Janey
“Some of these posts need replacing too.”
I’m out here showing the handyman, who was able to come in for a few hours today, where the fence needs fixing.
“I know,” I tell him. “There’s a bunch in that pile of lumber behind the barn they dropped off earlier.”
“Good.”
He nods, giving the rotting post a final shake and marking it with a spray can, before moving on to the next one.
It’s a bit silly for me to follow him around the entire perimeter. I may as well head back to the clinic, I need to give my leg a break because it’s starting to ache. I’ve been on my feet too much already today.
I’m about to tell him as much when I hear my name called.
“Doc?”
Frankie comes jogging up to me, her pink Chucks no match for the muddy, overgrown field she finds me in.
“What’s up?”
“We have an emergency,” Frankie announces, breathing heavily when she reaches me.
“What kind of emergency?”
“A crash involving a truck hauling a small trailer with two horses out on Flower Lake Road near the Nordic ski trails. Both horses injured.”
“Shit. No sign of Logan yet?”
“No.”
I turn to Will Figueira. “You can find your way around from here?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he replies, waving me off.
“Need anything, talk to my assistant.”
I start heading back to the clinic with Frankie trying to keep up with me.
“Look, if you prefer, I can try and get a hold of Dr. Feltner. See if he can go?”
I shake my head.
“It’ll take too long.”
Flower Lake Road runs up the mountain right behind us. It wouldn’t make sense to call in Sam Feltner, his office is on the north side of town and it would take him too long to get there.
I rattle off a list of things I might need as we make our way back to the clinic. Inside I quickly change into coveralls, while Frankie stocks my kit with the extra supplies. Within five minutes I’m in my truck, heading out.
Flower Lake Road is little more than a dirt road, snaking up the mountain. There isn’t much along here, a few trailheads, the lake, and the ski trails that are mostly used for ATVs in the summertime. There may be a few hunting cabins up farther, but little else. I follow Snowshoe Road past the golf course where I have to take a right turn up the mountain.
I drive for a few minutes without encountering another vehicle, which kind of surprises me. I would’ve expected maybe emergency vehicles heading to the site of the accident. Personally, I wouldn’t want to haul a trailer up this road, but I guess to each their own. I assume these people were looking for a good spot to take the horses for a ride. It’s definitely pretty up here.
Driving past the small dirt parking lot of a trailhead, I notice it’s empty. There’s no sign of any accident, and nothing visible on the road when I pass by the Nordic Ski Club. I’m starting to wonder if maybe we got the directions wrong.
Then I round the next curve and see an ATV on its side in the middle of the road. A pickup and horse trailer are off to the side, butting up against the tree line. I notice the back of the trailer is down.
I pull up behind the trailer and start getting out of the truck, wondering what is going on. Maybe the horses were spooked and took off? I scan the woods around me but don’t see any movement. Puzzled, I walk up to the back of the trailer and peer inside.
The next moment a hand clamps over my mouth and, before I can react, I feel a sharp stab in my neck. I try to struggle briefly, before my body grows heavy and my muscles become nonresponsive. I feel myself getting dragged into the back of the trailer, and there is nothing I can do.
Next, everything goes black.
My arms feel like they’re being pulled from their sockets.
I cry out as I’m bounced around.
I’m trying to wrap my head around what is happening and where I am, but I can’t will my eyes to open. All I know is that my arms are suspended above me and my body is heavy.
My olfactory senses provide the first clues when I notice a few familiar smells; fresh straw, horse manure, and a hint of gasoline.
I’m in the back of the horse trailer, and it’s moving.
It’s coming back to me now, the emergency call, the Nordic club, the accident. But that wasn’t a real accident, was it? That was a setup. Someone had been lying in wait for me, and injected me with something.
Ketamine?
It would fit. It knocks you out quickly and, depending on how much you’re given, the effects can wear off in as little as ten to fifteen minutes. It feels like I haven’t been out that long. It’s possible they underestimated my size and miscalculated the dosage. An unexpected benefit to being a couple of pounds overweight.
