Shauna couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think beyond flying the helicopter out of the clearing. The chopper made its way through blue skies punctuated with puffs of white clouds, but her hands did what they had to do while her heart urged her to get to Alex, to scoop him into her arms and never let him go.
Who was this maniac who killed her friends and targeted her own family? And why had her dad run off like that? She had no way to contact him to find out what he’d meant about fixing it.
Zach’s voice spoke in her ear through the headset. “We’ll find Alex. Stay calm, Flygirl.”
She gave a jerky nod. “We shouldn’t have called the sheriff. The man said not to.”
“We can’t fight him on our own. You know that.”
It felt wrong to go against the kidnapper’s orders. What if he had someone inside the sheriff’s office? What if he’d tapped her cell phone in some way? There was so much that could go wrong. She prayed for God to keep watch over Alex and Marilyn as she pushed the chopper as fast as she dared for the airport.
Two sheriff’s department squad cars were in the parking lot when she set the helicopter down. Zach leaped out when the skids touched the ground. The wind blew his hair, and he ducked down to run out from under the rotors. Shauna did the same as soon as she had everything shut off.
She rushed up to the sheriff, who appeared very somber. “Any idea who has my boy and Marilyn?”
Sheriff Burchell shook his head. “Marilyn lives in the middle of nowhere, so there are no witnesses of the kidnapping. I have two deputies at her house right now going over the premises to see if they can find any evidence.”
“I’ve got to take the necklace and leave it for him like he demanded. I’ve barely got enough time to get there by the deadline.”
“Where is the necklace?” the sheriff asked.
She tugged it out from under her shirt. “I like wearing it. It makes me feel closer to my mother, but it’s nothing compared to Alex’s life. And Marilyn’s.”
“I have several deputies masquerading as tourists around the pull-off. They’ve been instructed to follow him and see if he leads them to Alex and Marilyn.” Everett reached into his car and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Use this to tape the necklace to the back of the sign like he said, then leave immediately.”
“This feels wrong,” Zach said. “What’s to ensure he returns Alex and Marilyn once he has the necklace? I don’t think you should do it, Shauna. Once he gets the necklace, he can do what he wants.”
She chewed on her lip and nodded. “I tried to tell him I wasn’t going to do it that way, and he said I’d never see them again if I didn’t.”
“Of course that’s what he’d say,” Zach said. “He’s trying to force your hand. This leaves you no bargaining power.”
“What if I tape a note to the back of the sign with an alternate plan? I can tell him we’ll meet him in Rainshadow Bay, by Eagle Rock. I’ll tell him I will fly him wherever he wants to go in my helicopter if he lets Zach take Alex and Marilyn.”
Zach was shaking his head before she finished. “I don’t like it. What’s to keep him from killing you once he escapes? I’ll fly him out in my plane, and you can take Alex and Marilyn to safety.” He rested his hands on her shoulders, and his dark-blue eyes held desperation as he stared into hers. “You can’t risk leaving Alex an orphan. You just can’t.”
“It might work,” the sheriff said.
A vivid image of Zach floating lifeless in the bay struck her, and she shuddered. What she felt for Zach wasn’t just attraction or loneliness, but a deep, lasting love like she’d had for Jack. She couldn’t bear to lose him like she’d lost Jack, but she knew he was right. Alex had only her. It would destroy him to lose her too.
She pushed away the fearful image and nodded. “Okay.” A search of her purse yielded a notepad, and she wrote out the alternate exchange offer, then grabbed the roll of tape from the sheriff. “I think I should go alone. If he sees too many people milling around, he’ll take off.”
“Any idea why he wants that necklace?” the sheriff asked.
“Not a clue. He didn’t say.”
Zach pursed his lips. “I just thought of something. You know how Alex has those vivid dreams and sleepwalks? I caught him looking for what he called ‘the key’ last night. He said Spider-Man needed him to find it so Alex could be his sidekick and save us all from the Joker.” He held up his hand. “I know, I told him the Joker was a Batman villain, and Alex had an explanation for that. What if this guy tried to get Alex to grab the necklace for him, but when he failed, he took him to force you to give it up?”
Shauna took it off and looked it over closely. It was still just a Haida argillite stone with an abalone hummingbird. “But it’s not a key. It’s a necklace.”
“It’s even weirder that it was your mother’s yet it’s important to him all these years after she died,” the sheriff said.
