The Rivals

by Joan Johnston

  “Do you know which deputy is up there?” Clay asked.

  “The dispatcher said she sent Sarah up there to meet the park ranger who answered the original call and retrieve Kate’s backpack,” Libby said.

  “You ready?” Clay asked, as he stepped into his skis.

  “Yeah,” Libby said.

  They skied west across the flats in the direction of the mountains until they reached a hillside, an old glacial moraine, then angled south into the Beaver Creek drainage. The sun was hot on Libby’s shoulders, the air brisk enough to make her breath fog, as they followed the hillside above the creek until it gradually turned back toward the west. After a mile and a half they crossed Beaver Creek and headed into an open meadow.

  As they crossed the meadow, which led up the mountain, Libby glanced at Clay, whose face looked grim. She wondered what he was thinking. She didn’t ask, because she didn’t want to hear her own fears confirmed. When they reached the beginning of the thick timber, he stopped abruptly.

  “Why are we stopping?” Libby asked.

  “You realize the detective is probably already on her way back down the mountain with Kate’s backpack,” he said. “It’s crazy for us to be skiing 25 Short in these conditions.”

  Libby looked around her. The sky was clear, as blue as she’d ever seen it. A breeze played at her hair, but it was rare when the wind didn’t blow in Wyoming. Clay was right, of course. Disaster could be a short step away. The snow beneath the bends on the mountain could fracture and take them down the mountain with it. But it could just as easily remain right where it was.

  “You can go back if you want.” She squared her shoulders and focused her gaze on the mountain above them. “My baby might be up there somewhere. If she is, I intend to find her.”

  Clay was having trouble catching his breath, he was so scared. The danger of avalanche on 25 Short—lwhich had gotten its name because the ridgeline above the slopes was 25 feet short of 10,000 feet—was real. But he knew his fear was way out of proportion to where they were on the mountain. The real danger occurred farther up, in the ravines south and north of a series of benches in the open slopes between the thick timber.

  Before the avalanche that had tumbled both him and Drew down one of the ravines on 25 Short nearly a hundred feet, and then buried Drew alive, he’d loved out-of-bounds skiing and been as much a daredevil as anyone on the slopes. After the incident, he’d gotten right back on skis and done some of the riskier runs down the Tetons at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

  But something had happened to him when he left the groomed ski trails for the first time after Drew had been buried alive and headed into the back country by himself. He’d never told anyone, not even Drew, that he’d gotten so scared that his body had become paralyzed. He’d stood frozen on the trail, unable to go forward or backward, certain that the snow around him was moving, sliding, and that any moment he would be buried and suffocate as Drew almost had.

  He’d stood there trembling, his knees threatening to buckle. He’d struggled to draw breath, and gasped because there didn’t seem to be any air. He could remember the world spinning and then everything going black.

  When he’d awakened and realized where he was, he’d been grateful there wasn’t anyone around to witness his humiliation. Then he’d looked up at the glistening white mountain above him and distinctly heard the sound of snow fracturing and felt the earth trembling beneath him. His heart had started to pound. And he’d gasped for air that, once again, wasn’t there.

  When he’d woken up the second time—and the snow was still right there on the mountain where it had been the first time—he’d realized that, once again, he’d fantasized the danger. He’d given himself a stern lecture about how ridiculous his fears were. He wasn’t even in a high-risk avalanche zone. But it had taken him a long time to convince himself that moving an inch in any direction was not going to start an avalanche of snow that would bury him.

  He’d managed, somehow, to get back onto his feet. He’d turned himself around and skied, very slowly and carefully, back down the mountain.

  Clay hadn’t told anyone about the incident, not even Drew, who had more reason than he did to be frightened of skiing out-of-bounds. Nor had he repeated the experience. He’d simply found reasons why he couldn’t go skiing whenever Drew or Kate headed out-of-bounds.

  Right now, his legs were still responding when he demanded they move forward another step. But his breathing had become labored, and his heart felt like it might burst, it was beating so hard with terror.

  Above them lay thick timber, fir and pine and aspen, and beyond that the series of benches and open slopes through which they would have to climb, where the danger of avalanche was real. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep his feeling of panic under control. In another moment, he was going to have to tell Libby the truth.

  “Someone’s coming,” Libby said.

  Clay looked up and saw Sarah Barndollar skiing toward them. “It’s the detective.”

  Clay caught Libby’s arm to keep her from skiing off to meet Sarah halfway. “No sense skiing up to meet her when you’re just going to have to turn around and ski back down.”

  A few minutes later, Detective Barndollar reached them.

  “You didn’t have to come out here,” she said.

  “Yes, I did,” Libby replied. “Do you have Kate’s backpack?”

  Sarah nodded. “I had no choice but to retrieve it. I marked the spot where it was found, but a small avalanche uncovered it, and I was afraid another avalanche was going to bury it before I could get anyone else up there. The park ranger’s taking one last look around.”

  Clay exchanged a glance with Libby, then asked, “Could you tell if Kate was actually up there?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No other gear was uncovered. I had the dispatcher contact Teton County Search and Rescue to canvass the area, but conditions at the top of the mountain are hairy.”

