Cold Sweat Page 14

  “A tattoo?” Amelia was going to kill her daughter for scarring her skin on purpose, right after hugging her to death. “Don’t you need parental permission to get a tattoo?”

  “I had a good fake ID.”

  To save her from her mother’s wrath, he was tempted to ask for that fake ID and throw it into the fire. “Tell me it’s tasteful, and not at a weird place.”

  “Of course it is.” She rolled up the left leg of her pants. “It’s my guardian angel.”

  Propped on his left elbow, he motioned for her to approach. She hesitantly presented him her leg.

  An endearing duckling on skis stretched its wings, pointing the rifle strapped to its back toward the sky.

  “This...” Any worthy description caught in his throat. “This is lovelier than an angel.”

  A myriad of emotions crossed her face. “Ducks are my angels. Mom told me there would always be a ducky watching over me.”

  Ducky. It’d been his name. The endearing nickname her mother had given him. Could Quest be who he yearned for her to be?

  Eve checked. The baby was too small...

  “Quest, do you know the name of your father?”

  “Course I do. It’s n-o-r-m-h-c-r-a-i-g.” To his regrets, she’d spelled the name of the man listed on her birth certificate, not the name he’d longed to hear. “I just didn’t know my mother had scrambled the letters.”

  “Scrambled?” The letters danced in front of his eyes forming a different name. A familiar name. His name. “I’m...I’m your father?”

  Strangled by emotion, he choked on the words he wanted to say. Quest was his daughter. The most precious gift Amelia could have given him.

  His daughter recoiled by the fire. “Are you disappointed?”

  “No...just overwhelmed...and happy...so very happy.” An avalanche of unconditional love flooded through his chest, branding his heart with his daughter’s name. “I love you, little duckling. I love you very much.”

  And he opened his arms.

  ***

  Dusk fell upon the lone cabin battered by the gusty snow.

  Parked at the edge of the forest, Amelia pulled a pair of binoculars from her backpack. On each side of her, Thompson and River straddled their snowmobile, waiting.

  “There’s a truck parked in front of the cabin. No snow on the hood.” Under the current weather conditions, Amelia didn’t need to specify that the truck hadn’t been sitting there for more than a few minutes. “The shed and the front door of the cabin are wide open. I can’t see any sign of life.”

  “Do you detect any movement through the windows?” The wind gave an eerie intonation to Thompson’s voice.

  “Nothing.” She disembarked and drew her gun. “Thompson, you take the back. I’ll take the front. You wait for my signal. River, you stay here.”

  Without portable radios, they had to rely on visual contact.

  While Thompson made a dash for a stack of firewood, Amelia took position behind the truck. Ready to strike, she held up three fingers, two—

  A detonation echoed in the darkening sky.

  Chapter Twenty

  The gunshot sprang Gil into action. His gun drawn, he kicked his way in through the narrow back door shouting Sheriff’s office.

  In another part of the house, Matheson barged in yelling U.S. Army.

  No response. No other sound.

  A small bathroom was on his left. Gil peeked inside. The smell of urine lingering in the air assaulted his sensitive nose. I hate bathrooms. Aside from a few bloody towels littering the floor, it was unoccupied.

  He advanced through the kitchen and into a messy living room.

  A man lay on the floor with part of his brain missing, his head drowning in a pool of blood.

  “Bathroom and kitchen are clear. Is it Elliot?”

  “Yes. Self-inflicted gunshot to the head.” Crouched by his side, Matheson removed a handgun from the dead doctor’s grip and pocketed it. “We were too late.”

  A few minutes sooner, and they could have made the doctor cough up his crimes.

  “Maybe he saw us...or heard us.” Anger and frustration oozed through Gil’s pores, and he marveled at Matheson’s abilities to keep her feelings at bay.

  “The reason doesn’t matter.” The colonel moved away from the body and toward a huge gap in a wall near an open door.

  Someone had smashed the wall and gutted the space between the studs, creating a large gap. Large enough for a child to squeeze through.

  Reaching for the closest two by four, Matheson produced a yellow object pinched between her fingers. “This is a piece of fabric from Hope’s yellow suit. It was snagged on a nail. She...she slithered through the wall.” Something keen to admiration sizzled in her voice. “It’s quite possible she took advantage of Elliot’s absence and escaped during his morning killing spree.”

