Fire and Ice: A Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 3)

by Dustin Stevens

  Still, I remained silent, allowing him to continue. Now that an explanation was being given, I wasn’t about to cut it off.

  “We gave it an honest effort, but you know how things go. I had been back up here more than 15 years before we even spoke again, her calling out of the blue to tell me she was dying and that I had a teenager who would soon need a caretaker.”

  He stopped there, shifting his gaze from me to his lap, his head hanging as if the story had sapped most of his energy. I could see his chest rising and falling in short, rapid breaths, hear just the slightest of wheezes through the quiet living room.

  “My brother has Stage 4 carcinoma,” Ferris said, cutting off the story, his gaze locked on Mike. “When Yvonne found out, she offered to come up and help take care of him.”

  I nodded just slightly in understanding.

  “Everybody we’ve talked to speaks of her in glowing terms,” I offered. “You should be quite proud.”

  A single sound escaped his lips as he attempted to respond before falling into a fit of coughing, his entire body shaking from the exertion. A string of spittle hung from his lip as he hacked, his right hand rising to cover his mouth, the other attempting to brace himself in the chair.

  Beside me Ferris rose a few inches from his seat, walking hunched over toward the end table and taking up a handkerchief, passing it over to his brother.

  I watched the interaction for a moment before averting my gaze, focusing on the brick fireplace directly across from the couch, a four-by-five elk mounted on the wall above it.

  The coughing lasted three full minutes before he could breathe normally. As it subsided, Ferris returned to his seat, Mike resuming his position, wiping the bottom half of his face with the handkerchief.

  “I am proud,” he managed, his voice a fraction of what it was just a few moments before, “and damn worried. Some assholes have my daughter out there, doing God-knows-what to her.”

  It was obvious from his tone that he felt the same guilt I had sensed from Ferris earlier, both of them claiming responsibility for her being in Montana, for getting her home safe.

  Five years before I had lost a daughter, and a wife, both taken as a direct result of my job as a DEA agent. If there was a soul on the planet who understood a parent’s guilt, and the need not to have others dwell on it, it was me.

  “Is there anybody up here who would have reason to do something like this?” I asked, ignoring Ferris as he turned to stare at me, a flash of something behind his eyes. “Any encounters she might have had since arriving? Someone with a long standing grudge against you?”

  Another quick burst of coughing erupted, this one hidden behind the handkerchief, before Mike shook his head. “Like you said, everybody loves Yvonne. She’s been a peach since she got here.

  “As for me,” he continued, motioning toward his lap, “if anybody had any problems, they’d just come finish me off themselves. Not like I could do anything to stop them.”

  He paused, his eyes glassing over a bit, before adding, “Hell, they’d be doing me a favor at this point anyway.”

  It was clear that Ferris had no intention of conducting any kind of interview, content to let me do it.

  I was reasonably certain that if in his position, I would probably do the same. Family is meant to be a source of comfort, of support, not someone who steps in and starts poking holes into lives.

  “What about her race?” I asked, putting the question out there in a voice that surprised even me. “I know there are a lot of stories about folks in Montana...”

  “Supremacists, militias. Yeah, we’ve heard them too,” Mike said. “And believe me, I’ve thought about that, even worried about it before she arrived.”

  He stared at the floor, contemplating the notion, before raising his gaze to look at me.

  “I’m not saying those things – or at the very least, racial intolerance – don’t exist here. Hell, you’ve only got to look as far as the tribes nearby to see that they do.

  “I just honestly don’t believe that happened here. Not with Yvonne.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The small space heater had gone a little way to raising Yvonne’s core temperature, helping her to fend off the cold. The surge of adrenaline that passed through her system once the initial shock and accompanying fear wore off had done the rest, not yet bringing her to the point of sweating, but managing to pump enough blood through her system to stave off numbness.

  Once she had collected herself, rising from the rocking chair, the first thing she had to do was inventory the meager supplies that were laid out for her. Looking more like the scattered contents of an old medicine cabinet or first aid kit, what she had at her disposal was nothing more than a couple of bottles of rubbing alcohol, some gauze bandages, elastic tape, Vaseline, a nearly empty tube of Neosporin, and a small handful of individual packets of expired pain relievers, minus four Advil tablets that she had dry swallowed herself.

  The effects of the Advil managed to take the harsh edge off the pounding in her head. The overhead light in the room was still too strong to even glance at, but at least she could open her eyes without succumbing to piercing pain.

  In addition to the first aid supplies there were also things that would not do her or her newest patient any good, including Rolaids, throat lozenges, Nyquil, and even a couple of glycerin suppositories.

  Yvonne moved them to the side with her hand, placing them along the back of the table.

  Armed with the knowledge that she had precious little of even the most basic medical supplies, Yvonne turned her attention to the bed. Taking a deep breath, she allowed her shoulders to rise and fall, examining the man before her.

  Buried beneath a mound of old and faded blankets, it was impossible to get a read on his height or weight, the only thing visible his face. From what she could tell he was a middle-aged man of Caucasian descent, his skin tan, a patchy beard and mustache around his mouth.

