46

ARN TRIED DOZING. HE DRAPED his hat over his eyes and, about the time that he actually thought he’d catch a nap, some urchin would run screaming by with the mom screaming even louder in hot pursuit. So when his phone vibrated in his pocket, he was fully awake as he flipped it open.

“Arn?” Ana Maria said, her voice strangely calm. Quiet. As if she were fighting to remain so. “You need to come back to Cheyenne.”

“I’m waiting for my flight now.” He checked his watch. “If it’s not delayed, it leaves here in a little over three hours. Back in Cheyenne in six unless the Denver traffic’s too nasty.”

“I do not have six hours.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have six hours? You know I’m headed home, and you ought to be, too, if you want Danny’s Welsh—.”

“Arn!” And Maria snapped. “I’m telling you, in six hours I will be dead. Unless you get here in three.”

Arn’s gut churned as he recognized that voice, that angry yet pleading voice. Ana Maria needed help. And Arn was the only one to help her. “Ok,” Arn said. “Breathe deeply and tell me with a yes or no—are you in danger right this instant?”

“Yes.”

“Is someone holding you against your will?”

Yes.”

“Are you in a position to tell me who?

There was a long pause and muffled voices over the phone before Ana Maria came back on, “not if I want to live through this night.”

“Ok. Ok,” Arn said, thinking quickly. “I’ll charter a flight. Will that get me back in time?”

Muffled voices once again, and Arn could only imagine what condition Ana Maria was in right this moment. “Leave Seattle. Now. Talk with no one,” muted voices. “Take no detours anywhere. Come straight to Cheyenne.”

“Where?”

“When you arrive, call my phone number,” Ana Maria said. “You will be told where to come. And Arn,” she started sobbing, “do not deviate from your instructions,” and the phone disconnected.

Arn grabbed his travel bag and ran to the information counter. He got directions to Business Air and ran across the terminal, stopping at the first kiosk he encountered. “I need to charter a flight.”

The woman behind the counter leaned over and looked at a planner. “Where to?”

“Cheyenne, Wyoming.”

“Oh my,” she said. “That’s a loooong way off. That will be pricy.” She flipped a page. “And just when do you wish to fly out?”

“Now.”

She grinned wide as she grabbed a phone and punched in numbers. “That will be expensive, indeed.”

—

Arn didn’t even know Honda made an airplane, let alone one that it flew above forty-thousand feet according to the pilot who seemed fascinated that someone would spend two-thousand dollars for a charter flight to someplace as remote as Wyoming. “There’s cocktails in the fridge,” the pilot called back and she laughed. “With what you’re paying the company, we can afford for you to get knee-walking drunk at our expense.”

“I’d just like some quiet time to think,” he said and left the drink mixers alone while he dialed Oblanski’s number. “I was just going to call you,” the chief said, “and tell you about that croaker the rancher found in his culvert.”

“Tell me later,” Arn said, and hurriedly told Oblanski about his phone call from Ana Maria.

“She gave no hint as to who was holding her?”

“I got the distinct impression she was being monitored very closely. I shudder to think what would have happened if she said more than she was allowed.”

“I’ll put out a BOLO for her car—.”

“Danny said her car was still parked at the library.”

“Shit,” Oblanski said. A beat. “Here’s my plan—since you were warned not to contact the police, I’m going to call in every officer we have. Plainclothes. We only have a limited number of unmarked cars, but I’ll authorize mileage for those who drive their own. I don’t know just what to look for, and I’m relying on the experience of my officers to see when something is out of place that might lead us to her.”

Arn checked his watch. The library had been closed for a couple hours. “Can you send a man over to talk with the librarian who saw Ana Maria there earlier? See if anyone followed her out to her car. And it might be a long shot, but could you send a TTY Denver Airport Police and ask them to run down Ethan Ames. He should just about be boarding his redeye for D. C. about now. He might remember something. Anything that he recalls from his interview with Ana Maria earlier.”

“That I can do just as soon as we hang up,” Oblanski said. “Think hard now, and tell me who you think took her?”

“Doc Henry would be at the very top of my list. I can see him taking her as a hostage to get me alone. I’d say he hates Ana Maria and me equally.”

“I had a bad feeling about her broadcasts,” Oblanski said. “I was afraid she’d stir up a hornet’s nest with all that talk about the veterans’ murders.”

“Don’t forget the RSL,” Arn said. “Jonah Barb would be right under Doc on my suspect list. The way he’s been sending her threatening emails. The dead cats. The slashed tires—.”

“He’s at the bottom of my list.”

“The bottom? That man is about as snaky as they come.”

“That man is about as dead as they come,” Oblanski said, and Arn thought he heard the chief chuckle. “Colonel Barb was that body the rancher found in his culvert. The coroner thinks Jonah has been dead more than a week.”

“That’s impossible,” Arn said. “He was emailing Ana Maria all this time.”.

“Unless he wasn’t the one sending the email,” Oblanski said. “Unless someone else sent them.”

“Doc Henry,” Arn breathed, and mentally kicked himself in the keister. When Doc was actively luring unsuspecting women to their deaths in Colorado, he was not caught because of his profile origins on dating networks. The computer forensics officers never linked Doc to any of the victims, he hid his activities so well. It was old fashioned police work—and luck that Ana Maria acquired a cell phone to call Arn—that had solved the case and saved her. Even after Doc was caught, there was never any computer footprint to connect him to the other victims. “Was there by any chance a white rose atop the corpse?”

“Matter of fact, there was,” Oblanski said. “Pretty wilted in this heat but it was there.”

“Doc Henry,” he whispered and his gut churned.

Arn thought deep, thought back to what he’d learned this last week with his interviews, his brief visits with people at the VA. “Oh, shit,” he breathed.

“What is it?”

“If I’m right, Ana Maria is in imminent danger.”

“From who?”

“When I know something more certain, I’ll call,” he said and closed his phone. “Shit,” he whispered, as if the killer could hear him miles away.