A Fire in the Night

by Christopher Swann

  He brought the day pack into the house and started a fire, then quickly scrambled some eggs in a saucepan and ate them quickly with a piece of toast. His hunger satisfied, he took the pistol out of his day pack and put it back into his desk drawer, then sat down in his chair by the fire with the flash drive and his laptop. He glanced at his closed bedroom door, knowing Annalise would want to know what was on the flash drive, but he was afraid he had pushed her too much today with the hike and then the long car ride, plus the meeting with Lapidus. He would look at it tonight and talk to her in the morning.

  As soon as he tried to plug the flash drive into his laptop, he cursed. It was an older flash drive that used a standard USB-A connector. His laptop was a newer model with a squarer USB-C port. He would need a different computer to take a look at the flash drive. That would mean a trip to the Highlands library tomorrow.

  He sat in the chair for a long time, staring into the fire and thinking about Jay and his parents and Annalise. The bottle of whiskey sat on his bar, forgotten.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nick awoke in his chair, stiff and needing to pee. The fire was a bed of ash, and the morning outside the window was brightening. He used the hall bathroom and flushed, then splashed some water on his face and went into the kitchen. By the time he had scrambled some eggs and made coffee, Annalise had come out of the bedroom, bedraggled but smiling. “Coffee?” she said.

  Nick nodded at the coffeemaker. “Help yourself.”

  Annalise stirred a spoonful of sugar into her mug and drank it standing at the counter as Nick plated the food. They sat at the table to eat, Annalise wolfing her food down. “Starving,” she said, her mouth full of egg and toast.

  “Apparently,” Nick said, and when Annalise shot him a look, he gave her a slow smile, which she returned.

  “Did you look at the flash drive?” she said.

  “Doesn’t fit in my laptop. Have to go to the public library in Highlands.”

  Annalise nodded, then swallowed the last of her coffee. “Let me take a shower and we’ll go.”

  Nick shook his head. “You stay here. You had a fever again last night. Plus you don’t need to be showing your face in public. That sheriff’s deputy is looking for you. And he’s not the only one.”

  “You let me go with you to Charlotte yesterday,” she said.

  “Only because you hid under a blanket in the back seat until we got down off the mountain. You can stay here. Highlands is less than half an hour away.” He finished his own coffee, set the mug down on the table. “If you give me your phone, I’ll take it with me and charge it while I’m at the library.”

  Annalise nodded and stood up to take her plate into the kitchen. Then she winced and put a hand on her belly.

  “Are you okay?” Nick asked.

  She nodded. “Just a cramp,” she said. “I’ll be—” She stopped, her eyes widening. “What’s the date?” she asked.

  He told her, then saw her do some mental calculations. Whatever result she got, she apparently didn’t like—she closed her eyes and groaned, putting one hand out to lean against the kitchen counter, the other hand still on her belly.

  “What is it?” He stood and went to her. “Talk to me, Annalise. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, not looking at him.

  A thought shot through him like a bolt. “You aren’t … you aren’t pregnant, are you?”

  Still leaning against the counter, she turned her head toward him and glared. “I’m having my period,” she said. “But thanks for making this even more awkward.” She straightened and stalked out of the kitchen to the bedroom.

  Nick followed, horrified. “Annalise, I’m—”

  “Whatever,” she said, cutting him off. “Just—can you get me some tampons when you go out?” She closed the bedroom door in his face. “Please,” she added from the other side of the door.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake, he heard Ellie say.

  NICK STOOD IN the pharmacy aisle at Ingles, scanning the shelves. The last time he’d gone shopping for tampons was in London, when Ellie had been laid up in bed with a sprained ankle. Now it seemed things had advanced in the field of feminine hygiene. Nick was bemused by the variety of brands and products. He picked up one box, realized it contained pads instead of tampons, and set it down. A young mother waiting at the pharmacy counter, a toddler clinging to one leg while another child sat in her shopping cart, gave Nick a knowing smile of sympathy.

