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

by T. J. Brearton

  She reached the woods. There was a semblance of a trail, just some of the brush trampled when she and Carson had arrived two days before. She was finally ready to get out of here. She’d tried for the GPS, found it broken, couldn’t fix it, but she’d since rested and gathered more supplies. And she’d seen Carson die with her own eyes, so she could be certain he couldn’t chase her.

  But then there was this new player. Someone totally unknown. She wasn’t sure what gave her greater pause – that he might come after her, or that he’d seemed generally disinterested in her.

  Why hadn’t he ventured inside? He’d roamed about like someone in his own backyard, or at least familiar with the woods. Maybe even someone who knew where they were located. If he was truly a hermit, he’d know the lay of the land. He could escort her out, or at least tell her the way.

  “Dammit,” Katie muttered.

  Every time she tried to set off, something seemed to keep her in the woods.

  She moved up the slope of the mountain, keeping the cabin in sight through the trees. The woods were thick, with plenty of robust balsam firs to hide among, and she found her spot.

  She could see the north side of the cabin and the front porch. She waited for what felt like an eternity until Fallon reappeared on the far side of the clearing.

  He walked with a slight limp, picking his way along like someone not in any hurry. For a little while he continued to search the clearing. He found the rocks she’d used for her signal then moved on from them. He was like a dog, in a way, nosing out the interesting smells, the signs in the grass.

  She’d left the door to the cabin wide open, and at last Fallon looked there and moved toward it. He disappeared inside and she heard him walking around on the plank floors, glimpsed him through a broken window.

  She waited, growing uncomfortable as she squatted among the fir trees. He took an unnerving amount of time in the cabin. What the hell was he doing in there? Making a sandwich? She supposed he was just taking everything in, evaluating.

  Finally he reemerged; there was something in his hands. He walked a ways into the clearing and sat down with whatever it was, examining it.

  If he was with Carson and Leno, why wasn’t he radioing someone? For that matter, if he was working with them, he seemed to know the woods – why not send her in with someone like him instead of Carson? Fallon didn’t seem to care that someone had obviously been inside the cabin, with the door shut, smoke billowing, and now they were gone.

  He wasn’t part of it, and she couldn’t keep hiding here forever; she was getting stiffer by the second, her abused muscles still sore from all the recent exertion.

  But even if he wasn’t with them, even he looked old and a bit hobbled, he had that rifle. He might try to hurt her. She didn’t know anything about him, how long he’d been out in the wilderness, or why.

  It was safer to wait, damn the soreness.

  Just a little longer. A few more minutes. Then, keeping her distance – and the hatchet in her hands – ready to run, she would try to talk to him.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The convoy of law enforcement vehicles barreled along the freeway, lights flashing but sirens silent. Cross and Gates followed in his car, pushing it to ninety.

  The feds had gotten a fix on Montgomery.

  “Malone?” Cross asked. “Malone is over 100 miles north of Bakers Mills.”

  “I know. But it’s right near the Canadian border – crossings at Trout River, Fort Covington, Cornwall…”

  It was nine in the morning. The kidnappers were due to call the Calumets that afternoon. Cross thought it was insane, but the feds acted confident.

  The convoy slowed as they rolled into the outskirts of town, alongside a wide river that had once provided water power for saw mills. Those days were gone and now there was a college, several County Seat buildings, shopping centers. They came to a stop at a gas station and convenience store with tractor-trailers in the parking lot.

  The dozen vehicles – state trooper cruisers, black SUVS, and Cross’s sedan – pulled in and surrounded the store, blocking the entrance and exit.

  Troopers pulled rifles and took aim over the hoods of their cruisers. A helicopter thundered overhead.

  Sair was holding a satellite-assisted tracking device. Cross knew it was so precise that it told the feds that the phone was inside the store. The rest of Sair’s team, dressed in Kevlar flak jackets, flooded in.

