Alaska Mountain Rescue

by Elizabeth Heiter

  That actually seemed possible. No matter what Peter thought of Darcy’s actions, he’d seen the love for Alanna in her eyes. He could absolutely picture her kidnapping kids she didn’t know, trying to re-create what she and Julian had once had. But he wasn’t sure he could imagine her intentionally hurting Alanna by having her niece kidnapped by someone else.

  It wasn’t her MO. Whatever messed up psychology had allowed her to rationalize kidnapping children, she’d grabbed them with the intent of raising them. This was different. Elysia’s kidnapping seemed malicious, angry, driven by revenge.

  “I’m going to talk to the US Marshals she got away from back in Oregon,” he told Alanna. “They’ve probably already looked into who visited her in prison. Hopefully they’ll share that info with me. Otherwise, I’ll try the prison.”

  Pulling out his phone again, he looked up the number for one of the US marshals who’d accompanied Darcy to Julian’s burial. He’d spoken to the agent a few days ago to give her a heads-up that he thought Darcy could be in Alaska. At the time, she’d seemed overworked and overstressed and seriously doubtful that Darcy had made it so far north so fast.

  When she picked up now and he explained the situation, there was a long pause. Then she admitted, “We can’t be sure about this, but it’s possible Darcy had help escaping us at Julian’s burial.”

  Peter swallowed back words of frustration that he hadn’t heard about this the first time he’d called. “Who?”

  “We don’t know. We don’t even know if he was in on it. At the time, we assumed it was a coincidence. But given what you’re telling me now, maybe we should have looked at it more closely. The distraction he caused, right when he caused it... He left right after, with the rest of the crowd. We never tracked him down.”

  “It’s what gave Darcy a chance to run?” Peter guessed, as Alanna tilted her head close to his, listening in.

  “Yeah.”

  “You have a description?”

  “It was a man. Younger than her. Probably white.”

  Peter let out a noise that sounded like a laugh, but was all frustration. “That’s it?”

  “It was drizzling. He was wearing a dark raincoat. He wasn’t particularly close to us and he wasn’t our priority. There was a big crowd there, gawkers and press, plus mourners from another burial service nearby. He was in the wind immediately.”

  “Okay.” Peter sighed, then said, “A little girl is missing. We think it’s connected to Darcy. Do you know anything else about this guy that could help?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you look into who visited her in prison?”

  “Of course. But no one visited her. We confirmed with the prison that she received mail, but following procedure, they didn’t read it. And whatever she received wasn’t in her cell after her escape.”

  “What about phone calls?”

  “Nope. She requested to have all the kids she abducted on her approved contact list, if you can believe it, but obviously, that was denied.”

  “Thanks.” When he hung up, he saw how tightly Alanna’s lips were pursed together, how her eyes were twitching like she was holding back tears. “I’m going to call my department. Whoever Darcy is working with, she had to contact that person somehow. If it was via mail, maybe one of her cell mates knows who was writing her. We’ll find him. In the meantime, let’s—”

  The buzzing of his phone cut him off. He answered and told his partner, “Tate, I was just about to call you. Alanna’s niece—”

  “Has been kidnapped. Colter Hayes called us twenty minutes ago. You need to get in to the station right now.”

  “We’re trying to run down leads,” Peter told him, squeezing the hand Alanna had placed in his, watching her wipe away tears. “I think—”

  “I’ve got a lead. I need you here right now,” Tate interrupted, then hung up.

  * * *

  THE MOON WAS an ominous sliver in an angry gray sky when Peter whipped his truck into the Desparre PD parking lot.

  Alanna leaped out as he put the vehicle in Park, Chance chasing after her. She raced across the lot to the station’s door, sliding on a patch of ice and pinwheeling her arms until she regained her balance. Her frustration at the lack of information had grown unbearable on the way over. All Peter had told her after hanging up with Tate was that there was a lead.

