Surviving the Wilderness, page 10
Pain filled Quinn’s heart. She prayed that Bruno had sought peace and forgiveness before he’d died.
“Did they catch the guy?” Jeff asked.
“Nobody even saw who fired,” Vic said. “Police cordoned off the whole area and did a complete perimeter, but didn’t see so much as a footprint.”
Jeff frowned.
“I found Quinn in a cave just as we theorized,” Jeff said. “As soon as I entered it and started calling for her, it collapsed and we had to dig our way out, which was why we were unreachable for so long. But just like your invisible shooter, I didn’t see anyone explode the cave either, so I’m guessing I hit some trigger I didn’t see.”
How could he protect himself and the people he loved against an invisible enemy?
“Oh, that reminds me,” Vic went on. “I told you that along with putting out warrants for Kelsey and Benny, they pulled Pastor Drew and his wife in for questioning, right?”
“You did,” Jeff said. “Do you think it’s possible your pastor had anything to do with this?”
“No, I don’t,” Vic said bluntly. “I think both he and his wife are good people who took in his dead brother’s very troubled children. But I’ve also lived long enough to know I can’t always assume I’m right about people and things.”
Yeah, Jeff thought, wasn’t that the truth.
“Have they found Paul?” Jeff asked.
“No,” Vic said, “apparently he’d been off the grid for a few days, along with his girlfriend and parents. But they have arrested two men suspected of the hostage taking at the campsite this morning. They still had the gorilla and clown masks with them and confessed pretty quickly. They claim they were paid a lot of money to wave fake guns around, Taser anyone who got out of line, and tie people up, and that somebody told them it was just a harmless stunt for a viral video. I believe the first part, not sure if I believe the second. They claim it was a two-man job and there was nobody else with them.”
Quinn sat straight and looked at Jeff. “But I heard more than two people. There were people coming in every direction. You were surrounded.”
“I thought so too,” Jeff said.
“So does everyone else questioned,” Vic said. “People claim to have seen anywhere from ten to twenty masked men with guns. How many did you see?”
“That I know I saw for certain?” Jeff asked. “Just two. I heard more than two voices. I saw the trees moving in multiple places at once.” Jeff blew out a breath. “You ever hear the adage that when you feel water on your skin you don’t need to see it actually fall from a cloud to know it’s raining?”
“No,” Quinn said. “But I know the principle of Occam’s razor—the simplest solution is almost always the best.”
“Almost always,” Jeff repeated. “And the fact we have an invisible gunman and an invisible detonation, the idea of invisible hostage takers sounds a little less impossible. Not that it gets us any closer to finding my daughter.”
“We have every major mouth of the river blocked off and every town they could possibly leave from has roadblocks,” Vic said. “Plus, we have helicopters in the air for aerial search, and ground teams. But we’ll have to call those off when the storm picks up again. They’re forecasting dangerous winds with the risk of tornadoes. We’ve got every realistic way out of the forest covered but, honestly, they should’ve exited by now. So they must be hiding out somewhere.”
Quinn’s eyes rose to the horizon and he watched as her lips moved in what he suspected was silent prayer. Then she stood and started to walk a couple of steps away from them down the mountain of rock. She stopped. “I overheard Benny say something when I was drifting in and out of consciousness—”
“Hang on.” Concern filled the military medic’s voice. “Why were you unconscious? Are you okay now?”
“They used chloroform,” Quinn said. “I slept it off. But I should probably hydrate.”
“You should,” Vic said. “Take it slowly.”
“I will.” She glanced at Jeff and smiled. “Benny and Kelsey said they were meeting up with Big Poppa tonight in a town. I don’t know what town it is.”
“Again, we have every town covered,” Vic said.
“Unless there’s a town we don’t know about,” Quinn said.
Jeff watched as an idea formed in her eyes. “Vic, can we call you back?”
“Sure,” he said. “By the way, I’m heading to the cabin now to help with the evacuation of the campers. It took a lot longer than we’d hoped. But that’s because when word began to spread through our communities and prayer networks that you all were in trouble, apparently a friend of a friend of your sister Leia’s detective fiancé offered everyone rooms in a motel of theirs only three hours away and they needed some time to get them ready. They even arranged to have everyone’s luggage and belongings driven up so everyone will have their stuff.”
Quinn closed her eyes and prayed. “Thank You, Lord.”
They ended the call and she asked Jeff to call the cabin.
“Hello?” Rose’s voice was on the line even before it had time to ring once.
“Hey, it’s me.” Quinn’s voice was suddenly tender. “I’m okay.”
“Oh, thank You, God!” Rose praised.
“Jeff’s here with me,” Quinn added. “You’re on speakerphone.”
For a moment, Jeff heard the soft sound of Rose sobbing in relief. Then she said, “Everyone—I mean absolutely everyone we know—has been praying for you. Do you have Addison yet?”
“No,” Quinn said. Tears glistened in her eyes, but her jaw set with determination. “But we will soon, I have faith. Can you put Marcel on the phone for me?”
“Absolutely,” Rose said.
