Rescue At Cedar Lake

THREE

Fear washed over Theresa’s body. Instinctively her arms tightened around Alex’s body.

It was Castor. It had to be. His dark, masked form stood silhouetted against the snow. But the voice and stance were unmistakable. The head of the gang of kidnappers and killers who’d raided the cottage was back, filling the doorway and blocking their escape.

“I said, get off the snowmobile!” He stretched his arm out to its full length and tilted the gun sideways, like some kind of television gangster. “Both of you. Now. With your hands up.”

There was no way past him. They were stuck in a tiny little shed and he was about to shoot them at point-blank range. Her limbs began to shake. Her grip loosened on Alex’s body. Tears choked in the back of her throat and mingled with prayer.

Alex gunned the engine.

The snowmobile shot forward. Her body bounced back hard against the seat. The weapon fired. The snowmobile swerved hard to the right and she clung to Alex so tightly her arms ached. A second bullet split the air. Then she felt wind and snow smacking her body again. She opened her eyes. The snowmobile was flying through the woods. Bullets echoed behind them in the trees. Then the sound faded and all she could hear was the rush of the engine beneath her and the beating of her own heart in her chest. Trees grew thick around them, pressing in on all sides. Jagged rocks seemed to burst through the snow. Flakes filled her eyes like they were shooting through a galaxy of stars. She held on.

What was he thinking driving straight at Castor like that? Yes, Alex had saved their lives. Again. But he’d done so by risking getting shot. Something about that made her feel almost indignant. Alex was the kind of guy who’d just free-fall through life, trusting things would work out okay. Sure, he was right most of the time. In fact, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she was safer on the back of Alex’s snowmobile than she would be with anyone else in the world driving at this kind of speed, through these woods, in the snow. But did that mean he had what it took to be anybody’s bodyguard? Who’d pick up the pieces if, the next time he launched himself into danger, he was wrong?

As a teenager, the strong, daring young man with sun-bleached hair and dazzling blue eyes had always seemed like something out of a teenage heartthrob fantasy. She’d had a girlhood crush on him long before the day he’d dashingly rescued her from the capsized sailboat. Wakeboarding, water skiing, diving off the cliffs—it had seemed like there was nothing he couldn’t do. Except plan or think for more than two seconds ahead. There was a world of difference between instinctively leaping into action to rescue someone from a capsized boat and impulsively dropping out of college. She hadn’t been sure back then that Alex knew the difference. She’d lost count of how many times Zoe had recently tried to convince her that Alex had grown up and wasn’t that reckless guy anymore. Maybe. But she had yet to see it.

God, forgive me for sounding ungrateful. I’m thankful that Alex rescued me. Thank You that we both got out of there alive. But please, help him be wise and actually think through what we’re going to do next, to find Zoe and Mandy, and get us all home safe and alive.

The snowmobile was slowing already. She sat back. They’d left the Rhodes family cottage only a few minutes ago, but now another building loomed ahead of them out of the snow. A moment later she recognized the shape. It was Number Seven Cedar Lake, the Pattersons’ cottage. Despite the size of the lake, its wild and rugged landscape meant there were only eleven cottages dotted around it, like the numbers on a misshapen clock. They were owned by five different extended families, now that her family had sold their cottage: the Rhodes, the Deans, the Pattersons, the Mullocks and the Wrights.

John and Judith Patterson were a sweet, elderly couple who spent their summers at their small, nonwinterized cottage and every winter at their condo in Florida. Their son, Don, was a widower who’d built a large A-frame for himself and his children, Natalie and Corey, after his wife had died tragically. It had probably been twenty years ago now, and she’d been just a kid at the time, but still she remembered how everyone came together to help.

Then Don had been the first one to leap to her parents’ aid, years later, when they’d lost their business, buying up what remained of their inventory and taking over the lease on their store for his lumber business. Sudden sadness filled her chest so sharply it hurt. The little Cedar Lake community had been like a second, extended family who looked out for one another. One that she’d lost the summer she’d lost Alex.

