Нора Робертс - The Search

“It’s my house. I have you around.”

She didn’t think she could laugh, but he brought it out of her. And with it she put her arms around him and held on until the sheriff pulled into the drive.

When they stepped out to meet him, Sheriff McMahon didn’t waste time.

“We’ve got the road to the cabin blocked off. Davey was able to get close enough to get a look through binocs. The car’s there, all the windows in the cabin are closed, the curtains drawn.”

“He’s inside. With her.”

“It looks that way,” he said with a nod to Fiona. “Feds are coming in by chopper, and I called in for some backup. Ben Tyson over on San Juan’s heading in now with two of his deputies. Feds don’t want us moving in, but I’m going to argue some on that. It would help us out, Simon, if we could use your place here as a base for now.”

“It’s yours.”

“Appreciate it. I need to talk to Meg, and keep the line open with Davey and Matt. They’re watching the cabin.”

Fiona felt the minutes dripping like syrup, so slow, so thick.

No movement, the deputies reported, again and again. Each time she imagined what moved inside, behind those shuttered windows.

“The problem is, there just aren’t enough of us, and goddamn it, Matt’s still green.” McMahon scrubbed his fingers over his head. “We can keep watch, but I can’t argue with the feds that if we go in, he might get through us. It doesn’t sit well, I can tell you, but sit’s what I have to do. At least till Tyson gets here.”

“I’ve got a shotgun.” Chuck stood, his arm around Meg’s shoulders. “We could have half a dozen men here in ten minutes willing to help out with this.”

“I don’t need a bunch of civilians, Chuck, or to be worried about maybe having to tell somebody’s wife she’s a widow. He killed the others where he buried them—I can’t argue that fact, either. Odds are she’s alive, and we’re going to get her out the same way.”

He pulled out his phone when it signaled and walked outside to take the call.

“He’d have her up here, wouldn’t he?” Fiona gestured to the printout of the floor plan they’d gotten off the cabin’s website. “In one of the bedrooms. Not downstairs, just in case somebody got in. But where he could lock her in. So they not only have to get into the cabin but up the stairs—if he’s with her.”

She tried to think of it as a search and applied the same principles of most likely behavior. “The master has the little deck off it. I don’t think he’d keep her there. He’d use the smaller room, the one with less access. But they could get men on that deck from the outside, and they could go through the slider, into the cabin on the second floor. Then—”

She broke off when McMahon strode back in. “Chopper just landed, they’re on the road. And Tyson’s on island, on his way. I’m going out to meet them. I need all of you to stay here. Right here. I’ll keep in touch best I can.”

From his perch in the trees on the rise well beyond Simon’s house, Eckle watched the sheriff through his field glasses. The third time the man paced the back porch, with the phone at his ear, Eckle knew they’d made him.

He pondered how. The e-mail he’d composed wasn’t set to send for another two hours. Maybe there’d been a glitch.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. Things would just get started sooner. He heard it, faintly—the whir of a helicopter.

The gang’s all here, he decided. The chances of his escape, of going under long enough to write the article, finish the book, dropped dramatically.

He’d most likely die on Fiona’s island.

That didn’t matter either. If formerly pretty Kati wasn’t dead by now, she’d likely be before they found her, so he’d have had his own.

And while they were looking, he’d find Fiona and accomplish what his teacher never did, never could.

They went in much as she’d imagined—fast, silent, covering every door and window. As one unit rushed through the first floor of the cabin, another rushed the second.

Tawney swept into the second bedroom steps behind the team.

He didn’t need the calls of Clear! to know Eckle had moved out, and taken Starr with him.

“He’s on his own script now. He’s tossed Perry’s and he’s on his own.”

“The trunk’s empty.” A little breathless, Mantz joined him. “He had her in there. It’s lined with plastic, and it’s bloodstained. Jesus,” she added with a murmur when she saw the plastic, and what stained it, covering the bed.

“He left us plenty of her scent.”

He wondered why.

Fiona wondered the same as her search unit reported to the cabin. She listened to the theory speculating he intended to come back, clean up, clear out—he’d left clothes behind as well—after he’d killed and buried Starr.

She didn’t argue. Her unit had a job to do, and the focus was to find the reporter.

“We’ll use the buddy system,” she said. “None of us goes in alone. Meg and Chuck, Team One; James and Lori, Team Two; Simon and me, Team Three. Two people, two dogs per team.”

She took a breath. “There are going to be armed police and federal agents swarming everywhere. You’ll keep in regular contact with Mai, and with Agent Tawney. They’re running the base. We’ve got about three hours before we lose the light. There’s a strong chance of a storm hitting before dusk. If we don’t find her before dark, we call it until morning. Everybody’s back to base at dusk. We don’t risk ourselves or our dogs.”

She glanced toward Tawney. “We all heard what Agent Tawney told us. Francis Eckle is a killer. He may be armed, he’s certainly dangerous. If any of you want to opt out of this search, it’s not a reflection on you or the unit. Just tell Mai, and she’ll recoordinate.”

She stepped aside as Mai signaled. “I don’t like you going in, Fee. You’re a target. He’s fixed on you already, and if he got any sort of a chance—”

“He won’t.”

“Can’t you convince her to take the com on this?” she said to Simon. “I’ll take Newman in, go with you and Peck.”

“I’d be wasting my breath, just like you, and Tawney, for that matter. But she’s right. He won’t get the chance.”

Mai swore, then caught Fiona in a hard hug. “If anything happens to you—anything—I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Fear of that alone will keep me safe. Let’s get started,” she called out. Signaling the dogs, she moved off toward her sector.

“Aren’t you supposed to give them the scent?” Simon asked her.

“Not yet,” she murmured. “I need you to cover me here. I’ll explain.”

When she judged the distance enough, she drew the scent bag out of her pack. “We’ve got four experienced search people and dogs looking for Starr—and cops and feds. They’ll find her, or they won’t.”

She looked up into Simon’s eyes. “We’re not going to look for her. We’re going to look for him.”

“That suits me fine.”

This time she blew out a breath. “Good. Okay, good.” She opened the bag. “This is his. He wore this sock and it hasn’t been washed. Even I can smell him on it.”

She gave both dogs the scent. “This is Eckle. It’s Eckle. Let’s find Eckle. Find him!”

As the dogs scented the air, noses twitching, heads lifted, she and Simon followed.

As they covered the first quarter mile, Simon swore the dogs consulted each other. Ear flicks, tail wags, a duet of sniffing. The temperature eased down under the cover of trees, along ground soft with its bed of needles, and rose again in the open, through wild grass and juts of rock.

“If he brought her this way,” Simon wondered, “why didn’t he use the road, keep her in the trunk until he found his spot? And if he did that, why is the car back at the cabin, and the cabin empty?”