Sabotaged (23 page)

After a grueling two-hour wait, the regional assistant DA had the papers drawn up and faxed over.

With only a modicum of hesitation, Sam signed and Kirra pounced.

“Where's my cousin? Where's Belinda?”

He slid the papers to Hoffman with his index finger. “I don't know.”

Panic shot through Kirra. “But you said . . . ?”

“That I knew who took her . . .
them
.” He swallowed. He clearly cared about Belinda.

Reef rested a hand on Kirra's shoulder, steadying her. “And . . . ?”

“Joe took Meg our first night in Seward. I imagine he took Belinda after she went to the police station with you. I'm sure Joe was watching.”

“Belinda?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. You two.”

Kirra swallowed the fear that invoked.

“Joe, as in . . . ?” Hoffman asked.

They needed him to be precise.

“Joseph Keller. I told him I didn't think we needed to snatch the stupid girl for our cause to be effective, but he was persuasive and insistent. I ain't going down for his choice, though, especially not after Belinda.”

Irritation flared in Kirra that Sam apparently attributed worth to Belinda's life but seemed to attribute none to her cousin's. Besides, they already knew Keller was involved, or at least suspected as much. What if they'd made a horrible mistake by making a deal with Matthews? What if he was of no actual help and they'd just let him off the hook for his role? Nausea waffled through her stomach.

“You mentioned that he and Meg had ridden up to the protest with you,” Reef said, keeping them on track.

“That's right.”

“So what car did he move Meg in? Is someone else involved?”

“There are lots of us involved at varying levels, but that night it was just me and Joe. He had a car stashed up there ahead of time.”

“We're going to need a make and model on that vehicle,” Hoffman said.

“It was an old beater. Something Joe paid cash for.”

Hoffman frowned. “I'm afraid you're going to have to do better than that.”

Sam sighed. “It was a red Fiat.”

“So what happened?” She was desperately trying to envision how that night had played out, praying some detail—any detail—would lead them to Meg.

“Joe slipped something in Meg's drink. Once she was out, I helped him carry her to the car.”

“And then you started the rumor the two of them had just taken off together during the night?”

“Yeah.” Was that a hint of a smirk on his lips? Did he not grasp the seriousness of this? Or did he actually not care when it came to her cousin?

“Where'd he take her?” Reef asked, his tone deepening in intensity.

“Like I said . . .” Sam shrugged. “I don't know.” He rocked back in the chair, the front two legs lifting off the floor.

Hoffman stalked around behind him and shoved the chair down. “Not good enough!”

“I can't tell you what I don't know.”

“You know more than you're saying.”

“No I don't. All Joe said was they were taking her someplace safe.”

“They?” Reef prodded.

“I assume Joe's cousin. He's the one running things.”

“Let me guess,” Hoffman said, his jaw tight. “You never got a name?”

“Actually, I did.”

Kirra straightened.
Finally
.

“Jay.”

“
J
as in the letter?”

“I always assumed
Jay
as in
J-A-Y
. But either way it was short for something.”

Maybe Jacob or Jason.

“Same last name?”
Keller.

“I assume so.”

“How'd you meet Joe?”

“He approached me on campus in Anchorage.”

“Anchorage? You're at Fairbanks,” Kirra said. That's where they'd found him or at least heard of him from the ROW students there.

“I am now. Joe approached me on campus last fall and said he and his cousin have been fighting environmental injustice for years and they had something monumental planned. Something they hoped I'd be a part of. They were familiar with my vigor for the cause and wanted me to join them.”

“So you just hopped on the bandwagon. No questions asked?”

“I asked.”

“And?”

“They were sick of the oil companies like NorthStar taking over native and private land, destroying the environment so big corporations could get richer. They wanted to teach them a lesson.”

“And kidnapping my cousin was the way to do it?”

“Like I said, that wasn't my idea, but Joe and his cousin were convinced we needed somebody on the inside to rig the pump stations to overheat.”

“So it would look like a company malfunction rather than an act of ecoterrorism?” Reef said.

“We're
not
terrorists. We're just fighting back for those who have no voice.”

“What about all the people that will get hurt when those stations overheat and blow?”

He shrugged. “Cost of the cause.”

“And how did Meg get pulled into all this?”

