Chapter 36
In all thedangerous situations he’d found himself in, Nick had never panicked the way he was doing now. His breath was wheezing in his chest, and he couldn’t form words, or at least not the ones he wanted to. The only words that came out of his mouth were curse words, the kind he hadn’t heard since his old firehouse days.
Charlie kept saying something, trying to break into his ranting, into his trance of absolute freakout. But he couldn’t focus on her, couldn’t get his ears to understand what she was saying. She held onto him, her hands on his shoulders, her gaze capturing his, offering strength and focus. Hailey. Hailey’s been kidnapped. On my watch.
Finally his head cleared enough to hear what she was saying.
“Breathe,” she commanded. “Take a breath.”
He dragged in air.
“Now another one.”
Finally he was able to form a word. Or at least three letters.
“FBI,” he blurted. “We need to call the FBI.”
“I don’t think there’s an FBI office out here. The closest one is probably in Anchorage.”
“The sheriff. Police. We need to get a swat team out here to search the woods.” He grabbed the phone again. “Trees. We need to find those trees.”
“Nick.” Her firm tone cut through his panic once again. “The photo isn’t real.”
“What do you mean?” He stared at it again. It sure looked real to him.
“Trust me, I know about this stuff. It’s been photoshopped. Look at Elias’ head. That fuzzy bit? They had to rush it, didn’t have time to clean up the edges.”
Now that he looked at it more closely, he could see what she was talking about. The fog of fear cleared, at least for a moment. “So they haven’t been kidnapped?”
“I don’t know. They might be trying to send us in the wrong direction to search. Maybe they’re in a house, not the woods, something like that.”
He muttered a string of curse words. “They sent us a proof-of-life photo that offers no clues.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I can triangulate where the photo was sent from. They haven’t sent any demand yet. If I was them, I’d change location before sending something else. Then we can see a pattern.”
He wasn’t going to wait around until they sent something else. He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Charlie limped after him.
“Our cabin. Hailey might be there, this could be a fakeout. If not, look for leads.” In other words, he was going to investigate.
“But I don’t have Wi-Fi in town. And they sent the photo to me. They want something from me. I need to stay reachable.”
He stopped at the threshold of the door. Damnit, she had a point. But he needed to search for Hailey or he’d lose his mind. “I’ll be back in an hour. I have to see what I can find. Maybe two hours, given the drive.”
“Okay, but…whenever you have a Wi-Fi connection, check in. The Fang, the store, wherever. I might get another message from them.”
He nodded.
“And don’t do anything reckless. Whatever’s going on here, it’s not what it seems. If they’re going to photoshop a picture, they might be up to other tricks.”
Maybe they were. If so, it was working. Taking Hailey was the one thing he couldn’t ignore.
Silently, he strode back to Charlie and wrapped her in his arms. “Don’t leave the lodge until I get back, okay?” he murmured in her ear. “Be careful. I—I need you.”
He wasn’t sure exactly how to describe the emotions churning through his being right now, but “need” would do, for now.
He started at the cabin,where he found a broken-down four-wheeler and a note from Hailey. That sent him to The Fang, where he learned from Bear that Hailey had never made it there.
As they were talking, Lila came through the door that led from the dimly lit bar to the tiny kitchen prep area. She stopped dead at the sight of him.
“It’s Hailey, isn’t it?” she asked softly.
“We think she’s missing. We got a photo. I’m trying to retrace her steps. Any chance you…” He paused, not sure how to delicately ask if she had some kind of psychic insight she could share with him. Charlie had said Lila didn’t want people here to know about her abilities, but this was a crisis.
“I haven’t seen her.” She glanced at Bear. “Is it okay if I take a short break? I uh…have something that might help.”
If Bear thought it was odd that Lila could be of help, his impassive face didn’t show it. “Long as you want. Nick, you call on me for anything. I can round up a crew of searchers, backup, whatever you need.”
They shook hands over the bar. Nick would have hugged him if the bar hadn’t been in the way. Knowing that he had muscle to call on if necessary helped…a lot.
Outside, Lila blinked in the bright sunshine.
“Have you sensed anything more?” he asked urgently. “Charlie told me you thought Hailey was in danger.”
“No, nothing. I’m sorry. It doesn’t really work that way anyway. But I do have something. Let’s drive to my house.”
At the hardware store, she pointed to something mounted over the door. “After the camera, and the break-in, I installed my own camera. Sam helped me set it up. It only keeps twenty-four hours of video, but that should be enough to show you something.”
“That’s brilliant, Lila.”
“It’s connected to an old laptop Sam passed along to me. I’ve never even tried to look at it, so I hope you can figure it out!”
She beckoned for him to follow him inside.
“I’m not Charlie Santa Lucia, but I can handle a tech challenge.”
“There’s only one Charlie Santa Lucia,” she said as she led him to a small Dell laptop sitting on top of a pile of books. “And only one man to equal her.”
Did she mean him? Is that what that little gleam in her eye meant?
He couldn’t think about that now. The only thing that mattered was Hailey.
It took a few minutes to find what he was looking for, but the moment he saw Hailey’s profile in the passenger seat of a big Dodge truck, he knew he had his clue. Gunnar would know that truck, if it belonged to a local. He played back the three seconds of video several times, trying to get a clear view of the driver. All he could see was that he was a big man, gray hair, older, burly. But it had to be Vasily.
He dropped Lila back at The Fang, and took the opportunity to send a text to Charlie. He didn’t get a response right away, but didn’t worry too much about it. She probably had her hands full tracking down the originator of the photo. Or maybe she was reverse engineering the photoshop job or unearthing metadata that no one else could find.
It felt damn good to know he had Charlie on his side.
Pinky waved at him from his usual spot at the bar, a tankard of ale gripped in one hand. “Sit down and take a load off,” he called to Nick.
“Sorry, no time.” He put away his phone and hurried toward the door, then stopped and strode back to Pinky’s side. Pinky had been around when Bulldog was killed. He knew Solomon, he knew April. He remembered Vasily.
“Hiya, Pinky. Got a quick question for you. Remember we talked about Vasily, Bulldog’s friend from back forty plus years ago?”
Pinky gestured with his tankard. “Sure. Russian guy. Excellent hunter. Used to talk politics with Bulldog, the two of them gabbed ’til the sun came up, or went down, depending on the time of year.”
“Was Vasily close to anyone else besides Bulldog?”
Pinky had to think about that. As the minutes ticked past, Nick clenched his fists to keep from shaking the man’s memory back to life. “Solomon, for a while, but then they had a falling-out. Hated each other after that. Lot of folks said that’s why Vasily skipped Bulldog’s memorial, cuz Solomon gave the eulogy.”
So Vasily and Solomon feuded … good to know.
“What about the Chilkoots?” The Chilkoot territory would be a good place to keep Hailey captive. Maybe she’d been tricked into searching for Elias out there.
“Chilkoots? Nah. They weren’t even here back then.”
Well, hell. Dead end.
But maybe not completely. There was something in what Pinky had told him. Something important. He just needed to pin it down.
He checked his phone one more time to see if Charlie had texted, but saw nothing from her. Odd. He hoped the Wi-Fi hadn’t dropped up there. But he didn’t have time to wait around. He loped out of The Fang and headed for Gunnar’s garage.