Storm Warning

by Michele Hauf

  Until then, she did have a more pressing task at hand.

  Leaning forward on the not-too-comfy chair, Amelie wrote out the numbers and letters that formed a list she’d viewed weeks earlier in the strange email that she now felt sure had been sent to her with an ulterior purpose. It couldn’t have been an accident. Someone had wanted her to take that information to her boss.

  And her boss had known exactly what sort of damage that information could do. To him?

  More and more, she believed Jacques was involved in something underhanded.

  It was slow going this time around because it was difficult to avoid thoughts of Jacques Patron’s true intentions. What information was she streaming out onto the paper? It was something worth killing for.

  After half an hour, she wrote out the last line. Times, dates, locations and...that mysterious fourth column. Each entry was a jumble of letters and numbers. It had to be code or...maybe a password?

  Stretching her arms over her head, she turned and stood, peering out the window. Jason was still gone, and she hadn’t heard a peep from Marjorie after she’d called out that she was going downstairs to straighten the cells.

  She wasn’t about to go out wandering on her own. But she was antsy now, and the office had chilled noticeably. Pulling on her coat, she dallied with the idea of running down the street to Olson’s Oasis for something to munch on. No. Jason had snacks in the drawer. And he’d never forgive her for leaving the station.

  Picking up her camera, she wandered out into reception. Amelie trailed a finger along Marjorie’s pin-neat desk, taking in the photos of Marjorie and a man with blond hair who must be her husband. A bobblehead of a black cat with green rhinestones for eyes sat next to a desk phone. And a cookbook titled Hot Dishes that was flagged with colorful Post-its was splayed open, cover facing up.

  She stood back and snapped a few shots of the reception area, being sure to get Jason’s office in the background. She’d never been much for interior shots. Nature was most interesting to capture on film. Backing up against the door, she decided a step outside would be worthwhile, because there was a large oak tree that loomed in the back parking lot. And she’d stay close to the station.

  Jason’s truck was still parked in the back lot, as was a green Honda. Must be Marjorie’s. The oak tree’s canopy was vast, leafless, and stretched overhead as if an open umbrella.

  Tilting back her head, Amelie snapped some shots. Inhaling the crisp winter air, she smiled. Yes, this could become a career that would make her happy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “The cyanide killed him,” Elaine said over the phone line as Jason scrolled through Herve Charley’s cell phone looking for clues. He and Alex stood in the gas station parking lot, where the green SUV had been towed to wait for the Duluth tow to come and take it away. Ryan Bay stood over by his car, on the phone. “I found traces of it in the beef jerky. Clever.”

  Jason eyed a couple bundled against the day’s ten degrees as they passed by, probably on the way to The Moose for some pie. “Whoever followed him must have planted the beef jerky. Probably drove up behind him. Nudged the car into the ditch and waited to see if the driver would react. No reaction. Assumed he was dead, and drove off.”

  “A fair assessment. The body was clean of any DNA not unique to the deceased.”

  Jason swore under his breath. They were dealing with professionals. Two of them. One dead. And the other?

  “Thanks, Elaine. This may have become an international case. Bay is on the phone with Interpol again, trying to get some real answers about the one suspect that sticks out like a sore thumb.”

  “Who do you think the perp is this time around?” Elaine conjectured, “A vigilante going after someone who tried to harm another?”

  “Why would someone take out a hit man, Elaine?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Well, I do. It’s because the first one has been replaced after a shoddy effort at eliminating the target. Which means Frost Falls has another hit man running loose. The FBI has verified links to the Minnesota mafia right now.”

  “Which means someone is after your woman.”

  “She’s not my—”

  “Where is she?”

  “At the station.” Jason checked his watch. It had been half an hour since he’d left Yvette. He should check in with her. “I gotta go, Elaine. Thanks for the info.”

  Dialing Yvette’s number, he suddenly jumped when his pocket rang. Alex cast him a wondering look.

  “Shoot. Forgot I’d taken her phone as evidence.” He patted the pocket and hung up. “I’m heading back to the station. Make sure everyone is all right. Have Bay give me a call as soon as he’s off the phone with Interpol.”

  Jason started walking down the street. For some reason, he quickened his footsteps.

  * * *

  THE SKY WAS white and the sun high. Amelie could even find some good in the cold, because it tingled across her face, making her feel alive. The idea of spending more time in Frost Falls to photograph the scenery, to perhaps even venture into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, was appealing. It would be a great addition to her meager portfolio.

  Everything felt normal. Yet a weird feeling of dread prompted her to suddenly twist at the waist and scan the parking lot behind the station. She hadn’t heard anything beyond the hum of the heater that puffed out condensation from the rooftop of the station. Narrowing her gaze, she took in the surroundings.

  * * *

  JASON RAN DOWN the street toward the station. His rubber-soled boots took the snow compacted on the tarmac with ease. Four blocks and no one was going to break a sweat in this frigid weather. By the time he reached the parking lot, he cursed when he saw Yvette’s figure standing against the hood of his truck.

  What was she doing outside?

  “Yvette!”

  She turned and waved.

