by Karen Harper
Damn! If Meg came back like she did the other time he was here, she’d better not come in. He should have told her that.
Getz was not in here either, but the smoke was getting worse. He wished he was breathing canned air through his diving gear. One more room and he’d have to turn back. What if Getz wasn’t here at all? What if this was a trap for Bryce? No, only Rafe and Kurt knew where they had been headed.
The next room—he thought it would be a bedroom, but it wasn’t. Not even the office he’d been in before. He jolted to a stop. Two store mannequins and two straw scarecrows sat at a table as if they were real, and one of the scarecrows was aflame. Whoever had set the fire must have lit this one too. Could the arsonist still be here?
He saw one of the mannequins was Getz himself, propped up and sitting sideways in the chair!
Unconscious? Dead?
Praying for help, he grabbed a white blanket that was lying nearby and stooped and yanked Getz toward him in what he’d been trained to call a fireman’s carry, covering the man’s head with the blanket in an effort to block some of the smoke. He nearly fell, staggered forward under the man’s weight, then backed out toward the front of the long, narrow place.
As he half fell out the front door, gasping for air, he still couldn’t tell if Getz was alive. Dead weight. His skin felt hot, but how would it not in that inferno?
He started for the stream, when—thank God—Meg tore at him across it. They nearly slid into each other, the blanket covering Getz falling to the ground.
It was only then that he realized Getz was tied hand and foot. So he hadn’t started the fire by design or by mistake. And that meant—though the would-be killer could have run—they could be in danger too.
“The volunteer firemen are coming!” Meg shouted and started coughing in the smoke. “They’re bringing the water truck, but I told them—” she gasped for air “—there’s a stream here even if it’s under ice.”
He had a quick flashback to being under the ice the times he dove to Witlow’s plane. He shook off the vision and laid Getz down on the snowy bank near her truck.
“Bryce, he’s alive. I saw him blink. Bill!” she cried, putting her hands under his head when it sank back. “The firemen are coming and they can help you too.”
The man was not burned, but he looked to be in shock. He opened one eye, looked at Meg, then closed it. He whispered something but his voice was raspy, and the crackle of the flames drowned out his words.
Meg bent closer to him. “Say it again,” she said.
The man muttered something, then sighed and seemed to settle into the earth.
“Did you get that?” Bryce asked, his voice a raspy whisper.
“I think he said, ‘Two men set timed bombs to start the fire and two more.’”
“Two more men or two more bombs?” Again, Bryce pictured the blast that destroyed Witlow’s plane and nearly killed him and his dive team.
“We have to move back,” he ordered Meg. “I’ll bring him. Run!”
But she helped him lift the limp man into his arms, and they staggered through deep snow to her truck and laid Getz in the back bed of it to keep from jostling him more. When they got in and Bryce backed the truck a short distance down the road to escape the smoke, he saw the volunteer fire truck was coming right at them. He pulled Meg’s pickup way over as the big truck raced by but didn’t go far.
Though she hadn’t said anything about it, in the pulsating lights on the fire truck, he saw Meg’s gloves were slick with blood.
“From his head,” she said, looking at them too. “I didn’t want you to stop and look, but his head is soft in back—bashed in.”
“Stay put. I’ve got to warn them about possible bombs in the fire.”
But she ignored his order—par for this course, he told himself. As two of the firemen hurried up to them, starkly illumined in the big truck’s headlights, Bryce saw Meg get out and wash her red gloves, then her hands off in the snow.
He told them, “Bill Getz is in the back of our truck, hurt or worse. He said two men planted incendiary bombs in his place to start the fire, but there may be two more, and I don’t think they have blown yet, so—”
As if to prove his words, the woods and sky reverberated with two massive blasts that shook the earth under their feet. Flaming debris shot overhead and rained down amid shuddering trees.
