A Dark Lure (39 page)

She smiled. “I’m almost twelve.” It just came out. A need to say it. Share something of herself.

“I know.”

She topped off his glass, adding a wee extra splash for good measure. She brought it to him and he took another sip, smaller this time.

She angled her head, watching him. He was crusty. But she decided she liked him. He said things like they were. Tori placed a high value on this.

“How old are you anyway?” she said.

He chuckled. Then his smile faded. “Old enough to have had a good run on this earth, kid. Take a seat next to me here.”

She did. “What if they don’t come back?”

“They will.”

“I don’t believe that you know it for certain.”

“Kiddo, you
need
to believe. Now come, we’re going to tie a fly.”

“What kind?”

He peered over his glasses. “A damselfly.”

He showed her how to pick the colors and wrap them tightly around the hook, forming the body with shimmering blue bars with black bands. He showed her how to make the wings. He let her have a go at winding thread and picking eyes. They made several flies, some really bad, but she was getting the hang of it. They worked and she copied, and the grandfather clock ticked. He drank more whisky, and she fed the fire.

“Do you think they watch down on us, Tori—the dead?”

“I . . .” She inhaled deeply. “I think my mom does.”

He nodded. “Grace, too. My wife.”

“I think the dead see everything. And from up there in the stars, everything makes sense. It has a design.”

He crooked up a hairy gray brow. “Do they forgive you, do you think? From up there?”

She thought on this a while. “Yes. They do. They know that you don’t have the same perspective that they do, so you make mistakes. You make wrong decisions even though you think they’re right.”

“You’ll forgive your father, then? For any mistakes?”

She looked down at the shimmering gossamer blue thread in her fingers. In her mind’s eye she could see the damselfly alighting on her jeans . . . but before she could answer, a great big booming thundered up the stairs.

She tensed. Myron’s head snapped to the door, his eyes going wide.

The banging continued. Voices reached them. Men outside. Yelling, screaming.

Myron quickly rolled his chair over to the wall, took down his shotgun from a bracket. “Stay there.”

“Where are you going?”

The banging sound boomed up the stairs again, reverberating through the big empty lodge house. Her heart raced.

Myron flung open the window, peered down.

Voices reached in through the open window. “Clinton RCMP. Police! Open up!”

CHAPTER 24

Cole braced for impact as he fought to pull the nose higher. Suddenly, wind slammed the Cub along the flank and they were thrust sideways, forcing him to bank sharply to the left. Another force of wind, big downdraft, hit them from the top, and the plane plummeted like a rock.

Just as he thought they were going to enter a death spiral, they were flung upward again by a rush of air deflecting off the mountain in front of them. It shot them way up, like a cork in a wild waterfall current. He struggled with the controls to keep his wings level, opening the throttle, racing with the wind, riding it like a wave, and abruptly, they popped out above cloud.

His heart hammered.

His skin and shirt were drenched.

The engine droned loudly in the sudden quiet. Behind the tail of his plane he could see the gray—a roiling, churning hump of air—the storm they’d just punched through. It curled and crawled behind them like deadly smoke trying to reach out and grasp them back in as they headed north. All he had to do was keep outrunning it now.

Yeah, right. And he had to find that truck and camper before the weather monster swallowed them up again.

He wiped his brow with his sleeve.

“Shit,” came the word through his headset.

He gave a snort. “Got that right.”

Below them lay a shining ribbon of road yet to be covered by snow. The northern highway. Vehicles moved steadily back and forth along it. Cole banked, descended, and began to follow the strip of road, watching for a camper on a gray truck. He figured whoever had Olivia would have ditched the boat and trailer long ago.

He tried to calculate distance from Broken Bar versus how fast the camper could conceivably have been traveling along the snowy logging roads. If Olivia had been abducted three hours ago, at a max speed of sixty kilometers per hour for the most part, then faster once the camper hit the highway, the bastard who took her could have made it well over 180 klicks north by now.

“There!” Burton barked into his headphones. “Camper! Heading north near that turnoff ahead at two o’clock.”

He saw it. He banked again, descending and flying low over the highway, buzzing the tops of cars as he went.

“Binoculars are in the side pocket beside your seat,” he told Burton. “We’re looking for an AdventureCaper camper on the bed of a gray Ford F-150, BC plates.”

