“What’s our plan of attack?”
“This two-track forks in two miles. Right goes to the base of Mount Baldy and left to Mount Phelan. I say we go right first—it’s the longer ascent—while we have fresh legs.”
J.P. nodded and began hopping his way across the creek, being careful to step only on dry rocks. Jake wore heavy-duty backcountry boots, completely waterproof, and he plodded through a shallow gravel bar.
As they rose in elevation, the forest was composed mainly of pure, dense stands of grand firs with low branches, which limited visibility. Jake climbed the occasional rocky outcropping to try to gain perspective on their progress. Even from the perches, they saw nothing but forest.
The only tracks visible in the snow belonged to rodents, elk, and mule deer. Jake stopped every minute or so to brush away the few inches of fluff and check the ground beneath him for footprints in the frozen dirt below.
Bingo. He spotted a new kind of print. Well-defined horse tracks in the hardened muck and boot prints alongside. Their definition meant that they hadn’t been through a freeze-thaw cycle. At most, they were a week old—when the last cold front came and went.
“Definitely hunters back here.” Jake was crouched over a set of tracks. J.P. turned back to look over his friend’s shoulder.
“Whaddya see?”
“Just horses and a footprint here and there. Doesn’t mean much.” Jake stood and started walking again.
“What sort of stuff should I be looking for?” J.P. hustled to catch up.
“Anything out of the ordinary. A small footprint maybe, piece of clothing, anything like that. If we come across fresh tracks, we’ll follow them to their end. I say we head toward the hunting camps atop Mount Baldy. Anything sticks out on the way, we’ll check it out.”
The clouds eventually parted as the sun came up. The modest warmth was a welcome relief. Still, Mount Baldy wouldn’t concede without a fight. As Jake and J.P. approached the last section of the ascent, the slope steepened. The trail that hunters used to access the cabins was littered with downed trees, made slick by the newly fallen snow. They pressed on.
* * *
Despite the fire, Esma was freezing. And because of it, she was having some difficulty breathing. Around midnight, the men lit a few pieces of damp tinder and one long four-by-eight on the dirt floor. The smoke from the wet, moldy wood had no way to escape, and they had left her chained fifteen feet away, where the heat from the damp pyre was negligible. She prayed for a painless death from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Was she shivering from the cold or the memory of what the men had done to her the night before? Her body ached, her spirit broken. She fought back at first, but it only made things more miserable for her. The shackles had scraped against her wrists and ankles as the men got angrier.
She’d passed out from pain and fear after about an hour. When she awoke, her body was bruised and beaten. Her clothes were in tatters.
A creak. The sound of the crude wooden door opening. She lay still on her side, the same pose the men had left her in hours ago.
Tinny looked down when he entered. He didn’t dare say a word. Despite his passive demeanor, he had been aggressive when he raped her. There was strength in those slim, fibrous muscles.
Now, he played at being gentle. He bent down in front of her and took something out of his pocket. A tube. Tinny pulled Esma’s shirt aside and dabbed Neosporin on a tiny wound below her left clavicle. A scratch, likely. A mark of blood not much bigger than a pinhead.
* * *
“Up here, I think.” J.P. had taken the lead, cigarette hanging from his lips. Jake had to admit that his friend possessed more endurance than predicted, given his generally bad physical condition.
“One to the right and the other to the left?” It was 11 a.m., and they were near the top. At almost nine thousand feet, the snow was deep—seven inches or more.
“Yeah.” The trail split. According to the satellite images Jake had printed, one route led to a camp on the northeast shoulder of Mount Baldy, just below a sheer cliff, and the other led to a cabin atop Baldy’s western ridge.
“Take the right first.” The cabin below the cliff was more difficult to access. Jake wanted to get the more rigorous route over with as early as possible.
He saw the occasional rifle shell and more elk tracks: desperate animals fleeing the snow cover to find food. Jake checked the rounds. All were popular hunting cartridges, nothing overtly suspect about them.
