by Elle Keaton
“Damn.” He’d left his wallet at home. No matter how small the town, you still could not rent a car without a credit card.
Ed would do it for him, but he wasn’t answering his phone. This felt urgent to Micah; he needed to check this nascent theory out right away. If he was by chance on to something, Matveev would likely be gone like the wind before law enforcement knew where to turn, he couldn’t let that happen. His family had waited long enough for justice. Rooting around in the desk drawer underneath the Gideon Bible he found an actual paper phone book. Micah grabbed all 3/4 hefty inches of it and began flipping through the pages. Ten minutes later Buck Swanfeldt, of Swanfeldt’s Auto and Body, pulled to a stop in the motel’s parking lot.
“I told you to drive something low-key!” Micah complained. “No one is going to forget a car like this!”
“The only other drivable, meaning street legal, thing I have at the shop right now is a cherry-red ’71 Camaro. You want me to turn around and get that one?” Buck drawled. Why Buck drawled was beyond Micah; the man and his family had lived longer in the Skagit Valley than almost anyone else Micah knew of. He sighed. Buck was a couple years younger than he was, so they’d never been friends, but they knew each other through random community events. Buck was a solid, and much of the town had been grateful when instead of closing his daddy’s auto shop he had made it his own.
The dark-brown paint job wouldn’t raise eyebrows, but the eight-cylinder ’70s-era Mercury Marquis would not slide through town unnoticed. Micah peeked over at the gas gauge; it was full. At least they wouldn’t run out on the way there, and the way back was all downhill. The thing could only be getting about nine mpg. An environmental disgrace.
“The Duke here is a mean machine. Don’t go counting him out.” Buck caressed the steering wheel possessively. “Where we headed?”
Micah had to agree with Buck on one thing: Compared to his recent drives up the Mt. Baker Highway in Adam’s SUV, the Duke took the inclines and curves like a dream. Holy cow, the thing had full leather seats, power windows and a push-button AM/FM radio. Even a nerd like Micah could appreciate glory of the 1970s. Love was free (and could be had comfortably in the back seat), and the embargo meant nothing to Detroit yet. It caressed the road like a lover, the hum of the powerful engine a siren song.
“This it?” Buck interrupted Micah’s inappropriate thoughts about the Duke.
He saw the sign for Glacier Creek coming up quickly.
“Yeah, turn in here and pull over—well, at least leave some room for other cars, okay? I want to check something out.”
He’d seen on the county records that a bunch of these little A-frames lined up next to the National Forest boundary were all owned by the same LLC. An LLC with a Russian name. He’d noticed because, well, chance really. They were uncomfortably close to his parents’ old cabin. No way was he keeping that. He’d sell it and donate the profits, if there were any. For that matter, he was considering selling the house as well. It was time he put those memories in the past where they belonged. Nothing was going to bring them back, and a living mausoleum wasn’t healthy. He didn’t even have to stay in Skagit, although he did love it; a small town but the interstate went both north and south and there were major cities within two hours both ways.
When he’d called Buck, he thought they would merely drive up and see if the little cabins looked inhabited. They would be the perfect secluded location to hide people from prying eyes, especially during the off season. That was his entire plan. Many of these places had been foreclosed or abandoned during the last recession, the area was only now bouncing back. The 99% could not generally afford the luxury of a winter retreat.
Now that he was walking down the gravel road toward the group of cabins, he felt stupidly exposed. He hadn’t wanted Buck to drive by because that damn car was huge and stood out like a sore thumb, but walking alone now seemed monumentally stupid.
What if Matveev was here? What was he going to do? Knock him over with his amazing wit? Was he going to tap on cabin doors and pretend to be selling magazine subscriptions or overpriced candy bars? Some people had said he was effeminate, but no one had ever mistaken him for a Girl Scout.
He stopped walking. His toes were cold. He could hear the low grumble of the Duke behind him, reassuring him of his…escape? It was a bit like being stuck between two worlds, or maybe in a build-your-own-adventure book. The next move would either take him back to page eight or to the end.
