CHAPTER 23
Standing at the back of each truck, the team prepared for their search and ultimate rescue, putting on and preparing tactical gear such as bullet proof vests, helmets, and of course weapons. Not knowing what they were walking into, they had to be prepared for anything. It was a form of organized chaos that lead to a plan.
Moving out in the direction the tracks took them, the team disappeared into the woods. Some on foot to track the trail of evidence left, and some on horses to look ahead and get a better view of what they were facing, the team spread out in a line, briskly but carefully trudging through the snow-covered brush and trees. The helicopter had arrived just before they moved out, taking Dawson and Carigan with it as well as Liam to run the search equipment. They hovered above, circling the team guiding them from the air as much as the team guided from the ground.
Quick progress lead them to an old forest service road, something quite common in those woods, but that’s where the trail ended. No more tracks, a snow-covered road, and the silence of snow falling in a spooked forest.
“What the hell?” Luke bellowed, “Where did they go?”
“Good question, the snow couldn’t have covered their tracks or it would have covered all of them. It’s as if they just vanished at this point.” Wylie pointed out the obvious, but they were all thinking it.
“They didn’t vanish
,” Declan reasoned, “they drove.”
Looking between Declan and the blank canvas of a road before him, Doc was confused, “Uh, if foot prints can’t disappear from snow, how do tire tracks…I don’t see any evidence of a vehicle.”
Blake rolled his head in frustration and anger, letting out a few expletives under his breath, “That’s because they covered their fucking tracks. Shit!”
“Wait, how the hell does that work if they’re in
a vehicle, driving? Even a small vehicle, or snowmobile would leave traces at least as deep as those of their feet…I mean that’s just obvious.” Jessie had a good point, the obvious answer, however, wasn’t what they were looking for. Not now, not with this piece of the puzzle. The answer was intended to be anything but simple or obvious.
“They had a vehicle waiting, probably right here.” Blake waved his arm from left to right angled down at the ground in front of them. “Then, dragged the snow behind them as they left.”
“If you look closely, you see an inconsistent pattern in the snow – it’s too smooth through here,” Declan took over, sharing his observations so the team would know what to look for, the subtleties, as they forged ahead. “And there are two narrow lines with quite a distance between them. We were looking for tire tracks, but those were covered by whatever they are dragging. It’s probably the width of the vehicle and just heavy enough to camouflage the tire tracks without leaving too much of a trace, as we see here.”
Jessie reiterated what Blake said, trying to wrap her mind around the absurdity as much as the reality it brought to the forefront. “Dragging something? To smooth the ground back out behind them? That means…”
A petrified steely look fell over Doc, his tone so even keeled and calm it was alarming, “It means this was planned. Someone staged this…the abduction, the waiting vehicle, a way to cover their tracks. Whoever has her…has been watching her. Why?”
“I don’t know, man,” Declan offered. “But we aren’t stopping until we find out and have Evie and
the asshole
who did this…you got me?”
Doc’s illusive nod indicated that he was still on board and understood the mission, but his blank stare suggested otherwise. He was overwhelmed – by everything – he didn’t know where to go, what to think, or why this was happening.
McKenzie was a small town where everyone knew each other, there were no strangers. Even many of the tourists were repeat visitors and were known among the locals. How does a psychopath live in your midst and you not see the obvious signs that must have been there? How does this kind of crazy go under the radar?
He wracked his brain, trying to think of any possible suspects, but nothing hit him, not a single one. Everly had lived in McKenzie her entire life, had no family outside of Lou, and now Stone. Her only outside ties were to Portland, and those were limited.
This was too much effort and too much planning for a city friend, or foe, to put together and execute. This required vast knowledge of McKenzie, the surrounding area, and these woods. It also required knowing Everly’s schedule and habits, but who would, or did, watch that closely?
He was at a loss, and felt defeated. He wasn’t giving up, but he wasn’t feeling very optimistic either. Whoever this was, they were a step ahead and that was saying a lot, considering he was surrounded by a tactical team made up of some of the most highly trained men he’d ever met, with resources and experience beyond imagination. They had seen and dealt with the kind of stuff you only see in movies and then some. And they were stumped.
Sure they were catching the small clues most wouldn’t, but they still didn’t know where to go, or what to do next. They needed to think like a crazed lunatic and break his or her pattern and find Everly. That idea brought on an entirely new sense of purpose and intention for Doc.
He owned it, the dark, mystery of it all. He felt hollow without Everly, so it wasn’t hard to go to such a diehard place that reeked of dark and ugly motives. In that very moment, Doc knew he was making good on his promise to Everly…he would do anything for her. He would even kill.
Stone was a new factor in Everly’s life, and had been illusive himself in the beginning. It took them some time to catch up with the mystery man who he was known as and finally figure out who he was. But as Doc watched Stone, sitting on his larger than life brown steed, waiting for instructions, he saw his pain. Stone was out there for the same reason as the rest of them and it was all good intentioned.