J.P. sped up as the cabin came into view. They had traveled just over a mile from the split. The sun was shining brightly and the snow had become wet. It soaked J.P. up to the knees. The birds were out, chirping and exploring a world that had changed from fall to winter and back again overnight.
Jake whistled, and J.P. stopped. Jake waved him over.
He whispered, “Let’s do a walk around the tree line first. Scope things out. Keep yourself hidden.”
J.P. pointed one way, counterclockwise around the structure, then pointed for Jake to go clockwise. Jake nodded.
After J.P. started on his way, Jake pulled the Mariner and made sure there was a round in the chamber. Then he clicked the safety back on, hoping it would stay that way.
The log cabin was constructed of native Douglas fir. It was a traditional one-and-a-half story retreat with its loft bedroom visible through large casement windows on either side’s gable. Its footprint was no more than 20x30. Woodstove, judging by the narrow chimney. No indoor plumbing—there was an outhouse near the perimeter of the neglected yard, Jake assumed. A summer cottage.
Still, he took his time looking. There was a possibility they had been detected and whoever was in the cabin was waiting in ambush. It was unlikely, but he’d been trained to assume the worst.
Halfway through his walk, when J.P. was directly across the large yard and obscured by the cabin, Jake heard a whooping noise. He scanned the cabin and listened more carefully. Nobody was in sight. Jake bolted for the front of the building, worried about his friend. As he got closer, J.P. started yelling. “Got something! Hurry, man!”
J.P. was fixated on something far away. “C’mon! Get over here! Thought you were in shape!”
Jake struggled to catch his breath after sprinting across the uneven, brushy flat at elevation. “Guess not. What do you see?”
J.P. pointed across a hollow. Jake followed his gesture up to the top of Mount Phelan. There, on a promontory overlooking the river, tiny puffs of smoke popped through the thick grand firs, rising skyward.
“You think it’s . . . ?”
Jake deflected. “Only one way to find out.”
19
SALMON, IDAHO. THE SAME AFTERNOON.
2 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME.
Jake’s and J.P.’s progress was minuscule in comparison to the scale of the terrain around them. J.P. was exerting himself to keep their pace up, despite Jake’s warnings. The duo were already exhausted and sweaty—not a good combination if they ended up spending the night in the backcountry. Exhaustion and moisture led to hypothermia. For now, though, the sun was shining and the temperature was in the fifties.
“Fuckin’ moths everywhere!” J.P. waved his hand in front of his face as they crossed a creek.
“Dicosmoecus. October caddis. There won’t be many once we get away from the water.”
“Disco moth!” J.P. lunged out of his way to smack a bug out of the air and almost fell into the creek himself.
“Nice recovery.” Jake reached out and caught one of the caddis. He hadn’t been fishing in over a week, between Divya’s project and winterizing the bed-and-breakfast. This hatch, the October caddis, was the final act of the dry fly season. The bugs were three-quarters of an inch long and meaty—approaching the size of their larger cousin, the stone fly. They would draw big fish to the surface.
Trout, like all living things, have an innate sen
se of impending hardship. As temperatures began to drop in the fall, the fish responded by stuffing themselves with as many calories as possible—great for fishing. The way things were looking, Jake wouldn’t have a chance to capitalize on this reckless behavior.
“How much farther, you think?”
“A ways.” Jake looked toward the top of Mount Phelan, then back toward Baldy, where they had come from. He checked the elevation on his watch. Their lack of progress was discouraging. They were back at the same elevation they’d started from early that morning.
Instead of retracing their steps, Jake and J.P. decided to descend Baldy’s south face, directly facing Phelan. The route was more direct, but the terrain more challenging. Sharp and uneven volcanic rock rolled and tumbled under their feet. J.P. fell twice, cutting his hand badly between his thumb and forefinger. Rejecting Jake’s first aid, he made do with tying a sweaty bandana around the wound.
The north face of Phelan was steep and daunting. After they had crossed the creek and begun their ascent, a thick forest of pines slowed their pace. Downed trees on steep uphill slopes meant lots of work—climbing and scrapping their way over the obstacles. The heavy packs and melting snow wore on them.