Behind him Burton found the scopes, peered through them as Cole flew yet lower, keeping an eye out for hydro lines. There was thin, high-level cloud cover here. Tiny crystals were starting to form and hit his windshield. The storm was moving steadily in.

“Can you see BC plates?”

“Affirmative.” Then he swore. “It’s a
Citation camper.”

Cole lifted the nose. They continued to follow the gleaming ribbon of road. Tension twisted through him. With increasing cloud cover it could be dark in a few hours. They had to locate the camper before nightfall.

He took the plane down again as another vehicle caught his attention. But it was a camper on a red truck.

“That’s the dirt road that leads off the highway and into First Nations territory.” Burton pointed over his shoulder. “There, at about eleven o’clock.”

“I see it.”

“It bypasses Watt Lake and heads way up into the forest and mountains out the back. Toward Predator Ridge and then Bear Claw.”

Cole’s gaze flickered between the highway and the twisting thread of dirt snaking into dense forest. It was a gamble. Olivia’s assailant might not have even come this way.

“It’s the only place he’d go.” Burton’s voice came through the headset.

“Her life is on the line. If you’re wrong—”

“I want to save her more than you can possibly know,” Burton said, voice low, quiet. “It’s the reason for everything.”

Cole swallowed, then banked sharply to the left, leaving the highway to follow the logging road into dense, evergreen wilderness. Foothills rose in the distance. Beyond those, Pinnacle Ridge was hidden by cloud. He had to get Olivia before Sorenson took her through those Pinnacle mountains.

“There!” Burton yelled suddenly, right at the same time Cole saw the plume of dust rising above the trees. “Something’s traveling along there!”

Cole swooped the plane down, and they buzzed over the top of a camper and truck, a cloud of fine, gray glacial dust boiling up behind the rig as it raced and rocked along the narrow road.

Burton peered through the scopes. Cole’s heart was in his throat. He scanned the surrounding terrain. Not one fucking little piece of dirt to come down on, apart from that twisty road hemmed in by giant, dark conifers. Snow started to fleck a little more insistently against the windshield. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The monster of churning cloud was fast on their tail.

“AdventureCaper,” Burton said. “Long box, gray Ford F-150. BC plates.”

“I’m taking her lower. Look for another plate on the rear of the camper, to the left of the door. It’s a ham operator’s license plate.”

He buzzed lower, skimming the towering tops of trees.

“Affirmative! I can see the plate.”

Immediately Cole took the nose up a tad. The camper picked up speed. Dirt roiling as it raced through the trees. The road was approaching a canyon with a silvery river.

Cole tried his radio again, fiddling with channels. He wasn’t getting any reception.

“You got a cell phone?” Cole barked.

“Negative. Left it in the cabin.”

He dug in his pocket, found his phone. Handing it over his shoulder, he said, “Use mine. See if Watt Lake can send in an emergency response team, choppers, before that weather hits. Before it gets dark.”

But as he spoke, the weather dragon behind him unleashed a tongue of wind that flicked his little Cub sideways. “Shit!”

He banked, struggling with the controls again. And the phone fell between the seats before Burton could grab it. It skittered all the way along the floor into the gear at the back.

They were on their own. Cole sucked in a deep breath, taking the Cub low again, adrenaline pounding though his blood as the camper neared the first bend at the canyon. It swayed precariously round the corner, too fast, sending a boulder tumbling and exploding down into the river.

The camper increased speed further. The driver clearly knew he was being chased from the air. Cole fought with conflict. Chase them, and they could crash. He could kill Olivia. Let up, and the camper could slip into that endless, dense forest and mountains, and once the weather and darkness hit, Olivia was as good as dead anyway.

Gritting his jaw, he kept over the camper. It rocked and swayed down a decline, approaching another bend that hung over the river. As the camper veered into the bend, the left side came frighteningly close to the drop. As if in slow motion, part of the road shoulder seemed to collapse under the left wheels. The rig seemed to hang suspended above a shower of clattering stones that tumbled down into the river. Dirt mushroomed up, billowing away in the wind. The camper tipped.

Cole felt his stomach drop to his bowels as the rig rolled, crashing onto its side and sliding with rumbling boulders and stones and uprooted saplings in a landslide, down, down, down toward the churning green-and-white water.

The wreck came to rest, precariously balanced on a rock ledge over the water.

Holy Mother of God.

He had to land. Now.

