by J. S. Marlo
There was no one outside that he could see. Gathering his courage, Todd drew the gun and edged the door open. Just enough to peek outside.
A wind gust slapped him in the face and pushed the door wide open. Fresh snow blanketed the landscape. No human or mechanical sound could be heard and no print could be seen in front of the lodge. Whoever shot him had vacated the vicinity, the rising storm covering his escape.
His snowmobile hadn’t moved. It was still parked beside the sheriff’s. Todd approached the vehicles. Both hoods were up. He brushed the snow from his engine, exposing pulled out wires and ripped hoses. To his dismay, the sheriff’s engine fared worse, and both emergency radios had been smashed. Whoever attacked him hadn’t intended for him to go anywhere or call for help.
“Sheriff Morgan!”
The shout was lost in the forest, unanswered. Todd didn’t know the sheriff personally, but he doubted the man would have abandoned him, unless Morgan pursued the attacker and left the gun to Todd so he could defend himself. But then, the weapon would have been on the bench, not hidden underneath, as if it’d been lost in a scuffle.
“Sheriff!”
Todd combed the clearing for any signs of activity, checking the outhouse and digging into any suspicious mounds of snow that could conceal a man.
“Sheriff Morgan!”
The storm intensified and dusk settled over the clearing. If Todd stayed outside any longer, darkness would engulf him. He would lose the opportunity to return to the only shelter in which he stood a chance to survive the freezing night.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff.”
***
The countdown has begun.
Sly relished little pleasure in breaking his oath to do no harm, but it couldn’t be helped. The girl had to die. Someone had to pay for her father’s atrocities. The senator deserved to suffer as much as Sly suffered from Lexa’s death.
A knock on the door halted Sly’s mental preparedness. The fishing cabin he’d usurped belonged to an old Army buddy currently posted overseas. It stood near a frozen lake sixty miles west of Snowy Tip. In the summer, big fat trout populated the water. Catching one was as easy as throwing a line at dawn and reeling it in. Sly hadn’t gone fishing since before his tour in Afghanistan, and he missed the delicacy.
No one in his right mind ventured in these parts of the forest during winter. The secluded cabin offered the perfect hideout.
“Who’s there?” The girl being deaf, Sly wasn’t afraid to shout.
“Open up, Serpent. It’s Vince.”
The petty criminal wasn’t supposed to show his face here ever again. After kidnapping the girl, he and his friend had been more than adequately compensated for their services.
“Hold on.” Not impressed by the unannounced and unwelcomed visit, Sly yanked the door open. A strapping guy in a bloody uniform fell into his arms. “What the hell?”
“We have a problem.”
That has to be the understatement of the year. Sly dumped the body on the floor before wiping his hands on his jeans. “What did you do?”
A ski mask covered Vince’s head. “I shot the sheriff.”
“You what?” Sly spat his frustration in the brainless thug’s direction. “Were you out of your mind?”
“He caught me with the brat’s gear.”
“You’d kept her equipment?” Anger swept through Sly. The thug was as dense as the forest. “You were supposed to get rid of everything the day you brought her to me. Not keep them as souvenirs.”
“I’d tossed them into an outhouse.” Vince balanced his rifle from one shoulder to the next. “Not my fault if the sheriff stumbled onto them. He had no business riding on the hiking trails in the winter.”
The presence of the sheriff in the area unsettled Sly.
Marvin, the other thug that Sly had hired, worked at the training center. The sheriff might have had reasons to suspect him—or Vince—in the girl’s disappearance, or he might have been following a random tip.
“Is the gear still in the outhouse?”
“No. I dumped everything under the Nowhere Bridge on my way here.”
The old bridge crossed Cherry Creek halfway between Snowy Tip and the fishing cabin. No one would find the evidence before the spring—if ever.
Why couldn’t the idiot think of tossing them there in the first place?
“Good. Now take the body, find another bridge, and dispose of him too.” The sheriff’s eyelids fluttered, startling Sly. “He’s alive? Were you crazy bringing him here?”
Leaving the sheriff to die in the woods would have solved all their problems.