* * *
Two and a half hours later, the summit was still not within sight. The thick pine forests had given way to steep, wet cliffs and rocky spines. To make matters worse, the cooling afternoon temperatures brought snow showers.
“I don’t know but I been told . . .” J.P. hummed the rest of the cadence call, not knowing the words.
“We need to stop soon and eat something.” Neither man had taken any sustenance since before sunrise.
J.P. turned around, reached in his pocket, and tossed a Nature Valley granola bar back at Jake. He started walking again.
“Not enough.”
J.P.’s shoulders slumped in resignation and he walked back toward his friend.
Jake already had taken off his pack, an old blue Osprey, removed his small stove, and lit the burner. He gathered snow from the shade of a tree, swiped the forest debris from the top layer, and packed it into a pot.
Setting the pot on the stove to boil, Jake sat on a downed tree and motioned for J.P. to join him.
“I’m fine.” He lit a smoke.
Jake just shrugged. He pulled off his stiff hiking boots, then his socks, and let his clammy feet dry in the cold air. Satisfied, he reached in the pack and pulled out a fresh pair of hiking socks.
“Always prepared, huh?”
“Who likes wet socks?”
The water was starting to steam, but J.P. was getting antsy. He kicked at the ground and broke dead branches from a surrounding tree, then tossed them at nothing.
“Sit down, J.P. Relax for a minute.”
J.P. sauntered over and sat.
Jake gave him a hard look. “We’ll find her.”
Above them in the canopy, ravens popped from branch to branch, waiting for food scraps. Jake stood and went to the boiling water. He carried it carefully to his pack, where he pulled out his foodstuffs.
“Chinese noodles or Easy Mac?”
“Mix ’em?”
Jake laughed. “Hell yeah. Party time.”
The hot food tasted good—not only necessary calories but also a morale booster. Jake cleaned the pot and the backpacking sporks and stashed his kit.
J.P. was still sitting, elbows on his knees, face in hands. Jake sat next to him again.
“What’s going on?”
“I just wanna find her. You know, protect her. Remember how protective you were of Noelle after all that shit?”
Jake thought back. He missed Noelle deeply, but there was nothing to be done about it at the moment. Maybe nothing to be done about it at all. But what Divya had done, the whole sloppy mess of it, only reminded Jake of how genuinely he cared for the park ranger. “I know what you mean.”
It sounded hollow. He was still distracted, thinking of Noelle. What a mess. It had gone from perfect to awful so quickly. As with a fickle trout stream, there was no real explanation for the change in conditions. One day, they were happy. The next, Jake was hinting that maybe things were going too fast.
And Noelle’s response had broken his heart. If you think that’s the case, we’ll take a break. How could Jake explain that was not what he meant?
Jake had figured that if she wanted to put their break to an end, she would do so with a phone call. It never came. He wanted to write it off as lack of interest from Noelle, though his better judgment said that wasn’t the case.
When he’d seen her around town, she looked happy. Still glowing as she always did, seemingly untroubled. This hurt him. But Jake had feigned normalcy during their interactions—maybe she was doing the same?
His final conclusion was that he wasn’t going to take the risk of finding out. If she wants to, she’ll call, remained his motto.
J.P. interrupted. “Obviously, it is weird, then.”
“Huh?”
“To be so paranoid that she doesn’t care about me anymore. I mean, half of me thinks we might find her shacked up with someone else.”
Jake refocused on his friend, who needed his attention more than his self-imposed problems.
“It’s not weird. You care for her. C’mon, we’re not going to find her with someone else.” Jake looked uphill; he could see the smoke from the cabin’s fire again in the distance.
Really, he thought, finding Esma with someone else wouldn’t be so bad. At least it probably wouldn’t involve a gun fight. He looked back at J.P.’s distraught face. Probably.
“Wanna get moving?” J.P. was still sitting on the log.
“It’s just that things like this don’t happen to me very often. You know, the beautiful-girl scenario.”
