by Webb, Peggy
“Oh, please, no. Please. Please.”
She feared the worst. A scared little boy, a slippery bank, an ice-covered creek, some it of thick enough to walk on, some thin enough to crack apart and let a child slip through. If he’d gone into icy water, there’s no way he would still be alive.
Would her daughter meet that same fate?
“Tim,” she called, her voice cracking with cold and anxiety. “Tim!”
Jefferson was still going, his tail up like a flag, his nose pointed straight to the creek. Fear increased Maggie’s speed. She prayed as she ran.
Suddenly, that abrupt halt, that bark—Jefferson’s find signal. Even better, he was jumping up and down, his signal for found alive.
There was no doubt in her mind. No hesitation. If Jefferson had found the boy dead, he would be sitting.
“We’ve got him,” she yelled. “We’ve found him. He’s alive!”
On the road above, Joe shouted, “She’s got him!”
Maggie heard the answering calls of other men, coming closer as they scrambled down the embankment and raced her way.
“Tim,” they shouted, their voices echoing across the frozen field, held aloft and magnified by frigid air.
Jefferson had stopped just short of the creek. Maggie hurried the last hundred yards toward a large hollow log. She heaped extravagant praise on her dog then squatted down for a look. The little boy was hunkered inside, his lips blue, his eyes wide and his gray sweatshirt bloody.
“It’s okay, Tim. You’re safe. You can come out now.”
Blinking against the glare of her flashlight, he shook his head—no—and refused to budge.
Maggie passed his red jacket to him. “You daddy wants you to have this, honey. He’s waiting for you back on the road.”
Timmy grabbed the coat and clutched it to his chest, but he still refused to move.
“Are you hurt, honey?”
That slight little shake of his head. Yes.
“Give me your hand and I’ll help you out.” She reached for the child but he scooted deeper into the log.
Suddenly Joe was beside her, squatted down with his face close to the log’s opening.
“Hey, there, buddy. Your daddy Charlie sent me to get you. If you’ll scoot up here, we’ll go find him and I’ll let you pet the dog.”
“Okay.”
And that’s how simple it was, how simple it had always been for her husband to charm people, young and old alike. He scooped the little boy up then turned to smile at Maggie.
It was so like the look he used to give her after they’d found a missing person during their SAR days together that, for a moment, Maggie felt the years melt away. In the space of seconds, she found her heart warming toward her husband while an icy wind lifted her hair and sent a chill down her collar.
“Come on, Maggie, let’s get Timmy back to his mama and daddy.” Joe ruffled the little boy’s hair. “Your Aunt Patricia will be up there waiting for you, too, buddy.”
For the first time since his rescue, the little boy smiled.
When they got back to the accident scene, Timmy went straight to his Aunt Patricia while Joe consulted Ken about the quickest way to get them to Glen’s Crossing.
“It’s going to be another hour or so before we can clear a path for you through here.” Ken waved his hand toward the wreckage and all the emergency vehicles. “Your best bet is to go back about five miles and cut through the forest on Everson Road. It’ll be slower driving but still, it will beat waiting here.”
Ken wished them luck and they headed back to the truck. Jefferson bedded down as soon he loaded into the backseat. Maggie stripped off her gloves and held her hands in front of the heat vents.
“What will happen to that poor little boy, Joe?”
“Several people in the search party know the couple. They said both parents are repeat offenders. Child protective services will step in this time, and he’ll probably be put in the custody of his Aunt Patricia.”
“She seemed like a nice sort.”
“There are still good people in this world.”
“Do you think Kate found somebody like that?”
“I don’t know, Maggie.”
“The Glen’s Crossing area is where I found those girls in the snow.”
“I know. Don’t think about it.”
“It’s sparsely populated. And remote.” Joe didn’t answer, and she couldn’t bear to look at him and see her own anxiety mirrored in his face. “Could she have walked to a shelter somewhere?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“I don’t want platitudes, Joe. You know that area better than I do. Is there someplace father away from where her car was found that most people wouldn’t even attempt to go, someplace she could have remembered from hiking with you?”
“A couple of remote houses, but we never hiked that area together. She rode with me to Glen’s Crossing on a business trip, but she was only eight.”
“She’s smart, Joe. Maybe she went to one of those houses and just can’t call us for whatever reason.”
“Without her coat?”
Maggie was grasping at straws. Desperate. Frightened. No, terrified. She didn’t even ask how remote the houses were. She was scared of the answer.
“Hurry, Joe.”’
Chapter Six
6:55 a.m.
Kate’s spirits lifted as the pale slivers of light announced the approach of dawn. Running would be much easier now that she could see the trail.
A sudden gust of wind lifted snow off the forest floor. The powdery curtain obscured visibility and reminded her that a storm was coming. She stopped to rest and to get her bearings.
Where was the store? Kate had traveled as fast as she dared in her running snowshoes, trying to pace herself without getting overheated. At the speed she’d been going, she should have found the trading post long before now.
Had she passed the store in the dark? Betty had said it was right on the trail. Even under current conditions, Kate would have seen a clearing big enough for a store and a parking lot. She’d have seen the shape of a large building.