She glanced at her watch. “It’s four thirty, and I only have an hour. None of that matters right now. I have to get Alex and Marilyn back.” She clasped Zach’s neck to bring his head down, then brushed her lips across his. “Pray for me.”
He gripped her shoulders. “Constantly.” He snagged the necklace from her fingers. “Let me keep this for now.”
The drone of a small plane landing on the runway made Sheriff Burchell raise his voice. “You have no intention of letting her go in there alone, do you?”
Zach shook his head and started for the hangar with the sheriff on his heels. “Not a chance. I knew she’d object if I told her, but I’m taking my ATV after her. I can run it in the fields, and I’ll get there before she does.”
The sheriff caught his arm. “My men are watching. I think we’d be better off trying to track down Lewis and find out what he knows. This could all go very badly if we’re not careful.”
Zach stopped in the hangar doorway and ran his hand over the back of his neck. The stakes couldn’t be higher. “We don’t know where Lewis went.” But he remembered the look on Lewis’s face when Shauna asked him about the strange building. He told the sheriff about it. “He could have gone there. He did head in that direction.”
“I’ll go with you. Can you take your plane in there?”
“There’s not enough room to land.” And it was impossible to get there by car. Hiking in would take too long. Zach crossed the yard and went to his office, where he pulled out a topo map and spread it out on his desk. He jabbed a finger on it. “We could take a boat up the river and get off about a half mile from the site, then hike in. We could be there in an hour.”
Past the deadline. He’d be in an area with no cell service and no way to know what was happening back here. The thought forced the air to leave his lungs. What should he do? Everything in him wanted to go to Shauna and protect her.
The sheriff must have seen the indecision on his face because he put his hand on Zach’s arm. “We can’t sit back and wait, Zach. If we let this guy control things, Alex and Marilyn might not make it.”
Alex was probably terrified and crying for his mother. The thought was a stab in Zach’s guts, and he rubbed his forehead. “Okay, let’s go.”
“I’ll drive,” the sheriff said.
Zach got into the passenger side of Burchell’s vehicle, and they sped toward town where Zach had a boat docked. Neither of them had much to say in the five-minute drive to the pier. Zach kept going over and over in his head everything Lewis had said. “I always knew it would come to this. I’m the only one who can fix it.”
Lewis knew exactly why this had happened and the identity of the kidnapper. But how? He barely left that cabin in the woods. How did the necklace figure in with this? It seemed an old bauble without much value, yet someone was willing to kidnap two people to get it. And how had Clarence even gotten ahold of it? There seemed no way to detangle this.
They reached the dock, and he pointed out his boat, a forty-footer he’d bought three years ago. Once they reached the pilothouse, he pulled out his phone. “You think you can captain this? I’ve got a hunch I want to check out.”
Burchell’s brows rose, but he nodded and started the engine. “I was born boating.” As the boat pulled away from the dock, Zach sat at the bow and called Dorothy Edenshaw’s shop.
She answered on the third ring. “Rings and Things, this is Dorothy.”
“This is Zach Bannister again. I’m sorry to bother you, but we have a desperate situation in Lavender Tides.” He launched into the circumstances before she could hang up on him. “Is there anything special about the necklace? Could it be used as a key in some way?”
“Not that I know of.” Her voice was cold. “You keep trying to drag me into this, and I want nothing to do with it. Please, just leave me alone.”
She was about to hang up. “Please, Dorothy, a little boy’s life depends on us figuring this out. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” There was dead-air space, but he could still hear the faint sound of voices in the background. “I’m sure he’s scared to death.”
She finally broke the silence with a sigh. “Who has the necklace?”
“I do.”
“Turn it over and you’ll find three little ridges on it. They’re spaced evenly apart on the back.”
He pulled the necklace from his pocket and flipped it over, then ran his fingers over the smooth black surface of the argillite. “I feel them.”
“Press against them and turn it counterclockwise.”
He followed her instructions. “The back popped off. It looks weird now.” There were protrusions and indentations inside.
“There’s a matching lock the protrusions fit into. When the necklace is in place, you can turn the lock.”
“What lock?”
“That’s something you need to ask Lewis. I’ve told you everything I can.”
This time there was no mistaking the fact she’d ended the call. He looked at the phone to verify there was no connection, then put his phone back in his pocket. “Look at this.” He showed the back of the necklace to the sheriff. “She says Lewis knows what this is all about. It’s already nearly five.”
The sheriff revved the engine, and the bow of the boat lifted out of the water. “Then we’d better find him.”