Truth was, he’d had no clue what he was going to do with his life back then. Now, here he was, all these years later, just three months into the official launch of Ash Private Security, finally starting the career he felt like he’d been created for.
The cottage road was uneven and turned sharply as it dipped and curled around Cedar Lake. They crested a hill and a fork in the road spread out beneath them. To his right the road continued around the mouth of the lake, passing the cottage that once belonged to Theresa’s family on the route back to his family’s place, where he’d parked the truck.
Straight ahead lay the road away from the lake leading to the highway. His mind spun quickly. Mandy’s brother Emmett had recently bought a dilapidated house on an offshoot of the lake, near the highway. Alex and Zoe had agreed that if disaster struck they’d meet there. It didn’t have power and wasn’t the kind of place a person could comfortably camp out for long. But he could drop Theresa off there in safety and then continue up the highway until he got a cell phone signal. He wouldn’t be leaving her for long and he would definitely be more likely to get a signal faster that way. He might even be able to flag somebody down to help.
He gritted his teeth, made a judgment call and drove straight. He could feel Theresa tapping him on the shoulder, no doubt wanting to ask him what they were doing. He didn’t slow. They’d done a whole lot of talking back at the Pattersons’ and now it was time to just make a decision and go with it. The truck was safer. But just staying on the snowmobile and not going back for it would be faster. Despite Theresa’s reassurances, Castor’s cruel words still twisted in the back of his mind. Zoe was his sister and his colleague. Mandy was their client. Theresa was an unfortunate casualty of all this. The sooner he got her out of danger and found somewhere safe to leave her, the quicker he’d be able to find them.
The road grew narrower, cutting between a steep incline leading down to the lake on one side and forest rising on the other. Winding turns sent their bodies rising up off the seat and back down hard again. He knew this road like he knew his skin. Just twenty more minutes and Cedar Lake would be behind them. He breached another hill, already mentally preparing for the next turn, where he knew the road took a sharp, steep turn to the left.
The hairpin turn loomed. His heart stopped. A mess of desperately swerving tire tracks and broken branches covered the road ahead of them. A vehicle of some sort had careened down the hill ahead, lost control and failed to make the turn. Theresa squeezed his shoulder hard. His eyes scanned the broken trees on the right, looking down the steep drop to the lake, hoping with each breath to find some evidence to counter the picture that was forming.
But between the devastation and the tire tracks, the story was clear. A vehicle had slid off this road, crashed through the trees and plummeted down the hill toward the frozen water.
* * *
The snowmobile slid to a stop. Before Theresa could react, Alex leaped off and pelted down the road toward the broken trees. She pulled her helmet off and ran after him. Was it Zoe’s car that had left the road and split the trees? Frozen tears rose to her eyes as prayers she could barely find words for swirled through her heart like scattered snowflakes. Castor had been telling the truth about there having been a car accident. The fact she’d suspected that did nothing to temper the shock of seeing the violent devastation the crash had caused.
If he’d been telling the truth about Zoe, she’d never forgive herself.
Lord, please have mercy on the victims of this crash. I had no idea it could be something this bad. Please, may Zoe and Mandy still be safe and alive.
Alex reached the spot where the tire tracks disappeared. He scrambled over the side of the road and started climbing down the steep, slippery incline through the trees. Through the bracken and snow she could barely see the front wheels of an overturned vehicle. The car had completely flipped.
“Stay back.” Alex raised a gloved hand in her direction. “It’s really not safe.”
She stopped, her boots at the edge of the road, watching as he half climbed and half slid his way toward the car. The ground below was an obstacle course of snow-covered shapes, strewn with broken glass and car debris. He scrambled over a rock and disappeared from view. Her hand grabbed onto a pine tree. She’d been called to traffic accidents before. She could handle this. She braced herself and eyed the ground, and took a sideways step. “I’m coming down. I can help.”
“No, please don’t!” Alex’s face appeared between the trees. “Stay on the road. It’s incredibly slippery and dangerous. It’s almost a straight drop below me. I’ll holler if I find anyone who needs help. But it’s not Zoe’s car.”
Relief filled her lungs with a deep gasp of icy air. Alex carefully made his way around a tree that seemed to be growing almost horizontally from the hill below her. He disappeared from sight again.
“The car is sort of dangling partway down the hill.” Alex’s voice wafted up from below her. “It seems to be wedged upside down between two trees and a giant rock. But the ground’s so steep down here I can barely stand. I’m afraid if I’m not careful, I’ll send it rolling down the hill into the lake. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t feel like crashing through the ice today.”
He was trying to make a joke. He did that when he was stressed. She didn’t much feel like smiling.
“And you’re sure it’s not Zoe’s car?” she asked.
“One hundred percent,” he said. “Trust me. I have no idea whose car this is. But even upside down I can tell it’s a zippy little red sports car without snow tires. They didn’t have a hope of navigating safely in this kind of weather.” His voice disappeared again. Then she heard an odd, muffled grunt, like he’d barely managed to stop himself from shouting out in surprise. Then he was back. “Just give me a minute, okay? I need to focus and that means we can’t keep yapping.”
