CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE

Savage River Lodge
Detective Darren Fletcher

The sun was gone. Defeated, Fletcher had agreed to hunker down for the night. His sense of honor was in tatters. He was so worried for Sam he could barely breathe. As darkness had enveloped the search team, they decided a staging point would be necessary, and found the nearby Savage River Lodge, a beautiful stone-and-timber retreat that Fletcher had half a mind to check into and never come back out again.

The forest service guys were stretched out over a table to his right, looking at a topographical map, estimating times and drawing circles with their protractors, then tapping things into their computers. They were attempting to figure out how far Sam could have gone on foot, working on the assumption, however faulty it may be, that she hadn’t been shoved in a car. Or put on a horse. Or dropped off a cliff.

All he could do was wait. On the streets of D.C. he knew what his place was, what he could do. Out here, in the woods, he didn’t stand a chance. He’d never been much of a nature guy. Outside of the odd Boy Scout camping trip with Tad, trips that Felicia increasingly took in his stead as the boy grew up, he’d never spent any time in the woods. He wasn’t a hunter or a fisher. He was a cop. A jog down by the river was as exotically outdoors as he ever got.

He’d been stupid to think he could control the situation. Alexander Whitfield was a seasoned soldier, capable of hiding in plain sight, and that knowledge made Fletcher even angrier. He’d been played. They’d all been played.

But something in his gut told him Whitfield wasn’t his man. He was so far off the grid that calling attention to himself by murdering his old friends seemed out of character, at least the little bit he’d been able to profile from Whitfield’s record and Sam’s translations from Edward Donovan’s journal.

Now, Margaret Lyons was another story. A woman scorned is a powerful thing. According to Taranto, Perry Fisher was the father of her kid. Maybe someone in her chain of command had figured that out and was using that knowledge to scuttle her career, and things got out of hand. Croswell could have found out and confronted her. She snapped, walked him across the street to the house she knew was empty, shot him and played dumb until morning, when Fletcher and Hart came knocking on her door.

A plausible theory, sure. But where did Donovan fit into that? Lyons had been at work at her law firm when Donovan was shot. Three people had seen her and confirmed.

Karen Fisher was still a good choice. Assuming she was playing the reporter for her own personal gain … She could have been using Taranto to ferret out the real story, and Donovan and Croswell were trying to keep it quiet.

Shit, if he just knew who’d been the actual shooter in the friendly fire. That would help narrow it down.

DOD wasn’t talking. Roosevelt had called three times, pushing hard. He was about to play his last card, which was going public with the information in an attempt to bluff them into telling the story. Fletcher wanted him to do it right now, but Roosevelt fancied a few more tries to see if he could work the back channels.

Fletch even thought about calling Felicia, beg and plead for her to talk to Joelle again, but they were running out of time.

That damn phone call. That’s what got the ball rolling. But there was nothing to indicate that the Raptor offices were Donovan’s end goal—he could have been meeting anyone anywhere. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a fluke that his direction took him toward the Raptor offices. Donovan’s boss, Deter, hadn’t called him in. The other guy, Culpepper, was in Iraq at the time. Fletcher had interviewed the personnel there three times, and didn’t have a single hit.

So Donovan was headed somewhere else. But where?

Fletcher paced around the room.

He thought back to the conversation Sam had with Taranto. He brought out his notebook and went through the code names again.

King, that was Perry Fisher. Doc was Donovan. Shaky Guy was William Everett. Mutant was Whitfield, Jackal was Croswell.

There was another name on that list. Taranto said when Karen Fisher heard that her husband might had been killed by one of his compatriots, by one of his friends, she went to another, Orange, to get the truth.

So who the hell was Orange?

Orange was his killer. He had to be. And something about Perry Fisher’s death exposed the man, or woman, who operated under that nickname, and as a result, they needed to minimize the damage as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And the best way to make sure no one talks is to permanently shut them up.

Had Susan Donovan figured out the truth? Fletcher resisted smacking himself on the head. Of course she had. She’d found the missing pages from the journal.

Could she be responsible for her husband’s death?

Shit. That couldn’t be. She was missing. But had she gone on the run? No. He was firmly convinced the killer was part of Donovan’s unit overseas.

He called Roosevelt.

“Where are we with the DOD?”

“Third time’s a charm. I’ve been invited to the Pentagon. Fifteen minutes.”

“That is fantastic news. I’ve got a couple things for you, too. Knock on my head must have sprung loose some nuts. You need to go find Karen Fisher. Taranto supposedly had her hidden away. She is involved, though how I don’t know. Check Taranto’s credit cards—he told Sam he was keeping Karen somewhere safe, so he probably got her a hotel room. And while you’re at the Pentagon, see if you can find out who was saddled with the moniker Orange while they were over there. Someone in Donovan’s unit was called Orange, and that’s who our killer is. I’m sure of it.”

Roosevelt was quiet for a minute. “Seems I should let you get shot, lost and hit on the head more often. How would someone get saddled with the nickname Orange?”

“Fuck if I know. Maybe he likes orange juice, or is from Florida or California. Remember that show, the O.C.? Orange County? Or has red hair. Doesn’t matter. We just need to find out who he or she is.”

“Your wish is my command.”

Fletcher laughed. “Call me back.” He closed his phone and went to the table of forest service guys.

“You got anything?”

The lead kid, and Jesus, he was a kid, nodded. “Four sites they could be, sir. Spread across the mountain. All very remote. Permanent camps on private property. It’s going to take a few hours to get to any of them.”

“Show me.”

The topographical map was just a bunch of lines and squiggles, circles and four small red Xs. All of them were in an area within the greatest concentration of lines, scattered across the map like miniature camp-fires.

“What do those lines mean?” Fletcher asked.

“Oh, you don’t know how to read a topo? That’s an elevation indicator. Pretend it’s in 3-D. If you can imagine the lines as rising into the air, as the concentric gets smaller, that’s the higher up the mountain it is.”

“I failed Boy Scout 101. How far are these from us?”

“Closest one will take two hours. Farthest is five, minimum.”

“Do you know who lives at any of them?”

“No. No, sir. Very remote. We don’t normally get up that way. We’re assigned to the park only. That’s private property.”

“All right, then. There are four of you. Each of you will guide a team of my men. And we aren’t waiting for morning. We’re moving out right now.” He turned to the tactical team guys who were happily sprawled around the lodge’s great room, enjoying the fire and their full stomachs. The lodge owners had taken good care of them.

Fletcher spun his finger in the air over his head.

“Get off your asses. Lock and load. We’re rolling.”

“But, sir …” The kid who’d explained the map looked panicked. “Really, it’s not safe.”

Fletcher turned on him.

“There’s a woman in danger at one of those camps. Do you want to be responsible if we get there too late because you were scared to go out on the mountain at night?”

The kid puffed out his chest. “I’m not scared. I’m just not an idiot.”

“Then prove it. And keep us safe while you’re doing it.”