Alaska Mountain Rescue

by Elizabeth Heiter

  “None of this was ever his choice. Drew and Valerie, they didn’t remember their families, but the rest of us—we felt torn between these lives we sort of remembered and the life we had, the family who loved us.” She swiped more tears away, begging Kensie to understand. “I’m so sorry. If I’d ever thought—”

  “You were trying to protect someone you loved. I understand why you didn’t tell.” Kensie’s voice sounded understanding, but her hands were fisted, betrayal in the depths of her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alanna repeated, but it felt like she was talking into a void, like it was already far too late. She’d tried so hard to do right by everyone and in the end, maybe she’d done right by no one.

  Peter squeezed her hand, but she didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see the judgment there, too.

  “So, what’s the dynamic now?” Tate asked when the silence dragged on too long. “Who’s in charge? Darcy? Now that she’s behind bars again, Johnny is after revenge, right?” His gaze skipped to Colter and Kensie and he grimaced as he looked back at her. “What does that mean for Elysia? You said he’d never hurt her, didn’t you? So what’s his endgame?”

  Alanna looked around the room, at four pairs of eyes all staring at her, waiting for an answer. It was an answer she didn’t have.

  * * *

  HE’D BEEN RIGHT from the beginning.

  Peter stared at Alanna, who was trying so hard to hold it together, and remembered the distrust and suspicion he’d felt when he’d realized who she was. Had that only been six days ago?

  Despite everything that had happened since then, he’d been right. He just hadn’t been right about Alanna.

  When this all started, he would have felt vindicated that his theory wasn’t illogical. He’d believed from the very beginning that the kidnapper could be someone who’d been kidnapped and raised by the Altiers, who’d bonded so closely to them, he was now willing to do whatever it took to protect them. It wasn’t unusual. Feigning loyalty to stay safe in the beginning could easily shift over time into a warped need to protect the very people who’d kidnapped you. But Alanna hadn’t been the one afflicted. Her “brother” had been.

  Alanna remembered Johnny as a vulnerable and confused boy, and it was messing with her perception. Peter saw the truth: Johnny was dangerous to them all.

  Peter should have felt sorry for him, but instead, it took him back to that war zone, covered in blood and sand and knowing everything he’d worked for as a reporter was over in an instant. He could feel his hand twitching, a strong desire to touch his bad ear. Ignoring it, he tried to focus on what he’d just learned and what it meant for the investigation.

  Johnny had been the one kidnapping kids all along. Regardless of Darcy’s involvement—which was identifying a kid she wanted—Johnny had actually taken action. What else was he capable of? And how far would he go to get back at Alanna for what he perceived as the ways she’d done him wrong?

  He squeezed Alanna’s hand tighter, not wanting her to get close enough to Johnny to ever find out.

  Across the room, Tate’s gaze dropped to their linked hands, then up to Peter’s face. Tate’s lips pursed slightly—assessing or judging, Peter couldn’t be sure. Right now, as much as he liked his partner and valued his opinion, Peter didn’t really care. His job was already in jeopardy. The fact that they’d called him at all, that they were letting him in on the investigation, probably had more to do with his proximity to Alanna than their belief in him as an officer.

  After the debacle at the cabin, the chief had told him to take a few days off. He’d only been at the station yesterday because the chief had called him in to give him a serious dressing-down. He was lucky she hadn’t immediately demanded he hand over his badge and gun. But he knew that wasn’t the end of it. She’d all but told him she was still deciding if he had a future on the force.

  He had a reckoning coming at the Desparre PD. He didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t afford the distraction of worrying what it meant for his future, for the very way he’d come to identify himself. Right now, his sole focus had to be on finding Alanna’s niece. And on keeping Alanna safe in the process.

  It was his job, but it had become more than that. Whatever his connection to Alanna meant, however long it was destined to last, he couldn’t let her down now. Not with so much of her happiness at stake. Because if her niece wasn’t okay, Alanna would never be okay again, either.

