by Lisa Preston
Nodding as hard as he could, Greer managed to look up, giving his sincere, silent promise. He shouldn’t be here at all. He should have stayed at the bakery so Maddie could pick him up and bring him home. He shouldn’t have taken Momma’s horse.
Doug. In a fleeting instant, Greer closed his eyes and summoned an image of his brother in the forest. You weren’t supposed to have a favorite brother or sister, but it couldn’t be helped that Doug was the coolest guy ever. A guy as comfortable in the woods as Greer wanted to be. If only Doug were here.
But his brother didn’t appear. Greer tried harder, begging in his mind for his brother, for his papa. Papa would be great right now. Papa had guns, often carrying one in his coat when he logged with the big horses. Papa? Doug? Help me. Greer’s thoughts screamed in desperation and rank fear.
“Nothing happened!” the man screamed. “You will never speak of this to anyone or everybody dies.”
Greer opened his mouth, but bit back his own scream, stayed silent. Even if Doug were here, what would happen next? Maybe Doug could kick the living daylights out of this mean man in a fair fight, Greer thought, but what about when the man had a gun in his pants? And what about later, if he came in the night?
Momma and Papa and all his brothers and sisters would get killed.
“I’ll hurt them, little Greer Donner, son of Ardy and Bella on the old Ingle place. I’ll come in the night and kill everyone. I will shoot your whole family if you tell. Got it?” The man drew back his right palm. “Answer me.”
“Yessir!” Greer replayed the man’s promise, word for word, in his mind. I’ll come in the night. And kill everyone. I will shoot your whole family … if you tell. Too horrible to seize all at once, the threat had to be measured and weighed. But it was a promise, and Greer made one right back, striking a bargain for the lives of his entire family.
“I won’t tell, sir. I won’t ever tell.”
“You swear to that, boy.”
“Yessir. I swear. Sir.” He’d already said he wouldn’t tell, he could do no more. His word was good. Donners made good on their promises. What else could he do? Please, please believe me, he prayed in his mind, prayed to the mean man. I won’t tell. He scrunched his eyes tight against sudden, unbidden images of his murdered family. Would the man shoot them in the head or the body? Greer had caught glimpses on TV, in movies he wasn’t supposed to see, of people being shot.
A picture of his papa, with a surprised expression and half his skull blown away, solidified in Greer’s mind. He saw his momma lying on their hardwood floor, a black hole seeping red in the center of her chest, her arms at her sides. His mind’s eye brought him a picture of his brothers and sisters as a pile of corpses, arms and legs protruding everywhere. It was left for Greer to pull them out of the pile, to lay them out neatly, to get blankets and cover them so they wouldn’t be cold.
Greer swayed with strain. Bang! His eyelids stretched wide. At first he thought it was a gunshot, then he realized it was the slam of a car door. The man was in the big SUV. Tires flung gravel as he slam-shifted, maneuvering the vehicle back and forth in a one-eighty. Brake lights lit the scene red, bathed the dead end like the devil’s home. Greer remembered leaving the living room last month when Frankie came for the weekend and watched a horror movie. It had been way past Greer’s bedtime, but he wanted to be with his big brother. And on the TV, the devil kept showing up and doing bad things, sometimes to bad people, but sometimes to the good guys. Greer hadn’t had the endurance to see the movie through, and he’d had nightmares ’til morning.
Spinning tires, the SUV made the next forest road off this dead end and accelerated.
Greer gasped, freezing and terrified. His jeans were wet below the knees and also between his thighs. His face was wet. The night was black and getting colder. He bolted after the SUV, turning on instinct when the spur joined another road. That man leaving him alone should have felt better, should have been a burden released, but Greer felt no freedom and knew why.
What if the man decided to do it anyway? To just go kill his whole entire family? What if they were already dead when he got home? His heart thumped faster, commanded him to run harder.
CHAPTER 2
Maddie pumped coffee from the airpot on the bakery counter, took one bracing sip, and stopped. She was late. Dusk had fallen, and she shouldn’t be drinking any caffeine at all, for the same secret reason she wouldn’t have any champagne when it came time for a toast to her mom’s happiness tonight. She smiled, reveling in the thought, and hollered toward the back of the commercial kitchen where an oven door whooshed shut.