  Nick finally selected a box of tampons—slim, unscented—and turned to find himself facing Deputy Sams, who was standing a few feet away by the shaving lotions, holding a plastic shopping basket in one hand and a can of Gillette shaving cream in the other. He was wearing jeans and a blue chambray shirt instead of his deputy’s uniform.

  “Professor,” Sams said.

  “Deputy,” Nick replied.

  With a nod, Sams indicated the box of tampons in Nick’s hand. “Doing some shopping?”

  Nick paused only a heartbeat. “Donation,” he said. “For the women’s shelter in Highlands.” He took two more boxes of tampons off the shelf for good measure.

  “Here.” Sams held out his plastic shopping basket. “Looks like you need this more than I do.”

  Awkwardly Nick held the three boxes in his arm and took the basket from Sams with his free hand, then dropped the boxes into the basket. “Thanks,” he said. He fought the instinct to walk away and instead asked, “Any more news?”

  Sams shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard, I’m sorry to say. I’m off duty today, though, but if I hear anything, I’ll let you know.” He looked pointedly at the tampons in Nick’s basket, then back at Nick. “No sign of your niece?”

  “No,” Nick said. “But if I see her, you’ll be the first one I call.” He nodded good-bye and walked down the aisle toward the front registers. He glanced back at the end of the aisle and saw Sams still watching him.

  Nick stood in line to pay for the tampons, snagging a phone charger from an endcap. He paid for the tampons and the phone charger and walked outside with his bags, not looking back until he was in his car. He didn’t see Sams anywhere. He drove out of the parking lot, turning right on 64 toward the BP station. When he stopped at the traffic light, he was hardly surprised when he glanced in his rearview and saw Sams’s blue pickup, a Chevy Colorado, three cars behind him.

  If he were in a city, he could lose the deputy easily, but there were few options on these mountain roads, and trying to shake him would be obvious. Plus, if he did that, the deputy would probably just go to his house to wait for him, and he would find Annalise there. So when the light turned green, instead of turning left toward home Nick continued straight through the intersection, heading to Highlands. The road here was a long straightaway, and he saw Sams was still following at a comfortable distance, now two cars back. He hoped Annalise would be okay without the tampons for another hour or so.

  Outside Cashiers, the road curved and continued to rise, hugging the side of the mountains as the valley fell to his left. The rain had stopped, and blue sky was peeking through the heavy white clouds. The curving road kept Nick from seeing very far in his rearview mirror, but every once in a while he glimpsed Sams’s blue pickup still behind him. Occasionally Nick passed new residential communities—Mountaintop Golf Club, Highlands Cove, GlenCove by Old Edwards. Ellie had hated the idea of moving into a subdivision, had wanted to live alone with Nick on the edge of a lake. Now Ellie was gone, and golf courses and million-dollar homes with mountain views were encroaching.

  He started into another curve, like any other curve in the road, but something about this one struck him—the angle of the slope to his right, the scree of fallen rocks at the road’s edge. He had been on a road like this before.

  The canteen, spilling its water into the dirt. A bloody hand. Firelight on stones. Muzzle flashes like pinpoints of fire in the night. And screaming.

  Nick realized his foot had let off the accelerator and he was slowing down. He stomped
on the pedal and his car jerked forward, the engine whining. He wobbled coming out of the turn but stayed in his lane. He blinked and glanced back up at the slope to his right. Ranks of green trees, dappled in the sunlight, spread across the slope. It wasn’t the same place at all. This was home now.

  With a suddenness that was expected yet still always surprised him somehow, the trees fell away on the left-hand side of the road, revealing the north face of Whiteside Mountain. It was a panoramic view: Whiteside rose to the right, lower ridges hid Cashiers just beyond, and the single curved cliffside of Rock Mountain glimmered in the far distance. Then he was past the view and the road turned sharply right and away.

