Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Sarah looked at the medallion half. “I must have misunderstood. It sounds like you’re saying your grandfather knew my grandfather.”
“That is what I’m saying. Think about it, Sarah. It makes sense. The only difference is that my grandfather never gave me a deathbed confession. He died suddenly, so who knows, maybe he would have if given the chance.”
“He didn’t leave a letter or a map,” she said. “Even if you do have the other half of this, maybe your grandfather never knew what this was really about. They could have met, sure, but what does that mean, if anything?”
“He knew the truth. He said that I would know the truth too if I found the other half. I think we’re close to uncovering the secret.
We now know that the plane crashed on the mountain, when it was reported lost at sea.
I think it’s possible my grandfather helped yours escape the crash.
Maybe he even helped him hide in that cave or escape and leave the cave.
Assisted him to get somewhere safe and off the mountain.
It’s not something easily done without help.
Even if I didn’t have the coin or believe my grandfather was there to help, I would suspect someone had helped yours to survive. ”
Ryder was probably right, but she wasn’t sure and needed to understand.
Considering his words, she angled her head to one side then the other.
“I guess it makes sense when you put it like that. But tell me why he didn’t report the crash,” she said.
“A plane crash would be something to report, and a priority. Why would he cover it up? Claim the plane hadn’t crashed on the mountain? He lied to you, Ryder. To everyone.”
“I guess the same reason that yours changed his name and let everyone believe he died.”
Touché.
He gestured to her cell. “We should probably listen to that before something happens to it.”
Exhaustion threatened to take her down. Her lids felt so heavy, but the man sitting across from her with his hard stare and apprehensive expression exhilarated her.
She should be as anxious as he was to hear the recording, but she wanted to be fully alert and coherent and not thinking about the weird but very likely connection between their grandfathers.
She pressed the button and released a slow, measured breath. Her grandfather’s voice crackled through the tinny speaker, sounding distant and like a ghost crossing time and the veil of silence to reach her. The pain of tears ignited in the back of her throat.
“If you’re listening to this, then I’ve failed to keep the secret.
Or maybe I’ve finally done the right thing.
Either way, I won’t be around to explain everything, so listen carefully.
I was the navigator—fresh out of flight school, barely twenty-one.
They said it was top-secret cargo. That we weren’t to ask.
The Sentinel One was carrying something.
It wasn’t a weapon in the usual sense. It was experimental, biological, developed in a place we never talked about back then.
Camp Detrick—what they call Fort Detrick now.
You’ll find the rest of it—vials of it inside the wreckage—or what’s left of it.
But you’re not the only one looking. There are people who’ve spent decades making sure the truth stays buried.
Others want to find what was created. I’m told an explosion took out the lab in Camp Detrick. All the information was lost.”
The recording crackled. Stunned at what she’d heard, she shared a look with Ryder, hoping there was more.
Grandpa Walt’s breathing was ragged over the recording.
“I’ve lived with that horror of what we had developed every day since. Maybe this was plan B, in case . . .” The recording crackled again, and his words became garbled. Sarah strained to understand. Then it continued.
“A good man helped me . . . Goodwin was his name . . . he helped me bury the evidence . . . beneath an avalanche. Then he helped me survive.”
Another pause and his voice softened. “I’m sorry. For the secrets. I realize the secret won’t stay buried forever, so it must be destroyed completely. And now that you’re this far, you need to find the plane. Destroy what’s inside before someone else finds it. And . . . forgive me.”
The message clicked off. The only sound was the crackling fire in the woodstove.
Still, even with the heat spilling from the cast iron, a chill closed in around her after what she’d just heard.
Sarah stared at her hiking boots, then finally lifted her gaze to meet Ryder’s.
She couldn’t read his expression, but if she had to guess, he looked angry.
Confused.
Ryder jumped to his feet and paced the small room, his boots clomping. “Did you know?” he asked.
Her chest tightened. “Of course not. I had no idea.”
But it made sense, didn’t it? Maybe God had been guiding her steps in this all along.
Otherwise, how else would she have ended up hiring Ryder?
Then again, he knew the mountain, and she’d hired him for that reason—and the fact that he was a hero.
That hadn’t hurt. Whatever. Her getting Ryder’s help hadn’t been a coincidence, so she shouldn’t have been surprised at this news.
In fact, she should have suspected it. Maybe that thought had been flitting around in her mind all this time, just out of reach.
She dropped her shaking hands to her lap under the table to hide them from Ryder.
Wait a minute.
She could ask him the same thing. “How about you? Did you even suspect it? After all, your grandfather was around at the time the plane went down and then spent his life dispelling what turned out to be truth with the idea it was a myth, when all along he knew that it crashed on the mountain!”