Bryce hit the ground with Meg beneath him, nearly burying her in the bloody snow. They held tight to each other as the trees seemed to sway, the very ground to shake under them. He looked back to see that the fire truck was intact and its crew had hit the ground too. Several fir trees had caught fire, though the snow heaped on their branches soon snuffed it out as the inferno beyond roared louder.
He knew the place was gone and feared Getz was too. One of the firemen, a medic, went to check on him and came back with a shake of his head while they all huddled there waiting, hoping for the fire to burn out.
As the noise subsided, Meg stirred under him and he rolled his weight off her. She said in his ear, “I must be crazy to love a man who keeps coming so close to death.”
He sensed she was thinking of her husband. Would his own dangerous occupation keep her from saying yes to him? But she’d become so daring and brave, right in step with him, helping him, even urging him on.
“I’ll take the love part,” he told her. “And, I promise you, once I manage to move on from this, I’ll cut back on deep sea dives.”
“But you’d still be flying.”
He helped her up as all four firemen reappeared, two of them dragging a hose from the back of the truck. They broke the ice in the stream to access the water below to smother the fire. One man checked on Getz again, then covered him with a folded tarp, leaving him in the back of Meg’s truck.
Bryce knew one thing: the fire in his belly to solve this case, to find the two men, was not going out. Did the same people blow up Witlow’s plane? They were skilled at what they did—who had hired them, or was this their fight too? Could they be the same men who had invaded the lodge and held Meg and Chip at gunpoint, searching for—for what? More jewelry? Who the hell were they and who were they working for?
First guess—the mayor, who had maybe decided to silence Getz because he knew too much or was a loose cannon. Second guess—the Galsworths, to keep Getz quiet that he knew Rina from years back, that he had been working for her and her Michigan husband, maybe for her treasure-running father too. That could have been Getz who Meg and Chip saw waiting for Witlow’s plane to land that day before everything went wrong. The distinctive smell in Getz’s home—before all that smoke—had been like that blanket piece, and wouldn’t it have been like him to put an old white blanket he’d picked up somewhere over himself for camouflage the day he went out to meet Witlow?
Then it occurred to him—the blanket he’d used to get Getz out of the house! He ran back to retrieve it from where it had fallen and saw that, though damaged with smoke and stained with blood, it had probably once been a white blanket. It was singed in places, but there was no mistaking the tear at the corner, where a piece of the fabric had been ripped clean off. Snagged on a tree branch? He lifted the blanket to his nose, but all he could smell was smoke.
“Is that the mystery blanket?” Meg asked.
“Could be,” he said. “Hard to tell now, but we should hang on to it just in case.”
He felt damn bad for Getz. The guy knew his own treasures were going up in flames. He’d been such a loner. He must have known too much about something—or someone.
One of the firemen approached them, his voice steady as he spoke. “The coroner or his delegate from Anchorage will have to pronounce him officially, but he’s gone. The guy was an eccentric character—a monument—around here. I’m gonna call the state troopers and the squad right now even though he’s gone.”
“Poor guy,” Bryce mut
tered as they stood, brushing snow off themselves and each other. “And this means more damn questions from the mayor coming. If anything precious for our case was in Getz’s house, it’s gone.”
“We have to hope whoever was pulling his strings was smart enough not to keep the lost treasure there. If those two bombers were trying to find it, surely they looked around there before setting the place on fire.”
“And maybe tried to beat some answers out of him. It could be more than his head was hurt, the way he was carefully tied. I didn’t look close, but, once again, I think we’re dealing with two men who are very skilled at ropes and knots. And they have a sick sense of humor to put Getz at a table with scarecrows and a mannequin. Oh—didn’t tell you that yet.
“Listen, when you’re questioned,” he went on, clearing his throat, “leave out everything about our earlier visit here. I’ve already stashed the note about Mayor Purvis hiring him, and as for that yearbook photo—”
“Getz hadn’t written his name in the book, not that I saw, so maybe it wasn’t originally his. But it could be useful if we can link him to Rina—to get her to talk to us or in court someday.”