  Jason spied the flash of red as it glinted across the hood of his truck. “Get down!”

  Racing toward the truck, he lunged forward, gripped her by the shoulders and knocked her down to land on the snow-packed tarmac. Their bodies rolled, and he barreled over the top of her. The camera she’d been holding clattered across the snow. Protecting her body with his, Jason looked up and around the front of the vehicle.

  “Someone just shot at you,” he said. “I was right.” He pulled out his gun and switched off the safety. “There’s another hit man in town.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Stay down,” Jason demanded to the woman beneath him on the snow.

  Yvette nodded. Her eyes were wide, but he detected more common sense than fear in them. She’d been trained for hostile situations.

  He scrambled around to the end of the truck bed and crouched low, pulling out his gun. He swept a look around the rear taillight. No movement in the parking lot. Aiming out into the parking lot, he didn’t spy the shooter.

  Jason’s exhale fogged before his face.

  The growl of a snowmobile engine firing up alerted him. He sighted a flash of silver that would place the machine in the alleyway behind the antique shop two buildings down.

  “I’m going after him!” he called to Yvette. “Get inside the station!” His protective instincts forced him back to the front of the truck where she now crouched. “You got this, yes?”

  She nodded. “Go!”

  “Tell Marjorie to call Alex here.”

  His snowmobile was parked ten feet from the back door. Firing it up, he navigated forward out of the parking lot and to the alleyway. He waited until he heard the other snowmobile reach the intersection of Main Street and the corner of the block. The driver was dressed all in black. No cap or earmuffs, and he didn’t wear gloves.

  “Not a resident,” Jason confirmed.

  Confident that whoever drove the snowmobile was the one who had shot at Yvette, he
gunned the throttle and his sled soared forward just as the other snowmobile took off through the intersection.

  Gun tucked in the holster at his hip, he would not fire on the shooter until he could confirm he was indeed the suspect. Worst-case scenario would see him chasing a kid out for a joyride. But his gut told him this was his man.

  Picking up speed as he passed through the intersection, Jason saw the suspect turn and spy him. Jason performed a circling motion with his hand, signaling the man to pull over. A press of a button on the handlebar turned on the police flasher lights.

  That resulted in the suspect kicking it into overdrive.

  Jason had expected as much. He was a hundred yards behind but intended to close the distance before they got too far out of the city. On the other hand, he was an experienced snowmobiler, and even if the suspect had some skill handling a sled, he wasn’t dressed for a ten-degree day or a race through the frigid air and newly drifted snowpack.

  The road heading north out of town had been plowed by Rusty Nelson early this morning. Jason’s machine soared along the hard-packed snow that had formed on the tarmac. Perfect track for racing snowmobiles. In these conditions, he could handle this six-hundred-pound machine like a dream.

  He thought momentarily of how close Yvette had come to taking a bullet. Why had she been standing outside? He’d seen her camera on the ground. Taking photos? He should have been more clear about her staying inside.

  Was the shooter a replacement for the previous hit man? Dirty business, that. But all was fair in spies and deception. If that was what was going on.

  Jason had been capable of such dirty dealings. Once, he’d been sent in to replace an inept field asset, but termination had not been a requirement. And yet the same could have happened to him after he’d missed the kill shot. He’d been taken in so easily by the female agent. Had truly believed she was on his side. Damn it!

  He gripped the handlebars and ripped the throttle, cutting the distance between himself and the shooter.

  Had Interpol issued an official agent termination order for Yvette? Because she had read sensitive data? It was possible yet highly unlikely. But if so, her boss was either trying to save her neck or cut her throat.

  The suspect veered from the main road and took off across the ditch. Snow sprayed in the sky, glittering against the too-bright sun that proved deceptive in that it wasn’t able to warm this frozen tundra.

  They headed northeast. That direction would not allow an easy escape.

  The falls, the town’s namesake, sat half a mile ahead. Frozen this time of year. Always fun to take the cat out on the slick riverbed, but if a person didn’t know the area, the falls could prove dangerous. He and Alex put up orange warning flags and stretched a bright orange safety fence before the falls, but it seemed every few years some unfortunate soul crashed his snowmobile or took a flight over the falls, which dropped twenty feet to boulders below.

  * * *

  AFTER JASON LEFT, Amelie squatted near the tire for a while. Back flat against the front quarter panel and palms against her forehead. That had been a close call.

  She should have never been out here to give the shooter such opportunity. Taking pictures, of all things.

  The glint of something silver caught her eye. She crawled toward the pushed-up snow that demarcated the edge of the parking lot in front of the truck. Something was wedged into the snow.

  She started to touch it, then got smart. Pulling her sweater sleeve down over her fingers, she used that as protection to grip the object and pulled it out.

  This was what had been fired at her. A dart with a red tip.

  “Not cool,” she muttered, because the implications were creepier than if it had been a bullet.

  Springing up, yet staying bent and low, she crept over to the building, plucking up her camera along the way, and then around to the front door. She quickly went inside and rushed to Jason’s office to close the door. Marjorie must still be downstairs tidying up the cells.

