Tempting Evil (8 page)

Wyatt didn’t have a ski mask on, and his face was hard. “Get away from her,” Wyatt said.

Wyatt had a gun in his hand. He’d reacted too fast, now Doherty knew for sure they were on to him.

Doherty grabbed Jo from behind, held her to him. “Come with me, Joanna.”

“Let her go,” Wyatt demanded.

“Shit!” Doherty exclaimed. Cold metal pressed into Jo’s neck. “Who told you, Joanna? Who told you?”

“Don’t hurt anyone. Please don’t hurt the boys.”

“I’m not going to hurt a kid! I don’t kill kids like that bastard Lincoln Barnes.”

Linc? What did Doherty know about Linc? What did he know about Timmy? Oh, God, this was a nightmare.

“Just back away, John, back away from Jo and we’ll talk, okay?” Wyatt said.

“Stop it!” Doherty yelled.

Now all eyes were on them. Doherty was backing away from the cabin, toward the closest snowmobile. He pulled Jo with him, then turned his gun toward the Manns. “Get away.”

Craig and his son herded the boys like cattle away from both the cabin and Doherty’s gun.

“Okay,” Doherty said, “we’re going to do this my way. You’re coming with me, okay? Then no one will get hurt. Just you and me, Joanna. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Jo stared at Wyatt. He was slowly shaking his head. “John, I don’t know what you want, but you don’t want to do this.”

“Stop talking!” Doherty shouted at Wyatt. Quieter, to Jo, he said, “Please, Joanna.”

She hesitated.

Doherty turned the gun toward where Ben Ward lay strapped—trapped—in the sleigh thirty feet away.

“I’ll come with you!” she exclaimed. “Don’t hurt him.”

Doherty turned the gun back on her. “Good. Good!” He sounded happy. “Let’s go.”

“Jo’s not going anywhere with you,” Wyatt said. He stepped out of the cabin.

Before she knew what he was doing, Aaron aimed the gun at Wyatt and fired.

Oh, God, Wyatt, no!

Wyatt dropped to the ground.

Aaron pulled her shocked body the remaining feet to the snowmobile. She started to fight.

“Stop, or I’ll kill every one of them. I don’t want to, I really don’t want to.”

He touched her cheek with his gloved hand. “You know me, Joanna. You know I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I love you. I wouldn’t hurt anyone unless you made me.” His eyes hardened. “Get on.”

Shaking, Jo slid her leg over the snowmobile. Aaron Doherty was not sane and she didn’t know what he would do. She didn’t know him, she’d just met him yesterday. He thought he loved her? Unreal. He was unstable. She had to go with him, get him away from the boys. She couldn’t risk their lives. What if Wyatt had been one of the scouts? Jason?

She dry heaved.
Wyatt, please be okay. Please live.

Aaron jumped into the seat behind her, his gun pressed against her side. He turned the ignition.

“Drive.”

Craig Mann crossed over to Wyatt. Jason stared at Wyatt’s body in front of the door. Wyatt was struggling to get up, blood spreading across his shoulder and dripping into the white snow.

Aaron took charge of the snowmobile and they started off too fast, almost tipping them end-over-end. He regained control and within a minute, Jo couldn’t see Wyatt, Jason, or the cabin.

FOURTEEN

Doug tired of Vicky Trotsky quickly that morning and slit her throat in one clean slice.

Aaron had said he didn’t want her to suffer.

Aaron wanted him to go back to the first cabin. Aaron probably wanted him to sit and heel and sit at the back of the bus. Asshole.

Doug was tired of taking orders from Aaron. He’d heard the snowmobiles leave well over an hour ago, didn’t know what was going on, but that meant there were fewer people at the lodge. Easier to gain control.

But he’d been stupid. He’d left his gun at the cabin. No fucking way he could take anyone hostage with a knife. Might be able to slice one or two, but what good would killing someone be if he still got caught?

Guns kept people under control. He’d sneak in, find someone by themselves, and then he’d have a hostage. Get everyone in one room, have them tie each other up, and he’d be in charge. Warm, in the big house, eating well. As soon as this shitty weather passed, he’d grab a truck and get the hell out of here. Take a hostage to drive, he had no idea where he was or how to get out of here.

But maybe Aaron was right. Maybe he should lay low, go back to that cabin they’d found. They’d left the snowmobiles they’d stolen behind the cabin, shielded from casual observers. They were probably buried in snow by now, but Doug knew where they were.

He could just leave fucking Aaron Doherty. The kid didn’t seem to want him around, anyway. And after all he’d done for him! If it weren’t for Doug, they wouldn’t have even had the guns. And he was the one who hot-wired all the cars they stole, he was the one who’d gotten the snowmobiles running. Damn, Aaron treated him like a sewer rat rather than the smart guy he was. He might not have acted as smart as Aaron, but who was the one with the college degree? That’s right, good old Doug Chapman had a degree in civil engineering.

