Chapter 34
“No,no, no, I don’t believe it … Oh my God … really?…No…if she did it, is someone coming after her for revenge now?” The whole ride to the lodge, Charlie went back and forth like that. Nick focused on the road while she processed his theory. At one point, he had to swerve to avoid a moose wandering across the road; Charlie barely reacted.
“Okay, assuming it’s true,” she finally said. “How do you think she did it?”
“Knocked him out and left him to freeze? Knowing that wolves would destroy most of the evidence?”
She shivered. “But why? Pinky said they fought a lot. Do you think he was abusing her?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot going on here. Maybe it was a love triangle with Vasily.”
“Oooh, juicy.”
“I’m just throwing out ideas here,” he said with a snort. “Maybe she wanted Fire Peak to herself. Or maybe it was an accident.”
“Or maybe she didn’t do it.”
“Of course. We don’t know anything, it’s just a theory.” He thought about the safe and all the documents they’d found. “You said you read Chadwick’s journal entries, right? Did anything jump out from those?”
“Well, mostly he seemed to be losing his marbles. There was a lot of political stuff in there, ranting about private property and so forth. Ironic, since he was from such a wealthy family. But April said they were rebels looking for a different kind of life.”
Nick glanced over at her, unsure if he’d see more of that icy distance, or the softening that had happened after their showdown with Solomon. Neither, it seemed. Charlie was completely wrapped up in figuring out this forty-five-year-old mystery.
That was how it was with Charlie. Two steps forward, one step back. Nick was getting used to the pattern by now. He was patient. He could work with it.
“So what about strike one and two?” Charlie asked, gazing out the window as they reached the first slope of Fire Peak. “Is someone threatening April?”
“Maybe, but to me it feels more like blackmail. Like someone wants something from her, and they’re putting on the pressure.”
Charlie snapped her fingers, then pulled out her phone.
“No service,” he reminded her.
“No, what you just said made me think of the Chechen couple outside the camper.” She found the recording and read aloud the translation.
“Vasily wants to turn up the heat. The woman is dragging her feet.”
“We need to be patient. Why is he being so crazy?”
“There’s a history. But we need Vasily. Without him, we have nothing. What can we do?”
“We can find out…Shhh. What’s that noise?”
“This sounds to me like they’re blackmailing April, and the younger two wanted to learn more about Vasily’s history here, that’s why the man was hanging out at The Fang. That’s why he jumped you.”
“There you go. That’s brilliant deducing right there.” Nick grinned and offered his hand for a high-five, or perhaps more of a side-five. She went along with it, then pulled away quickly.
“A high-five doesn’t mean we’re okay.”
“Got it.” He returned his hand to the steering wheel.
“I mean, I’m grateful. I understand that you protected my dad and possibly kept me out of jail. Don’t think I don’t see that.”
Sunshine gleamed on her hair, but no smile curved her lips. He wanted her smile back, her sassiness, her freewheeling humor, her bright energy. He wanted everything about her.
So he needed to be totally, completely honest.
“It was Hailey,” he said softly. “She likes you almost as much as I do. I didn’t want?—”
She went as stiff as one of the spruce trees whipping past them. “I get it. You didn’t want a bad influence. Understandable. Say no more.”
“Charlie, that’s not exactly?—”
“I said I get it. It’s okay. We’re just fooling around anyway. Look, there’s the lodge. Let’s move on.”
Goddamnit. He wanted to explain more, say how much she meant to him, how incredible she was, how it wasn’t just fooling around for him, how uncertain he was about how to be a father to Hailey…but it was all so hard to express while they were bouncing in a Jeep up a mountain road on their way to interrogate a murder suspect.
“To be continued,” he said, but she gave no answer to that.
They found April weeding in the clear plastic “high-tunnel” greenhouse, fifty yards of protected space filled with raised beds of herbs and vegetables. The air smelled of fresh earth and tomato plants, a fragrant haven of growing things.
“Don’t let the rabbits in,” she called as they made their way past rows of basil and bok choi and salad greens. “One got in last night and ate half my cabbage.”
She straightened up as they reached her, and her gaze swept across Charlie. “You’re walking better. Maybe you ought to be back at work.”
Clearly, April was in a mood. Nick couldn’t blame her, if she was being blackmailed.
