Chapter 7 #2
He narrowed his gaze at the map.
Where are you, Glenn? Where are you headed?
More important, where was Summer?
He spotted a computer terminal set-up and decided to see what the news outlets were saying. The chair creaked as he sat down, but the deputy snored on.
Was the guy supposed to be guarding the Command Center? If so, he was terrible at it.
Sebastian pulled up the latest batch of headlines and news stories, most of which showed a photo of the sheriff on the podium as he addressed the media. Banners with photos of Summer Eastman flanked him.
The FBI had sent a media liaison to work with the sheriff, but the organization would prefer to stay in the background.
The last thing anyone wanted was for this to turn into some individual versus the US Government shitshow.
Unlikely, given Eastman’s violent crimes, but Sebastian had seen stranger things happen.
The thought of wackos traveling here to support a man who’d abducted his own child—as if she were a chattel—to somehow interfere with their search… Yeah, not gonna happen.
Nothing in the reports mentioned that they’d found Eastman’s truck, thank goodness. If Eastman got wind of that information, he’d know they were on to him.
So, yeah.
So far, so good.
Even with signal blockers in place, it was difficult to keep intelligence locked down during a manhunt of this magnitude. Law enforcement were people with families and friends, and sometimes they said things they shouldn’t.
Nora Deacon hadn’t struck him as the sort to gossip about a case, but he’d spent all of four hours with her, so what did he know?
His instinct said she was trustworthy but…
His fingers typed in her name before his brain caught up with the legalities of what he was doing.
But this was publicly available information, not an official background search on law enforcement databases.
It wasn’t really overstepping—he was vetting her to join his squad.
No reason for him to feel any degree of guilt.
Several “Nora Deacons” showed up on the list but not the one he was interested in, so he added “search and rescue” and “Glacier” into the mix.
Hits came back, and he spent a few minutes reading a couple of interest-based articles on SAR in the National Parks. One article called her “Eleanor,” so he typed that in instead of “Nora” and found a few more newspaper articles about events in the park.
Nothing personal.
Nothing that remotely satisfied his curiosity.
Recalling the conversation from the Jeep earlier, he replaced “Glacier” with “Vermont” and froze as article after article appeared, but these were nearly twenty years old.
He almost closed the page, but a thumbnail-size photograph caught his eye.
A photograph of a girl, a girl who looked similar enough to the Nora Deacon he’d met yesterday that he stopped the scroll and pressed the link.
Everything inside him froze as he read the details. Twelve-year-old Mary Eleanor Deacon had been abducted by a family friend, a man named John Kingston, one sunny August afternoon as she’d walked home after picking up groceries for her mother.
His mouth parched.
This couldn’t be the same person.
He read further. The parents had initially been suspects. Unfortunately, as Eastman proved, victims often knew their abuser, and family were always the first whose involvement had to be ruled out.
Nora’s father had been at work when she’d gone missing, and the detectives had failed to find a motive or any evidence that the mother had been involved with her daughter’s disappearance.
John Kingston had been in touch with the family to offer his support and had been a member of the search team on multiple occasions.
After a month, the search effort had wound down. The cops had no clues to pursue. The family had given up hope of ever seeing Eleanor alive again.
Then a couple of climbers had found Kingston’s body at the base of a cliff where he’d apparently fallen.
Questions as to what he’d been doing out in that remote region had been raised.
Search and rescue had been called in again.
The girl, who’d been missing for forty-two days at this point, was found naked on a narrow ledge beneath a shallow overhang, almost dead from starvation and hypothermia.
Acid churned in his stomach and made bile rise in his throat. He clenched his jaw.
The child had been almost catatonic when she’d been found—by a black Lab named Baxter, and his SAR handler, Chance Michelin.
Shit.
There were too many parallels for it not to be the same woman he’d met yesterday.
He felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
He read further.
Evidence suggested Kingston had shackled the girl in a make-shift camp on the other side of the mountain and sexually assaulted her.
At some point, he must have unshackled her, and she’d escaped.
Police concluded that John Kingston had died trying to recapture her—and suspected this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this.
His other victims had never been recovered.
Something cracked inside Sebastian’s chest at the thought of the depravity one human could inflict on another—especially a child.
He jumped as the barn door opened. He glanced guiltily over his shoulder and spotted Ryan Sullivan.
Sebastian wasn’t sure what to do with the information he’d uncovered. Should he tell Novak or keep it quiet?
“What you up to?” Ryan gave his trademark grin, but there was a strain at the edges.
The guy had lost his wife, presumably in this place, though he never spoke of it, and the fact his kid lived here with his brother and his wife couldn’t be easy.
Or maybe Sebastian was reading things into this he shouldn’t.
It was one a.m., and most reasonable humans were asleep. Maybe Ryan was simply tired.
Sebastian glanced at the deputy. Then waved his teammate closer.
“I discovered something.” He kept his voice low. “And I don’t know if I should tell Novak or not.”
“About the case?” Ryan frowned, hands in the pockets of his jacket.
Sebastian shook his head. Lowered his voice to a whisper. “About the SAR handler I worked with today.”
He pointed to the screen and Ryan leaned forward to read.