by Brenda Novak
“Well, they think that’s what he wanted. His jaw’s broken, so they wired it shut, which makes it awfully hard to understand him.”
“Who told you this?”
“Dr. Ricardo called here an hour or so ago.”
“What could Jasper want now?”
“He believes he can tell you where Evelyn is.”
Amarok caught his breath. “How?”
“I have no clue. And neither does Ricardo.”
Evelyn’s old nemesis had to be lying, didn’t he?
Yes. Amarok knew it. But then his mind flashed back to the way Jasper had guided the investigation to Lyman Bishop right from the start. “Does Ricardo believe him?”
“Not entirely. Given Moore’s current state, he could be delusional. Or he could be playing games. You know how crafty he is, how much he craves attention. Ricardo said he might be trying to insert himself, to be part of everything, to feel important again.”
“Not to mention, if he knows something and really wants to help, he could tell someone else.”
“That’s a big if.”
“You’re saying he won’t, Shorty? Why not? Why does it have to be me?”
“Good question, but Ricardo had no answer for that, either.”
The air brakes sounded on the arriving bus and the doors whooshed open. “He can’t know anything,” Amarok said skeptically. “I’ve been on the outside, doing everything possible to find her, and I still don’t know where she’s at.”
“Yeah. It’s probably BS.”
“Has to be.”
Those waiting for the parking shuttle with him began to climb on, so Amarok lifted his bag. He wasn’t going to Hanover House. He was better off staying in Anchorage and following up on the lead he’d found via Emmett’s mail. Edna Southwick was his best possible chance at finding Evelyn.
Or was she? Jasper Moore didn’t have to care about Evelyn to want to save her. He was obsessed with her, which was turning out to be close to the same thing, or at least eerily similar.
And he had been right before.
With a curse, Amarok sank into a seat on the shuttle to the parking lot. He hated the amount of time it would take, but as soon as he reached his truck and left the airport he turned toward Hilltop. If Jasper was lying, if he was causing Amarok to waste such precious hours, it would be all Amarok could do not to kill the prick himself.
Hilltop, AK—Wednesday, 6:35 p.m. AKDT
When the nurse finally came back into the room to take his blood pressure, Jasper jerked his arm away. No one would listen to him, trust him, believe him. And if only they would, he could save Evelyn. “Is he coming?”
The nurse, with a scolding look at him for thwarting her attempt to do her job, propped her hands on her hips. “You know I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Now give me your arm.”
“Amarok!” he cried. That, too, came out muddled since he couldn’t open his mouth.
But Jasper knew she understood what he wanted when she said, “From what I understand, he’s on his way, okay? Are you happy now? Will you let me get your blood pressure? Because I’d like to go home at some point, and I’ve still got a lot of other things to do.”
“So he’ll be here soon?” he asked, allowing her to take his arm.
Although she didn’t respond, didn’t make any attempt to reassure him, he clung to the promise she’d already given him—he’s on his way—as the blood pressure cuff tightened around his bicep.
“I think you’re going to make it,” she said as she recorded the reading on his chart and tore off the cuff.
He hadn’t realized there’d been any question about his survival, not since he’d learned several hours ago that Officers Cadiz and Perez had finally stepped in to break up the fight, before Lester could thrust that shiv into his heart. He hadn’t been raped or stabbed, but the doctor had him on so much medication he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness all day without much interaction with anyone, other than to plead with medical staff who happened to be in the room when he was awake to get Amarok.
“When will he be here?” he asked, pressing her again.
She sighed as she rolled up the blood pressure cuff. “You just don’t give up, do you?”
“I can save Evelyn!” he insisted.
“Only about every other word you say makes any sense to me. Tell you what.” She stuck the cuff back in its holder. “I’ll bring you a piece of paper and a pen.” She lifted a hand. “I know you’re not supposed to have a pen, but I’m going to come back for it before I leave.”
“You can trust me,” he insisted.
She rolled her eyes. “I never would. But in your current condition, I can’t imagine you could be too dangerous. You’d fall over if you even tried to stand. As a matter of fact, it won’t be easy for you to write, but at least you can get across what it is you’re dying to tell the sergeant. Maybe then you can relax. You’re not doing yourself any favors by fighting sleep, you know. You took quite a beating.”
He hated to think what life was going to be like once he was put back into general population—if he’d suffer a second attack. At a minimum, he’d be whispered about.
But he’d get even, with the inmates who attacked him and the COs who allowed it to happen.
Telling himself he’d worry about all of that later, when he was recovered, he fell back on the pillow. The nurse was right. It wouldn’t be easy to use a pen in his condition. He was so weak. And he had so many tubes going in and out of him. But at least he wouldn’t have to force his eyelids open every time someone walked into the room or worry that he might miss the sergeant. “Okay.”
He fought the drag of sleep, which threatened to pull him back under, as he waited for the nurse to return.
Just when he was summoning the energy to start yelling, because he thought either she’d forgotten him or she didn’t care enough to follow through, she walked back into the room.
“Here you go.” She set a sheet of paper and a pen on the rolling table, which she pulled across his lap.
“Thank you.”
