“They were brothers, not twins,” my father corrects. Let’s be honest…correcting and judging people is what he does best. “And it was them. I’ve had them in my court a few times and I knew they were heading down the wrong path. I never thought they would escalate to this point, but when you put two troublemakers together, it could always lead to something sinister.”
Wendy nods. “Yes, well, he is in everyone’s thoughts and prayers.”
“Of course.” I keep my eyes focused on my feet. What is the point of this conversation?
“But, before this tragedy, Detective Grant agreed to ask for a fine and community service,” she says. “So, Mason, you will not be serving time in prison.”
I exhale, a smile creeping onto my face. I can’t help it. A fine and community service is nothing. It’s petty. It’s what kids get for graffiti—like the Bradwell boys. I turn to my father, who has noticed my smile, but I can’t stop it from growing.
“You did this, didn’t you? You helped me cut a deal. I thought you wanted me out of your life.”
“You’re my son,” he says, his back stiffens. “You have a problem. An addiction. It’s my responsibility as a parent to raise you right. If that requires me to watch you pick up trash for the next three months, I’ll do that.”
I giggle, which turns into a laugh. I keel over, my body shaking from the sheer humor of the situation. I had been so worried over being trapped in a prison cell that there are now four burnt, extra-crispy bodies…and it turns out that all I have to do is some chores for the town.
“Stop it, Mason,” my father snaps, agitation sharpening his voice. I imagine him exchanging a look with Wendy, concerned that his insane son will taint his perfect image, and that only makes me laugh harder. I’m nearly choking on air from how hard I’m laughing.
“You said…you would never…help me again.” I guffaw. I can sense my father stand up, but before I can raise my hand to defend myself, his fist comes down in the same way he smashes his gavel. It hits against the crown of my head and I fall out of the chair. He’s on top of me as my mind tries to remember how I ended up on the floor. His fists strike me with such speed and force that I can’t find a way to defend myself. Even as I curl up on the carpet, covering my head with my arms, his fists manage to slam into me, sending waves of pain through my whole body.
“Judge Latham!” I hear Wendy scream. “JUDGE LATHAM!”
I barely open my eyes to see her trying to pull him off me, her tiny body unable to even catch his attention. He stares down at me with such murderous intent that for once I can see the family resemblance.
41
Sarah, 2015 (Monday night)
THE SMELL OF SMOKE is getting worse.
I raise my head, hardly outside of the mine. I use all of my energy to roll myself over onto my right side to avoid hurting my broken ribs. When I glance up, the sky is dark and hazy, but it looks like just the faintest bit of smoke.
It would be my luck if there was a forest fire right now.
I get on all fours and try to lift myself onto my feet, but my ankle hurts worse than ever. I sit down and examine my ankle. It’s swollen so much that the edge of my sneaker is cutting into my skin. As I pull the laces out of the eyelets of my shoe, I nearly fall back to sleep. My head just feels too heavy and my eyelids feel like they are being pulled down by gravity.
I jerk awake with my laces still in my hand. I glance around. It doesn’t look like much time has passed, but it’s hard to tell in Alaska. I yank my sneaker off. It might be hard to get through the woods that surround the mine with only one of my shoes, but I don’t think this foot will come to much use anyway.
I get back on my hands and knees…and crawl. Each movement I make causes a lightning strike of pain to course through my body from my rib cage, and another strike of pain from my ankle. It’s as if my own body is a torture chamber and the only way to escape is to stop trying.
But I have to keep going. I have to survive.
It seems like forever, but my hands finally touch the dead pine needles of the forest. I keep moving, my knees scraping against the needles, tree roots, and pinecones of the woods. I can feel my skin being rubbed raw by the forest’s debris, but I can’t care about that right now. All I can think is that I can’t die now. I can’t get this far and give up.
I stop.
I have no idea where I am.
I have no idea how far I would have to crawl to reach civilization.
I have no idea which direction I would have to go to reach civilization.
I am lost and completely, utterly screwed.
Just go to sleep, every cell in my body pleads.
So, I lie on my back. I stare up through the pine trees, pretending that I’m trying to find some astrological sign that will point me in which direction to go.
But there’s nothing. I can’t even see the midnight sun because the trees are too tall, which is a shame because I always enjoyed it. My mother used to tell me that the sun stayed out so I wouldn’t be afraid when I fell asleep.
I close my eyes, unafraid of whatever comes next.
42
Teresa, 2015 (Monday night)
AS WE DRIVE TO the quarry, Aaron keeps glancing out his window and over his shoulder.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“Look into your rearview,” he says.
I glance up at it before looking straight ahead again. I just see the road and trees. “What am I looking at?”
“Look just above the treetops.”
I do. At first, I don’t notice anything worth looking at, but then I see it. A glow of red and smoke rising above it. “Is that a forest fire?”
“I would call it more than a forest fire,” he says. “I can see it through my side window, too. It’s spreading quickly.”
If Sarah is in the quarry and by some miracle, she’s alive, we need to find her before the fire does. I’m about to push my foot harder onto the gas pedal, when I see a robust man in the road. He’s wearing a firefighter’s uniform. I slow to a stop as he raises his hand in the halt! position. I roll down my window.