Blake and Declan were huddled together, talking into their headsets to someone and motioning one direction to the other. They were revising the plan. It was in that very moment, where everything felt surreal and moved in slow motion, that he felt it. The pain that had been building in his heart that the distraction of fear could no longer cloak – his heart – it was breaking.
“Alright, listen up,” Blake said. “Mission has changed. Check your weapons, we don’t know what we are hunting or about to come across. We’re following the trail.”
Colton, like Doc and Beck, was along to help, trained in Search and Rescue, but didn’t think like the other guys did. Their experience ended with their escapades on the mountain rescues, this was far above their heads. “What trail? They covered it. Either direction, that little bit of a clue we had disappears. How do we know which way to go? How do we know we aren’t burning up daylight and time on the wrong trail?”
“Just radioed the helo, they didn’t see anything up ahead so they’re heading west now. This road leads back to the highway making it the least likely direction our captor took or we most likely would have run into them on our way here. The chopper will zig zag back our way, scouring the area in case we missed anything.” Blake was direct, this was in his blood. It was like it took him somewhere else, somewhere from his days in the military perhaps.
Declan picked up where Blake left off. The two worked in sync seamlessly, bouncing off one another well. They knew each other from past lives, crossing each other’s paths often on various missions with their respective teams and outfits, which were never fully disclosed, handled together.
“We will head east, follow the road, flanking each side until we find our next clue. Given the starting point, and where we encountered the car, its apparent they picked this spot on purpose, and are using the woods to their advantage, so they can hide. So we follow, the deeper they go, the more protected they are so we need to make up time. The eyes in the sky will double back, after they clear the western section of the search area, and check our tracks. They have speed on their side so they’ll make sure we didn’t miss anything then work ahead.”
“Okay, eyes wide, guys. Everything’s a clue until it’s not…”
Moving forward, the team spread out, just as Blake and Declan had instructed, and moved forward in a stealthy silence. With every billowing branch, every howl of the wind, they were on alert, hunting with clandestine like maneuvers. Doc followed suit, but a nagging inkling was digging at him and had the day’s events running back through his mind as he tried to sort out what he had missed.
Everly never made it to the hospital. When they went to the house, they found candles and flowers that actually made more sense now, given the items they found in the car that suggested a surprise was brewing, yet she never made it to the house, so where did those come from? Had she done that before she went to Arrow Springs, but after she dropped him off at the hospital? That timeline or order of events didn’t entirely make sense.
Then, finding her car the way they did, where they did, didn’t support the flowers and candles being set up, unless she had
done that before heading to Arrow Springs because she hadn’t made it back to McKenzie Ridge in the first place? Or had she? Her car could have been stolen, but again, where was she, and why was her stuff still in the car?
His thoughts were spinning in circles, getting him nowhere except right back to the out of place flowers and candles that didn’t make sense or fit the series of events. They were nagging him, distracting him, weighing on him…why? How did they play into Everly’s disappearance?
Revisiting the what, when, and how, he considered the potential clue. The flowers were ongoing, they had been mysteriously showing up for weeks and a plan of this caliber had to have been planned for weeks as well. They had to be connected. As did that smell that only Blake noticed initially, but became more prevalent as time wore on. So many candles in one place had revealed the source of the odor, as the candles, Everly’s favorite candles. That was the other half of the clue, had to be.
Someone had to have brought the flowers and candles to the house as a surprise, not for him, but for Everly, just like the single bouquet that had somehow made its way into their home a few weeks prior. Someone was in their home then, someone was in their home today. The same someone who had his girl. He felt it, the details were swarming around him, becoming more clear. He knew, he knew where she was…it was the candles, they held the answer.
When Doc stopped dead in his tracks, the team took notice and did the same. Staring off in the distance, his peripheral vision blurred leaving only the long snow-covered road ahead in his view. The voices around him muffled to nothing more than static noise when the ground beneath his feet spun, dizzying him as reality struck him, and the answer crashed over him in a wave of confident optimism.
Finally hearing his name, his world straightened, and he turned his attention to the frazzled faces around him, an almost smile graced his face when he said, “Oh my God…I know who has her.”
“Doc? You okay? What do you know? Who has Ev?” Blake’s voice carried a skeptical overtone as he measured Doc’s assertion – they didn’t have time for games or false hopes.
“It’s all coming together – it all makes sense. It’s been right in front of us the whole time. Fuck
, we’ve even talked to him, he’s been around us. How did we miss it when it was so obvious?”
“You aren’t making any sense, Doc. Who?
Who has been right in front of us all along?” Patience was wearing thin with Doc while he continued to think out loud and consider every detail that flooded in. Blake couldn’t validate or disprove Doc’s theories if he didn’t know what they were.