  “But if she’s up there—” Libby began.

  Sarah fixed her gaze on Libby and said, “It’s too dangerous to let civilians up there right now. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t cut it,” Clay said. “If there’s any chance my daughter—”

  The words were out of Clay’s mouth before he could stop them. He glanced at the detective and noticed she didn’t seem particularly surprised by his revelation.

  “You guessed,” he said.

  “I considered it a possibility,” she admitted.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that information to yourself,” Clay said.

  “I will as long as I can.” Sarah looked from Clay to Libby and back again as she said, “I don’t know if your daughter was up there skiing and got caught in an avalanche, or whether someone buried her backpack up there to hide it and an avalanche uncovered it. The last time your daughter was seen, it was late in the day. It seems unlikely she would have come here to snowboard after that. But it’s not impossible she was here—”

  “And got caught in an avalanche,” Clay finished for her.

  The detective nodded. “I’ve already contacted Teton County Search and Rescue, but based on the conditions when I was up there, I can tell you they aren’t going to be able to look for her until that crest of snow breaks loose.”

  Clay realized the problem. “And that might bury her even deeper.”

  Sarah nodded.

  Clay realized Detective Barndollar hadn’t pointed out the obvious. If Kate had been buried for the entire time she’d been missing, it was unlikely she was still alive. Most avalanche victims suffocated within a few minutes. He grasped Libby’s hand like a lifeline, staring up at the mountain that had almost taken Drew’s life, wondering if it had claimed his daughter.

  “I’m going up there,” Libby said, yanking her hand free.

  Clay grabbed for her arm and missed, but Detective Barndollar was there to block Libby’s way.

  “I can’t let you do that,” Sarah said.

  “You can’t s
top me!” Libby said.

  “I can and I will,” she replied in a calm voice.

  “Libby, you can’t—” Clay began.

  Libby whirled on him and said, “You don’t have to come!”

  “You heard what the detective said,” he shot back. “The whole mountain’s about to come down. What good will it do Kate if you end up suffocating under a ton of snow?”

  “Mr. Blackthorne is right,” Sarah said.

  Clay watched Libby’s shoulders slump and realized she’d given in to reason. He turned to the detective and said, “Is there anything in Kate’s backpack that indicates where she might have gone or where she might be now?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to look inside yet,” she said. “I suppose it’s safe enough here if you want to check it out.” She slipped the backpack off her back and handed it to Clay.

  Clay had seen too many cop shows not to wonder why she wasn’t “preserving the evidence”—the assumption being that there might be some sort of hair or fiber adhering to the backpack, or fingerprints on some item inside the backpack, that could be used to prosecute whoever might have abducted Kate.

  But it was obvious why Sarah had picked up the backpack and run with it, and even more obvious why it made sense to look as soon as possible to see if there was some clue inside the backpack that might lead them to Kate’s whereabouts.

  Clay unzipped the backpack and held it open wide enough for the three of them to look inside. The first thing he saw was Kate’s gloves and hat. Which was when he realized she hadn’t been snowboarding or skiing or anything else on that mountain. Otherwise, she would have been wearing them.

  “Oh, no,” Libby whispered.

  Clay carefully pulled the tasseled wool cap and fleece gloves from the pack and handed them to Libby to hold. She pressed them against her face, and he heard her inhale. He wondered if she could smell Kate on the clothing, realized she probably could, and envied her that closeness to their daughter.

  He tipped the backpack, saw a spiral notebook, a pen and a mechanical pencil and a folded up piece of paper. He reached in for the paper and pulled it out. He handed the backpack to the detective to hold as he opened the paper and read it.

  “It’s a printout of the e-mail instructing Kate to come home,” he said. “She’s written her flight information on the bottom of it.”

  “We’re checking with the server to see who has this e-mail account,” the detective said. “But if whoever sent this wanted to remain anonymous and hid his tracks, it’ll take time to hunt him down.”

  “And every minute counts now,” Clay said, refolding the paper.

  Sarah Barndollar nodded. “The first twenty-four hours a child is missing are crucial.”

  And they were almost gone, Clay realized. He pulled the spiral notebook from the backpack and opened it, expecting to find notes from one of Kate’s classes.

  “It’s a journal,” he blurted.

  “Let me see!” Libby said, leaning over his shoulder.

  He flipped through it, hoping that something would leap out at him.

  “You’re going too fast,” Libby protested.

  Each entry was marked with the date and time. He turned to the end of the book to see what Kate’s last entry had been. He could hear Libby reading it aloud as he read it more quickly in his head.

  I wish Dad would have taken my call.

  I don’t know why I thought he would.

  He hasn’t been there for me in the past.

  Why should I expect him to be there when

  I need him now?

  Clay felt his stomach clench as he imagined Kate trying to reach him—and failing.

  “Anything jump out at you?” the detective said.

  “No,” Clay said.

  “We can examine everything more closely once we get off this mountain,” she said. “Maybe there’s something in your daughter’s journal that will give us a clue to what’s going on here.”

  “What do you think is going on?” Clay asked, meeting the detective’s eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “But I’m every bit as determined as you are to find out.”

