The Rivals (16 page)

“Drew.”

He turned and saw that Sarah was right behind him. “What is it, Sarah?”

She reached out and gave him a quick hug. “Be careful.”

Drew took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth. “You bet, sweetheart.”

He was surprised at how hard it was to let her go. A couple of months ago he'd sworn off women for life. Here he was feeling things he'd promised he'd never let himself feel again.

He reminded himself that Sarah had kids, and that kids were no part of his future. Which meant Sarah could be no part of his future. But that didn't mean that they couldn't enjoy each other right now.

He wondered if the brief connection they'd made would survive the discovery of her husband's body on Bear Island. He didn't know why he was so sure it was there. Maybe he just wanted it to be there. Until Sarah knew what had happened to her husband, she wasn't free to move on. He tried not to think why that mattered to him.

“Get some sleep, Sarah,” he said. “This'll all be waiting for you in the morning.” He kissed her on the mouth, tasting her warmth one last time, then let her go and stepped out into the cold.

Once outside, Drew realized he wasn't going to be able to sleep until he took a look at that island. The whole area was crawling with police right now, at least where the houses were located. But what if he waited a while and approached from the other side of the river?

Drew drove away wondering how hard it would be to launch his fishing boat at this hour of the night.

 

Brooke snuck into Nate and Ryan's room without turning on the light. “Nate,” she whispered. “You asleep?”

“I was,” Nate muttered.

“We have to go to Bear Island,” Brooke said. “Right now.”

“It's dark out, Brooke, in case you haven't noticed,” Nate said.

“We have to go at night so we won't be seen.”

“Then how are we supposed to find Dad—if he's even there?” Nate asked.

“There's plenty of moonlight.”

From the other side of the room a small voice piped up, “And we can tape red plastic wrap over the front of our flashlights, so they're like, infrared.”

“How come you're awake?” Brooke demanded.

“You woke me up talking so loud,” Ryan replied.

“You can't come with us,” Brooke said.

“Then I'm going to tell Mom what you're doing,” Ryan said.

Brooke whirled on Nate and said, “Now see what your loud talking did?”

“I'm not the one who had the brainy idea of going to Bear Island in the middle of the night,” Nate said.

“So we're really going?” Ryan said excitedly.

“Shh!” Brooke admonished. “You're going to wake up Mom. If you want to go, get dressed.”

Ryan lit the flashlight he kept under his pillow to read after the lights were out, then jumped out of bed and began rummaging through his drawers for clothes.

“Are you really going through with this cockeyed idea?” Nate said.

“With or without you,” Brooke assured him.

“Shit,” Nate said. “I can't let you go by yourself. You're liable to get lost.”

“I've got a better sense of direction than you do,” she shot back. “But I need you to paddle the canoe.”

“Paddle what canoe?” Nate said as he pulled on jeans over his long johns.

“The one we're going to steal,” Brooke said.

Brooke waited for some protest from Nate. He merely continued dressing. Ryan said nothing, but his eyes went so wide they were white all around. “Are you going dressed like that?” she asked her younger brother.

Ryan looked down at his cowboy-patterned pajamas and pulled the top off over his head without unbuttoning the buttons. He pulled the bottoms off, revealing Jockey shorts, then searched through his chest of drawers, pulling out a long john shirt and bottoms and some corduroy trousers, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a wool sweater. Brooke crossed to help, but Ryan said, “I can do it myself.”

“How are we going to get the keys to the truck?” Nate asked.

Brooke reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a set of keys which she dangled before him. “Already taken care of that.”

Nate grinned. “Guess we're really going to do this.”

“Where's the Scotch tape?” Ryan asked, searching around the desk Nate used to do his homework.

“What do you need tape for?” Nate said.

Ryan held up his flashlight and a roll of red plastic kitchen wrap he'd been using to make a school project. “I need to tape some of this stuff—”

“That's stupid,” Nate said.

