Her rain jacket kept her torso dry and the cap helped with her hair, but her pants were drenched and sticking to her legs by the time she reached the gondola station. Thank God the lift was running. The wind had died, and the lightning had stopped, but rain still poured, relentless.
She held her pass out to the lifty, who looked her up and down as he scanned it. “You know it’s snowing heavily in the Alpine at the moment, ma’am?”
“I’m just going up to the restaurant.” The restaurant was at midstation. She didn’t need to tell anyone she was going right to the top, to Grizzly Hut.
“Well, you’re in luck. Only reason we’re running the gondola tonight is because of the party up there.” He smiled. “The big buffet kicks off the long weekend. Make sure you’re down by eleven. That’s when we shut down.”
“Uh…did you see anyone else go up. A man with a little boy?”
“No kid, ma’am. Just two other guys within the last hour or two. One and then the other a few minutes after him. Weird thing was they both had cuts on their faces. In the same place, just under the one eye.”
Hannah wrapped her arms tightly across her chest as the gondola doors swung shut. She was shivering. From cold. From fear. She was nauseous with worry for Danny.
The cab lurched out into the dark rain and started its climb up into black clouds.
She felt exposed, vulnerable in the glass bubble as it swayed and lurched into the dank mist. She did not get out at midstation, and there was no one to see her continue the last leg of her ride up to the peak.
She willed the car to go faster. As it rose higher, the driving rain turned to thick wet flakes of snow that plastered one side of the gondola. The weather was freakish at this elevation, at this time of year. By the time the sun came out tomorrow the snow would probably all have melted. No sign of it. But where would she be when the sun came out? Would she be holding her boy? Would the mountain claim them, like it had Amy, leaving no sign of the tragedy that was unraveling around her?
Hannah shivered in her wet clothes as she shouted out the window. “Oh, Danny. Where’ve they taken you? What do they want?”
* * *
Nothing in this world could have prepared Rex for the twisted tangle of emotions that assailed him.
Outside the Gazette office he had to stop to collect himself. He gripped the cold metal of the staircase banister. Why hadn’t she told him?
A son.
A prickle of exhilaration burgeoning in his gut slammed head-on into anger. She’d kept the secret for six bloody years. He would’ve dropped everything had she told him. Now he might never see his son. The Plague Doctor had him. If he didn’t hurry, they’d have Hannah, too. They would use his woman and his boy to get to him.
Rex sucked in the damp air, trying to find control. Six years ago he’d walked out on Hannah so that this would not happen.
Now it had.
They had all come full circle to see this thing finally play out.
He had to get to them, to Hannah. He would not let six years of agony come to naught.
Driven by a force alien to him, Rex flew down the stairs, two and three at a time. He would let nothing come between him and his son.
He checked that his .38 was tucked into his hip holster and ducked into the rain. It would be dark soon. It was probably snowing in the Alpine. He needed gear. Fast.
He vaulted up the stairs of Expedition, a rental and retail store off the village square. It was quiet, no other customers. Rex ordered his gear, making clear it was urgent. The clerk raised her eyebrows but said nothing as she gathered up two head lamps, gloves, hats, a backpack, emergency space blanket, a water bottle and first-aid kit. Rex flashed his credit card and quickly stuffed the gear into his new pack.
The village was nearly empty as he ran through the cobblestone streets to the gondola station. The clerk at the store had told Rex it would still be operational because of a party up at the midstation restaurant.
He saw the lifty chatting with another young guy as the gondola booths swung through the berth, opening and closing empty before starting back up the mountain.
Rex considered running past the lifty and hijacking the cab with the doors just closing. But he figured if he didn’t go over to the booth and buy a ticket they’d shut the lift down and have security waiting for him up top. He couldn’t risk it.
He pushed his cash through to the ticket seller. “One. Anyone else gone up recently?”
She looked up at him through the hole in her glass booth.
“Been real quiet today with the weather and all. We had a woman a short while ago and two guys before her. Should get busier closer to seven though, when the party up at the restaurant gets going.” She pushed the ticket and the waiver form out to Rex. “Sign here.”
He spoke as he scribbled on the form. “Who bought the last ticket up?”
“Can’t give out that information. Sorry.”
Rex slipped a fifty-dollar note under the window of the ticket booth. The young woman looked up at him, surprised, unsure.
“Can it hurt?”
“I, uh…I guess not.” She flipped to the last waiver form that had been signed. “Here it is. Mark Bamfield.”