  He passed more country clubs and private communities and the Highlands-Cashiers hospital, and a few minutes later Highlands sprang out of the trees, a mountain town that even with just under a thousand year-round residents dwarfed Cashiers. “Going to town” in Cashiers usually meant you were driving to Highlands, a cluster of a dozen or so town blocks centered on an actual Main Street with inns, bistros, banks, boutiques, antiques stores, an art gallery or two, a hardware store, and a gourmet market. If you wanted to go to the movies or the theater, you went to Highlands. It was also in neighboring Macon County, and Nick hoped that crossing the county line would deter Sams from trying to interfere with him in any sort of official capacity. After he’d finished at the library, Nick would figure out how to shake Sams and get home to Annalise.

  Nick turned left onto Main Street and then pulled into the Hudson Library parking lot. The library was built like a mountain lodge, with an impressive peaked porte cochere over the main entrance. Nick parked his SUV, then took one box of tampons out of the Ingles bag and pushed the box under the front passenger seat. He got out of his car with the Ingles bag containing the other two boxes and the phone charger, locked the car, and walked down the parking lot to the street.

  The Church of the Incarnation, located next door to the library, had an active outreach ministry and regularly solicited donations. Nick spent a few minutes in the church with a kind older woman who thanked him for his gift, fending off her polite request that he fill out a visitor form. Then he walked back over to the library, the new phone charger in his pocket. Across the street, Sams’s blue pickup was parked at the curb, but Nick ignored it as he headed for the library entrance. He hoped he could find a free computer.

  Inside, Nick walked past the circulation desk, where a masked librarian was helping an elderly man in a red-and-black checked flannel shirt find a book on Audubon. A sign indicated the computers available for public use, desktops on heavy wooden tables. A young girl with a red bow in her hair was seated at one computer, avidly staring at her screen. Sitting in an armchair a few feet away, an adult woman was reading an Outlander novel. She glanced over her book at the girl with the bow. “Julia, you okay?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, Mommy,” the girl answered, eyes on the screen.

  There was a computer directly opposite the young girl, and Nick sat in front of it. He put the flash drive Lapidus had given him on the table next to the computer keyboard and then put the folded sheet of paper next to it. He entered his library card information into the computer and pulled up the default browser. Then he remembered—Annalise’s phone. He stood to take both her phone and the charger out of his pockets, then plugged one end of the charger into a power strip on the computer table.

  “I’m researching whales,” someone said, and Nick glanced up to see the girl with the red hair bow looking at him from her seat across the table.

  Nick raised his eyebrows. “Is that a fact?” he said.

  The girl nodded. “People think they’re fish, but they’re not. They’re mammals—like us. I like sperm whales because they have teeth and really big heads and sometimes they eat giant squid.”

  Her mother stirred, distracted from her novel. “Oh, Julia, don’t bother the nice man.” She looked at Nick with a pained smile. “I’m sorry. She’s very curious and she loves to share. Maybe too much.”

  “Not at all,” Nick said. He smiled at Julia. Then he plugged the other end of the charger into Annalise’s phone. In a few seconds, the Apple logo appeared on the screen as the iPhone began rebooting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Cole and Zhang sat in the Suburban in the parking lot of a barbecue joint in Dillard, eating a quick lunch. They had been canvassing hotels, playing the private investigator angle—the runaway girl, the concerned father, the bad boyfriend—for two days. So far every hotel manager and employee they had spoken to had been accommodating, eager to help them find a young woman in trouble, but no luck yet. Cole put a lid on his growing unease. They just had to keep working their search grid. Dillard wasn’t a sprawling city like Atlanta—they would find something. And Jonas and the others were finally en route from Hilton Head in the private jet. They’d been delayed by a tropical storm, and then by an engine problem requiring a mechanical fix, but now they were on their way. Once they arrived, Cole’s team could cover more ground. Right now Dawes and Poncho were still out searching. As soon as Cole finished his sandwich, he would rejoin them. The sandwich was good but greasy. Sauce coated his chin and he wiped it off with a napkin.