  That was it.

  Since she had been in the room, he had made no sound, his body lying completely still, cocooned within the blankets. She herself had taken a direct shot to the cheek with the butt of a pistol, the blow knocking her unconscious for hours. Whatever had put this man down had presumably occurred well before they came for her and showed no signs of relinquishing its grip on him any time soon.

  The sound of metal slamming against metal sounded from the barn, drifting in through the opening above the door, reminding her of her deadline. She didn’t know what would happen in an hour when the man returned, but didn’t especially want to find out.

  He had hit her once with the butt of his gun. Something told her on the next visit he might be inclined to use the opposite end.

  Yvonne extended her hands toward the man, her fingertips making it almost to his chin before pulling back slightly. There they remained before again moving forward, taking the top cover and folding it down to his waist.

  Beneath the wool blanket was another one just like it, stains of an indeterminate origin spread across it. Not wanting to consider the source, Yvonne moved on, finding a third and then a fourth blanket encasing the man.

  As she gradually unwrapped her patient, any previous trepidation she had faded away, replaced with a growing agitation aimed at both the man before her and the situation in general. Disregarding the possibility of him waking, she stripped back the final few layers, ripping them away, leaving them piled on his thighs.

  The sight she found buried beneath the covers stopped her cold, her mouth gaping open, her eyes bulging.

  The man was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt that had previously been white, his torso and most of his upper arms stained with blood. The overwhelming odor of something potent, even more so than what she had smelled out in the barn, burned her nostrils, bringing tears to her eyes.

  “Jesus,” she whispered, staring down at the man, seeing the garment stuck to his skin in several places, the material still damp, indicating that the wounds were open.

&nb
sp; Releasing her grip on the blankets, she took up the hem of his shirt and lifted it away from his stomach, the shirt clinging to him in places before coming free. As she did so a second, stronger smell hit her, the familiar scent of blood and decay, of singed skin.

  “Chemical burns,” Yvonne whispered, peeling back the fabric and staring down at what she saw.

  Lesions dotted the man’s chest, ranging from an inch to more than three times that in diameter. Dark body hair had been burned away, the rest matted together by blood and fluids, stuck flat against his skin.

  Yvonne turned and again surveyed the supplies she’d been allotted, dismissing most of them immediately. If there was going to be any chance for her to help this man, to even begin treating the burns covering most of his body, the pain so great it had apparently shut down his nervous system, sent him into a coma for his own good, then she was going to need more than the meager pile on the table.

  Even if meant doing something she really, really didn’t want to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The clock on the dash of Ferris’s truck showed that it was a quarter past 3:00, the green glow shining brightly, almost mockingly. Time was passing, the number of things that could be happening to Yvonne almost infinite, all of them unthinkable.

  Compounding that feeling was the scene outside, the headlights illuminating snow that continued piling up, wiping away any hope of tracking her abductors, slowing our own progress to a painful degree.

  “Sorry about that,” Ferris said, flicking his gaze over to me. “Before Yvonne came here, a lot of his care was on me.”

  I hadn’t been exactly sure what the trip to Mike’s was meant to do, the visit seeming only to slow us down rather than aid the investigation in any way. My assumption was that it was out of deference to his older brother, but with that one sentence he managed to clear things up for me.

  He had gone to check on him, to make sure he was okay there unsupervised.

  “Where to next?” I asked, pushing right past the statement, having known enough men like him to know that the topic wasn’t one he would want to linger on.

  Ferris pulled in a deep breath, holding it several seconds before letting it out.

  “You know, I’ve been sheriff here for the better part of two decades. Seen a lot of burglary, auto theft, even a murder-suicide once, but this is my first kidnapping.”

  I nodded at the information, waiting for him to continue, eventually turning to glance his way as nothing more came out, before realizing what he was trying to say.

  He was asking for my input, seeking advice, tacitly admitting that he wasn't entirely certain how to proceed.

  In my time with the DEA I had covered only a couple of abduction cases, both instances involving key witnesses who had disappeared before they could be brought under protection. In both cases we did eventually find them, though the shape they were in precluded them from ever giving testimony, a clear message being sent by some angry cartel leader.

  Still, it was a start, a basis to know the general steps for handling this situation.

  “Makes sense,” I said, “especially in a place like Glasgow. You’ll always have the occasional assault or burglary or any number of petty crimes.

  “Kidnapping though, that takes an entirely different criminal.”

  Ferris offered a low grunt in agreement, the sound barely heard above the groan of the engine. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, aside from crimes of passion, stealing someone’s car or a television or even something off their front porch is nameless, faceless. They don’t have to look someone in the eye, don’t have to stare at the consequences of their actions.

  “They don’t see a human being, they see an object, something they want, nothing more.”

  Again Ferris grunted, letting me know he was following, allowing me to continue.

  “But to drive up and snatch a person?” I asked. “That means it’s either extremely personal, or not at all. No middle ground.”