He walks over to my side. He has white hair, though it has receded drastically, and an almost Hitler-esque mustache.
“Hey, Pat,” Aaron says. “What’s going on? It looks pretty bad out there.”
“It is,” Pat says. “It’s spreading way too fast. I’ve called in all of the volunteers and asked anyone in nearby towns and Anchorage to come, but the fire may be spreading too quickly. We might have to get helicopters involved.”
I flash him my badge. “We need to get to the quarry. It’s part of our investigation of Sarah Latham's kidnapping.”
Pat nods. “It’s a sad thing. She’s such a sweetheart. I’ve been part of the search parties since she went missing, but there’s a lot of land out here, so she could be anywhere. I pray for her every night. But the mine is being evacuated. Not because it in itself is at risk of burning, but more that if the fire gets out of hand, the folks working there will be trapped. In fact, I just talked to Jeb—the guy who recently bought the land on the quarry because he wants to make a park or playground or something. He's having his guys load one of their bulldozers on a flatbed to come help contain the wildfire.”
“We need to get to that quarry,” I tell him. “Sarah could be there.”
Pat frowns. “Why would the kidnappers store her in a quarry?”
“It’s a hunch,” I tell him. “How long is it going to take the bulldozer to get to the fire?”
“Maybe forty-five minutes?”
“If you let me and Detective Grant through to the mine, we’ll come back with the bulldozer.”
He tilts his head. “I’m guessing even if I say no to you, you’ll find a way to the quarry anyway.”
“Absolutely.”
He grins. “Fine then. Just…try to make it quick. I don’t need two police officers trapped in a mine by a fire.”
I open my mouth, ready to tell him I am defi
nitely not a police officer, but then I decide I could be called something worse.
Pat signals to a few firemen down the road to let us go. I watch as they remove the roadblocks. “And Agent?” Pat asks me.
“Yeah?”
“Bring Sarah back if she’s there. Preferably alive.”
I nod then drive past him and past the other firefighters.
“Are you lying?” Aaron asks. “About bringing back the bulldozer? It will take forever to drive it back, and going back through here is going to be hell. Literally, hell. With the flames, heat, and everything.”
“I might be lying,” I admit. “But this isn’t a suicide mission. The worst case scenario is that we wind up being trapped in the mine and have to wait for a helicopter to come get us.”
The thought of flames dancing around us is terrifying, but it also reminds me that this isn’t Aaron’s first encounter with dangerous fire.
“Are you going to be okay through this?” I ask. “It’s not going to bring flashbacks is it? It’s not going to…be too hard for you?”
“Nope,” he says, and something in his voice tells me he's not lying. Something tells me this is not the same man I originally met who was tortured by his family’s death.
He’s coping.
43
Aaron, 2015 (Monday night)
WHEN I WAS GROWING up, Dad used to come home from work, sit down in our ancient leather recliner, and I would bring him a salami sandwich—two slices of white bread, three slices of salami—and a glass of milk. Then, I would sit down at his feet and he would tell me stories of how he caught the bad guys.
Now that I’m older, I assume that some of the stories were made-up. Or they didn’t happen the day he said they did because there is zero possibility crimes were happening that frequently in Wyatt, but I listened with complete reverence back then.
I remember one time, he came home, his shoulders were slumped, and he barely took notice of my enthusiasm that he was home. He sat down in that recliner and took his sandwich without saying a word. When I pressed him to tell me a story about work, his voice was almost monotone.
The story began in a rich neighborhood, where kids got cars for their sixteenth birthdays and fathers could sway college admission officials to let their children in with a C+ average. The daughter of a prominent businessman was found dead with a contusion on the back of her head and four broken fingers on her right hand. Everything pointed to a junkie ex-boyfriend she had. Dad questioned him over and over, but the ex-boyfriend never confessed, though his alibi was that he was home alone. The police had zero evidence of the crime, but then a witness appeared out of nowhere. It was the son of one of the other officers. Dad had his suspicions that the witness statement was fabricated, but he didn’t want the ex-boyfriend back on the street, so he let it go.
The ex-boyfriend was stabbed with a prison shank two weeks into his sentence. Three days later, a neighbor came back from vacation, and while checking his home security camera, watched the girl’s father beat her to death.
Dad told me there was a clear lesson in that case—make sure you have indisputable evidence and just because someone seems to be reputable doesn’t mean that they are. It could mean that they are just a sociopath that knows how to act perfectly human.
“What’s on your mind?” Teresa asks as she continues to drive toward the mine. The smoke is getting thicker, making all of the colors of Alaska dull and lifeless. She flicks on her headlights.
“Sociopaths,” I say.
“Oh, well, that’s a good topic considering we’re probably dealing with one,” she says. “Does that mean you think Mason is involved? Because that kid gives me the creeps.”
“There has always been something off about him,” I admit. “But I thought it was just his own grief over his sister’s death and the possible abuse he suffered.”
She slams on the brakes. My whole body jerks forward and I’m only saved from going through the window by my seat belt. In the headlights, two deer stare at us. Their black tails flicker for a second before they dash out of the road. A third deer skitters behind them.
