“We’ll help ya look,” Hellhound said immediately. We all held our breaths as a jacked-up four-by-four roared by, raising another cloud of dust. When it dissipated enough to speak, Hellhound added, “If there’s anythin’ to find on this road, we better find it fast before any more traffic goes over it. Ya lookin’ for anythin’ special?”
“Footprints,” Kane said tightly. “Especially small ones. Or distinct tire tracks. Skid marks. Disturbances in the vegetation at the side of the road. Anything unusual at all. And call for him. The search parties will be far away from the road by now, but if he’s still wandering, he might be close enough to hear us.” He raised his voice to a full shout. “Daniel! Daniel!”
The echo mocked his call, diminishing quickly into the ever-present sigh of the breeze through spruce trees.
Kane called again, and my heart twisted at the sight of his head raised in hope, his fists clenched by his sides.
When no answer came, he shook his head and cast his gaze down.
“What’s that?” he snapped a moment later.
We crowded around the area he indicated.
“Murphy’s bootprints,” Hellhound said. “Crossin’ the road into the campsite.”
“Don’t let anybody drive over them,” Kane barked, and jogged back along the trail to the campsite.
A few minutes later he returned, disappointment telegraphing from the heavy lines of his shoulders. “They already noted them,” he said flatly. “Apparently Murphy was a hiker. They found several places where he’d gone for a walk, and they’ve already been checked for evidence.”
I reached over to squeeze his hand. “That’s good, right? They’re really on top of things.”
Kane nodded, but the grim lines of his face didn’t ease. “That’s good,” he agreed without enthusiasm. “Let’s walk the road anyway. Just in case.”
We split up to trudge down the road, Hellhound and I on opposite sides while Kane paced slowly down the middle shouting Daniel’s name every dozen or so strides. Kane looked utterly focused on the road, and when another plume of dust appeared at the bottom of the hill, I called his name.
“John, there’s a car coming.”
“I see it,” he replied. “Don’t worry; I don’t intend to get run over.”
“That’s good. I don’t think tire tracks would be a good look for you.”
The bleak lines of his face softened into the tiniest hint of a smile as he stepped off the road, and we stood in silent endurance until the vehicle passed and the air cleared enough to breathe. Then we resumed our slow progress, eyes on the road and voices raised in regular calls for Daniel.
The sun blazed down, its heat a searing weight on my shoulders. Sweat mingled with my sunscreen and the ever-present gravel dust to form a gritty layer on my skin. The breeze provided intermittent relief, but as we slowly progressed downhill it diminished to barely a breath. My eyeballs felt broiled in their sockets and the gravel blurred into an interminable line.
I blinked hard and swigged from my water bottle, keeping my attention on the road. Any tiny detail might count…
“Footprints!”
Kane’s cry jerked my head up, and I was surprised to see we were only a few hundred yards uphill from the crash site. I placed my water bottle by the side of the road to mark my position before hurrying over. On Kane’s other side, Hellhound did the same.
“Look!” Kane pointed to a patch of boot prints in the middle of the road. Most of them were obscured by the gravel, but some were clearly visible in a softer sandy portion. He pulled out his phone to refer to his photo, but Hellhound was already nodding.
“They match,” he said. “Those’re Murphy’s boots, or else somebody else has a pair exactly the same size an’ brand.”
“What the hell was he doing?” I asked, studying the pattern of scuffs and overlapping prints. “It looks as though he was just standing in the middle of the road. Taking a smoke break or something?”
“I don’t see any butts,” Hellhound disagreed.
“Maybe he was walking along the side of the road and somebody he knew drove by,” Kane said. “The way the prints are clustered in the middle of the road, he might have walked over to talk to somebody in a vehicle that had pulled to a stop. Stood and visited for a few minutes, and then went back to his campsite.” He indicated where the prints turned uphill and headed toward the sparse vegetation on my side of the road.
“Shit, I didn’t see any tracks in the ditch,” I said in chagrin. “He might have walked alongside the road all the way back to the campsite.”
