“What’s the point? The Maldonado case is ours. I already know the FBI will consider this a local case. We don’t have a thing that puts this Smith at the other crime scenes. Yet. Hey, I’m ready to go get this bastard. I’m all packed. The only question is, do we fly or do we drive?”
“It’s gotta be by air,” Josh suggested. “Smith already has a two-day head start on us. He either already killed last night or he’s about to do it tonight. Driving would waste precious hours we don’t have.”
“Flight time is two hours,” Winston tossed out. “I’ll make the reservations if you want.”
Skye traded looks with Harry, waited to get a nod. “Yeah. We want. I’ll go throw a few things in a suitcase. No. Wait. We should think this thing through first. Winston says he has no hotel reservations. If Smith is camping out then we’ll need to bring stuff for that.”
“I’ll go dig out our camping gear from the basement,” Josh offered, shifting his gaze toward his hackers. “You guys need to keep in constant contact with us while we’re out looking for this guy. And I’ll need a map of all the cell phone towers around Bozeman and beyond. I mean every single one. I want locations in detail, right down to the GPS coordinates of each.”
Skye cleared her throat. “I’m counting on every one of you in this room to take care of Sierra while we’re gone. That old saying it takes a village might as well apply for this situation, this team effort.”
“Don’t go,” Travis pleaded, gripping Skye’s hand.
“Dad, I have to go with Josh. After all these years, we’ve faced the enemy together. It’s the way it was meant to be. I’m certain of it. What warrior would stay home and send another to fight her battles? It’s not me, Dad. I’ve been doing this way too long to give up now because I’m scared of a snake dream.”
“What’s a snake dream?” Leo asked.
“It’s a premonition, a forewarning of your own death,” Skye said, her tone uneven and filled with sadness.
“Or transformation, like a major change is coming,” Josh added with an upbeat attitude. “I looked it up. The snake dream doesn’t always equate to seeing your own death. Tell her, Travis.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Skye cited, holding up a hand. “Whatever it represents, I’m not willing to hide in the corner. All of you know me better than that. Now, on to more important things. Travis bought a car seat some months back for Sierra.”
Phyllis spoke up. “We bought the same one Travis recommended to us on Sunday.”
“Super. Then you’re all set for transport and traveling in the car. Travis, Doug, and Phyllis, all three have keys to the house. Because I’d like everyone to stay here under one roof. It makes for better continuity in trying to maintain a unit. In the event…well…let’s just say, if things go south out in the field, I want you to keep things going until we get back. Sierra has plenty of clean clothes, at least enough for a week. I did laundry yesterday. We’ve stocked up on all her favorite foods. If you have questions about anything, I’ll be no further away than a text message if you have trouble getting her to go down for her nap or similar things.”
“We’ll manage,” Doug said. “Just both of you, come back safe. That’s all we ask.”
Josh put a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Count on it. We’ll do what we have to do and get back here as fast as we can.”
Twenty-Four
Saturday morning
Outside Livingston, Montana
Michael Smith might’ve been the name some asshole gave him at the boys’ home where he’d grown up. But after his bitch of a mother had dumped him on someone else’s doorstep, making him someone else’s problem for the long haul, it really didn’t matter much to him what he was called.
Hell, he’d never even known his true birthdate. The director of the orphanage had picked that out, too. Father Michael Stanton, a man in his late fifties, had given the foundling part of himself by naming the boy Michael. But from day one it became clear the child had trouble attaching to anyone or anything, even to Father Stanton.
In fact, over the years the priest had tried bringing in a string of psychologists and therapists hoping someone could reach inside the child and find a way to pull out real emotion, maybe even create a lasting bond, or make some type of connection.
But Michael had been troubled from the start. He’d get into fights even in kindergarten, not just boyish tussling either, but true fist-punching attacks. If Michael ever got anyone on the ground, he’d pound their face in until someone stepped in and put a stop to the beating.
Growing up in a boys’ home hadn’t helped Michael’s rage. But neither could it be said that the place fostered his anger. It was just always there. To Father Stanton, and to many of the nuns, the fury had been deep inside the child from the very beginning.
To his credit, Father Stanton had done his best to raise Michael with a stringent set of morals and ethics. So what if the boy had a speech impediment, a slight lisp that tended to bring on ridicule from other students. The teasing kept the boy from saying much. And no matter how the priest tried to help Michael correct the problem, Father Stanton couldn’t quite make it happen.
Michael’s distinctive speech pattern became a source of embarrassment that kept the boy from joining in extracurricular activities, like Scouts or putting on plays. Anything that required verbal participation was scratched from Michael’s list of activities. But an outgoing personality wasn’t required to excel at swimming, or running, or any other type of sport that didn’t require a team attitude. While Michael became a superstar around the pool, competing for his share of blue ribbons, he had the same success in track and field, winning enough trophies that ended up in a special section just for him behind glass inside the school’s trophy case.
But no one there doubted for a moment that for all his sports awards and abilities, Michael remained a loner.
That detachment lasted pretty much until Michael left for seminary school at the age of eighteen. Father Stanton was certain if given the right instruction Michael would make an excellent priest.
