Finding Answers

by Kathi Daley

  Finding Answers

  by

  Kathi Daley

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Katherine Daley

  Version 1.0

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  I want to thank the very talented Jessica Fischer for the cover art.

  I so appreciate Bruce Curran, who is always ready and willing to answer my cyber questions; Jayme Maness for helping out with the book clubs; and Peggy Hyndman for helping sleuth out those pesky typos.

  And, of course, thanks to the readers and bloggers in my life, who make doing what I do possible.

  Thank you to Randy Ladenheim-Gil for the editing.

  And finally, I want to thank my husband Ken for allowing me time to write by taking care of everything else.

  Table of Contents

  Insert Table of Contents

  Books by Kathi Daley

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Up Next from Kathi Daley Books

  Chapter 1

  Books by Kathi Daley

  Books by Kathi Daley

  Come for the murder, stay for the romance.

  Zoe Donovan Cozy Mystery:

  Halloween Hijinks

  The Trouble With Turkeys

  Christmas Crazy

  Cupid’s Curse

  Big Bunny Bump-off

  Beach Blanket Barbie

  Maui Madness

  Derby Divas

  Haunted Hamlet

  Turkeys, Tuxes, and Tabbies

  Christmas Cozy

  Alaskan Alliance

  Matrimony Meltdown

  Soul Surrender

  Heavenly Honeymoon

  Hopscotch Homicide

  Ghostly Graveyard

  Santa Sleuth

  Shamrock Shenanigans

  Kitten Kaboodle

  Costume Catastrophe

  Candy Cane Caper

  Holiday Hangover

  Easter Escapade

  Camp Carter

  Trick or Treason

  Reindeer Roundup

  Hippity Hoppity Homicide

  Firework Fiasco – June 2018

  Zimmerman Academy The New Normal

  Ashton Falls Cozy Cookbook

  Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mysteries by Henery Press:

  Pumpkins in Paradise

  Snowmen in Paradise

  Bikinis in Paradise

  Christmas in Paradise

  Puppies in Paradise

  Halloween in Paradise

  Treasure in Paradise

  Fireworks in Paradise

  Beaches in Paradise – July 2018

  Whales and Tails Cozy Mystery:

  Romeow and Juliet

  The Mad Catter

  Grimm’s Furry Tail

  Much Ado About Felines

  Legend of Tabby Hollow

  Cat of Christmas Past

  A Tale of Two Tabbies

  The Great Catsby

  Count Catula

  The Cat of Christmas Present

  A Winter’s Tail

  The Taming of the Tabby

  Frankencat

  The Cat of Christmas Future

  Farewell to Felines

  A Whisker in Time – August 2018

  Writers’ Retreat Southern Seashore Mystery:

  First Case

  Second Look

  Third Strike

  Fourth Victim

  Fifth Night

  Sixth Cabin

  Seventh Chapter – August 2018

  Rescue Alaska Paranormal Mystery:

  Finding Justice

  Finding Answers

  Finding Courage – September 2018

  A Tess and Tilly Mystery:

  The Christmas Letter

  The Valentine Mystery

  The Mother’s Day Mishap

  The Halloween House – July 2018

  Haunting by the Sea:

  Homecoming by the Sea

  Secrets by the Sea – June 2018

  Sand and Sea Hawaiian Mystery:

  Murder at Dolphin Bay

  Murder at Sunrise Beach

  Murder at the Witching Hour

  Murder at Christmas

  Murder at Turtle Cove

  Murder at Water’s Edge

  Murder at Midnight

  Seacliff High Mystery:

  The Secret

  The Curse

  The Relic

  The Conspiracy

  The Grudge

  The Shadow

  The Haunting

  Road to Christmas Romance:

  Road to Christmas Past

  Chapter 1

  Monday, June 18

  He watched the boy skipping rocks across the clear, still water. From the cover of dense forest, he listened to the childish squeals of delight as the flat, hard surface of the stone met the firm, unyielding force of the lake. Each hop resulted in an ever-widening web of rings, each ring larger yet less intense than the one that came before. Life, he mused, was like those rings. The farther you traveled from the point of origin, the wider your reach, but the less intense the effect. He’d spent a lifetime struggling to affect change in the larger rings, but now, he’d decided, it was time to avenge the iniquities of his past, to claim the inner ring as his own.

  Vinnie Truman had been missing for just over an hour. The four-year-old with the sandy blond hair, big green eyes, and a smattering of freckles had been playing with his eight-year-old brother, Kip, and six-year-old sister, Cammie, in the yard of the cabin his parents, Jim and Joan, had rented for their summer vacation. No one saw Vinnie wander away. No one could explain why he would have.

  Both Jim and Joan swore they’d been keeping an eye on their children as they grilled burgers on the deck just off the kitchen. When we walked in, Joan had been telling Officer Houston that she’d only looked away for a minute and had no idea how Vinnie could simply have disappeared.

  “She’s lying,” I whispered to my partner, Jake Cartwright, the Rescue, Alaska Search and Rescue captain.