  The military doctor had kidnapped the colonel’s daughter to seek revenge on the senator. Gil didn’t hold a degree in psychology, but it seemed logical to assume Elliot would have displayed the teenager’s body—had he killed her—and blamed the senator for her death. He wouldn’t have killed himself until after he witnessed the senator’s fall from grace.

  The loss of his prisoner could have signaled the end of the game, prompting Elliot to join his niece. While the scenario rang true, it didn’t enlighten Gil on the teenager’s subsequent whereabouts. The cabin was in the middle of the mountains, not in walking distance from anything. If Matheson’s daughter ventured outside in the snowstorm, she might as well have waited for Elliot to kill her. The result would have been the same.

  Through the hole in the wall, Gil glimpsed a bed. “I’ll check the bedroom for clues.”

  The bolts on the outside of the open door raised the hair at the back of his neck. Heart pounding, he entered the bedroom. Fishing lures and hooks crunched under his boots. At the sight of the handcuffs and shackles tied to the bedpost and the blood on the lumpy mattress, his stomach somersaulted.

  Sensing a presence, Gil turned around.

  Matheson stood in the doorway. “Put your gun down, Thompson.”

  “Sorry.” Aiming at her had been an instinctive reaction. Before he succumbed to another reflex, he holstered his weapon.

  An inscrutable mask etched over her face as the colonel approached the bed and picked up a key lying on the stained mattress. How she could touch anything when her daughter had been kept captive on that bed boggled Gil’s mind.

  She unlocked the cuffs from the bedpost and tossed them at him. “What do you make of them?”

  Horrible images invaded his brain. He wanted to drown them with the bottle of Vodka dropped on the floor near the shackles.

  “Ma’am, I...” As Gil closed his fingers on the cuffs, the meaning behind the question dawned on him, and he took a closer look. “Those are Morgan’s handcuffs.”

  ***

  While Thompson and River fetched the snowmobiles, Amelia searched the shed.

  At one point, Hope and Richmond had ended up here, and now they were both gone. The search of the cabin had yielded blood, but no other bodies. Since Elliot hadn’t bothered disposing of his two accomplices, it was unlikely he would have taken the time to hide his victims. While Richmond’s fate remained undetermined, the hole in the wall suggested Hope managed to escape.

  Baby duckling, where are you?

  Neither one of them would have been foolish enough to flee outside in the middle of a storm without a means of transportation. In her training suit, Hope wasn’t dressed to sustain sub-zero temperatures.

  There was no quad or snowmobile in the shed, just a cracked helmet on a toolbox. It was possible there had been a recreational vehicle sitting in the shed. Her resourceful daughter could have borrowed it, but Amelia hadn’t met anyone or heard any engine on her way here. There were many routes Hope could have taken. Her path wouldn’t have necessarily crossed Amelia’s.

  I hate speculation.

  As she wandered around the cabin, she spied a re
d gasoline container partially buried in a snowdrift near the shed.

  Curious as why it hadn’t been disposed of properly, Amelia picked it up. The cap was missing. As she brought it closer to her nose, the smell of gasoline overpowered her senses.

  Someone had filled up a tank recently, and that someone had either been careless or in a hurry. Baby duckling...

  Engines drowned her thoughts. The deputy and River parked near the shed.

  “I’ll go get yours, Colonel.” River walked back on the tracks he’d just printed in the snow. In a few minutes, those tracks would be gone again, victims of the storm.

  As River’s silhouette became smaller, Thompson joined her. “I radioed Eve and updated her on the situation. She’s going to contact your Captain Jackman and request assistance.”

  “With the storm getting worse again, my team won’t attempt anything until dawn.” In less than fifteen minutes, dusk would swallow the mountains. They would be trapped in the cabin, pounded by the snow and whipped by the wind. “Did you ask her to call Snowy Tip in case Hope or Richmond recently returned?”

  “Eve placed me on hold while she made the call.” His gaze wandered above her head. “Nothing.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dawn peeked through the fog enveloping the mountains.

  After a sleepless night plagued with murderous thoughts toward a cadaver, Amelia had radioed the sheriff’s office. To hear Jackman’s voice alongside Eve’s had been a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, neither gave Amelia the answers she’d longed for.

  There had been no sign of Hope or Richmond, and with the low visibility, her team was delaying the search until the fog lifted.

  Alone with her regrets, Amelia wandered in the fresh snow.

  Above the roof of the cabin, the shadow of Axe Peak seemed to mock her pain and suffering.