Jeez, he was having an existential crisis in the middle of the darkling woods when there was very possibly a cold-blooded killer holed up close by.
His cell phone rang.
The chimes ring tone blared out into the silent woods. Doug firs and cedars crowded tightly against the road grimly, assessed his worthiness and found him deficient. Their branches grasped each other over the strip of gravel between them. The relentless drip continued. Micah was suddenly terrified.
His phone rang again; crap, he jerked it from his jeans pocket, fumbling because his fingers were practically numb from cold, and it slipped, squeezing out of his stupid fingers like a fish diving into a puddle that was only this side of being designated a lake. He fell to his knees in the puddle, trying to grab his phone before it was too late. He shook it and tried to dry it on his useless shirt before his brain took over and he remembered that he’d bought one of those water-shockproof protective cases. He could drop his phone in the river and it would be fine.
It rang cheerfully again, and he desperately swiped the screen to answer, moisture blurring the screen.
“Where. Are. You.” He could hear the punctuation in Adam’s voice, kind of. Reception up here was spotty at best; Micah had managed to find a spot that allowed him to hear every other word. There were possibly some fucks that weren’t coming through.
He didn’t need to hear whole sentences to understand that Adam was very angry.
“I, uh, probably not the best time for me to talk, actually.” His voice seemed to be echoing all throughout the Glacier Creek compound. He felt more exposed than before, if that was even possible. “I need to call you back in a, well, probably like an hour.”
“Where. Are. You?”
“Up Mt. Baker Highway. I’ve got to go.” Micah had been staring at one of the little cabins while he stood in the middle of the road and would swear he’d seen a faded gingham curtain twitch. He shoved his phone back in his pocket, this time switching off the ringer first.
So yeah, he had visual suspicion that someone was occupying one of these cabins owned by the Russian-named LLC. He’d come this far. A few steps farther would not kill him. Hopefully. An extra-cold shiver ran up his spine.
The door of the cabin where he thought he’d seen the twitch had a fresh coat of yellow paint covering it. The little porch, almost identical to his parents’, did not hold winter snow equipment waiting to be used. It was startling barren. And weirdly clean: no mud, no dirty footprints. He knocked on the door, keenly aware of his muddy boots.
Nothing but silence greeted his knock for long moments. He was deciding whether to knock again—after all, these little buildings topped out at about 600 square feet; if there really was someone in there they had heard him—when he heard a sort of shuffling and then firm footfalls coming toward him. A frisson of dread slithered into his belly.
The door swung open and didn’t even fucking creak like it should have.
A tiny woman blocked the doorway. Micah only knew she was a woman and not a girl because she had lines on her face and the air that comes from passing from young-adulthood into maturity. Micah was about two feet taller than her. She had to be one of the smallest people he had ever met. Asian, maybe Filipina, he thought. She stared at him with the biggest eyes he had ever seen outside of an anime film. Her hair was stick-straight, very long, and shiny black. She was ethereal; a gust of wind and she would be swept away.
Before either one of them could speak, Micah heard a creak and a thump, ironically the most enormous man he
had ever seen came rumbling around a corner. From the memory of his parents’ old cabin he knew that the tiny kitchenette area and bathroom were tucked back there. The man was enormous, huge, built like a grizzly bear. He even had a Grizzly Adams beard going on. Beards were hip right now, but Micah hysterically thought that maybe this guy was taking it too far. The thing seemed to have a mind of its own, resisting negotiated borders and migrating south toward the man’s chest and shoulders.
Grizzly came up behind the woman, asking a question. Micah knew this due to the inquiring sound at the end, not because he understood what the man had asked. What Micah could see of the house as he peered over the tiny woman’s head was neat as a pin. It did not have the look of a fugitive from justice’s abode. What style would a fugitive go for, anyway, Micah chided himself. At any rate, the living area was tidy and there were no random firearms lying around. Just an enormous man who seemed not to speak English and a couch that took up the entire wall facing a large flat-screen TV. Currently on pause was what looked like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
“Hi, um, I was wondering.” Geez. He tried again. “Would it be okay if I asked a couple of questions?”