  Cross pulled his weapon – only the second time in eight years being a cop he’d ever taken it out from the holster. He and Gates were also dressed in bullet-proof vests. They jogged toward the entrance.

  He heard shouts from inside and their radios crackled with tactical communications. Gates stuck out her arm, stopping him.

  Sair entered after the team, now gripping his handgun. More shouts, and Cross heard Sair yelling, “Come out of the bathroom!”

  Gates withdrew her arm and they cautiously proceeded forward. The store was in disarray, customers cowering among the few tables, the clerk peering over the counter. It was the type of place that sold pizza and cold subs in addition to the two aisles of junk food. Cross saw a pimply-faced cook in the back, looking excited by the whole thing. FBI agents had knocked over a rack of sunglasses, and someone’s bag of groceries had exploded on the floor, splashing milk.

  More than half the team was searching the store, but a group of three had converged on a door in the far corner, next to a vending machine. Their weapons zeroed in.

  Sair yelled again, “Montgomery, we know you’re in there – this is the FBI, come out with your hands up!”

  The lead SWAT member looked at Sair, who gave a nod. An agent kicked open the door, shouting, “Get down! Down on the ground!”

  Sair ran forward and Cross and Gates followed.

  They crowded outside the bathroom door, looking in at the sixty-year-old man crouched on the floor beside the toilet, terrified, his hands trembling over his head.

  The tension lasted another few seconds as the reality sank in.

  The agents lowered their weapons. Sair holstered his gun, and the investigators did the same.

  “Ah shit,” Cross said under his breath.

  The agents helped the man out. His fear soon turned into indignation and he started yelling at everyone about police brutality. When he shoved past one of the team, he was tackled to the ground and handcuffed.

  “Whoa, whoa!” Cross said, getting closer.

  Sair ignored Cross and loomed over the man. “Where is Jonathan Montgomery?”

  “Who? What?”

  Sair persisted a moment longer. “Where is Katie Calumet?”

  But the older man clearly had no idea who they were talking about. Either that or he was giving them a performance, but Cross doubted it.

  An FBI agent called out, “There it is; got it.”

  Cross moved in tighter, bumping against Sair as they both squeezed into the doorway. The tiny bathroom was overrun with law enforcement, barely elbow room. One agent had taken a towel from the dispenser and used it to pick up a device out of the trash beside the toilet. He held it up for everyone to see – a prepaid Tracfone.

  “Everyone,” Sair barked. “Fan out. Let’s go.”

  The trio of agents collected themselves and left the bathroom. The rest of the team, having turned the store upside down, spread to the outside, still on high alert.

  The search continued on the store premises, but Cross didn’t think Montgomery was anywhere around. He looked at Sair and thought the agent’s expression suggested he was coming around to the same conclusion – Montgomery had baited them.

  The man from the bathroom was yanked to his feet and brought outside. Customers gaped as the procession passed. One teenager took a picture with her cell phone.

  Agents whisked the man away into the back of a tinted SUV before Cross or Gates had a moment to question him. “Hold on,” Sair said to the investigators, and got into the vehicle.

  Cross didn’t want to wait
around for the excuses and backpedaling. This was an obvious screw-up. And of major proportions.

  “Cross,” Gates said beside him. “You go. I’m staying.”

  Cross didn’t argue. He jumped into the car and hit the horn. One of the troopers moved their cruiser out of the way and Cross nailed the gas, bouncing out of the parking lot.

  He glanced in the mirror before tearing off down the road and glimpsed Gates walking toward the SUV. Sair got out to greet her, his posture sagging.

  Cross raced back to Hazleton.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The hermit started back toward the woods and Katie got ready with the hatchet. He disappeared into the trees. He was very quiet for an old man with a limp, but she heard a twig snap and jumped. He was close. By the time she was ready to run from her hiding spot he was right on top of her.

  Katie stood and raised the hatchet, her heart beating in her throat.