  “Boss,” Zhang said from the back seat.

  “You find that 828 number?” Cole asked. He balled up his napkin and dropped it in his cupholder.

  “The girl’s phone just pinged another tower.”

  Cole turned around to face Zhang. “Where?”

  “Outside of Highlands, North Carolina,” Zhang said. “Sixteen miles away.”

  Cole called Dawes on his cell. “You and Poncho get back here, now. The girl’s phone is back on.”

  THE SUBURBAN RACED up Highway 23 through Dillard, passing other cars when the road widened to four lanes, riding impatiently behind a family in a Land Rover when the road narrowed. Once they were through Dillard, they turned right onto a two-lane road that wound up into the mountains.

  Cole was driving, Poncho now in the passenger’s seat and relegated to navigator.

  “How far?” Cole said.

  Poncho consulted the map on his phone. “Twenty-three minutes,” he said.

  “Zhang?” Cole said, eyes on the road. It was well paved but turned and corkscrewed like a bitch.

  “Still pinging,” Zhang said. “But this only tells me the tower, not the actual location of the phone. She could be anywhere in a twenty-mile radius of the tower.”

  “Not in these mountains,” Cole said, passing a slow-moving Escalade. “Signal won’t travel as far. Can we triangulate?”

  “Working on it,” Zhang said, hunched over his laptop.

  Cole powered around another turn. It was like driving into a living tunnel of green—on either side of the road was a wall of trees, and in most places tree branches grew over the road, creating a canopy.

  “Tell me something good, Zhang,” he said.

  “Trying to find a second cell tower,” Zhang said.

  “Dawes, where’s Jonas?” Cole said.

  “Still in the air but should be on the ground soon,” Dawes said. “Closest airfield is about twenty minutes outside of Dillard.”

  “When he lands, tell him to set up in Dillard and wait for my call.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  On the library computer, Nick ran a Google search for house fires in Tampa. The top story was about his brother—Local Businessman, Wife Found Dead in Tampa House Fire. He clicked the link to the local Tampa news outlet. The story said Jay and Carol Bashir had died in a house fire in the early morning hours of Wednesday. Evidence suggested an accident, a bad electrical outlet and polyurethane-soaked rags—the same story Deputy Sams had told him. But the article also said the police had not completely ruled out foul play and mentioned that the Bashirs’ daughter, Annalise, was missing and wanted for questioning. The article included a smiling photo of Annalise, probably her school picture.

  There was also a link to a story about another missing teen, Eric Morgan, who had dis
appeared sometime Wednesday evening. He, too, was wanted by the police for questioning with regard to the Bashir house fire. The article noted that he was a classmate of Annalise Bashir’s and that the two had been reportedly dating.

  Nick found other links on the story and read them too, but they added nothing substantial. Most simply reported the facts, although they hinted that Annalise and Eric were possible suspects. Other links led to Tampa-area bloggers posting about a fatal Romeo-and-Juliet couple who had set fire to her parents’ house before running off into the night.

  Nick knew Eric Morgan was probably not just missing but dead. Men willing to torture a married couple and then burn their house down were not likely to treat the missing daughter’s boyfriend gently.

  And they were doing all of this in order to retrieve whatever was on the flash drive that Jay had sent Lapidus. They thought Annalise had it.

  He picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it and stared at it, the blue lines on the white background. Jay had sent this to him on purpose. It was presumably a map, but of what Nick wasn’t sure. Perhaps the numerical notations were elevations, like he’d wondered earlier. He didn’t know what to make of the tiny triangles, the shortened capital As. Then he saw the word ANTICLINE again on the sheet—plat, map, whatever—and typed it into the Google search box.

  “Whatcha doing?” Julia asked, startling Nick. The little girl was standing next to him. How had she gotten out of her chair and crept up on him? He really was getting old.

  “Research,” he said. “Like you. But I’m not looking at whales.” He picked up the sheet of paper with the blue lines. “I’m trying to figure out what this is.”