“They learned your uncle Frank was the one they needed to rig the pumps. He designed them and laid all the grid work, not to mention he maintains them. He even had a background in B and E. You couldn't get much more perfect than that.”

“How'd you know he had . . . ?” She shook her head. “Never mind.” That wasn't important. If anything, it'd been
a total diversion. Meg wasn't being held as ransom for a Fabergé egg. She was being held so Frank would rig the pumps to overheat and blow.

“But you needed leverage,” Reef said.

Sam smiled. “Exactly. They found out that Frank's daughter was a junior at Fairbanks, and that the campus had a particularly strong environmental group, so I transferred from Anchorage to Fairbanks over winter break.”

“And sought Meg out?”

“Yes. She already had an interest in the cause from a class she'd taken the previous semester and had focused all her energy on learning as much about environmental rights as she could, so that was helpful.”

“But you took it a step further and made sure she got interested in you as well,” Kirra said.

“Yeah. At least until Joe started hanging around campus.”

There was a sore spot to nudge. “And Meg fell for him?”

Sam swiped his nose. “No biggie. Turned out he was the one she needed to be attached to anyway.”

But he clearly wasn't happy about it. Maybe that's why he didn't seem particularly concerned about Meg's well-being.

“Say Frank does as they instructed and the pumps blow—what happens to Meg then?”

He looked away. “That's up to Joe's cousin.”

“Why's that?”

His frame stiffened. “He's calling the shots.”

Kirra stood, intercepting his line of sight, forcing him to look her in the eye. “This is Meg's life we're talking about. Are you sure you have no idea where they're holding her?”

He swiped his nose.

“You nervous?” Reef asked.

“No.” Sam shoved his hands into his pockets, his right knee bouncing.

“If they kill her, you're going to have to live with the knowledge you sat back and did nothing to help.”

“Fine! They took her to some family cabin near Nome, but I'm sure they've moved her by now.” He frowned and stuck out his chin. “That's all I'm saying.”

“And Belinda?”

Were those tears beading in his eyes? “I don't know.”

K
ALTAG
, A
LASKA
M
ARCH
16, 8:20
A
.
M
.

Gage watched Xander step from the room as Darcy moved to his side with her backpack. The communications and SAR team were packing up to head for the next checkpoint located at Unalakleet—the lead mushers having pulled out about four hours ago, the slowest ones not to arrive for another eighteen hours. They'd hang back for a little while and then move on with the rest of the crew.

Unalakleet marked the first checkpoint on the coast of the Bering Sea, and the weather and terrain shifted dramatically. Brutal storms could suddenly hit off the sea without warning, the soft, drifting snow reaching rooftops. Many mushers would make the change to lightweight racing sleds there—preparing to face the windblown landscape for the remainder of the race.

“Any word from Jake and Kayden?” she whispered once she was sure they were alone.

“Nothing positive,” Gage said, “but the search is just getting started.” Jake and Kayden, along with several other air
force pilots and some snowmobilers, had left in plenty of time to arrive in the search area when dawn broke. The sun was rising behind the cloud cover, bringing filtered light onto another day of the Iditarod. Unfortunately they'd found no sign of Brad Abbott.

Darcy collected the remainder of her things into her backpack. “I know he needs to be found, and I want him to be, but so does Frank. Why has all the SAR effort shifted to Brad?”

“Because”—Gage zipped up his duffel—“Ben believes Frank scratched and didn't bother telling anyone. Scratched mushers aren't Iditarod SAR's responsibility. With another musher missing, one who's still part of the race, he gets full SAR support. Until Brad Abbott is found we don't have the go-ahead to resume searching for Frank—and we might not even get it then.”

“What if we tell Ben what is really going on? Might he see the importance and change his mind?”

“No . . . Jake and I discussed that. Ben would just argue that the threat to the pipeline isn't Iditarod SAR's responsibility—and he'd be right.” Gage shook his head. “NorthStar Oil isn't willing to call in the authorities yet, and even though we're pretty sure the kidnappers are well aware of our activities and that we have been in contact with the police, we can't take the chance of ticking them off by making law enforcement's involvement official.” He picked up his duffel and Darcy's backpack and walked toward the door. “So for now . . . we wait.”

Jake opened the throttle on the snowmobile as he entered the woods blocking any view of the ground from the Iditarod pilots searching for Brad Abbott.

