Rescue at Cedar Lake

by Maggie K. Black

  The ironic thing was that now he was living the kind of life he’d only played at back then. Stopping evil and protecting people from danger was no longer just some unattainable dream. It was his job and his calling. But did Theresa even see who he’d become? Or did she still think he was some reckless boy running through the trees playing at being a hero?

  He set the radio down on the table, fished his useless cell phone out of his pocket and took a picture of the group photo.

  “Kenneth Brick was obviously using his last name as a nickname,” Theresa said. “But that doesn’t mean Howler and Castor are. One or both of them could be someone we know using a nickname to hide their identity.”

  He nodded. “Agreed.”

  “If Kenneth Brick is twenty-three, then he’d have been about fourteen around the time this picture was taken, right?” Theresa asked. “If we assume that Howler and Castor are in their twenties, too, and that one of them is in this picture, then we’re looking at anybody in the picture between the age of, say, eleven and twenty.”

  He scanned the picture. He spotted Mandy quickly. She was eleven back then and sitting cross-legged in the sun between her older brothers. There were ten people in the picture who’d be in their twenties now. Six he dismissed immediately. Theresa, Zoe, Josh and Alex himself could be struck off the list. So could Mandy’s twin brothers, Emmett and Kyle, not just because they were slightly too old, but because it was hard to imagine the owner of a successful car dealership or a local politician hiring somebody to ransack their parents’ cottage. But, still, he couldn’t discount the possibility one of them was Castor’s target.

  That left just four people.

  “Natalie Patterson, Corey Patterson, Tanner Mullock and Paul Wright,” he said.

  “Paul would be about twenty-seven now,” Theresa said. “I don’t know where he is, but I know he was always big into hunting and won the scavenger hunt with the Rhodes twins every year, until we finally took the trophy. All I know about Tanner Mullock is that he came up to the lake to stay with his grandparents a couple of summers because his parents were going through marriage problems. He’s probably in his midtwenties now. There wasn’t a woman on the crew, so Natalie’s out. Although we can’t dismiss the possibility she could be romantically linked to Castor or someone on his crew.”

  “Which leaves just Corey as the only one we knew who got in trouble with the law,” Alex said. As wonderful as theories were, they were getting nowhere. “What we need to do right now is focus on finding Zoe and Mandy, and for that I need a phone signal. Hopefully the police are on their way and we just haven’t crossed paths with them yet.”

  The CB buzzed again with that odd whine of a signal flickering in and out. He reached for it but Theresa got to it first.

  “Let me talk to the girl,” Theresa said. “You’re right, she’s probably nowhere near Cedar Lake. But I might be able to talk to her parents, who could to put a call through to the police to back up the last report, as well as calling Zoe and Daniel.”

  “Not a bad idea, but she’s just a kid playing around with a radio. Plus, she hung up on me.”

  “I’m used to talking to kids.” Theresa held it up to her mouth. Her fingers lightly brushed the dials bringing the signal in stronger. “Break, break. Calling Bee. Come in, Bee.”

  There was a hiss of static. Then a deep voice, with a hint of cruel laughter floated down the line.

  “Well, hello, princess.” It was Castor. “Isn’t this a nice surprise? You must be pretty pleased with yourself pulling an escape like that. How long do you think you’ll be able to hide from me?”

  Theresa’s shoulders straightened. Defiance gleamed in her eyes. “You’re a murderer and a thug. But you haven’t found that trunk you’re looking for yet, have you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be taunting us.”

  “Listen here,” Castor spluttered. “You’re nothing but a spoiled, entitled little snob who deserves what’s coming to her. But I’m going to find that trunk, and then I’m going to find you and kill you. Because I’ve found your friend Zoe Dean. After that car accident, I was the one who riddled the car with bullet holes, while she ran away like a coward.”

  What was he talking about? Alex’s brain swam. What accident? Why would Zoe be alone in the car without Mandy?

  “I found Zoe and dragged her back to the Rhodeses’ cottage screaming and crying for mercy!” Castor spat out the words with so much venom he was almost shouting. “I’ve got her here with me, right now, kneeling on the floor with a gun pointed to her head. So, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to come back here and start thinking really hard about where you might’ve seen that trunk, otherwise I’m going to kill her.”

  Anger burned like fire through Alex’s veins. “No, you listen to me! You’re not going to lay a hand on my sister. You’re going to let her go. Because I’m on my way over there—”

  But the words froze on his tongue as the CB went dead.

  FOUR

  Static hissed through the CB radio. A cry of frustration left Alex’s lungs that was so strong and filled with pain it was almost primal. He grabbed the radio from Theresa’s hand.

  “Hello? Hello?” There was no one there. Castor was gone. He was going to kill Zoe. Alex couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’ve got to go.” He grabbed his snowmobile helmet and turned the radio’s volume down, until the whining rise and fall of the static wasn’t much more than a whisper. “I’ve got no choice. I’m going to go back to the Rhodeses’ cottage and confront Castor. Hopefully, Zoe will still be alive when I get there.” He couldn’t let himself think otherwise. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’ll come up with something on the way. I can’t let those monsters hurt my sister.”