“I have a record, Serpent. If his body is ever found, the bullet in his chest will send me to jail. I can’t take the risk.”
“That’s your problem. Not mine.” The brainless thug had become a liability. “Take him outside, cut him open, and take the bullet out.”
“Did you look outside? There’s a snowstorm. You can’t see a thing.” Vince walked into the living room and crashed onto the couch without bothering to remove his snowy boots or mask. “Besides, you didn’t pay me enough to kill a sheriff. I’m not going down for murder.”
The unpleasant situation spurred a new plan of action. “Get your ass off the couch and help me move him into the bedroom.”
Vince slung the strap of his rifle over his shoulder. “Isn’t the girl there?”
“Yes. She’s about to get her hands dirty.”
Killing the sheriff would shatter her spirits, making her more docile.
***
Alone in the sheriff’s office, Eve penned two names under the Dallas fashion show picture. Marianne Levine and Lexa Sheen.
Marianne was the brunette with short curly hair and dazzling smile standing on the left of Senator Norman. Lexa was on his right, her long wavy hair cascading on a shimmering red dress.
Both girls worked for the same agency in Baltimore.
While Eve waited to hear from the girls’ agent, she turned her attention on the next article. The opening of the cancer ward in Boston.
“I have a middle-aged woman in a suit and a bunch of smiling nurses.”
The article introduced the business woman as Chairperson Gloria Verdi, but it didn’t name any of the nurses.
“Let’s see.”
A quick search indicated Mrs. Verdi, a widow, was fifty-nine years old.
“That would have made her fifty-four at the time. An unlikely candidate for unwanted pregnancy. That leaves me with five...” Eve gave the picture a closer look. The nurse at the back was cute, but there was definitely a five o’clock shadow on his chin. “Four nurses.”
The door opened as Eve searched for a hospital directory.
“You’re still here. Good.” Gil threw his jacket on the unoccupied desk. “We need to go through that list of employees again.”
Chapter Thirteen
Norman’s callous indifference toward anyone but himself incensed Amelia as much as the words written on the last email he hadn’t bothered to report. The only parts of her body that felt good were her bloody knuckles.
Nothing like a hot shower to lessen the tension from her shoulders and clear her head. As an additional bonus, the water also cleansed her hands.
Amelia rummaged through her suitcase for clean clothes. Her uniform was on the floor near the guest bed, sullied with the senator’s blood. As she slipped on a pair of fatigue pants, her phone rang.
“Colonel Matheson.”
“It’s Jackman, ma’am. Have you talked to Deputy Ford in the last twenty minutes?”
“No, but I was about to call her.” The prospect of a lead electrified Amelia. “What’s new?”
“I’ll let her brief you, ma’am. I just wanted you to know we identified the dead woman in Major Elliot’s cottage. Her name was Alexandra Sheen. Twenty-three. She was Elliot’s niece. The major raised her after her parents died in a car accident fourteen years ago. Miss Sheen worked for an agency in Baltimore. According to the coroner’s preliminar
y report, the victim underwent abdominal surgery shortly before her death. I should know more tomorrow.”
The doorbell rang.
“I have to go. Keep me posted.” Hoping it was Richmond who’d forgotten his keys, Amelia rushed to the door. The cold nipped at her bare feet. “Ford?”
The deputy stared with big dark eyes and her mouth wide open.
Had Amelia known the identity of her visitor, she would have donned a long sleeve shirt instead of a cami and stuck her hand into her fatigue. “While you stare, would you mind telling me why you’re here?”
“I...I didn’t mean...I saw your rental car in Morgan’s driveway.” The deputy rubbed her gloved hands together as her gaze wandered in the twilight. “I have news. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer. I thought...I thought I’d drive home for a quick bite to eat.”
Ford’s attention should have been focused on the case, not derailed by Amelia’s appearance.
“Blistery fire, Ford. Just relax. Are you trying to give that poor baby an anxiety attack?” Taking pity on the flustered woman, Amelia softened her expression as she stepped aside. “Come in. My bark is worse than my bite.”
