Chapter 1
This day in the church calendar was variously known as “Stir-up Sunday” from the collect, or Rose Sunday, for the color of the third candle in the Advent wreath, symbolizing Mary, the Rose of Sharon.
But Clare had a private nickname for the third Sunday in Advent: Chaos Christmas.
In the parish hall, the Martha and Mary Guild were selling homemade cookies as a fundraiser while members of the congregation—those who hadn’t torn out of church headed for the mall—chatted, drank coffee, and poked among the Holly and Ivy Fair remnants that still hadn’t been cleared out.
In the sanctuary, the children’s choir and the Christmas pageant kids were rehearsing in the chancel, while the volunteers for the greening of the church clambered up ladders holding wreaths and shouted at each other, “A little to the left! No, your other left!”
One of the three kings let out a strangled cry. “He bit me! Spencer bit me!” His small page boy, freed from the older kid’s restraint, jumped across the chancel step and fled toward the parish hall, his beleaguered mother close behind.
Clare shifted Ethan’s weight on her hip and kissed his cheek. “Please don’t grow up to be the Biter,” she whispered.
One of the women wiring bows onto the ends of pews gestured toward the nave. “Clare? It looks like we have a visitor.”
Clare turned around to see Yíxīn Zhào at the great double doors leading out of St. Alban’s, staring at the red-and-green-themed circus and shifting from foot to foot. Clare hurried toward her. “Hey. What’s up?”
“I’m sorry to barge in—I tried calling you, but it went straight to voice mail.”
Clare laughed. “You can’t really barge in here, Yíxīn; everyone is welcome.”
“Tiny’s gone.”
“What?” Several of the volunteers stopped and stared at her. She dropped her voice. “Where? How?”
“Did you drive over here?”
“No, of course not. I live next door; it’s faster to walk.”
“Then it looks like she took your car.”
“Oh, for—!” Clare stopped herself before swearing loudly in front of several interested bystanders. She took a breath. “Let me tell a few people I’m heading out early. Come with me, we can save a few steps by leaving through the kitchen.”
It took Clare less than eight minutes to extricate herself, pull on her boots and parka, and grab Ethan’s things; with Russ gone, the baby made a wonderful get-out-of-coffee-hour card.
She and Yíxīn clattered downstairs and wove through the church’s kitchen, Clare smiling at the congregants washing coffee cups and hoping she didn’t look like she was bolting because of an emergency.
Once outside, it was just a few yards to the break in the privet hedge that led to her driveway, where, oh, yes, her car was gone.
“I’m sorry; I was sound asleep. When I woke up, she had already left. We should call the cops.” Yíxīn held the baby bag while Clare juggled Ethan and searched her pockets for the house key.
“Not yet. Along with making me lock the damn doors—oh, here it is—Russ installed a home security system and GPS trackers in our cars.” She swung the door open.
The young lawyer looked at her. “He can see where you’re driving?”
Oscar met them at the kitchen door. The room looked the same as when she’d dashed out earlier this morning, except the spare keys that hung near the coatrack were gone. “Don’t worry, he’s not a controlling spouse. I mean, he does try sometimes, but I just ignore him.”
Yíxīn closed the door. “O-kay.”
“Maybe she’s gone to a friend’s. Or to buy some things for the baby.
” Clare dropped Ethan in his high chair and tugged off her boots before letting the dog out into the yard.
“What did it look like upstairs?” She had given Tiny the guest bedroom, with Ethan’s Pack ’n Play for a temporary crib.
Yíxīn had gotten the inflatable mattress in the formerly empty fourth bedroom, which Clare had turned into a home office once she realized working in the living room wasn’t going to fly with a husband and baby around.
“She made the bed.”
“Of course she did.” Upstairs, she peeked into the guest room.
If the portable playpen hadn’t been there, it would have looked as if it had never been occupied.
It was different in the nursery, though.
An entire package of diapers was gone, along with a new red-and-white snowsuit her parents had bought Ethan.
