Last Track, The (25 page)

And maybe the wind was just a freak low-pressure zone, a curious quirk of the topography. Maybe.

He certainly wanted to believe that.

They reached the crest, which overlooked a vista lined with pine trees.

And along the horizon, a much more important object held the tracker’s eye. Seeing it, he recognized it at once.

He saw what Sean had been running toward from the beginning.

01:14:50 PM

First Mike and Dagget had crossed the ridge in the same stretch where Mike believed Sean had. Now he stood where Sean had stood. Seeing the expansive view from the crest revealed what Mike had hoped for: a critical break in the search.

Up to that point, the tracks along the ridge had reinforced Mike’s notion that Sean had aimed for a very specific destination, right from the clearing near the ranch. Like any person on the run, as the distance he traveled increased, so did his wavering. Dalliances that Mike expected.

And yet each time he strayed, Sean had recentered himself and returned to the path. He chased a beacon; he pressed ahead with discipline and he persevered. That spoke about the strength of his character. The fire in Sean filled Mike with hope, and frustration.

From the beginning Mike had been trying to identify the visual lure that was guiding Sean, and failed miserably; it had eluded him. Still, he grappled with the question, as trackers must. And here, quite by accident, came the answer.

The wind died and then stopped.

Far ahead in the distance, beyond the pines, past several other shallow ridges, two mountain caps thrust above the horizon. A sense of déjà vu floored him, the sensation so powerful, so overwhelming, the weight of the realization made his body shudder. The exact mountains visible from the front porch and from room twenty-three at the Pine Woods Ranch.

The twin mountain caps.

He cursed himself, for he had noted that very mountain range earlier—for days, in fact—from different angles. Yet he had ignored their significance. Each occasion before, he had looked without seeing.

Lisbeth needed the information immediately.

Dialing her, Mike noticed his own rushed breathing. The call seemed as if it might not connect.

“Whatever eyes you’ve got in the air,” Mike said to Lisbeth, “please make sure they scan the south side of the twin mountain caps. The massive ones visible from the ranch.” Mike added some very rough headings for her, raw estimates of possible bearings.

“Briars Pitons,” Lisbeth said. “You can’t have made it that far yet.”

“No, we haven’t,” Mike said. “But that’s where he’s going.”

“Where are you, though?” Her voice rose sharply at the end of the question. An out-of-control inflection, so rare for Lisbeth.

“What makes you ask that?” Mike said.

“Because of all the searchers we deployed on horses,” Lisbeth said, “no one who used your coordinates recovered any evidence of you two or Sean. Not a scrap. I have to think that most of them are competent and can use the gear. I don’t want to believe the screw-up is yours, but I can’t believe so many people made the same mistake.”

01:16:38 PM

He could speculate, but was not ready to. “I can’t explain why the coordinates didn’t work out,” Mike said. If subsequent teams never found proof of Sean, or the many reflective markers Mike had pressed diligently into the soil indicating their location, he had an even bigger problem than the Partner’s phone threats. Besides the brief lapse when the Partner toyed with him earlier and blotted the GPS signals, and the one instance he skewed the coordinates slightly, he trusted the numbers provided to Lisbeth. There was nothing wrong with the GPS. No, there was a more ominous explanation.

Someone removed the markers before the searchers could recover them.

“Hey.” Dagget interrupted the phone conversation. “Ask her what happened to our pallet.”

Mike nodded and returned to the original conversation with Lisbeth. “I should have listened to Shad and taken his offer of a new GPS. Mine must be broken.”

“I hope that is all that’s wrong,” said Lisbeth. “But you can understand why I’m a little concerned. Every resource is important, and I can’t afford to squander what I have on wild-goose chases. I bet big on your findings. Everything looked great on the surface, but now I don’t know. Maybe it’s like you say: your GPS is busted. In which case, I don’t know what we should do. Can we collaborate like that? You won’t know where you are really . . . which means I don’t know where you are either with any certainty. No one does. That’s a massive risk to sanction in terrain like this. Especially given Sean’s condition.”

