Maddocks panned his scopes over the island. He saw the green roof of the expansive lodge, decks stretching out over the water. Outbuildings. Docks, boats. A chopper on a small helipad. Two floatplanes moored out in the water.
Bennett angled the plane as they flew in over the island to come around in the correct wind. Maddocks had borrowed clothes and gear from Bennett, a keen fly-fisher. His plan so far was to walk in the front door of that lodge as a prospective client who was just checking the place out. Yes, it might arouse suspicion, but it was the best plan he had at short notice.
Takumi had finally okayed backup. Maddocks had received the call during flight, just minutes ago. The BOLO had resulted in the hit man’s Audi being spotted leaving the heliport in Vancouver. The kidnapper had been apprehended. Evidence of fresh blood and long red hair had been found in his vehicle.
But the chopper that had been awaiting the man had already taken off with the cargo that the man had loaded onto it.
According to heliport staff, the pilot had filed a flight log to Semko Island. Instrument flying—the craft was equipped to travel in the dark.
Heliport staff also informed police that the pilot regularly flew the Semko route, and they’d confirmed that the package that the Audi driver had delivered to the chopper was large enough to be a body. This was the information that Takumi had needed to prove Angie—alive or dead—had likely been loaded onto that chopper. Takumi had gotten the green light for an ERT team to fly in to Semko.
Maddocks was overdosed on adrenaline, his mouth bone-dry. He chose to focus on believing Angie was alive—she had to be. It was all he had to hold on to. It was what kept his mind sharp, his vision keen, every sense on alert. Something suddenly caught his eye in a forest clearing below. He swung his scopes.
His heart spasmed. Shit. Angie—alive.
With a man. Maddocks refocused his scopes, trying to stop his hands from trembling as he attempted to get a better view. The male was a redhead. Massive in stature. Kaganov. And he had a gun. He was forcing Angie to move ahead of him along a path that led through trees toward the far side of the island, toward docks that ran out into the water in grid patterns. The fish pens.
“It’s them. He’s got her!” Maddocks said through his mouthpiece. “Can you set down on the west side? Around the point north of what looks like fish pens.”
“Ten-four.” Bennett banked the plane, changing direction.
Maddocks’s brain sped like it was on acid. This place looked as Angie had described it from her hypnosis memories. Old-growth forest. Log house with a green roof. Docks forming fish pens. Surrounded by water.
Kaganov had brought his daughter home. To die.
Kaganov shoved Angie forward through branches that hung low over a seldom-traveled stretch of the path. As she came through the foliage, Angie saw a cove and a beach below. From the shore, old wooden docks stretched out into blue-green water in a grid pattern. A weathered hut listed on one of the docks, faded blue paint peeling from old boards. Beside the hut lay a giant tangle of crab pots.
She knew now why the sight of the docks outside Jacob Anders’s window had disturbed her so—it had prodded a buried memory of this place. She and Mila had stood right here, on this path, peeping down at the cove through the branches. And they’d seen something terrible. The recollection gushed into her brain like black, suffocating smoke.
The big red man at the far end of a dock, forcing a thin woman to curl up into a large cage he used to catch crabs. The man wiring the cage tightly shut around the woman, who was crying. The man stabbing her a few times through the gaps in the wires, making blood flow onto the wooden dock. The man shoving the cage with the bleeding woman off the edge of the dock with his foot. The sound of the splash it made. The cry of gulls up high.
Angie swallowed as she studied the scene afresh now, blood still leaking down her face from her split cheek.
The place was clearly disused. The giant crab pots were commercial ones, and they were rusting. On the dock that reached the shore was an old fish-cleaning station. An old gaff leaned against the station.
“Go down.” Her father shoved his gun into the small of her back.
She inhaled and began to make her way carefully down the slope toward the pebbled strip of beach. Stones dislodged under her boots and skittered and clattered down the bank. That’s what he was going to do—put her into one of those crab pots and drown her. Make her bleed more before pushing the trap into the water. Her blood would attract fish. She’d sink fast to the bottom. She’d lie like that pig carcass trapped on the seabed, her flesh being picked clean by crabs and lobsters and sea lice and octopi. She had to act before he could get her to the far end of that dock where the crab pots lay in a heap.
Cautiously, she moved farther down the slippery path and onto the beach. She stepped onto the old dock. The worn planks wobbled beneath her feet. She found her balance. Tentatively she made her way along the dock toward the fish-cleaning station. Water chuckled beneath the planks. Kaganov stepped onto the dock behind her, and she felt it sway under his weight. The breeze off the ocean was clean and cool and scented with brine. Angie came to a halt beside the station. She couldn’t allow him to take her any closer to those crab pots. She had to act now. This was where she had to pick her battle “These . . . these pens are no longer in use,” she said, her voice rough.
He snorted, coming right up behind her. “Not for a long, long time. Salmon farming is now a highly scientific, computerized enterprise. My new pens are out at sea—in open water. Deep water. The fish stocks are monitored by techs and live cameras around the clock. My staff live in floating accommodations for two weeks at a time, then rotate shifts. It’s a controversial business, of course, feeding the world. Growing protein. Environmentalists wage war on the Atlantic salmon we farm here in Pacific waters, say it kills the local fish, damages spawning in the BC rivers, undermines the entire ecosystem. But I have publicists. Good ones. They offer tours to the public. It all helps the company profile.” He nudged her forward. “And now that we’re all caught up, my Roksana, it is time. Take off your boots.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Why?” she asked quietly, but she knew why.
“Because maybe they float. Wouldn’t want your DNA washing up in Tsawwassen again. No more loose ends.”
Slowly, Angie turned around to face him. He had his back to the forested island. Above him, up on the bank between the shadows of the trees, something moved. A ripple of the wind?
Angie tensed as a form took shape in the shadows behind the branches. Her heart stopped. Men.
Two.
Armed with rifles.
Then she recognized the blue-black glint of hair. Maddocks. What in the—? He’s come for me. He’s found me. Angie tried to level her breathing, to not give him away.