Kayden had dropped him at the Grayling checkpoint, where he and two other volunteers had climbed on snowmobiles to begin an adjacent ground search for the missing musher.

The temperatures were holding at around five below, but Jake's internal fire had been set aflame. The thought of someone posing as Iditarod staff—or even worse, someone who actually
was
part of the Iditarod staff—watching them chewed him up.

He had Darcy running a background check on Xander Cook while they were searching for Abbott. Perhaps the relative newcomer had a few red flags in his background.

The thick patch of woods surrounding him provided an effective shield from the grueling winds plaguing this portion of the race route.

Animal tracks on top of sled ruts showed it had been some time since a musher had passed this way. Jake slowed to study the freshest tracks of the bunch. A bear had rumbled past within the last hour, and a trail of blood leading into the woods said he'd had a recent kill.

Something in his gut prompted him to stop. He turned off the snowmobile, climbed off, stretched, and then proceeded to follow the blood trail.

A handful of steps in, Kayden's voice broke over the radio.

He moved it to his mouth. “Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Abbott's team just pulled in to the Eagle Island checkpoint.”

“Oh, thank goodness.” He'd started to imagine the worst.

“Jake . . . his team pulled in, but not Abbott.”

Concern tracked through Jake. “What?”

“Ben just radioed. Apparently, the team was pretty shaken and tangled up, but they stuck to the course as trained.”

“Anything to indicate what happened to Abbott?” Mushers sometimes fell off their sleds and weren't able to stop their teams. Perhaps that was the worst of it, but the uneasy feeling tugging at his insides said otherwise.

“No, but Ben said one of the volunteers still camping out there saw what he believes is dried blood on the sled mount.”

Jake swallowed and turned his attention back to the blood trail. He exhaled. “Let me call you back.”

S
EWARD
A
IRFIELD
M
ARCH
16, 9:16
A
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M
.

“Another musher is missing?” Kirra asked as she and Reef boarded the . . . third . . . no fourth . . . ? She shook her head. She couldn't even remember how many planes they'd boarded since this nightmare had started. She and Reef were headed back to Anchorage, where Kayden would be making a dog drop after the search for the missing musher was over, and she'd fly them back to the heart of the race.

“Yeah, he called right before we left.”

“Did he say who it is?”

“Brad Abbott,” Reef said, settling in beside her. “You know him?”

“He's one of the new guys. Well, relatively new. I think he's run the past couple years.”

“Older? Younger?”

“Forties. Teacher, I think.”

“How'd he finish the past few years?”

“Couldn't tell you exactly, but nowhere near the top.”

“So it's possible he's fallen behind or encountered some difficulty?”

“Sure. I suppose, why?”

“Gage seemed spooked when he called.”

She shifted to face Reef better. “Spooked, how?” That wasn't a term usually associated with the go-with-the-flow Gage.

“I don't know. It's like he thought someone may be listening. He spoke in basics.”

“Do you think something happened to make them even more certain they are being watched and reported on?”

“Maybe. I wonder who it is?”

She hated to imagine. Volunteering with the Iditarod for years—starting as a teen with her dad—she couldn't imagine someone working by her side could be capable of kidnapping her cousin, or working with the men who had. “You told him what we learned from Sam—about the car and the cabin?”

Reef nodded. “Of course.”

“What did Jake think?”

“He wasn't there. He's already out searching for Abbott.”

“And Frank?”

Reef shook his head.

So for the time being they were on their own in the search for her cousin and uncle.

“Did you ask about what was found at the other pump stations?”

“Yes. No word from Jake's contact yet.”

She took a deep breath and released it, along with her anxious thoughts, finally verbalizing them. “I'm afraid we're running out of time.”

“I know.” He cupped her face, caressing her cheeks. “But we won't give up until we find them. I promise.”

She smiled, knowing he meant it from the bottom of his heart. “I believe you.” She truly did. “But what if we're too late? What if they're already . . .”

“We need to pray we make it in time.”

She closed her eyes and they prayed, asking God to provide a miracle, because that seemed their only hope for a good outcome.

With trepidation, Jake continued following the blood trail. With each step, the burden on his spirit increased. Before he stepped beyond the last copse of trees obstructing his view, he knew what he would find. Finally he stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut as he stood over the mauled body of Brad Abbott.