  “What do you think Johnny was trying to do?” he asked Alanna, tugging on her hand until she turned to face him, forcing her to shut out the stress of her family’s reactions and focus on what she knew about her so-called brother. “When he was grabbing those kids Darcy pointed out, are you sure that’s how it happened?”

  Alanna squinted at him questioningly, her free hand absently stroking Chance’s fur. Her loyal dog scooted closer, lending support, as she asked, “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you say that you decided to reach out with that note five years ago because Johnny had met someone, started talking about getting married? Is there any chance he was grabbing these kids for himself, that maybe Darcy being there just gave him the courage to do it? What about this woman he wanted to marry? Who was she?”

  Alanna shrugged. “I barely remember her. Darcy and Julian trusted Johnny more than the rest of us, gave him more freedom because they said he’d earned it. He met a woman when he was in town and thought it was love at first sight. Darcy and Julian were skeptical and warned him about keeping the family’s secrets, but he started dating her. Once the truth came out and our faces were all over the papers, she wanted nothing to do with him.”

  “So, you don’t think he’s trying to build his own family? That grabbing Elysia was just a way to do it and get revenge at the same time?” It might be the best option, the version of events that made it most likely Johnny would take care of Elysia rather than kill her.

  “No.” Alanna’s near-tears of a few minutes ago had turned into something hard and determined. “I think he wanted to re-create the family he had.”

  “But that was never going to happen,” Peter said.

  “No. He won’t talk to me. Drew’s and Valerie’s parents won’t let him talk to them—and from what I’ve heard in news reports, they’re always watched over. That just leaves Sydney. She talks to him every few months, but growing up, she was the one who remembered her birth family best. The Altiers grabbed her when she was six—older than the rest of us were when we were kidnapped. She’s the one that Darcy and Julian always worried would say something and put the ‘family’ in danger. Besides, she’s twenty-one now. She’s going to college. She has her own life. It’s pretty different from our isolated existence in Desparre. She told me more than once that she’d never come back here. I’m sure she said the same to Johnny.”

  “So, he decided to find new siblings?” Tate asked, getting Alanna back on track.

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “And then you showed up,” Tate said. “You ruined his plan, so he snatched Elysia.”

  Peter frowned, wondering if his partner was right. Maybe it was enough for Johnny to know Alanna was suffering. But his gut told him otherwise. Everything Alanna had said about Johnny suggested he’d been deeply damaged by his experience growing up, that he had the psychology of someone who would misdirect all their anger and rage at the easiest available target. What good was rage like that if the target didn’t know who was hurting her?

  Peter looked at Colter and Kensie. “Did you see Johnny at the cabin? Did he leave any indication that it was him? Some kind of message for Alanna?”

  “Elysia was in her crib in the back room,” Colter said. “Kensie and I had fallen asleep by the fire. We woke up because Rebel was going wild, trying to get into the bedroom. She might technically be a senior dog, but she still thinks like she’s military. We ran back there and found it was locked. I was scared to kic
k the door in with Elysia in there, so I ran around outside. I found the window open.” His jaw tightened, his lips turning inward. “Our daughter was gone.”

  “You didn’t see anything? Not in the backyard or in the room? No note?” Tate pressed.

  “If we had, don’t you think we would have told you by now?” Colter snapped. He ran a hand through his dark blond hair, making it stick up. “Sorry. My daughter is five months old. We’ve just—” He choked on a sob, then finished, “I’m trying to hold it together here, but we have to find her.”

  Tate nodded, his expression saying he’d been in this room before with scared parents. He looked back at Alanna, and Peter was suddenly glad of Tate’s extra years on the force, of his background as a police officer in a bigger city before he’d come to Desparre. “Are we waiting for a ransom note here, Alanna?”

