by Sandra Brown
“She called to let me know she’d made the trip without mishap, that she was already in bed and about to go to sleep.” He leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands. “None of this is good news, is it?”
He heard Knight’s chair squeak, then the detective’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. “Hang in there. It might look like we’re not doing much, but we’re pulling out all the stops to find her.”
As he escorted Jeff back to the lobby, Knight casually asked if he could take a look at Jeff’s handgun. “Standard procedure. You understand. If you’ll give me your car keys, I’ll send a deputy out to get it so you won’t have to go out in that mess.”
Jeff doubted the weather was the reason Knight didn’t want him to retrieve the gun himself, but he surrendered his keys without argument.
Having been assured that he would be the first to hear any updates, good or bad, he was again abandoned.
His chair had been claimed by a biker-looking type with a braided goatee that extended almost to his waist. While Jeff paced, he checked his phone for missed calls. One of Emory’s girlfriends, whom he’d called the night before, had left a voice message telling him that she hadn’t talked to Emory for more than a week.
A client had left a message expressing his displeasure over the dive the stock market had taken and asked Jeff if he had any ideas on how to make up for the loss. His tailor had called to inform him that his alterations were ready. There were two missed calls from the clinic’s main number, but no one had left a message.
Alice, of course, knew better than to call his cell phone.
He spent an hour on futile pacing and was seething with frustration when Grange bustled into the lobby, wearing a hat with ear flaps and zipping up a quilted puffy jacket as he walked toward him.
“They found her car.”
“Only her car? What about Emory?”
“They’re looking.”
“Where?”
“Nantahala.”
“Where’s that?”
“You’re in it. National forest. Knight and I are rolling.”
Grange was nearly out the door before Jeff processed all that and reacted. He jogged to catch up and followed the deputy. No sooner had he cleared the exit than Sam Knight pulled a tricked-out SUV to the curb. Grange opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Stay put. We’ll be in touch.”
With that, he closed the door and the SUV sped away, leaving Jeff staring after it through the snow.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Emory to deduce why he’d taken her shoes. She couldn’t leave in stocking feet. He’d guaranteed that she would remain trapped here until he returned. But she’d be damned before she became part of the spoils claimed by the redneck duo if they, not he, came back.
He’d moved the sofa with ease. It took more effort for her, and it was even harder to pry up the section of flooring, but she managed with the help of a screwdriver she found in the drawer where he kept the smaller one with which he’d repaired the toaster.
She chose a pistol at random and set it on the end table with care.
Soon after they’d married, Jeff had introduced her to a small handgun he owned and had given her a rudimentary lesson on how to fire it. But she never had. It had been a revolver. This one had a cartridge. Recognizing the difference was almost the sum total of what she knew about firearms. But having one in reach was good for her peace of mind.
She also felt more secure once she was fully clothed. As soon as her running clothes were completely dry, she changed into them.
Left with nothing else to do, she restlessly prowled the cabin. She pawed through the contents of drawers she hadn’t explored before, but found nothing that gave away anything about her host—no journal, correspondence, receipts, not a single scrap of paper with enlightening information on it.
That itself was a reveal. He was scrupulously careful. He kept nothing that could identify him.
Going over to the shelves, she ran her index finger along the book spines, noting that the titles had been alphabetized. She thumbed through several of them, looking for loose sheets or notations handwritten in the margins. After a time, she concluded that the shelves he’d installed himself held nothing except books.
In desperation, she held her hands palms-down on the cover of the laptop, mentally willing it to give up its secret password like a Ouija board. It didn’t.
She added logs to the fire when it burned down. She paced, frequently looking out the window, hoping to see the approach of the pickup. As aggravating as it was to admit, she was worried about him. The two men had looked disreputable enough to kill him for his boots, much less for his truck. Perhaps the “kid sister” had been a lure. Maybe they had deliberately crashed their dilapidated pickup into the tree as part of an elaborate scheme to rob him.
He’d told her he hadn’t met the brothers until today, but he had admitted that he knew who they were. He knew that slitting his throat wasn’t their style. What was that about? Her imagination expanded on several themes, all of them catastrophic, all ending badly not only for him but also for her.
It was an appalling thought, one she hadn’t allowed herself to contemplate before now: She might never get home.
By now Jeff would have notified the police, but would he know where to tell them to start searching? She’d talked about her destination, but had he paid close attention or retained a thing she’d said? Even she couldn’t remember how specific she’d been when she’d shown him the map of the national forest on which she’d marked her trail. But even with only a general idea of where she had set out that morning, a search would be under way.
She would get home. Of course she would. And then—
What?
The crystal ball was as murky on her future from that point as it was on her immediate situation.
When she and Jeff reunited, they would be glad and relieved to see each other. But their quarrel would only have been suspended, not settled. The wedges between them would still be firmly lodged. Assuming he was having an affair, upon her safe return, would he end it strictly out of a sense of obligation? That would serve no purpose other than to keep everyone unhappy.
