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Richard slammed down the phone. “Nothing,” he grumbled over at Adam. “The town doesn’t have any snowmobiles and the county can’t get any to us until the storm lets up. We won’t need them then!”
Adam shook his head. “I haven’t had any luck, either. A friend of mine has one, but I can’t reach him.”
“Do you even know how to ride one?” Betty asked the chief.
“I’ve been on one,” he told her.
She smirked. “That doesn’t mean you know to steer it.”
“We didn’t have much need of them in Boston. But several years ago we were helping search for a missing girl up in New Hampshire. I . . . I rode a snowmobile then.”
Betty’s smirk deepened. “You rode one?”
“Yeah.” Richard sighed. “Right into a tree.”
Betty laughed. “Our great hero to the rescue.”
“Is your son good with his?” Richard asked her.
“Sure. But as I said, it’s just a beginner’s model. Frank and I bought it for Danny last Christmas. It’s just a small Ski-Doo.”
“Ask him if he knows who else might have one in town,” Richard said.
“I’m one ahead of you there, chief,” Betty told him. “I already called him, and he’s trying to find you a good-size one.”
“Thanks, Betty.”
The window of the police station was now completely covered with snow. A couple of officers were out front, digging a passage out the front door. It felt as if they were inside an igloo.
“Have you tried the Blue Boy’s phone again?” Richard asked Adam.
“Yup. Still no answer, chief.”
“The phone at Millie’s store still works. I just called her. So why wouldn’t the Blue Boy’s still be working?”
“Beats me, chief.”
“He’s disconnected it,” Richard said.
Adam looked up at him. “Who has?”
“Jack Devlin. I feel certain of it.”
In his mind’s eye he saw Amy, so small in her hospital bed. The snow had been piling up outside the hospital much as it was accumulating outside the station now. Richard couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu helplessness. The longer he remained trapped in the station, the greater likelihood that he would let Annabel die.
Outside, he heard the whirr of an engine. It sounded like a buzz saw at first, then like the spinning of tires in snow. He hurried over to the front door, Betty at his side.
“It’s Danny!” the secretary exclaimed.
A teenage boy in a bright green wool hat and orange parka riding a yellow snowmobile was stuck in a snowbank in the station lot. The officers who’d been shoveling out the front entrance were rushing over to assist him.
“That boy,” Betty said, shaking her head. “He’s so impulsive. When I told him you needed a snowmobile, he offered to come over. I told him under no circumstances did I want him venturing out in this storm. But he came anyway.”
Richard was grinning. “I’m glad he’s a disobedient child.”
Betty looked up at him. “But take a glance out there, chief, will you? He’s stuck! That’s not a very powerful machine. If Danny got stuck in our parking lot, how are you going to make it all the way out to the Blue Boy Inn?”
“Danny made it all the way out here from your house, didn’t he?” Richard asked, his eyes on the boy.
With a shove from the officers, Danny was able to maneuver the snowmobile out of the bank, then hopped back onboard and steered it over toward the front door, where he brought the machine to a stop. He waved a big blue-mittened hand when he noticed the chief and his mother watching from the glass door.
“I’m giving that boy a medal,” Richard said, beaming.
“If he wasn’t so tall,” Danny’s mother said, “I’d give him a spanking.”