  Peter didn’t live that far from the station—less than ten minutes at the near-dangerous speeds he’d been driving. But she’d felt every one of those minutes like they were hours. Elysia was out there somewhere, at the mercy of a stranger.

  Alanna had never felt a joy quite like the day she’d gone to the hospital to meet her niece. She’d spent years agonizing over her choice to leave behind “siblings” she’d loved, so she could return to siblings she’d missed but who’d become vague memories. But that first moment she’d held Elysia in her arms, she’d been so overcome with love, she’d nearly burst into tears. That moment had been worth every doubt, every ounce of guilt she’d tried to psychoanalyze away.

  Now Elysia was in danger. And it was because of her.

  Yanking the door to the police station open, Alanna nearly stumbled as Chance raced in past her, barking a greeting that was returned immediately. Rebel was here. Which meant Kensie and Colter were, too.

  The door marked Police Only was propped open and Chance bolted through it. Even though she knew Kensie and Colter would never blame her, Alanna’s steps faltered. Her anxiety ratcheted up, but then Kensie was running toward her. Colter hurried after his wife, his gait uneven as he leaned on the cane he rarely used, his wartime injury obviously acting up. Before Peter had even finished slipping through the door behind her, Kensie and Colter had their arms around Alanna, a family hug that reminded her how much she’d missed in all her years away. Chance doubled back, running circles around Colter and Kensie’s Malinois-German Shepherd, until the two of them pushed their way into the circle.

  A short burst of anxious laughter broke through her threatening tears as Alanna pulled out of the tight embrace. She saw the panic and desperation on Kensie and Colter’s faces and a sob burst free. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t,” Colter snapped, something deadly coming into his eyes that might have been his war face. “It’s not your fault. We need to focus on getting her back, not on regrets.”

  Alanna nodded, swiping away the tears that had spilled despite her best efforts. “What do we know?”

  At the question, Tate appeared, frowning as his eyes skimmed down the top page in a big stack of paper. “Not what we expected.”

  “What does that mean?” Alanna demanded, tired of all the cryptic information.

  “Let’s go sit in the conference room.” Tate nodded briefly at Peter, then spun back the way he’d come.

  Alanna hurried after him, alongside her sister, brother-in-law, Peter and the two dogs. Together, they all crammed into the little conference room and then Tate announced, “The parents of those two kidnapped kids arrived late this evening.” He glanced at his watch and then amended his statement. “Technically, yesterday. Once they saw their kids, we sat down and talked to them about what happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kensie interrupted, her hand clutched tight in her husband’s, her eyes and nose bright red like she’d been crying fiercely not long ago. “What does this have to do with Elysia? Do you have any leads on where she is?”

  Tate set the stack of papers on the table, rubbed the side of his hand against his forehead like he was exhausted. “We all assumed Darcy had kidnapped those kids.”

  “What?” The floor seemed to move underneath her and Alanna flung her hand out to steady herself on something. Before she could grip anything, Peter was holding her arm, keeping her upright.

  “She did kidnap them, didn’t she?” She looked from Tate to Peter and back again. “She had those kids at the cabin...”
Or did she? They’d obviously been at the second cabin, but at the first one, Alanna had only seen her run out the door. Where were the kids then?

  “It sounds like she was involved,” Tate said, “but...” He glanced at them, leaning against the wall, holding onto each other, the dogs positioned in front as if standing guard. “Why don’t you all sit?”

  “Just tell us,” Colter demanded, his arm tight around Kensie’s shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  “According to the kids, Darcy didn’t grab either of them. The little boy said it was a man, much younger than Darcy, who kidnapped them and brought them back to Darcy.”

  “I’ve been in touch with the Marshals who were watching her in Oregon,” Peter jumped in. “It sounds like this could be the same person who helped her escape at the burial. We need to talk to the prison, try and see if we can figure out who was writing her there. She must have met someone through letters, convinced him to help her escape.”

  Was that really what had happened? Or was the answer much simpler? Alanna felt herself sway as Tate continued.