Cole banked sharply, taking his craft low over the water, flying upriver, trees rushing at their sides barely a breath away from the wingtips. Snow was starting to beat against his windshield. Through the blur of his prop he searched for a bank, a gravel bar, anything—even if it meant crash landing, he had to go down now.

“Olivia called him Algor,” Tori told the cops, who were now inside with her and Myron in the library.

One of the officers showed her a photo on an electronic device. “Was it this man?”

She scrunched up her brow. “Yes. No. I mean, he looked sorta like that. Same whitish-blond short hair, same facial hair. I don’t know.” She glanced up at the officer. The cop seemed young. Nice.

“The man wore a ball cap,” she explained. “With the bill pulled low over his face so it was mostly in shadow when I saw him. But it could have been him.”

“How tall was he?”

She glanced at one of the dark-haired RCMP members talking to Myron. “About that officer’s height.”

“So about six two?”

“I guess. He said he had a wife, but I never got to see her.”

The cops exchanged a glance.

“Thank you, Tori,” the officer said.

He went to the window and looked out at the snow as he made a phone call.

“Sergeant Yakima,” he said into his phone. “Yes. It could have been Sorenson, or a man posing as Sorenson—similar in appearance. He’s abducted the ranch manager, Olivia West. She’s apparently injured—lots of blood left on the trail where he took her. The belief is he’s heading north, to the Bear Claw Valley.”

He paused, then said, “Affirmative, that was the information that Cole McDonough, son of ranch owner Myron McDonough, left with his father. He also said that there were now BC plates on the truck, but there was still a ham operator’s plate on the back of the camper, issued in Washington.” He gave the number.

Another pause. “I know. Yes. It was Burton who insisted she was being taken to Bear Claw, and yes, I’m aware Burton’s state of mind is questionable. But it’s our only lead right now—everything here”—he glanced at Tori, then Myron—“points to her abductor taking her north. Possibly to finish the job started by Sebastian George.”

Another pause. “Piper Cub. Yellow. No, I don’t know.” He cleared his throat. “Burton’s daughter says that her father is armed with two pistols, and McDonough has a shotgun. She said her father came here to ‘finish some business.’ My recommendation is we alert Watt Lake detachment and get an ERT up into the Bear Claw Valley, stat.”

Ahead was a narrow bar of gravel—an island around which the river flowed. It was short. Cole was skeptical that he’d be able to stop his Cub before they hit the water again at the end of the bar. The skis around his tundra tires were going to take a beating on the rocks, could flip the craft over.

“Hang on!” he yelled, making a split-second decision to take her down. “Hold the dog!” His wheels skimmed the churning water. He worked the flaps, kept the nose just so, and his landing gear smacked against rocks. The plane lurched up, flew, slapped back down, yawing wildly and bouncing as Cole did everything in his power to stop the perfect little bush craft on a dime. And then he saw the log. They crashed hard, and the plane tipped forward and sideways, crunching over onto the left wing as it came to a stop on its side. The prop whacked into rocks and splintered into shards of wood that smattered against the windshield.

Cole’s shoulder hurt where he’d bashed against the side. His heart palpitated overtime.

“Burton?”

“Okay, I’m okay.”

“Ace?”

“He seems fine, just panting . . . stressed.”

Cole unbuckled his belt. The door flap was on the upended side. He bashed it open, climbed out.

He helped lift Ace out with Burton pushing and lifting the dog from behind. Burton clambered out himself after Ace. He had a nasty cut on his brow. Blood leaked down the side of his eye.

“You sure you’re good?”

Burton nodded, white-faced.

Cole took hold of Ace’s harness and clipped on his tracking line. He handed the line to Burton, then reached back into the cabin. He struggled to fold back the seat, eventually smashing it back, breaking the hinge, then he climbed in again. Leaning on his stomach over the broken seat, he fingered along the floor of the back of the Cub, searching for where his cell phone might have slid. He couldn’t locate it. It must have gone right under the rigging and gear in the back, which was crushed. No time. Olivia might be alive, hurt, dying. Every minute was critical.

He unclipped the first aid kit from the side panel, removed it, and strapped it onto the belt of his jeans. He jumped out, wincing as a bolt of pain shot up his ankle. He reached into the front of the cabin, unhooked the shotgun he’d stashed along the side. It appeared to be in working order. He felt in the front compartment for the ammunition. He tucked the boxes of slugs into his jacket and slung the 12-gauge across his back. He held out his hand for Ace’s line. Burton gave it to him.