57 - Kodiak
57
Kodiak
—
The last three days have been the happiest in memory. I could spend the rest of my life in bed with Frankie and my brothers. I don’t want to give it up. The world outside can wait.
But it seems the world has other plans.
Frankie’s phone buzzes, the sound cutting through the tranquil morning. She answers it, and her expression changes, a collision of concern and determination hardening her features.
She hangs up, scrambles from our tangle of naked bodies, and hurries into the walk-in closet.
“A cruise ship docked in port,” she shouts from behind the door. “Half of the passengers have the stomach flu.” She breezes out, her mind on a mission as she drags on her scrubs mid-stride. “They didn’t know they were infected until after they carried it into our town. The hospital is overrun, and they need all hands on deck. I have to go.”
All three of us shoot up in the bed.
“Frankie, no.” A knot tightens in my stomach.
“We just got you back.” Leo climbs out and prowls toward her, shamelessly nude. “We’re not letting you go.”
He grabs her, buries his nose in her neck, and presses his hips against her.
“Put that thing away.” She laughs, pushing against his stomach. “I’m serious.”
Monty swings his legs over the side of the bed and braces his elbows on his knees.
Voice hard, he gives her his stoniest expression. “How do we change your mind?”
Her green eyes soften as she treads to him and cups his unshaven jaw. “You handsome devil, how many times have we argued about this over the years? How many times have I changed my mind?” She kisses the angry slash of his lips. “This is my career. My purpose outside of this room. I know you all understand that.”
I do understand. I have my distillery, my own sense of purpose, and hard work. I never want to hold her back, but the fear of losing her is a snarling, rabid beast inside me.
“We’ll go with you.” Leo paces around her, flexing his hands.
“What part of stomach flu do you not understand? It’s contagious.” She pulls on her sneakers. “You’re staying here, all of you, until this is under control.”
I know we won’t win this. Leaving the bed, I remove a pair of lounge pants from Monty’s dresser and drag them on.
“What about you? You’re exposing yourself to this thing.” Leo walks through the room, gathering her hair ties, earbuds, coat, and purse.
“Risks of the job. But we wear PPE to minimize exposure.” She takes his face in her hands, halting his movements. “I’ll come back. I promise.”
“Holding you to that, love.” He helps her get ready in silent concentration, handling her gently as if she’s flammable.
He’s the one who’s close to combustion. His tenderness disguises the Molotov cocktail blazing beneath his skin.
“You’re not going alone.” Monty snags a pair of sweatpants from the floor and hauls them on. “You’ll take a security team.”
She nods, knowing it’s the only way we’ll let her leave.
“This isn’t going to wrap up in a day. I’ll be there for a while, working long shifts and taking naps when I can. Promise me you’ll all stay here.” She looks each of us in the eye. “Don’t go into town and risk getting sick.”
Monty stares at her, silent for a moment before nodding stiffly. “We’ll stay. But you need to promise to stay safe, too.”
“I promise.” She kisses him then Leo. Then turns to me.
“I’ll walk you out.” I shove my feet into Monty’s sliders.
With a small smile, she heads to the door.
“Frankie.” Monty grabs her phone where she left it on the bed. “Forgetting something?”
“Shit.” She spins back and takes it from him.
“This is a new phone,” he says.
“It is?” She stares at it, eyebrows pinched. “Looks the same.”
“Same model. After you left, I spent a lot of time thinking. How does the stalker know so much about you? It’s like they can hear your conversations and see where you are.”
Her eyes widen.
“I’ve been monitoring your phone for five months.” He rests his hands on his hips. “I scan it for bugs and dig for hidden software constantly. But I’m not a forensics analyst. So while you were gone, I bought a new phone.” He nods at the one in her hand.
“And you sent my other one to your forensics team?”
He nods.
“When?” she asks.
“The day after you returned. I swapped them out and shipped off the old one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was waiting until the analysis came back. Didn’t want to worry you. But you’re leaving with it and need to know. I manually installed everything on that one and might’ve missed something. I didn’t want you to freak out if I didn’t set it up correctly.”
“This one has the GPS tracker, too?”
“Of course.” He strokes his thumb across her cheekbone. “Come back to us, darling.”
“I will.”
I follow her out.
A perpetual drizzle mists our rainforest island in a fine sheen, clinging to my skin.
Our island.
Monty has spent the past three days pounding the concept of all in into our heads. Everything that belonged to him is now ours .
Frankie is ours.
I walk her to her cruiser, my heart heavy. She’s going back into danger, and I fucking hate it.
Up ahead, the guards are already assembled on the dock.
“Your shoe is untied.” I stop her with a hand on her back.
As she bends at the waist to lace the strings, I can’t help it. I crouch behind her and shove my nose between her legs.
“Kody.” She whisper-scolds through a laugh, only encouraging me to linger longer.
Inhaling deeply, I scent her through the fabric. It’s not enough to hold me over, but my time is up. As she starts to stand, I sink my teeth into her muscled backside, biting hard enough to bruise.
She yelps, spinning toward me.
I rise to my full height and pull her close. The cherry aroma of her hair, the warmth of her body, everything about her is my oxygen, my nutrients, my lifeblood. “Come back to us.”
