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  “November 18th...paid three months...cash.”

  Three days later, Serpent rented the postal box. The time line was consistent. “Did he provide any references?”

  “To live in this dump?” She gave him a dubious look. “I’m lucky if...if I can rent half the place.”

  Beside Gil, the colonel seemed to eye the hallway with perplexity.

  When the matron stopped in front of door 313, he took the keys jiggling from her hand.

  “Please, stay back.” He knocked. “Deputy Sheriff Gil Thompson. Open the door.”

  No sound stemmed from inside. He unlocked. Still no sound...

  His weapon drawn, he stepped into a bare living room. A couch, a coffee table, an empty bookcase...

  The door closed behind him.

  “With your gun, you nearly gave the poor woman a heart attack.” Colonel Matheson peeked inside the entrance closet. “No coat, no boots. Doesn’t look like anyone lives here.”

  He agreed. “Shouldn’t you be armed?”

  “I don’t need a gun to be dangerous—or to kill someone.” Issued in a deadpan voice, that didn’t sound like an empty threat. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Envious of Matheson’s nerves of steel, Gil proceeded down a narrow corridor. The door to the bathroom was open. Water dripping from a leaky faucet thumped in the ceramic sink. No soap, toothbrush, or towel.

  Aside from a discolored shower curtain pushed at one end of a rusty rod, the room was void of personal items.

  “Bathroom is clear. I’m checking the bed—” The word room died on Gil’s lips as he entered into the bedroom.

  The far wall was plastered with newspaper articles and magazine clips, all featuring pictures of Senator Craig Norman with an assortment of beautiful women.

  “Thompson? You okay?” Hurried steps resonated in the apartment, culminating with Matheson’s intrusion. “Blistery fire, that’s...interesting.”

  The woman was smirking, a rather disconcerting sight coming from an officer in uniform.

  “He’s taunting us, Colonel.”

  “What did you expect from a snake?” Without touching the evidence, Matheson examined the wall. “The dates are visible. They’re posted in chronological order. It’s a time line, Thompson. Do you have evidence bags in your cruiser?”

  “I’ll go get them and request a guy from the lab. He may be able to lift some prints.”

  “Serpent forgot his book.” Matheson pointed at the naked bed. Amid the dark spots staining the sunken mattress lay a book.

  “50,000 baby names?” The title unnerved Gil. “You think he might have been stupid enough to highlight the name of the girl he kidnapped?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” With her black gloves on—which she’d never removed in his presence even when she’d removed her coat—Matheson picked up the book and leafed through the pages.

  A piece of glossy paper fell from the book onto the floor, face up.

  Air hissed through her teeth. “This can’t be.”

  ***

  Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Sly cleaned the deep cuts his captive clawed on his left cheek. He was lucky to still be able to see. Had the teenager aimed an inch higher, she would have scratched his eye out.

  Wild, fierce, and unpredictable. The senator’s daughter was as much of a force to reckon with as the rising snowstorm.

  When Sly had gone into the bedroom with a glass of juice and sandwich to feed her, she’d attacked him. For someone of small stature, she’d packed a punch. If she hadn’t slipped on the juice puddle, she would have escaped him. Hitting her had been the only way to subdue her.

  I should have let her starve.

  How she’d managed to untie her rope, he couldn’t fathom, not with the fisherman’s knots he’d used. To prevent another escape attempt, he’d shackled one of her ankles to a bedpost with a ten-foot chain. Once she regained consciousness, it’d give her the freedom to wander around her prison while pondering her fate.

  I’m done playing nice guy. She didn’t deserve his compassion any more than her father did.

  The bleeding had stopped. He threw the bloody towel in the corner shower before walking into the kitchen where he kept his laptop.

  The suggestive pictures on the bridge had received over ten thousand hits since he posted them. It didn’t matter Norman had issued a statement refuting any allegations of infidelity and disputing the authenticity of the pictures. The senator’s reputation had been tarnished with a stain that would never completely disappear.

  “I’m going to expose every one of your little secrets, Norman, and destroy you.” That was the promise he’d made Lexa before she drew her last breath. Not keeping it wasn’t an option.

