Blind Spot

by Brenda Novak

  Ms. Stokes’s article had helped them battle back in the arena of public opinion, but Amarok hadn’t been happy that he’d been spotlighted in her final piece. She’d painted him as a lone, rugged lawman, raised by a man who was never the same after his wife abandoned him and headed for gentler climes, who turned out to be some sort of Alaskan superhero, standing guard over the whole town.

  In a way, it had been flattering. He had to admit that. But it had been even more embarrassing, something his friends made the most of by teasing him mercilessly the first several weeks after that issue hit newsstands.

  After it was all over, he’d shoved it out of his mind. But he should’ve connected the dots immediately. Of course Bishop would keep an eye out for Evelyn’s name in the press and read everything about her he could get his hands on. Chloe Stokes had handed him a golden ticket to kidnap Evelyn when she’d revealed so much about Amarok and his personal situation.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It was the article.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Try like hell to get hold of the widow of a guy by the name of Terry Lovett. It’s three hours later in Minnesota, which puts it right smack in the middle of the afternoon for her, but she isn’t picking up.”

  Phil scratched his head. “Apparently, I missed a lot while I was sleeping. Who’s Terry Lovett?”

  “A janitor at Beacon Point who was recently murdered.”

  “How does that tie into anything?”

  “I’m not sure it does, but I plan on finding out if he helped Lyman Bishop escape—or had something to do with it.”

  Phil opened his mouth to say more. No doubt he was curious to learn how Amarok had learned about Terry. But Amarok raised his hand; he had to get back to work. “I’ll tell you all about it if it amounts to anything. There’s no need wasting the time if it doesn’t.”

  “Okay.” He started to walk over to his desk, only to turn back. “Amarok?”

  Amarok glanced up from his computer, where he was rereading everything he’d found on Terry Lovett. He’d thought maybe the funeral was today and that was why he couldn’t reach Bridget. They’d certainly rushed the autopsy. But since Terry was a murder victim, Amarok doubted his body would’ve been released so soon. “What?”

  “Are you sure Bishop didn’t involve your mother in the kidnap plot? That she wasn’t the one who contacted Evelyn? I’d hate to think he held a gun to her head and made her place that call, but if he thought Evelyn might recognize your mother’s voice, it’s a possibility he went that far. He had eighteen months to plan her abduction, and he doesn’t seem prone to making mistakes.”

  “The article mentioned that she moved to Seattle when she left my father, but it didn’t give her address. How would Bishop find her?”

  “It’s not hard to find someone with such an unusual name. How many Alistair Wingates can there be?”

  Amarok didn’t care to acknowledge that, even to himself. “He was still at Beacon Point when Evelyn was kidnapped.”

  “But we know he had help.…”

  “If the guy who’s helping him was with my mother, he would’ve had her use her own phone, wouldn’t have had to use a burner.”

  Phil still seemed reluctant to let it go, but, finally, he nodded. “Yeah. Okay. You’re probably right.”

  “Besides, she would’ve called me if she’d had an encounter like that,” Amarok added.

  The door flew open and Heidi Perth Robbins walked in with dinner. The appearance of his wife distracted Phil. She was saying something about cooking enough for two, at which point Amarok should’ve smiled and thanked her, but he wasn’t really listening. He couldn’t quit thinking about the possibilities. Whoever was involved with Bishop may have figured out where his mother lived and gone to visit her. There was also the chance she hadn’t called him about it because she couldn’t. And maybe her murder hadn’t been reported on the news because she and her husband were both dead and their bodies hadn’t yet been discovered. After all, Jason, Amarok’s twin brother, lived in Spokane these days. He probably didn’t check in on their mother every day.

  With a curse that made both Heidi and Phil stop talking and look over at him, Amarok picked up the phone. But he didn’t get a chance to dial his mother; someone was already on the line.

  “Amarok? How weird. I didn’t even hear you say hello!”

