Montana Standoff

by Sharon Dunn

  Mackenzie emerged from a side room, her eyes red from crying. “Chris is on his way here from work.”

  “There will be search teams all over here in less than thirty minutes. In the meantime, we can cover the area in a wider and wider circle calling out for Ethan. It won’t do any good for me to go alone if he only responds to your voice,” Bryan said.

  Though she still looked like she was in shock, Mackenzie nodded.

  “I’ll go with you, too,” said Sarah.

  They circled the yard and then outside the yard. Mackenzie called Ethan’s name over and over, her voice growing weaker. A helicopter soared overhead. Probably part of the search team.

  “What was your son wearing?”

  “A yellow shirt and orange shorts.” Mackenzie rubbed her neck, her voice filled with anguish. “Those are his favorite colors.”

  Bryan glanced up and down the road “Did you hear a car pull up or the sound of one leaving?”

  Mackenzie’s hand fluttered to her chest. She bit her lower lip. “It all happened so fast.” She stared up at the sky, probably trying to piece the horrible memory together. “Come to think of it, I didn’t hear a car. It’s quiet out here. The horses make a lot of noise when someone shows up.”

  With the two women following him, Bryan stalked around to the side of the house circling a corral confining two horses. “That means they parked some distance away so they wouldn’t be noticed.” He continued to survey the area surrounding the house, pointing to the forest that jutted up against the backyard. “What’s on the other side of those trees?”

  “There’s an old logging road,” Mackenzie said.

  Bryan picked up his pace. “Let’s look for your son through there.”

  Mackenzie trotted toward the forest. She ran in an erratic pattern, calling Ethan’s name. Sarah and Bryan moved slower. Desperate, Sarah searched the lower levels of the forest for a flash of orange or yellow.

  Mackenzie ran deeper into the forest shouting Ethan’s name. Her voice grew hoarse. She stopped when they were completely surrounded by trees and the house could no longer be seen. She lifted her head toward the forest canopy. “Ethan,” she whispered. A tear trailed down her cheek.

  Sarah placed her hand in Mackenzie’s. She closed her eyes. Silence descended like a shroud.

  Please, God, please.

  “Hey,” Bryan spoke in a soft hush.

  Sarah opened her eyes and followed the direction of Bryan’s pointing. From beneath thick evergreen boughs slanted close to the ground, two feet with one yellow and one orange sock were visible.

  Mackenzie gulped air. “Ethan.” She darted toward the tree and reached in through the branches, pulling out a blond child who pressed his face against her chest, not saying a word as Mackenzie laughed and cried. “Oh, thank You. Thank You, God.”

  After both mother and child calmed down, Bryan approached them. “Will he talk to us? He might know something about the men who took April.”

  Ethan grunted in protest and gripped the neck of his mother’s shirt. Mackenzie made a soothing noise and stroked the little boy’s head. “He might give you yes and no answers.”

  “Ethan, did you see the men who took your sister?”

  No response.

  Mackenzie repeated the question. Ethan nodded.

  “Did you follow them?”

  Again, Mackenzie had to repeat the question before Ethan responded in the affirmative.

  “Which way did they go?”

  With his face still pressed against his mother’s chest, Ethan pulled his arm away from his body and pointed through the forest.

  Bryan’s gaze cut through the trees as he nodded slowly. “So they did take the old logging road.” He turned to face Mackenzie. “We’re going to get your daughter back.” Bryan raced to the house. Several other police cars and a search-and-rescue unit with tracking dogs had arrived.

  Bryan explained where he thought Mason and his men had gone and pointed out Mackenzie as she emerged from the forest carrying Ethan. “I’m going to get the jump on this.” He looked over at Sarah. “You coming with me?”

  He jogged toward the car, not giving Sarah time to respond. She raced after him. Once inside the car, he explained his urgency. “It’ll take them twenty minutes to get this search organized and to get the dogs onto some kind of scent.” He shifted gears. “That’s twenty minutes we don’t have.”

  Mackenzie ran toward them holding a canvas tote. Sarah rolled down her window.

  “This is April’s baby bag. If...when you find her, she’ll be hungry and scared. She’ll need these things.”

  “Thank you.” Sarah draped her hand over the other woman’s. “We’re going to find her.”

  Mackenzie stepped away from the car.

  Bryan sped up the road until he came to a spur road that must be the logging road Mackenzie had referenced.

  “Why would they go this way? It’ll take them forever to get back into town,” Sarah said.

  “I doubt their plan is to go into town just yet. They don’t want to be caught. Mason’s got Nadia suitably frightened.”

  “You really think he will just give up the baby so he can have Nadia?”

  “Yes, I think April is a tool to him. But I have a feeling he won’t be satisfied with just having Nadia back as his girlfriend. He’s probably figured out we’ve been prepping her to testify. He’s knows I’m back on the case. I think if Nadia goes back to him, she’ll disappear...forever.”

  * * *

  Judging from the frightened look on Sarah’s face, Bryan feared he had said too much. He softened his tone. “Mason’s only objective in life is to survive and to keep on doing whatever benefits him.”