“You’re a better woman than I am, Colonel. If...if my baby girl were missing, I wouldn’t bark, I’d rip someone apart.” Ford unzipped her coat, but stayed on the rug in the lobby. “I’m sorry. It was rude of me to stare. I knew the Army was tough, but I wasn’t expecting the severity of your injuries. Makes me glad to be a simple deputy.”
The candid response was as refreshing as the deputy’s consternation was short-lived.
“Childhood fire, not battle scars.” Droplets from her wet hair dripped between Amelia’s shoulder blades. “What did you learn?”
“Wayne River discovered an artisanal grooming machine was used without authorization. We’re rechecking the maintenance employees. There are some interesting characters on that list.” Her face scrunched into a brief grimace. “Your people found some of Barry’s old files in Elliot’s clinic. One file was titled ‘Norman’s cases’. Jackman faxed it. It’s on my desk. Like the name suggests, it contains cases. Five cases. Germany Embassy, New York Ball, Cincinnati Ballet, Philadelphia Opera, and Boston Hospital. Each is dated roughly two months after the actual event described in Serpent’s clippings. No mention of Dallas.”
There shouldn’t be any mention of the Dallas fashion show. By then, Barry had already sold his clinic to Elliot—and located a more sordid place from which to operate on that girl. On the other hand, the two-month intervals were consistent with the time it would take the women to find out they were pregnant and for Norman to arrange for a solution. “Keep going.”
“Except for Germany, all the other cases contain the same short annotations. Procedure completed, no complication, patient fine. The case of the Embassy woman is different. On Sept 1st, Barry wrote complication, patient sent to hospital, outcome unknown.”
“Barry screwed up the first abortion, but he didn’t tell the senator?” Not exactly the story Norman had fed Amelia an hour earlier. “How did our mysterious Serpent learn about it?”
“The picture places you at the Germany Embassy on July 4th, Colonel.” Inhaling a sharp breath, Ford squared off her shoulders. “You said you met Hope’s father, Lt. Norm Craig, in Germany. I checked every branch of the military. There was no American pilot by that name and no mishap. Sept 1st, on the same day Barry sent his patient to a hospital, you were admitted to an undisclosed medical facility in critical condition. Your baby wasn’t expected to survive. When she was born at the end of December, your daughter weighed less than 4 lbs. The size of a baby born two months premature. If you’d been exposed to a chemical agent during a secret mission to the Middle East, like your record shows, she would have suffered more serious birth defects than just deafness. Something in your life story doesn’t add up.”
Flabbergasted by the deputy’s audacity, Amelia slumped on the couch. “You hacked into the military database, broke the encryption, and accessed my medical record?”
Rocking back and forth on her feet, Ford rubbed her belly. “It...it sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“Really? I’m not sure what shocks me the most, Ford. Your recklessness, your hacking skills, or your ludicrous insinuations that I have such bad taste in men?”
Next time she logged onto her computer, Amelia would send a message saying she’d authorized the search of the database. Someone needed to protect the deputy from a military investigation and a jail cell.
“You were young, Colonel. It was a party. Maybe you drank too much and Norman took advantage of you. It happens.”
Had Norman taken advantage of her, Amelia wouldn’t have hesitated exposing him. His political career would have been over before it had even started—and Hope wouldn’t be missing.
“Didn’t I tell you I was already pregnant in July? I went to the party to eat, not drink. The Army sanctioned my tragic love story with a pilot to cover up for my presence in the Middle East. If you value your freedom, you’ll forget everything you read.”
“The Army sent you behind enemy lines while you were pregnant?”
The horrified look on Ford’s face stirred the guilt that had engulfed Amelia when she’d realized she placed her precious baby in harm’s way.
In a futile attempt to contain her raw emotions, Amelia held her head with both hands. Since Hope’s disappearance, her mind had refused to shut down. She didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to protect her sanity.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant when I accepted the first mission at the end of May.” Had the rebuke come from anyone else but an expectant mother, Amelia would have terminated the discussion, not relived it. “The scars on my body gained the respect of...of a man who would become a valuable source of information. He wouldn’t meet again unless I was the translator. Once it became known I was pregnant, additional measures were taken during the meetings. The explosion came out of nowhere.” The acrid smell from long ago invaded her nose and the invisible smoke burned her eyes, unleashing tears of regrets and frustration. “If not for the extensive protective gear I was wearing, I’d be dead. For months afterward, my life hung by a thread. Hope’s growth slowed to a crawl, but she didn’t suffer any lasting complications. Her deafness was the result of a vaccine I received at West Point, not the explosion. If I’d known someone would one day mistake her for Norman’s daughter, trust me, I would have given the dead pilot a different name.”
