Under the Alaskan Ice

by Karen Harper

  “Here!” Darth Sidious shouted and he raked out a handful of what must be Suze’s share of their grandmother’s jewelry, because Meg had hers in her room. He shrugged at his accomplice, then turned to her and exploded, “Where’s the damn rest of it?”

  “That’s all that’s left of my deceased grandmother’s jewelry.”

  He hesitated, his dark brown eyes glaring at her through the eyeholes of the mask. A gold filigreed necklace dripped from his fingers, and she noted he wore an onyx ring. It had a small gold shield in the middle of the onyx, like maybe a badge for a society or even a college or fraternity ring. His fingernails were clean and looked manicured. And for the first time she thought clearly enough to note that, besides a raspy voice, he had a slight drawl, though he was speaking so fast and harshly it wasn’t pronounced.

  When she didn’t flinch but dropped her eyes from staring at him, he asked Snoke, “What do you think?”

  “The rest is not something to leave out. Secreted elsewhere? Off-site?”

  Meg knew she had to play dumb. “The rest of what?”

  He threw the jewelry at her. She didn’t try to catch it as it hit her chest, then slid to her feet.

  And then, the sweetest words she’d ever heard.

  “Let’s go. No time to ransack the place or question them further. It’s broad daylight. Let’s go.”

  Meg grabbed Chip hard to her as the two men ran out of the office and slammed the door. “Are you all right?” Meg asked, smoothing back his hair, checking for injuries as she fought back tears. Those men had held a gun to her boy. “Does anything hurt?”

  “I’m okay, Mom,” Chip said. “But I’m worried about Aunt Suze and Rafe. It looks like they hurt him real bad.”

  Of course her brave boy would be worried about them. Had their attackers hurt anyone on their way out? She had to see what they drove away in!

  Grabbing Chip’s hand firmly in hers, Meg tore out past Suze into the hall and stared out the window just in time to see the two men, still masked, disappear into the thick trees at the side of the lodge with all three dogs barking at their heels, though, thank heavens, the dogs stopped at the tree line. No way she was going to chase them either.

  “Chip,” she told him as she grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen counter, “get the scissors out of the top drawer of the desk and cut Aunt Suze and Mr. Getz’s ropes. I’m going to check on Rafe.”

  She yanked open the back door. “Rafe! Rafe, they’re gone. I’m going to cut you loose.”

  He was hog-tied hand and foot with his legs bent back nearly to his wrists behind his body. If he moved, the rope around his neck could choke him. He was awake, watching the forest where the men had run.

  She also saw that he had managed to nearly saw through his ankle bonds by scooting toward the bare winter bushes and rubbing his feet back and forth against a hoe someone had left there. His hands and wrists were bruised, bleeding and purplish.

  “They hurt anyone?” he rasped out as she kneeled to cut him loose—the rope at his throat first.

  “No. They were looking for jewelry, I think.”

  “I—didn’t see them ’til too late. Came from the forest. Then they had a gun on Chip. I screwed up, let you down.”

  “No one was hurt. And maybe we learned something. You’ve been such a help to Chip—just like Bryce. There’s nothing more you could’ve done.”

  Suze, still with her wrist ropes hanging from her arms, darted out into the cold with Chip by her side.

  “Suze, he’s all right,” Meg cried as Suze’s expression broke with relief.

  “Thank goodness,” she said, helping Rafe to his feet.

  “Getz?” Meg asked.

  “A little shaken up, but otherwise, fine,” Suze confirmed.

  “Someone needs to tell Commander Bryce what happened,” Chip said.

  Meg and Rafe exchanged a look. “If I go,” he said, “there’ll be nobody here to guard—”

  “You should go, Mom,” Chip said. “I’ll be okay. I’ve got Rafe and Aunt Suze.”

  Meg kneeled in the snow beside him. “Chip, no. I couldn’t leave you—not now. Not after what happened.”

  “I’m okay, Mom. I promise. I’m brave like a Jedi.”