  Sarah shook her head in stunned disbelief. “Certainly, he doesn’t think he can stay in Discovery conducting business as usual.”

  “He’ll probably tie up loose ends, disappear and reinvent himself in another part of the world.” Bryan pounded the steering wheel as determination coursed through him. “We have to get this guy.”

  The car lumbered up the steep road and Bryan shifted down. He hoped his gamble would pay off. Trusting the testimony of a frightened four-year-old boy, who perceived the world differently than most, might not have come out of the police rulebook, but he had a gut feeling.

  They’d lost precious time. He had to find a way to make up for it. The car laboriously climbed the hill. Once they reached the peak, Bryan turned the engine off. “Let’s see if we can spot anything.”

  The mountain was a high point that provided a three-sixty-degree view of the surrounding area. The only higher spot was about two miles away as the crow flies, the mountaintop where the fire spotter tower stood. This part of the hill had very little vegetation. Thick forest occupied the lower elevations with barren areas that had been logged.

  Bryan pulled the binoculars out of his glove box. “If they came this way, they took that road down there.” He put the binoculars up to his eyes. The thick forest limited his view of the winding road. He turned in the opposite direction. Though the house wasn’t visible from this angle, he spied the police and search-and-rescue vehicles moving out from a central point.

  Sarah stared off in the distance at a plume of smoke rising up from the forest. Her hand fluttered to her mouth.

  “That’s a long ways away and it’s a small area,” he said.

  “They wouldn’t call off the search because of a fire, would they?” Anxiety laced through her words.

  “That fire is miles from where these guys have probably gone,” Bryan tried to assure her even as doubt crept in.

  The fear in her eyes intensified.

  Bryan studied the distant fire again. “Something that small will be contained quickly.”

  He examined the ant trails of dirt roads that crisscrossed th
rough the hills, disappearing in patches of forest and emerging on the other side.

  “There.” Sarah pointed to the adjoining hill. Metal reflected the sunlight. A blue vehicle made its way down the mountain. “It’s got to be them.”

  He assessed the direction the other police vehicles had gone. None of them headed the right way.

  A revelation sparked in his mind. “That day Mason’s men brought you out here, why did they take you all the way out here into the backcountry?”

  “They intended to kill me.” Sarah shuddered. “They probably thought no one would find the body out here.”

  “That’s probably why they didn’t kill you right away in town or me when they had me. The best way for Mason to stay clean is for the bodies never to be found.” That had to have been what happened to Eva.

  “Why are you being so morbid?”

  “I’m not. What I’m asking is did you get the impression that either of those men who took you knew this area? People usually don’t choose new and strange places like that for committing a crime.”

  Sarah seemed perplexed by the questions. “My eyes were covered for most of the journey.”

  He could tell by the tightness of her mouth and furled eyebrows that she really didn’t want to relive any part of that day. He spoke gently. “Try to remember what they said. It’s important.”

  She thought for a moment. “One of them did seem to know the area. He barked directions at the other man who was driving.”

  “So my bet is that same thug is with Mason now, guiding him through all these back roads so he’s not likely to get caught. They’re not going to take the obvious route. They want to avoid detection. And at least one of them knows where he’s going.”

  They got back in the car and went down the other side of the mountain, entering a stretch of road that had thick forest on either side. The light diminished by half. They came to a place where the road forked in two directions. Bryan gave his best guess which way to turn based on the direction the other vehicle had been traveling. The road narrowed and turned into a washboard.

  Though he kept his doubts to himself, he wondered if they had made the right choice. That vehicle they saw could have belonged to anyone.

  The forest thinned. A helicopter flew overhead.

  “Is that headed toward the fire we saw?”

  Bryan peered up through the windshield. “Yeah, it might be.”

  The whop-whop-whop-whop of helicopter blades faded. Bryan made slow progress on the precarious road. He traveled at less than fifteen miles an hour as they rounded a bend. A creek flowed in front of them...

  ...and a blue truck just like the one they’d seen at a distance sat motionless in the middle of the creek.

  * * *

  Bryan tapped his hands on the steering wheel. “Looks like they tried to ford the creek and got stuck.”

  Judging from the amount of mud on the vehicle, they’d put substantial effort into trying to get it out. Sarah leaned her head out the window, listening. Only the creaking of the trees and a distant caw of a bird pressed on her ears. “I don’t think they’re close.”

  “Let’s check it out, make sure the truck was really them.” Bryan pressed on the handle and quietly eased the door open.

  Sarah remained on high alert as she followed behind Bryan. The pounding of her feet on the dirt seemed exaggerated. The cool water swirled around her ankles as she stepped into the creek. The license plate was for Discovery’s county and the frame around the plate was from Crazy Ray’s, a tenuous connection. The tinted windows didn’t allow her to see anything inside. At the center of the creek, where the vehicle bogged down, the water rose up past her knees. Her shoes sank into the mud. Sarah opened the passenger-side door. A toddler-sized windbreaker lay on the seat.

  Bryan opened the driver’s-side door. Sarah pointed to the windbreaker and he nodded.

  “Check the registration,” Bryan whispered.

  She opened the glove compartment. The car was registered to a Richard Hart. She shrugged her shoulders, indicating that the information wasn’t helpful. They both closed the doors at the same time.