But three years into his studies, Michael abruptly packed up his stuff one morning and headed for the nearest Army recruiting office.
A disappointed Father Stanton never heard from the boy again.
The Army would attest that for the first three years they had him, Michael Smith was an exemplary soldier. They’d turned the orphaned boy into a man who could expertly hit a target thirty-nine times out of forty. Depending on the day, he might even bullseye the mark all forty times. His skill with a weapon made him a first-rate sniper.
But after two tours of duty overseas in a war zone, Michael began to question his commanding officers. He began to get into fights with other soldiers. His undeniable rage resurfaced. Not that it had ever left him. It didn’t take much else for the Army to boot Michael out the door and back to the States.
He landed back in Tennessee, headed back to his wife, Maitlin, a beautiful southern belle he’d met and married two years earlier.
Getting kicked out of the Army, with nowhere else to go, he’d surprised Maitlin by showing up at the stately manor unannounced. But the joke was on him. He’d found Maitlin and a coworker in bed together.
There’d been a fight, an argument, a bloody mess aftermath that had to be dealt with and cleaned up.
Michael had done it all with precision. Without too much overthinking, he’d made the problem go away.
And for the last several years he’d been able to go about his life without intrusions from pesky neighbors. Without Maitlin around, his former father-in-law had given him some problems early on. But when the local police were forced to go on with other more important cases, the guy had to back off. Along with some well-applied threats of a lawsuit for harassment, his father-in-law had given up trying to get him arrested.
Without the risk of getting followed—in case Maitlin’s father had hired a private detective to keep track of his movements—he’d managed to go back to his acti
vities. Part of that included a few well-timed visits to the Lundquists.
He’d scoped out the Lundquist house before on other trips to Yellowstone and the surrounding Montana terrain. He had an affection for this area for its rugged beauty.
Smith had been inside the family’s four-bedroom home twice before, once when the homeowners were busy working their store in town, and the other, when the family had gone away for the weekend to spend time with a sick relative. He knew the layout intricately as a split-level ranch with a sunken living room and tacky taste in furnishings. Mrs. Lundquist seemed to have an obsession for reading trashy romance novels and collecting folksy, cheap-assed-looking figurines. He wondered if Mrs. Lundquist knew her husband bought girly magazines and ordered dirty videos from an online website.
Smith doubted the wife knew because he’d found the hubby’s stash in the basement hidden behind the furnace.
To stay close to the family, Smith had rented a small, rustic cabin five clicks from the Lundquist home. Now all he had to do was settle in and wait to carry out his plan.
Twenty-Five
Saturday afternoon
Their hunt began in earnest as soon as they got off the plane at the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, the same place where Smith had arrived days earlier.
The spring thaw hadn’t quite made it to the plateau that served as the airport. The fields surrounding the runways still had a dusting of snow.
The northern red oak and cathedral elm were trying to leaf out, but were taking their own sweet time doing so.
Skye had never been to south central Montana before. Any other time the picturesque peaks and valleys would’ve held an allure, like they were on vacation. But at the forefront, they were there to track a cold-hearted killer who didn’t want to get caught. The daunting task had started to sink in by the time they collected their bags and made their way to the car rental counter.
While Josh took care of the paperwork, Skye grabbed a handful of local maps and a guidebook that promised to list all the hiking trails in order of ease, up to the most difficult.
Dragging their bags behind them, they stepped through the automatic doors to pick up the Hyundai Santa Fe Josh had leased. A bone-chilling northwest wind greeted them with a fierce slap in the face, gusting and swirling before ushering them along to the rows of parked cars.
Dark clouds threatened drizzle or snow, depending on how low the temperature intended to drop. From the looks of the storm clouds brewing, there’d be some type of precipitation before nightfall.
They threw their bags into the rear cargo hold and Josh slammed the door shut.
“Are you sure you’re up to this, Harry?” Skye said, climbing into the front seat.
“I may be carrying around twenty extra pounds, but I can still drag my sorry ass after you guys.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just need to know how far you’re willing to climb.” She pointed out the car window to the mountain range to the south. “Those are the Beartooth Mountains. Will you be able to climb two thousand feet, five? The map from the airport says those suckers reach ten thousand feet, and that’s not even their highest point.”
Josh heard Harry grumble. The two-hour flight, and the reason for it, had left all three of them in a state of agitation. Harry and Skye had been bickering since baggage claim—Harry believing they’d brought too much stuff.
Josh did his best to play peacemaker now that they were all crammed into the SUV. He spotted a herd of antelope grazing in a field of half-barren mud. “That’s the least of our problems. If we keep picking at each other like this, finding where this guy snuck off to hide will do us in before we ever get started.”
Skye scrubbed her hands over her face. “Sorry, Harry. Josh is right. I’m a bundle of nerves.”
“That’s okay. I’ve known you long enough to tell when you’re cranky. So what’s the plan? Do we check into a hotel or what?”
“Not until we figure out where Smith is holed up. He’s been here since Thursday and Winston couldn’t find out where he’s staying. There are cabins in the area for rent online. The owners rent them out to tourists all the time.”