  “Why do you say that?” Jake asked, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the room, seemingly taking in the climate around us.

  I looked toward the short blond woman who was wringing her hands in distress as she clung to the sturdy arm of the uniformed officer she was speaking to. “Her blouse is buttoned wrong, her feet are bare, and her hair is mussed. There may have been grilling going on, but it wasn’t in the kitchen, and they weren’t focused on their children.”

  Jake snorted, I was sure, to suppress a chuckle. “Play nice,” he whispered as he stepped forward to greet the officer in charge.

  “You got here fast,” Hank Houston, a tall, broad-shouldered man with chiseled features, dark hair, dark eyes, and a serious way about him, commented as he reached out to Jake.

  “We were in the area,” Jake responded as he shook the man’s hand.

  “This is Jim and Joan Truman,” Houston introduced the obviously distressed couple. “And this is Jake Cartwright from Rescue, Alaska.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re going to do everything we can to find your boy,” Jake said, his voice gentle. He turned and gestured to me and the two dogs with us. “This is my teammate, Harmony Carson, and our canine helpers, Sitka and Yukon.”

  “Officer Houston sa
id he called for the search-and-rescue team,” Joan said through her tears. “There are only two of you.” I could see the woman was on the verge of hysteria, which could only serve to make the situation worse. “He’s just a little boy. He could be injured and is probably scared. Two just won’t do.”

  “There are a half dozen police officers looking for your boy,” Houston assured her. “The search-and-rescue squad is well trained and familiar with the area. They can cover a lot of ground with just a few people and are here to lend a hand. I can assure you, ma’am, we’re doing everything we can to find Vinnie.”

  Jake turned and looked at Joan. I watched the hard lines of his face soften as he took her hand in his. He’d been doing this a long time. He knew what to do: offer hope but get what you needed. “Harmony and I were running training exercises in the area when the call came in, so we came straight over, but we have four other highly trained members of our team in transit. We’ll do everything in our power to find your boy.”

  Joan’s face softened slightly as I imagined her clinging to that promise. I watched as she smiled slightly at Jake and then looked doubtfully toward the dogs. “Can they find him? That one looks so young.”

  Jake’s hand visibly tightened on Joan’s. “Yukon is still a puppy, but he’s been doing very well with his training, and Sitka is a veteran search-and-rescue dog. He has dozens of rescues under his belt. He’s one of the best at what he does, and I know he’ll do his very best to find your boy. We’re going to need your help, however. The most important thing you can do now is to stay strong. Can you do that?”

  The woman nodded.

  “Okay, good.” Jake shot her a look of approval. That seemed to calm her somewhat. “First, I’ll need a recent photo of Vinnie.”

  The man Houston had introduced as Vinnie’s father handed Jake a photo he’d been holding since we’d arrived. Jake looked at it, then handed it to me. I tried to ignore the noise in the room and focus on the curious eyes and crooked grin of the boy we’d been tasked to find.

  “I’ll need a couple of pieces of clothing Vinnie’s worn,” Jake added. “The more recently they were worn, the better. Perhaps his pajamas.”

  “I’ll get them,” Vinnie’s dad said, seeming grateful for something to do.

  Jake nodded at him, then turned his attention back to Vinnie’s mother. “How long have you been staying at this cabin?”

  “Almost a week.” She ran a hand over her face.

  “And I understand Vinnie has been missing about an hour?” Jake continued.

  Vinnie’s mother nodded. “Yes. We tried looking for him ourselves for a while before we called the police.”

  Jake continued. “Is there anywhere you’ve walked in the past week that seemed to fascinate Vinnie? Anywhere he might want to return to?”

  Vinnie’s mother shook her head. “No. He was supposed to stay in the yard. I only looked away for a minute.”

  Jake looked at me. “Are you picking up anything?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.” Jake didn’t bother to explain to Jim and Joan that I was often able to connect with people I was destined to help rescue. It certainly wasn’t an exact science, and I wasn’t always able to do it, but I felt as emotionally connected to the child in the photo as I felt irritated by the woman who’d been canoodling with her husband rather than watching her children.

  “Where was the last place you saw your son, ma’am?” I asked as I tried to get a visual image that could help me to get a read on the boy.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. It happened so suddenly.” The woman was gesturing wildly with her hands, as if to make me, to make us all, understand. “One minute he was there and the next he was gone.” A fresh stream of tears started down the woman’s face. “I only looked away for a minute.”

  “So you’ve said,” I responded as I glanced down at the photo once again. I know it isn’t my job to judge the actions of the people we’re tasked to help, and I didn’t have children, so I wasn’t an expert when it came to the supervision of the under-ten crowd, but what I did know was that if I ever did have a child, which was highly unlikely, I wouldn’t leave him or her unattended in the Alaskan wilderness.

  “You’ll find my boy?” Vinnie’s mother pleaded after I glanced up from the photo.

  “We’ll try,” I answered. The team I belonged to was one of the best anywhere, our survival record unmatched. Still, I’d learned at an early age that when you’re battling Mother Nature, even the best teams occasionally came out on the losing end. I looked at Jake. “I’m going to head outside with the dogs. I might have better luck in a quiet environment.”