Obviously Kate had misunderstood. Or maybe Betty’s directions were not accurate. She was probably under so much stress from living with her unhinged son she couldn’t think straight.
“Poor Betty. When I get out of this mess, I’ll see that you get some help, too.”
Kate took a small sip of water. It wasn’t nearly enough to quench her thirst, but she didn’t know how long she’d have to make her small supply last. The same with her food. She broke a piece of beef jerky in half then stowed the rest in her backpack and thought about the problem. She knew what lay behind. A monster who had already murdered two girls.
And though she didn’t know exactly what lay ahead, she knew there was an occasional cabin in the wilderness, mostly near one of the many lakes. And if she found the Superior Hiking Trail there would be outpost shelters.
As the dawn crept in, wind howled around her picking up speed, sending eddies of ground snow swirling round her.
“I’m tough. I’m strong. How hard can it be to find a trading post on the trail?”
Kate left another hanging branch to mark her trail then set off once more. The path was more overgrown and far more treacherous than the groomed trails Kate was accustomed to in cross country ski competition. Though she’d never been with her dad along the entire length of the Superior Hiking Trail, this was obviously not part of it. This trail had no markers. And the way some of the trees were scarred, it was obviously used by people on horses and snowmobiles, both forbidden on the Superior Hiking Trail.
Suddenly Kate came to a halt. The trail split in two directions. Had Betty mentioned that?
Doubt crept in while icy winds clawed at her. She wanted her mom and dad. She wanted her home and her fireplace. She wanted the creamed corn her mom had promised to make just for her and the comfort of Jefferson curled beside her. A tear escaped and froze on her eyelash.
&nbs
p; Adapt. Coach’s voice was as clear as if he were standing beside her. A mentally tough runner adapts to every situation.
The trail had become rockier than when Kate left Betty’s house. She gathered stones and quickly made a cairn to mark the left fork in the trail. The pile of rocks blended in with the wilderness. Hopefully a madman bent on murder would never notice.
She listened for sounds of the snowmobile behind her. Jonathan was too weak-minded and cowardly to run after her. Hearing nothing but the wind in the trees, she followed her instincts and set off on the left fork.
“Run,” she told herself. “Move. You can do this.”
When she’d been a competitive runner, she’d done interval training, running interspersed with strength and endurance training with at least one day built in for rest. Weekends had been devoted to uphill training, brutal ten-mile climbs that left her leg muscles burning. Cross-country competition runs that exceeded twenty miles often left her feet bleeding. And still she’d run. And won.
Kate kept a steady pace. If she didn’t see the store soon, she’d have to decide whether to retrace her steps and explore the other fork or keep moving forward.
There was a sharp curve ahead, barely visible in the swirling snow. Kate moved toward the center of the trail to run a tangent, and that’s when she saw it—a huge wooden monstrosity erected on two timbers that rose in the pre-dawn gloom. A billboard.
Hope surged through her. She was too far away to read the lettering, but she knew it was the trading post Betty had told her about. It had to be.
Speeding up as much as she dared, Kate pressed forward. From the beginning she’d battled against the darkness and the dangers in an unfamiliar and barely visible trail. If she let herself get overheated in freezing temperatures, she would be chilled by her own sweat.
“Come on,” she told herself. “You can do this, Kate. You can.”
She paced herself, all her senses alert for the unexpected, a rock buried under snow that could send her sprawling and break a leg, an air pocket that could bring her down and twist an ankle, even a predator in the woods looking for one last tasty meal before the storm hit.
Focus! The Coach’s yell echoed through her mind.
“I won’t think about the storm.”
She was close enough now to see the outline of the general store. Kate raced toward the gas pumps out front.
Wait!
Something was wrong. Their inner workings had been pulled out, and one of the hoses lay half buried under the snow. The pumps squatted like sawed-off robots in front of an abandoned general store.
The roof sagged and wind blew snow through an open front door. Obviously Betty didn’t know. Was she getting senile or did she simply not keep up with what was going on around her?
Though the front of store had the look of long-neglect, there was still a small possibility that somebody lived in back. Maybe it was no longer worthwhile to operate a trading post on a trail that looked seldom used, but the owners couldn’t afford to leave their adjoining apartment.
With renewed hope, Kate headed through the open door.
“Hello? Is anybody here?”
Her voice echoed in the silence. Ghostly shadows cast by empty racks and shelves crowded in on her. She pulled her flashlight out of the backpack and trained the light around. A rusted-out cash register from another era presided over the grimy wooden countertop, and a chair with a cane bottom shredded by animals sat nearby. Behind that was a wall-hung telephone.
Kate seized it and held the receiver to her ear. There was no dial tone, not a single thing to indicate she might find a connection to a life that was now so far out of reach it was nothing but a dream.
Still, she said, “Hello?” When there was no answer, she said it again, her voice breaking apart on a sob.
Stay strong, Coach urged.
“I won’t cry,” she said. “I am mentally tough.”