Micah must have looked pathetically harmless, and besides, she had a grizzly bear for a pet; the woman gestured for him to come inside. In for a penny. He hoped he wasn’t about to become a meal.
The woman gestured for him to follow her into the kitchen. The big man sat down on the couch, engulfing the remote in his huge hand. Soon Micah could hear low sounds of screeching tires and sirens blasting. He stood between the rooms while she clattered around and began warming water.
“Would you like tea or hot chocolate? I am afraid we do not have any coffee.”
Her English was impeccable, though Micah could hear a slight accent softening the ends of her sentences. He realized he was freezing, and his little dip in the pond must make him look extra pathetic.
“Hot chocolate would be wonderful. Thank you.”
“It is not a problem; hot chocolate is Bear’s favorite, too. One moment.”
“His name is Bear? Uh, mine is Micah, Micah Ryan.” Another undercover failure as he mentally slapped his forehead; he’d given his real name. He hoped Adam wouldn’t be the one to find his body buried in a shallow grave.
“Yes. He is Bear and I am Perla.”
Forty-Five
Micah had hung up on him. Adam stared at his cell phone, willing it to ring again so he could reason with him. He knew Micah was intelligent, but he was no match for a ruthless criminal whose specialty was human trafficking. Mitya Matveev was a scary man who’d probably had Micah’s family killed a decade earlier when Brett Ryan had been building a case against him. There was no doubt in Adam’s mind that Weir was right and Matveev had been keeping an eye on Micah over the years.
Officer Parks, must have been on Matveev’s payroll for years. Somehow he had managed to cover up what happened at the Ryan accident scene. Who knew how or why, but the guy had been in Matveev’s pocket ever since. No wonder Matveev was always several steps ahead of law enforcement.
He was going to kill Agent Rourke. She was supposed to have been at the motel keeping an eye on Micah. He knew it wasn’t her fault that she had been given the wrong address and by the time she had driven to the other end of town after being hours late due to weather and traffic, Micah was long gone. Adam suspected he knew where Micah was. He hoped not.
Not only had Jack Summers been right about Natalia Verdugo harboring juvenile delinquents, he’d discovered she, too, had ties to Matveev. Matveev’s pockets were deep and Natalia, it seemed, had expensive habits. Ones she could not sustain on the salary of someone who runs a youth center. Investigators had been to her home, where they discovered a flashy Mercedes parked in the garage and closets full of designer clothing and jewelry. She had lived quite the double life. Now Adam understood why she had accosted him at the Beaver. It had never been about reconnecting; she’d been trying to figure out what he was in Skagit for. Criminals never believed the truth.
Micah was one step ahead of the team in figuring out that Matveev also had properties up near the ski area, not too far from the cabin his parents had left him. How he had gotten up there without a car was a mystery Adam wanted to solve. Someone was getting reamed, and Adam was going to enjoy every minute of it.
After they found Micah.
Forty-Six
Micah felt like he’d fallen asleep on the drive from Skagit and was having a surreal dream. Where were the other two bears? Was this Papa Bear? He had a feeling the huge man was Baby Bear. He had no idea what to say or ask, perhaps he should have thought this out better. “Ya, think?” Responded a mocking inner voice. For the life of him he couldn’t figure out why Perla had asked him inside the house. He must look like he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.
He pulled out his phone and checked the time; he’d been gone over hour. He hoped Buck was getting worried and not cheerily sitting in the car listening to the oldies station crank out the James Gang and wax poetic about the magic of Clapton’s guitar work. For someone born in the 1980s, he sure seemed to live in the ’60s and ’70s.