I try my eyes again, and this time I manage to open them slightly, blinking a few times to clear my vision. The first thing I see are my hands zip-tied to the horizontal bar across the front of the trailer. It’s a safety bar that braces against a horse’s chest to prevent injury to the head or neck in case of a sudden brake.
Then I struggle to lift my head, which is tilted back, and see the ATV inside the trailer. I’m guessing the same ATV I saw lying on its side in the road. I notice a set of keys dangling from the ignition just underneath the handlebars.
If only I could get the rest of my body to work, there may be a way I can get out of this. If only I could get my hands out of these damn zip ties. I could get on the ATV, and the moment that gate comes down, I can floor it out of here.
As I wiggle my fingers and move my feet as best I can, I’m trying to think of anything that might clue me in to who grabbed me. I never saw his face, and didn’t recognize the truck or trailer either.
Slowly some control returns to my extremities and I manage to get up on my feet, bracing myself against the safety bar. But before I have a chance to test the strength of my binds, the truck slows down and comes to a halt. I pull and twist, trying to get loose, but all I manage to do is break the skin on my wrist.
Too late, I consider maybe I should’ve pretended to still be out cold when the gate starts coming down. I squint my eyes against the bright sun backlighting the shadowed form peering into the trailer, but I end up identifying him by his voice.
“You’re awake.”
JD
“Where is she?”
Frankie startles when I come barreling into the clinic, immediately ducking past her and poking my head into the treatment room and her office. Both are empty.
“Out on a call? Why?”
Because she’s not answering, that’s why.
I’ve been trying Janey’s cell the entire drive here but keep getting bumped to her voicemail.
I hopped in the passenger seat of Ewing’s cruiser, leaving Jackson to deal with the search. My blood had run cold when he relayed his call with Stephanie Kramer. She hadn’t told him much, other than to say Jericho had brought up Logan Osborne, but was using holding the concrete evidence he claims to have hostage in return for his own immunity.
She’d stepped out of the meeting because she was concerned about Janey. As it turns out, from my countless unanswered calls to her phone, a very valid concern I share, and clearly Junior Ewing does as well, since he drove us to the clinic in record time.
“Tell me about the call,” I snap at Frankie, leaning over her desk.
Her eyes are wide as she leans back to get as far away from me as she can. Probably wise, because my rage is bubbling right under the surface.
“JD, back off,” Junior Ewing barks at me. “You’re angry at the wrong person.” Then he turns to Frankie, and says in a much gentler tone, “It’s urgent we find Doc Richards.”
She nods and starts talking. “We got a call for two horses injured in a crash somewhere up on Flower Lake Road, near the Nordic trails.”
“Where did the call come from?” the sheriff probes.
“I’m not sure, I assumed it was someone involved in the accident or maybe a passerby.”
“You didn’t recognize the voice?”
She shakes her head. “Not really. It was a man, and he sounded pretty frantic, said the horses were in bad shape, and hung up before I could ask more questions.”
I flip her desk phone around and push a few buttons to check the incoming call list. The last number comes up as unlisted. Of course it is.
“What about Logan? Where is he?” I ask, which earns me a warning look from Ewing.
“He’s not here yet.” She glances at the clock in the waiting room. “He called maybe five minutes ago to let us know he’ll be a bit later. Something about his engine stalling, and he’s waiting for his dad and a tow truck.”
Like fucking hell he is. I’m already halfway to the cruiser when Ewing catches up to me.
“I told her to lock up and wait for a deputy,” he tells me as he slides behind the wheel. “I’m gonna have to pull some manpower off the search for Britt.”
As much as I hate that, it’s the right call to make.
“If he has Janey, my gut says we’re already too late for Britt,” I suggest.
“Yeah. I’m of the same mind.”
He puts a call out to get a cruiser to the clinic, and a few more to meet us up by the Nordic club. We have no idea what we’re walking into.
