by Henry, Sue
“Thanks, Ned.”
Swiftly, she headed for the door, heedless of Bishop’s words from behind her. “I wouldn’t—”
Leland turned as she came through the door and closed it behind her, then rose to his feet at the look on her face.
“What?”
“Here.” She handed him the envelope.
“They left it for you?”
“Yeah. Found it on the floor of my room, where someone slipped it under the door.”
He ripped it open and unfolded the single page it contained. They read it together silently.
DOUBLE WRAP THE MONEY, ALL $200,000, IN BLACK PLASTIC GARBAGE BAGS. CLOSE IT SECURELY WITH SOME KIND OF RED TAPE AND GIVE THE PACKAGE TO JESSIE ARNOLD. RUNNING BY HERSELF—NO ONE ELSE—SHE MUST CARRY IT IN HER SLED WHEN SHE LEAVES DAWSON. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DAWSON AND EAGLE SHE WILL FIND OUT WHERE TO DROP IT. THIS IS FOR YOU AND ARNOLD ONLY. DON’T TELL ANYONE ELSE—NOT THE POLICE. WE KNOW THEY’RE INVOLVED NOW. BUT BE SMART LELAND. DO ANYTHING STUPID AND YOU’LL NEVER SEE YOUR DAUGHTER AGAIN.
“Goddammit.”
“But that’s more than…”
The woman behind the desk had risen and stood watching with concern on her face. “What is it?”
The door opened and closed again, with Ned Bishop just inside.
Jessie looked up, realizing that she and Jake Leland were anything but alone. Had she just made a bad mistake by bringing the envelope to him here, not waiting until she could catch him by himself somewhere?
“I’m Connie Stocker,” the woman said, coming around the desk and holding out a hand. “I’m the Canadian YQI president.”
“YQI? Oh…Yukon Quest…?”
“…International. Right. And you’re Jessie Arnold. Now, what’s up? Is that your instructions, Jake?”
Leland looked at her and nodded his head in frustration. “Exactly. And it says I can’t let you see them, Connie.”
Bishop had moved across the room to stand near Connie Stocker. “We can understand that,” he said. “It’s your call, Jake. They still want what they originally demanded, from you and us?”
“Yes. I have all of mine. Jill came in with it from Fairbanks late this afternoon—in cash. It’s in the hotel safe.”
“Wait,” Jessie questioned. “Us? What do you mean, us?”
“The bastards sent a second note, Jessie. To the Quest committee—demanding another hundred thousand. So their price has doubled, with the same threats. If we or the committee tell anyone not named or directly involved, or anyone contacts the police, Debbie dies.”
“But…how can the Quest—”
“We’ll have to use the prize money from the race,” Connie told her. “We’ve discussed it and decided we don’t have a lot of choices here. The American half of the committee agrees. It’s going to cause problems, but we’ll work them out later. It’s all we have, and I hope we have that. Pledges from sponsors were still coming in when I left Whitehorse.”
“Can you get it by tonight? I came in this morning…” Jessie glanced at her watch. “Well…yesterday morning, now…so I’m supposed to leave at eight-forty this evening, including the fifty-eight-minute adjustment to my start time. If I’m supposed to carry this payoff, it’ll have to go with me then.”
“And you shouldn’t alter your schedule,” Connie agreed. “From what Jake tells me and what we’ve figured out on our own, someone must be keeping close track of us.”
“They slipped this note under my door, so they know where I’m staying. But they can’t watch all of us all of the time, can they?”
“Maybe not,” Connie replied. “But how can we know who’s being watched, and when?”
She was right. There was no way of knowing. They would simply have to go along, especially with Leland so adamant about it. What else could they do?
And she had already gone to Delafosse, Jessie remembered. How could she tell Leland, or the others, about that now? Del had said he would call her, or send Claire in an emergency, but she had no idea just what he was planning or would do about the situation. Would it fit in with these new instructions? She would have to get word to him somehow, but decided to keep her visit and conversation with him to herself for a while longer. There was no need to worry Jake Leland any further—he had enough on his plate at the moment. This news would make him crazy.