  We came back up on the main drag of Glasgow, turning left without pausing at the stop sign, retracing our path from just a short time before. Already the bulk of our tracks were filled in, the edges rounded over with fresh snow.

  Snowflakes continued to fly at our headlights at an angle, illuminated for just a moment before disappearing, replaced by hundreds more just like them.

  Any hope we had of the snow stopping by morning appeared to be waning fast, the weather having no interest in aiding our investigation.

  “Either personal or not at all,” Ferris said, his tone letting me know that he wasn’t quite sure what I was getting at, though he was trying.

  “Right,” I said, picking up on the unspoken question. “Someone either knew, and wanted, Yvonne, or they wanted something in particular, and she just happened to fit the bill.”

  I could almost see the light bulb going off above Ferris’s head as it rocked back a few inches, parting his lips, processing the new information.

  “And since we’ve already heard that the likelihood of someone having any ill will toward her was low...”

  My eyebrows tracked a bit higher as I considered the point. “Could be the complete opposite. Maybe someone had an eye on the new girl in town, thought this was the only way to get her attention.”

  It was thin as hell, and extremely unlikely, but more than once I had made the mistake of jumping at conclusions. As the youngest member of my team, the guys around me had even turned it into a running joke my first year, always reigning me in, making sure I fit theories to facts instead of the other way around.

  At first I had bristled at the treatment, needing a couple of embarrassing situations to play out before seeing the error of my ways.

  “In a blizzard, though?” Ferris said, his face scrunched up slightly, bearing the disbelief that was apparent in his voice.

  “The other side,” I said, not bothering to respond to his question, letting him know that I was in agreement with his assessment, “is the non-personal.

  “Something happened, meaning maybe these people needed a doctor. They probably drove up, planning some sort of elaborate scheme for gaining entry, and found it was their lucky day.”

  Ferris’s head dipped so low, his forehead nearly kissed the steering wheel as he turned to glance at me.

  “She was standing right outside waiting for them, even stepped out into the snow to try and help.”

  I met his gaze, nodding once in agreement. “And there are few things in the world more recognizable than someone in a white coat and scrubs.”

  Ferris maintained his stance, hunched over the steering wheel, before thrusting himself back against the seat. Releasing his grip, he smashed his right hand down against the wheel, letting the sound echo through the truck for a moment before doing the same thing again and again.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

  I remained silent, keeping my eyes aimed forward. Long ago I had discovered that it was impossible to tell someone how to react in certain situations, even less so when family was involved.

  If anger, guilt, some unknown emotion that he had not yet let surface, was his natural response to things, then I was certainly in no position to tell him he was wrong.

  More than a full minute passed after the outburst, Ferris steaming, his breathing much louder, easy to hear over the rumble of the truck.

  “Who?” he finally whispered. “Who would be in need of a doctor, at that time of night, and be willing to go out into this to get one?”

  As he asked the question, he waved a hand toward the windshield at the storm going on around us.

  “And more importantly, who wouldn’t just call and ask for help?” I added. “Or just bring the sick or injured person into the hospital, since they were already there?”

  Again Ferris fell into silence, processing my questions, fitting them with what precious little we did know.

  “None of the townsfolk,” Ferris said. “If this was a local, you’
re right, they would have called the hospital or my office and asked for help.”

  “Mhm,” I agreed, “but you said it yourself, the oil rigs have brought a lot of new faces into town. That narrows it somewhat, still leaves a lot of possibilities to consider.”

  “Yeah,” Ferris sighed. “It also begs the question, what happened that they needed a doctor but couldn’t risk stepping inside the hospital?”

  He let the truck idle to a stop, the deep snow bringing us to a halt within seconds of his taking his foot off the gas. He left the big truck in the middle of the street and pulled his hands free from the wheel, clenching his fingers, a couple of the knuckles popping.

  “Thoughts?” he asked.

  “Just one,” I replied, glancing over to him before motioning to the far end of the street with my chin. “Where’s the most likely place for the kind of people were talking about to be during a storm like this?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There was no telling how long the sound had been going on before Cuddyer was made aware of it, his attention aimed down at the two pieces of copper piping he was working with, their ends coming together to form a right angle. Both were clamped in a bench vise, an acetylene torch in his hand, melding them into a solid corner piece.

  Not until he felt Jasper swat at his arm, jerking his attention up, almost sending the blue flame across his skin, did he know that anything was going on.

  “What?!” he snapped, his eyes flashing behind the clear plastic safety glasses he wore.

  He rarely raised his voice at Jasper, knowing his sensitivity and penchant for pouting, yet another of the costs for the sake of unshakeable loyalty.

  “Um, well,” Jasper stammered, shrinking back a few feet. No further words crossed his lips as he motioned toward the room in the corner.

  Raising the torch, Cuddyer turned off the gas feed at the base, extinguishing the flame. He held it a moment, continuing to glare at Jasper, before the reason for his intrusion became obvious.