Chapter 32
32
After showing off his new smartphone to Kathy at the general store, Gunnar settled onto the bench, which was squeezed between the chest freezer and racks of rental DVDs, and tried to find some information about “Sergeant Grant.”
He decided to skip the part where he bumbled around, getting nowhere, and cut to the chase by contacting Nelson. If anyone could figure it out, it would be his nephew, and he preferred to keep it in the family instead of reaching out to Charlie.
He sent Bridget an email, since even though Nelson was a whiz at computers, he wasn’t allowed to have his own email address. If people really wanted to control what their kids did online, they should just send them to Firelight Ridge, he thought dryly. They’d be doing precisely nothing online here.
Was that why his father had brought him here? he wondered suddenly. So that he’d never have the opportunity to stumble across something he wasn’t supposed to? It seemed like a stretch—what could be such a threat that it would require such a drastic move?
But nothing made sense anymore, so anything could make sense. If that made sense.
After a blessedly short wait, he got an email back from Bridget.
He’s right here, already tapping away at the keyboard for you. How are you?
Should he tell her he’d seen Jim Kelly, the same man who’d turned up in her car? Was his email being monitored? Was he being too paranoid?
I saw a friend of yours , he wrote. From Florida. We should talk more in private.
She answered with an email that included a link. Invite to an encrypted messaging service recommended by Nelson. Click on the link to make an account.
The last thing he wanted was to download some app he knew nothing about. He should never have gotten this damn smartphone.
Get on it! Bridget emailed next. Got info from Nelson.
With a sigh, Gunnar gave in and clicked on the invite link. In this day and age, was it really possible to completely avoid the Internet and all its new offerings?
With Kathy’s archaic WiFi, the process took some time. While he waited for the app to install itself on his phone, he went back to the aisles and grabbed a package of powdered mini-donuts to take the place of breakfast. He had to wait for someone to complete their transaction at the counter—a man he didn’t recognize—but went ahead and ripped the package open.
As he did so, he noticed something stuffed into the man’s back pocket. It seemed to be a map, hand-drawn, though it was folded so he couldn’t make out what area it showed. Maybe he was a hunter with a map of the best place to find Sitka black-tailed deer. Or maybe it was a map to the general store, who knew?
Except he could see exactly three letters on one side of the fold. T-h-u.
The only place around here that began with those letters was Thunder Pass.
After the man had left—his camouflage baseball cap hiding his face—Gunnar set the opened mini-donuts on the counter and dug out some change from his pocket. A condom almost came with it, but he shoved it back down. “Who was that?” he asked Kathy.
“Customer,” she answered in her blunt, all-business way.
“New in town?”
She shrugged, but he thought there was a “no” behind her stoic expression. She’d seen the man before. He tried a long-shot. “I think I ran into him out in Thunder Pass.”
Her lips thinned. Her eyebrows came together ever so slightly. She knew something about Thunder Pass. As the owner of the only general store in town, she got orders from all sorts of people for all sorts of things. She never shared the details with anyone else. If you ever wanted information about anyone or anything, Kathy would be the last person you would go to.
Which was why the next thing she did shocked him to his core.
She leaned over the counter and whispered, “Don’t go near Thunder Pass.”
“What?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly at first.
“You heard me. You’re a sweet kid. I watched you grow up. You fixed my freezer. Stay away from Thunder Pass.” Kathy was Filipino, but she spoke English perfectly. The fact that she was speaking in staccato sentences with more of an accent than he’d heard from her before, that was a red flag. Clearly something was upsetting her.
“Can you tell me anything more than that? What do you know?”
A flash of fear came over her face. “Nothing. I know nothing.”
“Come on, Kathy. That’s obviously not completely true. There’s something you’ve seen or heard that set off some alarm bells. If you aren’t going to tell me, you should tell someone. Maybe Bear?”
Bear was everyone’s first choice when it came to anything threatening the community.
He watched her wrestle with her innate urge to keep things to herself. Finally she gave in. “They order too many things. So many cans of food. At first I think no problem, money is good. But then I hear one man say to the other, ‘after Thunder Pass, we’ll be home free.’ What do they mean? I don’t know. But you should stay away.”
Gunnar didn’t have any time to ask Kathy more questions about Thunder Pass. Before either of them could say another word, Lila came bursting through the door.
“Gunnar, I had a feeling you’d be here. Ruth needs you.” He caught the suppressed panic in her voice, and immediately forgot everything else. Kathy had already turned back to her cash register, determined, as always, to mind her own business.