  He sat to write a new message.

  Would you rather I return your daughter dead or alive?

  You have three days to resign.

  Sly Serpent

  The computer would reroute his message on so many proxies across the world that by the time the email entered the senator’s office, its trace would have been muddled in cyberspace.

  Chapter Ten

  Snowflakes swirled in the cold breeze prickling Rich’s skin. A prelude of the winter storm forecasted to blanket the region over the next forty-eight hours. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to suspend the search until it was completed.

  “I’m going to check a lone lodge deep in the woods.” Rich spoke to Eve from the parking adjacent to the maintenance bay. “I’ll be out of range for a few hours. Did you receive a fax from Chief River listing the employees and volunteers?”

  “I’m checking them now.” The woman was as meticulous as she was dedicated. If there were any shady characters on the list, his deputy would expose them. “I found your Doctor Barry. He’s retired. I’m hoping to have an address next time you call.”

  The senator might have conveniently forgotten the pregnant women’s names, which had enraged Eve, but he’d kept a contact number for Dr. Barry.

  “You’re awesome.”

  “I know. There’s nothing suspicious on Hope’s phone and tablet, or on Coach Goldman’s phone, and Nathan hasn’t been able yet to trace the message sent to the coach or the emails sent to the senator, but do you have time to listen to what he dug up on your colonel?”

  The bay door of the maintenance building was opened. The disfigured mechanic had pushed a snowmobile out and lifted the hood. It looked like he was still fiddling with the engine. The snowmobile wasn’t ready and young River was nowhere in sight.

  “I have a few more minutes.”

  “Nathan hacked into a classified database in order to get this information, Morgan. He could go to jail for this. I hope it’s worth it.”

  “I owe your hubby.” He appreciated their effort, more than he could ever express. “And I’ll cover for him. Go ahead.”

  “At West Point, Amelia Matheson was known as Phoenix. It doesn’t say why she adopted that moniker.”

  “She didn’t adopt it, it was given to her by her classmates.” No other name could have better captured Amelia’s essence. Calling her Phoenix was a privilege—a privilege he lost.

  “I take it you know why?”

  One day Rich might indulge her curiosity, but not today. “It’s not relevant. Please, continue.”

  “She graduated with honors from West Point on May 15th. She was deployed to Europe three days later...Why do I have the feeling you already know all this?”

  “I...” He considered lying, but then he remembered the risk that Nathan took accessing that database. “We briefly dated while she was a cadet.”

  “How brief is briefly?”

  A silent sigh tightened his chest. “About a year and a half.” A year, seven months, two weeks, and five days.

  “You call that briefly?”

  “Drop it, Eve.” He didn’t need to be reminded of his biggest mistake. Not with Hope missing. “It ended abruptly when she graduated. We didn’t stay in touch.”

  “Sorry, I
shouldn’t have pried. Officially, Matheson was posted to Germany from May 18th to July 25th and to Finland from July 26th to August 31st.” The emphasis on officially had rung loud and clear. “On Sept 1st, she flew home and was posted to Fort Ravens, Massachusetts, where she stayed the following two years.”

  Some postings were more prestigious than others. Two years at Fort Ravens didn’t belong in the prestigious category. Something else had fast-tracked her career and earned her those early promotions. “Did she unofficially go somewhere else?”

  “Nathan got the unofficial version through her medical file which was heavily encrypted. There were some blanks we couldn’t fill, but we think we got the bigger picture.”

  Rich wasn’t sure what amazed him the most. That someone bothered encrypting Amelia’s medical file or that Eve’s husband broke the encryption. “Nathan is a genius. Go on.”

  “On Sept 1st, she didn’t fly home from Finland, she was medevaced from the Middle East and sent to an undisclosed medical facility stateside.”

  “They’d sent her to the Middle East?” The Army must have been out of their mind. Amelia had just graduated. She was a language specialist without combat experience.

  “Calm down, Morgan. And don’t make me repeat everything twice.”