She stepped back from the ledge. That was the closest he’d even come to being sharp with her. When they’d been younger, he’d been so laid-back about everything it had driven her crazy. He’d floated through life like a kite on the wind. While for her, life had always felt more like digging deep, like a shovel in the dirt—even before her parents’ financial troubles. But now there was something different in Alex’s tone. In fact, there had been ever since he’d challenged Brick. Now his voice sounded more as if he’d given up coasting for blasting charges through the rock.
Alex seemed harder than he used to be, both inside and out. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.
She waited a long moment, listening to the trees sway and the muffled sounds of Alex struggling to do something far below where she couldn’t see him. Then she gave up, turned and started walking, moving to keep warm. She climbed up the steep slanting road. Maybe if she got high enough she’d get a better view of what Alex was looking at. Her footsteps traced the tire tracks where the car had swerved down the road, even as the lightly blowing snow slowly wiped them away.
She’d lost track of how many times she’d asked God to make Alex a more responsible and serious man. Now she didn’t know what to pray. Maybe he was no longer the irresponsible young man she’d once loved. But the mutually supportive relationship that her youthful heart had longed for seemed as far away as ever.
The road grew steeper under her feet. Tire tracks wove in wild curves across the road. She stared down at the muffled patterns of treads on white snow and it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.
There was a second set of tire tracks ahead on the hill.
She ran toward them. There were two sets of tracks. Two vehicles had started coming down a hill, swerving and jockeying for space. One vehicle had hit the other, sending it flying through the trees, before continuing on down the hill, losing control and crashing. Alex had found the first vehicle. But where was the second one that it had hit? Her eyes scanned the forest. It looked like the driver
of the second car had barely managed to steer onto some kind of narrow utility road. She followed it a few steps. Then she saw a faint red light, flickering off and on ahead.
“Alex!” she shouted. “There’s a second car!”
She ran toward the blinking light. Her boots pushed through the snow. She could see it now. Zoe’s car ahead of her, dented but still intact. She drew closer. The front end was crumpled. The windshield was a shattered mess of cracks. The hazard lights flickered off and on, casting the snow and trees around it in odd red shadows and waves of light.
“Alex!” She cupped around her mouth. “Alex! I’ve found Zoe’s car!”
There was no answer but the wind. She paused, halfway between Zoe’s crashed car and the snow-covered road behind her. She could still see the snowmobile between the trees if she craned her neck. If she ran over to the car and checked it out without letting Alex take the lead he’d be frustrated. But what if someone was still in it? What if they needed her help? There were two crashed cars and two of them.
Lord, what do I do?
She walked toward the car cautiously. Even with the hazard lights flashing she could see the splatter of blood on the ground, changing color with the world around it as at the lights blinked off and on. Dark brown against the oddly illuminated red snow. Then bright scarlet on white. She couldn’t see anyone in the car. Not from here.
“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone there? Can you hear me?”
She glanced back. Still no Alex. Yes, she had some medical training and was a trauma expert. Due to her role with Victim Services, she’d seen all kinds of tragic accidents and crime scenes. Wisdom told her it was always best to have backup and to never approach the scene of an accident or crime alone. But her only backup had climbed down a hill, by himself, toward a totally different crash.
Help me, Lord. I’m conflicted and I’m doubting myself and I don’t even know why.
She stepped closer. The car seemed to be empty. Did that mean Zoe and Mandy had been kidnapped? Did that mean they’d made it out alive?
Then she heard footsteps on the ground and the sound of a handgun’s safety clicking off.
“Don’t move.” A thin, bearded figure lurched into the clearing and leaned heavily against a tree. “Don’t even make a sound. Or I’ll be forced to shoot you.”
FIVE
Wide, bloodshot eyes stared out at her over the folds of a thick scarf. He was wearing a black toque, too, low over his forehead, so the hat and scarf obscured almost all of a bearded face. But he was young. The eyes told her that much. Midtwenties, Theresa guessed. Who are you? Someone working for Castor? Someone involved in the ransacking of the cottages and searching for the trunk? Someone from the picture they’d looked at in the cottage? Whoever he was, he wasn’t wearing gloves. His legs were shaking, and the bare hand that clutched the gun shook, too. His other hand clenched his side.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble!” she said loudly. She wondered just how loud she would need to be for Alex to hear her. “I can see you’ve got a gun and I don’t want to get hurt. I’m just looking for my friends. There were two women in this car. Do you know where they are? Are they okay?”
“I said, be quiet! Okay?” he snapped. “I need to think. You keep it down or I’m going to shoot you. I mean it! I really am going to shoot!”
Would he, though? She wasn’t sure. He didn’t strike her as a killer. But he struck her as desperate, in pain and in fear. Sometimes that was enough.
“Okay, I hear you.” She lowered her voice. Her hands rose slightly in front of her, but more in a posture of defense than surrender. “We can talk quietly. Just set the gun down. I don’t want to hurt you, and I’m hoping you don’t want to hurt me, either.”
“Are you alone? Who are you here with?” His eyes scanned the trees. Muffled questions tumbled from his mouth so quickly his words ran into each other in a garbled mess. “Have you seen Castor? Where is he?”