  Alanna shook her head, frustration and exhaustion on her face. “I don’t know.” Then that frustration morphed into angry determination. “But I know who does. I want to talk to Darcy.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I don’t understand you at all,” Darcy said, staring at her from across the table inside the Desparre PD’s claustrophobic interrogation room.

  Tate and Peter had brought Alanna here, insisted that Darcy had to remain cuffed and then left them alone to talk. Of course, alone was a relative term. Alanna’s gaze darted to the camera mounted in the corner. Whatever was said in here, Peter and Tate were watching. She didn’t know who else from the department was with them.

  Darcy looked even worse than she had at the cabin. Her shoulders were slumped inward and the lines pulling at the edges of her mouth and eyes seemed even more pronounced.

  “I’m not sure I understand you, either,” Alanna said, clutching her hands tightly together underneath the table, trying to keep her tone even, keep the anger and blame out of her voice. Darcy knew her better than most people on the planet; it was unlikely she’d be fooled.

  “You let me go at the cabin,” Darcy said, real confusion in her eyes. “You stood in front of me, gave me an opportunity to escape.”

  Alanna tensed, resisted the urge to glance at the camera surely recording every word spoken in this room. That hadn’t been her reasoning at all, but she clamped her lips together, let Darcy continue. She’d rather fight an accomplice charge than risk angering Darcy, risk losing the chance to find out where Johnny had taken Elysia.

  “So, why did you bring police in the first place? Why did you turn us in all those years ago? It’s like you’re two different people, Alanna.” A humorless smile flitted across her face, before morphing into a scowl. “I should have realized it sooner, I guess. You’re torn between two worlds. I saw it over the years when you were growing up, this far off look you’d get on your face, like you were dreaming about the family you’d been born to, instead of the one you were meant to be a part of. I thought you’d grown out of it before you wrote that note. After all those years, we thought we could trust you.”

  This again? Alanna fought down her frustration. The guilt she’d seen in Darcy’s gaze, in her words, when Alanna had told her how her kidnapping had affected the Morgans, already seemed forgotten. Right now, seeing Darcy wasn’t about getting an apology. It wasn’t about getting closure on her past. The fact was, she’d probably never fully have it. That was something she needed to manage. And it was something she could manage, with her degree in psychology and her job helping others overcome worse trauma.

  What she did need was for Darcy to understand the hurt she’d caused. She needed to understand the further hurt she’d cause if she let Elysia stay with Johnny. It was the only way Alanna had a shot at getting Darcy to choose Alanna’s happiness over that of the man she still called her son, the man who still called her Mom.

  Alanna folded her arms in front of her on the table, leaned in.

  Before she could speak, Darcy asked softly, “What happened to your ring?”

  Alanna’s hands twitched, her wish to keep them hidden under the table too late. Darcy had given her a worn ruby ring when she was sixteen years old. It was a family heirloom Darcy had worn most of Alanna’s childhood. Alanna hadn’t taken it off for three years. It was the only thing she’d taken with her when she’d left Alaska besides the clothes she’d been wearing the day police had split apart the “family.”

  The Morgans had all stared curiously at it when they didn’t think she would notice, but they waited for her open up to them at her own speed. She hadn’t wanted to hurt them, hadn’t wanted to admit that she missed Darcy and Julian, that the ring felt like her final connection to them. Instead she’d taken it off, placed it carefully at the bottom of a drawer and hadn’t put it on since.

  “It’s safe,” Alanna said. “I still have it.” She slid her hands back under the table, tried to get the conversation back on track. “You thought you could trust me? Well, you said you loved me. You said you wanted to raise me to be strong and happy.”

  The offense was as obvious on Darcy’s face as it was in her voice when she insisted, “I do. I did.”

  Alanna leaned toward her again, closing the space between them, letting Darcy see the hurt and fear on her face. “Then why would you let Johnny take my niece?”

  Darcy’s mouth dropped open into a small O. She shook her head slightly, her brow furrowed, but she didn’t quite meet Alanna’s gaze.