  Meg cupped his cheek and kissed his forehead. “Yes, you are. My brave Jedi. You go inside with Rafe and Aunt Suze and lock all the doors, do you hear me?”

  Chip nodded.

  “I won’t let him out of my sight,” Rafe promised. “Go get Bryce. And look in your rearview mirror.”

  “I will,” Meg promised, then quickly ran back inside to grab a coat, her purse and the keys to her truck.

  With another quick hug for Chip and a promise that she’d be back soon, she tore to her truck, grateful that no one was hurt. But danger and evil had come to their precious, snowy home and at holiday time.

  * * *

  Bryce was waiting for her, pacing behind the bushes near where she’d parked before. He was cold, stomping his feet, hugging himself. As far as she could tell, he had taken nothing else from Getz’s place. She was grateful he didn’t scold her about being late. Perhaps he thought she was angry with him for sending her away.

  She was bursting to tell him, but the forest was closing in as the afternoon shadows grew longer and darker, graying the snow. She just wanted to get out of there and get back home to Chip. She was halfway back to town, ignoring his asking her if everything was all right.

  “Meg, you’re shaking. You’re angry. What? At me?”

  “Two men in horrible masks came into the lodge with guns, kept one to Chip’s head the whole time, tied Rafe, then Suze and Getz. The intruders made me let them in your room to look around, then opened the safe in the office. Everyone is—is okay.”

  She stopped at the only light in town and turned to him, fighting not to burst into tears, so glad he was here to help.

  He reached for her, held her hard despite their seat belts until the truck behind them honked, and she saw the light was green. She drove on.

  “That changes everything,” he said, reaching over to put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “But should I stay or leave the lodge to keep you safe? Were they after me?”

  “Only wanted to search your room.”

  “Did they take my laptop?”

  “They didn’t see it, if it was under the bed. I’m thinking they were stupid about that. One guy dumped your duffel bag out, and I’ll bet your laptop was right near that pile, so when he looked under the bed, it was in shadow—hidden, like when I looked under at first to bring it to you.”

  “Chip and Suze. They’re really all right?”

  “Shaken. Chip is being so brave.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I supposed you’ll need to question them.”

  “And Getz too. Did he seem to know them?”

  “I couldn’t tell but he sure came over and put his hands up fast enough. Bryce, they were in normal clothes but were masked like villains from a Star Wars movie. Chip knew the characters. I took some mental notes on them but I’m sure they were no one I knew.”

  He heaved a huge sigh. He twisted even more toward her. “I thought the lodge was safe, especially with Rafe there, even if Getz was maybe a Trojan horse.”

  “Rafe went down right away, cooperated since they had the gun on Chip. I—I don’t know how this will affect him—Chip. Rafe too, they hog-tied him so that if he moved his feet or hands he’d choke himself. His wrists and hands—his artist’s hands, as Suze says—looked bloody and beat up from the ropes. When I ran out to him, he was trying to saw himself loose on a garden hoe.”

  “So perhaps someone who works with horses or livestock—skilled with rope.”

  “One guy, I think, faked a gruff voice—and had clean, great-looking hands and fingernails.”

  “Thank God no one
was hurt. I’m wondering if someone knew I was not just away but at Getz’s. They must have not been after my laptop but the jewelry—which shows the Confederate treasure is at the heart of all this. Someone stole it or hid it, or lost it and is desperate to get it back. Well, they won’t get their hands on what we sent to the Big Man, but there must be more out there—probably around here.”

  They got out of the car and found the front door locked as Meg had directed. They rang the bell, both looking behind them and all around. Suze hurried to let them in.

  “Is Chip okay?” Meg asked.

  “I think the scare took a lot out of him. He’s asleep in his room. I haven’t called the troopers yet,” Suze said. “Rafe said to wait for you.”

  “We’ll have to contact them, but through the Big Man again,” Bryce told Meg as Suze headed back inside. “We can’t have the publicity. Maybe he can assign someone else incognito.”

