Alaskan Showdown

by Sarah Varland

  Because of that she had no concept of how hard or easy she would be to find.

  Was there a body there from nearly thirty years ago? she wondered in passing. Was she going to be the new body?

  Now her head throbbed, too, joining the stab wound in vying for her attention.

  “Where are we going?” Was that her voice, groggy and wounded?

  Please, God, let Blue lead them to where I am. She prayed as she waited for an answer. She’d issued a sharp command for Blue to get inside right after she’d been stabbed, and her dog had listened. Hopefully, Blue might lead a search party to her.

  Levi? Would he be the one looking? Her SAR team?

  She knew how this part went. The search grids. The agonizing minutes turning to hours, the knowledge that if a person wasn’t found soon, exposure could kill.

  All of that, plus this week’s knowledge about humanity’s depravity, was too much to handle. Adriana had seen death up close this week, what this woman’s rage had done, all the lives it had ended.

  She didn’t want to be another casualty. She didn’t want to be part of this killer’s twisted plan.

  “Why are you doing this?” Adriana asked. Her captor hadn’t talked much, and Adriana didn’t recognize her. The woman was older than she’d have pictured a killer, somewhere in her sixties, but fit. Smaller than Adriana, and built like a woman who spent her days hiking mountain trails.

  And burying people on them.

  All those victims—this woman had been responsible?

  Still, she didn’t answer. Instead, she shoved Adriana again, harder. She tripped on a root and fell to the ground. Pain knifed in her side, where her wound was, and she grabbed it with her hand and tried not to cry out. When she moved her hand away, there was fresh, sticky blood.

  God, help me not die here, she prayed.

  “If you’re trying to be the biggest pain and slow me down so I let you go, it won’t happen. I could kill you now, you know. I’ve killed many, many times.”

  How did you explain the feeling of hearing those words? Adriana wondered. There was no way to articulate the amount of evil in what should be a normal, pleasant voice. Or the way she could almost feel the...void behind her. Like the woman had traded in her humanity for something else altogether.

  It was eerie. Terrifying.

  Please don’t let her kill me. She prayed, willing to beg God however much she needed to. Adriana wasn’t ready to die. Too much of the last few years had been suffocated under thoughts of death. Robert’s. The people she helped find. She needed a few years in full sunlight. In hope.

  With Levi. Please, with Levi.

  Please, not yet.

  “I’ll walk faster,” Adriana promised, doing her best to get her legs to cooperate. They were heavy.

  “Do that.”

  They hiked in silence. Another ten minutes, Adriana guessed. How far had they gone? It was hard to judge her pace when she knew she was walking more slowly than usual. More importantly, how fast could Levi hike it? And could Blue find them?

  Was there still hope? Or was it really lost now?

  She couldn’t let herself think that, she reminded herself as she took more hurried steps into the darkness.

  She had to believe there was still a chance. Levi knew she was missing by now; he had to. And she’d asked God to save her. Sometimes He allowed tragedy to strike, she knew that.

  Yet sometimes God stepped in with miracles. And Adriana needed one of those right now.

  * * *

  Levi banged on the front door of Adriana’s house with a closed fist, anger loaded and ready. It took Judah more than a minute to answer.

  “Where is she?” Part of him needed to see that she was really gone, or he’d keep hoping maybe she’d just stepped into another room, maybe Judah hadn’t seen her, maybe she was really fine.

  Maybe he hadn’t messed this all up. Again.

  “I don’t know. We were in the backyard, taking her dog for a walk.”

  It wasn’t unreasonable, Levi knew that in his head. Still, he felt his fists clench. “You let her outside?”

  “It was her backyard, Levi. I was with her. You couldn’t lock her up forever.”

  No, he couldn’t have. And with any other person in danger he’d have agreed with Judah. Quality of life was important and Adriana’s had been smashed all to bits this week. He loved the idea of her outside in her own yard. Safe in the outside air. Finally relaxing a little.

  Except he knew how this ended.

  “When did she get away from you? How? Did someone come? Did she leave?”

  Blue came trotting in from the living room, whining. She jumped up and put her paws on Levi’s shoulders.

  He didn’t remember Blue ever jumping up on him before. She was far too well trained for that. Stress from her owner being missing?

  “She went around the corner of the house.” Judah nodded toward Blue. “The dog acted weird. Sort of howled and ran and then she followed and was gone.” He shook his head. “I ran that way, and someone hit me. The dog came back, barreled right into me, actually, before I hit the ground, and then I passed out. When I got up, Adriana wasn’t there.”

  Levi bent down, scratched Blue behind the ears and looked into her eyes, willing her to communicate with him somehow. Adriana did this all the time, right? She made it look so easy, but the truth was she was a talented woman. Talented and gorgeous and funny and brave.

  He needed her to be okay.

  “Please tell me something,” he muttered at the dog.

  “You’re not talking to the dog, right? We’ll find her, Levi. Let’s go. I’ve already put a BOLO out for her and I’ve got everyone in the department looking for cars they don’t recognize.”

  Levi shook his head. “Except that may not be our biggest danger.”