“Em? Is Greer here?”
“Oh, hey,” came a singsong voice, followed by the sound of a metal tray sliding onto a rack. “He was. Left you a note. Hey, try the bun by the register. I used muscovado sugar. Greer was going to be my test subject, but he said to save it for you.”
Maddie let one more mouthful of coffee melt the cinnamon icing. “Perfect,” she called to her favorite sister-in-law. “You used what?”
Emma pushed through the swinging half doors that separated the working bakery from the front sitting area and dusted her hands on her short apron. Her face was as red as her hair. “Muscovado sugar. Extra-yummy brown sugar from Mauritius. I would call this the Olympic Cinnamon Roll.”
Maddie unfolded the note under the little plate and read the fat scribble: Gone fishing with Doug.
“Huh.” Her husband hadn’t said anything to her about going fishing this afternoon with his baby brother. She pulled her long, sand-colored hair up into a knot and showed Emma the note.
Wrinkling her nose, Emma said, “What’s the deal? He acted like it was secret. Like, between him and you?”
“No idea,” Maddie said, tucking the note into her jeans pocket and heading for the door with her coffee and cinnamon roll. “I’ll call Doug’s cell. See you soon at your folks’ place?”
“Absolutely. I’m closing up early.” Emma nodded and thrust a large pink box forward. “I’m bringing lots of goodies, but take this now, will you? I made tons.”
Driving to her in-laws’ house, Maddie phoned her husband, but the immediate forwarding to his voicemail told her he was in an area with no service. That made sense if he was deep into the mountains up some creek, but she couldn’t help feeling a little steamed over his not letting her know beforehand that he was going fishing and would take Greer. She and Doug had both been home this morning when Bella called and asked if one of them could grab Greer after school, maybe pick him up at Emma’s bakery.
“I’m going to help Papa buck a couple loads of hay after work, but Mad’s going to town today,” Doug had said, eyeing Maddie, who’d nodded her ready agreement to tend the baby of the family.
If she got pregnant right away, she’d have a baby this summer before she and Doug turned thirty. Her toes curled with giddiness.
If Doug had communicated his change of plans, she wouldn’t have had to swing by the bakery. She could have gotten eighteen thousand more errands done in town. As her mom’s wedding day drew nearer, the to-do list grew. Every detail demanded a back-up plan. The contingency plan for rain, given that her mom and Malcolm had decided to hold an indoor/outdoor reception, meant heaters, tents, a whole additional dance floor, improved electrical wiring, and more. Not all guests returned RSVPs, so they were guessing on catering numbers. Why didn’t people RSVP anymore?
When Greer left her a message that it was a late day at school, she’d scored an extra hour, but she’d only managed a recount of RSVPs at the caterer’s while they tried to guess how many vegetarians might be dinner guests should the people who hadn’t yet committed actually show up. She still had to deal with decorations and flowers and enough seating, plus return calls to seven different people—seven!—who wanted to know about wedding gifts even though the invitation expressed a wish for no gifts.
A pregnancy announcement was exactly the secret gift she wanted to give her mom at the wedding reception. Her doctor said that stress was counterprodu
ctive to conception, so she took an ultraslow breath then exhaled for as long as she could. Think calm.
Maddie rumbled the Jeep to a halt in front of her husband’s childhood home. His mom, in jeans and a sweatshirt, managed a wave while carrying a load of potted mums in from the old station wagon. In the motherin-law department, Bella was perfect. Sunny and affable in nature, she would be a wonderful grandmother.
Maddie ached to tell Bella that she was trying like crazy to get pregnant, and she hoped Doug carried his parents’ legendary fertility. All of the kids but Greer had been annual accidents. As an only child, Maddie exulted in the kinship of her husband’s big, rowdy family. She waved with Emma’s bakery box. “I’ll help you with those flowers as soon as I get this inside.”
Bella’s quick smile came as she flipped her brown bob out of her eyes and lifted a tray of orange flowers in an attempted return wave. “Hey, you. What’s that?”
“Super-special cinnamon rolls,” Maddie said.
