“To be expected.”
“We don’t have any food left.”
He put his mouth next to her ear and whispered, “We’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Get some sleep.”
Gracie heard him stretch up and turn out the lantern flashlight.
It was black and silent inside the cave.
Rob seemed to fall immediately to sleep.
But as exhausted as she was, Gracie lay awake, restless, chewing on a cuticle. Anxiety knotted her stomach. Thoughts spun around inside her head. What, if any, mountaineering experience did Joseph have? At what skill level? What were his chances of surviving the storm? Was he holed up somewhere like they were, waiting it out? What the hell happened up on the outcropping?
When after what seemed like hours, Gracie finally did fall asleep, she slept fitfully, dreaming of mutilated bodies and deep-set blue eyes.
CHAPTER
70
IT was quiet in the Command Post motor home, the only sound coming from Nels Black and Ron Gardner, who stood in front of the large map of the wilderness area, talking in low, urgent voices.
Near the back, Ralph sat perched in a folding chair at a flimsy card table, a clipboard of papers and a half a cup of coffee sitting in front of him. A couple of other SAR members sat at a long utility table nearby sorting forms and maps into multiple piles.
Outside in the parking lot, an orange snowplow the size of small house scraped away the still-falling snow, pushing it into mounds higher than the visitor’s center’s roof.
With the temporary lull in the action, most of the search and rescue ground teams had gone home. The remaining few, mostly alpine team members on standby, were holed up in the visitor’s center.
Ralph flipped cursorily through the pages from the MisPers background checks that Deputy Montoya had run the first night of the search.
Aside from a single driving infraction, there was no dirt on Rob Christian. Apparently he led the boring life of a mega–movie star. There was nothing on Diana Petrovic either. Tristan Chambers, however, had been picked up twice in London for assault: once at the age of nineteen and a second time at twenty-one. And Cristina Sanchez had been arrested for solicitation in L.A. two years earlier. There was nothing on her husband, Carlos. The information on the couple was moot anyway.
On the pages about Joseph Van Dijk, Ralph stopped, frowning.
The man had multiple aliases: Aleksandar Novak, Alex Novak, Goksi Kovac.
What the hell kind of spelling was Aleksandar? And what the hell kind of a name was Goksi?
Ralph thumbed back several more pages and stopped again.
Deputy Montoya had also run the MisPers’ social security numbers through a federal verification database. Joseph Van Dijk’s social security number had come back as a fake.
Ralph leaned back in his chair and mentally sifted through the pieces of information. Then he stood up abruptly, tipping his chair over on the carpet. He grabbed up the clipboard, walked over, and sat down at one of the Command Post computers. He Googled the name “Joseph Van Dijk.” No results. He typed in “Aleksandar Novak.” Nothing. He tried the single word “Aleksandar.” Several listings appeared, the third for Aleksandar Veljic, a retired Serbian basketball player.
He typed in “Goksi Origin.” The very first listing told him it was a nickname for the Slavic name Goran, used in several Eastern European countries.
He thought for a moment, fingers poised above the keys. Then he typed in “Petrovic.” Several listings down was a site describing the name as Croatian and Serbian.
Ralph stretched back in the chair, thought for a moment, then shuffled through the stack of papers again and pulled out the original Lost Person Questionnaire. He scanned the pages until he found a note Gracie had scribbled in a side margin: “Per Eric: JVD-slight accent, poss. E. Eur.”
For more than thirty minutes, Ralph searched the Internet using various combinations of “criminal record” and “alias” and “Serbia” and names like “Goksi” and “Aleksandar.” He opened tangential sites, hit dead ends, backtracked. He didn’t know exactly what he was searching for; he simply followed the meandering threads of information until one of the pages he opened contained a link to the Interpol website.
Ralph clicked on the site and spent several minutes opening and reading the various pages. Structure. News. Drugs and Criminal Organizations. Under Fugitives, he searched through the Wanted pages and the listings for the United States under National Wanted Websites. Another dead end. He hit the Back button and stared at the National Wanted Websites home page, wondering where he should look next. His eyes focused and he read what he had been staring at: the listing directly beneath the United States listing: United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
Ralph clicked on the site.
He scanned the first page, scrolling down until, at the bottom of the page, something caught his eye—a little blue box reading simply: “Fugitives: Facing Justice” and two names. Ralph homed in on one: Goran Lucovic.
He clicked on the window.
The page that opened contained the pictures of two men. Goran Lucovic was no one Ralph recognized. He peered at the picture of the other man, old, grainy, in black-and-white. He couldn’t be sure.
He searched further until on the right side of the screen, a Wanted poster appeared.
Ralph clicked on the poster.
At the top of the page, large red letters blared UP TO $5 MILLION REWARD. In the bottom right corner was a circular seal from the United States Department of State Diplomatic Security Service. Along the right side of the page ran several paragraphs of type, which Ralph scanned. His mind registered only certain words and phrases: United Nations . . . Criminal Tribunal . . . torture . . . rape . . . murders of thousands of innocent civilians.
