Chapter 16 #3
Wow, Daniel was cute. Tousled dark hair, big brown eyes. He grinned as his daddy picked him up and threw him over his shoulder, squealing as Gabe tickled him—it just seeded all sorts of warmth inside Jericho.
Yeah, they all needed a happy ending here.
“Daddy needs to talk to Auntie Harley,” Gabe said to Daniel as he swung him down, setting him on the floor. “Can Mommy put you to bed tonight?”
Daniel went from giggles to a frown, then leaned up and vised his arms around Gabe’s neck. “I want you, Daddy.”
He sighed. The boy’s legs clamped around his waist. “Can it wait?” he asked, turning to Jericho and Harley.
“I’ll put him to bed,” Harley said. “Want Auntie Harley to put you to bed? I’ll teach you the bunny song.”
Daniel seemed to consider that a moment.
Orlando walked up then, sat and whined.
“Doggy!” Daniel said, and got down to put his arms around Orlando.
The dog’s tail thumped the floor.
“Ready?” Harley held out her hand. Daniel looked up at her.
Then he took it.
Her smile evoked all sorts of wild images—Harley bringing their own child off to bed, tickling the little tyke on the way.
She’d be an amazing mom. She just didn’t know it. Yet.
Gabe watched them go. “Wow, that was . . . unexpected.”
“Why?” Jericho said. “She spent her entire life protecting you. I can’t count how many times she waited for you after school or made sure you did your homework or—”
“Yeah.” Gabe hung a hand around his neck. “At the time, I just thought she was being bossy.”
“Oh, she’s bossy all right,” Jericho said, and he held up a fist.
Gabe met it, laughed. “So, you want the dirt on Wilder Frost.”
“All of it.”
“Right. Well, so, he came to me about a year after Mom and Dad died. I was driving trucks to the North Slope, up the Dalton highway, and at the time, he was running dogs, working on qualifying for the Iditarod. I knew him because he was also working part-time at the FBO before Dad died, so he had introduced us. Wilder said he knew the Sorros brothers were doing something iffy—he’d seen the Summit Construction vehicles at odd places. He wanted to shut them down.”
“Seems like a dangerous request. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. He seemed pretty adamant about it. Anyway, not long after that Darrin was murdered—”
“Darrin?”
“He was working DEA in the area. I told him about Wilder wanting to help, and he talked Wilder into being an informant. Wilder witnessed Darrin’s murder.
When he came to me, I told him to hang tight—I was working on a case against them.
I didn’t talk to him again before I went into WITSEC, so . . . I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Apparently, he’s been on the run since Conan Sorros tried to kill him on the plane.”
“He’d better keep running,” Gabe said as Harley came out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Her expression could turn Jericho inside out, the rawness of joy in it . . .
“He’s so darling,” she said. “I had to sing the bunny song twice. And then he wanted me to pray with him.” She made a face. “I hope I did it right.”
“You can’t pray wrong, Harls. You just . . . talk to God.” Gabe came over to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “After this is over, I hope this becomes a regular thing.”
Her eyes widened, and for a second, it seemed that Jericho could see right into her soul. The longing. The hope. The joy.
Almost as if nothing of her wounds remained.
“Definitely,” she said, then kissed her brother’s cheek. “So, what else did you guys find out about Wilder?”
“Just that he was working with Gabe as an informant.”
Her smile fell. “You’re not safe here,” she said to Gabe.
“There’s a deputy outside the door, and”—he glanced at Sunni, back to Harley—“I’m not unarmed.”
Oh.
“I’m worried about you, sis. Clearly Mars knows you’re after him and he’s tying up loose ends . . . like Pete Barrow. Any leads to the info you got off his computer?”
Her mouth opened. “I . . . wow. I just . . . I blanked that after . . .” She glanced at Jericho. “We need to get back to the dome.”
“Why?” Jericho asked.
“My computer is there, and I dumped the contents of Pete’s hard drive onto my cloud.”
“Maybe there’s something on it that links him to the crash.”
Harley turned back to her brother. “Besides Dad’s box of pictures?”
What? “Pictures?” Jericho asked.
“I found a box of my dad’s evidence from the North Face Construction case. Most of the photos were of Pete Barrow and the Sorros brothers,” Harley said. “They were definitely working together.”
“And if Pete knew, then maybe he tampered with the plane’s fuel,” Gabe said. Sunni had gotten up to make coffee and now came back with a mug for him. She offered another to Harley.
She took it. Jericho held up his hand. He didn’t need any help staying awake tonight, thanks. His brain just kept circling around “Clearly Mars knows you’re after him.”
Yep. Not letting her out of his sight.
“Tommy Reid was in one of the pictures. He was one of Dad’s deputies.”
“One of the pictures with Pete?” Gabe asked.
“And the Sorros brothers, yeah. I was thinking Dad was building a case against him.”
“Or, he was just keeping them off Dad’s radar,” Gabe said. “But Tommy disappeared a couple years ago, right after his wife died.”
“He’s in Juneau. Working in private security.” Harley sipped her coffee. “I’m going to be up all night.”
“I remember him,” Sunni said. “His malamute had puppies. I wanted one. Even went over to the FBO to look at them.”
“Why the FBO?” Jericho asked.
“Oh, Tommy’s wife, Heidi, worked dispatch. She brought them to work. So cute.” She had walked over to the bedroom to check on Daniel, then shut the door after peeking in. “I think Wilder’s dog was the sire. I remember him saying something like that.”
Silence. “You knew Wilder Frost?”
“Oh yeah. He grew up in the area and was working part-time at the airport. He has a little girl. So sad.”
Even Jericho spiked an eyebrow.
“Oh,” Sunni said. “She died in a terrible car accident about three years ago.”
“A car accident? Like she was forced off the road?” Gabe offered.
She frowned, her mouth opening. “Uh. I think . . . yes, actually. I don’t know.
Single-car accident. She was missing for a while.
They finally found her thrown from the vehicle.
At least, that’s what the Copper Mountain Good News said.
” Her voice cut low. “But rumor says that she was run off the road.”
“As in murdered?” Harley asked.
Sunni nodded.
Harley glanced at Gabe. “Wilder was working at the FBO before our parents’ crash.”
“What if”—Gabe drew in a breath, blew it out, hard—“what if he saw Pete put in the wrong fuel?”
“And only figured it out after the crash,” Jericho said, echoing Gabe’s tone. “And that’s why he decided to help you nail the Sorros gang.”
“How did he know the Sorros family was involved?” Gabe said.
Harley looked at Jericho. “Summit Construction. One of the trucks was in the picture. Taken with Pete Barrrow. At the FBO.”
Silence.
“North Face redid the terminal at the Copper Mountain Airport,” Sunni said. “Although it’s not much more than a glorified coffee shop.”
“Still. The trucks would have been common on-site,” Gabe said. “And if Wilder saw them with Pete and he suspected the fuel had been tampered with . . .”
“It’s not a huge leap to suspect the Sorros boys,” Harley said. “We need to find Wilder.”
“I vote we find Mars and Sloan first,” Jericho said.
“You’re not going to find anything in this weather,” Sunni said. “The windchill is negative thirty. Nothing is moving out there, not even bad guys.”
Jericho’s mouth tightened, and beside him, Harley nodded.
“But I do know where to start,” she said. “With a guy named T-Bone. And he’s sitting in the Copper Mountain jail wearing a Summit Construction sweatshirt.”
She finished her coffee. Turned to Jericho. “Ready for some PI work?”
“Will this involve running?”
She laughed, her golden-brown eyes nearly alight. Yes, something—or someone—had changed.
So, of course he and Orlando followed her right out the door.