  “Alex, stop—”

  “No, you stop. We can’t afford to just sit around and talk about this right now. My sister is in danger. Some killer has her, and he’s going to hurt her if I don’t get there and stop him.”

  “But you don’t understand. He didn’t hang up on you—”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Just stop for a moment and let me explain—”

  “What would’ve happened to you, an hour ago, if I’d stopped instead of racing across the ice to rescue you? Or when your sailboat capsized when we were teenagers if I hadn’t jumped in to save you?” He felt her hand brush his arm. But he pulled away and started down the narrow front hallway. “Hide. Find a safe space in here somewhere, make yourself as small as you can, and don’t come out again until I come for you, okay? You should be safe here. There’s no reason to believe they’d come back here. Just stay hidden and don’t come out.”

  “Alex!” Her voice rose. “You’re not listening.”

  “I don’t have time to stop and talk.” He strode toward the door. He heard her feet behind him. Then suddenly she hugged him from behind, hard, with arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, just like she had back when they cared about each other and he’d been about to run off somewhere without remembering to say goodbye. “Theresa, don’t. You know I can just shrug you off and keep going.”

  “I know.” Her breath came hard and fast in his ear. “But the Alex I knew never would.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” he said. “Don’t make me choose between standing here talking to you and going to save my sister.”

  “I don’t think he has Zoe. I’m almost positive he doesn’t.” Her arms slid off his body. “Also he didn’t hang up on us. I hung up on him.”

  “You did what?” He turned toward her. “That wasn’t your call to make!”

  Frustration, confusion, anger and fear all battled inside him like rising bubbles in a boiling pot and for a moment his voice could barely rise above a whisper. She stepped back. And for a moment, the depth of pain and fear echoing in her eyes, mirroring his own feelings right back at him,
seemed to be the only thing that kept him grounded. “How could you do that to me?”

  “He was lying to us.” Theresa leaned against the wall and dropped down to sit, as if her legs no longer had the strength to hold her. “He doesn’t have Zoe. He just doesn’t.”

  He stood there for a moment, looking down at her, not even knowing what to feel.

  Theresa folded her legs beneath her and sat cross-legged, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “I didn’t trust what he was saying, so I just changed the channel for a second, to make it look like we’d lost the signal, so he wouldn’t realize we were stalling for time. I thought it would throw him off and grab us a quick few seconds to talk. You were running hot. I never expected he’d just give up and disappear altogether.” Her eyes were locked on a patch of floor by her feet. “He’s lying through his teeth. If you leave here and go back to Mandy’s family cottage, you won’t find Zoe there. Trust me. It’s a trap.”

  Thoughts and feelings were still flying through his mind so rapidly he couldn’t even figure out how to put any of them into words. His legs practically burned with the drive to bolt out the door to the snowmobile. But Zoe trusted Theresa’s impressions of people. So did Daniel and Josh. And a long time ago, so did he. He set his helmet down on the floor and sat down opposite her. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “There are a dozen little things you can pick up about how people’s voices change when they’re not telling the truth. It was partly the inflection in his voice and partly the words he said. He didn’t sound confident. He didn’t sound like a man who knew he had the advantage, let alone something of major value to bargain with. He sounded like a panicked fool who was getting desperate.”

  Zoe had always said it was like Theresa had a built-in lie detector, which was part of what’d made her such a valuable ally and asset. Still, she’d just cut off a criminal who claimed he was going to kill Alex’s sister.

  “I’m listening. Convince me.”

  “He didn’t once mention Mandy.” She looked up at him. “I can’t imagine Zoe leaving her alone, can you? He made it sound like Zoe had run away from some car crash, like a coward, and that he had to drag her back, begging and crying. Does any of that sound anything like the Zoe you know?”

  “No. No it doesn’t.” He leaned his head back against the wall. If anything, it sounded like the exact opposite of Zoe. “But just because he was lying about that doesn’t mean he was lying about everything. And you were still wrong to cut him off like that.”

  “Did you even hear what you were saying to him? You were emotional. You were seconds away from tipping them off to exactly how far away we were.”

  Heat rose to the back of his neck. Because while he was certain that wasn’t true, Theresa had clearly thought it was. “Just how foolish do you think I am?”

  “I never said I thought you were foolish.” She sounded a lot calmer than he felt. “I thought you were impulsive. You were running hot. You still are. Barely an hour ago, you risked your life and leaped onto a snowmobile with no weapons, no backup and no plan and just dashed across the frozen lake—”

  “To save your life!” His voice rose.

  “You risked your life!” Her voice rose to match his.

  “Yeah! Because you really mattered to me! I couldn’t stand the idea of you getting hurt!” His voice filled in the narrow hallway and bounced back to his ears. Theresa gasped and, as he watched, something softened behind her eyes. For the first time in a long time, he felt the impulse to just reach out and hold her hand. His voice dropped. “So, yeah, I was willing to risk my life for you. Twice. Just like I’d risk it now to save my sister.”

  It was as if the hallway were shrinking and the walls pushing them closer toward each other. Static buzzed quietly from the walkie-talkie. He could hear the sound of his own heart pounding.

