Chapter 39
39
Remi stared at the picture. The completed puzzle was an image Remi had taken. The church. Sergei. But other people were in the background. Why send her this image and think it would trigger her memory?
“Look at this.” Jo tugged a face mask from the bottom drawer.
“What’s that?”
“This was in the garbage too.” Jo turned the combination face mask and hat inside out.
Remi looked closely at two blue hairs. “What are you thinking?”
Jo sighed. “Hawk’s brother didn’t abduct me. Erika did.”
“Erika? How do you know? How’s that possible?”
“Think about the guy who attacked you in the woods. Really, think about it. Did you see him? It could have been Erika. Did you ever hear him speak? My abductor never said a word.”
“How did she get you to the bunker?”
“I don’t know. I’m small, she’s big. A fireman’s carry. A wheelbarrow. She had help? I’m telling you ... I think it was her.”
Remi closed her eyes and thought back to that moment on the road. The guy approached with a knife. But he was covered in a thick raincoat and a mask. She fought him in the woods. Could she have fought Erika instead? The guy had dark eyes. Erika had blue eyes. But sometimes she had green eyes or purple eyes. She loved her colors. Hair and contacts.
Remi eased into the chair at the desk. Erika had been the one to tell her about Paco. Erika had suggested Jo’s ladder over the radio. In the woods, she and Hawk had been running to hide from someone. Then he’d gone back and run into Cole. No mask, the guy had made himself known.
At gunpoint, Cole had abducted Remi at John Marshall’s secure island home. He was a medium-height guy. Muscular. Smaller than Hawk, who was more like a lumberjack in her mind. Erika was bigger than Remi, bigger than the average woman, and she was strong. Chopped wood and carried it in like it was nothing.
Still, Remi struggled to wrap her mind around this.
“Nothing is as it seems. I don’t get why someone would send this picture and tell me to remember. This doesn’t seem important.”
Jo looked at the image closely. She pressed her fingertip near a woman walking on the sidewalk. “Who is that?”
Remi peered closer. How could it be? Her heart rate kicked up. “I’m not sure, but ... she definitely resembles Erika.”
“I didn’t want to say anything until you said it,” Jo said. “But I agree. That’s Erika. She was there and now she’s here. How does Erika tie into this?”
Remi took a step back and drew in a breath, her head spinning. She hadn’t remembered this part because she hadn’t even noticed.
“She was working here before I even got here.” Remi didn’t understand.
“For like a week. Maybe you coming here had been the grand plan all along.”
“To wait for me to remember something? And if I did...” Erika had tried to kill her. “And what was Cole’s role?”
“I don’t know, but I’m thinking that Cole never rented that cabin. Erika was in charge of the rentals, remember? She put Collin Barclay’s name, an alias, but it was her. She changed into her scary-man-in-a-mask outfit there in the cabin. I walked in on her, and she pulled the mask on so I couldn’t tell it was her. She could have killed me.”
“How do you know it was her if she had the mask on?”
“Because I’m the one taking out the garbage from the cabins, and I noticed the mask inside the plastic. It made me shudder. Reminded me, and I dug it out. That was a mistake on her part. It’s not like people don’t wear them around here in the winter, but she has blue hair.” Jo lifted a shoulder.
Right. That danger was always so close sickened her. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone. Left right after you did.”
Remi sank onto the sofa and pressed her head into her hands. “I need to warn Hawk of the additional players.”
“So, there’s Erika, and what about this Cole guy?”
“Cole wasn’t wearing a mask when he abducted me and put me on a boat,” Remi said. “He was trying to escape. He told me that I needed to remember before it was too late. Those exact words here. I believe he sent this picture.” She hadn’t thought of this, even after her memories had rushed back, but ... “When he helped me up into the helicopter, he’d taken my rucksack, which had my camera inside. It was waterproof, so it could have survived if he went into the water with it.”
“That would make sense,” Jo said.
“I wanted to come back to the lodge for perspective, and I think I have a new one.”
“What is it? If you don’t mind my asking. Erika bad. Cole ... good?”
A knock came at the door. Remi yanked her handgun from her holster. “Who is it?”
“It’s Dylan.”
She lowered it to her side. Jo opened the door and Dylan entered, leading another guy into her office.
Remi squeezed the grip of her gun. “Dylan? What is this?”
“You mean who?” the stranger asked.
To Dylan, she said, “I mean what are you thinking, bringing this guy in here?”
“He says he’s part of your security detail, compliments of John Marshall,” Dylan said.
She didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t John’s security. She’d test that. Remi lifted her gun anyway.
The man aimed a handgun at Dylan’s head. “Lower your weapon, Ms. Grant.”
“You aren’t security detail for John. Who are you?”
Two men stepped in behind him and entered the office. “These men are the security detail that John sent you. Now they work for me. It’s a buyer’s market. John Marshall has double-crossed me.”
Her insides buckled.
“Are you ... Charles Whitman?”
“One and the same, only my friends call me Chuck.”
“And Erika?” Jo asked.
“You mean Latasha Pascoe. She was an operative for Zarovia, protecting their interests. You don’t have to worry about her anymore.”
Was?
“She’s been eliminated.” Whitman signaled to the security detail and gestured at Jo, Dylan, and Remi. “They’re all coming with us.”
“Wait a minute,” Jo said. “Someone needs to stay behind and take care of the guests.”
Like he would care about that, but Remi was thinking the same thing.
He glanced at one of his men. “Take care of it.”
Remi screamed, “Wait! What are you going to do? You can’t harm innocent families and children.”
“Relax. I’m not a barbarian, for goodness’ sake. Inform them there’s a gas leak and they should all pack up and head home. The lodge is shutting down for now.”
He wanted them to go out in this storm? But the storm was safer than being in Whitman’s path of destruction. While that meant people would be safer, horror filled her that it was all coming down to this.
“It’s okay, Remi,” Jo whispered. “They’ll be okay.”
No. No, it’s not. Jo and Dylan aren’t part of this. But if she said something, this guy might kill them in her office. Except he’d said he wasn’t a barbarian. Still, Jo and Dylan already knew too much. And Hawk. He was out there somewhere, and maybe he could get here in time to help them out of this nightmare before it was too late. He was good at that, after all.
A radio squawked and Whitman answered. “Speak.”
“We got ’em. They’re trapped.”
“Kill them.” Whitman looked at them. “Your hero and his brother aren’t coming to save you.”
You’re a barbarian after all.