Chapter 6
6
L ina wrapped her arms around him as they pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward the highway. Westbound 299 would take them through Whiskeytown Lake toward Big Flat and to their destination in the Trinity Alps.
The cool air hit Viper’s face as he accelerated and, although still technically summer, he was glad for the gloves he kept in his saddlebag. He’d ridden in cooler temperatures, but not if he could help it.
Behind him, Lina scooted closer, plastering herself against his body, her thighs cradling him. As they angled through a turn, he took a moment to appreciate having a woman—Lina—on the back of his bike. Only the second in all his years of riding. Although, maybe the first didn’t count as they’d both been in high school at the time—more kids than adults. He didn’t feel the same kind of eager anticipation he felt that night. He and Lina weren’t sneaking off to make out somewhere her parents wouldn’t find her. Nor had the young woman just lost her father.
Maybe it was age, or maturity, or something else entirely, but the thoughts running through his head as they merged onto the highway felt remarkably adult .
A deep sense of satisfaction settled in him knowing that she’d chosen him when she needed help. And it felt natural and right that, even without any intel on the situation, he’d brought her exactly what she needed—the hair ties, bandanna, and glasses. Yes, he for damn sure appreciated the way her body curled around his. But relief that she was safe, that they’d eaten without getting spotted, that he had an extra pair of riding pants for her to wear over her cutoffs, and that he now had her back, outweighed his physical awareness of her.
He considered dissecting those thoughts and feelings, then decided not to. Over the years, he’d learned that rushing or fighting change rarely ended well for him. And change was definitely happening. He needed to let it.
The air cooled as they climbed the Trinity Alps, hitting his face with a slight sting. He wiggled the tips of his fingers, grateful for his gloves. Lina’s cheek pressed against his back, her helmet resting against the top of his spine. Her hands, tucked under his jacket, were laced together over his stomach.
His headlight sliced through the night, the shadows of the mountains making it even darker as they twisted their way through. At close to nine o’clock, they didn’t encounter much traffic—an RV or two lumbering toward the next campground, a pickup truck that pulled off on one of the unmarked dirt roads, and a couple of cars. Nothing tailing them. Not that he expected to see Sam and the woman—they’d left before he and Lina and were likely still looking for a woman alone—but he’d rest easier when they arrived at the cabin.
When they finally pulled into the campground near Big Flat, Viper let out a mental breath and relaxed at the familiar sights. Having been to the property more times than he could count, he slowed but didn’t hesitate as he wound his way toward the cabin the owner kept available for the Falcons—usually fully stocked. He smiled as it came into view, tucked in at the end of the row of eight buildings. Danielle, the owner, had left the porch light on for them.
Pulling his bike close to the door and out of sight of the rest of the cabins, he turned the engine off. Silence enveloped them like a heavy blanket, and neither moved. Slowly, the sounds of the night made themselves known—the gurgle of the river, the breeze through the pines, the call of a night bird of prey.
“You’ve been here before,” Lina said as she slid off his bike.
“The owner is a friend of the club,” he said, swinging his leg over and rising. He loved his bike—the meditative rumble, the wind on his face, the agility of it as it hugged curves—but the solidity of the earth under his feet in those first few seconds after a ride anchored him.
“She lets us use this cabin when we need to,” he added.
Lina looked up at the shadowed mountain, then turned her face toward the river. She held her helmet in her hand, but her hair remained in braids and she still wore the bandanna, the tip of it rustling in the breeze. She inhaled, her chest rising under her leather jacket, then slowly exhaled.
“We’re not here for a vacation, but it’s lovely. Even in the dark. Please thank her for me when you have a chance,” she said.
He nodded before opening his saddlebags. Pulling out Lina’s backpack, he handed it to her, replacing it with her helmet. After grabbing his bag from the second container, he gestured her inside.
“There are two bedrooms, each with a bathroom,” he said as they climbed the two steps onto the deck. Three months ago, they had every intention of spending hours in bed together. But after the shooting, after watching Leo bleed onto the gravel of the parking lot and hearing Joey’s quiet sobs, neither had been up for something so light and, although fun, meaningless. They’d shared something deep in that hour, something poignant, real, and raw, bonding them in a way that made it impossible to go back to who they were in those first few hours. Now, he didn’t question that they’d sleep separately. At least for tonight.
“I owe you an explanation before bed,” Lina said, following him into the center room of the cabin that held the kitchen, a small dining area, and a sitting room big enough for one chair and a loveseat.
“Set your stuff down first,” he said.
“Mind if I hop in the shower?”
He shook his head. “We also have laundry if you have anything that needs washing.”
Her eyes lit up. “I left with nothing but my go bag. I still have an extra set of clothes, but since I destroyed a pair of jeans tonight, I wouldn’t mind washing what I have left.”
