Amarok unloaded the snowmobile from the trailer he’d been towing and grabbed his snowshoes, a shovel and the avalanche probe he kept in his truck. “Get on,” he told Hyde after he’d secured his equipment to their new mode of transportation.
Once he felt the other man climb on behind him, he gave the sled some gas and they jetted across the snow. The motor was so loud he didn’t attempt to communicate again until he came to a stop at the place Easy had indicated from the road. “Here?” he asked as he let the engine idle.
Easy didn’t seem completely convinced. He looked around, obviously trying to gauge where they were in relation to where he thought they should be. “I guess we could start here. I can’t be positive it’s the right place. I just rolled over something while I was driving. It happened fast, and I thought nothing of it, so there wasn’t a lot to fix the location in my mind. But this should be close.”
“Okay.” If it wasn’t close, Amarok could be out here for hours—until after dark. But he’d brought lights and he could only work with the information he had.
He killed the engine and they got off. After putting on his snowshoes, he deployed his avalanche probe to its full 240 centimeters. He had another probe that went to over 300, but while the snow was deep, it wasn’t as deep as it was going to get in full winter.
He began poking the probe into the snow in a spiral pattern, making sure each new hole was no more than the width of an average-size body from the last.
Evelyn wasn’t the only one who believed Jasper was back. Amarok had known he’d probably blame them for the fact that he’d felt the need to kill his own parents, which meant it was only a matter of time before Jasper tried to take retribution.
And maybe that time was now.
Just in case, Amarok had to be ready for him, had to outthink him and outwork him if he planned to keep Evelyn safe.
“We’ve got company,” Easy said.
Amarok, breathing heavily from the physical exertion, looked up. Sure enough, there were several cars parked behind his truck and a handful of people stood at the edge of the field, gawking at them.
“Everyone’s curious about what’s going on,” Easy added.
This road led to the prison, which meant the COs, the kitchen help, the administrative staff, the warden and the mental health team came past here. So did the supply trucks. “No surprise there. I’ve been flashing Sierra’s picture all over town.”
“So most folks know a woman’s gone missing?”
“By now they do.”
“Then why are we keeping what I found a secret?”
Primarily because Amarok had been trying to buy some time so Evelyn wouldn’t come under fire from the community again. But he didn’t want to admit that. “They know someone’s gone missing. They don’t know she’s dead.”
“Do you?”
“Not for sure. I’m still holding out hope,” he said, but he was almost certain his hope would be in vain. And if he didn’t find Sierra’s killer soon, he could be searching for Evelyn’s body next.
*
At four twenty, Evelyn was relieved when she saw a call coming in on line one. Penny wasn’t at the prison to an swer the phone. None of the support staff worked on Saturdays. Only a few of the mental health professionals ever appeared. Today there were two—Russell Jones, the youngest, at thirty, of the psychologists on her team, and James Ricardo, the only neurologist. She wouldn’t have been at Hanover House herself today, except she had so much to do and she’d felt that working would make the time pass faster while Amarok was busy. She’d been waiting to hear from him all day.
She asked James, who’d stopped by to say hello, to give her a moment, and he shut the door as he walked to his own office. “Where are you?” she asked Amarok as soon as she was alone. Judging by the noise in the background, he wasn’t at his trooper post.
“At the Moosehead, grabbing a bowl of chili,” he replied. “I haven’t had lunch, so I’m starving.”
She’d been battling a headache since before noon, but good news should help. “Did you find anything in that field?”
“No.”
The worry that had been plaguing her grew worse, made her feel like her stomach was churning with acid. “But her body has to be there. Where else would Easy get that hunk of human hair?”
“I have no idea, but I was in that field all day, probed the whole damn thing.”
“Didn’t Phil do part of it?”
“No, he didn’t get back from the coroner until I was well into it, and then he had to do something for his wife. Now I’m glad I didn’t ask him to come out. I wouldn’t have trusted the results if anyone else had helped. That’s how positive I was she’d be out there.”
Evelyn sank back into her chair. “So what now?”
“Easy must’ve picked up that … biological matter from somewhere else.”
“Damn it!” She’d been going all day on almost no sleep, hadn’t so much as managed to nap. Even after Easy left and she’d called Andy Smith, who’d already called her back to say he’d keep quiet, Phil had come to the prison to pick up the sack. Every time she tried to rest her eyes, she saw the shack where Jasper had murdered her friends and tortured her. He was here. In Alaska. He had to be. That was what everything that’d happened recently had to mean—and it left her with the creeping sensation that she’d be hearing from him herself soon. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to keep looking.”
“But we live in a vast wilderness! There are so many places to stash a body. And with all the snow…” She rubbed a hand over her face. Once again, Jasper would win. “You’ll never find her.”
“Yes, I will. Maybe it’ll be in the spring, when the snow melts, but—”
“Did you say ‘in the spring’?” she cried. If Jasper was here, she’d be dead by then.
“These things don’t always move fast. Even if I don’t find her body, there could be a piece of clothing or something the perpetrator dropped that we can’t see right now.”
A knock interrupted, and Russell Jones poked his head into her office. “Got a minute?”
She didn’t. Neither was she in the mood to deal with him. He’d been Tim Fitzpatrick’s protégé and had always sided with him against her. Even without the politics of the past and the frustration that had engendered, Russ was so negative it was difficult to like him. He was sloppy, too. Short and cannonball-round, he wore a shirt and chinos every day that looked as though he’d slept in them—and his appearance matched his general mood. She still wondered why he hadn’t quit when Tim did so he could move back to the Lower 48. He did nothing but complain about Alaska.
Still, now that Fitzpatrick was gone, Russ was relatively harmless; that was the main reason she hadn’t put any pressure on him to leave Hanover House. “I’m on the phone.” She held up the handset as if to say, Do I have to state the obvious?
“I just need a second of your time,” he said. “Please? I have to go, but before I do, I’d like to show you this.” He came forward with a letter in his hand.
Evelyn managed to keep herself from snapping at him only because her conversation with Amarok was pretty much done. “I have to go,” she said into the phone. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
Amarok didn’t seem eager to let their conversation end on such a sour note. “Don’t be discouraged.”
That was impossible. But he was trying so hard to keep her safe. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t appreciate his efforts. “I’m just tired.”
“You need to get some sleep.”
“So do you.”
“I’m fine,” he said, and from that she knew she probably wouldn’t see him until very late. He’d drop off Makita so she wouldn’t be alone once she got home, and he’d continue working—sifting through everything they’d ever learned about Jasper, trying to figure out if there was anything more he could do for Sierra. He felt the need to catch Jasper as much as Evelyn did and knew they could be running out of time.
She rolled her chair closer to her desk. “I’ll see you later.”