Gone Missing: A gripping crime thriller that will have you hooked

by T. J. Brearton

  The doubt bubbled up.

  Had she even seen anyone?

  Katie moved cautiously toward the window, peered out through the dusty pane of glass. The woods were thick with balsam fir, the roll of another peak visible in the distance. But no human beings anywhere.

  She returned to the bed and sat down, her heart skipping beats. She stuck her head between her legs and took several deep breaths.

  Leno.

  It could be Carson’s partner, back in the woods with them because something had happened.

  But the figure had looked like an entirely different person than the one who’d dabbed at her wounds and taken a picture of her the previous day. Even with the balaclava mask, she would’ve seen the wild gray beard and shaggy hair. His clothes looked different, too, layered and tattered.

  Maybe an associate of theirs, then.

  A third man; someone sent to check up on her.

  There may have even been a rifle in his grip.

  He wouldn’t be a searcher, not alone, not this far into the wilderness, with no planes or helicopters in sight since she’d been watching the sky.

  The cabin was beastly hot, the wood stove still cranking. It had to be 100 degrees in the unvented space. She couldn’t stay here long in the stifling heat. She wondered if she could even keep on staying at the cabin at all with someone else in the area.

  Maybe whoever it was had been drawn by the smoke. Maybe he could help her.

  She watched the wood stove, saw the licks of fire through the seams of the cast iron door. She thought about getting such a heavy thing out this deep into the woods. Must’ve taken four or five men. Maybe he was one of them and this was his place.

  Or, he was mentally deranged. He might be desperate, hungry, who knew.

  Had she even just seen anyone?

  She tried to recall the moment with clarity: She’d been thinking about her family. Sitting in the grass, feeling beaten, missing her husband, just awakened after sheer exhaustion had forced her into a dead sleep. It could have been a dream, something left over from sleep.

  The cabin was so hot, her hands sweating, the hatchet slipping in her grip.

  She made a sudden decision, took up the backpack, and ran out the front door. Scanning the woods, she cut through the clearing, heart pounding in her chest. This was it. She was going to get the hell out of these woods, even if the daylight was fading.

  More movement – in the corner of her eye.

  Katie cried out involuntarily and halted in her tracks. The motion had been to her right, something low to the ground, just at the edge of the clearing. She dared to look fully in that direction and she saw it, loping along, then slipping out of sight.

  A dog?

  Her hands trembled, sweat cooling on her skin, pulse pounding in her temples.

  She’d had occasional heart palpitations since her teenage years. They came on particularly during periods of stress, but recently they had worsened. David had worn her down about seeing a doctor, who’d diagnosed it as tachycardia.

  It felt like her heart was fluttering in her throat. Katie clutched her chest and stared off where the dog – if it was a dog – had disappeared.

  “Hello?”

  The tremble in her voice only intensified her alarm.

  She looked at the cabin, twenty yards away, front door gaping open. Too hot in there, but not safe out here, either – there was possibly a man, maybe his dog, circling the grounds.

  Or, not a dog – something else.

  Her heart was out of control. She dropped to her knees and lowered her head again.

  Calm down. Calm down…

  There was another noise; the snap of a twig. She stood and broke into a shambling run toward the cabin, gripping the hatchet with two hands, gritting her teeth against the fear.

  She stopped on the porch and waited, feeling the intense heat emanate from the open door. She needed to ventilate the damn place.

  With a rush of inspiration, not caring whether it was smart in the long term or not, Katie ran into the cabin, shut the door. Then she smashed the windows with the hatchet.

  The act was terrifically satisfying, and the sound of the breaking glass imbued her with a sense of power. Maybe whoever or whatever was out there would be scared off.

  She felt the air breezing through, and the cabin instantly started to cool. Not by much – it was still over ninety degrees – but enough that she felt encouraged. Now she needed to lie down. Her heart kept slamming. Her vision was spotting, like she wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

  She dropped onto the bed, willing herself calm, and took long, slow breaths. She pictured herself together with David, as they’d been last Christmas in the city, bundled up in the cold, walking the streets, hailing a cab, and laughing as they rode uptown amid the twinkling lights.

  She imagined herself on her morning runs, the mist hanging suspended in the air, the drowsy prattling of the Ausable River as she ran alongside its banks.

  Gradually, as she relaxed, her heart slotted back into a regular rhythm.

  But she didn’t dare get up yet. She’d closed the door when she’d come in – no lock on it, but it barricaded against any animals, at least.

  You’re losing your mind. You’re still in shock. You’re imagining things.

  When she felt strong enough she rose from the bed, checked through the window again. Still no sign of anyone.

  She wasn’t in the habit of hallucinating, but she’d never been abducted and dragged to the middle of the mountain wilderness before, either. Whether someone was really out there or not, one thing was clear – she couldn’t escape the woods in a blind panic. She needed the benefit of full daylight, she needed her wits about her, and she needed her heart to beat steadily.

  Leaving under any other circumstances was a bad idea.