  “I’m calm.” Fury boiled inside his blood. “Was she shot?”

  “No, but she was exposed to chemical agents during an explosion. She was in critical condition...and pregnant.”

  The Amelia he’d known would never have put the life of her child in danger for a secret mission on the wrong side of a border. She’d either been told it was a routine mission or she’d been unaware she was pregnant. “Keep going.”

  “The doctors wanted to abort the fetus to increase Matheson’s chance of survival. They listed so many birth defects and complications I’m surprised she rejected the procedure. She risked her life for her daughter, Morgan.” Eve sounded in awe of Amelia’s decision. “Little Hope was born on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Amelia gave birth on Dec 31st?” As Rich subtracted nine months from Hope’s birthday, a startling feeling of hope and anticipation rose inside his chest. “Was Hope full term?”

  “You mean...Oh...I see why this is important for you.” It seemed Eve had also done the math. He shouldn’t have expected anything less from a pregnant woman. “The baby weighed 3lbs 11oz. There was no mention of a gestation period. She spent two months in an incubator in neonatal care. Deafness was the only medical condition listed in the file.”

  The low birth weight crushed Rich’s fantasy, exposing a void in his chest. To miss something that had never been his to miss in the first place made no sense.

  Despite his best efforts to dismiss the silly dream, the feeling endured. “What about Hope’s father?”

  “So far we haven’t found any record of a Lt. Norm Craig or a mishap involving a pilot in Germany. It’s possible the information is classified. Want us to keep looking?”

  “No.” Digging any deeper wouldn’t change the timing of Hope’s birth.

  Its engine roaring in the cold air, a snowmobile rode down a slope. It came to an abrupt stop near a ski rack. The driver took his helmet off. Todd’s long blond hair cascaded on his shoulders.

  “I have to go, Eve. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  Had Amelia’s daughter stood by Rich’s side, she wouldn’t have heard her secret admirer’s approach unless she was looking straight at the mountain. The missing teenager could be hidden under his nose, and Rich could be shouting her name until his vocal cords snapped, she wouldn’t know he was looking for her.

  The mechanic had fetched a gallon of fuel and proceeded to fill up the tank of the snowmobile.

  With a few minutes to spare, Rich rushed inside the dormitories. The last time he was in Hope’s room, he’d seen the transmitter on the dresser. He wanted to have it on him for when he found her.

  Hope’s transmitter and wallet were gone. He quickly searched the room. Not there. Amelia must have taken them.

  One wing twisted behind its back, the downy duckling had plunged beak first into the pillow. Rich picked it up. It was the same size and just as light as the real one that had sent his life spiraling up and down.

  The resemblance was unsettling. He tucked the stuffed animal into the inside pocket of his winter jacket. That little duck wasn’t the bond he’d wished to share with Amelia’s daughter, but it was a connection.

  ***

  Vince fumed.

  Because of the spoiled Army brat, he walked with a side-to-side gait, like a stupid penguin. It was too bad Serpent didn’t let him teach her a lesson.

  Three thousand bucks isn’t enough for the aggravation and humiliation I suffered.

  Marvin, his friend and accomplice, had phoned him and told him to hurry to the lodge and retrieve the skis and rifle before the sheriff found them. If Vince had known this was supposed to be a temporary hidey-hole, he wouldn’t have thrown her gear into the outhouse. No one should have been checking that lodge until the spring. By then, Serpent would have been done with the girl.

  Frustrated by the turn of events, Vince waddled briskly to the shed behind the country house he shared with Marvin. His snowmobile was inside along with a loaded rifle. A light breeze stroked his face and fat flakes fell from the cloudy sky. The guy on TV forecasted fifteen to eighteen inches of snow by tomorrow afternoon with wind gusts reaching seventy miles per hour overnight. The timing of the storm couldn’t have been more perfect.

  It would erase his tracks.

  ***

  Rich’s engine coughed and sputtered. Then died. Again.

  “Problems?” Astride his own snowmobile, Rivers waited for him. “Want me to call a mechanic?”