  After leaving the house, I sat down on a bench and instructed both dogs to sit at my feet. Sitka was an old pro at this sort of thing and waited patiently for the hunt to begin, while Yukon, sensing that something important was up, danced around on the end of his lead. I scratched him behind the ears before instructing him, again, to sit and wait. Thankfully, he did. Yukon had so much raw talent, I was certain he was going to be as good a search-and-rescue dog as Sitka eventually, but he was less than a year old and, at times, still easily distracted.

  Once Yukon settled into the wait position next to Sitka, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I’m not sure why I’m able to connect psychically with those I’m meant to rescue. It isn’t that I can feel the pain of everyone who’s suffering; it seems to be only those we’re meant to help that find their way onto my radar. I’m not entirely sure where the ability comes from, but I know when I acquired it. When I was seventeen, my sister Val, who was also my legal guardian after our parents’ death in a car accident, went out on a rescue. She got lost in a storm, and although the team tried to find her, they came up with nothing but dead ends. I remember sitting at the command post, praying harder than I ever had. I wanted so much to have the chance to tell Val how much I loved her and, suddenly, there she was, in my head. I could feel her pain, but I also felt the prayer in her heart. I knew she was dying, but I could feel her love for me as her life slipped away. I’d tried to tell the others I knew where she was, but they’d thought my ramblings were those of an emotionally distraught teenager dealing with the fallout of shock and despair. When the team eventually found Val’s body exactly where and how I’d told them they would, they began to believe I’d made a connection with the only family I’d had left in the world.

  Since then, I’ve used my gift to locate and rescue dozens of people. I couldn’t save them all, but today, I was determined that our search for Vinnie would result in a check in the Save column. I tried to focus on the image of the child with the mischievous grin. I sensed water and was picking up the feeling of curiosity rather than fear. That was good. Chances are, as I suspected, the boy had wandered off chasing a rabbit or some other small creature and hadn’t even realized he was lost yet. It was a warm day, and Vinnie’s mother had assured us that he wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a hooded sweatshirt, so at least we didn’t have the elements to worry about, as we did with so many of the winter rescues on which we were called out.

  I heard Yukon begin to whine. I opened my eyes and saw team members Wyatt Forrester, Dani Matthews, Landon Stanford, and Austin Brown walking toward us. Yukon stood up, preparing to greet some of his favorite people.

  “Sit and wait,” I reminded the pup.

  He plopped his butt on the ground but continued to wag his tail. Beside him, Sitka thumped his tail without having moved an inch.

  The group stopped several feet short of the dogs. The animals were working, so playful scratches and enthusiastic kisses would have to wait.

  “Any news?” Dani asked.

  “Jake is inside, talking to the parents. I’m sure he’ll be out soon. I haven’t been able to establish a clear connection to the boy, but I sense water near his current location. I don’t think he realizes he’s lost. I sense curiosity but not fear.”

  Wyatt was about to say something when Jake walked out of the house with two plastic bags, each containing
a piece of clothing Vinnie had worn.

  “Anything?” Jake asked me.

  I told him what I’d just told the others.

  “There are two bodies of water nearby,” Jake said. “Eagle Lake is about a half mile up the mountain and Glacier Lake is about a half mile down the mountain from here.” Jake looked around, as if sizing up the situation. “The family has hiked in both directions within the past twenty-four hours. It’s likely the dogs will pick up the boy’s scent in either direction, at least initially. We’ll divide into two groups. I’ll take Sitka, Dani, and Austin and head up the mountain. Harmony and Yukon can work with Wyatt and Landon and head toward the lower lake.” Jake looked at me. “If Yukon picks up a strong scent, radio and we can discuss a strategy. If you make a stronger connection to Vinnie, or are able to pick up anything more specific, let us know.”

  Jake, as Sitka’s handler, and me, as Yukon’s, each took a plastic bag. Once we’d cleared the yard, we let our dogs sniff the piece of clothing, telling them repeatedly, “This is Vinnie; find Vinnie.” When the dogs seemed to understand what it was we were asking, we took them off their leads, then followed. I trailed directly behind Yukon, while Wyatt walked parallel to my route to the right and Landon paralleled to the left.

  Once Sitka had a scent, he was usually very focused on the task at hand, so the odds of Jake and his team finding Vinnie if he had traveled up the mountain were great. Yukon, on the other hand, was pretty green. He had been abandoned on my doorstep five months earlier, and I, as I always did, had taken him in. Over the course of the next month, I’d worked to teach him the house rules. During his training, I’d noticed what I felt was an innate ability to find whatever it was I sent him to look for. I spoke to Jake, and he agreed to help me train him for search and rescue. We’d discussed needing a second dog. Yukon caught on to the training like a fish to water, and although he’d only been training for a few months, he’d already been successful in locating the victim in five different simulations. Of course, a real rescue was a lot more intense than a simulation for both dog and handler, and this was the first time he’d participated in a real rescue without Sitka by his side to show him how it was done.