Chapter 72
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Radioville, AK
Marco leaned forward in the folding chair, watching waves break from a tidal rip around the distant point.
The flat-black RIB emerged—on plane and at high speed—from behind the neighboring island. The driver’s neon orange beanie and the blare of the outboards broadcasted its arrival. There was a second person in the boat.
Marco took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he clenched his fists in his lap. The flat-black RIB made a beeline for the beach, coming ashore next to Marco’s dinghy. The driver jumped out and helped his passenger ashore—a woman—small, nimble.
She retrieved a bag from the boat and started up the path toward Marco while orange beanie guy took the bow line…
No.
In a flash, he grabbed the shore line of Marco’s dinghy, jumped back in the RIB, and backed away from shore with Marco’s dinghy in tow.
Marco’s only means of escape was gone. He was trapped.
He gripped the plastic armrests of the lawn chair, willing himself to remain still. He forced a breath, trying to relax his tensed muscles. A surge of adrenaline washed through his body. It took all Marco’s strength to simply do nothing.
The woman continued up the path. Her stride was strong and confident. Her face was weathered, but calm, looking much older than her stature conveyed. She could be in her seventies—maybe even her eighties. She held direct eye contact with Marco as she approached.
“You’re sitting in my chair.”
Marco’s throat tightened. “I figured you left it here for me.”
Her face softened, a slight smile brightening her eyes. “You’re a very determined man, Mr. Franco.” She held his gaze.
Marco squeezed the case of the inReach device through the fabric of his jacket pocket. The two hours he’d given Bill was too long.
A fishing boat pulled into the cove, and the flat-black RIB pulled alongside. Orange beanie guy climbed aboard the fishing boat, with the unmistakable silhouette of a rifle over his shoulder.
They could take him out anytime they wanted. But if that was their plan, why wait until now? Who was this woman? Why was she here?
Marco tried to look stern. “What do you want from me?”
The woman took a cigarette from her bag, lit it, and blew a column of smoke over her shoulder. “I’m not a bad person, Mr. Franco. Are you?”
The question caught Marco off guard. “Would you like to sit down?”
She looked toward the fishing boat and stepped aside, leaving a clear line of sight from the boat to Marco. “We’re probably both safer if we stay as we are.”
“I was just…” Marco could almost feel the crosshairs from a high-powered rifle centered on his chest. “…trying to be a gentleman.”
Marco could make out two men on the fishing boat that appeared to have rifles trained on him. They wouldn’t both miss.
The woman’s forehead smoothed and her tone took on an air of calm confidence. “Mr. Franco…Would you prefer Marconi?”
A tingle ran up Marco’s spine, as if her very presence deflated him. “It’s Marco. Have we met?”
The woman tapped her ash on top of the stump. “Not personally. But we’ve been watching you for several weeks.”
Rage built in Marco’s shoulders. “Watching? You almost killed me.” He clenched his fists. “I’m not after the damn gold.”
“At first I thought you might be working for the Pyke family,” she continued. “But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“I heard a distress call on the radio,” Marco replied. “She asked to be rescued.”
“The gold is long gone,” the woman said. “I dug it up thirty years ago.”
Marco shrugged. “So you tried to kill me because you thought I was after your gold?”
“We never tried to kill you, Marco,” the woman replied. “It was supposed to be harmless, just keep you in Juneau and away from here.”
“I was helping search for the Pykes’ daughter,” Marco said. “I don’t care about the damn gold.”
“She’s not their daughter,” the woman replied. “The Pykes are her in-laws. They are the ones she needed rescuing from.”
“Sounded like they were pretty bad folks, from what I read,” Marco said.
“What possessed you to work so hard to find one missing woman you never met?” Anya asked. “Hundreds of women go missing out here every year, and nobody seems to care much. I’m guessing it has something to do with losing your wife, Michelle?”
A lump caught in Marco’s throat. He didn’t owe this stranger his grief. “That your fishing boat anchored out there?”
She moved her cigarette to the other hand, away from him, and replied without turning to look at him. “Yes. That’s one of my boats.”
Marco was a bit taken aback. Most fishing boats were crewed by strong younger men. “You have more than one boat?”
The woman slowly looked him up and down. “I own a lot of them, Mr. Franco. I own Baranof Marine.”