  It was Evelyn’s mother. “I’m sorry. I … ah—How’s everything with Brianne? Any news yet?” He hoped so. As far as he knew, she’d been in labor since Thursday night.

  “It was a long, hard go. Her contractions didn’t progress at first. So they gave her something, and she went into labor in earnest and finally delivered early this morning. We have a boy!” she announced.

  16

  Anchorage, AK—Sunday, 11:45 a.m. AKDT

  Lyman Bishop knew from experience how easily having a disability could win trust and sympathy. He’d seen it happen with Beth. When she’d lived with him, he’d been admired and praised, mostly by his co-workers since he’d never had a wide circle of friends, for taking care of his mentally handicapped sister. Being Beth’s guardian had made him look good, created a perfect cover for almost anything he wanted to do. And now he could see that his own handicap—the difficulty he had walking and the paralysis in his face—would serve the same purpose.

  He mumbled that he was a war veteran with a head injury and other people held doors for him, smiled and even hurried to get him a cart at the grocery store or wave him on ahead of them at the checkout. And yet they didn’t really see him or pay particular attention if they did, so there was little threat that he’d be distinctly remembered if someone were to ask about him. He was just one more pathetic figure they encountered while going about their daily routine, someone who meant nothing to them, other than the quick pat on the back they gave themselves for trying to be nice and the passing gratitude they felt for not being similarly afflicted.

  He smiled at an attractive young woman who scrambled to get out of his way as he pushed his cart down the vegetable aisle. He loved food and wine, refused to be cheap when it came to either of those things. And now that he was out of Beacon Hill and could have something besides the institutional slop he’d been fed for the past eighteen months, food that would’ve been a disappointment to pigs, he planned to take full advantage of it. His new girlfriend, being so far along in her pregnancy, was going to need some good nutrition, too.

  The memory of how Evelyn had treated him when he’d tried to talk to her this morning threatened to ruin his mood, but he refused to let it. He couldn’t expect too much from her. Not at first. Being held against her will after being able to do just about anything she wanted must come as a terrible shock. She was a bright, accomplished woman and deserved a little more latitude than he’d offered his previous “girlfriends.” Besides, he had no idea how Emmett had behaved with her. Maybe he’d been uncouth. He certainly hadn’t been feeding her properly.

  She’d get used to him, Bishop decided, would learn to love him the way Beth had—or at least to treat him as if she did, which was all the same to him—especially once she realized that he was willing to reward her when she behaved herself.

  And if she refused to play nice?

  He finished loading his cart with squash, watermelon, grapes, lettuce, corn on the cob and potatoes and headed off in search of the aisle that had a small section of kitchen implements. He needed a knife—he’d disposed of the one he’d used to kill Terry rather than draw attention by putting it in his luggage when he got on the plane. He also needed a new padlock for the front gate and an ordinary ice pick, the kind people used in their kitchens all the time, which meant purchasing one.

  In a state where practically everyone else was packing a gun, that wouldn’t raise any more eyebrows than seeing a forty-two-year-old man who was barely five eight, had already lost most of his hair and was carrying a few extra pounds around the middle shuffling along with a limp.

  He smiled when he found wh
at he was looking for. It was only $8.99, a small price to pay for a little insurance, especially because he already had plenty of sleeping pills.

  Since he controlled Evelyn’s food, he could ensure that she went to sleep whenever he decided it was necessary—and woke up much more manageable.

  Anchorage, AK—Sunday 11:50 a.m. AKDT

  Evelyn knew more about her surroundings than she’d known before. That was something, wasn’t it? Maybe it was a small thing—a very small thing—but she had to find some tiny rainbow in what had transpired. She hadn’t stabbed Emmett (thanks to Bishop, she now knew his name) for nothing. She’d gotten out of her cramped prison long enough to see where she was being kept and, as a consequence, had some inkling of the layout of the building.

  She rolled over on her cot and gazed up at the smooth white walls. This had once been a cooler, as she’d guessed—a cooler in some type of processing plant. There was a staff room; she’d run in there when she’d been looking for a way out.