“I’ll reset the device,” Mike said. “Maybe a full reinitialize will do the trick.”

“Look, Mike, I’m just concerned.” She paused long enough to drag on a cigarette, though Mike was almost positive Lisbeth wasn’t smoking then. He had a feeling, anyway.

“Understood.” He could see her point. “I wanted to ask you about the gear drop earlier. We had some trouble recovering the pallet.”

“If your GPS is busted, that makes sense.”

“Well, I just wanted to check it was dropped as planned. And second, if it was, I was wondering how much drift the pilot accounted for? Because it was windy earlier and if they pitched it from a high ceiling, you’d be surprised how far something wanders before touching down.”

“I assure you, the gear was deployed on schedule. I can ask the pilot about how much drift she accounted for.” Lisbeth sighed at the present state of affairs. “Let’s just hope things get better.”

Lisbeth hung up.

In the corner of his eye, a swatch of a maple stirred, nearly five hundred yards out. Mike zeroed in on it.
Odd. That doesn’t look right.

Wind patterns could change without notice, at the whim of pressure systems. He doubted this was an isolated dip or swell in the barometer.

The rustling stopped. Lingering atop the ridge for a moment, he hesitated. While he doubted Dagget occasionally, now suddenly Mike doubted himself.

However well his senses functioned normally, under duress, they might deceive him. Compromised senses could make a tiny animal sound larger. Or they might suggest that an object appeared out of place, even though all was in order. Proving there was anything out there was very difficult, because at that angle, at that range, the outermost layer of canopy blocked a direct view. Mike peered through his binoculars for a long time. He held the high-powered specs fixed to his face, and the viewing area pressed a circular groove in the skin around his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Dagget prompted the tracker, finally breaching the stillness.

Mike tightened the focus, sharpening the image.

In the sights, a figure clad in camouflage and a face mask stared back at him through binoculars.

01:19:55 PM

Rumors about Sean’s disappearance spread among the guests like a fire built from over-seasoned wood. A lack of details stunted the spread of flames at first; the hounds of gossip worked hard to light the initial log, hoping for a spark. Once the first flame caught, rumors consumed the next log rapidly, and the next faster still. By lunch each guest knew, or claimed to know, about the case. As word spread among the guests, the tone turned speculative.

Jessica pieced the real chronology together by talking with Erich, Lisbeth, and Cara.

Like a good urban legend, nearly all the chatter traced back to a single person. A woman had noticed a double-parked sedan in the parking lot the night before, and a man hollering at a woman as he threw a notepad into the backseat of a rental car. They drove off in a rush. Not recognizing the couple from any ranch activities, this guest asked the girl at the front desk the following morning, who gave a vague response.

Others guests would have dropped the questions then, but the nosy guest happened to be Cara Isham. As she told Jessica later, she did not let anyone give her the runaround when she wanted a straight answer.

So over breakfast the following morning, while Jessica rode back from the hospital, Cara asked another ranch staffer about the vanishing couple. He explained there was a situation, the police were involved, and the ranch trusted the authorities to resolve the problem. Instead of ending there, the vague comments piqued her interest further.

Later that day, the same car returned to the ranch. Again it double-parked in the lot. A woman waited in the passenger seat, her face red, sobbing. Cara went over and asked what was wrong. The three words the woman in the car uttered had Cara’s full attention.
My son disappeared
. And that was all the woman managed before she broke down in a heave of shudders.

Later, Cara cornered Erich and asked about the couple. Unlike his staffers, she found him surprisingly forthcoming. Sean’s father, Gerald, tired of the lack of progress and of being denied the chance to look for his son, took matters into his own hands. Without disclosing his plans to Faith, he sneaked into the woods and began searching for Sean. He started at the clearing where it all began. Fourteen hours later, he made a panicked call to Lisbeth. Gerald Jackson had slipped down an embankment and broken his wrist. He had not packed enough water or food, and had no idea where he was. Lisbeth squandered four hours worth of time and resources trying to extract him. More seriously, Gerald had also tainted the murder scene, to the point that no additional evidence uncovered there would be admissible. In response to these mishaps, Lisbeth had ordered the Jacksons off the Pine Woods Dude Ranch and out of her way.