“Ya couldn’ta noticed,” Hellhound comforted. “It’s just grass an’ rocks over there; nothin’ that would show a footprint.”
“But there might be partial prints…” I began.
“Maybe,” Kane said. “But don’t try to find them. I want the forensic team to look at this before we contaminate the site any more.” He let out a breath. “They’ve probably already catalogued it, but I don’t dare take a chance. I’ll run back up. Don’t let anybody drive over this. If it’s old news, I’ll give you a wave from the top of the hill.”
He turned and ran uphill and I sighed and wiped the gritty sweat off my forehead. “We’d better make sure he drinks some water when he gets back.” I glanced up the road, judging the distance. “Nearly a mile uphill in this heat…”
Hellhound chuckled. “Darlin’, the army’d just call that a nice little warm-up jog.”
“Fuck the army. I enjoy a run as much as the next person, but I’ll do my running in the morning or evening when it’s nice and cool, thank you very much.” I sighed. “I’m getting sunburned even through my sunblock.”
Hellhound sobered and eyed my face and arms. “Shit, ya are, too. You an’ that pretty redhead skin a’ yours. Here.” He peeled off his T-shirt. “Put this over your head. Sorry it’s sweaty, but it’s better’n fryin’ in the sun.”
“No, don’t do that,” I objected. “You’ll get a terrible sunburn if you go shirtless at this altitude.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. I was gonna put on some more sunscreen anyway, so ya can do my back for me.”
While I tied his T-shirt around my head and centred the knot to cast some shade over my face, he extracted a tube of sunscreen from his pocket and removed the bandanna he’d tied over his shaved skull. Smearing sunscreen over his head, ears, and face with both hands, he rubbed the excess onto his arms and scrubbed the last traces off his beard before handing me the tube.
“Lube me up, darlin’.” He winked.
I did my best martyred sigh, grinning. “Well, if I have to…”
Gliding my slippery palms over the mountains of his shoulders, I massaged in small circles, working my way down the ridges of muscle on either side of his spine to the waistband of his jeans. Stepping around to the front, I murmured, “I’d better do your chest, too. I wouldn’t want you to miss a spot.”
“Mm-hmm.” He growled deep in his throat while I worked with leisurely appreciation over his bulky chest and down his hard abs.
Heat gathered in parts of my body I was pretty sure the sun’s rays couldn’t reach and I circled my hands lower, letting my fingers dip teasingly into his jeans.
“Mmm,” I purred. “It’s too bad I just smeared sunscreen all over you. You’re looking very…” I licked my lips, admiring the glistening swaths of tattooed muscle. “…lickable.”
“Damn, darlin’.” He grinned. “Maybe I oughta give ya my jeans, too. You could put ‘em over your shoulders so your arms don’t get burnt. ‘Course…” His grin widened. “…then you’d hafta rub sunscreen on a few other places for me.”
I wiggled my exploring fingers a little deeper, watching his eyes ignite. “Commando as usual, I see. There might not be enough sunscreen in this little tube.”
“Darlin’, the way you’re heatin’ me up, there ain’t enough sunscreen in the world.”
The blip of a police siren from above made me jerk my hands off him.
Hellhound ch
uckled. “Guilty conscience?”
“Permanently.” I sighed, watching the police car cruise down toward us. “I swear, even now that I work for the Department; even when I haven’t done anything wrong; I still think ‘What have I done?’ every time I see a uniform or a police car.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Hellhound grinned. “When Kane wore the RCMP uniform, he used to sneak up behind me every chance he got just so he could watch me twitch when I turned around. Bastard.” The epithet was affectionate, and I smiled in return.
“You probably deserved it.”
“Well, yeah. I’m usually guilty a’ somethin’.”
The cruiser pulled to a stop above us, lights flashing, and Kane got out of the passenger side and strode over.
“This was a new discovery,” he said. “The traffic investigators checked this area, but they weren’t looking for footprints. Now they’ll block traffic until they’ve processed the entire stretch of road.” He shot a glance up and down the road. “I don’t think there’s anything more I can do here. I’ll go back up and join the next search party that goes out.”