She raised his bed into a sitting position, told him he had about twenty minutes before she returned for the pen and bustled out.
Spots danced before his eyes as he hunched over, trying to see well enough to write. He knew what Amarok would ask. The sergeant would want to know why he should trust the information Jasper had to give him, so there was a lot Jasper needed to communicate. How Chastity had realized she might get more from talking to the other patients at Beacon Point than the doctors. How the guy in the next room claims to have heard Bishop and the janitor discussing an abandoned warehouse in the industrial part of Anchorage in the days leading up to Bishop’s escape. And, above all, how Evelyn’s name had been used in that conversation.
But Jasper could manage to scrawl only a few words—even then he wasn’t sure Amarok would be able to read them—before blacking out: Old FedEx Warehouse in Anchorage.
Anchorage, AK—Wednesday, 11:00 p.m. AKDT
It wasn’t quite dark, but Ada felt this was the best time to visit the ranch. She could see well enough that she wouldn’t need to rely too heavily on her flashlight. A beam dancing around outside the window could all too easily draw Edmonson’s attention; she didn’t want to turn it on unless she absolutely had to. And yet dusk provided her with some cover.
As she got out of the car, she couldn’t help remembering her husband’s warning not to come back alone. He’d repeated that warning when she’d spoken to him this morning, and, once again, she’d promised she wouldn’t. But she still hadn’t heard from her mother. Neither had any of her sisters.
The police had gone out to her mother’s house at six and found nothing to indicate trouble. She’d been at the vet clinic when they went—there’d been an emergency just before she got off, so she’d stayed to help—but she’d told them where to find the key, so they’d been able to go inside. Now that they’d looked through the house, they believed her that there was no evidence Edna had purchased
a plane ticket or a cruise, could see for themselves that her makeup and luggage were still there. Now they were searching for her car.
Or so they said. Ada hadn’t heard anything since they finished up at six thirty. She feared the officer who was investigating had simply gone home to his family after he left her mother’s place and any further investigation would have to wait until morning.
What could she do? He wasn’t approaching the situation with the same degree of alarm because it wasn’t his mother who’d gone missing. That, more than anything else, was what convinced Ada she had to do all she could herself. If she found something suspicious here on the ranch—her mother’s car, purse or some article of clothing—perhaps they’d take the situation more seriously. They might even be able to get a search warrant.
The thought that Edna might have been depressed enough to drive somewhere and commit suicide, so that Ada wouldn’t have to be the one to find her, crossed Ada’s mind, but she refused to accept the possibility. Her mother had been lost without her father, but she hadn’t been suicidal. There had to be another explanation.
To put her mind at rest, she needed to make sure she had no reason to suspect the strange little man who’d rented her mother’s chicken ranch, because the two encounters she’d had with him had already made her decidedly uneasy.
She looked both ways before crossing the street, but there wasn’t another car or truck in the area, probably because there weren’t any houses close by, either. Although that gave her enough confidence to creep around to the back, take a peek into the chicken coops and even the plant—if she deemed it safe—and return to her car without being spotted, it also meant she couldn’t rely on help being close at hand, should she need it.
She had her cell phone with her, though. She could call the police if she got into trouble. And if they didn’t arrive quickly enough? She’d brought a gun. She wasn’t a particularly good shot, not like her husband, but she didn’t think she’d need to be good—not if she was only feet away from her target.
Dressed in a pair of black jeans, a black turtleneck and black tennis shoes, she had her hair pulled into a ponytail, her husband’s 9mm GLOCK jammed into her waistband—no way had she wanted to carry his much heavier rifle—her phone in her pocket and a flashlight in her right hand as she left her vehicle. Terrified that John Edmonson would hear the engine or spot the headlights if she got too close, she’d parked almost a quarter mile down the road. But she ran five miles every other day for exercise. She could get back to it fairly quickly, if escape became necessary. Surely, given the fact that he limped, she could outrun the man living on her parents’ chicken ranch.
She jogged along the road, her feet falling in soft put, put, puts on the bare earth while her head swiveled from side to side as she watched for any activity.
There was no one around, nothing happening—until she startled a doe, grazing in the field to her left, with a fawn. Jerking their heads up, the deer bolted away, the sound of which nearly gave Ada a heart attack.
As soon as she spotted the perimeter fence, she slowed to a walk and checked behind her again. There was no guarantee John Edmonson was at home. He could have gone out for a beer or something else and, if that was the case, he could come up behind her.
Fortunately, that didn’t happen. No one came.
The gate, when she reached it, was locked. It seemed odd to her that Mr. Edmonson was so concerned with security, but maybe she was judging him by her own husband, who felt he could handle anything. Or maybe he was up to something illegal, even if it had nothing to do with her mother.…
She stood on tiptoe, trying to see if the van she’d noticed before was still there. But the carport was off to one side and, with the gathering dusk and the vines that had all but overtaken the structure, she couldn’t tell.
She did, however, see the dim glow of a light in the building, which told her Emmett was probably home.
She’d have to climb the fence in order to get onto the property, but she’d be foolhardy to do it here in front.