“No, it's not,” Brooke countered. “That red plastic wrap will cut the light.” She crossed to the desk and searched through the center drawer until she found a roll of Scotch tape. While Nate shoved his feet into Sorel boots, she taped the filmy plastic to Ryan's flashlight.

“You'll drown if you go overboard in those,” Brooke said, pointing at Nate's heavy winter boots.

“You know my feet get cold. I'll take my chances.”

When she saw her brothers were dressed, Brooke crossed to the door and silently eased it open, looking down the hall toward her mother's room. Light seeped from the crack under the door, and she could hear CNN coverage of the murder on Bear Island on the TV. She turned to face her brothers and put her fingers to her lips, then slipped into the hallway and headed for the kitchen.

Ryan tripped on the rug and the flashlight banged on the wall.

Brooke's heart skipped a beat, and she stared down the hall at her mother's closed door.

“What was that?” her mother called from her room. Brooke cleared her throat and said, “I was getting a glass of water and I tripped on the rug.”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, Mom,” Brooke said, shoving the boys past her into the kitchen. She ran the water at the kitchen sink as though filling a glass, then set a glass down on the counter loudly. “Good night, Mom,” she said.

“Good night, Brooke.”

Brooke followed Nate and Ryan down the street to Nate's friend Clive's house, where they got into the truck and closed the doors with barely a click behind them.

“Where are we going?” Nate asked as he started the truck.

“I have a friend who lives at John Dodge,” Brooke said, naming an expensive neighborhood across the river from Bear Island. Every home in John Dodge had a pedestrian walkout to the Snake River. The wide dike that kept the river from overflowing was open to the public. “I saw a canoe beached near their boathouse the last time I visited. We can borrow that.”

“How big is this canoe?” Nate asked. “Are we going to be able to get it into the water?”

“Big enough for the three of us,” Brooke said. “You and I should be able to carry it.”

“Your friend's not going to notice anyone stealing a canoe from their backyard?” Nate said skeptically.

“Their backyard goes back about three acres, so no, they're not going to hear or see a thing,” Brooke said.

“Are you sure they're not around?”

“Pretty sure,” Brooke said, biting her lip nervously.

“Where do we park Mom's truck?”

“There's a back road that leads to their place. We can park it there.”

Nate met Brooke's gaze, glanced down at Ryan, who sat between them, then back at her and said, “What happens if we do find Dad's…I mean, what if we do?”

Brooke felt her stomach churn. “We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Nate followed Brooke's directions and finally cut the engine on the pickup at the end of a long drive that was bordered by naked birches and tall cypress. “How much snow do you think there is built up on the ground out here?” he asked.

“Not more than two or three inches,” Brooke said. “We shouldn't have any problem.”

She and Nate each took one of Ryan's hands to help him through the snow. The canoe was where Brooke remembered it being, turned upside down on an open wood frame that was sheltered by a pitched wooden roof. “There it is,” she said. It was smaller than she remembered.

“That's barely big enough for two,” Nate muttered.

Brooke had remembered the canoe as being bigger than she now realized it was. “It'll be easier for the two of us to maneuver,” she said.

“Where do you suppose they keep the paddles?” Nate said as he lifted the canoe by himself.

Brooke looked around and realized the paddles weren't with the canoe. She turned to stare at the house and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw no lights were on. “They probably keep them in the garage,” she said. “I'll go get them.”

“It's going to be locked,” Nate said. “And there's going to be an alarm system.”

“I know where they keep a key hidden,” Brooke said. Nate raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as Brooke headed for the house. The family vacationed in Jackson a couple of weeks in the summer and sometimes came to ski for a week in the winter. Otherwise, the house was vacant. Brooke had met the girl who lived here when she'd come last year to ski. They'd spent an afternoon talking at the Mangy Moose, after which the girl had invited Brooke back here.