  “Apparently, when you caught up to Darcy and the kids at the second cabin, this man was out. When you found her at the first one, he’d already taken the kids to the second location. Both times, he had their vehicle. Darcy had needed to start that avalanche so she could slip away and wait somewhere for this guy to pick her up. It’s why she didn’t have anywhere to go at the second cabin. Darcy was supposed to erase all traces of them and then call to get picked up again.”

  “Did they mention a name? Have we pressed Darcy on who it is?” Peter asked. “Or I can call the prison right now, light a fire under them, so that they—”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Alanna said. “I know who it is.” She looked at Kensie and Colter, shaking her head in disbelief, ashamed that it hadn’t occurred to her before now that Darcy might have had help.

  Darcy might see a child from a distance that she wanted, that she believed should have been her child. But it had always been Julian who’d made it happen. With Julian out of the picture, there was only one person Alanna could think of who would try to piece together a new family for Darcy.

  “It was my older ‘brother,’ Johnny.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Johnny is the kidnapper,” Tate confirmed. When Kensie gasped and looked to Alanna, Tate said, “We don’t have a recent photo of Johnny, but we showed the kids a picture from when he was rescued five years ago and they confirmed it was him.”

  “Why?” Kensie asked Alanna. She was flushed with panic and clutching Colter, whose expression had morphed into a fury Alanna had never seen before. “Why would he kidnap those kids? And why would he take Elysia?”

  “He’s—” Alanna choked on a sob, then took a deep breath to get control of herself. Focusing on all the mistakes she’d made, worrying about all the worst-case scenarios for her niece wasn’t going to help right now. She needed to focus on what had happened to turn Johnny into a kidnapper. Maybe that would help them figure out where he was now and how to stop him.

  “He was the first one the Altiers kidnapped,” Alanna said, trying to work it out in her mind at the same time she tried to explain to everyone else. “He was five years old. As we grew up, he remembered his family, but barely.”

  “He refused to talk to you once you came to Chicago. He...” Lines appeared between Kensie’s eyebrows as she squinted into the distance, into a memory. “He’s the one who shot at me and Colter at the cabin five years ago, isn’t he? That was him with the gun?”

  Alanna nodded, wishing she could make it untrue. Wishing she could have gotten through to Darcy enough to get her to admit that Johnny was involved.

  “He won’t hurt Elysia,” she blurted. Whatever Johnny had become, he’d never harm a child. Right now it felt like the only thing in her life she knew for certain.

  “Alanna,” Colter said, judgment and barely contained anger in his voice. “I know he was your big brother for a long time, but—”

  “I’m not trying to make excuses for him.” She cut Colter off, even though the thought of Johnny doing any of this made her chest hurt so bad she wanted to double over. He might not be her blood, but he was still her big brother. When she’d first been kidnapped, feeling terrified and alone, he had comforted her. He’d promised to always look out for her, look after her. He’d said they were brother and sister now and that would never change.

  Except if he’d kidnapped Elysia, it had changed. There was nothing random about it. While the idea of Darcy grabbing Alanna’s niece for revenge had seemed out of character, Alanna could imagine Johnny doing it far too easily.

  The truth was, everything between them had changed five years ago. From the moment she’d left that note and brought the scrutiny of the FBI, Johnny’s brotherly love had turned into confusion and then hate. When Kensie and Colter had tried to rescue her, Johnny had seen Darcy pick up a weapon, so he’d done the same. He hadn’t spoken to her since that moment when the Altiers had been arrested, and he’d barely spoken to the rest of their “siblings,” either.

  “Drew’s and Valerie’s parents won’t let them talk to any of us. Johnny won’t talk to me, so he’s only been in contact with Sydney since that day. Sydney said...”

  Alanna frowned, wishing she’d tried harder to reach out to Johnny, found a way to get through to him. But every phone call had gone unanswered. Even her emails and letters had never gotten a response. Over the years, she’d all but stopped trying, reducing her attempts to a few letters a year she knew he’d never read.