In fairness, how could she blame Jeff for having a lover when a stranger’s embrace and near kiss had made her burn hot?
Yes. There was that.
Her attempt to be a femme fatale had ended on an ironic twist: it was she who’d been seduced. She had put on that mortifying display, but when he began caressing her, she stopped playacting. He’d pulled her to him, and she’d felt him hard and insistent against her, and the truth had been undeniable. She’d wanted him.
Every feminine urge had sprung to life, and it wasn’t just the long dormancy that had made her sexual desire so acute. It was him. She wanted to experience him, every rough surface, every gruff word, his outdoorsy scent, the whiskey taste of his breath, the arrogant jut of his penis. She had wanted the totality of him with a reckless disregard for what was right and proper for Dr. Emory Charbonneau.
If he hadn’t ended it in that insulting manner, she would have made a further fool of herself.
Thinking about it agitated her and increased her anxiety, so that when she heard the pickup pulling into the yard, she retrieved the pistol, cradled it between her hands, and aimed it at the door.
He stamped in, looking more forbidding than she’d ever seen him. The pistol didn’t disconcert him in the slightest. He took one derisive look at it, then tossed the pillowcase containing her shoes over to her. It landed on the floor at her feet.
“Put your shoes on. We’re leaving.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you down the mountain, and I’m in a hurry.”
Chapter 12
Come October, the heating system in Jack Connell’s apartment building was cranked up to somewhere around eighty-five degrees, and it stayed at that setting until May. After coming in from a frigid wind that
whipped through the brick-and-mortar canyons of Midtown Manhattan, he exchanged his suit and overcoat for shorts and a Jets T-shirt, opened a beer, and carried it with him into his home office, a small room sparsely furnished with a desk—a door suspended between two sawhorses—and a secondhand chair on casters, one of which wobbled.
He called the number Greer had given him for the television news reporter who’d covered the protest march on the state capitol building in Olympia, Washington.
The phone rang several times, and when it was answered, the background noise was deafening. After several false starts, the young man explained that he was out, having happy hour drinks with friends. On the West Coast, happy hour apparently began at three thirty.
Jack shouted, “You talked to my colleague earlier today. Wes Greer.”
“Oh, the FBI agent?”
“Right. You told him that the group featured in your story’s video had come by bus from Seattle to participate in the demonstration. Were they isolated people with a common passion or an organized group?”
“A group. With a name. Can’t remember it now. It’s in my notes. When do you need it?”
“Yesterday.”
“Oh. Can I get back to you? I’ll have to call the newsroom and have somebody go over to my desk.”
Jack gave him his cell number. While waiting for him to call back, he went into the kitchen and made a sandwich of stale rye, hot mustard, and deli roast beef that hadn’t gone completely green, opened another beer, and was halfway through each when the reporter phoned.
“The group is Citizens Who Care. CWC.”
“Is there a contact person?”
“The guy who started it. A relative of his—I think it was his nephew—was shot and killed while buying a Slurpee at a convenience store. He got in the way of an armed robber. Anyway, this guy’s an uber-activist. He has a long name, like a Polish hockey player or something. Ready?”
The reporter spelled it out, and the letters were mostly consonants. Jack asked if he had a phone number for him.
“Figured you’d want that, too.” He read it out. “Say, why’re you trying to track him down? Is there a story here?”
The poor sap had no idea.
Jack made up some mumbo jumbo about the “Bureau’s interest” in any group or individual supporting either “stricter gun laws” or any “opposed to government’s suspension of personal liberties.”
“Oh, that’s been done to death.” The reporter sounded bored and ready to return to happy hour with his friends. “But keep my number and call me if you come across anything newsworthy. On the QT, of course. I’d never reveal you as my source.”
Jack made a promise he never intended to keep, thanked the reporter, and hung up. Switching to a burner phone, Jack called the man with the odd name, and the gentleman himself answered.
He sounded like a nice enough guy, which made Jack feel bad for lying to him. But not too bad. He used a fake name to introduce himself. “I’m not taking a survey or trying to sell you anything. I’m looking for a long-lost classmate.”
He launched into a whopper about an upcoming high school reunion. “I’m in charge of finding people the class has lost track of. You’d think it would be easy, the Internet and all. But some have slipped through the cracks.
“Last night, me and the wife were watching the news, and, swear to God, I think I spotted Becky Watson in your group that marched on the state capitol. Even in high school Becky was politically active and a crusader for causes like gun control. Which, so am I, by the way.”
“Becky, you said? We don’t have a Becky in CWC.”
“Maybe she goes by Rebecca now.”
“Nope, sorry. Nobody named either Rebecca or Watson.”
“Gosh, I was positive that was her. The white spiky hair was exactly the same.”
“That sounds like Grace.”
“The lady I’m talking about was wearing a red coat.”
“Her name’s Grace Kent.”
Jack, heart bumping, scribbled down the name. He wanted to probe the gentleman for information about his fellow demonstrator: What does Grace do for a living? Does she have a daughter around twelve years old? Does she have a brother who visits her regularly? You can’t miss him. Big, tough-looking, dark hair, light eyes.