On the other hand, if she was being blackmailed, that meant she’d done something bad, and he shouldn’t be so sympathetic.
It was just a theory, he reminded himself. He shot Charlie a glance, letting her know she could take the lead here. She had a relationship with April, and he didn’t.
“I’m feeling a lot better, thanks, April. And I will get back to work.” Charlie hauled in a long breath of moist greenhouse air. “But first we have to warn you about something.”
April cocked her head, looking wary but not especially alarmed.
“Nick got attacked last night over a photo of, well…of Chadwick Tudor. That’s Bulldog, right?”
Although April showed no visible reaction, Nick noticed that she gripped that trowel so tightly her knuckles went white.
“It was the Chechen guy, one of the ones shooting arrows at us,” Charlie continued. “But Nick and I…well, we’ve come to the conclusion that we’re just collateral damage here. They’re after you.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I can handle myself.”
Ever the tough Alaskan.
“April, if they’re blackmailing you for that perilium?—”
Finally, a reaction. “What do you know about that?” She pulled herself upright and even though she was barely five feet tall, Nick felt the power of her will. She didn’t need a weapon or the trowel she still held, or any such prop. All on her own, she was a force to be reckoned with.
Charlie shot a glance at Nick, maybe wondering how much they should reveal.
“We know there’s some of it around, probably on Fire Peak land,” he said.
“No one is going to build a mine here. Some of the richest people in the world have spent time at this lodge. It’s the most exclusive spot in the Wrangells.”
“Wait a minute here…” Charlie narrowed her eyes at her short-but-mighty boss. “Now it all makes sense to me.”
April scratched the side of her head with the trowel. Nick gave her extra points for Alaska style. “What are you talking about?”
“You knew there was a potentially valuable mineral here, but you didn’t want it to be mined. You didn’t want history to repeat itself. That’s why you built this lodge the way you did, so expensive and upscale. It couldn’t be just an average inn or BB. You know your people, you know what they like. The more high-end something is, the more untouchable it is. Once you get the upper-crust involved, it’s the whole NIMBY thing. Not in my backyard. That’s why you stuck around here and built the lodge, even though you don’t even like all those one-percenter guests.”
April punched a finger toward Charlie’s face. Nick stiffened, ready to intervene, but she didn’t make contact.
“Yes, that’s why I built it. So what?”
“Don’t you see the irony?” Charlie gave her a rueful smile. “You did what the Whitfields always do, parachute in, stake your claim, keep all the profit for yourself.”
April’s face turned a slow, deep red. “I’m nothing like those vultures,” she spat. “I’m trying to preserve this place.”
“But someone wants to develop a mine, don’t they?” Charlie took a half-step toward her. “They’re threatening you. They’ve been spying on you, planting listening devices. Throwing smoke bombs. They’re turning up the pressure on you. It’s Vasily, isn’t it? He has some kind of hold over you.”
Finally, April looked flustered. “I…no, no. Just stop.”
Nick bit his tongue so as not to interrupt. Charlie was on a roll here, and he didn’t want to stop her flow. Go for the jugular…do it…
“Vasily was here back in the old days, right? Was he a friend? Lover? Did he know about the perilium?”
April stared stonily at her and gave no answer.
Nick dug around in his pocket for the notarized agreement between Chadwick and Vasily. He handed it to Charlie, who presented it to April. “Looks like he knew there was some valuable mineral in Fire Peak. Now he wants his share.”
April tried to snatch the document from Charlie, but she held it out of reach, then handed it back to Nick.
“Where did you find that?” the older woman asked in a thread of a voice.
Charlie held firm. “Tell me who Vasily is.”
“He…he was Bulldog’s friend. They hunted elk together. Fished, sometimes.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No.”
“Talked to him?”
“No.”
“Is he pressuring you in any way?”
“No.”
Nick thought she was probably telling the truth, but he also thought she was perfectly capable of lying if that suited her.
Visibly frustrated, Charlie switched gears. “Why did you get rid of the smoke bomb? Why won’t you let us help you?”
“Stop. Just stop,” April ordered her. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Just walk away from all this. It’s not your business.”
They were close. Nick could feel it. Come on, Charlie.
Charlie hauled in another breath; he knew this wasn’t easy for her, with her affection for April. “Was Vasily there when it happened? Is that it? Does Vasily know what you did?”