They were still two miles or so from the rising smoke. At least a two-hour climb in this terrain, Jake thought. They better get going. He didn’t want to be poking around enemy territory in the dark. But J.P’s face said he needed a moment. Jake joined him again on the log.
“I’ve gotta say, Jake—seeing you with Noelle was tough, man. I mean, it made me jealous or whatever.” J.P. gave his friend a sheepish look before looking down again at the forest floor. A few wet snowflakes were shoved around by the wind.
We should get moving.
Jake clapped J.P. on the back. “And see how that turned out?” He laughed awkwardly. Heart-to-heart wasn’t his strong suit. “What I mean is, the grass is always greener.”
“Never happened before,” J.P. blurted.
“Sorry?”
“I never had a girl I really liked, okay? Shit, man! Don’t make me feel stupid.”
“I—”
J.P. interrupted. “I mean, I’ve had my moments. Tourist chicks, ninety-day wonders, whatever, but, like, I don’t know . . .” Jake had heard the stories before. Some of the flings he’d heard firsthand all the way from the trailer.
“It’s tough. I mean, I’ve never had a girl before where people are like ‘good for you,’ you know? I guess that means she’s outta my league.”
“Esma’s not out of your league. You two are a good match.”
Another look. You mean that? Jake nodded to affirm his sentiment.
A cold gust. More snow. Shit. Jake had seen this before. Tough conditions and an unknown outcome compounded by emotional breakdown: it was a recipe for disaster. J.P. needed a serious pep talk. He needed to feel the resolve that was necessary to stay focused.
But J.P. was no military man. Not a cop. He was a ski bum from a cozy small town. He hadn’t hardened like the people Jake knew from his days at the Office. It was a fine line—push him too far, and maybe he cracks. It was a normal human reaction.
“I just need to find her.” J.P. was shaking his head, nearly in tears.
Goddammit. It was a long walk back to the vehi
cle, and night was coming.
J.P. looked up at Jake with cloudy eyes. Jake looked back and saw a broken man. There was far more going on inside J.P.’s head than a missing girlfriend. Unfortunately for Jake, that was the easiest problem to solve.
J.P. cleared his throat. A blink cleared his eyes of the moisture. He was still looking at Jake, but now directly, his focus piercing through the remaining emotion.
Strength, Jake thought. Determination. Maybe his happy-go-lucky friend was not to be taken lightly.
Jake stood abruptly and pulled J.P. up by his shirt. The two friends were standing face-to-face.
“We’re going to get Esma back.”
Picking up his pack, Jake started uphill at a reinvigorated pace. J.P. scrambled to follow.
“All right! Do I get a gun?” he shouted through the brush.
“Nope,” Jake said, without turning around.
20
TRAM VILLAGE, CHINA.
In the windowless room, time was a mystery. No clock. Terrell was sure this was intentional. Looking around—the heavy door and sterile, drab interior—he wondered if the entire room had been designed for this very purpose. It wasn’t a stretch; this whole damned village was a put-up job.
Xiao seemed harmless thus far—a benevolent kidnapper. But there was no doubt that he was dead set on getting Meirong home. And regardless of his demeanor, there was no way Terrell was going to leave Charlotte unguarded, just in case the giants came back to underscore how serious Xiao was.
She slept, which surprised Terrell. She lay on the olive-green canvas cot, facing the far wall. He couldn’t tell whether she was still mad at him or simply exhausted and afraid.
The accommodations were basic but not inhumane, apart from the chilly air in the room: two military-style cots, old wool bivvy sacks, and the same down pillows used in the hotel. There were a case of water and a few snacks. True to Tram Village’s promise, they were American—beef jerky, potato chips, and Red Vines licorice.
For Terrell, sleepless nights were usually spent mulling over work. Who did what and why? The prior night had been the same, albeit with higher stakes. He wasn’t an outsider looking into a crime anymore. He was living the crime, start to finish, whatever it might be. The who, what, and why were in plain sight.
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