Deep Freeze (43 page)

“Don’t panic,” Rinda said as Jenna tore the house apart. Searching, looking, calling for her kids. Denying what she knew in her heart.

“Where the hell are they? And the dog? Where’s the damned dog?” she demanded. “Where did he take them?”

“I don’t know, Jenna. But they’re not here, and if you mess things up, clues or evidence for the police, it’ll only make things worse.”

Panic was shredding her insides and she was rambling, but she didn’t care. “I have to do something!” She’d called Shane again, and couldn’t get through.

“Then let’s do this methodically, okay?” Rinda said. “Maybe then we’ll figure out what happened here.”

“Fine. Let’s start at the top level and work our way down.” They both had flashlights, but the house was big, a rambling behemoth that was dark as death.

Every muscle in her body tight, her nerves fraying, a headache beginning to form behind her eyes, Jenna worked her way down from the top story. With Rinda at her side, she searched through all the bedrooms and closets, the sauna, the bathrooms, checking every nook and cranny.

Nothing.

No sign of anyone, not even the damned dog.

With each step, dread tightened its grip on her lungs and she could hardly catch a breath.

Please let them be safe. Let me find them. Please—oh, God, let them be safe!
“Allie,” she called vainly. “Cassie! Girls!” Tears burned behind her eyes and her throat was thick and clogged. They weren’t inside. Not anywhere.

Don’t give up. You have to find them. You
have
to!

But her daughters weren’t in the house. It was as if they’d vanished into the blizzard. Along with their bodyguard.

“I’m going to check the garage,” she said, once the house had been searched. She tried and failed to keep the sheer panic from her voice. “Maybe Turnquist took them away. To somewhere safe. Used my car.”

“Wouldn’t he have called?”

“You’d think,” she said, but the bodyguard had been marginal at best these past few days, his skills and judgment, in Jenna’s opinion, sorely lacking. She headed outside where the wind lashed violently, slanting so that snow blew beneath the cover of the breezeway and caused the windmill to creak and moan as it spun.

“Cassie!” Jenna screamed over the rush of the wind. “Allie!”

Dear God, let them be safe!

How had he gotten in?

No sign of forced entry.

Why would they let a madman into the house?

What the hell had happened?

Don’t go there. Do not let your worst nightmares get the better of you.

She searched the garage, inside and out. None of the vehicles were missing. Her Jeep, the old truck, and Jake Turnquist’s pickup were parked in their usual spots, tools hanging from the walls, the lawn mower idle and dusty in its corner.

As if nothing was wrong. As if no dreadful acts had befallen her family.

Cassie’s heart nose-dived, but she refused to give up. She spied a sickle hanging on the wall and grabbed it. Just in case. Then hurried outside to the exterior stairs leading to the loft over the garage, the quarters Jake Turnquist had claimed for his own. At the landing, she found the door unlocked. Just like all the others. Inside, Turnquist’s suite of rooms were dark and cold and appeared just as she assumed he’d left them. She swung the flashlight’s beam over the living quarters. Two soda cans, an empty beer bottle, and a couple of microwave dinner boxes littered the counter. Flannel pajama bottoms hung on a hook by his bedroom door. Beyond the door, his bed was unmade, the closet empty, a disposable razor lying by the bathroom sink.

In the living room his equipment—cameras, night goggles, and handgun—had been left behind on the coffee table.
He didn’t have his gun with him?

Something was very wrong here.

The more she saw, the more she was convinced that her children were unsafe. In danger. Who would do this? And why?

And how? How did someone—a single person, presumably—come in, overpower Turnquist, silence the dog, and kidnap the girls? Or was Turnquist in on the abduction?

Fear feeding her headache, she returned to the house where Rinda, back to the fire, was talking rapidly on her cell phone, her free hand gesturing wildly, as if whoever she was speaking to could see her actions. Spying Jenna, she cut herself short. “Just a minute. She’s here now. Nothing, huh?”

“No.”

“Damn.” Rinda’s face fell as she handed her phone to Jenna. “I finally got through to Shane. Talk to him.”

Jenna nearly cried out in relief. As ridiculous as it seemed, just a connection to Carter gave her strength. “Hi.”