He just shook his head in utter disbelief of this woman. She was thinking like an agent, maybe not even NTSB, but FBI or CIA. For one crazed moment, he wondered if she was somehow involved, if she’d been waiting for Witlow’s plane to land when it crashed. But no—no way. He was just losing it. And he’d lost all self-control when it came to her.
“You’re trembling,” she told him.
“So are you. Cold. Nerves. We’re stuck here until the authorities come. I don’t care if you-know-who is being wined and dined by French President Macron, I’m calling him as soon as I can. Not for reinforcements this time, since he’s sent us those, but to ask him why in hell he hasn’t emailed documents and pictures of what I sent him in those first underwater boxes from Lloyd’s plane. How long does it take so-called forensic experts to dry out and look at stuff like that?”
“Maybe they were water damaged as well as fragile.”
The firemen were spraying cold water on the dying flames. Bryce sighed and looked at the shrouded form of Bill Getz as they walked past her truck. For a moment, he thought of the Confederate and Union soldiers shrouded like this who had died for their causes in the Civil War. This was a kind of war too, one over the historical treasure the rebel president had sought to escape with, a priceless, elusive fortune that now seemed a deadly curse on all who tried to hoard or hide it—or find it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
After answering questions from the state trooper who showed up before Getz’s body was taken away, Meg and Bryce leaned wearily against the hood of her truck. They had not told the trooper that his fellow officer Jim Kurtz was on assignment at the lodge, though they used the officers’ phone system to patch through to tell Suze what had happened and to talk to “Kurt.”
“To top off all that tragedy,” Suze said when she got back on the phone with Meg, “guess who’s here, making what she calls a final, fair and fabulous bid for our old jewelry? And she says she’s not leaving until she talks to you, and I couldn’t tell her where you were. Meg, it’s just one awful thing after the other,” she added with a shaky voice and a single sob.
“I agree. But we can’t just hide out and hope it all goes away. We have to stop it—somehow. We’ll be back as soon as we can. If Melissa doesn’t want to wait, fine, because I’m not selling her my things either.”
“She has her husband, Jordan, with her. You think she throws her weight around, you should see him. Twice he’s said he was in the Marines. He’s clearly used to giving orders. At least Rafe is talking to him, because Kurt’s lying low since he thinks he’s met Semper Fi Jordan McKee before. Meg, it’s just a terrible day and now poor Getz. Oh, got to go. Chip’s making a mess washing the dogs.”
Meg sighed. Could things get worse today? Maybe it would do everyone good if she, Chip and Bryce could get away for a few days—that is, if she could get their friends Sam and Mary Spruce to come in to live at the lodge while they were gone. Josh, who was Sam’s brother, would be around off and on, and Rafe and Kurt were here for a while.
Bryce was still coughing from the smoke and his rough voice broke into her agonizing. “Any news from the lodge? Is Suze okay?”
“Melissa McKee is there with her husband. Bryce, despite the fact we’re focusing in on the mayor or the Galsworths, we can’t forget her. And Suze is really wrung out.”
“So are we. You’re right about Melissa McKee, but she’s a long shot. I think we’re done here. We did—” he coughed again “—what we could. The invitation is still open for you and Chip going home with me, whatever we can manage. If the Big Man can take extra days in France, we can afford a couple.”
Her eyes, sore from smoke, watered with more tears. She nodded and took his sooty hand. Bryce raised his other to the officer in charge, who nodded.
They turned toward her truck, which, thankfully, no longer had Getz’s shrouded corpse in the back. His body had been taken to Anchorage for an autopsy.
“We know where to find you,” the trooper called out.
Bryce said to her, “Maybe they know where to find us—but maybe they won’t. Let’s see if we can clear two days in Juneau. We can work from there. I know I won’t need to convince Chip, only his mother.”
“I’ll go. I’m ready.”
