, it seemed appropriate.
Catch you soon, old friends. Catch you soon.
30
The text messages didn’t arrive until after the Trenton family was gone. Matt Bouchard was confused as his phone began to chime and chime and chime, stacked up messages finally filtering through.
Hey, something is weird here. We are going away for the weekend? Leaving now? I don’t get it. She never said anything about this and she seems tense or nervous. She says it is about her cabin.
Damn it, my phone isn’t working. Crap signal, and now no Wi-Fi. Router is dead. Are you getting these?
?????
Stupid cell phone doesn’t work in house. We are leaving now. On a seaplane that my brother thinks is cool and I think will probably crash. It is my aunt’s friend, Ed. She says we will be gone three days up north of Moosehead Lake.