Guiltily, she knew she was also leaving the breaking of that news up to Delafosse, avoiding the unpleasantness she knew would result. But he had said it might be better to wait for her departure, so she held her peace, though she wondered just how this new piece of the puzzle would affect his plans.
As she left Connie Stocker’s office with Leland a few minutes later, she was desperately hoping that the inspector would be able come up with some plan of action before she had to leave Dawson. Leaving without knowing what they would do would not add to her confidence, or give her any idea what to do in case something went differently than anticipated. She also heartily wished she had her familiar Smith and Wesson .44 tucked securely in the pocket of her parka—and not with moose in mind this time out.
14
“On either side the sun are sun-dogs, so that there are three suns in the sky…. And all about is the snow and the silence…and all the air is flashing with the dust of diamonds.”
—Jack London, “The Sun-Dog Trail”
JESSIE DID NOT TALK AGAIN TO ALEX BEFORE DEPARTING from Dawson.
Leaving Jake Leland, she returned to her hotel room, went straight to the phone, and called Delafosse, reasoning—hoping—that whoever was watching was only watching, not listening. It was a calculated risk, but one that she and Del had agreed was probably safe, considering the odds that whoever had abducted Debbie Todd wouldn’t bother with listening devices, relying instead on observation and intimidation. It was a better option than trying to meet Del again.
“They probably think they’ve got you sufficiently discouraged,” he told her. “That you’ll all be too afraid for Debbie Todd’s safety to tell anyone, especially law enforcement.”
Now she told him about the note she had found in her room and taken to Leland, about the demand that had been made to the Quest committee for another $100,000 and the role the note had demanded that she play in carrying the ransom money to a still-undisclosed drop. She also shared her frustration at not being able to carry her handgun on the Canadian part of the trail.
“What do you usually carry?” he asked, and when she told him, he said he would take care of it. “I think this situation merits a bending of the law a bit and I’ll be responsible. I’ll be more comfortable, and so will you, if you have some protection along that you’re used to. I’ll have someone uninvolved and safe take a firearm to Don Graham in the dog yard. That’ll be better than trying to get it to you directly.”
When they finished talking, she went to bed and—though she had thought she might not be able—slept soundly until Linda Caswell came knocking on the door at eight o’clock the next morning.
Alex did not call again, but had asked Del to tell her that he had heard the whole story and that she should be extremely careful, whatever she did. But he had talked to Delafosse before they knew the contents of the note that had been slipped under her door, before she knew she was to carry the ransom. Still, she made no attempt to call him, remaining focused on what she had to do in the next few hours and days.
It bothered her, in a distracted way, that she seemed to have no need to share the problem with him, felt tired at the thought of having to explain it all over again to someone who was not, and could not be, involved, but the whole thing was beginning to wear her out emotionally and mentally. Perhaps this was how he had felt about his father’s funeral, she thought—not up to dividing himself into too many pieces.
The idea of carrying the ransom was unsettling and there was little she could do except determine to make the best job she could of following the kidnappers’ instructions and hoping that would be enough for them to release Debbie Todd unharmed. The o
nly thing she felt she could do ahead of time was prepare herself as well as possible physically, so she went to work on that, and, letting everything else go, including Alex, slept, then ate a huge breakfast and went out to get her team and equipment ready for the last half of the race.
Walking through the streets of Dawson toward the river made her feel that she had stepped back in time, for the town was lined with boxy, false-fronted buildings, some old, some new, constructed in the style that had been popular during the gold rush a hundred years earlier. Even the names of various establishments echoed the vernacular of stampeders intent on making a fortune: the Bonanza Shell Station, the Trail of 98 Restaurant, the Jack London Grill, the Eldorado Hotel, the Klondike River Lodge RV Park, the Gold Poke Gift Shop. On the bank of the river in the middle of town rested the sternwheeler SS Keno, one of the last majestic steamboats to ply the Yukon bearing greedy gold seekers. Now, refurbished, painted, and polished, its distinctive Victorian shape looking almost like new, it was a popular tourist attraction.