On the left side of the page were color photos of three men.
The larger, top picture was of Slobodan Milosevic: “Wanted for crimes against humanity.”
Below were pictures of two other men, “Wanted for genocide and crimes against humanity.” The man on the right was Goran Lucovic.
The man on the left was thinner and clean shaven with a full head of hair. Square jaw. Deep-set eyes. And only one ear.
The man on the left was named Radovan Milocek.
The man on the left was Joseph Van Dijk.
CHAPTER
71
GRACIE jerked awake and stared out into the absolute darkness of the snow cave.
Had she heard something outside?
She lay without moving and listened.
A full minute passed. Then another. She heard nothing but Rob’s soft breathing.
It was probably nothing she decided and checked her watch. She had slept for more than four hours.
Feeling creaky, but rested in spite of her fitful sleep, she slipped out of the sleeping bag, whispering, “Go back to sleep,” when Rob mumbled, “What are you doing?”
She pulled on her parka and boots in the dark, grabbed up a trekking pole, and pulled the pack from the doorway. Crouching down, she pawed away the heavy snow that had piled up over the entrance and peered through the hole into the darkness outside.
She could see nothing.
She wormed out of the cave, pulled the pack into place behind her, and stood up in the knee-deep snow.
For five full minutes, Gracie stood just outside the entrance of the shelter and listened.
There was no sound. The wind had died completely. There was no movement, but ethereal snowflakes floated down to land softly on her upturned face and cling to her eyelashes. Overhead, a single star, steady and bright, peeked out through an opening in the clouds.
The storm was passing.
CHAPTER
72
“I’M thinking
about quitting,” Rob said.
He and Gracie sat on their respective benches, drinking scalding brown water brewed with the last of the fuel from the last tea bag. The little lantern flashlight filled the cave with a muted, golden light.
Upon waking, Rob had declared himself “aces up” (“I can’t help it. It just comes out.”). Gracie noted with relief that he did in fact resemble a human being and not the walking zombie of a few hours earlier.
Gracie and Rob were engaged in comfortable and consciously distracting mundane banter when he had tossed out that thunderbolt.
Gracie blinked at him. “Quitting what? Smoking?”
“Acting.”
“Acting.”
“Sometimes I despise it.”
“You’re an actor,” she said, reminding herself to breathe.
“I’m aware of that,” Rob said, head bowed. “But I feel like I’ve sold my soul to the devil. I’ve gotten caught up in the trappings.” The pain in his voice was palpable and Gracie felt her insides wrench. “I’ve lost touch with what really matters. Sometimes I don’t even know who I am anymore. Bloody hell, even that sounds like a line of dialogue.”
“Why do you do it if you don’t like it that much?”
“But I do! Love it even. I love the process. The audience. It’s the accompanying baggage I’ve had my fill of. The frenzy. The . . . the clutching. The suffocating loss of privacy. The lack of integrity.”
“The money?”
He smiled with irony. “That’s the trade-off, isn’t it? If you don’t take the good with the bad, if you complain at all, you’re a spoiled, ungrateful sod. Some days I would trade it all for a moment’s peace. For the ability to trust a friend.” He stared down at his hands. “Some days I feel the whole bloody profession is irrelevant in today’s world. Wars are being fought. Millions of people live in poverty. Die of starvation. What’s my contribution to solving the mess? Reciting a couple of lines and getting paid obscene amounts of money?”
Myriad responses flooded Gracie’s mind, then she said, “I read an article once about an artist who couldn’t paint for a long time after 9/11. In light of all that happened, she felt it was irrelevant. But after a lot of soul searching, she finally decided that not only was it not irrelevant, it was imperative. The world needed the positive and the beautiful to balance out the killing and the evil and the hatred.” She looked over at Rob to confirm that he was even mildly interested.
His eyes were laser-focused on her. “I’m with you.”
“This woman also decided,” Gracie said, “that what she painted from then on had to count for something and that she needed to identify exactly what it was she wanted to accomplish. Did she want her paintings to heal? Help people escape? Stir them to action? Enlighten?” She clenched her hands together to hide their trembling. “Maybe if your acting were the means to an end, a . . . a springboard to a loftier goal . . . like save the rain forest. Teach at-risk kids responsibility. Build wells in the Sudan.”
Rob nodded slowly. He glanced up, caught her watching him, and winked at her.
Gracie let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding and smiled back at him.
They sat in silence again until Rob said, “Tell me something nobody else knows.” Gracie stared at him for several seconds, then, letting the sleeping bag fall from her shoulders, she pulled up the shirts on her left side and turned so that he could see her ribs.
Rob leaned forward and squinted at the small round scar just above the waistband of her pants. “What is that?”
Gracie pulled her shirts back down. “Burn scar.”
Rob’s eyes shot up to hers. “Where the hell did you get that?”
Gracie cleared her throat. “Morris’s . . . my stepfather’s cigar. He used to hit us . . . Lenora, Harold, and me. Usually with a belt. Always on our backs so no one would know. When he came at us, I always ran way out behind the house, climbed up to the top branches of this big old apple tree, and stayed there. Sometimes for hours. I felt safe there. He caught me once when I was nine. Guess he wanted to make it count.”