“Did he have a little boy with him, about six years old?” My son.
“No, sir. Haven’t been any kids going up since this morning.”
“And the woman and the other bloke? Who were they?”
“They used passes. I don’t have their names on waiver forms.”
“Your lifties scan the bar codes on the passes, don’t you? Their names show up on your computers.”
The woman hesitated. Rex slipped another fifty-dollar bill under the glass. Her dark brown eyes opened wide.
“Everyone has their price, sweetie.” If money didn’t work, there were other ways.
She turned to her computer monitor, opened a window and scrolled down a page. She looked at the times of the scans. “The woman was Hannah McGuire. The man—” she scrolled farther down the computer page “—I’m sorry, there’s no particular name registered against that bar code. The pass he used was a corporate pass that belongs to the White River Spa. Their staff use it and they also give it out to guests. It could’ve been anyone.”
Rex left the booth, handed his ticket to the lift attendant and climbed into a gondola car.
There was no way to go any faster. Mitchell, the loose cannon, was up there with Hannah. Who else? And where was Daniel Logan McGuire? The Plague Doctor was behind this. Rex was certain of it. After all these years everything had converged in this quiet mountain town. Had the Plague Doctor been hiding up here, in plain sight, while he continued his diabolical work?
Rex flipped open his cell phone and punched in Scott’s number.
“Scott here.”
“Where are you?”
“Down here in the lobby of the Presidential. I got into White River earlier than I expected. Where are you calling from?”
“I’m in a gondola heading up Powder Mountain. I need your help.”
“Shoot.”
“I’m gonna keep it brief. McGuire has a son. He’s been kidnapped. I suspect they’re using the boy to flush her and myself out. They—and I think the Plague Doctor is involved in this—are luring us to the Grizzly Hut up on Powder Peak. I don’t know where the boy is…or even if he’s still alive. I need you to get to the White River Spa and check it out. See if the boy is there. Mountain staff haven’t seen a kid go up in this lift since this morning. He was kidnapped around four o’clock this afternoon, but there’s a back entrance to the spa. You can get to it through the back of White River Park.”
“What’s the boy’s name?”
Rex felt his voice catch. “Daniel…Daniel Logan McGuire. He’s almost six. See what you can find. I’m going to see if they’ve got Hannah up at the hut.”
“Logan McGuire?”
“Yeah.”
Scott was silent for a minute. Processing the information.
“Take it easy, Rex.”
“You, too, buddy.”
* * *
He watched from the shadows of the mountain-top gondola station as she emerged from the building and stumbled up the rocky path into the swirling gray. After six years, it was all finally going to come to an end. Like a festering boil, it had taken until now. Here, in White River, all the links were coming together. He felt a sense of relief. Finally he could purge himself.
He watched as she slipped. Then he stepped out from the shadows to follow her up to the cabin. He knew the man was waiting for her there. He had followed the man.
* * *
Hannah slipped in wet snow that was starting to compact on the trail up to Grizzly Hut. Without the aid of a flashlight she groped her way into the snowy bleakness. She had to concentrate. Accidents happened when you lost concentration, when you panicked. But she could feel the panic licking in her stomach. She willed herself to push it down. Danny was counting on her.
Her legs and toes were numb, her wet pants now icy and abrasive against her skin. She stumbled again and stopped.
“Danny!” She screamed into the swirling snow. Her words were sucked into a flat absorbent void.
She was at the traverse now, where the trail crossed above Grizzly Glacier, where Amy had gone down. She hugged the side of the mountain, her fingers red and raw from cold. Darkness swallowed the trail ahead. She rounded the ridge, feeling her way. Then she saw it. The light above. It flickered, wavered. Dim in the distance. It was light from the hut.
“Danny!”
The wind sucked the yell from her mouth. This side of the ridge was unprotected, and the flakes of snow became small, driving ice pellets. They stung into her face like a million needles.
Hannah groped her way to the cabin, bent double against the stinging snow. She stumbled up the cabin stairs and crashed into the door. It swung open under her weight and she tumbled into the room.
He sat there, beside a flickering candle. There was no fire. The cabin was cold, dank. He watched her, one side of his mouth pulled down in a derisive grin. Mocking. The fresh scar under his eye was puce.
This was not the Dr. Gregor Vasilev she knew. This was the man who had tried to kill her, tried to drown her in White River.