If she gave in to defeat now, she might as well sit down in the relative warmth of the store and wait to die. Still, the terrors of the house and the harrowing escape through the freezing forest had taken a toll.
Kate hung up the phone then shut the door against the wind and sat in an uncluttered corner of the general store to lean against the wall. Warmth began to seep through her and her head began to droop.
She jerked upright, and shook herself. If he caught her asleep, she’d die like the other two girls.
Chapter Seven
7:00 a.m.
“Jonathan! Wake up!”
He rolled over, pulling the covers over his head. Jonathan wasn’t ready to wake up. He’d been dreaming about that luscious plum waiting for him upstairs when the old hag stomped inside and interrupted him. The things he had planned for Kate today made him giddy.
She’d already discovered the wedding dress. Oh yes, she had. Yesterday when he’d come up from the basement where he’d stashed her laptop and had that argument with his mother, he’d heard Kate exploring her new home. That room--her room now, theirs later—was imprinted on his memory. He could tell by the direction of her footsteps when she’d opened the closet door and found the wedding dress. Her wedding dress.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out her perfect size. He’d been corresponding with Kate on Facebook for months. Since shortly after the last girl didn’t work out.
Frankie, he’d called himself, using the photograph of a redheaded, freckled faced farm girl wearing thick glasses. He’d found the picture in an advertisement for some low-class homemade jellies nobody ever heard of. Frankie was just the kind of nerdy, needy girl Kate gravitated toward.
Kate was a do-gooder. Privileged girls often were. Life had been easy for her and she wanted to share with the less fortunate.
“Get your lazy self out of that bed!” The wretched bag poked him with the business end of a mop. A wet mop. “We’ve got a job to do.”
He wanted to roar out of the covers like a lion king and take her down with one swipe of his big paw. He could, too.
It had been so easy to knock Kate out of her chair last night when she wouldn’t let him kiss her. She’d even had the audacity to slap him. And after all he’d done for her--talked his mother into letting him take the food, arranged ham sandwiches on the tray himself then given up his precious time watching the six o’clock news on TV so he could sit in front of that fake snow scene by the window and have supper with her.
The girl had a lot to learn about being a proper wife. And he intended to teach her before the wedding.
Betty poked him again with the mop.
He threw back the covers and leaped up, fists balled. “What do you want?”
She didn’t back up an inch. The old biddy. It was her fault he didn’t get to play with Kate. Her and her false sympathy for the girl, always sneaking around spying on him, foiling his plans.
“The girl’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“She escaped sometime last night. I told you that girl was smarter than she looked.”
Jonathan raced up the stairs without even bothering to put on his clothes. Sure enough, her door was open. The hairpin she’d used to pick the lock was lying on the floor.
He flung himself onto her bed and rooted under the covers as if he might find her wadded into a tiny ball.
“Kate! Kate!” The covers smelled like her—the citrus scent of her hair and the light floral perfume she wore on her wrists and behind her knees. He’s sniffed them all, repeatedly, while she was sleeping off the drug he’d slipped into the coffee he gave her when he rescued her.
He’d rescued them all. It had been ridiculously easy. Just plant a fake detour sign in the right weather, at the right time, rig up a plank in the road with nails protruding, then wait for the college girls to fall into his trap. So what if he occasionally caught a logger or some fool tourist family. He just helped them change tires and sent them on their way.
“I told you she’s not here.” Betty stood in the doorway with her arms crossed
over her sagging body. Her uncombed hair stuck out from her headscarf like straw. All she needed to be a witch was a pointy hat and a wart on her nose.
As they tromped back downstairs to the kitchen, Jonathan wished for the thousandth time that his daddy had taken him along when he ran away. He didn’t remember much about Harvey Westberg—he’d been only four when his daddy left—but anything would be better than living under Betty’s thumb.
“When did you discover she’d escaped?” he asked her.
“Just now. When I went upstairs to mop. I came straight to tell you.”
Old biddy. Mopping at the crack of dawn. Still, if she hadn’t, Jonathan wouldn’t know his future bride was missing.
“She can’t be far. She’s helpless as a kitten.”
“You’ve got it wrong. As usual. Helpless girls don’t know how to pick a lock.”
“Why would she leave with a storm coming?”
“Use your head, dummy.”
“That little whack I gave her at supper was nothing more than a love pat.”
“Idiot! If I hadn’t pulled you off her last night after you sneaked back up here, she’d be filing rape charges. She’s probably heading to the authorities right now to name you for attempted rape and kidnapping.”
“She wouldn’t do that. She loves me!”
“She loves Frankie, you fool. Have you told her you’re her pathetic little Facebook friend?” He scratched his head. “I thought not. Get some clothes on and get out there and take care of her.”
Betty pulled out a frying pan and threw in some bacon, going about her day like she hadn’t just pronounced a death sentence on Jonathan’s bride.
He saw his entire future crumbling. He’d spent months searching social media for somebody like Kate and then grooming her on Facebook. She was perfect wife material, smart and generous hearted and sweet tempered. A simple girl. She didn’t spend all her time sharing every detail of her life on social media like some of them. That was one of the reasons he’d targeted her.