“Leave it out on the bed before you get into the shower,” he said. “I’ll grab it when I hear the water running.”
She nodded, then disappeared into the room to their right. He waited until she closed the door before heading to his own, pulling out his phone as he walked. Dropping his stuff on the floor, he opened a search engine as he sank onto the corner of the bed. Lina would tell him what he needed to know—more than what he’d find online—but he wanted to be prepared.
Typing in “Kato,” “murder,” and “Seattle,” he waited as results popped up. The screen filled with links, but he immediately dismissed the first seven, which covered the murder of a young college student killed four years prior. The eighth link looked more promising, a short article about the murder of Dr. Alastair Kato of Seattle, a prominent professor of hematology, who’d been found dead in his home the day prior.
The article barely filled four paragraphs, and Viper gleaned little other than that the man had died from multiple concussive injuries and a neighbor’s dog, who’d escaped its leash, found him. The dog had nudged its way through the unlocked front door, and its owner had followed inside. The editors of the paper thought it appropriate to put a picture of the yellow Lab alongside a professional photo of Dr. Kato.
When the sound of the pipes cranking echoed through the walls, Viper closed the browser. Slipping into Lina’s room, he grabbed the small pile of clothes, pausing on his way out and inhaling the humid, musky linen scent filtering from the bathroom into the room. As nice as it was, he wondered if the smell would mask Lina’s unique essence.
Not something he should think about.
With a shake of his head, he closed the bedroom door and headed to the kitchen. Dropping her clothes in the washer/dryer combo, he started the machine before pouring himself a glass of water.
His mind wandered as he stared out the window over the sink into the darkness and sipped his drink. Lina hadn’t seemed overly upset about her father’s death, and he wondered if they’d been close. He’d felt nothing but relief when his own father finally died, so knew that sadness didn’t always follow loss.
He did hope she hadn’t seen the body—regardless of their relationship, seeing the body of someone you know, especially when they’d been beaten to death, wasn’t a walk in the park.
With that thought, he opened the cabinet over the sink and pulled out the bottle of Ardbeg Wee Beastie that Danielle, the owner, kept for them. He poured two glasses and was recapping it when Lina emerged from her room in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt.
“You read my mind,” she said, walking over and picking up a glass. “Also, can we turn that on?” she asked, nodding to the gas fireplace.
“Remote’s right there,” he replied, pointing to the device on the coffee table. “Let me kick my boots off, then we can sit in front of the fire and you can tell me what’s going on.”
Her lips quirked. “An adult version of a campfire story. Aside from the fact that the story will be about my dad, I like this version better,” she said, lifting her glass in a mock cheers before turning toward the fireplace.
When he returned sans shoes, he tossed her the extra blanket from his closet, grabbed his drink, and sank into the comfortable La-Z-Boy. Stretching his feet out, he held his glass up, the glow of the flames turning the liquid a glistening amber.
“It’s good,” Lina said. “The Ardbeg,” she added.
“My favorite.”
She smiled. “Mine too, although the seventeen year is my true weakness.”
“We’ll have that next time.”
“Deal,” she said before holding her glass up. He didn’t press her. She would talk when she was ready. Two sips later, she started.
“My dad and I aren’t—weren’t—close,” she said. Curled on the loveseat, with the blanket tucked over her legs, she rested her glass on her thigh. “And his…relationship with my mom was complicated. But she and I were close.”
“She’s gone, too?”
Lina looked down into her drink before taking a sip, nodding as she swallowed. “Three years ago. Ovarian cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
She lifted a shoulder, her eyes back on her glass. “I am, too. I still miss her.”
A half a minute ticked by on the old clock hanging above the door.
“When she died, she made me promise to keep an eye on my dad. Like I said, we weren’t close. Not ever. He wasn’t a terrible person, not cruel or abusive or anything like that, but he was…absent. For my entire life, he’s been this sort of background figure. And when I say ‘absent,’ I’m not talking about him missing my third-grade play. I mean it in every way—mental, intellectual, emotional. Every way except the physical. We lived in the same home until I left for college, but I don’t think he could tell you my birthday or middle name or who my friends were or what I liked to study.” Her gaze drifted to the flames, but Viper doubted she saw them. “I walked by him once on campus. He taught at the University of Washington medical school, and I was on a college tour. He didn’t recognize me. To be fair, he didn’t recognize much of anything happening outside his own head…”
“But it couldn’t have felt good.”
She huffed. “You’d think I’d be used to it, but no, it didn’t feel great.” She took another sip of her drink, letting her gaze rest on the fire. “The weird thing is our lack of relationship doesn’t bother me. Not anymore. When I was little, I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t talk with me or play with me like other dads in the neighborhood. But, by the time I was a preteen, it was just the way we were. My mom and I were family. He was a guy who lived in the house.”
“ Was he just the guy who lived in the house?” he asked.