Even through the scarf she could tell he was sweating and his skin was clammy. He was in pain and on some kind of heavy painkillers, too, probably far higher than a legal dose. Would he even be able make the shot, from a distance like that, with his limbs shaking that badly? Maybe. It was hard to tell. If Alex didn’t materialize soon, she might have to handle this on her own.
She was familiar with guns. Comfortable with them, too. But handgun licenses were so hard to come by in Canada that his weapon was almost certainly illegal. Most of the families on the lake hunted with shotguns and rifles. Paul Wright had killed his first deer when he was just fourteen. Not to mention, she’d done more than her fair share of lessons at the local gun club in the past few weeks, after a maniac had threatened her and her friend Samantha at Christmas.
But none of that had managed to prepare her for snatching one from a criminal’s hand.
Help me, Lord. What do I do? I’m a psychotherapist, not a bodyguard.
“I asked you where Castor is!” he snapped. He pulled his hand away from his side long enough to adjust his grip on the gun and she could see a thick smear of blood on his hands. His side was bleeding. Had he been shot? Stabbed? “What did Castor tell you?”
Her eyes rose from the weapon to the young man holding it. Despite the fear in her chest, something like pity still wrenched inside her heart. Whoever he was, whatever he’d done, he needed help. If she got him talking, maybe she could get him to drop his weapon or stall him long enough for Alex to find her.
“I’m sorry, I honestly don’t know where Castor is,” she said. She took a slow step forward. “You’re hurt. Is it a gunshot? A knife wound? If you tell me, I can help you take care of it. I have a first aid kit in my bag.” He didn’t respond. “Look, you need medical attention. I need to find my friends and get them home safely. So how about you put down the gun and let me help you?”
He raised the gun in his shaky hands. “Don’t come any closer.”
She stopped. His aim might be terrible and he might not be able to hit her on the first shot, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to die trying. “Look, I don’t know what kind of trouble you and your friends are in—”
“Castor’s not my friend!” He spat in the snow, then let out a long string of swearwords, letting her know what kind of low-level piece of scum he thought Castor and those like him were. It wasn’t pretty. “Now, tell me, what does Castor know?”
“I don’t work for Castor! He’s not my friend, either!” She could feel her voice rising in her chest, but she bit it back and forced it level, as if she was trying to calm a wild animal. “I don’t even know what you want to know or what you’re trying to ask me. I was at the Rhodeses’ family cottage. Number Eight on the lake. Castor broke in with two cronies and trashed the place. He said their names were Howler and Brick... Brick was shot.”
His hand tightened on the gun. “By who? Who shot him?”
“I don’t know for sure. Castor, I think. I’m sorry, but Brick didn’t make it.”
His face grew paler. “And Castor didn’t mention me?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know if he mentioned you because I don’t know who you are. Have we met before? My name is Theresa Vaughan. My family used to have a cottage on the lake.”
He shrugged. His eyes scanned the forest around her. Okay, so that wasn’t exactly a “no” to the question of whether or not they’d met before. But if they had, it had been a long time ago, when he was much younger. He might not even remember her. His hand pressed deeper into his side. She stretched one hand out, just a little, as if showing him an open door in the air between them and welcoming him to walk through it.
“You can call me Theresa,” she said softly. “I help people who are in trouble. And you are?”
He grimaced and didn’t meet her eye. “Castor calls me Gnat. Like the bug.”
Gnat? At least “Brick” had made s
ense because it had been the young man’s last name. But she couldn’t think of anybody connected to Cedar Lake that had a name that sounded like gnat or was anything close to any kind of insect. His eyes twitched like he was struggling to think. She cast a quick glance at the sky. The flakes falling from above were growing thicker.
“Look, I don’t know how badly you’re hurt or what happened here,” she said. “But I do know that you’re bleeding, a storm is coming and it’s going to take us a very long time to get to the hospital. I don’t have a car. Do you?”
“I hitchhiked and walked.” He shook his head. “Castor ran my car off the road and I crashed. I was trying to make this one go.”
Okay, she guessed that would be the one that Alex had climbed down to see. Not that his hitchhiking comment made any sense for now. Maybe the combination of pain and pain medication was muddying his brain.
“I’m going to walk over to my friend’s car and see if I can make it go. Okay?”
He didn’t answer. Slowly she stepped closer, praying with every step. The driver’s door was open. Empty wires hung where the ignition had been. The front passenger’s seat was slashed diagonally from one corner to the other. Carefully she opened the passenger’s door and looked closer. The cut in the seat was so deep the corner of the seat had been hastily hacked off. A few quick lines had been scratched on the dashboard forming the letters A and Y. An odd beat of hope clattered in her chest.
When she was a teenager, A and Y were a secret signal she, Alex, Zoe and Josh had used on their scavenger hunts. It was their short form for the question “Are we a team?” and the response, “Yes, we’re the best team ever!”
They’d used those two lines as secret signals to each other, a long, long time ago. Could Zoe be trying to remind her of that now?
“Who cut up the car like this?” She straightened up. “Was it you? Was it Castor?”
Rescue at Cedar Lake Page 6