  “Let me give it one last try.” With the amount of time the mechanic had already spent under that hood, the engine should roar like an angry Sasquatch. Come on. Start. The engine came alive...and stayed alive. “Lead the way, son.”

  The young man plowed along the trail, negotiating the twisted turns with ease. Envious of Todd’s skills, Rich followed some twenty feet behind. The trail turned right and began to descend. As Rich came into view of a narrow bridge, he decelerated. A blue lodge was erected in the middle of a clearing. A skier came out and waved. River nodded and kept riding.

  The wind picked up, decreasing visibility. On the left inside of the well-groomed trail, a bright orange marker pinned to the white bark of a birch tree pointed into the forest. Todd veered between two tall spruces onto untouched snow.

  No one has ventured here since the last snowfall.

  Huddled together, the trees closed around them. They rode at reduced speed through the narrow and tortuous hiking trail.

  A sharp curb ahead swallowed the River boy. Rich swerved right. A branch swung in front of him. He ducked. The arm of the naked tree whipped across his windshield, grazing the top of his helmet. Here goes another scratch on the Plexiglas.

  Ten feet ahead, the path made another abrupt turn. Rich navigated this curve with more caution than the previous one, ending in a clearing facing an orange lodge.

  He parked near the lodge, killed his engine, and removed his helmet.

  His young guide had done the same before climbing on the porch. “The lock is on the door, Sheriff. Want me to open it?”

  The snow around the small wooden lodge hadn’t been disturbed recently. “Sure.”

  While Todd fiddled with the key and the lock, Rich surveyed the landscape. Faint knocks piercing through the howling wind caught his attention.

  A door squeaked behind him.

  “The lodge is empty, Sheriff.”

  Glancing past the young man in the doorway, Rich only saw a bench and a garbage can. The lodge appeared smaller than his bedroom closet. “Stay in there, son. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  The wind whistling in his ear made it difficult to establish from which direction the rattling sound originated. As he trudged through the clearing, Rich drew his gun. The snow crun
ched under his boots. There was no footprint in the snow, only the shadow of the outhouse hidden behind a big evergreen. The banging intensified.

  He pushed aside two branches and took another step. Caught in the wind, the door of the outhouse rattled back and forth, exposing a white toilet seat with the lid up.

  Chapter Eleven

  Amelia entered the sheriff’s office with a pile of evidence bags in her hands.

  “Is the sheriff back?”

  “No, ma’am.” Rushing to her rescue, the female deputy helped Amelia display the evidence on an unoccupied desk. “What are these?”

  “It’s a time line featuring the senator.” Amelia proceeded to reconstruct the sequence she’d seen on the wall. “It was taped on the bedroom wall of the apartment rented by Serpent. Do you have a good camera so we can take pictures of these before sending them to the lab for fingerprints?”

  “In my drawer.”

  While Ford fetched the camera, Thompson stepped in.

  “You should have seen the place, Eve. There was a baby names book on the bed. It was down right creepy.” Book in hand, Thompson retreated behind his desk. “The name Hope is highlighted in pink. That’s a tangible connection with the colonel’s missing daughter. I’m leafing through the pages for other highlighted names or clues.”

  The evidence pointed toward Serpent as Hope’s abductor. It was a lead. A good lead.

  Heartened by the discovery, Amelia pointed at the magazine article stored in the first transparent bag. Dated back in September, it was titled Fashion Show – New talents and featured a glossy picture of Senator Norman with two skinny models, both brunettes.

  Ford snatched shots of the article. “I wish I was that skinny.”

  “You’re pregnant, Ford, you’re not supposed to be skinny—no one is supposed to be that skinny.” Amelia shed her coat on the nearest chair, but kept her gloves. Now wasn’t the time to distract the deputies from their work.

  The next evidence bag contained a newspaper article praising Norman’s financial support for the construction of a cancer ward in a Boston hospital. Two photos were attached to his detailed contribution. In the first one, Norman cuts the ceremonial ribbon under the watchful eye of a man and a woman dressed in business attires. In the other one, he’s surrounded by a group of smiling nurses.