She smiled at his gentle inquiry. “He was definitely my biological father. I have a couple of the Japanese characteristics he inherited from his mother. This,” she said, running her fingers through her dark hair. “And the shape and color of these.” She tapped the edges of her eyes, which to Viper looked more catlike than indicative of any specific ethnicity. “Also, my mom assured me of that fact and that I was planned.”
Families came in all shapes and sizes, but Viper couldn’t imagine willingly having a child, then ignoring it. His parents hadn’t wanted kids, let alone the five they ended up with thanks to a cocktail of poverty, lack of education, lack of resources, and addictions that ruled their lives. The fact that they hadn’t wanted any kids to begin with didn’t excuse the choices they made while raising their brood, but he did believe that if they had wanted him and his brothers, their lives might have been different.
“I left for college at eighteen, then on to life and all that, and he disappeared even more. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. By that time, it was probably more me disappearing on him. I no longer lived at home, so what little efforts I’d made while under the same roof, I stopped making. I talked to my mom all the time and we met up in places for vacations and things like that. In the ten years I lived away from Seattle, I saw my dad maybe once a year. Sometimes not even that.”
“You’re from Seattle?”
She nodded. “Born and raised. I moved back when I was twenty-eight to take care of my mom when she got sick. She lasted two years after that.” He’d already said he was sorry, so he kept his tongue. “Anyway,” she said on a sigh. “I made that promise to my mom, so once a month, I stop by, make sure my dad has food, the bills are paid, that kind of thing.” Her gaze still lingered on the flames dancing behind the glass, her body still. “I went over yesterday afternoon and…found him.” She took a sip of her drink. “He’d been beaten. I’m not sure when, but the blood on the floor was mostly dry.”
He rose and walked to the kitchen. Grabbing the Ardbeg, he returned and poured her another dram before retaking his seat and topping off his.
“I found him near the dining room. There was a…trail of blood. I didn’t follow it, but it came from the kitchen. And no,” she said on another exhale, “I didn’t call the police.” She rolled the glass in her hands, then took another sip. “He left me a message and a bag. A pink backpack of mine from when I was a kid. One I thought they’d thrown away years ago.”
“What did the message say?” he asked as a night bird screeched not far from the house.
“‘Run,’” she replied. “That’s it.”
“And the bag?”
She ran a hand through her hair, shoving it behind her shoulders. “A hand-drawn map and a stack of cash. Twenty thousand dollars.”
“He wanted you to go off-grid.”
She inclined her head.
“The map?”
“My mom used to draw me maps all the time. It was…kind of our thing. That and puzzles of all sorts. He imitated her style. I’m surprised he remembered.”
“So you ran, but you’re not running away, you’re headed to wherever it is he sent you.”
She nodded. “It’s a map of a piece of property my great-uncle owns. It’s been in the family for a few decades and is leased to the UC system in California for agricultural research. It’s near Eureka.”
“That’s where you were headed when you noticed Sam following you.”
She nodded. “I was in my dad’s house less than five minutes and left straight from there. I drove to Portland and stayed the first night at a random hotel.”
“Then to Redding, where you got waylaid.”
“I’m glad I did, though. It should have occurred to me that I might be tracked, but it didn’t. My dad was such an…introvert that I can’t imagine what he might have done to catch the attention of a killer. I think I still had that image of him in my mind when I left. That maybe it was a fluke, a random break-in.” She hesitated. “But of course, it wasn’t,” she said on an exhale. “He had that bag ready. Filled with cash and a map. Whatever was going on in his life, he suspected it could end like this.”
If she had any idea what it was, she would have said, so he didn’t bother asking. “What now?”
The glow of the fire lit her face as she considered her answer. “Get to the property in Eureka. See what the map leads to. Beyond that, I have no idea.”
“Do you know any of his colleagues? Any chance you can get his computer?”
Her gaze never left the fire, but she frowned. “I imagine he had some sort of relationship with the people he worked with, but I never met any.” She narrowed her eyes, and her frown deepened.
“You remembered something,” he said.
“You asked about his computer. He has a personal laptop. It was usually on the dining table when I stopped by. It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“They took it?”
She started to shrug, then ended with a shake of her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t look through the house, but it wasn’t where it usually is.”
“As his daughter, the police will be looking for you.”
She nodded. “They called and left a message this morning. As did someone from the university. I haven’t returned either. I want to see where the map leads me before I make any decisions.”
“So that’s the plan for tomorrow?”
She looked at him. “Do you mind? I called you out of the blue, and I know I’m asking a lot. I didn’t say it before, but thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome, and no, I don’t mind,” he replied. After that night at the club, he owed her one. But he would have come anyway. Wherever this adventure took her, he’d be by her side.
“So,” he said, setting his empty glass down. “Where in Eureka are we headed tomorrow?”