“I will.” She kisses me, a lingering, tender kiss that ends too soon.
She boards her boat with her bodyguards and blows me a kiss before steering it away and fading into the gloom.
I ache with loss. It feels wrong to let her go, but I have to trust her, trust she’ll return to us.
An hour later, I sit with my brothers in the den, surrounded by maps, sticky notes, and diagrams. After Frankie’s last session with Doyle, Monty turned this space into a war room. Clues, evidence, suspects, timelines—all the information we have is displayed on the wall in a complex diagram to help us focus and problem-solve.
“We don’t have enough clues.” Monty scans the wall of sticky notes. “The stalker has been too quiet.”
I lower onto the couch beside him. “Every message and morbid gift to Frankie puts this nutjob at risk of getting caught.”
“Why send anything at all?” Leo rubs his head.
“Desire for control and power,” Monty says. “By making us afraid of him, he can savor the perceived power he holds over us.”
“He?” I raise my brows.
“Most serial killers are male,” Monty argues.
“Okay, well, maybe these gifts are also a need for recognition.” My throat works around painful memories. “Denver craved acknowledgment for all the good work he did. He believed he committed all those crimes for us and wanted recognition for it.”
“Good point.” Monty scowls. “It can also be a psychological thrill for this guy. The risk of getting caught is an adrenaline rush.” He turns back to his notes on the wall. “I don’t want more communication from him, but we need it. We need something. The investigation is going stagnant.”
“What are we missing?” I lift the book of Pushkin poems. “Someone put this and the flight logs in Rurik’s house, and the stalker knows about them. There’s a connection we’re not seeing.”
“I agree.” Monty rolls his lips. “I gave Wilson a list of everyone who’s familiar with the estate on Kodiak Island and their connection to it. We need to retrace those threads, no matter how thin.”
“Feels like we’re always a step behind and looking in the wrong direction.” Leo paces the room, chewing on his thumbnail. “It’s like the bastard is dangling red herrings to distract us.”
“He’s toying with us.” Monty looks up, his gaze steady. “We need to be thorough. Every detail matters.”
“I want to hunt.” My fingers flex and release.
“We tried that,” Leo says. “We can’t hunt until we know who we’re hunting.”
“I hate feeling useless.” I let out a grunt of frustration. “Frankie’s out there, risking her life, and we’re stuck here chasing shadows.”
“We’re doing everything we can. We’ll find him. Then we’ll deal with him.” Monty holds my gaze. “The Strakh way.”
The conviction in his tone sets my shoulders. I can’t fucking wait.
I just hope we’re not too late.
We spend the rest of the day picking through clues, making phone calls, and touching base with Wilson. Monty is relentless, driven by the need to protect us all and find the answers.
“Someone out there has a motive.” Monty slumps into the couch, exhaustion edging his voice. “A motive that set this into motion a long time ago.”
Wilson has been painstakingly crosschecking the handwriting on Wolf’s photo against the handwriting of those on our suspect list. So far, there have been no matches. But our suspect list is incomplete.
He’s still pulling names from Rurik’s incriminating ledger. Monty knew it would take an unreasonable amount of man-hours to scrub hundreds of pages of accounting entries, but it’s been three months. It’s taking too damn long.
“What about Alvis Duncan?” Leo leans over the table, reading through our list of suspects. “He kept tabs on Denver for decades. Maybe he knows more than he’s let on.”
“Wilson checked his handwriting, too. No match. And he hasn’t left Whittier in years. He’s a recluse.” Monty frowns. “But we need to dig deeper. Maybe he can identify the stalker?”
“Tell Wilson to send photos of every person on our suspect list to Alvis Duncan. If one of our suspects collected the flight logs from him, he’ll recognize their picture.”
“You’re right.” Monty grabs his phone and makes the call.
It’s late when we finally surrender to exhaustion, retreating to Monty’s bed. It feels empty without Frankie. None of us can sleep, the chill of her absence tormenting us.
She sent us messages throughout the day, updating us on the chaos at the hospital. Her urgent demands to remain where we are only makes the fear more unbearable.
Sprawled on my back between them, I stare at the ceiling. “I miss her already.”
“Me, too.” Monty pats my stomach and leaves his hand resting there. “But she’s strong. She’ll be okay.”
“She’s a fighter,” Leo mumbles.
In the middle of the night, Monty’s phone rings.
He jolts up in bed and answers on speaker. “Wilson?”
“Alvis Duncan is missing.”
“Missing how?” He tenses.
We all go still. No one breathes.
“Don’t know yet,” Wilson says. “I couldn’t get a hold of him, so I sent James up there to Whittier. Alvis and his wife are gone. No signs of packing up. No indication of a struggle, either. But their dinner was still in the oven, burnt to a crisp by the time James arrived.”
The news knocks the wind out of me, leaving me reeling.
Alvis never leaves Whittier. Maybe he had a family emergency.
Maybe he’s the stalker.
Questions whirl through my mind, each one more troubling than the last.
The unease grows as we stare at Monty’s phone in the dark. The connection is there, just out of reach, and we’re running out of time to find it.
“And, Monty…” Wilson lowers his voice. “Frankie’s phone had spyware on it.”