  Her daughter loved the shape of that mountain. She’d emailed a bunch of pictures after exploring the caves. Her grandfather had even chosen one of them as his screensaver on his laptop.

  That Amelia could see Axe Peak, but not the chimney on top of the roof seemed like a cruel punishment. This wasn’t a beacon, it was a pile of rock and—

  Blistery fire. This is a beacon. If she could see Axe Peak through the fog, it was possible that Hope had seen it through the storm. She might have decided it was safer to seek refuge in the caves than to go back to Snowy Tip.

  “River!” Amelia stormed into the cabin. “Get up, River. I need you to take me to Axe Peak. Now!”

  ***

  Amelia zoomed through the rough terrain behind River. The man had known instantly which caves she meant. Without him, she wouldn’t be approaching the oddly shape mountain. She owed him.

  Dark mouths opened in the rocky wall of Axe Peak. She intended to search every cave, every nook—

  River’s abrupt change of direction interrupted her thoughts. She stretched her neck, and saw what he must have seen. A snowmobile partially hidden behind a pile of rocks.

  She parked by the rocks. “River, you wait outside.”

  A gaping hole guarded by a short, scrawny fir tree led to the entrance of a small cave. The smell of burning twigs teased Amelia’s nostrils, stopping her dead in her tracks.

  Someone is inside. Anticipation and fear clutched her heart, accelerating the pounding in her chest.

  If the occupant was her daughter, and she’d acquired a weapon, startling her—or anyone else—wasn’t a good idea.

  “Hello,” Amelia called. “Is someone here?”

  At the center of the cave, a dying fire glowed with red embers.

  As her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, Amelia took cautious steps forward.

  Dry naked twigs were stacked near an empty cover of evergreen. She fetched a few twigs and threw them in the fire.

  Bright yellow flames leaped into the air, illuminating a second bed of evergreen at the back of the cave.

  Choking back her tears, Amelia stared in absolute wonder at the sight of her baby girl wrapped in her father’s protective arms.

  “Phoenix?”

  In the confine of the cave, the tenderness overlying her name caressed her ears.

  “I’m here, Richmond.” Kneeling by his side, Amelia removed her gloves and ran a hand through her daughter’s hair. “Did...did he hurt her?”

  Hope stirred in her sleep, smiling.

  “Just some scratches and bruises. Nothing serious.” He laced his fingers with her over Hope’s head. “You should have seen her, Phoenix. She was incredible.”

  The warmth in his voice matched the temperature of his hand.

  “Richmond...” Only then did Amelia notice the large blood stain on his coat and the hole in the fabric. “You got shot.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  Dazed by the question, she swallowed hard. “What?”

  “Quest’s father. Do you...do you still love me?”

  Tears streaked down her face at the realization he’d figured out the truth.

  “I never stopped loving you, Ducky.” The ordeal had brought father and daughter together, and set Amelia free to cherish the truth. “I should have told you about Hope. I’m so sorry.”

  “No...it was my fault. Not yours. I should never have let you go.” Reaching out, he gently stroked her cheek. “I love you, Phoenix. I’ve loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you. You gave me an amazing daughter. Any chance you could also give me a second chance?”

  The same love from long ago shone in his eyes, melting her heart.

  “A second chance sounds wonderful.” And she leaned in for a tender kiss full of promises.

  Biography

  J.S. Marlo spent her childhood in a small French Canadian town, reading and daydreaming stories. One day, she met her hero, a dashing young officer, and followed him back and forth across the country.

  The “memorable” adventures she experienced with her young family fueled her imagination and kindled the dream of one day becoming a published author. It wasn’t until after her three spirited children left the nest in pursuit of their own adventures, that J.S. finally gave writing a chance.

  Her first two dozen stories were for her friends’ eyes only. To her surprise and delight, they enjoyed them and rewarded her with their encouragement and support. J.S. kept writing, and learning, and writing...

  She finally captured her dream with her first novel Salvaged, and then carried on with her first series, Duty Bound: Unscripted—Book One, Unearthed–Book Two, and Untamed–Book Three. She’s currently working on two new series: Heart & Endurance and Digging through time. Cold Sweat of the Heart & Endurance series is coming up in November 2013.

  J.S. lives in northern Alberta with her wonderful hubby, and when she’s not visiting her children and little granddoggie, she’s writing in front of the fireplace.

  You can visit her at www.sites.google.com/site/jsmarloauthor