April didn’t answer. She watched Charlie like a mouse waiting for the cat to pounce.
“Vasily knows you killed Bulldog and now he’s blackmailing you so he can get access to the perilium, isn’t he?”
After a moment of stunned astonishment, April burst out laughing. Then she spun on her heel and walked a few steps down the dirt path between garden beds.
Nick felt Charlie’s hand twine into his. He squeezed it. Whether in approval or comfort, he didn’t know which.
Finally April turned around to face them. She gazed at them without any visible emotion, although she still held on to that trowel for dear life.
“I didn’t kill Bulldog. If I was being blackmailed, it’s not your concern, because it won’t work. There will be no mine here. I’ll die first.”
The four-wheeler hada freaking flat tire. Hailey and the kid—Eric, his name was—only got about ten yards before the machine clunked to a stop. They both climbed off and stared at the thick treads of an entirely flat passenger side tire.
“How does that even happen?” wondered Hailey. “Did you run over, like, a butcher knife?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Eric cried. “It happened when I was talking to you.”
That seemed odd, but the amount that she knew about tires could fit into a microdot. “Well, whatever. Let’s just walk. We can stop at Gunnar’s on the way and maybe he can fix it, or tow it or something.”
Secretly, she didn’t mind a stop at the hot Viking mechanic’s place. On sunny days, he liked to work outside with his shirt off and she found that pretty mesmerizing.
They set off down the road, walking single file so they could stay out of the dust clouds of passing vehicles, with Eric right ahead of her. Hailey was very curious about the Chilkoot clan, having heard so many stories about them since she’d gotten here. Before the big bust, some of the kids hadn’t even gone to school, like Elias, who was just now learning how to read.
“What were you and Elias doing when the bad man grabbed him?” she asked him.
“Nothing. I mean, nothing bad. We were looking for rocks,” he added, hanging his head. “We’re not supposed to do that.”
“What’s wrong with looking for rocks?”
“I don’t know. We’re just not supposed to.”
She knew that the Chilkoots used to have a lot of rules, some of them based on survival, since they lived completely off-grid, but some based on the quirky beliefs of the clan’s patriarch and matriarch.
“So why were you? Just trying to make a little mischief?”
“Last night I woke up because there were people yelling. A man was shouting at Ruth, and she was crying. She kept saying ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, leave us alone.’ He said we had to help him or he’d call the FBI on us again. We hate the FBI.”
Hailey knew about the FBI raid on the Chilkoots, but she didn’t know much about it. “What else did you hear?”
“Something about Fire Peak. The last thing he said was, don’t touch that rock or I’ll have your head. He sounded really mean.”
“Rock? That’s weird. What was he talking about?”
“These special rocks in the cave, they’re really soft and pretty, like silver. But you aren’t supposed to touch them. They’re poisonous and dangerous, and you can’t even talk about them. I was scared, but I knew Elias would know what to do. So I took the four-wheeler and went and found him. We went to the creek that comes down from Fire Peak, just to see if something had changed with the rocks. That’s when the bad man got Elias.”
“Same man that you heard yelling about the rocks?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. He just hit him on the head. Elias yelled at me to take the four-wheeler and get help. Then he went…” Eric made a toppling over gesture with his head. “On the ground.”
Hailey was so immersed in this story that she hadn’t noticed the rumble of a truck pulling up next to them. A man with a jolly grin and his gray hair in a ponytail rolled down the window and called out to them.
“You kids need a lift?” He spoke with a trace of an accent, but she couldn’t place it.
With a squeal, Eric pelted down the road, yelling as he ran,“It’s him!”
Hailey ran after him, but the truck swerved into her path and blocked her. She turned around to flee back toward the rental cabin. The man jumped out and came around the back, moving so quickly it shocked her. He might be old, but he was strong and fast.
He didn’t lay a hand on her, just folded his arms across his chest and grinned down at her. A grim grin this time, not a jolly one.
“Looking for Elias? Get in.”
When she didn’t move, he opened his jacket, revealing a holster attached to his belt. A gun. Holy shit. This was really happening. She was being freaking kidnapped.
“I’m not going to hurt you, kid. Just get in.”
She got into the truck. That was when she saw the fur coat tossed onto the backseat. Fur coat, gray hair. The man from the woods.