But he resisted the temptation to ask. He didn’t want the man’s curiosity aroused. He might feel obligated to alert Grace Kent that someone had called inquiring about her.
He sighed with exaggerated disappointment. “Oh well, not our Becky then. But it was worth a shot. Sorry to have bothered you. Thank you for your time.”
“No problem. Good luck with your class reunion.”
Jack’s fingers couldn’t move fast enough on his keyboard, but for naught. No one with the name Grace Kent was listed in the Seattle phone book. He ran a Google search, didn’t find anything. So he called Wes Greer and put him on it, then sat there and absently finished his sandwich, chewing mechanically, thinking.
It took him less than two minutes to make up his mind, then he was on the phone again, booking an early flight, arranging for a car service to take him to LaGuardia at six o’clock in the morning, and reserving a rental car in Seattle. As he packed a roll-aboard suitcase, he acknowledged that the trip would probably turn out to be the last in a long line of wild-goose chases.
The last one being to Salt Lake City, preceded by Wichita Falls, Texas. Before that, Lexington, Kentucky. Seemingly random places and individuals, unrelated except for a single commonality—one man.
He was already in bed but not asleep when Greer—who, it seemed, never slept—called back. “I have an address. Grace Kent actually lives across the Sound, not in Seattle proper.”
“How do you get over there?”
“Ferry.”
Wonderful.
Jack typed her street address into his phone, gave Greer his basic itinerary, and closed by saying, “For the time being, nobody needs to know I’ve gone. In fact, I’m out sick with the flu.”
“Got it.”
As he lay staring at his bedroom ceiling, he placed odds on the likelihood of Grace Kent being Rebecca Watson. He was going on nothing more than Rebecca’s friend, Eleanor Gaskin, who hadn’t laid eyes on her in four years, picking her out of a jostling crowd in a news video of mediocre quality. Based on that alone, he was making the cross-country trip.
Would it be asking too much that he catch a break and the picket carrier turn out to be Rebecca? Dare he hope that she would cooperate and tell him where her brother was? As long as he was fantasizing, why not imagine that her brother was visiting her, and that he would answer the door when Jack rang the bell?
He could trust Greer’s discretion, so at least if this turned out to be another false lead, another dead end, no one would regard him as a complete fool.
Except himself.
And he was used to that.
* * *
“When will we be there?”
“When we get there.”
Emory clutched the edge of the seat as he steered the pickup around another hairpin curve. The headlights had been their only source of light since the abrupt departure from the cabin. If there was a moon, the cloud cover obscured it completely.
They hadn’t passed a dwelling or structure of any kind. Nothing. It was as remote a road as she’d ever been on, and certainly the most hazardous. As feared, there were icy patches beneath the accumulation of snow, invisible until the truck lost traction.
As they took the turns, the headlights swept over unforgiving rock formations that rose straight up out of the narrow shoulder, some encrusted with ice where waterfalls had frozen. Where there weren’t rock formations there was forest. The massive tree trunks wouldn’t have yielded to a tank. Or, most terrifying of all, the lights cut into black nothingness. One skid and they could plunge over the edge into the void.
She wanted to shut her eyes so she wouldn’t see the hazards that threatened, but she didn’t dare because of the ridiculous ass
umption that strictly by her will to live she could help keep the truck on the road.
He’d told her that he was accustomed to these mountain roads with their curves and switchbacks, but he drove with single-mindedness, not nonchalance. His gloved hands gripped the steering wheel, his eyes never left the road.
Answers to her questions about the Floyd brothers had been brusque and monosyllabic, if he answered at all. She had stopped asking. Whatever had happened between him and his unkempt neighbors had prompted him to take her home, or at least to drop her somewhere so she could get home. That was all she cared about.
She told herself that was all she cared about.
“What are all the guns for?”
“What are guns usually for?”
“To shoot…things.”
He shrugged as though that’s all the debate the issue warranted.
“It’s dangerous to have them around. What if I’d accidentally shot you?”
“It would have been a miracle.”
“You’re a large target. At that range I couldn’t have missed.”
“Probably not, but there wasn’t a cartridge in it.”
“It wasn’t loaded?”
He came as close to smiling as he ever did. “Doc, a word of advice. If you aim at somebody with the intention of shooting him, make sure the weapon is locked and loaded, ready to fire. If you don’t intend to shoot him, don’t point the thing at him in the first place.”
“You sound like an expert on the subject.”
He didn’t say anything in response to that, nor did he say anything as he navigated the next series of switchbacks.
Finally, she asked. “How much farther?”
“A few miles.”
“Do you mind if I turn the heater up a bit?”
“Go ahead.”
Before leaving the cabin, he’d draped a coat of his over her, telling her that her running clothes wouldn’t be sufficient to ward off the cold. The coat swallowed her, of course, but she was grateful for it and pulled it more closely around her now.