The snowmobile slid smoothly around the far side of the cottage under the side awning. Alex cut the motor and they sat there for a half a breath, hearing nothing but the wind shaking the trees and snow buffeting the awning above them. Then, slowly, she pulled her arms from around his waist. He slid his visor up and looked back over his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

The depth of genuine concern in his tone was probably the only thing that kept her from asking if he had any idea what he was doing. At least now they’d have a moment to regroup.

She slid her visor up, too. “Yes, I’m okay. That man in the mask was Castor. I’m pretty sure of it.”

“Well, I think he’s the same man I saw shooting up the Rhodeses’s cottage and who killed Brick. Which does not bode well.” Alex swung his leg over and stood up. “Can I take it from the look on your face that you don’t like something about how I handled things back there?”

Was she still that transparent around him?

“You drove a snowmobile straight at a gunman.”

“He was going to kill us. We may not know much about these guys, but we know they’re not above murder.” He stretched. “But they’re also sloppy and reckless. Castor, as you call him, was only holding the gun with one hand. Which is cute if you’re trying to look all tough, but absolute garbage when it comes to aiming. My gut told me that if I was fast enough off the mark he’d have no hope of hitting us.” He shrugged. “I was right.”

All right, he had been right about that. Her studies in human psychology told her that there was a lot to be said for reading body language like that, and she could even concede that sometimes a person’s instincts took over and acted, before the rational brain had processed what they already knew. But it was one thing to believe these men were nothing but a ragtag group of amateurs. It was another to risk your life on that.

“So, we’ve stopped here to talk things through and make a plan?” She climbed off, too. The fact that Castor had killed his own henchman worried her, as did the fact he hadn’t taken the time to thoroughly check every corner of the cottage when he’d found her gone—despite how relieved she was he hadn’t seen them. But for now, she could only guess what all that could mean.

“Pretty much,” Alex said. “We should be safe here for a bit. This cottage is pretty hard to find from the main lake road if you don’t know what you’re looking for. If they were coming after us on snowmobiles we should have heard them by now. I’m going to try to call Zoe again on my cell phone and, also, the police and Daniel. Not that I expect I’ll be able to get a signal. So I’d like to try the CB radio, too. But that’s going to be trickier because anything we say on an open channel could be overheard.”

“Absolutely.” Theresa eased the backpack off her shoulders and pulled out the radio. “I’m sorry. You must be worried sick.”

“Yeah, I am.” He took it from her. “Zoe’s not just my little sister. She’s my colleague, and right now she’s somewhere with our client.”

He strode off down the side of the cottage under the porch roof.

“Alex, wait! You said you’re worried about being overheard on the radio. Like I tried to tell you, one of the guys called me by an old nickname.” She took a deep breath. “In fact, it was ‘finicky little princess.’”

She didn’t know what kind of response she’d expected from that, but it wasn’t the one she got. He didn’t even turn. “Okay, well, we can talk about that after if you think that means anything.”

If it meant anything? Didn’t he remember?

“But the kids at Cedar Lake used to call me princess, remember? And they thought I was spoiled.”

He still didn’t turn.

“The only person who ever called me a ‘finicky little princess’ was you. Just you. When you broke off our engagement.”

Alex spun back. His face had gone oddly pale. He opened his mouth, and for a long moment no words came out.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that,” he managed, finally. “I’m sorry if whatever those thugs said reminded you of our breakup. I don’t remember things like you apparently do. Certainly, I never meant to hurt you. But right now, our past doesn’t matter.”

She could tell he was upset, but she didn’t know why. Did it bother him to be reminded that he was the one who’d broken off their engagement? Either way he was completely failing to get what she was saying. Like when he’d seemed to think “I don’t know if I can marry you right now” had meant “Please go away forever. I don’t love you anymore.”

“Listen,” she said. “Please. What I’m saying is that it was very bizarre and specific. Added to the fact he seemed convinced I knew something about this trunk, which I don’t, it makes me think that maybe he had some kind of deeper link to our history here.”