  Once inside with the door closed and relocked behind them, Bryce pulled Meg to him. She hugged him back hard.

  “We learned a lot more today.”

  “Learned it the hard way. The dangerous way, that will not be repeated. And here I sent you away from my assignment to keep you safe.”

  They went in arm in arm to see Suze rubbing some sort of healing ointment onto Rafe’s neck since both of his wrists and hands were already bandaged. Meg thought of the day she had put the ointment on Bryce’s neck for his diving rash, that day she had fallen a little more in love with him.

  “Rafe!” Bryce called out and hurried over. “Sorry I wasn’t here, man.”

  “Maybe that was the idea. I took a fall when they had the gun on Chip. Suze says he’s exhausted, finally asleep in his room with the dogs. The whole thing was pretty well planned, Star Wars masks and all, as Chip will tell you.”

  Suze moved closer to him on the couch and kept putting Cortisone cream on his neck. “Glad I don’t need the hospital like Steve did, because I’ve got a great nurse here,” Rafe added.

  “I’m worried about his hands,” Suze said. “And that reminds me, Steve’s wife, Jenny, called a few minutes ago to say he’s better, being released from the hospital to go home. So—good news amid the bad. We do need to call the state troopers, don’t we?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Bryce said. “Meg, let’s go check on Chip.”

  They dropped their coats on the table and hurried down the hall to Chip’s room. It was as if the three of them belonged together, were a family. Look in the rearview mirror, Rafe had warned when she went to pick up Bryce. She looked back at her life now: despite danger in the present and the future, she was moving on, however desperate she was to stop the invasion of evil in her beloved little piece of home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Chip was not asleep when Meg went in but was sitting up straight, wide-eyed in bed with the little black Scottie in his arms. The two other dogs lifted their heads from their beds on the floor and, seeing who it was, put them down again. Meg supposed Buff and King had come through this latest ordeal better than anyone.

  “They didn’t come back, did they? I had a nightmare about them.”

  “No, but Bryce is back and he’s going to come in too, okay?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s my friend, and I’m glad he wasn’t here to get hurt like my other friend, Rafe.”

  It hit Meg again how isolating the lodge was for her boy. Sure, he had some friends at school, but he lived in a world of adults here—distressed adults.

  She sat down on the side of Chip’s bed and pulled him into her lap as if he were a toddler. “They were very bad people,” she whispered. “They ran away. Bryce is going to tell the troopers, and they’ll help keep us safe.”

  When Bryce peeked in, she gestured him over. He kneeled on the woven rag rug next to the bed, his right shoulder pressed to the mattress and his left elbow across Chip’s knees. “Hey, Chip,” he said, “I’m proud of you for keeping calm and being so brave with those bad men here. And for recognizing their masks.”

  “I was glad when they let me and Mom stick together. But just in case they come back, I got up and put the soccer goal frame inside her bedroom door. Extra barrier to help keep them out.”

  “Good man,” Bryce assured him.

  “Thank you, honey,” Meg choked out, her lips in Chip’s hair as she kissed his head where those idiots had put the muzzle of the gun. Maybe he was too young to know what could have happened—she hoped so. “Besides, I can get into my room through our adjoining door here.”

  “But now that Commander Bryce is back, he can watch you close too,” Chip said.

  Her gaze snagged with Bryce’s steady stare.

  “Good reasoning, if you ask me,” Bryce said. “I promise you, we will put up that goalie net, and we’ll practice how to dodge enemy soccer balls that try to get past you. And if we get to go to my house in Juneau for a few days during your Christmas vacation, I have a big basement we can play inside, whatever the weather does.”

  “Can we, Mom?” he pleaded, not even waiting for her answer, but turning back to Bryce. “If it’s just the three of us, would Mom play too?”