“That’s tough to narrow down,” Josh pointed out. “Unless we get the guys back home to contact every listing that offered a rental in the past few weeks. It’ll take time but…”
“Let’s do it,” Skye prompted.
Harry’s cell phone beeped to life. Looking at the readout a familiar number popped up. “Looks like this is Bennington. Hey, Paul, what’s up? Any updates yet? Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. That’s good. Yeah. Send me the email. We’re way ahead of you guys. I’m sitting here in Bozeman, Montana, now with my partners. Okay. Okay. But keep me in the loop.”
From the front seat, Skye turned to look at Harry. “Good news?”
“I think so. Nashville PD is still bagging up evidence at Smith’s fancy estate. Police found enough weapons for a small army hidden behind a wall in the attic. They also uncovered evidence that shows Smith might have killed his wife and her lover several years back. Both adults went missing around the same time.”
Skye raised a brow. “Let me guess. Smith used the excuse that the little wife ran off with her boy toy. You’d think those kinds of guys would get a lot more creative than that. Isn’t that the standard line nowadays?”
“Uh-huh. But Smith might not have been living in that big ol’ house by himself. The detectives went down to the basement and discovered someone had definitely been living there with him for quite some time. Whoever it was had spent the time chained up. There’s more. There were chains attached to the wall in the basement downstairs and a guest room upstairs.”
Skye lifted the other brow and angled toward Josh. “Could Smith have taken a captive from one of the families and kept him alive?”
“Sounds like it. But which family? It could be anyone.”
Harry was on a roll. “That’s not all. They also came up with a potential list of victims. Namely, Jay and Diana Lundquist who, get this, live south of Livingston, Montana. It seems for some reason, Smith has a fixation on this family. He’s made a few trips here before. That’s what his notes say. There were other names on his list but those potential victims live in other states. The Lundquist family is the only entry that explains his flying to Bozeman. The Lundquists apparently own a donut shop called Donut Holes & Other Things in downtown Livingston, about thirty-five minutes west of Bozeman.” Harry rattled off an address on Washington Avenue. “The couple has three kids, the oldest is a teenager, a girl who just turned seventeen a couple of weeks ago.”
“Sounds like the Lundquists fit his profile right down to the three kids. What else do you have?”
Harry held up his phone to let Skye read the email Bennington had just forwarded from the Nashville PD. “That’s the Lundquist’s home address.”
“It’s a place to start,” Josh uttered as he took the exit ramp onto I-90, heading east toward Livingston. “Because right now we’re chasing our tails. I think it’s a waste of time to go to the donut shop. Smith isn’t going to march into their business in broad daylight and kill them there. He prefers nighttime and houses.”
“And waiting for everyone to go to sleep,” Skye added, flipping through the map app she used to look up the directions to Jay and Diana Lundquist’s home. “They don’t just live outside town, it’s way out of town, a good half mile from the nearest neighbors. Jeez, if the map is accurate this place is so remote, the location is perfect for Smith’s MO, and no one within a two-mile radius would hear anything. When you reach the Livingston exit, you want to take a right, and head 89 South.”
Josh stepped on the gas, the resolve sharp and clear. The hope was they’d be getting there ahead of Smith, in time to save five innocent lives.
Twenty-Six
Saturday afternoon
Livingston, Montana
While a twisted psychopath plotted and planned his attack, Jay and Diana Lundquist were oblivious to the fact they had a stalk
er. Which is why they were going about their regular Saturday morning routine just as they always did.
They’d both grown up in Livingston, a picturesque, old-world kind of town, where real cowboys were part of the landscape as much as fly fishermen. Both had a taste of fame when Hollywood crews came to town to film movies like Horse Whisperer and a River Runs Through It.
As Montana natives, Jay and Diana had met in high school—the same high school their daughter now attended—and got married three years after graduation. They knew everyone in town and everyone knew them.
On weekends their donut shop kept regular hours, opening at six on the dot and closing just as promptly at noon. Jay waited on customers until Diana arrived with the kids around eight. For as long as anyone could remember, he’d made a habit of treating the business like a family affair, especially when the kids got old enough to help out. Everyone pitched in doing something. From cranking out the best dough in town, to spritzing the tables clean, to brewing the finest cup of coffee, to taking out the trash, all the kids were kept busy after school and weekends.
Today, Saturday traffic had been brisk. But a few minutes to twelve, Diana threw the dead bolt on the front door just the same, and locked the place up.
From there, the couple took their two youngest boys to soccer practice and dropped their teenage daughter off at a hair salon around the corner to have her hair done up for the prom that night.
Diana insisted on stopping to pick up tacos for lunch, going through the drive-thru before heading to their house twenty miles outside of town.
The Lundquists had lived within view of the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness all their married life. They loved the outdoors and for that reason sought out five acres of pristine back country full of ponderosa pine and towering aspens that spread out all over the landscape. It took them three years to save enough money to start clearing a portion of the land to build their dream home. And when the house did get built, it was basically hidden from the road by a forest of trees that backed up to Yellowstone’s northern gateway.
Truth in the Bones Page 23
