Chapter 23
23
They left Renata McBurney’s office in a daze—or at least Ruth did. Gunnar seemed to be on a mission. He practically ran to the truck and turned on the ignition before Ruth had even closed the door.
“What are we doing? Where are we going? What should we do? Are we backing off?”
“First things first. I’m getting a phone.”
They drove to the Anchorage mall, where Gunnar made what was probably the quickest purchase of a smartphone and a phone plan the salesperson had ever witnessed. She showed him how to access the Internet on it, and a few moments later they were back in the truck and he was punching keys like a madman.
“I’m tired of relying on other people for information,” he explained as he downloaded app after app.
“Don’t you think we should go home?” She glanced nervously at the pedestrians passing their truck, which was parked on a busy street right outside the mall. “It seems like someone was sending us a message, don’t you think? Back off?”
“Yes. I do think that. But I don’t like mysterious messages bossing me around.” He looked angry, a feeling she understood, but didn’t share. She was too busy feeling scared to get angry. “Okay, my translation app is in. Say that stuff again, the language you overheard Luke speaking.”
“Oh lord, Gunnar, I don’t even know if I’m remembering it accurately. We can’t rely on that!”
“I’m not relying on it, I’m just curious. Maybe it’ll tell us something. Maybe it won’t, but it won’t hurt to try, will it?”
She couldn’t think of a reason why it would, so she summoned the memory of that time so long ago—maybe fifteen years ago—when she’d hovered like a mouse outside the kitchen entrance, the planks of the wall cool against her face, anxiety in her belly.
That was why she’d had a stomachache, she realized now. Always anxious. So anxious.
She uttered the sounds she remembered out loud, then adjusted them because they weren’t quite right.
“That’s it?” Gunnar asked.
She nodded. “As best as I can recall.”
He looked at the results on his phone. “Norwegian.”
Norwegian. Norwegian? Why on earth would Luke be speaking Norwegian to a strange man in their kitchen? “Play some more Norwegian. Like some curse words. I always thought Luke was cursing when he talked to the cows and horses.”
He found some Norwegian cursing. Some of it sounded familiar, but not all of it.
“Has Luke ever said anything about Norway?” he asked her. “Is it possible that he’s from there?”
“I don’t remember ever hearing the word ‘Norway.’ But I suppose anything is possible.” She shrugged helplessly. “But wouldn’t he have an accent if he was from Norway?”
“I’ve met a few Norwegians and none of them ever had much of an accent. “They sound British, if anything. Some of them sounded just like Americans. They learn English very early on there.”
This was all so strange, so surreal. “Is Chilkoot a Norwegian name?”
“Definitely not.” He performed another search on his phone, then read aloud. “‘Chilkoot comes from the Tlinkit, from the Chilkoot Trail, which was a passageway into the Wrangells that only they knew about until they decided it would be in their best interest to share it with Westerners for trading purposes.’ I bet Luke and Naomi adopted that name because it sounds Alaskan, so it made them seem like locals. They’re scammers, right? Didn’t it turn out that they were wanted in other states for fraud and so forth?”
She winced at the reminder. “I think those charges were dropped, but you’re right. In Firelight Ridge, no one cares what name you use. And they always treated it like a clan name rather than a family name. People who came to live with us would call themselves Chilkoots too. It’s like…”
“The Crips and the Bloods. The Sharks and the Jets.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she nodded anyway, since clearly he understood what she meant. “I wonder what their real name is? What my name is?” She gave a quick gasp. “Am I Norwegian too?”
Gunnar cocked his head at her. “I dated a Norwegian girl one summer, and she told me that I look Norwegian to her. She was surprised when I said I was just plain old American.”
“Maybe you’re Norwegian too. Where does the name Amundsen come from?”
“I don’t know. Dad never said anything about where we come from. He said his parents were both dead, and I don’t remember anything about any brothers or sisters either. It was always just us.”
“And Bridget?”
“Yeah, his first marriage and my half-sister, he talked about them, but I hardly saw Bridget at all. She’s a little older, and they lived in Seattle, and…” He scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Fuck it. I’m going to Google my dad.”
His search for Anthony Amundsen turned up nothing useful whatsoever, unless his father doubled as a taxidermist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which, at this point, they couldn’t dismiss as a possibility. “Why does my father have to be such a damn mystery?”
“Is it because he was in the Special Forces?” Ruth wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but maybe you had to be very secretive to do that job.
“The hell if I know.” He tossed the phone back on the dashboard. “Even if Luke has some connection to Norway, so what? That doesn’t even tell us anything.”
Ruth felt the frustration rising from him like steam. “Maybe we’ve learned all we can here in Anchorage. Maybe we should get home.”