“Okay, Cap,” Hellhound agreed. “Let’s go.”
As we turned to trudge up the road again, Kane glanced at his wristwatch before eyeing Hellhound’s bare torso and the sweat-stained T-shirt around my head. “No, you need to take Aydan home…”
Our combined objections drowned out his next words, and he waved a silencing hand and continued, “This is the best way. Aydan can’t stay out in the sun any longer, and in any case she has to be at work tomorrow morning-”
“Fuck work,” I began, but he shook his head.
“No, you need to go to work.”
Something in his voice alerted me, and we walked in silence until we were out of the earshot of the police officer who was placing markers around the footprints in the road.
“Because…?” I prompted when we were at a safe distance.
“Because I need somebody on the inside,” Kane said quietly. “Mayweather has been good about sharing his findings so far, but if he finds out I’m not in law enforcement anymore he might dry up. I need to stay on top of everything that’s happening in the investigation.” He hesitated before adding reluctantly, “If… if you’re willing. I realize it will place you in an ambiguous moral position-”
“There’s nothing ambiguous about it,” I interrupted. “A child is missing. The only moral thing to do is make sure we do everything possible to find him.”
Kane sighed. “All right, never mind moral; consider the legal implications. You’d be illegally accessing an active police investigation and leaking information to a civilian. If you get caught, you could go to prison.”
My heart rate ticked up in claustrophobic fear at the thought, but I met Kane’s gaze squarely and kept my voice light. “Well, hell, it’s about time I did something to justify my guilty conscience.”
Chapter 10
Sitting in the passenger seat of Hellhound’s SUV with the vent blasting cool air onto my hot face, I kept my sunbaked eyes closed and continued the argument I’d started before we began driving. “It’s a waste of time to go all the way back to Calgary just to pick up John’s gun. If we drive straight east from here we can shave at least an hour off the trip and you can get back and join the search party that much sooner.”
“Yeah, I know, darlin’,” Hellhound agreed from behind the wheel. “But John’s already skatin’ on thin ice by not goin’ in for his debriefin’. Better if everythin’ else goes by the book.”
“But the gun’s perfectly safe at your place. You’re the Department’s top weapons specialist, so Stemp can’t argue that we’re being careless. He can just take a chill-pill. We’ll get the gun back to him later.”
“Sorry, darlin’,” Hellhound said regretfully. “This time I’m stickin’ to Kane’s orders.”
I snorted. “That’s a first.”
“Yeah.” I could hear the smile in his voice, but it turned serious as he spoke. “But right now there’s nothin’ he can do but wait, an’ that’s the worst feelin’ in the world. It’ll help if he’s in control a’ somethin’.”
I opened my eyes to gaze over at his homely profile, a lump rising in my throat. “You’re such a good friend,” I whispered.
When we parked in front of my house at last, I leaned over to kiss Hellhound. “Normally I’d invite you in for a nice long shower, but I guess you’d better get going.”
He returned the kiss and held me close for a moment. “Can’t believe I’m turnin’ down a chance to get ya all wet an’ slippery, but…” He smiled and dropped another kiss on my lips. “…I ain’t gonna let it happen again. See ya soon.”
“Be careful. Call me tonight or as soon as you have news, whichever comes first.” I slid out of the SUV and leaned in. “And good luck.”
“Thanks, darlin’.” The usual twinkle was absent from his eyes. “We’re gonna need it.”
The heat of the closed-up house enveloped me like a suffocating blanket as soon as I stepped inside. Panting in the airless rooms, I hurried from window to window, throwing them wide open in an attempt to catch even the slightest late-afternoon breeze.
When I returned to the kitchen for a glass of ice water, a folded note in the middle of the kitchen table caught my eye. ‘Aydan’ was scrawled across the front of it and I picked it up with smile, anticipating a thank you from one of the guests or possibly a note from Lola, though it didn’t look like her usual flamboyant penmanship.