The cabin door crashed shut in the wind behind her. Trapped. Just her and Vasilev, in the dull flickering light.
“What have you done with my son?”
She forgot the cold. She forgot the numbness in her legs and feet, her raw hands. She took a step toward him. “Where is my boy, you bastard?” Clumps of snow dropped from the peak of her cap.
He didn’t get up. He hardly moved. Vasilev just waved his hand indicating the bench opposite him. There was a glass of amber liquid in front of him. It was catching the light of the weak flame. An empty glass vial rested beside it.
Hannah looked back at Vasilev. It was then she noticed the glint of the gun in his other hand, resting in his lap.
She moved woodenly across the floor, toward the table. She didn’t sit. “I want to know where Danny is.”
“Take a seat, Hannah, my friend,” he laughed, the sound flat and sharp. It grated like metal in her head.
“Take a seat, have a drink. A bit of brandy to warm you up while we wait for your lover to come.”
Hannah eyed the glass, the empty vial.
“Go on, take it. It’s a sundowner.” He cackled again. “Except the sun has already gone down for you all. Drink it while we wait for the famous Rex Logan.”
It flashed through her mind. Amy. Grady. The GHB drug in alcohol. The brandy. The empty vial on the table. She had to buy time.
“What makes you think Rex will come after me? He doesn’t know I’m here. I told no one, like the note said.”
“Good girl. But Logan got his own note. I had it delivered after yours so that we could have a little time together before he arrived.”
So, Vasilev wanted to drug her before Rex arrived. Danny had been used to lure her. She saw it all now. This monster probably had no intention of keeping her alive. Her purpose as a lure had been served. She felt sick. Her stomach felt as if it had turned to water. She prayed that her son was okay.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You’re in the way.”
“Is this how you did it with Amy?” Hannah pointed to the drink on the table.
“She was easy, the nosy little carbuncle. She thought she could play with the big time.” He snorted. “She took the drink with no problem. I told her Fisher had asked me to come and meet her in his place. I told her that we had urgent, vital information for her, that she had to come at once and we would go down to the spa.” He laughed. He was enjoying this, finding sadistic pleasure.
Hannah tried to keep him talking.
“What then?”
“She was helpless from the drug by the time I sent her down the glacier. She managed to scream before her system shut down completely. Nature did the rest.”
“What about Grady Fisher?”
“His big mistake was using the phone at the spa. We have them all monitored. We knew what he and Amy had discovered. We heard them plan the meeting at the hut. He was going to show her the lab, our research and come down the back way to the spa. We dosed him up. After the nosy reporter was out of the way, I put him in his car and sent it over into the canyon.” He motioned to the vial. “It doesn’t leave much trace.”
He leaned forward, eyes boring into hers, menacing, the fresh scar on his cheekbone bunching. “Sit. Drink.”
Hannah stood her ground. “I’m not doing a damn thing for you until you show me Daniel.”
In one fluid movement Vasilev was up, forcing the glass up to Hannah’s mouth. She could smell the brandy fumes.
“You’ll never get away with this.”
“Watch me.” He held the back of her head and pushed the glass of lethal liquid up against her lips.
She’d be damned if she would acquiesce and allow him to pass off her death as some accident. If she was going to die, she would go down fighting. She would make sure he left telltale marks all over her body.
Hannah shoved his hand away from her mouth. The force of her movement sent the liquid splashing up into his eyes. The glass crashed to the floor. He winced and lashed out at her with the back of his meaty hand, sending her flailing to the ground.
She lifted herself up off the floor with one arm as Vasilev grabbed the heavy iron fire poker from beside the woodstove. He raised it above his head. Hannah raised her arm in a weak effort to fend off the blow as he started to bring it down on her head.
A sharp crack splintered the air.
Hannah watched in astonishment.
In slow motion, Gregor Vasilev’s knees buckled under him. The poker crashed to the floorboards and he started to slump forward. His body caught the edge of the table as he came down. He groped for the gun that lay there. He aimed, squeezed the trigger as he sagged down onto the floor.
Hannah screwed her eyes shut, waiting for the thud of impact in her body.
Nothing came. Just the sharp crack of gunfire.
Then silence.
She slowly opened her eyes. Vasilev had fallen faceup over her legs. His eyes stared out at nothing. She stared in horror at the small black hole in the middle of his forehead. It was oozing thick blood. Spittle seeped and bubbled from the corner of his open mouth.
Her heart stampeded against her rib cage. She turned slowly to face the cabin door.