She crushed out her cigarette on the stump.
It must have been a signal.
Behind her, there was movement on the fishing boat. Orange beanie guy was climbing back into the RIB, his rifle back over his shoulder. The second man had put down his rifle and moved into the pilothouse.
“Let’s take a walk, Marco.” She put her bag back over her shoulder.
“I want you to see something.” She walked past him toward the tree line, moving with determination.
She wore a Carhartt jacket and pants with the legs tucked into XTRATUF boots.
“Haven’t used this fishing cabin since…the eighties maybe?
Looks like it’s given up the ghost. We’ll have to tear it down. ”
“You dug up Joe Baxter’s gold?” Marco got up to follow her. “I’m really not—”
“My father owned a bar in Sitka—the Red Baron. It burned down when I was young. My father died. I was raised by a friend. We were poor.” She looked past Marco’s shoulder toward the water.
“I did okay in fishing for a number of years. People may think my money came from that, but trust me, nobody is that good at fishing.”
Marco looked behind them. The flat-black RIB was pulling back onto the beach with his dinghy attached. Marco had to pick up his pace just to keep up with her. “So you own all of Baranof Marine? The tour boats, fishing boats, boatyards, Ms…. I didn’t get your name?”
“Baron. Anya Baron,” she replied. “Family name is Russian, actually—Baranov. My three-times great-grandfather was Alexander Baranov—the one Baranof Island is named after. He came here in the late seventeen hundreds to set up a fur trade and to colonize the place, which is a fancy word meaning he was a slave-trading genocidal rapist. So, someone a few generations ago kindly shortened the name to Baron.”
She led him around the back of the dilapidated cabin.
“This was my fishing cabin thirty years ago.” Anya leaned into the rear door of the cabin.
“Originally belonged to my father-in-law—Joe Baxter.” She seemed to survey the ruins.
“Joe died before I met his son—my ex-husband. Great overnight hideout when we were trolling for salmon. Lots of memories in this old shack. Not all of them good. I fixed it up a bit, but when I came into my fortune, I just moved on.”
She turned toward the grassy area behind the cabin. “All those seasons we struggled to make ends meet out here. Never knew a fortune in gold from old Joe’s mine was buried right under our woodpile.”
“The woodpile. That’s what we…what I gathered from Joe’s coded journal,” Marco said. “I didn’t remember seeing a woodpile when I was here before, though. I even went back and looked through my photos.”
Anya met Marco’s eye. “So you cracked the code. My guys haven’t been able to yet.”
“Well, I can tell you what it says.” Marco pointed to the edge of the rubble where he’d found the radio. “The radio I dug up that started this whole mess was right under there.”
Wish I’d never found the damn thing.
“The gold wasn’t from Joe’s mine,” Marco continued. “Joe worked with two guys—Virgil Fellows and Sam Worlson—they stole it from the Chichagof mine. Joe’s mine was just a front—laundering the gold, so to speak.”
Anya slowed and turned back toward Marco. “Sam Worlson…” She nodded slowly, enunciating each syllable, looking into space over Marco’s head. “What about Thomas?”
“Don’t know a Thomas,” Marco said. “Who was he?”
“You know, you really messed things up with your fancy radio and your rescue project,” she said. “Almost got our poor girl killed.”
“You mean Crystal?” Marco stopped on the trail. “What are you…She is still alive!”
Anya moved away from the cabin. “Sometimes a woman needs to disappear, Mr. Franco.”
A wave of relief, elation, and confusion washed over Marco. He’d been right. He’d been wrong. His mind spun and wobbled its way through a maze of conflicting thoughts and emotions. “I knew it.”
“I was sick of feeling afraid in my own home,” Anya said.
“Keeping bodyguards round the clock, sleeping with a gun under my pillow, waiting for someone to come after me. Funny thing is, the people I’m afraid of probably died a long time ago.
” She nodded toward the cabin. “Anyway, I decided to do something about it—not just for me, but for people like me.”
Crystal was escaping. I just stepped right in the middle…
“I run six shelters across Alaska,” Anya continued.
“Most of the women we help can go there, get away from their abusers, and get a fresh start. On rare occasions, though, like with Crystal and the Pykes, that’s not enough.