“Jesus, Gracie,” Rob whispered. “No one ever . . . he never went to jail?”
Gracie shook her head. “Mother wouldn’t allow it.”
“Jesus,” Rob whispered again. He leaned over and encircled her wrist with his fingers.
Gracie stiffened. “What?”
“Sit next to me.”
She allowed him to draw her across the aisle and sat next to him.
He tucked her sleeping bag around her. “Keep talking.”
Gracie cleared her throat again. “We never knew what would set Morris off. A-minus on a test. Wet towel on the floor. Didn’t take me long to grow into a turtle. Fly below the radar. I got straight A’s. Went to U of M. Dated the moronic sons of his friends. Took the job he wanted me to when what I really wanted to do was go off somewhere and study wolves. One day after work, I stopped by the house to see how my mother was doing. Her arm was in a cast. Morris had broken it.”
“Bastard.”
Gracie stared straight ahead. “It’s like watching it on tape. Not like me doing it at all. Morris was watching the news. I took a shotgun from the gun cabinet, grabbed a handful of shells, loaded two, walked into the den and blew two huge holes in the wall right above his head. Two right in a row. Boom. Boom.”
“Gracie!”
“It didn’t hurt him. Well, not really. He got hit with a couple of pellets.” She stifled a giggle. “I told him if he ever laid another hand on my mother or anyone else again, I’d aim lower.”
Rob gaped at her.
“It blew the toupee right off his head.” She barked a laugh. “He sat there in his chair, drink in his hand, big bald head covered with plaster dust, pictures all crooked, and his toupee sitting on the back of the chair like a furry little rat. It looked so funny, I laughed. I swear he was more pissed off about me laughing at him than anything else. But he had to sit there and do nothing because I still had the shotgun and I’d already reloaded.”
“Bloody . . . !” Rob rubbed his hands down his face and chuckled. “So nobody called the police? Even then?”
“Are you kidding? What would the neighbors think? Evelyn picked the pellets out herself. They plastered up the wall and no one ever found out. As far as I know, Morris never hit her again.”
“Bloody bully.”
“If not for him, I might still be living in Detroit. . . .” Gracie said. “Evelyn sided with him. Even then. She screamed at me to get out and leave them alone. So I—” Gracie sat up and rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand. “Sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“Don’t be stupid,” Rob said. “So you what?”
Gracie relaxed again. “Quit my job. Sold my house. Drove out here. Worked jobs that they considered beneath my station. Pizza delivery, waitress, cashier, um, pizza delivery.”
“That’ll show them.”
“I know, right? He sent me a certified letter telling me he’d written me out of his will. I’m persona non grata, mentioned as little as possible within the family. Outside the family, never at all. Next to Jimmy Hoffa, I’m the best-kept secret of southern Michigan.”
“How long ago did all this happen?”
“Eight years? Nine? I can’t seem to get back on track.” She looked over at Rob. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I’ve never told anyone. Not even Ra . . . not even my best friend.”
“Nine years is a long time.”
“I know.”
Rob grinned at her and shook his head.
“What?”
“You’re something else.” He leaned toward her, lifted her chin and kissed her. His lips were soft and warm.
Gracie shrank back, trying to read his eyes in the dim light.
What was she doing? She had just met Rob. She knew almost nothing about him. When was s
he ever going to learn?
She smiled and leaned toward him.
Rob pressed his lips to hers again, a long lingering kiss, mouth open, tongue touching hers.
Feelings that had lain dormant for years reignited and roared to the surface, blasting to tiny bits any semblance of self-control and spreading a warm glow throughout her entire body.
Gracie pulled away.
Rob looked into her face. “What is it?” His voice was almost a caress. “Too fast?”
She shook her head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“I can’t compete.”
“With what, love?”
“Those perfect Hollywood starlets.”
He snorted. “Give me a . . .” He stopped when he saw her face. “Gracie, love, it’s all surface crud anyway. Like that addition to my vocabulary? Thanks to one Grace Kinkaid.”
“Terrific.”
He dipped his head to look into her eyes. “Besides, I think you’re beautiful.”
A blush crept up her cheeks that she hoped he couldn’t see. “No, you don’t. No, I’m not.”
“Why can’t you just accept the compliment? You are. Very beautiful.” His voice changed. “In a highly appealing, grimy, slightly gamey sort of way.”
She sat up straight in indignation. “I told you I wanted a bath.”
He lifted her hand, drew off her glove and kissed the bare palm.
A shiver ran up Gracie’s neck that she knew wasn’t from the cold.
“You don’t have to compete.” He leaned closer to kiss her neck. “And, I reiterate . . .” He lifted the flap of her hat and kissed her ear lobe. “You are beautiful.”
“This is that rescuer complex thingee.”
“Eloquently put. You’ll sweep me off my feet.”
“You’re hurt.” Grace’s protests sounded wimpy-assed even in her own ears.
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