Chapter 20
Knowing Kansas was likely the driving obsession behind Montgomery’s heinous crimes, Eli attacked the investigation with renewed vigor. The perspective that the women’s bodies had been left at sites where Kansas had participated in rescues gave them more geographic focus.
With Kansas’s help, they began reconstructing a map of all her rescue work over the past three years. The possibilities were mind-boggling. Kansas went on dozens of rescues every year, both close to Shelby and far out into the hinterlands of the Alaskan wilderness.
“How on earth do we pin down where he’s going?” Noelle moaned, the frustration in her tone matching the tension and urgency pulsing through Eli.
He stroked a hand over his mouth as he studied the well-marked map. “Will you enter all these sites and run cross-references and the like with your analytics software?”
“I will, but it’s going to take some time to get it all entered, and my laptop is still at your place,” she said.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the curious look Noelle’s last comment roused from Asher. He didn’t have time to address his partner’s speculations about his relationship with Noelle.
“I can’t help but wonder, though…” Noelle said. She paused, biting her fingernail while her brow dipped in thought.
“Go on,” Eli said. “All brainstorms are valid.”
“Now that he knows we’re onto him, he might have guessed we put together the reason behind the previous crime scenes, the link to Kansas’s search sites. And if he doesn’t want to be caught, then wouldn’t he break that pattern? Are we wasting time with the SAR locations?”
“You may be right on that point. If so, that would bring the possible locations Montgomery could have gone back to…anywhere in the world,” Asher said, waving his arm at the map, his tone dark with frustration.
The foursome exchanged tired looks. It was already late, and their general lack of progress clearly ate at them all.
After an extended silence, during which Noelle’s gaze remained fixed on the map, she suddenly blinked and jerked her head up. “Oh my gosh. I’ve been doing it, too—making assumptions based on small bits of information.”
Eli cocked his head. “Explain.”
“We’ve…well, I’ve been assuming he’s traveling by car because of the kidnapping footage. But look at this map! This state! So few roads. So many lakes.” She divided a look between Asher and Eli. “Does Scott have a pilot’s license?”
Eli frowned but immediately rocked his chair forward, his mind picking up her train of thought.
“Asher, can you send out notices to every bush pilot and plane-for-hire operation in a hundred-mile radius? If he was going anywhere too far afield, he’d have needed help getting there.
Meanwhile, I’ll contact the FAA and state licensing board to see if Scott has a pilot’s license or owns a plane we didn’t know about.
” Eli glanced at Noelle. “I’ll take you back to my place, so you can start entering this new information and cross-referencing. ”
“What should I do?” Kansas asked.
Eli exchanged a look with Asher, then back to his cousin. “You need to stay safe. Don’t go anywhere alone. If you think of anything Montgomery may have said to you about his favorite places to visit or a vacation home or a relative’s house he inherited, let me know right away.”
Kansas frowned. “That’s not what I meant!”
But Eli didn’t stick around to hear his cousin’s complaint about wanting to be more involved in the investigation. He grabbed Noelle’s hand and led her to the elevator and out to his car.
A heavier snow had begun to fall, and Eli bemoaned the fact that as the snow accumulation grew, it would affect road and flying conditions enough to hamper any pursuit of Montgomery.
In his head, the countdown clock to find the latest kidnap victim clicked faster.
Please, Lord, don’t let them be too late!
As he drove through the night-darkened streets of Shelby, Noelle looked up the phone number for the Federal Aviation Administration’s closest office and dialed the number.
When she reached their after-hours emergency operator, she put Eli on speaker.
Within a few minutes of giving his credentials and explaining the situation, Eli had reached the right person to look for any records regarding Scott Montgomery of Shelby, Alaska.
The agent promised to do the required research and call him back.
They’d been at Eli’s house for thirty minutes, beginning the process of Noelle’s analysis of the SAR sites, when they had a return call from the FAA source.
Scott did, in fact, have a pilot’s license and had registered a floatplane with the FAA five years ago.
Since floatplanes typically fly under eighteen thousand feet and in low-traffic areas, flight plans weren’t required, meaning Eli had no way of knowing if, when or where Scott might have flown tonight.
Eli thanked the FAA official and disconnected, his thoughts splintering in new directions.
“If he has a plane at his disposal, where does he keep it?” Noelle asked.
“The plane would have to be kept on a lake or river, right? While there are any number of places he could moor a plane here in Shelby, that water would have to be near a road, even if just a dirt track or logging road, in order to get the kidnapped woman to the plane without anyone seeing him. Once he gets wherever he’s going, he’d need a body of water to land the plane, too.
” Frowning, she pinched her nose. “Which really doesn’t help much.
There are lakes and rivers all over Alaska and Western Canada. ”
Eli nodded, squeezing his eyes closed, replaying everything he could possibly remember ever discussing with Scott Montgomery.