They smiled into each other’s eyes, and she noted again how gray his skin was from the smoke. Even his hair looked powdered, maybe a bit singed too. Several pieces of ash were caught in his hairline, and she brushed them away.
“I can drive,” she told him and held out her hand for the keys.
“Sweetheart, in more ways than one, you are already in the driver’s seat.” He handed her the keys. “Let’s get home and clean up.”
“Despite who’s waiting for us, sounds good to me,” she said as they got in and she started the truck.
“You know,” he went on, “maybe it’s not such a coincidence that Melissa and her husband are there waiting for us. If they expected us to be at the lodge, maybe they meant to show us they were nowhere near this fire. They may not have been, but maybe they used their hired goons to question and threaten poor Getz, then to send him and that place up in smoke—with their specialty remote-detonated bombs. If so, I’ll bet they were shocked if Suze told them we were there to see it happen.”
“And maybe that’s why Melissa is being so obnoxious about wanting to buy our small amount of jewelry—to convince us that she doesn’t have a huge cache of it to sell.”
* * *
Everyone except Kurt, who was still making himself scarce in case Melissa’s husband would recognize him, gathered around Meg and Bryce after they washed up. Chip was downstairs kicking balls into the net so he and Bryce could have a “basement game” later in the day. Meg had decided she’d tell Chip in her own way about Bill Getz’s death and the fire, but she was impressed that he always obeyed Bryce without hesitation or question.
Why Melissa might be having an affair with the mayor was beyond Meg’s grasp when she saw Jordan McKee close up, because he was good-looking, seemed protective of her and generally friendly. But this initial impression soon segued to a more aggressive and dictatorial one, and Meg saw what Suze had meant. But why would Melissa gravitate toward the mayor, for he was much the same way, unless that was the kind of man she really liked? And, if so, could Jordan be forcing her to help with the stolen treasure?
Wishing they were just explaining Getz’s death to Suze, Rafe and Kurt, Bryce went over what had happened, leaving out any suspicions they had about Getz being a spy or being linked to the Thanksgiving Day plane crash.
“Poor guy,” Jordan said, shaking his head. “Someone must have wanted something from his collection of stuff, then maybe they argued. But bombs detonating, then turning into a bigger conflagration? Wonder if they wer
e timed to go off or the fire ignited them.”
Bryce shot Meg a quick look. The words detonating and conflagration coming out of this man’s mouth so easily just sounded strange, but Meg knew they were both on edge, probably overreacting.
“Jordan worked with explosives in the Marines,” Melissa said.
This time Bryce’s eyebrows lifted—until he managed to hide his interest with a frown. “So did you ever work on underwater demolition? I had some experience with that in the service.”
“Not really, not directly.”
“One great thing about the service is making lifelong friends,” Bryce went on. “I still keep in touch and work with some of my old buddies. Even living in Alaska, hope that’s been one of your long-term benefits too.”
“Yeah, now and then, but you’re right about living here, since most of them are in the Lower Forty-Eight,” Jordan said and changed the subject.
As exhausted as she was, Meg realized that Bryce was wondering if Jordan had some old friends who had specialized in remote demolitions. But no one would blurt out questions about bombs if he were really guilty—would he? Or was this man, who obviously shared his wife’s interests, actually trying to attract them, get them to consult him?
* * *
After being turned down by both Meg and Suze about selling their jewelry again, Melissa huffed out the front door, and Jordan more or less swaggered out behind her.
Meg and Bryce collapsed at the dining table as Suze hurried to her room, and Rafe and Kurt huddled in the front hall, talking. “What do you think?” Bryce asked her. “The McKees are baiting a trap for us? Or else Jordan’s just a blowhard and has nothing to do with anything but being part owner of his wife’s struggling jewelry store and it just so happens he used to work in demolitions?”
“I think my brain’s going to implode, but now I have Jordan McKee to research—when I can see straight again.”