  They heard a deep rumble and felt the ground shaking beneath them.

  “Avalanche!” Clay said, staring at the mountain in the distance. He could see the powdery snow rise above the tree line in the distance. His heart was pounding and he felt his lungs constrict. He waited to take a breath of air, afraid there wouldn’t be any. At last he gasped, and his lungs filled.

  Both Libby and the detective were focused in the direction of the slide, and he managed to get himself under control before they turned around.

  “Please, God,” Libby murmured. “Don’t let her be on that mountain. Don’t let her be buried under all that snow.”

  Clay put a supporting arm around Libby’s shoulder and said, “She isn’t there, Libby.”

  Libby pulled away and said, “How do you know that? You can’t know that!”

  “Use logic,” he said. “We know she wasn’t snowboarding or skiing there. Otherwise, she’d have been wearing her hat and gloves. Agreed?”

  Libby nodded reluctantly.

  “I think the backpack was put there to lead us away from where she really is,” Clay said, as he pushed off and began skiing back toward the parking lot.

  “Why do you say that?” Sarah asked, following behind him.

  “Because this mountain is where the other girl was found,” Clay said. “The person who took Kate—”

  “We don’t know she was taken by someone,” Libby interrupted.

  “If Kate weren’t being forcibly detained, she’d be home,” Clay said implacably.

  “Unless she ran away,” Detective Barndollar said.

  “Runaways don’t usually run toward home,” Clay pointed out. “That note Kate received at school makes me believe someone wanted her here so she could be abducted. Whoever took Kate wants us to believe her disappearance is related to what happened to that other girl, so they planted that backpack near where the other girl was found. What if there’s some other force at work here?”

  “Why would you think something like that?” Libby asked.

  Clay feared that someone had found out Kate was his daughter and intended to use that fact to blackmail him, knowing his eventual aspirations for the presidency. But if that was so, he didn’t understand why no one had contacted him to make a ransom demand.

  Then he remembered the appearance of Niles Taylor at Bubba’s, and the invitation to the private party that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Was he going to be approached in person? Was he going to be asked for something other than money in exchange for his daughter’s life? His office was investigating an oil consortium Niles had set up. Was there a connection between his investigation and Kate’s disappearance?

  Clay recalled that Taylor had mentioned visiting King Grayhawk. Did Libby’s father—who hated Clay—have something to do with his granddaughter’s disappearance? That might have sounded too diabolical to be true, if Clay didn’t have his own experience with the man to convince him how nefarious Kate’s grandfather could be.

  “Clay?” Libby said.

  Clay realized he’d been caught up in his thoughts and had never explained why he believed Kate hadn’t been kidnapped at random by some serial murderer. He didn’t want to voice his suspicions about Niles Taylor or King Grayhawk without thinking them through first, so he said, “It’s just a gut feeling.”

  But he made up his mind to attend the political party on Bear Island. Maybe someone would approach him to deal for Kate’s life in exchange for some political favor. He was in a position to launch an investigation that could cost Niles’s oil consortium billions of dollars—or exempt them from scrutiny. Lives had been sacrificed for less. He didn’t intend to let Kate become a victim of corporate greed.

  8

  Sarah followed Clay and Libby back to the parking lot, then back to Jackson and the county government building on South King Street, whe
re they took a more thorough look through Kate Grayhawk’s backpack.

  The second search, conducted in Sarah’s small office, revealed a condom in the small zippered pouch—which caused both parents to take a long look at each other—half a Snickers candy bar, a hundred dollars in twenties, fifty-seven cents in change and a VISA credit card.

  Sarah saw Clay and Libby exchange another anxious look when they realized what the presence of the cash and the credit card in their daughter’s backpack might mean. The bag hadn’t been stolen, or the money would have been gone. And it was unlikely Kate would have taken off on her own without her cash and credit card.

  Their daughter was either buried under the snow on 25 Short, in which case she might not be found until spring, or she’d been abducted by the stranger she’d been seen with at the Mangy Moose and the backpack discarded, or some other option that was equally frightening.

  “What happens now?” Clay asked.

  “Teton County Search and Rescue will head out to 25 Short to see if they can find your daughter—or any more evidence that she was there,” Sarah said.

  “What else are you doing to find Kate?” Clay said.

  “What else did you have in mind?” Sarah asked.

  “What about a nationwide Amber Alert?” Clay asked.

  “We sent a BOL—be on the lookout—around the state last night. We can see about getting Kate’s picture on the TV stations in Colorado and Utah that air in this region. And I have the local police in Charlottesville questioning Kate’s roommate and friends. I promise you we’re doing everything we can to find your daughter, Mr. Blackthorne.”

  “I have a private investigator asking questions in Charlottesville as well,” Clay said. “It’s not enough.”

  “I’m open to any suggestions you might have,” Sarah said. She knew the despair Clay and Libby must feel, because she’d felt it herself when her husband disappeared, especially since Tom’s disappearance had been a nightmare from her childhood repeating itself.

  When Sarah was fourteen, her sixteen-year-old sister Paige had disappeared from a party and never been seen again.