Had they talked about the activities and sport challenges that Rough Terrain Adventures took customers on?
Had they ever talked about vacation rentals or family holidays or travel or—
Eli’s heart tripped as a shadowy memory of a conversation long ago wafted through his brain like smoke from a distant fire. Hobbies. Fishing. A lake. Barely there, but…
“What if we—”
He held up a hand, signaling for Noelle to hold her thought. “Just a second, I’m trying to remember the name of a place…” He snapped his fingers repeatedly as he dragged his memory for the name of the lake that was alluding him. “Run a search for a lake… Starts with a G or G-R.”
Noelle turned to her laptop, her hand poised over the keyboard as she waited for him to give her more information to narrow the search.
“Graybill? Grandiose? Grundy?” Eli said, trying out names and discarding them. “Montgomery told me once he liked to fish at a cabin. The cabin was on private property by a lake called…” Eli groaned and tapped his fist against his forehead. “Think, Colton!”
Using what little information she had, Noelle began searching databases and Alaskan maps. “Grouse Lake? Grant? Grayling?”
The name danced just beyond his grasp, and he waved Noelle silent again.
Gr—.Gr—.Gofer? Gross—
“Grossford!” He swung to face Noelle. “Look up Grossford Lake. See if anyone named Montgomery owns a property anywhere near there.” Eli went to the duplicate map he had on his dining room table and searched for Grossford Lake.
He found the small remote lake roughly one hundred miles north-northwest of Shelby and tapped it with his finger just as Noelle announced, “Bingo. Public records show that a Harold J. Montgomery bought a fishing cabin there in 1986. Could that be his father? Grandfather?”
“Don’t know,” Eli said, his jaw tightening. “But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”
Eli stared out his living room window in dismay as the snow streamed down harder by the minute. The panes rattled as gusts kicked higher, and the storm quickly worsened to whiteout conditions.
Moving up beside him, Noelle sent him a worried glance. “How are we supposed to mount a search in this weather? Assuming we can find a pilot willing to fly us to Grossford Lake, will the FAA even let us take off in this storm?”
“Unlikely. We can only hope the weather has stalled Montgomery’s progress as well. But bad roads and unfriendly skies or not, the woman with him is in peril.” He bit down on his back teeth, grinding out, “This waiting is unconscionable when we know her life is at risk.”
“I agree, but what can we do? Heading out in this mess by land or air is far too dangerous. We’re just as likely to get stranded as not. We aren’t any help to the woman if we get our car stuck in a snowdrift or get ourselves and a pilot killed in a crash in the process of chasing Scott down.”
“I know. It just sucks!” Eli grimaced, and Noelle wrapped a comforting arm around his waist.
After another moment of staring at the swirling blizzard, Noelle asked, “Didn’t your cousin’s girlfriend, Hetty, say she was a pilot for your family’s adventures business?”
Eli gave her a side look. “She is. Why?”
“Any chance you could convince her to take us to Grossford Lake?”
He shrugged. “I’m sure she would, but she’s grounded during this mess same as official state trooper pilots.”
“But state troopers could be tied up with weather-related rescues, medical emergencies and the like long after the storm breaks. But if we’re watching the weather maps, and she’s ready to go the minute the weather is clear enough to get airborne…”
“She flies a seaplane. We’d be constrained by the amount of ice on the lakes, both here and at Grossford. If the lakes are frozen—”
Noelle groaned. “Right. Of course.”
“But she’s licensed for helicopters, too, and RTA has a contract with a local helicopter rental company. Question is, would they sign off on her taking up one of their birds under these conditions, even if most of the bad weather has passed.”
“So we continue to sit here and wait?” Noelle’s tone mirrored the impatience and anxiety that wrenched his insides in knots.
“I’m afraid so. We can keep watching the weather maps and getting reports from the state troopers on road conditions, but even if we can drive north and get closer to Grossford Lake, we’ll still need a floatplane to get to the cabin.”
Eli turned back to his coffee table where the large paper map had been unrolled, the curling corners anchored with books.
He stabbed the map with a finger. “This doesn’t show any private roads or logging trails around Grossford, and it’s the most up-to-date GPS-verified map the Alaska State Troopers have. ”
Noelle used a hair band from her wrist to tie her hair back in a ponytail. “I’ll make coffee.” She paused and faced him again. “Unless you think conditions won’t change before sunrise, and we should try to get some sleep now? Be rested and ready for what may be a long difficult day tomorrow?”
She’d posed it as a question, down to the rising inflection of her voice, but he knew her well enough to know it hadn’t been an inquiry. She was right, as she so often was. Nothing could be done tonight, while snow piled up and the winds howled.
And when he looked at her, her face free of makeup, her hair back and her eyes bright, waiting for his response, Eli couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to hold Noelle in his arms.
Whether they slept or not… Well, that was another matter entirely.