“Rinda filled me in,” he said, and his voice washed over her like balm. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Sorry I didn’t answer earlier—too many calls at once. Some didn’t get through. The circuits are on overload. Any sign of Turnquist?”

“No. There’s no one here. No kids. No friggin’ bodyguard no dog, no one,” she said, her panic galloping unleashed, her voice cracking. It was all she could do to hang on to a thread of self-control.

“Okay. Listen. I want you to lock all the doors now. Keep Rinda there with you. Hole up in a room with only one entrance and lock and block the damned door. I’m sending someone over, an OSP unit that’s not too far from you, and I’ll be there in half an hour. Sit tight. Keep me on the phone if you want.”

“I’m going out to check the stable and the barn.”

“Wait until an officer gets there.”

“I can’t, Shane. I have to find them.”

“A few more minutes won’t make any difference.”

“A few more minutes might make all the difference in the world. They could be outside in this damned blizzard, freezing to death. Every minute counts.” She stared out the window to the snowy landscape, the drifts, the looming, dark buildings with their icy, black windows. “Or
he
could have them. Right now. I already got a weird phone call, so he’s around.”

“A call?”

“On my cell. He’s taunting me, Shane.”

“Stay put!”

“I’ll be okay. I’ve got the shotgun.”

“Keep it with you. In the house.”

“I gotta go,” she said.

“I’ll be there soon.”

Hanging up, she handed Rinda the phone.

“You’re not going out again.”

“Of course I am. You would, too. If it was Scott.”

Since the cells were working again, she found her phone in her pocket and hit a speed-dial button.

Her first call was to Cassie’s cell. No answer. Four rings and a quick transfer to voice mail, where Jenna left a quick message instructing Cassie to call home. Her second phone call was to Allie’s cell. As she listened, she heard Allie’s phone ringing and found it stuffed in the cushions of the couch in the den.

“Damn.”

She met Rinda’s eyes and then dialed Josh Sykes’s cell phone. Once again, nothing. “Oh, pick up,” she ordered, as if the kid could hear her. She was shaking inside, scared to death. When Josh’s disembodied voice asked her to leave a message, she did. “Hi, this is Jenna, Cassie’s mom. I’m worried about her. She’s not here at the house and I thought, make that
I hoped,
she was with you. Please call me back as soon as you can.” She rattled off her phone number before hanging up and dialing a final number.

A woman’s rough voice answered. She sounded as if she’d just woken up. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Sykes? This is Jenna Hughes. I’m looking for my daughter. I was hoping to talk to Josh.”

“He ain’t here right now. Don’t know when he’ll be back, neither.” She paused, and Jenna heard the click of a lighter, then the deep intake of breath. “I figured he was with your daughter,” Wanda Sykes said, and the tone of her voice hinted that Cassie was the bad influence of the pair.

“I don’t know where either one of them is.”

“Don’t that just figure.” Another long drag of her cigarette. “You know, I been tryin’ to rein him in, but he don’t listen to me, ’specially when it comes to your daughter. I told him to keep his distance, that she ain’t his kind, but would he listen? Hell, no. Never did have a lick of sense. Too much like his old man. Only interested in drinkin’, smokin’, and gettin’ himself some.”

Jenna was stunned. She’d never met this woman, and yet Wanda was more than willing to spill her guts. “Listen, when Josh comes in, or calls, would you have him phone me?”

A cackling, sarcastic laugh that ended with a coughing fit. “Oh, I’ll tell him, if it’ll do any good and if I’m awake. Sure, I’ll tell him.”

“Please, leave him a note if you’re going to go to bed.” How could Wanda not be worried sick?

“Didn’t you say you left him a message on his cell phone? He’ll get back to you.” She hung up as if Cassie’s whereabouts was of no concern.

“Idiot woman. Doesn’t she know there’s a madman running around abducting women?” Jenna muttered. Without waiting for Rinda’s response, Jenna raced up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, the feeble light of her flashlight bobbing in front of her. She found the shotgun beneath her bed, the shells in her nightstand. She loaded the gun, clicked on the safety, and headed back to ground level where Rinda was adding wood to the dying fire. Red embers glowed and a few flames began to lick at the new chunks of fir.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.” Jenna glared at her friend. “Absolutely not. Stay here. I’ve got my cell. If I need you, I’ll call.”