  She’d been too frantic to take stock of what she saw at the time, not consciously, anyway. But now that she was once again locked up, she was determined to go over her memories and cement every detail in her mind. She had to believe she’d have another chance to escape, and then she could take advantage of what she’d learned to avoid making the same mistakes.

  For instance, she’d have to remember not to go to the right. That was where Emmett had been staying and was most likely where Bishop would be staying now that Emmett was gone. Made sense, given it seemed to be the most hospitable area.

  She’d caught a glimpse of a room without windows that had a big machine in it—it had smelled terrible, like rotten eggs—and another room with lots of windows and trash on the floor.

  No, not all of it was trash, she decided as she closed her eyes and pictured it again. There’d been egg cartons. Lots of empty egg cartons. This place was most likely a plant that processed eggs, she decided. And the front part, with all the windows? That had to be a store that sold them, like a fruit stand a strawberry farmer put up on his own property.

  The more she concentrated on piecing together what she’d seen and making sense of it, a commercial farm with egg-laying hens sounded plausible. And if that was the reality, she probably wasn’t in a location that was too remote. An egg farm or ranch, or whatever they were called, wouldn’t be right downtown but still sited fairly close to civilization. A cooler this size would hold a lot of eggs and yet the small store wasn’t big enough to move a vast amount of product, which meant such a business would require a distribution method—trucks that carried cases of eggs to other retail outlets.

  So she was likely on the outskirts of a place much bigger than Hilltop. Anchorage or Juneau. But since Anchorage was closer to Hilltop, if she had to bet, she’d bet on that one. Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport was the largest and the busiest in the state and would make it easy for Bishop to relieve Emmett, since that had obviously been the plan.

  The bad news was that there weren’t any eggs in this cooler right now and all the trash she’d seen on the floor in the store, mixed with those egg crates, suggested the egg ranch was abandoned. Which meant little or no chance of a well-meaning customer or employee coming onto the property, stumbling upon what was going on and saving her.

  She pressed her palm to her forehead. How was she supposed to cling to hope when it was all so hopeless? Bishop had completely blindsided her, had thought of everything. She couldn’t even make another weapon, not now that she’d stabbed Emmett. Bishop would be watching for that. And if he caught her, he’d punish her.

  She knew how he’d do it, too.

  She was never getting out of here. She was only pretending it could happen, forcing herself to remember the details of the layout of the building to keep her mind off of what was really worrying her.

  It’d been a while since she’d felt the baby move.

  “Where are you?” she whispered to her child as she rubbed her belly in concern, and felt a single tear roll back into her hair.

  Boston, MA—Sunday, 4:30 p.m. EST

  Lara Talbot had to reach for a chair. She’d been so excited, so happy, for a change. Although Brianne wasn’t married, as Lara would prefer, she had a good job as a hospital administrator, made fantastic money and would be thirty-eight in two months—plenty old enough to be able to care for a child on her own. Several of Lara’s more religious friends had expressed their disapproval that Brianne would have a baby out of wedlock, but Lara had decided not to let her younger daughter’s single status ruin the enjoyment of having her first grandchild.

  She’d had no idea she’d have much bigger things to worry about.…

  “Not this again,” she said as Amarok’s words pierced through the euphoria she’d been feeling on the drive home from the hospital like a pin to a balloon.

  She knew the sudden pain and fear in her voice had caught her husband’s attention when Grant, who’d been hanging the car keys on a hook, whipped his head around to look at her.

  “What is it, honey?” he asked, striding over to where she’d sagged onto a barstool at the granite-topped island in their kitchen. “It’s not the baby, is it? Brianne and little Caden are okay.…”

  “I can’t do this again,” she said simply, and handed the phone to him, at which point she headed straight for her bedroom and the anti-anxiety pills she kept in her nightstand. After Evelyn had been kidnapped the first time, they’d become a staple in her life—until the past eight months, when everything seemed as though it was going to be okay at last.