There was a pause then Marcel came on the line. “Hello?”
“I hear I owe you one,” Quinn said.
A deafening whoop echoed down the line. “I was right?”
“You were,” she told him.
“You were in a cave!” Marcel exclaimed.
“I was,” she said. “Now, I need you to be right again and about something even more important. Are you alone?”
“I can be,” he said.
Jeff heard footsteps on the floor and then the sound of his sliding kitchen door opening and closing. “I am now.”
“Okay, we have reason to believe the kidnappers are hiding out in a town,” Quinn said. “Is there any way there’s a town, or a village, or an outcropping of buildings anywhere near this river that I don’t know about?”
There was a pause then Marcel said, “There might be a ghost town.”
She glanced at Jeff and he felt fresh hope fill his core.
“Where?” she asked.
“Page thirty-nine,” he said. “It’s marked with a gold star. It’s the surprise detour I wanted to take if we had time. I don’t know for sure what’s there. But one of the old surveyor’s maps I found in the national archives said there used to be a big mill there, and I saw something in the satellite maps that looked like buildings.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone what you told me, okay? Nobody at all. Not even my sister. We can’t risk the possibility one of the other campers you’re with is somehow mixed up in this and overhears you.”
“Okay,” Marcel said. “Do you want me to hand you back to your sister?”
“No,” Quinn said. “Tell her I’ll call her back when I can.”
Jeff ended the call. “Do you think we can trust him?”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “But I do think this is the best chance we’ve got for finding your daughter and bringing her home alive.”
NINE
They called Vic back and gave him the rundown of everything Marcel had told them.
“I’m going to the cabin to help get all the campers out of our living room and on their way to the motel,” Vic told them. “Then I’m going to join in the search for Addison. Hopefully, this potential ghost town checks out.”
Quinn watched as Jeff’s brow crinkled.
“Whoever the criminal is who called and threatened me earlier,” Jeff said, “he said that if he saw any glimpse of a helicopter or ground search, he’d kill everyone I ever loved.” He blew out a hard breath. “And I don’t know what to do with that.”
“What do you want to do about it?” Quinn asked.
“Whatever it takes to keep my little girl safe,” he admitted.
“Then trust that you’re the one this criminal wants to hurt,” Quinn said. “Not her.”
“Unless he realizes killing her is the worst way to hurt me.”
A shiver ran down her spine even as she forced her voice to sound confident. “We can’t let ourselves think like that.”
“I know you hate accepting help,” Vic said, and Quinn realized for a moment she’d almost forgotten he was there. “But, bro, it’s your brothers and sisters in the Canadian Rangers who are heading up this mission. They’re military, like you, and that makes you family. Even if you’ve never met, they are willing to give their lives to protect your little girl.”
Quinn watched as Jeff swallowed hard. The conversation turned to the practical matters of where the supposed ghost town was, how they’d keep in contact with Vic, and how they didn’t have that much time until the rain was supposed to return and the treacherous storm was about to strike. They ended the call and walked down to the river together, where she blinked to see her very own canoe, paddle, life jacket and survival pack waiting for her.
“How did you know all this was my kit?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” he said and shrugged. “You and Addison were in danger and all that mattered was coming after both of you. So, I literally didn’t stop to think, let alone figure out which canoe or life jacket would be yours. I just ran to the waterfront, grabbed what looked best, made a quick guess at what life jacket would fit you and jumped in. I’m fortunate that Marcel chased me down and forced his maps into my hand.”
Quinn pressed her lips together and reached for her life jacket.
“You know, I hate admitting I need help and accepting it too,” she said. She slid her life jacket on and buckled it up. It was damp and clammy on her skin, but she was beyond thankful to have it back. “I’m not letting you off the hook for being difficult when we worked together—”
Jeff threw the other life jacket on. “I wouldn’t want you to—”
“But, as much as I say I wanted to work together,” she said, “and learn from you, I also really like taking charge, being independent and doing things my way.” That is why she loved the business and career she’d built so much. “So, we have that in common.”
He pushed the canoe off the shore and into the water.
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” he said.
“We have that in common too,” she said. She climbed into the prow of the boat. Plus, neither of them coped well with being trapped in tight spaces. “You know, I always thought we didn’t get along because we were opposites. But maybe it was because we had too much in common.”
Jeff chuckled under his breath.
They set a course and hit the rapids. She sat in the bow and navigated, while Jeff sat in the stern and steered. For over an hour, neither of them said anything besides brief directionalities like “on your right” and “sharp left” as they paddled together like one seamless unit around the quick turns and jagged rocks that jutted dangerously out of the water, threatening to capsize and scuttle them at every turn.
The river branched into myriad side rivers and cut deep through granite. Sheer walls of rock rose high on either side. Fierce wind beat down on them, pushing them faster and faster. The sky grew darker, thunder rumbled like a warning in the distance, while the current grew ever more treacherous beneath their little canoe.