And now that she thought about it, the very idea infuriated her. “Maybe if he hadn’t spent his life hiding the truth . . .” None of this would have happened.
Her brother would be alive. No, she was exhausted.
Not thinking clearly. She shoved her hair into a ponytail.
She was grasping at straws. Making unfounded judgments.
Ryder said nothing. Just kept pacing, clearly as upset about this news as she was.
Clearly as stunned. There was much more than their grandfathers’ connection going on.
Sarah needed to hear Ryder’s take on it.
“Ryder, tell me what you’re thinking.”
He stopped pacing, then glanced around the space. “I’ll tell you when I can form a clear, rational thought.”
Okay. She shouldn’t push. Yeah, she was going to push. “With such a dangerous payload, why hasn’t the plane already been found?” She had her ideas but wanted to hear from Ryder.
He turned his back to her and moved close to the woodstove to close the grate. The fire snapped from behind it.
Finally, he said, “A mountain like this, a person—even a team of trained searchers and scientists—would struggle to cover every ridge, every avalanche chute, every crevasse. You’d need years. Maybe even decades. You saw for yourself.”
“Sure, but even with today’s technology?
Satellites, lidar scans? Drones to fly around?
Come on. I mean, researchers found the lost Mayan cities in the jungle.
How can a plane simply vanish in the Cascades?
” Maybe her brother had been killed because he had the skills to find something no one wanted found, or maybe he’d been killed because he refused to search.
She might never know the truth—but if anyone could have found the plane, it was her brother.
And now . . . Sarah, because she had the map and she had Ryder.
Ryder appeared deflated, which wasn’t a reassuring look on him, as he eased into the wooden chair at the table, causing it to creak. The act made it look like his whole body carried the weight of the world. Sarah moved to sit in the chair at the table across from him.
He braced his arms on the plank surface, his gaze landing on hers, but this time it didn’t reassure her. Still, she couldn’t look away and braced herself for his next words.
“Because . . .” He released a heavy sigh.
“According to the official records, the plane went down in the Pacific. So that’s where they focused the search.
And the teams looking? Probably didn’t even know what the plane was really carrying.
Just another wartime transport lost at sea.
With no confirmed crash site and no distress call, the Sentinel One was written off—missing in action. Like so many others.”
Really? She could hardly believe it. “Eventually someone would have checked here, wouldn’t they?”
“The North Cascades? I don’t think this area was in the original flight path. It wouldn’t make sense.”
“But for the rumors to start that a plane crashed here carrying Nazi gold, someone had to have seen it. There’s truth in myth, right? So with that, it seems someone would have looked.”
“If they looked, my guess is that someone didn’t want them looking for it or finding it.
For instance, take the lidar data you mentioned—there’s a massive backlog of unprocessed data.
Not enough analysts. It wouldn’t take much to make the plane disappear.
Mountains like these, along with the thick, tree-covered canopy, snowpack, snow slopes that shift every spring.
That plane buried under a rockslide or a hidden ravine—it could be hidden forever. ”
Sarah crossed her arms, taking in his knowledge—he would know about mapping what was on the mountain, wouldn’t he? “You sound like you don’t think it was just lost.”
“It was buried and forgotten on purpose.” His eyes grew even more intense.
The look scared her. “What is it?”
“This is bigger than either of us. Whatever bioweapon was being transported could have been released with the crash. Or it could have remained intact. I don’t know what you expect us to do now. In case you forgot, we neglected to pack our hazmat suits.”
She almost laughed at his sarcasm, but he wasn’t wrong.
“You wish we hadn’t listened to this? Yesterday, before we got this far, part of me was afraid to hear what Tessa had found.
Maybe I wanted us to get this far before because, deep down, maybe I feared it would be something like this.
We’re here now.” So . . . we keep going.
The security of the cabin and the warmth of the stove revived her and ramped up her determination.
“Deep down, huh?”
“Look, I swear to you,” she said. “I didn’t know what we were looking for. I didn’t know about your grandfather’s involvement.”
He suddenly jumped up. “I need to search this place. I wouldn’t put it past my grandfather to have hidden something here.”
“Are you saying you stayed here—camped up here, hunting and fishing—and you never found anything related to the crashed plane? Do you think he would risk it?”
“No. He did this after. Maybe the last decade of his life, after nobody came back here.”
“How can I help?”
“This old place isn’t the safest. You’re good, so stay there and review what we know. Look at what we found. Examine the map. Think on our next steps. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
And with his exit, Sarah found herself cold and alone, as if Ryder had sucked the warmth out with him and fear and shadows had taken his place.