Perla poured hot water into three mismatched heavy mugs, and soon the comforting fragrance of hot chocolate wafted through the small room. Bear said something from the front and Perla answered, taking the biggest mug out to him. Micah stayed where he was, keeping his hands wrapped around his own hot cup. It was disturbingly domestic.
He and Perla were in the kitchen making awkward small talk about the area and Micah was working himself up to ask about their neighbors, and if they were the Russian mafia, when he heard gravel popping. Peeking out the kitchen curtain, he watched an enormous black SUV pull into the parking area a few feet from the cabin. His heart began to race. The way these houses had been developed, one mini cul-de-sac at a time, meant all vehicles had to park to the side of the cabins or on the front lawns. Fear snaked through his belly.
Micah was trying to play it cool, only he couldn’t help but glance over the top of the curtained window again to see who was getting out of the SUV. Two dark-haired men dressed in camo pants topped by heavy jackets were extricating themselves from the vehicle while a third stood waiting impatiently. There was little doubt in his mind that he had found Matveev, or Matveev had found him. He thought of Buck, whom he’d last seen idling to the side of the common roadway, and hoped he was safe. His heart started racing faster and he thought he might have to put his head between his knees. Perla noticed his discomfort and went to look out the window, too, carefully peeking through a small gap.
Matveev was tall, with a weathered, rugged face, his heavy features a throwback to his ancestors from the Steppes. Clean-shaven, not what Micah remembered from the Chamber of Commerce head shot. He’d traded his suit for the more classic Skagit Valley outdoorsy look, heavy black boots and tan work pants topped off with a puffy black cold-weather parka. The clothes looked new. Micah wondered how much he had dropped at the Outdoor Shoppe on Main Street.
Perla gasped, jerking away from the window.
“You cannot be seen!” she whispered.
No kidding.
“Uh, okay. I’ll head out.” Death wish. The pieces hadn’t quite fallen together yet, but Micah was certain that Matveev had been responsible for Jessica’s death. Natalia Verdugo, too. And maybe the girl from a few months ago. If he could kill three times, the man could kill a fourth, or more than that if he had a hand in Micah’s family’s deaths. And now he was spooked. Micah started to reconsider his motivation for coming up here.
“Not the front door.” Perla grabbed his wrist and dragged him toward the kitchen door. She was surprisingly strong for someone so small. Bear muttered something from the front room. The sound of the video game was suddenly gone, drowning the cabin in a horrifying silence. Before Perla could shove Micah out the door (he still had the hot chocolate in his hand), Bear appeared. Without stopping, she opened the back door and pushed Micah out, gesturing for him to wa
it there. “Do not even breathe,” she whispered.
The back porch, like many in the area, had been enclosed to give a few more usable square feet. It was basically a storage room filled with coats, boots, shoes, a stack of wood for the freestanding woodstove. The “windows” were a ribbed plastic usually used for carport roofing or greenhouses. Micah couldn’t see or hear clearly through them as unidentifiable figures morphed larger and then smaller as they moved away from the side of the cabin, toward the front.
Micah couldn’t tell if the figures were coming to Perla’s or headed next door. Perla’s fear was feeding his own, though, and he put the mug down on a windowsill, afraid he was going to be sick. Nothing about being mortally afraid for his life was sexy.
He considered the door, but he didn’t know where the men were. Perla’s voice rose sharply. She and Bear were in the kitchen speaking rapid-fire Russian or another Eastern European language. A third voice joined in, heavy and rough, darker than even Bear’s. For the first time in his life, Micah wished he was someone different than he was. A braver man would have resisted Perla’s demand that he hide. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets to keep them from shaking, and his cell phone nudged against his fingers.
Pulling it out, he saw he had one bar and about an hour of battery life. Several missed calls from Adam and another two from an unknown number. Texts from Adam:
> WHERE ARE YOU?
> DONT DO ANYTHING STUPID
> PLEASE
> MICAH PLZ COME BACK
Too late; seemed like he’d overstepped a bit. He tried to send a reply, watching as his phone struggled with the weak signal.