His head ached, and he blamed it on the Jack Daniels’s he’d consumed the night before.

He stared at the dead woman on the bed, the blood drying on the mattress. He remembered killing her. The anger that had been building up inside all week. The rage that had gotten him in trouble all those years ago when he’d been drinking. But he had it under control, cut out drinking too much which made his anger harder to ignore. Then Tanya had to start fucking with him and he let the bitch have it.

You didn’t want to kill Chantelle.

God, he missed her.

He turned his eyes away from Vicky Trotsky. She was just a nobody, Doug couldn’t bring up any real emotion or regret.

No emotion except the bubbling anger he’d never understood.

He looked out the window, saw nothing and no one. Nothing at all. The damn wind was kicking up snow all over the place and it was loud. How could the wind make so much noise? He’d always thought snow was silent, but there was nothing quiet about this blizzard.

In the daylight, he had seen there were marked paths leading to the lodge through some sparse trees. He’d watched which way Aaron and the hot writer had gone. Other trees were marked as well. That would lead him back to his cabin—and his gun.

“Thanks for a great party, baby,” he said to the dead woman and left.

He’d give Aaron another chance, Doug thought as he hiked back to the cabin where he’d left his gun. But if Aaron fucked with him, Doug Chapman would invade the lodge and take over. He hated doing nothing.

And if anyone tried to stop him, he’d kill again to feed the angry monster inside.

Tyler and his men arrived at Nash’s house off South Centennial Road ten minutes after Tyler spoke to Jo. Agent Vigo immediately got on his cell phone. The Centennial Valley had virtually no cell phone service, however there were certain pockets that the locals called “phone booths,” several of which were in Lakeview.

Tyler talked to Nash, who drew him a map on how to get around the avalanche. The detour would add only fifteen minutes to their timetable.

As soon as Tyler and his deputies packed their supplies into the snowmobiles which Nash had already fueled, he motioned for Vigo to wrap up the conversation—they needed to get on the road. The wind had really whipped up the fresh powder and while there was no new snowfall, visibility was poor.

Vigo approached and said, “That was my contact in Seattle, Quinn Peterson. He spoke with Annie Erickson, one of Aaron Doherty’s temporary guardians.

“She confirmed everything in his file—Doherty was raised by friends and family his entire life, being uprooted by his mother when she felt like it. She also said that Ginger Doherty disappeared when the kid was sixteen. Left him with a great-aunt and went to work on a cruise ship. Never returned. Peterson is running down that lead.”

“You think bringing the mother here is going to help us catch him?” Tyler asked. “We don’t have the time.”

“Actually, I suspect she’s dead,” Hans said.

“Why?”

“Peterson ran her social and nothing popped since the year she disappeared. She received paychecks from King Cruises for three months after leaving Doherty with his eighty-two-year-old great-aunt Dorothy Miles. She died three years later, left everything to the kid. A house, some money.

“So I’m thinking if what Ms. Erickson says is true,” Vigo continued, “that Ginger Doherty hooked up with men right and left—that maybe one of them killed her.”

“Nothing in the files on her? No death certificate?”

“Nothing we can find, but Peterson already put out an alert to the locals. Maybe there’s a Jane Doe out there that matches her description.”

“How is this going to help us catch him?” Tyler asked, anxious to leave.

“We need all the information we can get,” Vigo said. “The more we know about Doherty’s background, the greater chance we can predict what he’ll do next.”

“I
know
what he’s going to do next,” said a frustrated Tyler. “He’s going to track down Jo if we don’t get to her first.”

Vigo glanced at Bianchi, then said, “Peterson has letters that Doherty attempted to send to Jo Sutton through Ms. Erickson. The first letter was mailed to her—Erickson didn’t see anything harmful, it was a simple fan letter. Jo wrote back, a generic response—something like
Thank you for writing, I’m glad you enjoyed my book.
Erickson intended to give it to Doherty, but after reading his second letter, she decided to keep it from him and send no other letters to Jo.”

“What did it say?”

“It implied that they had a relationship, that he knew she wrote for him because that was the only way they could share intimacy.”

Tyler hit the side of the garage. The mere thought that some psychotic bastard would butcher Jo’s innocent and beautiful stories angered him.

“Erickson never mailed them—and Doherty was distraught when Jo didn’t write back. The prison authority just informed us that they uncovered dozens of letters Doherty had written to a ‘Joanna.’ They were hidden in plain sight—he’d highlighted words and letters in her books that, when read together, were messages for her.”

“It’s sick.” It was more than sick—now Aaron Doherty was trying to make his fantasy real. Jo was in danger and Tyler hated that he wasn’t with her to protect her.

“It’s in line with what I surmised earlier,” Vigo said. “He has delusions—but not the wild-eyed delusions you expect from drug addicts on the street or the mentally ill.”

