Chapter 2
2
W inding her way through neighborhoods and down surface streets, Lina watched her mirrors. She didn’t have a specific reason to think someone would follow her, but she wanted to be sure. When cars came and went from view—with none appearing overly attached to her—she turned toward Interstate 5. Heading north without a passport wasn’t an option, so she took the on-ramp south.
As the city of Seattle, then Tacoma gave way to lush farmlands, the shock of her father’s murder began wearing off. They hadn’t been close, but death, especially murder, had a way of ripping apart and rearranging so many things—priorities, feelings, grievances. And as the miles clicked by, the buried resentment she held as Dr. Alistair Kato’s daughter surfaced and blew away on the wind. Not gone forever—too many years of a strained relationship lay between them for that. But it fell back, no longer a consideration as much bigger issues occupied her mind.
With no signs of the house being tossed or riffled through, she ruled out a burglary gone wrong. A case of mistaken identity was possible, but she doubted that too. Which left the murder being personal.
To her dad.
Alistair Kato had a lot of faults, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of any that would lead to murder. Honestly, if he’d wronged anyone enough to push them to violence, it would have been her, and it most definitely wasn’t her.
Then again, everyone always said academia was cutthroat. As a professor at the University of Washington medical school and renowned hematologist, maybe he’d pissed someone off?
She could see that possibility all too easily. He wouldn’t have done it on purpose—her dad had little use for people and even less use for workplace politics. But inadvertently railroading someone in his pursuit of science? Yeah, a definite possibility.
Her thoughts shifted to the little pink backpack in her saddlebag. Maybe she wasn’t giving him enough credit. He’d been aware enough of some sort of danger. Enough to pack the bag for her and write the message.
As she zipped past a slow-moving semi-truck, she wondered what it contained. She hadn’t looked at the contents before leaving. She’d check into a nondescript hotel near Portland, ensure she was still flying solo, then open it. Maybe it held the answers she needed—wanted. Although, her father was and had always been a puzzle to her. She’d be surprised if he was any different in death than he had been in life.
A few hours later, she shoved the pink bag into her black backpack—her go bag—then zipped it up. Throwing it over her shoulder, she walked into the lobby of one of the many generic chain hotels that lined the highway. As she chatted with the man behind the check-in counter, she surreptitiously scanned the area. An older couple sitting at the bar, a woman with a toddler in tow heading to the pool, and a young man pacing by the front window, phone to his ear. Her gaze lingered on him. An older woman exited the elevators, making her way toward him. Lina’s suspicions faded when he ended the call, smiled, and reached for the woman’s roller board.
“Ready, Nana? We’ll make it to Seattle right on time for us to check into the cruise,” he said. It struck Lina as an odd time to check out of a hotel, but cruise ships had weird rules about check-in times, and maybe they preferred waiting in Portland rather than Seattle.
“A cruise to Alaska,” the man behind the counter said. She turned her attention to him as he ran her card. “The grandson started a small tech company and sold it recently. For as long as he could remember, his grandmother has wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise, so he’s treating her to the top-of-the-line trip.”
Lina’s heart pinched, but she smiled. “That’s one of the best things I’ve heard all week.”
The man inclined his head as he returned her card and handed over the envelope containing her key. After he directed her to the elevators, she made her way to her room on the third floor, ensuring the door locked behind her before setting the bag on the king-size bed.
She eyed it for a moment before walking to the large window. Shifting the privacy curtain, she looked out onto the parking lot and, a quarter mile on the other side, Interstate 5. Nothing looked out of the ordinary; nothing piqued her concern.
Letting the curtain fall back into place, she returned to the bed. With a determined shake of her head, she reached for her bag and dumped out the contents. Memories assailed her as she lifted her little pink backpack. She’d picked it out while on a trip to England. It looked similar to the one all her friends were getting that year, but coming from another country, it was subtly different in a way that made it a little bit cooler than everyone else’s. And the Hello Kitty badge had come from Tokyo, another trip she and her mom had made that summer.
The zipper stuck when she tried opening it. A little wiggling back and forth did the trick, and seconds later, she stared at what her father had left her.
And stared.
Bundles of cash stacked on more bundles of cash filled the small bag. In a world where cash was used so infrequently on a day-to-day basis, the piles almost looked fake. Almost.
She frowned. She had plenty of money—both her own and a trust left to her by her mother—why would her dad give her cash ? Frustration niggled at her, but she pushed it aside. Hoping to find another clue, she grabbed the bottom of the bag and tipped it over. The bundled twenties fell out—assuming they were standard issue, she counted twenty thousand dollars—then, with a little shake, a single folded sheet of paper drifted out, landing on top of the money.
She examined the bag to make sure nothing remained, then set it down and picked the paper up. Unfolding it, a map emerged. The fine black lines detailed elevation, waterways, and flatlands. The precision of it marking it as drawn by her father’s hand.
It took her less than ten seconds to identify the location—a unique piece of land nestled along the Eel River and Highway 101 south of Eureka, California. For reasons unknown to her, her grandfather’s youngest brother purchased it decades ago, then immediately leased it to one of the universities as an agricultural research facility. Technically, her great-uncle owned it, but the university was only forty or so years into its one-hundred-year lease.
Her eyes traced the lines and the few scribbles filling the otherwise white sheet. He’d included certain landmarks on the property—ones she’d recognize. But why? Of all the places she’d traveled to, why draw this piece of land? Land she hadn’t visited in more than two decades?
When no ready answer came to mind, that left her with a choice—head to Eureka and look for whatever her father intended for her to find, or hand it all over to the police and let them investigate. She sighed. No choice at all. Not for someone like her. Eureka it was.
But not today. Five in the afternoon was too late to start the eight-hour drive to the Northern California coast.
After replacing the money in the bag, she leaned against the headboard of the bed and stared out the filmy curtains, letting her mind wander. She wondered if someone had found her father yet. Again, she tossed around the idea of calling the police. She’d almost stopped outside Tacoma to do just that, but public phones were in short supply, and she didn’t want to use her mobile. They likely couldn’t trace her, not with the special technology on her device, but she didn’t want to take that chance. She hadn’t done anything wrong—well, other than take evidence from the crime scene. But she hadn’t killed her father, and she preferred to stay off their radar as long as possible.
She also couldn’t ignore her father’s last message to her, “Run.” Alistair Kato was not a man who wasted words. He’d told her to run, so run she would.
Her stomach churned at the thought of him still lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, though. She may not want to call the police, but if no one had discovered his body yet, she would.
Picking up her phone, she opened a search browser and scoured the Seattle news. Finding nothing of note, she logged into social media and searched several of the bigger sites. On the third one, she found a post about police activity on her block and a picture of four law enforcement vehicles parked in front of her dad’s house.
The images somehow made everything more real, and a wave of sorrow twisted through her as she imagined the scene happening inside her childhood home—her father alone in death, the house swarming with men and women who cared more about the crime than him. They’d be doing their jobs, she knew that, but it saddened her that her father’s death was not much different from his life—solitary, unfeeling, and entirely transactional.
Then again, maybe he’d appreciate it that way.
She laughed at that. Her dad would find her musings a waste of time. He was dead; whatever happened afterward, he wasn’t around to have any opinions on, let alone care about.
With another laugh—mostly at herself this time—she rose from the bed and grabbed her jacket. Her father rarely drank, but when he did, he had a single liquor of choice. He wouldn’t give a shit if she raised a glass to toast him and his life. But mourning, even as minimal as hers was, was for the living.
Fingers crossed the bar in the hotel had a decent shot of sake.