As she passed the riverboat, Jessie remembered being here before with Alex, after the earlier case he had worked with Delafosse had been solved. They had strolled past the boat through the quiet snowfall of an early winter evening and she recalled feeling that things were exactly right with her world, that there was nowhere she would rather be than where she was, knowing he felt the same satisfaction. The contrast with her feelings now was striking. She frowned, shook her head in dismissal, and hurried out onto the river ice toward the dog yard on the opposite bank.
Don Graham met her there with a worried look. “I have something for you, Jessie. A short guy with hair like steel wool, but bald on top, brought this and told me you’d be expecting it.”
He handed her a brown paper grocery sack. Inside was a dozen of Claire’s homemade oatmeal cookies in a plastic container and, underneath, another brown sack, wrapped around itself and secured with a heavy rubber band. Inside she could feel the hard outlines of the handgun Delafosse had promised her, and a box that could only be extra ammunition.
“Said his name was Robert Fitzgerald and that he was from the museum. Ah…?”
Jessie had to smile. Fitzgerald was clearly as “safe” a person as Del would be able to find and one she already knew. Curator of the Dawson City Museum, he had been slightly involved, in a peripheral but important way, in the case Alex and Del had shared. Dedicated to, in fact almost buried in, the hundred-year-old world of gold rush history, he was one of the last people she could imagine who would ever be suspected of carrying a firearm—even for someone else.
“Don’t ask, Don,” she told him. “It’s okay. Really. He’s a friend.”
“But, Jessie, if that’s what I assume it is, it isn’t legal.”
“The cookies, you mean?” she asked with a wicked grin.
“No, the—”
“That’s been taken care of. Don’t worry.”
“Why?”
“Don. You promised not to ask me any questions and I promised to tell you when I could. I can’t yet. Please. Have a cookie.”
He wasn’t happy about it, and changed the topic to a discussion of the weight of her sled for this segment of the run, but he gave her suspicious sidelong glances and frowns throughout the rest of the day when he thought she wasn’t looking.
The sun came out briefly in the afternoon, changing the flat gray day to a splendor of sparkling crystal and white as it touched each grain of wind-tossed snow with a tiny light till it seemed the very air was aglitter. Overhead, Jessie noticed a pair of sun dogs, one on either side of the sun, shimmering like spots of concentrated rainbow in the sky. The brightness of the sun itself was softened, slightly veiled in the snow the wind was scouring from the hilltops that surrounded Dawson.
“The weather’s going to change,” she commented, “and probably not for the better.”
She was rechecking the list of what she was carefully packing in the sled bag, and smiling at the antics of a raven that was hopping cleverly just out of reach of Tank and Pete as it pecked at a scrap of spilled dog food, when Jim Ryan showed up late in the morning to find out her schedule for leaving Dawson.
The adjustments to each racer’s time were made to compensate for the delay of two minutes between each start in Whitehorse. The team that had started last had no time added, because he had accumulated the most time waiting for his turn at the starting gate. In Dawson, the rest had time added to make up the difference between theirs and his, so that all were even when they left after their long rest. Jessie had started fifty-eight minutes before the last racer in Whitehorse, so she had that amount added to the thirty-six hours she was required to layover in Dawson. Ryan had thirty-six minutes added to his time, putting him ahead of her by twenty-one minutes on his way out of town, though he had come in just behind her.
“Boy, do I feel better,” he told her with a grin. “I slept like a log, but I’m ready to get out of here. How about you? With the adjustment to my start time, I’ll take off at eight-nineteen tonight. Hey, I told you I’d be ahead. What’s your leave time?”
“Eight-forty.”
“That’s only twenty-one minutes. You want to do the summit together? I’ll take it easy till you catch up, if you want, and we can help each other over the rough spots. They say it’s blowing like a son of a bitch up there, with more bad weather on the way.”