“Great. I’ve got two roasts on and vegetables in the crock pot. Where’s Greer?”
“With Doug, apparently. So, fishing, of course.”
Bella cocked her head. “But Doug went with Ardy to get hay this afternoon.”
Maddie pulled the note from her pocket. “Greer left this for me at Emma’s place. They must have finished up with hay early. Doug must have picked Greer up. I can’t reach him on the cell.”
Bella pursed her lips and began to say something, but waited when Maddie rushed to explain.
“You know, Greer left me a message this morning that it was a late day out of school for him.”
“It was an early day out for him.” Bella rested her hands on her slim waist.
“Late,” Maddie said. “He said it was a late day, so I didn’t have to be at the bakery ’til four.”
The truth was, she’d been there closer to four thirty. It was past five and dark now. She tried to swallow down the trepidation boiling up. She phoned the bakery where Emma worked and snarled as a recorded message played the business hours. Before Bella even hung up from trying to reach her husband, Maddie punched her cell’s speed dial for Emma’s cell phone, then made a face as it went straight to voicemail.
“It’s Maddie. Look, what time was Greer at your place? At the bakery? You know, when he left me that note. He’s not here, at your mom’s place. I … call me back soon as you can, okay?”
She helped Bella bring the flowers in from the car, oohed-and-aahed over Emma’s cinnamon rolls, and pretended not to cast looks out the windows. In the next half hour, Bella called her own motherin-law, her husband, and the adult son now entrusted with watching over her youngest, but darkness dropped and she failed to reach anyone.
Maddie grew quieter through Bella’s frustrated calls. Her head pounded. The mouthful of coffee she’d allowed herself had not been enough to curb the caffeine-deprivation headache she’d battled all day.
Crunching gravel at last heralded the arrival of a beater pickup, and she flung herself out the front door, relief rising in her chest. Before Doug could stop the truck in his parents’ driveway, her gaze fixed on the passenger side. No little boy sat beside him. Her anticipated relief vanished. Maddie blinked, raising one hand.
Doug lowered the window as he braked, his longish hair dancing in the breeze, his ready smile turning into a quizzical look. “What’s up, babe?”
She explained, again pulling Greer’s note from her pocket as Doug climbed out of the truck, knowing it wasn’t a guy thing when he stayed unruffled, hugging her and trying to kiss her as she talked. Doug just wasn’t a fretter.
“You didn’t take Greer fishing? You didn’t pick him up?” That kid had flat-out lied to her in his note.
“Nuh-uh.” He smirked and shook his head. “You guys been to the barn?”
“The barn? No, why would I …” Her answer trailed off because Doug headed down the scruffier driveway toward the sagging, gambrel-roofed firetrap where the Donner pastures began. Maddie glanced at the house and saw Bella through the window, arms folded across her chest, holding the telephone between one ear and shoulder.
Hurrying after Doug, Maddie heard his voice coming from the far corner.
“Well, son of a bitch.”
She flipped on the barn’s exterior lights and found him leading a bay horse into the field. “What?”
“Clipper. Here. Standing on the wrong side of the gate.” He shook the two lead ropes in his hand, one running to each side of the horse’s halter, and pointed to the dried sweat caking its coat. The shoulders and haunches had once been wet with lather, the foam now dried bits of goo.
Maddie shook her head. “What’s going on?”
“I’m guessing the kid went riding on my mom’s new horse and at some point the damn thing came home without him. You’ve been had. I’ve been had. Greer pulled a fast one on us.” He untied the halter and slipped it off the horse.
Maddie closed her eyes. The kid could be unconscious, off a cliff, might have hit his head on a rock. He could be anywhere. Countless miles of trails snaked through thousands of square miles of backcountry. She’d hiked many of them, dirt-biked plenty, ridden a few on the old horse when Doug pressed her to mount up. At the end of his parents’ road, the National Forest and Olympic National Park stretched to the deep interior of the peninsula, more than a million acres of wildland. She swallowed. “Your mom’s new horse apparently doesn’t stay with a person like Tib does.”
Doug nodded. “Clipper’s still green. The average horse’s plan A is to run for its life and as a species, they don’t have a plan B.”