“Sarah’s gone,” Lila told him as they hurried out of the store. The late-summer nasturtiums spilled over the rims of the clay planters on either side of the door, the hum of busy bees rising from the blooms. They must be Eve Dotterkind’s, he thought, randomly. No one else around here kept bees.
Strange, the thoughts that passed through your head in a moment of crisis.
“Where’s Ruth?”
“She’s at The Fang. Martha came in looking for Sarah, but no one’s seen her.”
“Did you already ask Kathy?” He made a move to go back inside.
“Martha did earlier. She’s really worried. She said Sarah was supposed to help her with a wool delivery, and never showed up for breakfast. Martha went to look for her, and her bunk hadn’t been slept in. The other woofers had a goodbye party last night, so none of them had seen her.”
Gunnar realized he was walking so fast that Lila was having to practically jog to keep up with him. He slowed his pace, though everything in him wanted to get to Ruth as soon as possible. “Is there any chance there’s a boy in the picture? I don’t know Sarah well, but she is sixteen.”
Lila shook her head. Her eyes darkened with worry, turning them an even deeper purple than usual. “I don’t think that’s it.”
He glanced at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“I…sense things. And sometimes I see things, like images of something that happened or maybe will happen. Enhanced intuition, basically. I don’t always know what they mean, but I’ve learned to take them seriously and I trust them. I saw something about Sarah, but I want to wait until we get to the Fang to talk about it. Ruth should hear it too.”
“Of course. Ruth must be losing her mind right about now.”
“Yes. She blames herself for leaving Sarah here while you guys went to Anchorage. That woman takes too much responsibility for things that aren’t her fault!”
As soon as Gunnar stepped through the door of The Fang, Ruth ran into his arms. The emotion that surged through him nearly knocked him off his feet— I’d do anything for her , he realized in a flash. I’ll protect her until I die .
“Shh, it’s okay,” he murmured in her ear as she shook against him. “We’ll find her. I promise we’ll find her. It’s okay. I’m here, and we’re going to find her.”
“This is all my fault…”
“No. How can you say that when we don’t even know what happened yet? Right?” She nodded against his chest. “Good. That’s better. Blaming yourself isn’t going to help find her, is it? Let’s focus on that part.”
“Okay. Yes. You’re right.” He felt her spine straighten, felt the big breath of air she took in. Ruth might have moments of fear and anxiety like anyone, but she was a strong woman, probably stronger than anyone he’d ever known.
When her trembling died down, he looked up and saw the entire bar gazing at the two of them with open curiosity.
That was one way to go public with their relationship—whatever it was. He took Ruth by the hand and led her back to the bar.
“So what do we know so far?” he asked the group assembled there—Bear behind the bar, Martha perched on a stool, Maura next to her, with Lachlan standing by her, arm around her shoulders. “Lila told me the basics. She didn’t sleep at the farm last night, right, Martha?”
Martha nodded. She was wearing one of her hand-knit ponchos with a hood that made her look like an elf. “The last time anyone saw her was in the kitchen around seven o’clock last night, when she baked some bread for the crew. She left the loaves cooling on a rack and told Sally—one of my woofers—that she had to check on something. It was party night for the woofers, they all got together for a goodbye bonfire. Since they planned to have alcohol, I asked Sarah not to go, and she promised she wouldn’t. Now I wish I’d told her to go. At least she would have been around the other woofers.”
Ruth put an arm around her shoulders. “Martha, this isn’t your fault. You’ve been so kind to us. You did the right thing, making sure she didn’t get herself into trouble at a party. Those bonfires can get so wild.”
“Oh, it did. Ramon is still throwing up in the outhouse.” Martha shuddered. “Might need to dig a new one after this.”
“We were at your place earlier than that, and got some shots fired at us.” Gunnar braced himself as everyone’s attention swung toward him. “We never saw who it was. We thought it might have been a Chilkoot.”
“Shit.” Martha swore. “Did they grab Sarah back? I’m going to go out there right now and?—”
Bear cleared his throat and slammed his hands on the bar counter, making everyone jump. As tall as Gunnar was, Bear had at least an inch on him, and a much more intimidating presence. When he had something to say, people listened.
“Lila wants to share something. It’s important, so please listen.”
Lila’s pixie face flushed as everyone turned toward her. “Okay, I know this might sound strange, but sometimes I have what I call ‘blips,’ what you might call visions, except I don’t call them that.”
Ruth’s eyes went wide. “Did you see something about Sarah? Please, anything will help.”
“I did. At first I wasn’t sure what it meant, but now I think that…well, I think she’s been taken somewhere. And the weird thing is, it’s not to hurt her. She’s not in danger. She was taken to keep her safe.”