“It feels like giving in.”
“It isn’t. We have a mission, remember? Kelly asked us to find out who’s hanging out at the compound. After that we could go to Thunder Pass and look for your dad’s cabin.”
His face lit up. Gunnar, she realized, was someone who needed a concrete course of action—a quest. “Let’s do it.” He started the truck, which gave a roar as if it was just as thrilled to have a plan as Gunnar.
“Before we head back, can we make one more quick stop at the correctional center?” she asked. She had her own quest, after all.
At the Hiland Correctional Center, Gunnar waited in the truck, looking up facts about Norway, while she went in to see Naomi again. She had the drill down by now, and no longer felt that she needed an emotional bodyguard.
“You’re back,” Naomi said flatly, showing no emotion other than wariness. “Where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s outside,” Ruth responded, then turned pink as she realized she’d automatically begun thinking of Gunnar that way, with no discussion between them. Was she repeating the same mistake she’d made before? “And he’s not my boyfriend.”
Naomi shrugged one shoulder, as if it didn’t matter to her one way or the other. It occurred to Ruth in that moment that there was something wrong with her mother. Shouldn’t she be more interested in what her daughter was doing and feeling and thinking? Why was she so removed, so indifferent? Was she really that selfish? Now that Gunnar had a smartphone, maybe she could Google psychological disorders.
“What connection do we have to Norway?” she asked abruptly, hoping to surprise her.
A quick flash of something crossed her mother’s face, but it was gone too quickly for Ruth to identify it. “I can’t answer any more of your questions. You should go back to Firelight Ridge and mind your sheep.”
Sheep. Had she told Naomi about staying at Martha’s? No, she hadn’t.
“Did someone tell you not to talk to me anymore?”
That question got no more of an answer than her first one. But she didn’t need an explicit answer; clearly someone had. Luke? Soraya? Soraya was being held in this same facility. Should she try to talk to her sister? Soraya had always hated her, so she doubted there was much point to that.
“Maybe I’ll see what Soraya says.”
Naomi made a face. “Good luck with that.” She glanced at the guard, apparently ready to end the visit, even though Ruth had just sat down. Her whole demeanor was so different from the last visit. Something had definitely happened between then and now.
She thought about Luke’s recent behavior at the compound, the way he was clamping down, and the fact that he hadn’t come after her and Sarah. As if he was purging the place of anyone he suspected of being less than completely loyal. Now he was trying to shut up Naomi, his wife of thirty years. Was he just being paranoid? What secret was he protecting? How many people were helping him, and how high up were they?
Gunnar’s truck. Someone had tried to tamper with it. It could have exploded. What was so important that they needed to be scared off?
A cold trickle of fear slid down her spine. She leaned forward, earning a sharp glance from the nearest guard. “Listen, Naomi. I don’t know what is going on at the compound, and I don’t really care, except for the children. Noah, Jeb, Sammie, Miller, Lilith, Seth, Mercy, Annie, Kirk, they’re all still there.” She carefully pronounced each child’s name in the hopes that the memory would soften her mother’s heart. “Do I need to be worried for them? Are they going to be in any danger?”
Naomi’s lips tightened to a line of white. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to talk to Soraya. But she won’t see you, I can guarantee that.”
“So something dangerous is going on, and Soraya knows about it?”
“Maybe,” was Naomi’s grudging answer. “But I’m speculating, because like I said, I’m on the outside now.”
“You said he’s working with someone else. Do you have any idea who? Any tiny little bit of information would help. For the kids, Naomi. I know you’re not heartless.”
Naomi snorted. “You have a soft heart. I always wondered where you got that from. But you have to be strong, Ruth. I tried to teach you that.”
“I am strong.” The words themselves filled her with conviction. “That’s why I’m here. Tell me. Who is Luke working with?”
“You think I know?” After a long pause, Naomi slid a sidelong glance at the guard, making sure she was occupied with someone else. “Follow the money. That’s all I can say,” she whispered.
“What money?” Ruth whispered back. “We never had any money. How did Luke buy the land? Where did that money come from?”
“Good questions. Better question…why that land?”
“Yes! Why?”
The guard appeared at their table. “Time’s up.”
“Wait!” Ruth dug in her pocket for the repurposed Post-It note. “This is Gunnar’s smartphone number. If you think of anything else, call it.”
Naomi took the Post-It, and a moment later she was gone, her straight back disappearing out the door.
In a last-ditch effort to get something more out of this visit, Ruth asked the guard at the front desk if she could visit Soraya Chilkoot, too.
As Naomi had predicted, Soraya refused to see her.