“They’re running from the fire,” I say as I rearrange my seat belt. Teresa glances on both sides of the road before beginning to drive again. A few cars pass by us, rushing back to their families.
“We’re going to need to find Sarah fast,” she says. She hits the heel of her hand against the wheel. “Even if she’s not alive. We need to find her and bring her back to her parents.”
“We’ll find her,” I promise her. “And she’s Alaskan. If anyone can survive in the wild, it’s us.”
“Unless she wandered into the woods that are now on fire.”
I glance over my shoulder. The smoke is far worse behind us. I know the firefighters will do everything they can to protect the town, but it still makes me nervous. “Maybe I should—”
Teresa slams on the brakes and turns sharply to the right to avoid hitting a cluster of elk. Her SUV veers into the lane and I see the two bright lights before I can recover from the appearance of the elk. Teresa is already shifting to reverse and she slams on the gas pedal. The truck carrying the bulldozer misses us by inches, but then there are lights behind us, and her SUV is grazed by another car that whips around her on the right, between her vehicle and a rock wall. Her passenger side mirror goes flying. The other car careens too wide around the same cluster of elk, winds up skidding off the road, and thumping down into the forest…out of sight.
I’m fumbling for my seat belt, instinct and adrenaline kicking in. “We have to help whoever that is. The ridge is barely visible through the trees and is near the entrance to the mine. If we get to it, we can follow it down to the quarry, which seems like it might be safer at this point than staying on the road.”
I run before she can say anything. I can hear her moving the car so it’s out of the road. I follow the tire tracks.
When I finally reach the car—which seems to have dodged multiple large trees until it hit a large western hemlock tree—I find a silver Mustang. The hood is caved in and the windshield is shattered.
“Are you all right?” I call out. I hear footsteps behind me and Teresa appears through the smoke-draped trees. I’m approaching the driver’s side of the car when it jerks open. It’s not until I see Mason’s face that I realize that I know the car. Of course. Who else drives a Mustang in a small town in Alaska?
Fear is etched on his face—just like the deer and elk we almost ran over. His nose is bleeding—likely from the impact of the airbag—and he’s holding a duffel bag. Before I can react, he’s running as fast as he can away from me.
“Stop!” I yell, though I know it’s a futile command. I turn to Teresa. “He’s heading to the mine.”
“Who?” she asks as I begin running after him.
“Mason!” I shout, speeding up. I don’t have time to see if she’s running after me. There’s only one reason Mason would be out here. He’s guilty. He’s a sociopath. He’s the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He’s a cold-blooded murderer.
Mason is young and virile, whereas I’ve spent the last two years hoping to drink enough to die. He easily stays ahead of me though the smoke makes it hard to see anything. I see him stumble a few times over rocks, roots, and low-lying tree branches. While I manage to dodge half of these obstacles, I manage to startle an already uneasy porcupine. I pause, distracted by the wild animal with quills that are sticking straight up when I see Mason trip in my periphery. He falls onto the ground.
I run faster toward him. I stop where he tripped. I see something green, black, and white lying across the forest ground.
It’s a Wyatt High School senior jacket.
It’s Sarah Latham.
“I found her,” Mason says, crawling toward her. The duffle bag he had taken with him is a few feet away from Sarah. Mason looks up at me, blood still trailing from his nose down to his chin. “I found her.”
I pull out my gun and point it at his head.
>
“Hold it right there,” I command.
He grabs Sarah’s wrist.
I grip my gun tighter.
He checks for her pulse. “She’s in bad shape. We need to get her to the hospital.”
Teresa approaches behind me, her gun also raised.
“What are you doing out here, Mason?” I demand.
“He’s right, we need to get Sarah to the hospital,” Teresa tells me. She puts her gun back in her holster, walks in between Mason and me, and crouches down next to Sarah. She slides her arms under Sarah’s knees and back, and lifts her up.
“Tell me what you’re doing here, Mason.” I snarl.
“She’s barely alive. We have to get her out of here, now!" Teresa shouts.
I glance over at her, surprised by her sudden anger.
Mason bolts, disappearing into the thickening smoke. I pull the trigger. I hear Mason grunt, but I don’t hear him collapse, so he must still be running.
“Take her back to the car!” I yell. I chase after Mason. I should have thought longer about whether or not to ditch my partner and a critically injured Sarah, but every instinct tells me to take down Mason—to ensure that he can never cause a family grief again like he has caused our families.
I glance behind me to make sure that Teresa is getting away safely, but the smoke has made it impossible to see anything past a few feet. I suppose that’s how it has been for this whole case—or, really, for my whole life.
I keep seeing a flash of Mason’s red shirt before it plunges back into darkness. The smoke is getting so thick that every time I breathe, it feels like I’m inhaling acid.
“Mason!” I shout. “It’s too late! Don’t make this harder on yourself!”
I glimpse blood on the ground. The bullet definitely hit him and from the sound he made, it isn’t just a flesh wound and even if it is, it must hurt like hell.
Midnight Sun: A Gripping Serial Killer Thriller (A Grant & Daniels Trilogy Book 1) Page 13
