Chapter 97
NINETY-SEVEN
Midnight Ridge
Cord shook his head at the number of people on the mountain tonight. A disaster waiting to happen.
He wanted to order them to go home, stay inside until conditions on the mountain were safe, the storm had stopped and the temperature rose a few degrees.
He had, in fact, stopped families and advised them and most had listened.
But the Believers insisted the higher powers above would protect them and that the missing girl Dana Jo and the two little girls who’d been abducted needed all the prayers and strength they could offer.
The more they believed, the louder they chanted and sang.
He and his team had roped off the trail that led to the top of the ridge and one of them was guarding it, refusing to let anyone attempt the treacherous icy path uphill where the conditions worsened with every minute.
He approached two of the leaders of the Believers, older women named Faith and Ester.
“Ladies, I really need you to head home,” Cord advised. Fuck, the two were so frail and their bones brittle with age, that heavy wind gusts might literally blow them off the mountain.
“We will once the prayer vigil is over,” Ester said. “I grew up here and I know the power of prayer.”
“And trust,” Faith said. “Those little girls need us and we won’t let them down.”
“I appreciate you wanting to help,” Cord said as gently as he could. The two women meant well and that was more than some. “But my job is to protect you. You can come back once the storm is over and pick up where you left off.”
“But then it might be too late,” Ester said in a raw whisper.
Faith peered up the hill into the white blur, lifting a candle in the darkness. “Oh, my word, is that a light up yonder at that old lodge?”
Ester jerked her head up, and Cord peered toward the mountain peak, narrowing his eyes for better visibility through the snowy haze.
“Ain’t nobody been up at that place in years,” Faith said.
“Not since that woman died on that ridge twenty years ago,” Ester murmured.
“What happened?” Cord asked.
Ester perked up, eager to tell the story. “Well, the Wheaton family owned the lodge and tried to make a go of it. But then they had a little boy and things took a nasty turn.”
Cord angled his head toward the area where the lodge stood. The women were right. A faint light was shimmering through the fog of the snow. “What do you mean, they took a nasty turn?”
“There were all kinds of rumors about the boy,” Ester said. “Some said they could hear the mother and kid fighting and screaming. They thought the mama was too hard on him. But…” Ester’s voice broke off.
“But other people said the poor woman was at her wit’s end as how to handle him. That he was as mean as a snake.”
“Tell me more,” Cord said.
Ester glanced at Faith. “Well, some insisted the boy was crazy. That they saw him killing animals. That he liked to trap the crows, then hack them up with an ax.”
“And once schoolteachers got freaked out because he brought some of the feathers to school with blood still on them.”
Cord didn’t like the picture they painted. “What happened?” he asked as he studied the faint light again. Was someone in the lodge now?
Ester lifted her candle toward the mountain where the abandoned lodge sat. “Well, nobody really knows. But the father confessed to pushing his wife off the ridge because she was hurting the boy.”
The fact that the woman died at the ridge raised the hair on Cord’s arms. “You said their names were Wheaton?” None of their suspects in the current investigation had the last name Wheaton.
“Yeah, Larry and Franny,” Ester said. “Believe the boy’s name was Wally.”
Another gust of wind howled off the mountain and loose limbs tumbled across the snow. One struck Faith in her leg and she winced.
“Ladies, if you want to say a prayer with your group, please do so very quickly and send everyone home before someone gets hurt. I don’t want to have another team out here in the morning digging people up from being buried in the snow.”
For the first time since he’d warned him, the ladies looked around at the accumulation and seemed to take him seriously. “All right. We’ll just pray you find those children and that missing mama.”
They held hands and waddled back to the group, candles held high.
Cord’s gaze swung toward the light at that lodge. Maybe someone out here was trapped or lost and found the lodge and went inside to escape the elements. That made sense.
Except the lodge had been deserted for years as Ester said. Another murder had occurred up here. A troubled family? A history of death on the mountain? Rumors about a child killing animals…
With a predator on the loose and a woman and two children still missing, he started toward the lodge.