Chapter 20
Spence was yawning as he stepped outside, but it cut off with an awkward cough when he realized he’d almost walked into his father’s fist, raised to knock on his door.
He’d come home for a shower, a change of clothes, had almost dived into his bed for a nap, but told himself the shut-eye he’d caught in the reclining chair at Hetty’s bedside would have to be enough.
He needed to get back there. He didn’t like being gone even this long.
He’d only left because she’d had a physical therapy session.
She was working hard at getting back on her feet, but she was going to be needing those crutches they’d given her for a while, no matter how much she obviously hated them.
Belatedly, he realized his father was holding out a bright blue mug with the familiar Roaster’s logo.
The café down on Main Street had the best coffee around, probably because it roasted its own beans.
It was a standing joke among the locals of Shelby that you could always tell a tourist because they were drinking from one of the Roaster’s paper cups instead of the refillable mugs all the regulars had.
But right now, all Spence cared about was the smell of that coffee and the caffeine jolt it promised. He grabbed it gratefully and his father let him take a long sip before he said, “We need to talk.”
There was a grim undertone to the voice and Spence wondered if he had enough energy left to brace himself for whatever was coming.
He stood aside for his dad to enter and they walked over to sit at the small dining table he rarely used.
He waited. When his father didn’t speak, he finally gave him a wry one-sided smile and said, “Just hit me with it, Dad.”
Ryan Colton nodded. “All right. Two things. Chuck says there was a partial cut of the line to the fuel pump, which is why it only gave out when it tried to turn on for the controlled landing. And a piece that was cut off the line, he thinks maybe accidentally since it was just floating loose, blocked the fuel intake from the wing tanks.”
That made sense, to him anyway. Hetty would be the one to really ask, but he didn’t want her getting all wound up about that yet. Time enough when she was well enough to be released from the hospital.
“And second,” Dad went on, “there may be a connection between RTA and your shooter.”
Spence blinked. He remembered Eli’s question and wondered at the instincts his cousin had developed that got him places long before anyone else. “What connection?”
“It’s not certain, just a possibility,” Dad cautioned. “In fact, it’s a pretty slim possibility.”
“Nothing in the last four—no, five—days has been certain,” he said, his tone a little sour. “Just tell me.”
“Well, you can thank your sister for this one…” his father began.
Spence drew back slightly. “Kansas?” Search and rescue was her bailiwick, and she was one of the best at it, but why would she have gotten involved with this, after the fact? “What did she find?”
A brief smile flashed across his father’s face. “This time it’s not what she found, it’s what she thought of. Something no one else did. She called a friend of hers who’s a cop in Portland.”
Portland. Where the newlyweds who had canceled were from. So, both his sister and Eli had made the mental jump. He supposed that’s what happened when you were in their line of work, your mind naturally went there.
“She’d be here to tell you herself but she got a call on a job over in Chugach,” Dad went on, referring to the state park just down and across the sound from them.
“Anyway, it turns out the new hubby’s ex-wife is quite the piece of work.
She’s well known to the officers assigned to the district your couple lives in.
Several domestic incidents with her on file. ”
That threw a whole different light on things. He frowned. “Hetty’s positive the shooter was a guy, and I don’t think she’d misjudge that. Which would mean…what?”
Dad gave a single-shouldered shrug and a shake of his head. “No idea. Friend? Relative?”
“Or…she hired someone,” Spence said, feeling a little silly even saying it. Who on earth would hire a…a hitman to try and take out your ex? A lot of people. You know that.
“That did occur to me,” Dad said grimly.
The pieces were tumbling around in his head. “But why would he come after us if the ex is the target? Not like he could mistake us for them. And is the guy who tampered with the plane also the shooter? Did he follow us out there? How else could he even have known where we were going?”
“Slow down there, son. One step at a time. How long were you there before it all started?”
“A couple of hours, maybe.”
“Enough time for somebody to get there,” Dad said. “But that’d pretty much mean it has to be a local, because some guy from Portland isn’t going to be able to just find his way out there.”
“Unless he hired somebody to take him there,” Spence said.
“Good point,” Dad admitted. “I think I’ll head down to the marina and ask around a bit before I get you back to Wasilla. Maybe I can find something.”
“Aren’t the cops supposed to be doing that?” Spence asked, grateful that he didn’t have to explain to his father than he had to get back to Hetty. That he was already restless and nervous being away from her.
“There’s only so many of them,” Dad said. “Shelby PD is small, and you know how strapped Bobby Reynolds always says they are. Besides, this is kind of a wild hair that might well be a dead end.”
“Yeah,” Spence agreed, even though his brain was latching onto the idea as the most logical. It made more sense to him than some random guy out there just taking it in his head to shoot at a couple of total strangers.
But if it was true, what did it mean? That he didn’t know what his targets looked like and thought they were the couple? He and Hetty?
If only.
Spence mentally stomped on the urge to pour out what had happened up in the cave that night to his dad.
He wasn’t ready for that, wouldn’t be until he and Hetty had a chance to talk without family, friends and an entire medical staff lurking about.
But setting that aside—which took more of an effort than he was used to—and after Dad had left to head down to the marina, he thought it through.
The ex hired a guy. If she’d somehow found a local, that answered the next few questions.
Otherwise, she’d hired someone from Portland who’d came up here.
Either the woman had to have known her ex had booked with RTA, or maybe the hitman had found out somehow.
It wasn’t like they’d kept everything secret.
In fact, Lakin, in all her cleverness, had arranged some newlywed-type trappings from local suppliers for the trip, so it could easily have gotten out that they’d had a booking of that kind.
So, he tried tampering with the plane, but didn’t know enough about them to realize that a broken fuel pump wouldn’t bring down a gravity-fed system. And what? Got lucky that he had managed to do some damage that later did bring it down, as things had shifted during the flight?
He pushed that aside and went back to visualizing the plan.
So, the plane was not supposed to land safely—Didn’t count on Hetty being as good as she is, did you, jackass?
—and the guy went to their destination just to be sure it didn’t?
To make sure he’d completed the job? How, by searching the wreckage for bodies?
Or if his sabotage effort had worked, would he have just assumed when they hadn’t arrived that it was mission accomplished, that they were down in deep water and beyond help or rescue?
And then what? He sees the plane land safely—thanks to its stellar pilot—but then realizes his quarry was never aboard and…
what? Panics? Decides he has to kill them anyway?
Or maybe he had just been trying to drive them away so he could escape unseen.
That made more sense. Except, Hetty had seen him, which had changed everything.
He wouldn’t want to leave a witness behind, so he’d started to hunt her, and Spence because he was with her. Was that it?
He gave a sharp shake of his head. It was crazy. The whole freaking thing was crazy. The only thing he was really sure of was that the shooter knew Hetty had seen him, which was why he’d tried to take her out so many times. And had come too damned close to succeeding.
Frankly, for him, that was all the certainty he needed. And as soon as Hetty was well enough, he was going to see to it that the guy never had a chance to try again, if he had to go out there and hunt him down himself.
Spence suddenly understood how his parents and his aunt and uncle had found the courage to leave everything they’d known behind and move here to Alaska, changing their lives in so many ways.
Because this had already changed him, somewhere deep inside.
Between finding that half-buried body and nearly losing the woman he’d finally admitted he cared so much for, he was feeling a bit beyond fierce.
He’d never hunted a man before. But all it took was the image of Hetty hooked up to every medical machine he could imagine, barely clinging to life, to convince him that he not only could but would.