He stood there, leaning against the jamb, a hand clutched to his chest just under his left shoulder. There was blood seeping out between his fingers.
“Mark?”
He cleared his throat, stepping forward into the cabin, hand still pressed into his chest. “You can call me Ken, Ken Mitchell. I think you know by now who I am.”
He tucked his gun back into his pants and moved over to Vasilev, slumped over her legs. He felt for his pulse.
“Good and dead.”
Revulsion leaped suddenly into her throat. She struggled to pull her legs out from under the bleeding body. Ken lifted Vasilev, helping Hannah free her legs.
Ken coughed. He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and pushed it under his jacket and shirt, up against his chest wound.
“You all right, Hannah?”
“I…I’m okay.” Her words came out in a dry croak. “You’ve been shot.”
“I’ll be fine.” He coughed again. “Surface wound. Can you make it down to the spa? They have your son there.”
“Danny? He’s all right?”
“I followed Vasilev after he kidnapped your boy. I was watching him as he staked out your house. He’s been watching your house for days. I saw him attack the older woman and take the boy. I followed them back to the spa. I couldn’t get in through the gates so I waited. Vasilev,” he nodded toward the corpse, “came back out a few minutes later without the boy and headed for the village. I followed him up in the gondola. I knew he would’ve sent for you, and for Rex Logan. He wanted to get you both away from the village where he could deal with you.”
“You’re sure Danny’s at the spa? He’s okay?” A spring of hope erupted in her chest.
Ken reached for Vasilev’s backpack resting on the bench. He pulled out a head lamp, grunting in approval. “I don’t know if he’s okay. We must hurry.”
“How’re you involved in all this, what’s going on?”
“U.S. Central Intelligence. We’re after a doctor who escaped capture in Marumba. We believe he’s here, in White River.”
Ken positioned the flashlight on his head. He took Vasilev’s gloves and hat and gave them to Hannah. “Here, you’ll need these. We’re going to hike down.”
The dead man’s gloves. His hat. She recoiled.
“Go on.”
She took her own sodden cap off her head. The ends of her hair were still encrusted with clumps of melting snow. It dripped down her shoulders into pools on the cabin floor. She racked her brain, trying to pull into focus what Rex had told her about Ken Mitchell, that he might be a double agent. She pulled the dead man’s hat low over her ears. She would follow Ken since he could lead her to Danny. She’d play the cards as they were dealt her. But she’d trust no one.
“Logan is after the same doctor.” Ken Mitchell opened the door into a night that was saved from blackness only by the whiteness of the blowing snow. “All the players are onstage now. All the same ones from Marumba, even you.” He clutched tightly at his chest, coughing, as he ushered her out into the cold.
“Even me? What do you mean, ‘even me’?”
“I followed Logan in Marumba, after the lab fire. It was part of my assignment to keep an eye on him. He’d managed to get real close to the doctor and we thought that if the doctor was still alive, if he’d survived the fire, he’d probably go after Logan, thinking he’d been responsible for things. I watched him in that bar in the capital, in Penaka, when he first saw you.”
Hannah stumbled out into the night. “I never met Rex in a bar in the capital.”
“No. But Logan saw you. Next thing he was taking an unscheduled vacation in Ralundi.” Ken coughed. “It was most out of character, very contrary to his CIA personality profile. You sure have some hold over the famous Bellona Channel agent.”
Bellona Channel agent? Hannah felt the bitter taste of bile rise in the back of her throat. Nothing was as she knew it. Nothing was as it had seemed. She felt violated. In her line of investigative work she’d heard mention of the Bellona Channel. It was a top-secret civilian agency, and few knew more about it except that it was a funnel for information on biological terrorism and warfare. It contracted to governments and helped head up and coordinate research projects. She didn’t know it had field agents. So Rex was a Bellona agent. Now she knew. He’d followed her to Ralundi. Now she knew.
The beam from the flashlight on Mitchell’s head probed a narrow tunnel into the void. Around it swirled a madness of snow.
“Stick close. Hold on to the end of my jacket if you want. Watch your footing. It’ll get slippery down by the gorge, but hopefully the snow will turn to rain down there.”
She looked at the marks in the snow made by Mitchell. He was not only leaving footprints but drops of blood, black against the snow.
“Why don’t we take the gondola?”
“We need to get into the spa the back way.” He had to yell against the wind whipping at his words, tossing them out to the peaks. “Don’t want to risk the gondola. Cops will be everywhere. It could screw this up.”