“Maybe? I don’t know. It sounds like a pretty big leap of logic to me.” He didn’t look convinced. “But we can talk about it more when I’ve located Zoe and Mandy, we’re somewhere safe, we’re not trying to outrun a pending storm and nobody’s shooting at us. Just give me half a second and then we’ll keep going. Won’t be long.”

He turned away. She nearly groaned. The storm was growing worse by the second. His sister and Mandy were missing. She’d just been kidnapped and shot at. A man was dead. Yet here they were, reliving the very same kind of argument they’d had a hundred times before. He wanted to leap into action. She wanted to pause long enough to actually think.

Alex had already given up on the cell phone and was fiddling with the radio. She glanced at the cottage. The families at Cedar Lake used to have an open-door policy for all the kids on the lake in case of emergency. Maybe she could still find a key. Her hand ran along the underside of the window boxes, feeling in the snow. Then she stopped short. The cottage door was already ajar.

“Hey, Alex? I think the cottage is open.”

No response. She pressed her hand against the door. It swung open under her touch.

She stepped inside the cottage and cried out in shock.

It had been ransacked.

* * *

Theresa’s cry was faint and yet to Alex’s ears it seemed to rise above the sound of the wind and the static hissing in his ear.

“Theresa?” He turned back. For a moment he couldn’t see her, just snow swirling around the empty place he’d left her standing just moments ago. He ran back three strides and burst through the open door. The cottage had been turned inside out. Drawers hung open. Furniture was tossed. They’d theorized the carnage at the Rhodeses’ cottage had had something to do with Josh’s second cousins and maybe something expensive one of them owned. But why ransack a neighboring cottage? Theresa stood in the clutter. Her hand rose to her lips.

“The poor Pattersons,” she said.

He slid his helmet off. Theresa still had her back to him. His hand reached up instinctively to slide around her shoulder. At the last moment, he caught himself and brought his hand back down, just before his fingertips brushed the back of her neck. He set the helmet down and slid his hands into his pockets.

“We knew Castor and his buddies were looking for a trunk,” he said. “Maybe they’re going door to door looking for it.”

“Mandy’s brothers have done well for themselves financially, and Castor mentioned her by name. So I could at least come up with some theories why somebody would rob them. But the Pattersons are just a really nice, low-key, modest family who never did anything to anyone...” Then she turned back suddenly and he could see the same question crossing her mind that had just crossed his.

“Except for Corey,” he finished.

Corey Patterson was four years younger than Alex and had gotten in trouble with the law for drug possession at sixteen. Alex wasn’t sure of all the details. But sometime around the time they’d been getting engaged, Josh’s dad, who was a cop, had smelled marijuana on Corey and threatened to turn him in. Rumor had it that Corey had been in trouble with the law off and on after that. Then, around the time their engagement had ended, Corey had been charged with possession.

“Whatever happened to him?” Theresa leaned against the wall.

“I honestly don’t know,” Alex said. “I kind of checked out of what was going on up here after you and I broke up. Last I heard, he’d been sent to a youth rehabilitation facility. All my mom would say is that every family had their problems. I just can’t imagine anyone doing this to their own grandparents. I hate to say this, but if they’re ransacking small cottages then they probably hit your family’s cottage, too.”

“My family doesn’t have a cottage here anymore. I thought you knew that.” She crossed over to where a jumble of smashed pictures in frames littered the floor. “They sold it years ago to pay off their business debts.”

She said it so calmly. Like she was pointing out the color of the sky or the existence of dirt on the ground. Like it was a given and he should know. But he hadn’t. And that irked him.

“No, I didn’t know,” he said. He watched as she bent down and carefully brushed the glass out of a broken frame. “I had absolutely no idea. How’s the business doing now?”

“It’s gone, too. They sold it at a loss.” Now there really was a hint of reproach in her voice. “A long time ago. Remember there was a big fire shortly after we got engaged? Well, when they lost the battle with the insurance company they were forced to sell the business, the cottage, our house—all of it—to settle their debts.”