  Bryan met her at the front of the car. “I say we go up this road a ways. The windbreaker is enough for me to think it might be April.”

  They pushed through the muddy water and out onto the road. They’d gone only a hundred yards when the faint cry of a child reached their ears. Sarah’s heart ached for the little girl. Bryan pointed in the direction the sound had come from and made a motion indicating they should separate and surround the area.

  Sarah crept through the brush. The crying stopped. She heard men’s muffled voices and then the crying started up again. Her foot snapped a twig. She cringed, but there was no interruption in the men’s conversation. The voices grew louder, more distinct as she got closer. She crouched low and peered out from beneath the brush. There were two men, both of them armed with handguns. A rifle sat propped up against a rock. She recognized one of the men as Acne Scars, one of her kidnappers.

  April stood at the center of the clearing. No one held her, no one comforted her. Her voice had grown hoarse from crying. She swiped at her eyes and plumped down in the dirt. A man she recognized from Bryan’s files as Tyler Mason stood some distance away from the other men, talking on the phone. The conversation indicated that he was making arrangements for someone to come and get them. Mason hung up the phone and paced.

  April, a little wobbly on her feet, dumped down to a crawling position and veered away from the two men.

  “Get her,” Mason commanded, still holding the phone to his ear.

  One of the thugs grabbed April above the elbow and dragged her toward him. April shook her head several times and let out a sputtering sob.

  Sarah peered across the clearing, hoping to see Bryan. How were they going to rescue that little girl? They were outmanned and had only one gun.

  Mason dialed another telephone number. “Hello, is this Discovery Police Station? I have a message for you to pass on to Nadia Akulov. Tell her she has five hours to meet at the rendezvous point. She’ll know what I’m talking about. If she doesn’t show or she brings police with her, no one will ever see April again. Can you manage that?”

  Despite the midday heat, a chill coursed through Sarah’s bones. A hand touched her back. She jumped but managed to stifle a scream. Bryan took her hand and pulled her deeper into the woods. He leaned close and whispered in her ear. “Go to the car, get it turned around and wait.” He pressed the car keys into her hand. “It may be ten minutes, it may be an hour. Wait for me and be ready to go.”

  The plan seemed foolhardy at best, but she nodded. Right now, all they had was foolhardy. Sarah ran quietly but quickly back to the car. It took some maneuvering to get it turned around on the narrow road. Perspiring from her effort, she shifted the car into Park. Her pulse drummed in her ears as she watched the rearview mirror.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Bryan crept in close to the clearing. He watched. He waited. What he needed was an opportunity. Just a few seconds when all three of the men dropped their guard. None of them seemed to want to hold April, which was good. Mason strode away from the group, his back to the others as he talked on the phone to whoever was supposed to come and get them. This time his words were harsher, filled with anger and impatience.

  One of the men rose from the flat rock where he’d been sitting. “I got to go water a tree.”

  April sat on the ground. Her head bobbed as she nodded off. Now all he needed was for the other man to be distracted. He picked up a rock and threw it so it hit a tree some distance away. The second hired gun ran toward the sound, leaving April unattended.

  He wasn’t going to get a better chance than this. He scrambled into the clearing, grabbed April and put his hand over her mouth to keep her from making a sound before slipping bac
k into the thick brush.

  The disrupting cries from the men pressed in on him.

  Bryan clutched the child and slipped deeper into the forest. “I’m not going to hurt you, baby girl,” he said in the most soothing voice he could manage while he tried to figure out what to do. He couldn’t run right out to the road. They’d find him.

  He hid behind a rock, gathering April close to his chest. She gazed up at him. Soft lashes framed her dark brown eyes. She clutched his shirt at the collar. She studied him, but did not cry out. His heart melted over her vulnerability.

  One of the men ran by the rock. He could hear the other crashing through the trees, getting farther away. Mason screamed and cursed, every word filled with rage. Bryan peered out from behind the rock. No movement, no close sound. Now was the moment. Holding April tight, he sprinted from tree to tree to shield himself from view.

  He worked his way back toward the creek, while the men shouted all around him. April clung to his collar. He held her close. Finally, the creek and the car came into view. Moving in spurts, he darted from a tree to a rock.

  The men’s voices grew louder behind him. He’d be fully exposed once he crossed the creek. He ran through the water, frustrated with the way the mud slowed him. Sarah had left the passenger-side door open, but would he get there in time? A rifle shot sounded behind him. April pressed harder against him.

  Sarah started the car rolling even before he slid into the passenger seat. He leaned out, grabbed the door and slammed it shut as she sped up. April trembled against him.

  He touched her silky hair. “It’s all right.” He circled his arms around her. She tilted her head and gazed at him. “You didn’t make a peep, did you?”

  She stuck a finger in her mouth. The thugs got off several rounds before Sarah slipped behind a bend. Each shot made April flinch. She looked at him, eyes filled with trust.

  Sarah drove without slowing, checking behind her several times. Finally her grip on the wheel relaxed. She glanced over at Bryan and April. “She knows you won’t hurt her. That’s why she’s so quiet.”