  “You didn’t know?” Alanna demanded, not sure if the confusion on Darcy’s face was feigned or real. Hope started to replace the fear that talking to Darcy was too much of a long shot. If she really hadn’t known, she’d be more likely to help Elysia. But would she be able to? Would she know how to get through to Johnny?

  “I—No. That wasn’t part of the plan. I didn’t even know your niece was here. Heck, I didn’t even know you had a niece. It’s not like you talk to me anymore.” She scowled, then gave a quick, hard shake of her head. Her voice was sad and lost when she continued, “We just wanted what we had before. We weren’t trying to hurt you. We weren’t trying to hurt anyone.”

  “But you know you did, right?” Alanna asked softly, willing Darcy to look at her, to face what she’d done. “Just like you knew what you’d done to all of our families. You tried not to think about it, tried to convince yourself the families you stole from would all be fine, that the kids you ripped away from them were happy. But deep down, you knew. You knew it was wrong.”

  Tears filled Darcy’s eyes and she blinked rapidly, clearing them away. She started to reach her hand out, then looked at the cuffs keeping them locked together and faltered.

  Alanna leaned farther across the table, closing her hand over the top of Darcy’s linked hands, hoping she wouldn’t fixate on the missing ring again. Not that many years ago, Darcy’s hands had been smooth and soft, deceivingly small for how strong she was. Those hands had picked Alanna up hundreds—thousands?—of times as a child. They’d sewn her clothes and helped her build a desk for her studies. They’d wiped away her tears and wrapped around her in loving hugs that Alanna still missed.

  Now those same hands felt paper-thin, dry and rough. They looked older, too, as if she’d aged twenty years in prison instead of five.

  The guilt that was never far beneath the surface bubbled up. Normally, Alanna reminded herself that she had no reason to feel guilty, that she’d done the right thing. This time, she let Darcy see all of her conflicted emotions, hoped it would help Darcy admit to some of her own.

  “Please,” Alanna whispered. “Elysia is only five months old. Johnny doesn’t know how to take care of a baby that young. Not alone. And my sister deserves to get her child back. Kensie has been through enough.”

  “I...” Darcy’s cheek twitched, her lips twisting downward. Her gaze skipped away from Alanna.

  “Johnny still has a chance to make a normal life for himself.”

  Was it true? Alanna didn’t really know. Not only because he’d c
ertainly be facing charges for helping a prisoner escape and kidnapping three children, but also because everything that had happened in the past week proved he was more damaged by their upbringing than Alanna had ever realized.

  Still, there was one thing she knew for sure. Turning himself in, handing Elysia over unharmed, was the only chance he had.

  Darcy looked up at her, eyes narrowed and unreadable.

  “Please help me find them,” Alanna begged, squeezing Darcy’s hands under hers.

  Darcy ripped her hands away and turned her gaze to the ground, but not before Alanna saw the regret there. “You’re lying to me. I’m not going to help you relegate Johnny to the same life I’ve had, the life Julian had. I love my son.”

  She looked up at Alanna once more, finality in the hardness of her eyes, the clenched line of her jaw. “Goodbye, Alanna.”

  * * *

  SHE’D FAILED.

  Alanna stood outside the interrogation room, her whole body too heavy with dread to move. Even knowing that Peter and Tate had surely already seen everything over the camera feed, Alanna didn’t want to face them. More than that, she didn’t want to face Kensie and Colter, didn’t want to have to admit that their best lead to find Elysia was gone.

  The finality in Darcy’s goodbye had brought tears to Alanna’s eyes. Just as quickly, she’d blinked them away, vowing never to shed another tear over Darcy or Julian Altier.

  Yes, they’d raised her with love. But ultimately, everything they’d done had been selfish.

  Five years ago, Alanna thought she’d taken a huge step in regaining control over her own life. But maybe she’d just been living in limbo, stuck between two worlds, between two families.