Those monsters would go to the ends of the earth to find her unless they thought she was dead.
They have people everywhere—including law enforcement, so we couldn’t involve the police. ”
“The other two women who went overboard.” Marco tried to keep his voice from trembling. “Was that you too?”
“They went much smoother,” Anya replied. “We scooped them up right after they jumped overboard just as planned.” Anya motioned for them to continue down the trail. “This time, with the bad weather, we lost Crystal. Then you came and trampled on our radio transmissions.”
Marco stopped in the trail. “That seems terribly dangerous.”
“The Pykes are even more dangerous,” Anya said.
“But we won’t try it this way again. Three times was pushing it, and you’re right.
We almost lost her.” She stopped and moved some branches from beside the trail, uncovering a wooden hatch at ground level.
“Joe Baxter’s root cellar.” She opened the hatch and motioned to Marco. “After you.”
Marco touched the inReach in his jacket pocket. Once he dropped into the root cellar, it wouldn’t have a signal.
He turned to Anya. “Are we okay?”
Her stare dug into his heart. “We are.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and brought up the inReach app to connect to his satellite device. He thumbed a message into the app, making errors every couple of letters and having to backspace. “EVERYTHNG OK. SAFE. STND DOWN.”
The inReach beeped its confirmation.
Anya took a battery-powered lantern from a dusty shelf and turned it on. The warm glow illuminated a cozy corner hideaway with a cot, provisions, blankets. She lifted the edge of the cot toward the light. Words were carved into the wooden frame.
Marco leaned in.
Lena—2014
Daphne—2016
Crystal—2017
Marco fought back tears. He ran his fingers over the rough engraving, each name etched with a different stroke, each groove aged differently.
He pictured the three young women sharing this space over the years, battered, terrified, lonely, hopeful—reaching out to each other across time for courage, comfort, and a companionship of sorts.
He imagined Joe Baxter crawling down here in winter to retrieve his food supplies, braving the harsh Alaskan weather and solitude. Trying to find his own leverage against the crush of the Great Depression.
He visualized Anya in her younger days, taking a minute for herself during a fishing break to have a cigarette, finding her own brief refuge from whatever demons stalked her.
Marco turned toward Anya, studying the lines in her face. “I’m glad you were here for her.”
“She’s safe now.” Anya turned off the lantern, started up the ladder, then paused. “New life, new identity—I thought you should know, but we have to protect her secret.”
Marco followed her down the path back toward shore. “Of course, I will.”
“I apologize for misjudging you, Marco,” Anya said. “I’m having the work that our boatyard did on your boat comped. I’m also paying for the spill cleanup and any other damage. Also, next time you need bottom paint and so forth on that beautiful vessel of yours, it’s on me.”
“I’m sorry I stumbled into your way,” Marco said.
“We never meant to harm you, Marco.” Anya looked down. “But if you want my advice, you’ll get yourself back out there and find yourself a partner, instead of traipsing around Alaska looking for damsels in distress.”
Marco felt the knot in his stomach begin to relax. “I’ve had my great love already. I don’t think I’m really—”
“You’re a handsome man with a lot of good years left,” Anya said. “And you are clearly a good guy, the way you tried to help Crystal. The world could use a few more good men. I could introduce you to a few dozen—”
“That’s thoughtful of you,” Marco replied. “I’ll think about it. You taking that advice yourself?”
Anya chuckled. “Oh, and there’s also this.” She reached into her bag, her hand emerged cradling—round, smooth, glass. “I am deeply sorry that our boatyard crew misplaced this when your work was being done. I wanted to return it to you personally with my apologies.”
Marco’s knees buckled, and he caught himself on a tree trunk. A great weight of sorrow rose from his core. He opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t form words.
Michelle.
“I think we have a lot in common, Mr. Franco.” Anya placed the snow globe into Marco’s hands and squeezed them with both of her own. “I’d like to be friends, if you can see your way clear to forgive me.”
They emerged from the woods into the clearing. The fishing boat was gone. Orange beanie guy stood waiting on the beach alongside his flat-black RIB and Marco’s dinghy.
“Where did your boat go?” Marco asked.
“Fishing, I hope.” Anya chuckled. “Not gonna make any money just sitting there at anchor.”