  She stayed in the cabin, keeping track of time. She’d let ten minutes pass, then see. She moved near the door. It was hinged so that it swung into the cabin. If anyone barged in, they were going to get a hatchet in their chest. How’s that for a horror movie? She wielded the hatchet like a baseball bat and flexed her legs, bouncing a little.

  A sense of absurdity washed over her: The idea that anyone out here was working with her captors seemed more unlikely as time passed. Carson was dead. By now they would’ve discovered his body and taken action. Anyone else, unless they were completely deranged, could possibly help her.

  It might be some kind of mountain man. She’d read about Adirondack hermits, men who cast off society to live in rugged isolation.

  Feeling a bit more confident, the new idea taking shape, she opened the door. “Hello?”

  Her voice echoed in the woods, a lonely sound.

  She left the backpack on the porch and moved cautiously into the clearing, looking everywhere. Her heart rate was up again, but the beats were holding steady.

  She stopped then continued a few steps, stopped again, listening intently. She moved toward the cliff where Carson had fallen.

  Carefully nearing the edge, keeping low and spreading out her weight, Katie looked down and her breath caught in her throat.

  The animals down below were picking at Carson’s corpse.

  Coyotes, five or six of them, taking their meal. Two of them right on top of Carson, the others nipping at each other. One circled the body then darted in for a bite.

  Jesus. Oh Jesus.

  She backed away, mindful of her footing, trying to be quiet. She hurried back to the cabin as fast as she could without making too much noise.

  Coyotes.

  Not a dog.

  Wild animals.

  * * *

  Katie let the fire die down, just one log at a time to keep it smoldering, then used what water was left in the urn to wash herself, cleaning the dried blood from her body. She cleaned more blood from the cabin floor with the remaining water in the wash tub. After all the scrubbing, she felt stultified and lay down on the mattress. The daylight was waning.

  They’d been p
icking his body apart.

  Carson had fallen to his death, and now the animals were eating him.

  How had it happened? She’d assumed he’d wanted to relieve himself. It would be just like Carson to decide to step to the edge of the drop, proud to eject a urine stream over the treetops. Then, still a bit drunk from the night before, he’d lost his balance.

  But what if that wasn’t the right story? What if someone pushed him? If the man she saw was some hermit who had abandoned society and all its trappings, why investigate a cabin showing signs of life? Because he was territorial? Because he was insane?

  Smashing the windows felt like a terrible mistake. The cabin was raised off the ground by piles of rocks, footers that helped to elevate the windows, but could a coyote jump through?

  She watched out the windows as darkness gathered, jumping at every noise. She needed to calm down. The animals had just fed. Coming across a body on the rocks was one thing; leaping into a log cabin with a living human inside was something else, wasn’t it? Unless they were desperate, they’d leave her alone.

  She hoped.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Cross pulled up to the Montgomerys’ address on Oak Street. Two state troopers were already at the scene, waiting for him.

  “Anyone home?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” one of the troopers said.

  Cross thought the place was typical for Lake Haven, a town triple the size of Hazleton and thirty miles away. The house straddled the line of ramshackle and historic, likely built in the 1950s as a “cure cottage” for sufferers of tuberculosis. Its prominent feature was a huge, rambling porch with multi-paned windows.

  The inside looked dark, the place unlived in. No car in the driveway.

  The adjoining garage was empty, but for some antique-looking yard equipment.

  The troopers joined him in the front yard. He sent one around back and asked the other to stay out front, keep an eye on things. Cross climbed onto the weather-beaten porch and knocked on the front door.

  He waited, peering in through the windows. In proximity, there were still only minimal signs of life. A table sat in the center of the living room, covered in tools, as if some remodeling was going on.

  According to BCI, Johnny and Janice Montgomery had bought the place just two years before, though it was unclear if they’d used it as a residence or an income property. It was big enough that it could be both, too. BCI was working on more information.

  Cross and the trooper watched a compact SUV roll slowly past, the old woman behind the wheel rubbernecking the scene.

  When she was gone, Cross knocked on the door again.

  They’d been married for five years. Her maiden name was Connolly, and she was born in New York City. Both of them had lengthy rap sheets, though mostly small-time stuff, including a few marijuana possession charges.

  Jonathan Montgomery had also been born in New York then moved with his mother to Pennsylvania at age five. He’d been in a juvenile detention center in Pennsylvania but those records were sealed. As a young man, he’d caught his first offense back in New York City selling fake watches. He’d held a series of odd jobs on his résumé prior to moving upstate – high school janitor, convenience store worker, auto mechanic – but had no employment history since he’d relocated.

  Janice Connolly had been a nurse in Brooklyn and her record showed a recent charge of theft while employed by the hospital – prescription drugs. It hadn’t been proven, but she’d been fired anyway. Her employment record showed a string of waitressing jobs after that; then she, too, seemed to disappear.

  Cross thought they sounded like quite a pair. But his enthusiasm ebbed the longer he waited on the porch. If he wanted to go inside, he’d need a search warrant. There was plenty of probable cause at this point; he just needed the official paper like before. It was in the works, but for now he stepped off the porch, shaking his head at the trooper on the front lawn.

  The trooper was looking at something down the street, something Cross couldn’t see from his angle. He jogged over for a better view.