  Judah stilled. “We know the killer?”

  “I’m not sure.” Levi couldn’t quite shrug, as it wasn’t a casual shrugging situation, but he felt every bit as puzzled as his shoulders wanted to convey. “Jim’s missing. I was on the phone with him, and he reacted really oddly to what I told him and then disappeared.”

  Blue whined and jumped up on Levi again, then ran toward the back of the house. Ran back. Again.

  Levi frowned. “You want us to follow you.”

  “You’re talking to the dog again,” Judah said. “And the isn’t Lassie.”

  Blue barked.

  Levi nodded. “All right. Come with me, Judah. I’ll fill you in on the way, but we’re following the dog.”

  “Following...” Judah’s voice trailed off, but Levi was already hot on Blue’s heels as the husky ran ahead, then pawed at the back door.

  This had to work. Levi swallowed hard against fear, desperate to do something to help Adriana. If she trusted her dogs, then...

  Maybe he needed to do that, too.

  Levi opened the door, said a quick prayer.

  Without hesitation, the large white dog ran for the woods behind the house.

  Woods. Levi swallowed hard and felt his chest compress. Please, don’t let me find her like every other woman I’ve found in the woods lately.

  Surely the killer wouldn’t murder Adriana. Not if he—well, more likely she—was motivated by a sense of justice. If the killer was truly motivated by infidelity, by making that right somehow, then Adriana had done nothing wrong. She shouldn’t be a target.

  And wouldn’t have been, if he hadn’t gotten her involved in this case.

  Shoving aside guilt that would do him no good, he hurried after the dog. Prayed he wasn’t too late. And that this actually worked.

  Please, God, let this dog actually know what she’s doing.

  * * *

  The glow of a light from a cabin would have been a welcome sight any other time, but right now it only added to Adriana’s sense of
foreboding.

  She wasn’t dead yet; that was a plus. However, the wet, sticky blood staining the side of her shirt served as a reminder that she could be. She had no idea how much blood she’d lost, no idea how much was too much. All she knew was that she was fighting waves of dizziness, but it could easily be panic.

  “Now we wait for your boyfriend.” The woman stepped ahead of Adriana and looked back at her with a look of bored hate. “Then you can die. Try to stay alive ’til he gets here. This works best if everyone knows how much their actions have made other people suffer.”

  The words reminded Adriana of what Levi had told her about the phone call, the fact that the person killing seemed to think they were doing something good, righting some kind of wrong. Is that what this person was referring to?

  The door to the cabin pushed open easily against the woman’s weight. There was no lock on the door, common in Alaskan cabins like this, something that should help Levi and anyone he might bring with him. If they got here. She’d lost track of how many turns they’d taken and there hadn’t been a way to subtly mark their path with someone right behind her. At first she’d done her best by snapping twigs with her feet, but when the woman had become impatient, Adriana had decided that keeping her calm was her first priority.

  She trusted Blue. If anyone could find her, Blue could. The question was whether or not Levi would trust the dog to do so, and if he could read her signals.

  “Who is this? What did you do, Rosie?” a raspy male voice called from the corner of the room. A man sat in a chair, hands bound, tied to it. His feet were bound, too.

  “Shut up, Jim.”

  Jim? She’d heard of Jim, hadn’t she? Where had she heard that name lately?

  “You did this, Jim. I didn’t do this, you did.”

  The woman turned to the other corner. Adriana looked over there for the first time and saw another woman, not much younger than Adriana herself, tied up like the man. The only difference was that the man looked tired. Resigned. And the younger woman, who bore a resemblance to Rosie and Jim, looked terrified.

  Adriana struggled to put the pieces together. Frowned.

  Levi’s old partner? Had his name been Jim?

  “You did this, too, Jenny.” Rosie turned toward the other corner and advanced. “You should have known better. You were raised better.”

  Now she spun around, back to Jim. “Unlike you, apparently.”

  “Rosie, I said I was sorry. A hundred times, I said it. I showed you every day. And it was over thirty years ago. And I stopped seeing her...”

  Rosie shook her head. “Not. Soon. Enough.”

  Adriana watched as Jim’s expression wavered, as understanding dawned.

  “You...didn’t...”

  “She was the first to die. The others committed the same sin she did.”

  So Rosie had been the killer all those years ago.

  But why...

  Adriana watched the family drama unfolding before her, hoped for answers, but more than that, hoped for escape.

  “You sit there.” Rosie grabbed her arm, the one Adriana had kept pressed against her wound, and pulled her toward a chair.

  Adriana sat. Put her hand back against her side. Blood stuck to her skin.

  “Why did you stop?” Adriana asked, knowing she had little to lose by at least getting answers.

  Rosie jerked her head toward the young woman. “I spent years raising her. Pouring all my energy into raising the perfect daughter.” Her face contorted into a sneer. “Only to have my daughter follow in her father’s footsteps with her bad moral choices. Dating a married man! Just like that other woman who wrecked my marriage. No better than she was. Then I realized I could never stop killing. That there would always be more people who had been unfaithful or helped someone else be unfaithful, people who needed to die.”