When we drive past the Cabinet View Golf Course, Ewing points out the window.
“Jennifer Wilson, our second victim, was found right there. Not that far from the clinic, or from where we’re headed.”
“You’re thinking that’s not a coincidence?”
He shakes his head. “I think the proximity is convenience on his part, not necessarily planned. I think it shows a certain impulsiveness and a lack of planning.”
“Then what about the first victim? The one we found near the Swede Mountain Lookout?”
He shoots me a glance before focusing back on the winding road and taking the turnoff toward Flower Lake.
“Phil Jericho’s place is on Obsidian Road, right at the turnoff onto Swede Mountain Road,” he shares.
I turn my head and look back in the direction of Swede Mountain on the other side of the valley.
“Jericho and Logan’s father both sit on the city council,” I think out loud, following the same train of thought I had earlier at the search site.
“More than that,” Ewing explains. “They’re in each other’s pocket, politically speaking. They travel in the same circles, play golf together on a regular basis.”
“So logically Jericho and Logan would’ve known each other,” I conclude.
I’m trying to remember if I’d seen them interact at any time during the rodeo, but I don’t think they ever spoke, at least not in my presence. Which is kind of weird in itself; you’d think they’d at least acknowledge each other. Unless they were trying to avoid anyone knowing.
I’m having trouble wrapping my head around all the possible connections and implications, as I go over some of the events of the past week in my mind.
“It was Logan,” I blurt out as Ewing navigates a particularly sharp turn in the narrow road.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s the one who hit me over the head. Earlier, I recalled the last thing I saw when I hit the ground was a pair of boots. Snakeskin boots. The kind he wears.”
“That could have been around the time of the attack on Lacey Del Franco. He probably didn’t want to be caught hanging around the trailers, and—”
He abruptly cuts off and leans forward, squinting through the windshield.
“Is that Doc’s truck?”
I spot the white cover on the back of her truck sticking up from the deep ditch on the side of the dirt road. I have the door open, jump out, and start running before Ewing brings the cruiser to a full stop.
I slide on my ass down the embankment to the front of the truck, which is wedged at the bottom of the ditch, that is thankfully dry. I brace myself and yank the driver’s side door open, which gives away easily. Airbags bulge out, and I grab the knife I carry on my belt to deflate them and get them out of my way, so I can see inside.
The truck’s cab is empty.
“She’s not here!” I call out to Ewing.
Then I notice the gearshift is set in neutral. It’s possible that happened as a result of the impact, but my gut tells me no one was in the truck when it went down into the ditch. I find her phone in the footwell of the driver’s seat, still powered up but with a cracked screen.
When I scramble back up to the road, Ewing appears to be studying the dirt.
“Looks like the tracks of an ATV, and up ahead it looks like something was parked partially on the grass shoulder.”
I follow the ATV tracks to the edge of the road. Where they disappear there is a sharp, deep indentation about four or five feet wide.
“The ATV was loaded onto a trailer,” I tell Ewing as I walk up the road a little ways. “The tire tracks go farther up the mountain. What’s up there?”
“Not much. Up ahead the road curves back on the other side of Flower Lake where it ends. Not much up there other than a handful of hunting cabins.”
I pull out my phone and call Jackson.
“Got her?” he asks right away.
“No. Her truck is in a ditch, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in there at the time. I need the Matrice here at the Nordic Ski Club up on Flower Lake Road. We’re looking for a truck and trailer, possibly a horse trailer,” I add.
It’s only a guess, but that’s what Janey would’ve been looking for, since the emergency call that came in was for a pair of horses injured in a vehicle crash. I don’t think she’d have gotten out of her truck otherwise.
“Give me fifteen minutes. I need to slap in a fresh battery pack, I’ll fly her out from here and we’ll follow in the truck.”
“We?”
“Yeah. We’ll be packing up shortly.”
Just then Ewing’s radio crackles to life.
“Why?”
I ask the question, but don’t really want to know the answer.
“Jillian and Emo found her.”
Fuck.