  If she hadn’t given up on him, would it have come to this?

  “What?” Kensie pushed, tears and anger mixing in her voice.

  Alanna tried to focus. “Sydney said Johnny moved back to Alaska. When his birth family came to get him, he was already twenty-three. Initially, he went home with them to Colorado, but apparently it never felt like home to him. The last time Sydney and I talked about Johnny, she said he barely spoke to his birth family anymore. I think they gave up trying to build a relationship with him, because he didn’t want one.”

  For Johnny, the Altiers had become his only family. When she’d left the note to tell the world she was still alive, she’d destroyed that family. From then on, he’d essentially been all alone.

  “So this kid—man, since he’s twenty-eight now—learned Julian had been killed. He was devastated, but saw it as his opportunity to help Darcy escape,” Peter said, thinking quickly. “He went to Oregon for the burial, but also to create a distraction and help Darcy get free. They traveled to Alaska together and presumably hatched a plan to kidnap kids along the way. Or maybe they planned the kidnappings before that, when he wrote to her in prison, as soon as they learned Darcy was granted furlough for the burial.”

  “I think the recent kidnappings were spur-of-the-moment,” Alanna said, remembering how Darcy had spoken of seeing her as a child and just knowing. She pictured those two kids in the cabin, so similar to the way she and Johnny had once looked. “I think Darcy saw a kid and felt a connection, felt like the child should have been hers. Then Johnny made it happen, like Julian used to do.”

  She flushed, realizing the one piece of information she’d held back five years ago suddenly mattered now. “Johnny knew how to do it because...” She squeezed her eyes shut, hating that her “brother” had been involved at all, wondering if he’d ever really had a chance to return to a normal life. Wishing she’d tried harder to help him.

  “Why?” Colter asked, stepping closer. His dog, Rebel, who’d been in war zones with him as a Combat Tracker Dog, stuck close to his side, knowing when Colter needed him.

  “When they kidnapped me and Johnny, they saw an opportunity and took it. But with all the other kids, they created opportunities. Darcy and Julian saw Sydney at a playground and they had Johnny lure her around a corner from where her parents were sitting, so they could grab her
.”

  “What?” Kensie blurted, looking horrified but also distrustful, as if she wondered what else Alanna had kept from her. “You never told me that.”

  “It wasn’t in the police reports, either,” Tate said, his narrowed gaze on her.

  To his credit, Peter kept holding her hand. She was afraid to look at his expression as she tried to explain. “Johnny was only thirteen when that happened. Did he really have a choice? I didn’t want Johnny to get in trouble because he did what the people he’d called his parents since he was five told him to do. I didn’t want him to get charged.”

  “He was a minor,” Peter said softly. “He wouldn’t have been charged.” When she looked at him, her misery probably clear in her eyes, he asked, “That’s not all he did, is it? What about Valerie and Drew?”

  She could feel all eyes on her again, and she forced herself to look at Kensie and Colter. “For those abductions, Julian asked Johnny to distract the parents, pretend he needed help while Julian grabbed the kids.” She ducked her head as Kensie and Colter stared back at her, disappointment and disbelief all over their faces. “I didn’t know about it until after the fact,” she added as if it mattered.

  Ultimately, when she’d known anything related to kidnappings didn’t really matter, did it? It’s what Peter had been getting at the first time he’d met her. Yes, she’d been a kid, but she’d had fourteen long years when she could have spoken up, when she could have stopped this.

  “He was older then,” Tate said when she went quiet. “He would have been seventeen with Drew and twenty-one with Valerie. An adult.”

  “Yes,” Alanna admitted. “But he was a victim, too. They took him when he was five years old and raised him with love, but also raised him to be theirs. He reacted to it differently than the rest of us, maybe because when they kidnapped him, he didn’t have anyone to reassure him, like the rest of us did.” It had been Johnny who’d first gotten through to her, comforted her, made her feel safe when her whole world was turned upside down. He’d done the same for Sydney, Drew and Valerie.