  She pulled open Jason’s desk drawers and in the second one spied some plastic evidence bags. Dropping the dart into the bag, she then sealed it.

  Patting her hip for her phone, she cursed the fact she’d given it to Jason. She looked around the desk for a weapon, but there was only a locked gun case with one rifle in it.

  There was another hit man?

  Of course, they wouldn’t let this rest without eliminating the target. Whatever this was. And whoever they were.

  As she settled into Jason’s chair, fingers gripping the arms tightly, Amelie asked herself plainly if Jacques Patron were friend or foe.

  Her father had valued his friendship with Patron. And her mother—well, she didn’t remember her talking about the man. Perhaps she’d even avoided him. Amelie recalled a few times when her mother had bowed out of joining her father over drinks with Patron at a local taproom.

  Had Patron gotten into dirty dealings? Was he protecting himself?

  And was he dead or alive?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The falls loomed ahead. In the summer, it was possible to walk from the creek above, using a jagged rocky trail, to the gorge below where the water fell softly and landed on mossy boulders. There were no nearby trees to block the wind or even provide handholds. It was a tricky descent without snow and ice.

  In the wintertime? Only an idiot would try to land at the bottom starting from the top. And more than a few did in search of Instagram-worthy shots of the spectacular frozen falls. The smart ones wore crampons and used rock-climbing gear. The stupid ones? Jason had rescued a handful of injured climbers over the past two years. Couple of broken arms and a head injury from falling ice chunks. The fine was two thousand dollars if he caught the culprits.

  But right now he was more concerned about the one idiot who had no idea what waited for him. Snow blanketed the land as far as the eye could see, and the whiteness played tricks with the eye, disguising ridges, valleys and even edges where the land stopped. The suspect would drive his snowmobile right over the falls’ edge if Jason didn’t intervene. The last thing he needed was another dead hit man on his hands.

  Gunning the engine, he pushed the cat to full speed and gained on the suspect. Veering right, he cursed that he only wore a ski cap and no helmet as the snow spraying up from that move spat at his bare cheeks like pins. He paralleled the suspect, who pulled out his gun and fired at him.

  The bullet went wide. Jason wasn’t worried about being a target—not at this speed. He jerked his machine to the left, forcing the other to veer left. Gauging he had less than fifty feet before the snowy land gave way to a twenty-foot fall, he stood and tilted his body to pull a tight curl. The nose of his sled butted the other snowmobile’s nose, and the impact caused the driver to fall off in a soft landing.

  Jason gunned the cat and managed to slip ahead of the other snowmobile and clear it before that machine, unmanned, soared over the falls. His own machine skidded up a cloud of snow behind him as he wrestled it to a stop but two feet from the falls’ edge.

  Muttering an oath worthy of this annoyance, Jason shut off the snowcat and pulled out his gun. He headed toward the man, who struggled in the knee-deep snow. Difficult to find purchase in the fresh-fallen powder. Jason stomped through the crusted surface, wishing for snowshoes.

  “Hands up!” he called.

  The suspect pulled up an ungloved hand. Sunlight glinted on the gun he held. Jason pressed the trigger but didn’t squeeze hard enough to release. He held steady.

  The shooter’s hands were too cold. Trembles gave way to jerky shudders. The gun dropped out of his frozen fingers. It sank deep into the snow. The suspect’s knees bent, his body falling forward. His face landed in the snow as he struggled against the freezing elements and the inability to keep his body warm enough to stand upright.

  * * *

  AMELIE ANSWERED THE landline
on the desk the moment Marjorie opened the office door and popped her head in.

  “Hello?” Amelie said. She waved at Marjorie to indicate she stay put.

  “I’ve apprehended the suspect,” Jason said. “Just wanted to make sure you were safe.”

  “I am. Marjorie just got in from downstairs. I’ll tell her to contact Alex now.”

  Marjorie signaled with an okay shape of her fingers and left for her desk. Amelie heard her say Alex’s name.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” Jason said.

  She nodded. “You should know he wasn’t shooting bullets.”

  “What?”

  “It was a tranq dart.” Amelie eyed the evidence bag; a few drops of water had melted from the snow on the outside. “He wasn’t trying to kill me. It would be a strange weapon to use if death was his objective.”

  “Interesting. Someone wanted you incapacitated—he had to have been following you. Waiting for...”

  “For me to make a mistake and walk outside, giving him a clear target. I’m so sorry, Jason.”

  “We’ll talk when I get in.”

  “I finished the list,” she added quickly.

  “Excellent. See you soon.”

  * * *

  THE SUSPECT WAS not speaking English. And it wasn’t a Texan drawl this time. Jason knew very few French words, but he did recognize the language. Interesting. For about five seconds.

  Patience did not come easily today. He was frustrated and yet invigorated at the same time. This was a mystery. Something he’d been wanting since taking the desk here in Frost Falls. If he was going to prove his worth, this was the case to do it. The powers that be wouldn’t want to close the station after he’d solved such a big case. This would put Frost Falls on the map. He’d prove he was an asset to the town as well as the county.

  Beside him stood Ryan Bay.

  “You recording this?” Jason asked.