“If it works.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me you’re not going to do anything foolish,” Rinda said, spying the shotgun. She was sitting on the edge of the hearth, the embers in the fireplace behind her finally catching fire to crackle, hiss, and cast shifting golden shadows through the room. “Tell me you’re going to take Shane’s advice.”

“I’m going to find my kids,” Jenna said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

Rinda’s gaze slid to the shotgun. “With a gun?”

“For protection. Or if some creep’s got the girls.”

Rinda snorted. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”

“Well enough,” Jenna said, and headed outside to the night where the wind blasted, the snow and sleet slanted from the sky, and somewhere, oh, God, somewhere, her children were.

“Sheriff Carter?” a male voice said over the crackle of static on the cell phone connection. Carter turned his back to the wind and the accident, a jackknifed semi and a small car smashed like a tin can. EMTs were working on the survivors, the M.E. had been called for the fatality. “This is Officer Craig, OSP. We were on our way out to the Hughes place, but we got caught up with an accident here on the highway. Two injured, one critical. A woman trying to have a baby. The EMTs are on their way, but we won’t be able to get out of here for at least half an hour.”

Damn!
Carter checked his watch. The unit should have been at Jenna’s by now.

“I’ve called for backup, but the department’s stretched to the breaking point.”

“I’ll handle it,” Carter said.

“We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

“I know.”

Carter hung up and walked to the scene where Lieutenant Sparks was taking notes. “Do you need me for anything?” he asked, and Larry looked up, dark eyes assessing.

“What’s up?”

Carter explained and Sparks nodded. “I can handle this. Go ahead and take off.”

He didn’t need any further impetus. He was in his Blazer and driving as fast as he dared, windshield wipers slapping off snow, police band crackling, his heart in his throat.
Hang in there, Jenna,
he thought, and planned to ream out and fire that useless piece of trash who called himself a bodyguard. What the hell was Turnquist thinking?

His cell phone rang and he answered, dreading a call that would pull him away from Jenna’s place. “Carter.”

“Hi, it’s BJ. I’ve been called to an accident on 84, but I thought you should know that I got a match.”

“A match?” he repeated, and his gloved hands tightened over the steering wheel.

“It’s not much, but you were right. There was an employee who worked for Hazzard Brothers who left right after working on
White Out
. He was a makeup man who also did technical stuff and he was injured in the explosion, nearly lost a leg. Collected a hefty sum of cash, nearly a million dollars, and disappeared. They checked their forwarding addresses—one in, get this, Medford—but that was a while back.”

“Mavis Gette was last seen in Medford,” Carter said. “Okay, so what’s his name?” He braced himself. Knew it could be anyone in town and probably not Wes Allen.

“Steven White,” she said.

“Steven White? Never heard of him.”

“Neither have I, and he’s not in our local phone book. Of course, there are about twenty S. Whites in the Portland-Metro area and I’m looking into them. I’m also asking for all public records under that name.

“The Hazzard Brothers have a ton of employee information they’re faxing me, including White’s employee picture. If this guy’s using an alias, we’ll find him.”

“And check any property bought since the accident. This guy has to live around here somewhere, and I bet he doesn’t want a landlord snooping around, so get a list of people who’ve bought places in the time since the accident.”

“There’s one other thing,” BJ said in a rush. “I don’t know how this factors in, if at all. But Steven White was the name of a character in
Resurrection
. He was Anne Parks’s, Jenna Hughes’s character’s, love interest.”

“Oh, this factors in,” he said, sure of it. “I just don’t know how. I’ll call Lieutenant Sparks and have him get in touch with the FBI, run Steven White’s name through their database; and see if anyone with that name on the West Coast was ever incarcerated.”

“You got it,” BJ said, “as soon as I get back to the office.”

“Keep me posted.” Carter clicked off, dialed Sparks and made his request, then turned off the main road. Jenna’s house was less than twenty minutes away.

Gripping the shotgun in one hand, Jenna directed the beam of her flashlight with the other. Icy snow pelted her as she tried to read the footprints that had collected around the house, garage, and sheds. Overhead, the windmill creaked and spun in the frigid wind, and though the night was alight with the blanket of snow, it seemed eerie, filled with an evil she couldn’t touch or see, could only feel, as if it were breathing hard and cold against the back of her neck.