  “That dead feller down there,” the man said. “He yer husband?”

  His words were such an accented mumble she could barely understand him.

  It took her a second to find her voice. “No. He’s not my husband.”

  “Took’r pretty bad fall.”

  This close to the man, just a couple yards, Katie got a much better look. He had wiry eyebrows, eyes set with deep wrinkles, gnarly gray beard. Despite his limp he looked healthy enough, though there was a distinct smell coming off him. Earthy, homeless. His gaze was milky, like cataracts forming.

  “He’s dead,” she said about Carson.

  “Yah.” The hermit looked off in the direction of the cliff. He kept his rifle casually at his side.

  Katie lowered the hatchet but kept a good grip on it. She decided to confide in him. “He kidnapped me. The man down there took me up here, blindfolded, two days ago. Do you know where this is? You must know. Do you live around here?”

  She stopped herself, wanting to give him time to absorb it, to answer. The hermit, Fallon, she thought with no further trace of giddiness, kept staring off toward the cabin and the cliff beyond.

  He didn’t answer her and she wondered if he’d heard her or was ignoring her. She spoke up, repeating that she’d been kidnapped, and she was lost. “Is this Black River Forest?”

  That got his attention and he turned his face back toward her. “Yah. Black River.”

  She felt relief but pressed on. “What mountain is this? What’s the nearest town? Can you help me get down off the mountain and back to town?”

  He seemed to avoid her gaze, and it made her uneasy. Maybe he wasn’t outright threatening, but he was strange and unpredictable. She kept her tight grip on the hatchet. If he came toward her, she would be ready.

  “Yah, that’s gonta be Atwell or Hoffmeister, dependin’ on which way ya come out.”

  She wasn’t familiar with the places he spoke of, but it was miles ahead of feeling utterly in the dark. “And what mountain is this?”

  He looked around, as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. “Don’t know the name. Mebbe Jones.”

  She tried to think. Carson had said Jones. She’d thought he’d meant a person, like Leno or another contact. A place they were supposed to meet, even if it had made little sense.

  Jones. West. Canada.

  Carson could have been talking about a mountain.

  Her hike of Dix had been almost a decade ago. There were hundreds of mountains in the Adirondacks. But surely only a few in Black River Wild Forest, one of many distinct regions of the park. “So you think it’s Jones?” She struggled to remember more names, anything she’d seen over the years. “What about Panther? Panther Mountain?”

  He pulled something out of his pocket and held it out to her. “This yours?”

  Katie stared at the object then took a step forward. It looked technical, like a radio or something.

  He continued to hold it out to her, still not meeting her eyes, oddly unemotional. It occurred to her that he might’ve spent years in the woods without human contact. Social skills could atrophy.

  At last she tucked the hatchet up under her arm and took what he was holding, turned it over in her hands. It wasn’t a radio – she thought it was a satellite phone.

  “Oh my God…”

  She poked at the buttons. She’d never used a sat phone before. It looked like one of the first cell phones she’d ever owned – a Nokia – though it had the brand iridium written above the blank screen. It was one solid piece, encased in a rubberized red shell.

  She found the power button and pressed. She waited a moment then let out an excited breath when the screen came to life.

  “It works! It has power.”

  She started pacing around without thinking about it, staring at the screen. After a fancy little intro of graphics (“iridium everywhere…”), a menu display showed her several options.

  INSERT SIM CARD

  ADD TO SIM CARD BALANCE

  DIRECT INTERNET 3

  ADVANCED

  There was nothing that read, simply, CALL, and her hopes immediately started to sink.

  She talked herself out of the dread and selected the ADVANCED option. Another screen listed more options, none of which made any sense – VCOMPORT was written in green, then things like INSTALL USB DRIVERS, FILES FS and LANGUAGE – nothing that seemed simple.

  Maybe simple was what it took.