  A pickup truck idled at the intersection a few houses down.

  As soon as Cross stepped into the street, the pickup took off with a squeal of tires.

  “Go!” Cross yelled at the trooper. He ran to his car, pointing toward the intersection. “Blue Dodge on Spring Street!”

  Cross jumped behind the wheel, engine still running, and hit the gas. He screeched around the corner onto the next street.

  The pickup rounded a bend in the road up ahead. Cross checked the rearview mirror and saw one of the troopers catching up.

  After rounding the bend, there was another intersection. Cross saw the brake lights flare as the pickup dropped down a steep hill.

  Holy shit, he thought, he could be on the heels of one of the kidnappers.

  The streets were narrow with no shoulders, packed with houses, families. He had to be careful. He tapped the brakes and descended the hill.

  The next intersection was a main road leading in and out of Lake Haven. The way it curved, no truck was in sight either direction. Would the driver head out of town or deeper into it?

  Cross spun the wheel in a hasty decision and roared toward town.

  He grabbed the radio. “Did you see the driver?”

  “A little,” the trooper said.

  “Man or woman?”

  “Man.”

  Cross bulleted through a green light and the trooper behind him flipped on the emergency lights and siren. He listened as the troopers called in the chase to dispatch.

  The road dipped, bisecting two business plazas – grocery on the left, banking on the right – and Cross spotted the truck ascending the hill on the other side. At the top of the hill was another streetlight, turned red. The pickup truck shrieked to a halt behind a line of cars. Then it started to go around them.

  The truck picked up speed and tore through the intersection. A car coming the other direction swerved to avoid it and blared their horn. On the radio, the dispatcher polled the call to all active deputies and troopers.

  There was a one-way street at the bottom of the hill and Cross took it. It was the wrong direction, but mercifully the street was empty. He saw the trooper zip past in his mirrors, headed up the hill after the pickup anyway.

  Cross pulled onto the next street, now driving parallel with the other. But he had to slow way down – this was the main strip; people were everywhere. It was late in the afternoon, work was getting out, and tourists abounded.

  He turned into a parking lot and weaved his way out the back side, onto another one-way street, until he rejoined with the initial road. It hadn’t worked, and the gap between Cross and the pickup had widened.

  “Dammit.”

  The truck was far ahead, having turned onto the road alongside Lake Flower, leaving cars helter-skelter in its wake and pedestrians scrambling. One of the troopers appeared, cruising along in closer pursuit.

  Cross slowed for the next intersection and had a moment to think – there was no Dodge Dakota registered to either of the Montgomerys. They had one car, according to the DMV, and it was a Ford F150.

  He fell in behind both troopers. The lake slipped past on the right; the lowering sun flickered amid the motels along the shore.

  The Dakota led the chase out the other end of town. On the radio, the troopers were calling for a road block.

  “Who the fuck is this?” Cross yelled. He was nervous, excited, terrified it would end badly and someone would get hurt. He eased off the gas.

  The Dakota swerved around a slower-moving vehicle and the troopers followed. Then the road opened up, the speed limit turned to forty-five, and the Dakota really got going fast.

  Cross stomped the gas pedal again, determined to see it through. They were doing sixty, then seventy, eighty.

  They flew past SCI Cold Brook. Past a gas station, a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, a golf course, then nothing but a long corridor of tall pines. Doing eighty-fi
ve, now ninety.

  “Jeeeesus…”

  The Dakota suddenly swerved. The driver had been trying to overtake another slower vehicle and nearly collided with a car coming the opposite direction. The edge of the tires caught and the truck flipped – once, twice, again – chewing up the soft shoulder. A broken side mirror flew through the air, a window shattered, the metal crunched.

  Cross slowed way down and gaped at the spectacular wreck as the Dakota finally came to a rest. The troopers in pursuit slammed on their brakes. More police vehicles arrived from the other direction, lights flashing red and blue through the tire smoke and road dust.

  Cross pulled off the road, jumped from his car, and ran toward the truck.

  On its side, smashed to hell, the truck engine was pinging. Something dripped. A trooper caught Cross by the arm and held him back. The other trooper was on his radio, calling it in. Everyone on the road had stopped. One motorist left their vehicle and ran over.

  “Hey – whoa!” Cross yelled.

  “I’m an EMT,” the civilian said. But she changed course and approached Cross and the trooper on the road shoulder.

  They heard the screech of tires as another motorist hit the brakes. They’d been coming up on the scene too fast, hadn’t been paying attention. The car skidded into an angle half on the road and half off, and came to rest.

  More sirens in the background as an ambulance made its way.

  Closer to the EMT, Cross thought he recognized her. She’d been at other emergency scenes where he’d been involved. He thought her name was Darby.

  Most vehicles didn’t automatically explode after they crashed like in the movies. Still, caution was prudent. Cross nodded to Darby and they jogged to the Dakota. They saw the man inside through the windshield, bloody and unconscious. Cross scrambled up the vehicle and tried to open the passenger door, which was now like an overhead hatch.

  The door stuck.

  Cross called through the broken window, “Hey! Hey, can you hear me?”