  Wrong as infidelity was, the woman was sick. Adriana felt nauseous as her stomach churned.

  “Why me, though? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Although, yes, it was madness that the killer was justifying her actions, Adriana had to keep her talking if she wanted to live. At least that was her theory.

  “You kept interfering. You and your boyfriend.”

  He wasn’t her boyfriend, Adriana wanted to say, but denying it was hardly going to help her now, was it?

  Besides, she loved him. There was no point in denying that now. Either to herself or anyone else.

  She. Loved. Him.

  The woman grabbed a rope and started to tie Adriana up as she continued, “Seeing you die will hurt him. Which will hurt you.” Rosie turned to Jim, her husband, and glared.

  Okay, maybe knowing they weren’t a couple could help, much as that truth hurt Adriana. “We aren’t together. Killing me gets you nothing.”

  Rosie shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But I’ve been watching. I see the way he looks at you. Anyway, he will want to save you. And when he gets here, he will die while my husband watches and sees what his sin has cost everyone.”

  Adriana kept quiet.

  There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.

  SEVENTEEN

  The dark tangles of the woods surrounded them as they hiked on into the night. Blue looked back at Levi now and then and he nodded at her, trying to convey somehow that he was trusting her. Adriana would know how to do this. She’d led countless searches.

  Levi looked at Blue. Swallowed hard. She was a regular search dog, too, wasn’t she? Because he couldn’t handle the possibility that she’d caught a cadaver scent. Adriana had to be alive. He stopped walking abruptly, tried to catch his breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Judah asked from behind him, having had to stop suddenly to avoid hitting him.

  Levi shook his head. The words brought up such a big fear, he didn’t even want to say it aloud.

  “She’ll be okay.”

  But his brother couldn’t promise that and they both knew it.

  Blue whined and trotted ahead again, then came back. Levi was fairly sure this was the same dog she used for all her searches. With that thought in mind to give him the little bit of hope he needed, he moved forward.

  He tripped on a root at one point, but stayed focused. Only when they got off the trail did he start to worry.

  “You sure about this?” Judah asked.

  No, Levi wasn’t sure at all. But Blue seemed pretty confident. He hadn’t seen her sniffing the ground, like he would picture a search dog doing, but from the little bit Adriana had explained to him, it seemed like the dogs were able to find scent in air. So maybe it didn’t have to be exactly what he was picturing.

  He needed to trust the dog.

  As he walked, questions started to nudge his heart.

  Was this anything like trusting God? Following a path that didn’t make sense to him, going through things like he’d gone through in the past? Why was he willing to trust a dog, but not the God who had created him and the universe?

  Because he was mad. He knew the answer right away. He’d grown up following Jesus, tried to do his best in his marriage, and it had still fallen apart. Now he walked around with his own kind of scarlet letter, at least in some parts of the Christian community, because he was divorced. But his church and friends had never made him feel that way.

  So did anyone judge him at all? Or did it just feel that way?

  And either way, was God to blame?

  No, he knew as he hiked through the darkness. God was not. He was without fault, without blame. He’d been there all the time, waiting for Levi to come to Him with the heartache he’d gone through, and instead of drawing closer to Him, Levi had pushed away.

  Why had it taken the thought of losing Adriana, just when he was starting to believe in second chances, for him to realize it?

  God, I’m sorry. Help me trust You. Help me find her.

>   It may not have been the most eloquent prayer. But as he saw glimmers of light in the distance, like light from cabin windows, he could feel something inside him lighten as well.

  Hope. Hope that maybe God had been working everything out, even still was.

  Please let that mean that she’s alive, he prayed again as the shape of a cabin became more distinct in the darkness.

  “Blue, come.”

  The dog did, went to him obediently, even though he could tell she could clearly smell what she’d been chasing, from the way she danced on her hind legs and whined.

  “And be quiet.”

  She stopped making noise. Levi frowned. How well trained was this dog?

  “What’s your plan?” Judah asked him, and Levi felt himself stand taller. Shoulders back. For once, his older brother had asked him that question. Of course, this time Levi wasn’t sure he had a plan, and could have maybe used his brother’s help. But he wasn’t going to admit that now.

  “I think I should stay out of sight for now,” Judah offered.

  Yes. That was a solid plan. Levi nodded like he’d already thought that through. “You stay out of sight. I’ll go in and try to get her.”

  “You won’t be able to just storm in and yank her out. Besides, didn’t you say your old partner may be in there, too?”

  True. So they’d have an officer going in through the door, one outside. Two hostages. One killer. He liked the odds. The hostages were on his side, but it was still not without risk. If Adriana was still alive, it wasn’t because this was a killer who showed mercy. It was because she was somehow worth more to them alive than dead.

  That made him uncomfortable, to not understand what they were planning. Also, what shape would Adriana be in? She was a fit woman. If she hadn’t managed to escape at her house, then she’d potentially been knocked out, drugged, or worse. He had to factor that in as well.

  Levi’s mouth was dry and the taste of fear was overwhelming. Adrenaline buzzed down his arms, through his veins. He needed her to be all right.