Part 5 (2/2)
She was amazed: you stomp off in a huff one morning and suddenly you're into the greatest adventure you ever had.
Hunkering down, she couldn't resist a peep around the tree. Her own breath was impossibly loud and fast in her ears, but she watched Makenzie's police truck dissolve in the haze like a fizzy tablet in a gla.s.s of water. Amber chuckled.
Then she fell back against the tree and let out a ma.s.sive sigh.
She raised her eyes to the branches overhead, trying to untangle them in her imagination. With its leaves of frost, the tree looked brittle and old. Spooky. She wondered if she could put one of Mom's house plants in the ice box, see if it would look the same.
d.a.m.n. She glanced around the tree again, along the ghost road. If she hadn't had a go at him this morning, maybe she could have gotten herself a lift. Maybe he would have been excited to hear about the parachute.
Lifting herself up with a groan, she shovelled at some of the snow with her boot. Oh well, if she was going to walk the miles to town she'd be better starting sooner than later. She set off, sticking to the road's edge, where the snow was good and thick.
Every so often she glanced around at the trees and up and down the road, and wondered at how the emptiness always stayed the same distance away.
Why in h.e.l.l did it have to be him?
The let-up in the storm was doing nothing for the atmosphere inside the truck, and in any case it was going to be a very temporary reprieve. Of that, Makenzie was convinced.
The drive back to Melvin Village was the longest and loneliest of his life.
The world was locked in under a glacial roof of cloud. No way out.
Laurie was gone. Gone. Better if somebody had come up to him and told him she'd been found murdered. Tourists did dumb things, like wandering off into the worst weather known to man. Laurie Aldrich did not, would not, ever.
Makenzie had searched and searched again, until he'd covered every inch of that wood, a lot further than Laurie could have walked in the time she'd had. He'd searched until his lungs were solid pain. In all that whiteness, his vision had turned black, and in all that whiteness he had found precisely nothing.
No sign of a scuffle, no tracks to show she'd been taken anywhere. No anything.
When he'd eventually dragged himself back down to the road, he'd stepped on broken gla.s.s. After that, it hadn't taken him long to turn up bottle fragments held flimsily together by the sodden label. Wild Turkey. Not his father's brand, but Makenzie knew it well enough and the alcohol smell was all over the inside of that Buick.
Disgusted, Makenzie had tossed the clue into the ditch.
Rescuing the gifts for Amber, he'd headed for his truck and sat a while before making the drive back to town.
From that discovery on, there was no Laurie, no tourists, no part-time townsfolk lost in the hills. No, the part he kept getting hung up on was Curt Redeker.
For this guy, the man who beat up on Martha and terrorised his own daughter, the man who lets his kid down when he's supposed to come see her, the man who drinks himself off an icy road into a ditch - for this man, Makenzie Shaw must do more than his d.a.m.nedest. When Makenzie wanted to be scouring the whole of New Hamps.h.i.+re for Laurie, he had to go find a hundred-proof son of a b.i.t.c.h like Curt Redeker. Nothing less would do.
Why?
Amber was why. Because when he'd had Martha and Amber move in with him, the spectre of Curt Redeker had moved in right after.
How did that Casablanca quote go? The problems of three people didn't amount to a hill of beans in this world. Yeah, unless you're one of the three, and then those problems are your world and there's nothing outside of that.
Makenzie shook himself alive. He didn't want to end up in a ditch like Redeker. He had to start thinking as well as driving. Real thinking, not just this circuit of doom.
The way he figured, tracks or no, Laurie had to have been abducted. Taken somewhere by somebody. Same with the folks in that sad little convoy. Even the most ravenous coy-dogs would have left a few bones, not to mention stained the snows red. That wasn't it. No, Laurie had to be alive somewhere, taken hostage. Redeker too maybe.
As he drove, Makenzie's gaze climbed the lowest slopes of Mount Shaw. Those cultists had taken over the old doc's house up there, turned it into some sort of commune. They were screwed up enough, he was mad he hadn't thought of them before.
They had themselves their own armoury too. He couldn't tackle them alone. Hm. He remembered the running gun battles he'd had with Morgan up there.
That checked him. Thoughts of Morgan weren't going to improve his mood.
'Listen, if this is something Curt's into, he's nothing to do with me, not since a long time back. He thinks he is, but that's his problem, none of mine.'
Martha was jumpy, edgy; she hardly felt the spike of caffeine as she drained her cup. The woman agent had suggested they retire here, to their cabin; the same place Amber had kicked up such a fuss that one time last summer.
The man had brewed up some coffee, help her calm down, he'd said. Some chance.
Crazy, finding herself back here, inside. Not nearly as big as Mak's place, and impersonal, like any holiday shack.
Personal touches wouldn't have registered with Martha anyway.
It had to be about Curt. He didn't have the spine to get involved in anything serious, but he was sure stupid enough.
And now she thought of it he'd sounded real jittery on the phone. But the CIA? This just wasn't a part of her life.
The guy was pacing around all casual. The woman sat opposite, prim with a patient smile. 'I understand how difficult this must be for you, Miss Mailloux.'
'Please, call me Martha. You seem to know me well enough already.' She realised she was nodding tightly, a nervous reaction.
'Martha,' the woman corrected herself genially. 'But this really has to do with your daughter, and we honestly believe her involvement is purely tangential to our investigation.
We'd simply like to ask her a few questions concerning where she found the parachute and if she knows anything about what was attached to it.'
The man, Agent Theroux, had shown her the bundled chute shortly after the badge and introduction routine. He'd demonstrated how the lines had been cut and he'd produced the pocketknife they'd pulled from Amber's hideout. Another dumb gift from Curt.
'Excuse me for a minute, but that's another part I don't get,' argued Martha, aware of how hostile she sounded. 'If my Amber found anything valuable attached to the d.a.m.n chute, don't you think she might have kept that instead? I mean, what you're telling me is there was something other than a person on the end of that.'
'Sadly, ma'am, we're not at liberty to say.' He hadn't given up his Southern drawl, so she'd figured by now he wasn't mocking her; although that line belonged in a movie.
The woman, Melody Quartararo, on the other hand, was hard not to like. 'Martha, you're right. Your daughter probably only found the chute quite by accident. But I hope you understand, we have to follow up every lead and we have to make absolutely certain. This is a matter of national security.'
'Well, Curt always said I was a bad mother and I'm real sorry. Agent Quartararo, but I don't know right now where my daughter could be. Maybe you'd like to help me look for her.' She set her mug down on the table and it clunked noisily. The two agents were waiting on something more from her, a best guess perhaps. 'Listen, I don't know. Maybe she headed into town to tell Mak about her find. Sometimes she wants to impress him.'
Apparently that sounded reasonable to Agent Theroux.
'Would you like to take a drive with us, Martha? I'm sure Amber would prefer to have her mother hold her hand while we interview her. Believe me, I know how intimidating us government types can seem.'
Melody laughed, a gentle echo to her partner. She was hard not to like, sure, but trust was a whole different matter.
Lagoy watched Jacks grab their leader as he fell into her, and they shook their heads at the creature he had become. Mitch couldn't make up his mind, but Emilie was looking at Crayford like he was a lame thoroughbred.
She didn't take up her rifle though, just gripped him hard and tried prying him open with a stare. 'Crayford,' she barked, 'it's me! Emilie! Emilie! What happened up there?' What happened up there?'
Crayford was on his knees, staring straight back at her but something else blocked his view. Their guru had lost it. All that hair on his face, he was starting to look like some Neanderthal raw recruit.
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