  She dialed 911 and pressed the single green button on the keypad. The phone chirped three times and a battery icon flashed on the screen – just one percent life remaining. A moment later, the screen went black.

  “No…”

  Katie looked up from the phone and saw that Fallon had moved off, back toward the cabin. She hurried to catch up with him, slapping the branches away. She stopped along the way to further investigate the phone.

  “Oh okay,” she said, hopeful again. There was a red button right on top of the phone next to the antenna. She pressed it and looked at the screen. To her delight, a small icon that looked like a beacon started to flash.

  The red button had to be an SOS. Maybe it was using backup battery. Still, she wanted to find the docking station for the phone, if there was one. An extra battery, something she had missed going through Carson’s bags.

  “Hey!” She caught up to Fallon. “Where did you find this?”

  He had reached the clearing and was back to snooping around in that odd way he had.

  Fallon faced the cabin. “In ’ere.”

  “Will you show me?” She felt more energetic than she had in hours.

  He stopped what he was doing and headed into the cabin without another word. She couldn’t believe when he showed her – Carson’s duffel bag had a small, zipped pocket she’d ignored. Her focus had been on the GPS; she hadn’t considered a satellite phone. She riffled through the contents of the bag again, this renewed hope revving her up.

  But there were no batteries. There was a plug-in adapter, which was useless – the cabin didn’t have power.

  She found a brochure for the phone, of all things, unfolded it, and devoured everything printed on the glossy pages. Unfortunately it was more of an advertisement than it was a manual. A rugged-looking guy on the cover held the phone to his ear as he gazed over a massif of mountains in the distance. The phone had “unparalleled reach” and was “feature-rich.”

  She found where it mentioned the SOS button – she’d been right. She looked at the screen again and saw the comforting icon for her broadcasted signal.

  How did it work? Emergency services everywhere were dialed into the satellites these things used? Maybe someone right now sitting in a 911 operations center was seeing a blip broadcasting somewhere in Black Forest?

  Katie read the fine print on the last page, feeling her heart sink deeper: “The programmable, GPS-enabled SOS button with a Satellite Emergency Notification Device (SEND) is ready to alert your programmed contact of your location and help to create a two-way connection to assist in the response.”

  In other words, the SOS
worked for anyone else who had a phone linked to this one.

  Someone like Leno.

  She might’ve just alerted Carson’s accomplice.

  She kept reading, the fear sliding over her.

  Fallon was back outside, doing whatever the hell strange mountain hermits did, but he was once again looking like her only way out of here.

  According to the brochure, the SOS indeed operated off an internal battery with a two-year life. However, that GPS-enabled SOS with emergency services was supported by something called GEOS Travel Safety Limited, at “no additional charge.”

  There was an asterisk after “no additional charge” and she read one of the very last sentences of the brochure, feeling nauseous.

  In order for the phone SOS to work with emergency services, like 911, it said, “Registration with GEOS is required.”

  She resumed clawing around in the bag even though she was sure she’d already dumped everything out. The brochure had gotten stuck in the fabric, but nothing else had. The contents were in a pile in the middle of the room and she went through them all again, item by item.

  The heat in the cabin was starting to get to her. The sweat ran down and she fought against the undertow of despair.

  A busted GPS. A sat phone with no battery to call anyone, and very likely no registration with any GEOS whatever. Just another useless gadget, frustrating her.

  And the sinking idea that she might’ve just notified Leno – or anyone else monitoring the phone from the Carson-and-Leno gang.

  She picked it up to press the red button again, to kill the beacon, but hesitated, thinking there was still a slim chance that the phone could’ve been registered. Maybe it was stolen. Maybe whomever it had been stolen from had an active account.

  But there’d been a damn brochure. Like Carson and Leno had just bought it. These phones could be expensive, hundreds of dollars, some of them more than a grand, but maybe for these assholes it was just a start-up expense. Tax deduction, right, guys? For your entrepreneurship as intrepid kidnappers.