“She called to let me know she’d made the trip without mishap, that she was already in bed and about to go to sleep.” He leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with his hands. “None of this is good news, is it?”
He heard Knight’s chair squeak, then the detective’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. “Hang in there. It might look like we’re not doing much, but we’re pulling out all the stops to find her.”
As he escorted Jeff back to the lobby, Knight casually asked if he could take a look at Jeff’s handgun. “Standard procedure. You understand. If you’ll give me your car keys, I’ll send a deputy out to get it so you won’t have to go out in that mess.”
Jeff doubted the weather was the reason Knight didn’t want him to retrieve the gun himself, but he surrendered his keys without argument.
Having been assured that he would be the first to hear any updates, good or bad, he was again abandoned.
His chair had been claimed by a biker-looking type with a braided goatee that extended almost to his waist. While Jeff paced, he checked his phone for missed calls. One of Emory’s girlfriends, whom he’d called the night before, had left a voice message telling him that she hadn’t talked to Emory for more than a week.
A client had left a message expressing his displeasure over the dive the stock market had taken and asked Jeff if he had any ideas on how to make up for the loss. His tailor had called to inform him that his alterations were ready. There were two missed calls from the clinic’s main number, but no one had left a message.
Alice, of course, knew better than to call his cell phone.
He spent an hour on futile pacing and was seething with frustration when Grange bustled into the lobby, wearing a hat with ear flaps and zipping up a quilted puffy jacket as he walked toward him.
“They found her car.”
“Only her car? What about Emory?”
“They’re looking.”
“Where?”
“Nantahala.”
“Where’s that?”
“You’re in it. National forest. Knight and I are rolling.”
Grange was nearly out the door before Jeff processed all that and reacted. He jogged to catch up and followed the deputy. No sooner had he cleared the exit than Sam Knight pulled a tricked-out SUV to the curb. Grange opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Stay put. We’ll be in touch.”
With that, he closed the door and the SUV sped away, leaving Jeff staring after it through the snow.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Emory to deduce why he’d taken her shoes. She couldn’t leave in stocking feet. He’d guaranteed that she would remain trapped here until he returned. But she’d be damned before she became part of the spoils claimed by the redneck duo if they, not he, came back.
He’d moved the sofa with ease. It took more effort for her, and it was even harder to pry up the section of flooring, but she managed with the help of a screwdriver she found in the drawer where he kept the smaller one with which he’d repaired the toaster.
She chose a pistol at random and set it on the end table with care.
Soon after they’d married, Jeff had introduced her to a small handgun he owned and had given her a rudimentary lesson on how to fire it. But she never had. It had been a revolver. This one had a cartridge. Recognizing the difference was almost the sum total of what she knew about firearms. But having one in reach was good for her peace of mind.
She also felt more secure once she was fully clothed. As soon as her running clothes were completely dry, she changed into them.
Left with nothing else to do, she restlessly prowled the cabin. She pawed through the contents of drawers she hadn’t explored before, but found nothing that gave away anything about her host—no journal, correspondence, receipts, not a single scrap of paper with enlightening information on it.
That itself was a reveal. He was scrupulously careful. He kept nothing that could identify him.
Going over to the shelves, she ran her index finger along the book spines, noting that the titles had been alphabetized. She thumbed through several of them, looking for loose sheets or notations handwritten in the margins. After a time, she concluded that the shelves he’d installed himself held nothing except books.
In desperation, she held her hands palms-down on the cover of the laptop, mentally willing it to give up its secret password like a Ouija board. It didn’t.
She added logs to the fire when it burned down. She paced, frequently looking out the window, hoping to see the approach of the pickup. As aggravating as it was to admit, she was worried about him. The two men had looked disreputable enough to kill him for his boots, much less for his truck. Perhaps the “kid sister” had been a lure. Maybe they had deliberately crashed their dilapidated pickup into the tree as part of an elaborate scheme to rob him.
He’d told her he hadn’t met the brothers until today, but he had admitted that he knew who they were. He knew that slitting his throat wasn’t their style. What was that about? Her imagination expanded on several themes, all of them catastrophic, all ending badly not only for him but also for her.