Her own thoughts and fears roiled within her. How long would Kelsey’s attempts to keep everything as cheerful, upbeat and manufactured as something inside children’s television screen last and the true terror of what was happening start to seep inside the little girl’s heart? How long and how thoroughly had this been planned? And why had someone used her little wilderness tour company as a piece in the evil machinery they’d designed?
This route had been chosen from several Quinn had listed on her website and been voted on in a poll on her social media. Had Big Poppa engineered that? Bruno had only come on the trip because her initial guide had been in a hit-and-run car accident. Was Big Poppa behind that too? She now knew Bruno had been planted on her trip as part of this, and so had to assume her supposed accident at the falls might’ve been an attempt to either get her out of the way or cause a distraction. Trying to break into the cabin also might’ve been a distraction or a first attempt at kidnapping Addison. The truck crash could’ve also been a distraction or a way to get rid of Bruno after he’d failed Big Poppa or served his purpose.
Or multiple things could be true at once.
They were caught inside a web, ensnared on invisible threads that weaved all around them. With Big Poppa sitting like a fat and deadly spider in the middle, pulling the strings.
Lord, no matter how hard I try to cling to hope and faith, everything seems so hopeless. Please guide us. Protect us. Bring Jeff’s daughter back safely into his arms. End this nightmare.
Then, when she’d been paddling for so long her arms ached and her shoulders cried for mercy, the rain returned with a vengeance. Lightning flashed in the distance. The water grew choppier, splashing over the edges of their little boat while a deluge poured down on them from above.
“Keep paddling!” Jeff shouted. “I’ll bail. We need to keep going.”
“Will you pray with me?” she called back.
“Never been much for praying,” he said. “Well, before today. But I’ll give it a try.”
“Lord, You promised that when we call out to You that You hear our cries,” she shouted into the rain. “Please save us. Help us find Addison. Bring her home safely.”
“And keep us from drowning,” Jeff added.
“That too.”
“Amen!” Jeff said. “Now, is my mind playing tricks on me or do you hear something flying toward us?”
“Flying?” she repeated. “In this storm?”
Suddenly she heard the staccato sound of what sounded like bullets exploding from a gun. The clatter of weapon fire echoed off the granite walls around them.
“Get down!” Jeff shouted. “We’re under fire.”
How and from where?
Bullets whizzed past her head and ricocheted off the rocks, sending debris and scrub showering around them. There was nowhere to run, let alone hide. Quinn bent as low as she could and sheltered her head in her hands.
“Help us, God!” Jeff shouted a prayer as bullets sprayed the water around them. “We’re sitting ducks.”
The bullets stopped. She searched through the rain for their attacker and finally saw what they were facing. A remotely controlled drone. The kind, she guessed, someone could buy for a whole lot of money from a very good aerial enthusiast’s store. The kind someone had jerry-rigged into a deadly weapon by welding a semiautomatic to the bottom.
“It’s a drone!” Quinn shouted. Where was the person operating it? There was nothing around here for miles. And yet, in one terrifying moment of clarity, everything made sense.
This could be how an unseen gunman had killed Bruno. How someone had blown up the cave and buried them inside. Why they’d heard and seen the approach of a dozen attackers in the woods when there’d just been two men. Someone was using a drone to terrify and terrorize them.
And now it was making a slow, sweeping turn, coming back their way.
“Jeff!” she shouted. “What do we do?”
She turned and looked at him over her shoulder. Something even more terrifying than the weaponized drone filled her eyes. Jeff was frozen. His face was pale, his eyes were wide, and his hands gripped his paddle so hard it was like he was about to snap it in two.
The drone began to fire. Bullets splashed through the water toward them. Fiberglass splinters and shards flew around her as weapon fire shredded part of the right side of the canoe. Whatever seeped through the bullet holes threatened to sink them. The drone flew past them, stopped and began to turn around again. Whoever was controlling the drone was doing so remotely and their aim was bad. The wind and the rain was no doubt making it much harder to both steer and aim.
But all it took was for one bullet to reach its mark.
Gingerly, Quinn placed her paddle in the middle of the canoe. Then she turned around in her seat, crouched low, and made her way toward Jeff. The canoe shook underneath her. She gritted her teeth and prayed they wouldn’t tip. She reached Jeff and took his face in her hands.
“Jeff, listen to me,” she said. Urgency and desperation coursed through her veins. “I need you right now, okay? Wherever you’ve disappeared to in your head, I need you to come back to me because I can’t survive this without you.”
Help me, Lord. I don’t know what kind of trauma happened to him on the battlefield or the depth of pain it left inside him.
She took his face in her hands. “The drone and gunfire are real. We’re together. We’re in a canoe. We’re being fired at and I need you.”
His deep blue eyes snapped to her face. “What do you need?”
The drone was turning back toward them. Its red light blinked at them like an eye. It was a camera. Whoever was doing this to them was watching it happen.
They’d survived two passes. They wouldn’t survive a third.
“Keep the boat steady,” she said. “Whatever happens, don’t let us flip.”
They were going to need the canoe to get out of the river alive.
Carefully, she picked up her paddle and stood in the canoe, felt it rock unsteadily beneath her feet.