It wasn’t a thank you.
I read it through twice, my heart chilling with fear despite the oven-like temperature of the house.
‘Dear Aydan – I’m sorry to have missed you at the party. I hope your family emergency wasn’t too serious. I’d like to get in touch with you to talk about a mutual acquaintance. Please call me at your earliest convenience.’
It was signed ‘Frederick Labelle’ and included a sleek business card advertising an investment brokerage.
He could just be some annoying sales guy… but the unnamed ‘mutual acquaintance’ made small hairs stand up on the back of my neck. And somehow I just knew he was the well-dressed guy who’d set off my alarm bells at the party.
I shook my head vigorously. Get a grip. I was overreacting. He was almost certainly a sales guy. He had probably withheld the name of the acquaintance just to make me curious enough to call him back, and then he’d roll out his sales spiel.
“Yeah, right,” I muttered. “But paranoid and alive is better than trusting and dead.”
Another thought hit me and I extracted my bug detector from the waist pouch I still wore, my heart pumping a little too hard. The reassuring flash of the green light made me ease out a long breath. Okay, so at least nobody was listening in on me. And my wrist monitor hadn’t vibrated since Saturday evening when it had shown Lola locking my gate behind her.
Drawing a deep calming breath, I dialled Lola’s number.
She answered with a cheery hello, and I forced a smile onto my face and did my best cheerful voice in return.
“Hi, Lola! I’m back. Thanks for locking up for me.”
“Oh, you’re welcome, honey.” Her tone went grave. “How is Big John? Was the emergency as bad as you thought?”
I swallowed, renewed memory of Kane’s haunted eyes tightening my throat. “Yeah, I’m afraid it might be.” I gave her a brief outline, letting her express her concern and sympathy before changing the subject without much finesse. “Hey, Lola, I found a note on my kitchen table…”
“Oh, good, you found it. I figured the kitchen table was best place to leave it.”
“Um, yeah… did you see the guy who wrote it?”
“Yes, Fred Labelle.” She sounded puzzled. “Did he forget to sign it?”
She knew him. Thank God.
“No, I just didn’t get to connect with him at the party and I wondered if he’d left early,” I fibbed.
“No, he left right after you.” I was beginning to relax when she continued, �
�He seemed really nice for a salesman.”
Shit, she didn’t know him.
I kept my tone light with an effort. “I hope he didn’t bother you. Were you talking to him for long?”
“Not long; he just said hi and we talked for a few minutes, and he told me about his investment business. He wasn’t obnoxious, just an extrovert, you know? I think he introduced himself to everybody. He was worried when you left in such a hurry, and when I explained what had happened he wrote out the note and asked me to give it to you.”
A chill skittered down my spine. “Thanks, Lola. Um… was he wearing slacks and a dress shirt?”
Lola laughed. “Yes, he said he felt silly walking around all dressed up while everybody else was in shorts, but he had come straight from the office and didn’t have time to change. It was nice of you to invite him. It’s too bad you missed each other.”
My bullshit meter red-lined, kicking my pulse into high gear. “Um… yeah, it’s too bad…”
I hadn’t invited anybody.
“Did he mention our mutual friend?” I asked cautiously.
“Oh, yes, he said Jack Paar had introduced you… no, wait, that’s not right. Jack Paar was the Tonight Show host ‘way back in the early 60s. Heavens, I used to love him! I’m sorry, I don’t remember your friend’s first name, but I’m sure the last name was Paar.”
I swallowed a hard cold lump of dread. “Nicholas Parr?”
“That’s it!” Lola exclaimed.
Shit, shit, shit!
Dropping into a kitchen chair, I focused all my will on keeping my tone nonchalant for the rest of our short conversation, and rang off as soon as I could.
I stared into space, my mind circling frantically. It couldn’t be. Parr was dead. We’d convicted and imprisoned all his minions. This nightmare couldn’t be starting all over again.
Lola must have gotten the name wrong. I gulped and dialled Spider’s parents’ number.
The Spies That Bind Page 8