What? His mind spun. His sister, his family and Josh all had to have known about this. Had he been so determined to shut down any conversation about Theresa that they’d never brought it up with him? Or, worse, had they presumed he’d already known?

“There was a huge auction.” She stood up slowly, the picture still in her fingers. “You must know this.”

“Well, I honestly didn’t.” Heat rose to the back of his neck. His voice sounded louder than he’d meant it to. While he’d been on the video call with Theresa he’d wondered why Zoe hadn’t relocated them to the Vaughans’ cottage at the mouth of the lake. He’d never imagined the Vaughans no longer owned it. “When exactly was all this?”

“The end of the summer we were supposed to get married. I told you, my parents were having problems—”

“Money problems. Not ‘losing everything’ problems—”

The lines around her mouth set hard, like she was biting something back.

“Well, at the time we broke up it wasn’t public knowledge,” she said. “They put the cottage up for sale at the end of that summer and held an auction for the furniture and the stock left in the store that the creditors didn’t take back. Don Patterson took over the lease of the actual store building for his business. But sadly it wasn’t enough to keep them from losing the house. The whole thing was a slow, painful death that took a very long time.”

He ran his hand slowly over his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

The words seemed so inadequate, but he didn’t know what else to say.

“Thanks. It was a long time ago. Now, can you do me a favor and take a cell phone picture of this?” She bent down and picked up a glossy photograph in a broken frame, changing the topic before he could press any further. “It would feel wrong to take it with me, but I think it might be helpful to have while we’re trying to figure out what’s happening here.”

She held it up and for the first time he saw what she’d rescued from the glass. It was a group picture of the Cedar Lake barbecue, taken the summer he was twenty. Almost fifty people between the ages of two and eighty clustered around the warm rocks that jutted out into the lake in front of the Vaughan’s family cottage. Half of them were kids or teens, many of whom had been his friends. He was sitting off to the side in a huge wooden Adirondack chair. He, Theresa, Zoe and Josh had won the Cedar Lake scavenger hunt for the very first time that year, beating out the stronger group of Emmett, Kyle and their friend Paul Wright.

The gold, spray-painted coffee mug that served as a trophy was clutched in Alex’s left hand. Nineteen-year-old Theresa sat on the arm of his chair, her back leaning against his shoulder. The sun soaked her long tanned limbs. Her head was tossed back, caught midlaugh, no doubt at whatever he’d been whispering in her ear, which, judging by the grin on his face, he’d thought was pretty funny.

A huge diamond dazzled on her finger. He’d proposed to her that day, on the edge of the rock in front of her cottage, while they’d been out together scavenging for whatever treasures had been hidden in the woods. The ring was even bigger than he remembered. It’d been so far beyond what he was able to afford that Theresa’s father had pulled him aside later that night to ask how he was going to pay for it.

He could still remember the moment that picture was taken. He’d never been happier than he’d been the moment she’d said yes. He’d never wanted anything in life as much as he’d wanted to marry her. His eyes slid from the cell phone camera up to Theresa’s face, as years’ worth of words he never got to say suddenly smacked inside him like a tidal wave.

Lord, what happened to us? How did something so amazing get so destroyed?

He swallowed hard. “Look, Theresa, I—”

“Break, break.” A child’s voice buzzed from the CB radio on his belt, and it was only then he realized the channel was open. “Bee to Hive. Come in Hive.”

Was there another family up at Cedar Lake? He yanked the radio from his belt and raised it to his mouth. “Hey, kid. I don’t what you’re doing on this line. But a radio isn’t a toy, especially not with a storm coming. Where are your parents? Because if you’re in a cottage right now they should really pack up and head for town.”

There was a pause. Then the child said, “Copy. Negative. I’m in a house. I’m not at a cottage and you’re rude. Over and out.”

The line went dead.

“In my experience, little kids hate being spoken to like little kids,” Theresa said mildly.

“I was worried his family might be up at a cottage around here and not know about the weather situation,” he said. “But it seems your radio’s getting a decent range. There are any number of houses on the highway that boy might be in. But I don’t know what his parents were thinking, letting him play with a CB radio.”