  She sensed that Grant didn’t know whether to follow her as he accepted her mobile, but she was glad he didn’t. She heard him say, “Hello? Amarok?” just as she stepped into her bedroom and locked the door.

  Hilltop, AK—Sunday, 12:40 p.m. AKDT

  That call had been every bit as difficult as Amarok had anticipated. He didn’t even have the chance to explain the entire situation to Lara before she disappeared and Grant came on the line.

  Grant had listened quietly, hadn’t railed or accused Amarok of not being diligent enough. He’d barely said a word, which had left Amarok trying to fill the silence—something he’d done awkwardly, at best. He’d promised Grant he was doing all he could to find Evelyn and heard himself saying all the same empty platitudes others had been saying to him—that she was a strong woman, that she’d weathered difficult situations before and would get through this, too, that the baby would be fine.

  But Grant understood how bad it could get and what the real chances were. He’d been through this type of thing before. He’d gotten his daughter back, but that had been a miracle. He could hardly expect to have such luck again.

  “What you told him, it’s true,” Phil said after Amarok had promised to keep them informed and hung up. “We are going to get Evelyn back safely.”

  Amarok had forgotten Phil was even in the room. He jerked his gaze away from the spot he’d been staring at—as if his eyes were laser beams and could drill holes through his desk—and nodded. He couldn’t talk about it; he’d fall apart. And that was the last thing he could allow himself to do. He had to remain strong and clearheaded, for Evelyn’s sake. In order to get through this, he could only think one step ahead, and his next step included another difficult call.

  He wished Phil weren’t watching as he dialed his mother’s number. But as much as Amarok preferred a bit of privacy, he wasn’t about to ask him to leave. Phil had been completely devoted to him and to keeping Hilltop safe since Amarok had chosen him as Village Public Safety Officer. He was proving his commitment now, by doing all he could to support and assist in Evelyn’s investigation.

  When his mother didn’t answer right away, Amarok’s anxiety grew. Maybe Phil was right and she had been hurt. Although he didn’t want anything to do with his mother, his feelings were a great deal more complex than he was willing to admit, even to Evelyn, which was probably why she’d kept pressing him about whether he really didn’t care to invite Al
istair to their wedding. Evelyn knew he had to be torn on some level; she was a mental health professional. And she was right. Alistair’s death would only make his feelings where his mother was concerned more complicated.

  He was about to hang up and call the Seattle police, to ask them to check on her, when he heard a breathless, “Hello?” as though she’d had to hurry to reach the phone.

  “Alistair?” He hardly knew her, refused to call her Mom. He’d spoken to her only a handful of times since Jason had reached out to him on their eighteenth birthday, and there’d been no communication before that.

  “Benjamin?”

  That she used his given name only highlighted the fact that she’d missed his entire life, wasn’t even familiar enough with what people called him to use it herself. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  Now that he had her on the line, which confirmed she was alive, he didn’t know what to say next. I’m just calling to make sure you’re okay wasn’t something he felt comfortable with. That made it sound as though he cared a great deal, and since she hadn’t cared enough about him to remain in contact after she walked away from him when he was only two years old, he wasn’t willing to pretend she could so easily erase all of that.

  “It’s good to hear from you,” she said softly.

  He couldn’t help bristling. It would’ve been good to hear from her while he’d been growing up without a mother, but he didn’t say that. “I have a few questions I was hoping you could answer.”

  There was a slight pause, during which he could feel her tense. “Is this about the past? Because I’ve been hoping we could talk about that, that I could finally say I’m sorry for what I did. I know you’re having a hard time believing it, but I loved you then, and I love you now.”

  She had a hell of a way of showing it, but saying so would only elicit the excuses she’d tried to give him before and make him angry. A mother didn’t abandon her child if she had a choice. Period. “This isn’t about the past,” he said, ignoring everything else, including the entreaty in her voice.