As a policewoman's daughter, Brooke couldn't believe the girl had been so incautious as to retrieve a key from a “rock safe” lying on the ground near the back door when Brooke was watching, especially when they'd only known each other for an afternoon. Brooke had never taken advantage of the girl's naïveté—until now.

She looked for the rock safe where it had been, but it wasn't there. She felt a moment of panic, then saw the rock that held a key inside had been moved to the other side of the back door. She retrieved the rock, and sure enough, the key was inside.

Brooke breathed a sigh of relief and used the key on the kitchen door. She remembered the girl saying they didn't have an alarm system because there was nothing in the house worth stealing. What she meant, of course, was that they had enough money to replace the very expensive furnishings if they were stolen. Brooke had often wondered what it would be like to be rich.

For a moment she allowed herself to imagine what her life might be like if her mother married someone as wealthy as Drew DeWitt. She cut off the fantasy as quickly as it began. What she wanted was her father back…alive. She just didn't think that was going to happen.

Brooke would never believe that her father had walked out on them. She was as certain that he loved her as she was that the sun would rise in the morning. He never would have stayed away if he could've come home. Which meant that something bad had happened to him.

She didn't want him to be dead and buried on Bear Island. But she would rather know the truth than live in limbo. If he was there, she planned to find him.

Brooke headed straight for the door that led to the garage from the kitchen. The aluminum paddles were hanging in plain sight on the garage wall a little above her head. She rose on tiptoe to get them but lost her balance, and one of them hit her hard on the head as it came down.

She stood back, stunned, and let them both clatter to the cement floor. She put her hand gently to her head, expecting it to come away bloody, but all she felt was a patch of rough skin where the paddle had skimmed her forehead on its way down.

She breathed an inward sigh of relief. Her head hurt, but so long as there was no blood, she was fine. When she bent to retrieve the paddles, she lost her balance and had to grab onto the workbench along the wall.

She reached up to her head again, wondering if she was hurt worse than she'd thought. She let go of the bench and waited to see if the spurt of dizziness would return. When it didn't, she pulled her wool cap down carefully to hide the spot where she'd been hit, then squatted, rather than bending, and retrieved the paddles.

Her forehead throbbed when the cold air hit her face as she left the house, but she figured her bop on the head was a small price to pay. It could have been a lot worse. Like if there had been blood. “Got 'em,” she told Nate, as she met him at the edge of the river.

He had the canoe in the water, attached by a rope tied off on a wooden stake. Ryan was already sitting in it.

“You get in and sit in the front,” he said.

Once Brooke was setted, Nate handed her a paddle, then untied the canoe, got in himself and shoved off with the other paddle. If Nate hadn't built so many muscles kayaking on the Snake last summer, they would have been swept downstream.

“The water's moving really fast,” Brooke said as she paddled hard upstream.

“What did you expect?” Nate said. “I told you this was a crazy idea.”

“Just keep paddling!” Brooke said.

“I want to paddle,” Ryan said.

“The current's too fast,” Brooke replied.

“I want to help,” he persisted.

“If you want to help, turn on your flashlight and aim it at the shore,” Brooke said.

With the red plastic wrap on it, the light didn't carry far. “Did you bring another flashlight?” Brooke asked Nate.

“Actually, yeah, I did,” Nate said.

He pulled a large flashlight out of the depths of his winter coat and handed it over.

“Give it to Ryan,” Brooke said.

“Ryan, shine it toward the shore.”

“Aren't you worried about someone seeing us?” Nate asked.

“So far, except for ‘borrowing' this canoe, we haven't done anything wrong,” Brooke said.

“What about breaking and entering to get the paddles?” Nate said.

“I didn't break in,” Brooke countered. “I used a key.”

Nate snickered. “I'm sure Mom will see it that way.”

“Mom will understand,” Brooke said. “If there's any chance at all we can find Dad—“

“Watch out!” Ryan called.

His warning came too late. The small canoe had hit something submerged in the water. It tipped wildly and began filling up fast with water.