Linwood Barclay - Fear The Worst

“Sydney Blake,” I said.

“Never heard of her,” he said and began to close the door.

I got my foot in. “Please, just a minute. It’s possible you might know her by another name.”

“What?” he said. “What other name?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I was reaching into my jacket for one of the photos of Syd I carried around with me everywhere I went. I reached through the door and handed it to him.

Reluctantly, he took it between his fingers and squinted at it. “Hang on,” he said and went around to the office desk, where a pair of reading glasses lay. That allowed us to open the door wider and take a step inside.

He peered through the glasses at the photo.

“Hang on,” he said again, and I felt my pulse quicken. “I’ve seen this girl.”

“Where?” I asked. “When?”

“She came in here, I don’t know, two weeks or more ago. Looking for some part-time work. I didn’t have anything.”

“Did she tell you her name?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t remember it. I told her to try another place, one of their summer staff quit all of a sudden, they were looking for help.”

“What place?” I asked.

“Uh, hang on. Touch the Cloud.”

“What?” Bob asked.

“The inn. That’s the name of it, the Touch the Cloud Inn. It’s further up the road, on the way to Smugglers’ Notch, where the road starts climbing.”

“Do you know if she got a job there?”

“Beats me,” he said. “Now you can go wake them up.” He ushered us out of the office and killed the light.

Back in the car, the guns removed from the backs of our pants, we carried on up Mountain Road, driving slowly so as not to miss any of the signs.

“Whoa, go back!” Bob shouted. “I think it’s in there.”

I backed up the Mustang about thirty yards. Even at night, it was clear to see that the Touch the Cloud Inn had seen better days. The towering rustic sign out front needed paint, a mock split-rail fence around the garden below it appeared to have been used for bumper impact tests, and one of the bulbs over the office door was burned out.

We parked again, tucked the guns into our waistbands, and did the whole routine all over again.

A second after the first knock, a small dog started yapping. I heard nails skittering across the floor, saw the shadow of something small scurrying across it. “Yap yap! Yap yap yap!”

Even before the lights came on inside, a woman was shouting: “Mitzi! Mitzi! Stop it! Be quiet!”

She was in her forties, streaky blonde hair, good-looking-not easy to pull off this time of night in a frayed housecoat and no makeup. She was also very wary. She looked at us through the glass of the still-locked storm door and asked, “Who are you?” We introduced ourselves. “What do you want?” she shouted over Mitzi’s yapping.

I said, loud enough to be heard through glass and over Mitzi, “We’re trying to find my daughter. It’s an emergency.” I said I thought she might be working there, and gave her Sydney’s name.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve got no one here by that name. Mitzi, Jesus, shut up!”

The dog shut up.

I pressed Syd’s picture up against the glass. The woman leaned in, studied it, and said, “That’s Kerry.”

“Kerry?” I said.

“Kerry Morton.”

“She works here?” I asked.

The woman nodded. “Who’d you say you were again?”

“Tim Blake. I’m her father.”

“If you’re her father, how come her last name’s not the same as yours?”

“It’s a long story. Listen, it’s very important that I find her. Do you know where she’s staying?”

The woman kept studying me. Maybe she was looking for some sort of family resemblance. “Let me see some ID. Him too.”

I dug out my wallet, pulled out my driver’s license, and put it up against the glass. Bob did the same.

The woman was debating what to do. “Hang on,” she said. She left the office and could be heard in a nearby room saying, “Wake up, wake up, pull some pants on.” Some male grumbling. “There’s a couple chuckleheads here want me to walk off into the night with them, and there’s no way I’m going out there alone.”

A moment later she reappeared with a young shirtless and barefooted man who looked like he’d just walked out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad. Washboard stomach, rippling arms, hair as black as the woods. The faded jeans he’d just pulled on were zipped but unbuttoned. Bob and I traded glances. A boy toy. But a boy toy who didn’t look like he should be messed with.

“This is Wyatt,” she said. He blinked sleepily at us. “He’s joining us.”

“Great,” I said.

“We got several out-of-town kids working here,” she said. “Wyatt’s one. We got a few mini-cabins out back for them.” Evidently Wyatt was favored with better accommodations, at least tonight. “Kerry’s staying in one of those.”

“Where?” I asked. “Do they have numbers? Can you tell me where-”

“Hold your horses,” she said and, along with Wyatt, led us down a sidewalk, around the side of the building to a row of cabins dimly lit by some lamps attached to wooden poles. They all backed onto a wooded area. I hoped Wyatt was groggy enough not to notice the bulges under the backs of our jackets. It was dark out, so I figured we were okay.

“It’s this one over here,” she said. “This better be a real emergency, because she’s going to be pissed, getting woke up in the middle of the night. I know I am.”

I didn’t have anything to say. I was so excited about finally finding Sydney that my body was shaking.

The woman reached the door and rapped on it lightly with her knuckle. “Hey, Kerry, it’s Madeline. Kerry?”

The windows stayed dark. I didn’t hear any stirring inside. I came up to the door and called out, “Sydney! It’s Dad! Open the door! It’s okay!”

Still nothing. “Open the door,” I said to the woman I now knew to be Madeline.

“I’ll have to go back and get the-”

Bob had come around behind her and kicked the door in. “Hey!” she said.

“Whoa!” said Wyatt. It was the first word we’d heard from him. He grabbed hold of Bob’s arm, but Bob shook him off and reached around inside the door, found a light switch and flicked it on.

It was, at best, six by nine feet. A cot, two wooden chairs, an antique washstand. No running water, no bathroom. A quaint prison cell, in many ways. There were a few toiletry items on the washstand: a hairbrush, a set of keys, a pair of sunglasses. The cot didn’t look slept in.

“Where the hell is she?” Madeline asked. “She needs to be stripping beds first thing in the morning.”

I stepped over to the washstand, picked up the keys. There were three house keys-that made sense: my house, Susanne’s, and now Bob’s-plus a remote and a car key, both stamped with the Honda emblem. I touched the hairbrush, then picked up the sunglasses.

They had Versace written on the arms.

“This is Sydney’s stuff,” I said to Bob, trying to keep my voice from breaking.

I began looking about the cabin for any other clues, anything that might give me a hint as to where she was now.

“When did you last see her?” I asked Madeline, who was huddling up close to Wyatt.

“Sometime today,” she said vaguely. “I don’t really keep track. Kerry usually works an early shift, finishes up midafternoon. After that she can do what she wants.”

“So she did work today?” I asked. “You actually saw her?”

“Yeah, I saw her.”

“What was she like? How was she?”

“You mean today, or since she got here?”

“Both, everything.”

“She’s just about the unhappiest girl I ever did see. Mopey and down, skittish, always looking over her shoulder; you come up behind her and say something and she jumps out of her skin. Cries all the time. Something’s wrong with that girl, you don’t mind my saying.”