“You were pregnant before you deployed?” A myriad of disconcerting expressions flickered across Ford’s face. “Why not give the dead pilot the name of Hope’s real father?”
At the time Amelia had been too hurt, physically and emotionally, to make a rational decision—a decision she’d come to regret with all her heart.
“Hope’s father grew up in a wealthy and influential family. When his parents made it clear I didn’t meet their expectations, I asked him to choose.” It’d been naïve of her to believe love stood a chance against his family’s wishes. That was the last time she’d issued an ultimatum she wasn’t ready to lose. “He was never part of Hope’s life.”
Ford removed her boots, and to Amelia’s bafflement, she came to sit at the end of the couch.
“With all due respect, you never gave him a chance. Why didn’t you tell him?”
The tone of the future mother bordered insubordination, reminding Amelia of her younger self, before she learned to ponder her words.
“It’s complicated. And frankly, none of your business.”
“Then just humor me, Amelia. Mother to mother.” The redhead woman leaned sideways, intruding upon Amelia’s personal space. “Didn’t Hope’s father deserve to know he had a daughter?”
“So he would stay with me for the wrong reason? His parents couldn’t stand looking at me, Ford. All they saw were my scars. You really think they would have welcomed a deaf grandchild into their perfect family? After we broke up, Hope’s father became the mirror image of his own fa
ther—a cold and calculating man. My baby girl deserved better than to be rejected by her father and grandparents the way I was. Satisfied?”
“I...I didn’t realize...you were right. It wasn’t any of my business.” Sinking back into the cushion, Ford sighed. “What happened to your fist? Did it unofficially connect with an elected scumbag?”
A fresh wave of frustration washed over Amelia, negating the beneficial effects of the hot shower.
She’d confronted the senator at home. Instead of answering her questions, the man had sworn to ruin Richmond’s career for involving the Army. To curb his belligerent attitude, she’d impacted some sense through his nose.
“I helped Norman jog his memory.” For all the good it did me. “He and Barry grew up together. Norman paid the doctor’s gambling debts in exchange for free medical procedures. When I showed him the pictures of the six events, he only recalled the Dallas fashion show. He’d slept with both women. Couldn’t remember their names. One got pregnant. He sent her to Barry. A few days later, the good doctor emailed Norman to confirm the procedure.”
The senator had deleted the compromising message. To his aggravation, Amelia had retrieved it from his computer.
A copy of Barry’s and Serpent’s emails were on the coffee table. She handed them to Ford.
“The girl was a bleeder,” Ford read aloud. “She made a mess on my kitchen table, and had she yelled any louder, she would have scared the neighbor across the street.” The deputy grimaced in apparent outraged and disgust. “Can we arrest that guy?”
“Depends if we can locate the girl.” And extradite Barry. “Keep reading.”
“Don’t worry, the problem is gone, and so am I. I moved to South America. I never want to hear from you again.” A low growl rattled in Ford’s throat. “I hate that doctor. No wonder I couldn’t find him. He’d jumped ship. After the way Barry treated that poor girl, she may agree to help us. I identified both girls in the Dallas picture. Marianne Levine and Lexa Sheen. They work for an agency in Baltimore.”
“One of the models in Dallas was Lexa Sheen from Baltimore?” A rush of adrenaline sped through Amelia’s body. She sprang to the edge of the seat. “The dead woman in Elliot’s cottage was Alexandra Sheen. His niece. She worked for an agency in Baltimore.” As that piece of the puzzle fell into place, an image emerged, all wrapped in medical symbolism. “The emblem of the American Medical Association is a snake. Sly Serpent isn’t a snake...he’s a doctor.”