Clare bet that if she took inventory, she’d be missing some clothing and wipes as well.
“That shoots that theory. She shopped for Rose right here.”
“What about money?”
Clare grimaced. “My purse is in the kitchen.” Sure enough, when she opened her wallet downstairs, the cash was gone. “Okay, she has a little over sixty bucks.”
“She’s not going to get far with that.”
Clare turned on her phone and opened the app. A circle blinked on and off and on and off until Clare was tempted to shake the phone to see if that made it work any faster. Then a map popped up, with a dot that didn’t seem to be moving. She zoomed out to get a sense of where the vehicle was.
“Clare…” Yíxīn pointed to the screen. “It’s not that far from Newcomb. Which the militia’s been using as a base.”
Clare tried to pinpoint the road details, but lost the greater context of the area. “Hold this. I’m going to get Russ’s park atlas.”
“Real paper maps, huh?” The young attorney sounded as if Clare was proposing shooting the sun with a sextant for directions.
“Once you’re in the mountains, paper is all you can rely on. Cell phone service is spotty to nonexistent.” She grabbed a pencil. “Let’s see the tracker.”
Yíxīn laid it on the kitchen table next to the map. “It’s, uh, County Road twenty-five.”
Clare put an X on the corresponding spot and straightened. “Okay, here’s Newcomb.” She added another X. “Here’s where I flew out of Long Lake, and this, roughly, is the area where we spotted the encampment.” She circled a generous portion of the High Peaks Wilderness.
“It makes a triangle.” Yíxīn looked at her. “Tiny might have led us to their back door.” She shook her head. “I actually believed her when she said she didn’t know what her husband was up to.”
“She might not.” Clare tapped the mark on County Road 25. “There’s no development here, but a lot of this land is privately owned. Cal March might have bought a few acres as a hunting camp. Or inherited it.”
“This could be where they’re keeping their vehicles. Trucks and cars that can’t get up to their training site.”
“Is that important?” Clare frowned. “The whole point was to find the militia.”
“It is, yeah.” Yíxīn began to walk back and forth.
Ethan followed her movement with interest. “If we have sufficient cause to arrest them, it’d be a lot easier for law enforcement to just wait for them to hike down and get their pickups than it would be to charge up the mountain for a New York State version of Waco. ”
Clare paused. “But you don’t have the evidence to arrest them yet.”
“I’m not even sure who’s taking part in the group, other than maybe the men Tiny recognized yesterday.” Yíxīn made a sound of frustration. “I thought this whole thing was going to be a lot more straightforward.”
“Regardless, we need to get Tiny back. There’s no telling what Cal might do if she catches up to him.”
“Report your car stolen and give the cops the location.”
“No. If Tiny is arrested, Rose will go into emergency foster care. It could be months before they’re reunited again.” Clare heard a woof and opened the door for Oscar.
“What’s going to become of the baby if her husband beats her up?”
“We’re going to stop that from happening.
” Clare lifted Ethan from his high chair.
“If you and I go up there to get Tiny and Rose, we’re just a couple of harmless do-gooders.
We’re not any threat to their plan, whatever it might be.
But if we call the cops, we’re going to get a lone Essex County Sheriff’s deputy, and how do you think the militia members are going to react to that? ”
Yíxīn sighed. “Not well. Not well at all.”
“Let me change out of my clericals and call my friend Karen. She goes to my church and her little boy loves Ethan. If she can watch him, we can be on the road in ten minutes.” Baby on hip, Clare pushed through the swinging doors into the living room. The lawyer followed.
“The Essex County deputy could get there a lot quicker.”
Clare headed toward the stairs. “One person. If you’re going to confront these guys with cops, you need a force in strength, not one individual.
And you don’t have any solid proof that would justify the sheriff’s department or the state police to do so.
I don’t think you realize how stretched thin law enforcement is in the North Country. ”
“If that’s the case, how come you’re not worried about your husband?”
Clare turned. “Because Russ can take care of himself. And because, thank God, he’s not a cop anymore.”