“Think about it… Carly heard someone talking to Lou and thought it was me telling her how much I loved Evie and wanted to marry her. She thought she misheard someone in a different room but she didn’t. But it wasn’t me – it was him
!”
Blake nodded, still skeptical, but he was listening. “I remember that conversation but…”
Doc put his hand out to stop Blake, eyes closed in annoyance while shaking his head. “Hang on, damn it
, listen to me… The wild flowers, they grow out in the fields and woods. You can’t get them at Meg’s flower shop or the regular market in town. Someone is out here picking them, or what’s left of them. There is one place you can
buy them though…”
Doubting stares turned to those full of sympathy, assuming Doc was reaching for anything, Declan intervened, “Look, Doc, we’ll all understand if you need to sit this out. You’re too close to the situation.”
“What the hell? The situation
? Will you just hear me out? Christ!” The men nodded, and Doc proceeded, “The conversation in the hospital that didn’t take place did,
wild flowers that can only be picked out here or bought at the Farmers Market…the Farmers Market
.”
“Oh…” Jessie chimed, “June…June Burton. She sold the flowers at the weekend market along with her candles.”
“Yes! Evie’s favorite
candles!” he replied, relieved that someone was finally understanding.
Eyes squinted, Blake tried to pick up Doc’s theory, like Jessie was, but with no such luck. “Doc, we need more than June Burton, she’s dead.”
“Shit,” Jessie said, “it makes sense. He was leaving her gifts, everywhere. The flowers were never for Gran, they were for Ev because she rarely left the hospital. She finally did leave and the flowers were in her house. The candles and flowers today, he was planning something. Something interfered with his plan.”
Declan gritted his teeth so hard a vein in his forehead began to protrude. The story still didn’t make sense to the rest of the team. “Can you guys, oh, I don’t know, fill the rest of us in on who he
is?”
“To top it all off, when we did rounds, he
grilled Carly about Ev and me…the pregnancy. He was always interested in Ev, fond of her, but this was odd. He seemed upset, distraught really.”
“Can we just give him
a name?!” Declan was done speaking in code, and Doc was so anxious it was all he could do.
“He’s talking about Clyde Burton,” Blake said. “The guy just lost his mom, June. She sold handmade goods at the Farmers Market – honey, potpourri, flowers, candles
. Woods people, and he’s all alone out there with his mom gone, his only real friend is moving on, and the flowers and candles…can’t deny the connection.”
“Exactly. He talked about Lou always being good to him. He’s such an introvert it would makes sense that he went to visit, felt comfortable talking to her, but need to do it when no one was around, lacks social skills.” Doc ran his hands through his hair, more memories falling into place, “God, he even said
he was lonely, wanted to be around people
.”
“They live in the cabin at the top of that ridge.” Blake pointed to a tall ridge in the distance, the highest in the area. “Access is on the far side. In this weather it’ll take us a good hour or two to make it around that way and he already has a good head start, we don’t have time to waste.”
“Can we go up the side? Climb the face?” Wylie asked, looking for a solution.
“Let’s use the helicopter,” Beck offered.
Blake turned and looked behind him at the long road east that ended back at the highway. “We aren’t any more than a mile in. Let’s land the chopper on the highway and hitch a ride. It’s about a fifteen minute run to meet them.”
“Okay, I’ll relay,” Dec said, offering to give directions to the team in the air.
Their plan was in place. The helicopter met them at the highway to give them a ride and would drop them just outside of their target, the Burton cabin, they would hike in the last quarter mile or so. Even if Clyde were to see the helicopter, he wouldn’t recognize it. They would have the element of surprise on their side, and hopefully make up most of the time they lost searching for Everly in the first place.
Before they left, the team divided once more, Stone was staying behind. “Look, son. I want to be there to help ya bring our girl home, but this old body and bad knee will probably cause you all more trouble than good. I’ll stay here with the horses, you just call me if you need me to bring the horses around, or a truck…anything. I’ll be there.”
Doc patted his back, understanding how hard it must have been for him to make such a selfless decision. “I understand, so will Everly.”
“I’ll stay behind with Stone and help get the horses loaded. We’ll be ready to move if we’re wrong on this,” Jessie added.
“That’s right,” Blake said, “you aren’t going anywhere near that cabin, Jess.”
Jessie straightened her shoulders, ready to fight back with Blake, but something about his protective nature and the look in his eyes, when he said he needed her to stay, left her off balance. All she could do was nod in agreement.
“I got your back out here, guys.” Morgan was a good cop, but she knew her limits. She also had a secret that made danger less appealing than it once was. “If we need to move in a hurry, these guys will need me to help them get there with the lights and sirens.”
“Alright, let’s go.” Declan climbed into the helicopter first and instantly started working on the rigging needed to rappel from the helicopter when they were finally in place.
With everyone in place, the helicopter took off…they had a mission to finish.