Erich had arranged lodging for the Jacksons at Chariot’s, a local hotel, opened a tab for them at the Little Gem Diner, and leased a Lincoln Town Car so they could go where they wanted, whenever they wanted.

The Jacksons remained near the action, a five to seven minute drive from the ranch, but no longer had access to the operations center. What they heard about the case now came only through Lisbeth. An officer stationed at the front gates would notify her if the Jacksons appeared unannounced.

Now, what missing kernels guests lacked but craved, they guessed, and twisted the news like a publicist with an incoming press release. And when those theories failed to satisfy their need for sordid content, they invented details, and added information that would make the story fit the mold they wanted to believe.

Snippets of conversations like these swirled near Jessica and Andy in the dining hall:

“. . . the FBI may look into it . . .”

“. . . they refused volunteers . . .”

“. . . they want volunteers . . .”

“. . . are you going to offer to help . . . ?”

“. . . foul play might be involved . . .”

“. . . as long as there is no sign of foul play, I’ll volunteer . . .”

“. . .what a shame for the parents . . .”

“. . .such nice people . . .”

No one commented on Jessica’s reappearance, or questioned her absence. The missing boy held center stage. Several guests noted her return; however, they said nothing more invasive than
hope you’re feeling better.
Their odd stares emoted far more than they expressed verbally.

Though she knew the truth, Jessica allowed the wild tales about the missing boy to circulate undisputed. She had kept secrets before. If she quashed the stories, challenged the outrageous rumors, it would only redirect attention to her.

People would ask Jessica questions; people would suspect she had an agenda. Generally, she loved asking questions; she disliked answering them.

As Jessica savored tiny bites of bison and rice pilaf, Cara appeared.

“I can’t believe my daughter left the sink running,” Cara said. “Good thing she told me in time so I could stop the bathroom from flooding. Hey, maybe we could go shopping after the afternoon ride? There are some kitsch stores on the main drag. I feel like spending money. You want a pair of authentic cowboy boots?”

“Not sure about the boots, but I could be in the mood for some shopping,” Jessica said enthusiastically.

“That’s what I’m talking about!”

Walking back to the lodge after lunch with Andy, Jessica ran into Erich outside the building.

“Thanks very much for the rose,” Jessica said. “And the water. That was very nice.”

“Not too much, I hope?” Erich said.

“It was perfect.” Feeling herself gush, she cleared her throat, and reminded herself of the question she had for Erich. “Funny I ran into you. I was talking to someone and your name came up. Detective Lisbeth McCarthy mentioned she contacted you about using your plane for the search, and hadn’t heard back yet.”

“Detective Lisbeth McCarthy?” Erich asked. He sounded surprised. “Oh yes, I remember now. One of my mechanics found a part that needed to be replaced. The problem is there’s a tight supply of that part, so we’re grounded until it arrives. Once the part is installed, I do a test run, then the plane is hers.”

To Jessica, his story seemed reasonable. “I imagine your days are very busy.”

“That’s true, but I have no excuse for not calling her back. Don’t worry, I’ll let her know what I told you.” Erich paused. “So are you helping with her investigations?”

“Just talking. Mike is still out there, so we chat a bit about it. You probably know more than I do about the search, being from around here.”

Erich mentioned he had business commitments and excused himself.

Reaching her room, Jessica turned the key halfway around and then suddenly stopped.

The door was already unlocked.

01:31:47 PM

The question Dagget posed to Mike was what to do about their stalkers.

Mike wasn’t worried about why they were being trailed. His real concern was how to get as far from them as soon as possible. And as far as Mike could see, they had one good option.

The ridge base and the edge of maple trees created a natural, and narrow, enclosure alongside the rocks. The enclosure minimized Sean’s wanderings, and led him generally north. For a boy being chased, the wall also doubled as a shield. If anyone stormed over the ridge, a thicket of trees at his left provided an escape route. His strategy could work for them as well.