She circled around to the back, out of view of the windows, and although she managed to get up and over, she landed awkwardly on the other side, twisting an ankle and dropping her flashlight in the process.
She bit back a curse as she tested her foot to see if she could still put pressure on it. Her ankle hurt, but she could walk. Although that was good news, she was beginning to regret coming here. It seemed darker in back, due to all the trees blocking the last rays of the sun.
The pain of her awkward landing started to radiate all the way up her leg.
Ada winced as she squatted, feeling around for the flashlight in the dirt and weeds, and breathed a sigh of relief when she was able to come up with it. By some miracle, she hadn’t shot herself climbing over the fence, but at one point the gun had bitten deep in her abdomen, which was why she’d landed wrong.
She adjusted the GLOCK and moved on.
The dogs began to bark as soon as she came close to the coop they were in. Although she’d anticipated their presence and their reaction, the noise seemed amplified, like she’d set off a blaring alarm in the otherwise silent night. But there were a lot of things that could cause dogs to bark—a skunk, a possum, a wolf, to name a few. They could even get into fights among themselves sometimes. She didn’t feel as though having them react would necessarily give her presence away.
Still, she hoped Emmett was asleep or watching television and wouldn’t notice the racket. Just in case, she had to move away from the dogs and keep to the shadows so that even if he did come out he wouldn’t realize he had company.
She was hurrying along the back fence, moving from one long metal warehouse-like coop to the next and turning her flashlight on for only a few seconds here and there as she peered into each one, when she heard something more definite.
Was it footsteps? Movement? A voice?
With the dogs making a fuss, it was difficult to tell, but she was suddenly convinced she was no longer alone.
Shit! Heart pounding, she pressed her back up against the closest wall and peered around the corner every so often to see if she could spot Edmonson. She couldn’t, and she couldn’t hear anything, either. The dogs wouldn’t settle down.
Closing her eyes, she waited, trying to breathe deeply enough to stave off the panic rising inside her. She prayed Edmonson would check on his rescued animals, figure it was nothing to be concerned about and go back inside. For all of the anger and determination she’d felt only moments before, she really didn’t want to confront him.
A loud thud made her jump. Was it one of the dogs trying to get out? The door being thrown open by Edmonson? What?
Once again, she tried to look but couldn’t see anything from where she was hiding. It was getting darker by the second, which didn’t help.
She eyed the fence, wondering if she should go ahead and climb over and run back to her car. She wanted to get out of there.
But it wouldn’t be wise to try to escape right now. What if she was caught while scaling the fence? She wouldn’t be able to use her phone or her gun.
She’d come this far; she had to ride it out.
Moving the flashlight to her left hand, she pulled the gun from her waistband. The solid weight of it in her palm gave her courage, even though it felt much heavier than it ever had before. But that courage quickly faded as various questions began to bombard her: Could she shoot another human being? Shoot Emmett?
And would she be justified if she did?
All the gray areas she hadn’t considered when she’d been so intent on her purpose flashed through her mind. She was technically trespassing. How would she know if her mother’s renter was a threat? If she shot him before he made that clear, she could kill an innocent man.
But if she didn’t shoot him right away and he got close enough, he could potentially gain the upper hand.
She hoped the right answers would come to her when she needed them most. But uncertainty handicapped her even more th
an fear. Her palm was sweating on the handle of the GLOCK despite the recent rains and cool weather.
A dark figure moved across the property, limping, it appeared, toward the coop that contained the dogs, so she slipped around the building at her back and hurried down two more rows. But then something else occurred to her: What if Edmonson let the dogs out?
They could come running right to her!
She needed shelter, a place where they couldn’t reach her, just in case. Then, after he went back inside, she’d get the hell out of there.
The chicken manure made her wrinkle her nose as she unbolted the door to the last coop, but she ignored the stink and let herself in. She’d grown up with this smell; it wasn’t anything new. At least now she couldn’t be seen and the dogs couldn’t tear her apart if he let them loose.
Closing the door blocked what little light remained, leaving her in total darkness. She had her flashlight, but she didn’t want to turn it on. Now that Edmonson seemed close, she was too afraid the light could be spotted through the cracks at the corners of the building or around the roof. So she huddled not too far inside the door, blinking at nothing while waiting to see what would happen.
It seemed to take forever, but, finally, the dogs quieted.
As the tension left her body, she began to feel silly for being as frightened as she’d been. Where was all her bravado, her certainty that she could outrun a man like Edmonson? Even if she couldn’t, given the fence, she had a gun, for crying out loud. If he had a weapon, too, she’d probably be justified in using it.
So far, there’d been no reason for her to get this worked up. There was nothing threatening about a man coming out to check on his dogs. As far as she knew, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Stop being a baby, she scolded herself. But she waited another fifteen minutes to give Edmonson plenty of time to get back inside the plant before making her move.
When she couldn’t hear anything except the wind brushing against the corrugated walls of the building, she switched on her flashlight. The old wire cages that had once held four or five chickens each, and the machinery to feed them, were still there. So was the manure that had piled up underneath. The coop was big enough to easily hide her mother’s car at one end, even with everything else intact, but she saw nothing to indicate Edna had been here.