“He must have bucked or spooked or something,” Maddie said, frowning at the horse. “And Greer was riding bareback?”
“Looks that way. He’s too little to saddle a horse by himself.” Doug caught his father’s horse, clutching one lead rope around its neck, until he could get the halter fastened.
She opened the gate as he led the black Thoroughbred through. He tied the horse, then stepped in and out of the tack room, fetching a saddle while Maddie struggled with apprehension. Greer might be fine, just five minutes away right this second. Or he might be unconscious, facedown in a rain puddle.
“Should I saddle Clipper?” Her suggestion came with a worried nibble on her lips.
Doug tightened the cinch and shook his head as he reached for a bridle. “How about you go tell my mom. Maybe call everyone who’s coming for the dinner, ’cause they’ll need better clothes to go out looking for Greer. Then grab one of the dirt bikes—the Trail 90 would be best—and meet me out there. Make sure the gas tank’s full before you head out. Love you, babe.”
So it fell to Maddie to go back to the house and explain to her motherin-law why Doug loped off on his father’s horse. She finished her explanation with a whimper. “I’m just so sorry, Bella.”
“Shush. It’s not your fault. You can have first dibs on smacking the little cuss around when we find him.” Bella made a weak try at a smile, phone in her hand, while she watched Doug as well as she could in the distance and darkness.
They could see casts from a flashlight at the end of the dirt road that served as their gateway to the vast acres of the Olympic Peninsula, then the sound of galloping came but quickly faded away.
Maddie considered the echo of hoofbeats and decided Doug had taken the uphill trail. She buckled on a motorcycle helmet and straddled the Trail 90. When she got there, she’d take the downhill trail. She bit off another apology when Bella waved her away, and gave the dirt bike, a rusty red thing older than she was, a vicious kick start.
She suspected how Greer had hatched the idea. This was the problem with five adult brothers and sisters having an eight-year-old for a sibling. The kid was too sly and sophisticated, had too many options, and took advantage of every one.
Crisscrossing trails, once meeting Doug on the sweating black horse, later meeting his father on a snorting bay, still later seeing Emma on Greer’s pony, then sheriff’s deputies and neighbors, Maddie lai
d claim to the title of most piqued. Her little brother-in-law had set her up as the fall guy on the night of her own mother’s wedding-planning dinner.
Her mother held all possible empathy regarding the horror of a missing child. She had perfect priorities and would do all she could to ensure Bella’s little boy was safe, never mind that the evening was supposed to be all about wedding plans.
Putt-putting down forest roads, almost out of gas, and cold enough that her thighs hurt, Maddie found her motherin-law at the trailhead near the family station wagon, casting about with a flashlight, sometimes hitting the car’s horn and calling out for her missing boy.
Maddie idled the bike and hung her head. The night’s wind had stiffened her face so she had to enunciate carefully to manage, “I am so, so sorry. And you know, I was late to the bakery to pick him up. I was late, Bella.”
“This is not your fault, Maddie. Go on back to the house and warm up. Your mom’s there.”
Caroline Sommers had followed her daughter to the small western Washington town of Callum a few years earlier. Long single, she’d been delighted to meet a good man, be courted, and slowly fall in love. Planning a wedding in middle age, gray hair and all, really did take the cake. That her beau, Malcolm, was a family friend of Maddie’s in-laws tied them all together, made it all seem meant-to-be. Caroline was as welcome at the Donners’ home as her daughter.
Approaching the house, Maddie saw her mother through the window. She saw the exhale and resigned drop of the shoulders when she killed the bike’s engine and shook her head. Irritation fought with the feeling of how she’d been thrilled with everything until this afternoon.
“Greer’s missing,” she said as soon as she walked through the door.
Caroline nodded. “Bella left me a note.” She turned the paper on the table, rotating the soft script to face her daughter.
C-Greer was riding and the horse came home without him. Everyone’s out looking for him. Will you hold down the fort here? -Bella
Grimacing, Maddie threw the dirt bike keys on the table. Her husband had grown up eating at this table. This table was the place where little Greer was supposed to be sitting right that minute. “I’m going to kill him, Mom.”