  “Here’s the deal,” Bryce said, leaning closer and grasping Chip’s shoulder. “If your Mom wants to play, she can. But I live real close to my friend Steve, who just got out of the hospital. He can’t play since he hurt his head, but he has a son named Mark who could play with us—teach you the ropes.”

  “Okay, good. But did you hear those bad guys had lots of ropes and tied almost everyone up but Mom and me? They hurt Rafe too, and he needs his hands to draw and paint.”

  “You know, the best thing you can do right now,” Bryce told the boy, “is to get some sleep. In the morning, I’d like to talk to you about anything you remember about those men. Not Star Wars stuff, but anything real about them.”

  “Questions like you asked after the plane crash?”

  “That’s right.” Bryce turned to address Meg. “I’ll wait out in the hall while you tuck Chip in. We’re all exhausted.” He tousled Chip’s hair, got up and went out, quietly closing the door behind him.

  “If you have any more bad dreams,” she told Chip as she kissed his bruised forehead again and tucked him back in bed, “you just come into bed with me.”

  Bryce was waiting for her in the hall, leaning wearily against the wall.

  They hugged each other for a long moment.

  “Meg, I want to keep you safe,” he said, his chin on top of her head. “Chip too, all of you, but this is getting worse. I’m going to ask for a trooper, disguised as a regular guest, to bunk here for a few days for extra protection. I can swing it.”

  “Or the Big Man can. You know, considering he’s got, like, the second highest security clearance in the country.”

  * * *

  Bryce pulled his head back to study her face. He was growing more and more certain that Meg had puzzled out the Big Man’s identity. Well, she could speculate all she wanted. He certainly wasn’t going to confirm the fact that Samson Walters, the sitting Vice President of the United States, was indeed the Big Man behind the curtain. He let her comment lie where it landed, pulling her close once more before he spoke. “Anyway, I need to talk to him first thing when the sun’s up in DC. I’m actually too beat to try to have someone wake him up so I’ll email him some info now and talk to him later. Besides, I’ve been waiting to hear what was turned up in the search of Lloyd Witlow’s house. More jewels? Gold, papers? Who knows what could have been there. No one will believe it—Confederate treasure squirreled away somewhere in deep woods Alaska by someone. But where and by who?”

  * * *

  At 3 a.m. the next morning—damn time zones—Bryce woke up to his smartphone alarm and called the Big Man.

  “Great news about Steve being released from the hospital, sir,” Bryce began.

  “For sure. A victory for the good guys.�
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  “I was going back to visit him, but after what happened here yesterday, I can’t leave.”

  “I got your email. Star Wars masks, no less. The black ops folks are getting nervous—maybe they’ll make another mistake. Meanwhile, I think you and your female noncom partner have a good excuse to attend the rather hastily planned funeral of Lloyd Witlow this afternoon at the Union Room in the sawmill near Wasilla.”

  “We haven’t heard a thing about it.”

  “Maybe that’s the idea. His daughter finally got his body back and is moving fast to bury him. But you two have every right to be there to pay your respects, even though you didn’t know him. And yes, I’ll pull a few strings to get you an incognito trooper like you mentioned in your email who knows the area. I’ll have him move into the lodge for a while, keep his eyes peeled, et cetera.”

  “That will help. What time is the funeral today?”

  “Visiting hour starts at one. Funeral at two, then a family entourage to the main Wasilla cemetery—ah, Aurora Cemetery, which will probably be covered with snow. Private graveside service, so I bet the calling hours and main funeral service should be large. The guy lived in or near Wasilla all his life.”

  “Sometimes they hold winter corpses in cold storage until the ground thaws. But I’d guess the fact we haven’t heard about the funeral means Witlow’s daughter, Rina, and maybe the mayor and their lawyer are still angry at us.”

  “The troopers who served the search warrant at Witlow’s house say his daughter threw a fit about not only their search but a delayed burial, so they’re going to carve a place for him next to his wife in the frozen ground. Bundle up and keep your eyes and ears open.”

  “Will do. Any more info from the examination of the Confederate loot?”