Chapter 41
41
When he came to, he was inside the house, a bungee cord lashing him to a chair right next to Pinky. The old Newfoundland, Newman, was huddled against Pinky’s legs. Lachlan wasn’t sure who was watching over whom; maybe they were protecting each other. Andrea Reed was kneeling on the floor, sorting through papers. Maura…where was Maura? He could hear her voice, anxious and placating.
It was a tone of voice he’d never heard from her before, and it sent chills through him.
His head throbbed as he craned his neck to find her. There she was, near the door, facing off with a large man who had to be the infamous SS.
So that’s who had knocked him out. Were he and Andrea working together? Or was he letting Andrea search the papers because she had a gun?
He tuned into the conversation between Maura and SS.
“I promise I’ll go with you quietly without any fuss,” she was saying. “Just don’t hurt anyone. That’s my only request.”
“Too late. I already hurt your boyfriend.” The disgust in SS’s voice made Lachlan recoil. He was large, this man, with big hands and bulky shoulders. He wore blue jeans—the worst thing you could wear in winter weather—and a black ski parka, but there was no sign of the yellow-and-green beanie. Maybe he’d figured out how recognizable it was.
“No, no, you have it all wrong,” Maura said. “He’s nothing to me. Total nerd.” She didn’t even glance at Lachlan. He knew she was trying to keep him out of danger, but damn, he hated that she had to talk and act so out of character.
“That’s right,” said Pinky loudly, spitting the rag away from his mouth. “Ain’t nothing going on between these two. They weren’t in my second bedroom this week, not at all.”
Not helping, Pinky. Lachlan gritted his teeth and decided it was his turn to speak up.
But all that came out of his mouth at first was a loud groan. Maura’s head jerked toward him, and he saw panic and distress on her face.
SS’s expression darkened. “Come on.” He jerked Maura’s arm, sending her stumbling toward the door.
Keep him from leaving. Say something.
The longer he kept SS here, the better the chances that the Skidoo armada would arrive.
He cleared his throat. “Are you really going to walk away from a gold mine?” Lachlan called after them. “If so, you’re even more stupid than I thought. You’re going to need a lot of money for lawyers after this. You keep piling on the crimes. Assault, kidnapping, the list goes on.”
SS strode back toward him and punched him in the jaw. It hurt like hell—Lachlan suspected heavy steroid use behind that punch. Possibly other drugs, too, now that he got a close-up look at SS’s bloodshot eyes.
“What gold mine are you talking about? Is it a real gold mine?”
Lachlan gestured with his head toward the papers littered across the room. “Wind Valley. There’s something out there worth a fortune. That’s what she’s here for.”
For the first time, Andrea Reed looked at him, fury in her gaze. He gave her a quick shake of the head to indicate he meant her no harm, and to go along with it. “Tell him, Andrea. Tell him about the treasure you and your husband left there.”
“Ex-husband.”
“That’s right, your ex-husband. You fought about it, didn’t you? Divorced over it. He wanted to abandon the project. But you wanted to exploit it.” He winced, realizing that was the wrong choice of word. “Develop it,” he corrected. “It could be a breakthrough, if only he’d get onboard.”
“It’s not just up to him.” Andrea sorted through more papers. “Where the hell is it? Pinky, where’d you put the rest of our stuff?”
“I didn’t do nothing to your stuff,” Pinky said defensively. “But I could if I wanted to. I’m a recycler. That’s what I do. What is it that you’re looking for?”
Andrea shot him a narrow-eyed glance. “That’s my business.”
“And Dr. Reed’s,” said Lachlan. “It’s his brainchild. He owns the rights. Is that why he’s accusing you of industrial sabotage, because he wants you to stay away from it?”
“He was the one who dragged me out there and nearly killed me and the kids a hundred times over,” she spat. “Then he wants to just walk away?” She shook her head, her blue eyes dark with anger. “Absolutely not.”
“See?” Lachlan said to SS. “Are you hearing all this? Wind Valley, man. It all starts with Wind Valley.”
SS scowled down at Maura. “Do you know the place he’s talking about?”
Maura shot a quick glance at Lachlan, who set his expression to “please trust me here.”
“Yes,” she told SS. “I know where it is. It’s east of here, about two miles away.”
“We can get there on the snowmobile?”
After another quick glance at Lachlan, she said, “Yes. But I haven’t been there.”
“Isn’t everything buried under snow anyway?” SS growled the question in Lachlan’s direction.
“It doesn’t matter. Snow doesn’t affect it. Does it, Andrea? That’s why he wanted to test it in these conditions. Cold, snow, ice, none of that matters.”
“No,” Andrea said curtly. “It doesn’t. But there’s no point in anyone going there. You don’t know what to look for.”
“Of course she’d say that.” Lachlan smirked. “She doesn’t think you’re smart enough to find it. She might be right.”
“Shut the fuck up.” SS hesitated, eyeing Lachlan, then Maura. Then he shrugged. “Wind Valley, huh? Sure, why not?”
SS kicked open the door, letting in a gust of cold air, and dragged Maura through it. He slammed it behind him, and a moment later Lachlan heard the sound of a snowmobile starting up.
So much for the Skidoo armada arriving in time. At least he knew which way SS was headed. A plan formed quickly in his head—a crazy, Hail Mary pass, but the only thing he could think of right now.
“Come on,” he said urgently to Andrea. “Get this bungee cord off me. We have to move fast.”
She stood up and folded her arms across her chest. Tall and athletic, she towered over poor Pinky in his chair. “Why should I help you? I don’t even know who you are. Whatever you’re up to, it has nothing to do with me.”
“That man is a stalker and a kidnapper. Don’t you want to help?” When that didn’t seem to affect her, he quickly switched gears. “If you help me, I’ll help you.”
She snorted. “How could you possibly help me, random stranger?”
“You’re looking for the remote trigger for your ex-husband’s energy experiment, aren’t you?”
Her head snapped up and she looked at him in shock. “What do you know about it?”
“Not everything. I know Dr. Reed was working on a device in Wind Valley using magnetic energy. The earthquake shifted something, didn’t it? The device started emitting a signal. Everyone thought it was dead, but it’s still alive. That’s when you took the semester off and started working on a plan to develop it.”
Her expression confirmed that everything he’d said was correct, so he kept going.
“I know you’ve been working with the Chilkoots. You want to develop it with funding from your family, but you can’t do anything without that trigger, not this time of year. That’s why you’re here at Pinky’s.”
“Jason left this stuff here so I wouldn’t find it. I only figured it out recently, and I know the trigger’s here somewhere.” She planted her fists on her hips and looked around at the small cabin with disgust. “God, I hate Alaska.”
He turned to Pinky. “Pinky, did the Nutty Professor give you anything else when he left these boxes here? Something mechanical, like a remote control, a handheld device of some kind?”
The old man looked more confused than anything else. Lachlan got the sense he’d given up on following the conversation. He screwed up his face. “I don’t know what you all are talking about.”
“It’s okay, Pinky, even if you recycled it for something else, that’s fine. You didn’t think they were coming back.”
“He said not to give her anything.” He gestured at Andrea with his chin. “She tied me up. I ain’t telling her nothing.”
Yes, he was definitely experiencing some confusion. No wonder, after the trauma of being tied up in his own home.
“Pinky, look at me,” he said gently. When the old man’s watery blue eyes were fixed on him, he said in the clearest, calmest voice he could manage, “Maura needs our help. If Andrea lets us go free, you’ll show us where the rest of Nutty Professor’s stuff is, won’t you?”