Hannah considered making a bolt for the gondola station. But Ken had the flashlight. He had a gun. She didn’t know what game he was playing. “Screw what up?” She slipped in the slush and regained her balance grabbing on to his jacket.
“I think I know where he’s holding your son. If police decide to descend on the spa, they’ll need a warrant. There’ll be too much warning. Everything will be gone. We’ll lose him again, the doctor. And we could lose your son.”
He wasn’t making much sense to her. She had to grasp on to the notion he might be telling the truth, that he might know where Danny was.
“Who has Danny? Who is this ‘him’?” She screamed the words into the wind as she followed in his trail. He was still dripping blood. He was badly injured.
“The Plague Doctor.”
Hannah felt her head swim. Things were getting more and more bizarre. “Keep focused, Hannah. Do it for Danny.” She whispered the mantra to herself, over and over, as they descended the trail to the cable crossing. Beyond it lay the spa. And Danny.
* * *
Rex cursed aloud. He was trapped in the glass bubble as it rocked in the dark against the blinding rain. Water ran in shimmering black rivulets over the glass.
He checked his watch. He’d been stuck like this for twenty minutes now. He hadn’t even reached midstation.
He swore again.
He knew this happened on ski hills. He’d skied often enough to know that lifts occasionally stopped for some reason—a mechanical hitch, someone having trouble getting on or off. There was nothing for it but to wait. If the gondola was broken, ultimately rescue would come.
But he felt impotent, suspended in time and air. The drama was unfolding up there on the mountain, and he was halfway between here and there, bobbing in the storm. It could cost lives. He tried his cell but he wasn’t getting reception.
Then he felt it jerk. It stopped. Then it jerked forward again, the cabin lurching forward as the cables swayed and sagged. Then the humming was regular. The lifts were running again. Thank God.
He fixed the head lamp onto his head before his gondola cab docked at the peak. He pulled on gloves, secured his backpack at his waist, made sure his gun was still accessible. Rex made quick work up the trail to Grizzly Hut. He could see two sets of tracks in the snow but they were obscured by the thick white blanket that kept falling.
With his tunnel of light, he could make out the warning rope above Grizzly Glacier where Amy had gone down. He could no longer see the path, but he kept parallel and well above the rope, hugging the far edge of the trail.
The window of Grizzly Hut was illuminated by weak flickering light. He could see it as he approached. He could feel the bite of the wind here, around the edge of the ridge.
Rex kept low, working his way around to the window. He killed the light from his lamp and carefully raised himself to look inside.
He could see nothing apart from the faint flicker of a candle flame starting to sputter and drown in its own wax.
He moved around to the front of the hut, the snow muffling the sound of his tread. He crept up the small stairs, felt for his gun. He waited. Listened. Then he crashed through the door, firearm leading.
Dr. Gregor Vasilev lay on the floor. A pool of thick gelatinous blood congealed around his head, his glazed eyes wide, oblivious. The stare of death. The sick sweet smell of death. A gun lay at his side.
Rex moved cautiously forward. He slipped his own weapon back into its holster, removed his glove and felt for a pulse where he knew there’d be none.
Vasilev was dead all right. Bullet wound to the head.
Rex clicked over to autopilot as he searched for signs. He saw the empty vial on the table, the same kind of vial he’d found in this very cabin and sent off for testing. He checked Vasilev’s gun. It had been recently fired.
He saw the shattered glass. He lifted the broken base of the glass to his nose and sniffed. Brandy. The fire poker lay near the table. There had been a scuffle.
He moved over to the door. More blood there. Life sputtered suddenly from the candle. Rex clicked on his lamp, the only light in the cabin now coming from the flashlight on his forehead.
He stepped outside into the swirling snow. The flakes were bigger, softer now, the wind dying. Then he saw it, the scuff marks and prints. They were being covered quickly but the indentations still remained.
He dropped down into a crouch, examining the trail. Blood. Someone else had been injured. God, he hoped it wasn’t Hannah. If Vasilev was dead, Ken Mitchell must have her. He was a wild card. Unstable. There was no point in trying to second-guess his moves. He would be behaving irrationally, and Hannah’s life, his son’s life, were at stake.
Rex could make out two sets of prints, leading away from the hut into the dark mountain night. The spa. Mitchell and Hannah must be making for the spa.
Rex crouched low, following the trail. He’d lost valuable time.