  “Well, people care about you, too, and don’t want you dying for them.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. Her eyes met his for a long moment. Then she looked away. “Anyway, like I said, I had no idea he was just going to disappear like that. I thought they’d hear static long enough for us to talk but not long enough to get suspicious. Then we could come back to them with something more planned and measured.”

  He could understand that. She’d made a call based on what she thought was the right thing to do and it just hadn’t worked out. But still, the fact she’d done it at all, because she thought they were apparently some kind of team, and that he was about to get them into danger, made it even harder to swallow. As far as he was concerned the dynamic was pretty simple. She was in trouble. He was saving her. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use her advice.

  “Okay, then, in your professional opinion, what do you think it means that Castor hung up?” he asked.

  She paused for a very long moment. Then she said, “Castor’s being impulsive. He’s being reckless and seems to have no real plan in mind. He took the risk of making up a big lie on the spot, counting on the fact we still didn’t know where Zoe and Mandy were. When that didn’t work, he stopped trying instead of doubling down. I definitely think that if he’d really had Zoe and wanted to barter for her life, he’d have tried contacting us again by now, with an even bigger threat. He’d have almost definitely put her voice on the line to punish you and prove he wasn’t lying. He wouldn’t have just given up. Then again, randomly shooting up the Rhodeses’ cottage makes no sense, either. We’re dealing with somebody desperate. Somebody who doesn’t seem to be thinking consistently. Not a criminal mastermind.”

  Not that it made them any safer.

  “He was unbelievably rude to you.” Alex shook his head. “I figured he was just making up nasty things to taunt you. But you think he was trying to lure us out because it’s possible he thinks you know something about the trunk?”

  “If so, I have no idea what it would be,” she said. “If I did know anything about the trunk, it was so long ago I’ve forgotten.”

  “Do you honestly believe there’s some valuable treasure in a trunk, hidden somewhere in a cottage at Cedar Lake?”

  “No,” she said. “Not really. But I’m not sure if it even matters. All that matters is that Castor and Howler think there is and are willing to kill for it.”

  He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. “What could they possibly think is in some old trunk that’s worth killing for?” he asked.

  “People kill for all sorts of reasons—desperation, fear, love, jealousy, hate.” Even without looking at her, he could tell she was shrugging. “Some people would kill for a hundred dollars. Some people wouldn’t kill for a million.”

  He closed his eyes and prayed for wisdom. What were his options? He could leave Theresa here and go back to the Rhodeses’ cottage. But if Theresa was right, he was walking into a trap for no good reason, all the while leaving her here alone, unprotected. He could head back to the Rhodeses’ and take Theresa with him, which could mean leading them both into a trap.

  Help me, Lord. I thought I had the skills and training for this. But I never counted on the woman I used to care about being in the mix.

  “Okay, I’ve made a decision,” he said. “We’re going to keep going around the lake to my cottage. Once we’re there, we’ll grab my truck and head out of here. I’ll leave you somewhere safe, like a coffee shop or motel, and then head back to find Zoe and Mandy. But I’m still hoping, despite our very remote location and the horrible weather, we will still manage to run into the police and they’ll take care of you from there.”

  Everything would be easier once he no longer had Theresa to worry about. What he did after that still remained to be seen.

  He stood up then reached down for Theresa’s hand. She unfolded slowly.

  “One more thing.” Her nose wrinkled. She took his hand and let him help her up. “That lie Castor told about there being a ca
r accident was oddly specific. I don’t know for sure, but part of me thinks he was talking about it as if it was a real event that he thought we already knew had happened.”

  Something twisted painfully in his chest. “Which means?”

  Fear flickered in her eyes. “Which I think means we should be prepared for the possibility Zoe, or somebody else, was in a car accident.”

  * * *

  They closed the door to the Pattersons’ cottage behind them as best they could, then stood for a moment under the limited shelter of the awning and listened.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m confident that Zoe would’ve seen how bad the weather is and just stayed in town,” Theresa said, sliding her helmet over her head. “She wouldn’t have had any reason to worry that I would be in danger.”

  His gloved hand touched hers briefly. “I hope so.”

  The sky hung low and pale gray above them as they drove. The snow had stopped falling, which he knew was just the lull before the storm. At least another inch and a half of snow had fallen since he’d left the Rhodeses’ cottage and if the weather forecast was right, at least ten times that was going to fall before the day was through. He could feel Theresa’s arms around his waist. She shivered against him, and he almost smiled. She’d never liked the winter as much as he did. Some of the other kids at the lake had teased her about that, too, and called her thin-skinned. Looking back, it was amazing how much teasing she’d taken, all for being beautiful and having a few nice things. But from the perspective of a love-struck young man, it was as if she’d been so full of inner light that she came alive when the rays of sunshine soaked into her skin.

  Guilt about her family situation stirred something inside him. Had she told him? Had she tried to tell him and he hadn’t listened? They’d both been so young. Maybe they’d had no business making that kind of commitment. When he’d seen that dazzling ring in the jewelry store window, he’d actually gone, gotten a credit card and maxed it out to pay for the most expensive ring he could find, only to later have her father gently point out to him privately that that had been an incredibly unwise first step in preparing to be married.