Here was a complication that, in her concern for the ransom problems, she had not considered. The kidnappers’ instructions stressed that she must make the run from Dawson to Eagle alone, at least until she found out where she was to drop the package of money. But how should she tell Ryan she couldn’t travel with him without explaining why? She knew him well enough to know that he would be resistant to letting her go alone if he knew she was carrying the ransom.
Glancing around at Ben and Linda Caswell, who were in the process of watering the dogs before Billy took them two by two for exercise, she hesitated.
“Let’s walk,” she suggested, and called to the crew. “Back in a while. I’m going to pick up whatever I’ve got left in the hotel room before noon check-out. Then I’m going to grab some lunch with this guy.”
When they were far enough out on the river ice not to be overheard, she had considered the problem enough to decide that at least partial honesty would be best.
“Listen, Jim. I’m going to do this part of the run by myself. It has nothing to do with you—you know I like your company. I just need to do it that way, okay?”
He gave her a questioning look. “This have anything to do with what’s going on with Leland’s daughter? Has he heard from them yet?”
“Yes,” she said, and stopped to turn and face him. “Yes, it does. And that’s all I can say. Will you just accept that and trust me?”
“Of course, Jessie. But it makes me uneasy for you to be running alone. Can’t we somehow—”
“Nope. Haven’t got a choice. I’ve got to do it this way. I’m sorry, really, but I have to know that you won’t do anything to put me at risk by holding back and sticking too close, okay? Promise?”
He didn’t answer for a long minute of thought, conspicuously reluctant to do so.
“What if I—”
“Jim.”
“All right. But I don’t like it. I’ll be looking over my shoulder all the way to Eagle. And if you’re not there in a reasonable amount of time…”
“Good. It’ll make me feel better to know that someone’s paying attention to where I’m supposed to be.”
They walked on across the river and into Dawson in time to watch one of the late mushers arrive at the checkpoint looking windblown and tired. His dogs, however, looked great—rested and still ready to go. It was a fact that in distance racing it was the mushers who suffered—tired, sleep-deprived, tense with the strain of keeping everything operating smoothly. The dogs—who got lots of rest, food, and attention—usually gained weight, were at the top of their form, and could go on long after their drivers would have cras
hed from total exhaustion and stress.
“I’ve already eaten,” Ryan told Jessie, when they had reached the middle of town, a block from her hotel. “And I’ve got to finish replacing the runners on my sled, so I’ll take off for now. If you change your mind, let me know and I’ll wait for you.”
“I won’t, Jim. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Okay, but be careful, Jessie. I don’t know what you’re up to, but this doesn’t seem very smart to me, especially when somebody’s already died over this. These may not be people to take any chances with, right?”
“Right, and I won’t. Don’t worry. I won’t do anything unnecessary or foolish, and, if it’ll make you feel any better, I’ve been given permission to carry along some protection.”
His eyes widened. “You’ve got a gu—”
“Yes,” she swiftly cut him off. “That’s not for publication.”
“Right. Sorry. That does make me feel a little better. Also tells me you’ve talked to someone in authority, who’s also keeping track. Still…”
“I’ll be just fine.” She hoped it would be true. “Just pretend you know nothing about any of this, okay? And I’ll see you in Eagle.”
COLLECTING THE FEW ITEMS SHE HAD LEFT IN HER HOTEL room that morning, Jessie went down to the restaurant to get some lunch. She had ordered a seafood pasta dish, with a salad and double garlic bread, and was waiting with anticipation for the high-carb-and-calorie lunch when Lynn Ehlers walked into the dining room. He saw her immediately and came across to her table by the window.
“Hey, Jessie. I thought I’d have to refuel alone. Okay if I join you? Or are you expecting the rest of your crew?”
“Nope. Got stood up, so I’m lunching alone. Make yourself at home,” she invited, looking forward to some conversation that didn’t center around the kidnapping.
But when he sat down his first comment dashed her hopes.