Nash approached them. “You’re all ready to go.”

Deputy Grossman called from Tyler’s truck, “Sheriff! Stan Wood from the Moosehead is on the radio. Says it’s urgent.”

Tyler strode over, picked up the radio. “Stan, it’s Tyler. What’s wrong?” His heart raced. The two people he loved most—his son and Jo Sutton—were in danger.

“I found Aaron Doherty’s mug shot,” Stan said.

“I faxed it last night along with Doug Chapman’s and Thomas O’Brien’s.”

“We only saw O’Brien’s and Chapman’s. I found Doherty’s in John Miller’s room, folded in one of Jo’s books. Doherty and Miller are one and the same.”

Stan’s words sunk in immediately. Tyler almost didn’t want to say it. “John Miller was one of the men who went out with Jo to bring back Wyatt’s troop.”

“Yes.”

“Does Jo know?”

“I called and told her.”

Shit.
It would have been safer to have let Doherty think he was in the clear. To return to the lodge with Wyatt and the boys where Stan would have the upper hand.

“I’ll contact them. Get everyone into the lodge and keep them there, including your guests staying in cabins.”

He hung up and dialed into Wyatt’s frequency. Nothing. He tried again. And again. And again.

Someone finally picked up the radio. “Hello?”

“This is Sheriff McBride. Who’s this?”

“Kevin Sampson, sir. Are you coming to save us?”

Kevin sounded scared. “Son, put Wyatt on.”

“He’s hurt.”

“Ms. Sutton?”

“She’s not here. Mr. Miller took her.” Kevin spoke fast. “He had a gun and they left on a snowmobile.”

“Mr. Miller?” Tyler repeated. His blood ran cold.

“He shot Mr. McBride and took her. You’re going to get them, right? Jason says you’re the best cop.”

Doherty had shot Wyatt and taken Jo. Tyler’s world was collapsing around him. He felt helpless this far from everyone he cared about.

“Is Wyatt okay?” He feared the worst.

“I think so. I don’t know. Mr. Mann is doing something.”

Tyler rubbed his temple. “Put Jason on.”

“I can’t.”

Tyler’s frustration and fear grew. “Just put him on, son.”

“He’s gone, too.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“He left right after Ms. Sutton and Mr. Miller. Following them, I think.”

His son—his twelve-year-old son—was tracking a killer in the middle of an impending blizzard. He’d throttle him. What
had
Jason been thinking?
Dear Lord, I just want my son back. My son and my girl.

The killer has Jo.

“Put Mr. Mann on. Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Why hadn’t one of the men gone after him? Why did Jason feel compelled to be so reckless? A moment later, a voice said, “This is Sean Mann. My father is trying to stop Mr. McBride’s bleeding.”

“What happened?”

“Not quite sure, except that Ms. Sutton got a call on the radio and then Miller just flipped out. He had a gun and said she was coming with him. When Mr. McBride tried to stop him, Miller shot him.”

“How is Wyatt?”

“He was hit in the right shoulder. My dad says he’ll probably be okay if we can get him to a doctor.”

Tyler surveyed the valley. There was no way Life Flight could get in here, the ceiling was too low. But Nash was a veterinarian. Not ideal, but the best they had under the circumstances.

“Get Wyatt back to the lodge ASAP.”

“We only have two snowmobiles and there are eight of us. Even with the kid on the sleigh, we can’t all go.”

Shit. Tyler had to both get to the lodge and find Jo and Jason. And he had to get those boys safely from the homestead to the lodge. All right now.

“This is what I want you to do. Either you or your father take Wyatt and Ben Ward to the lodge. I’ll have a doctor meet you there. The other needs to stay with the other four boys until someone can get there, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you do that?”

Another voice came on the radio. “Sheriff, this is Craig Mann. I heard your request. I’ll take Wyatt and the boy in. I think the others are safer here—there is plenty of food and water and the shelter is sound—until we know where the convicts are.”

“John Miller is Aaron Doherty, one of the convicts. Which way did he take Jo?”

“West.”

The lodge was southeast from the homestead. Where was Miller taking her? He hadn’t had time to scout out the area. He might have a map, but it wouldn’t show residences. All the vacation homes were either north or south, accessible from the North or South Centennial Road. Nothing west that Tyler could think of.

It was only twenty degrees. When night came, it was supposed to drop to minus twenty. They had no provisions to survive the night exposed. Most snowmobile tanks held nine gallons. They got—maybe—ten miles a gallon.

Tyler had to find them. And the only way was to follow their trail.

“Mann, you bring Wyatt and Ben in like you said. Sean will stay with the boys. I’ll go directly to the homestead and track Miller from there. I’ll send my deputy to the lodge with the doctor.” It would have been better to send Mann here to Lakeview, but the lodge was closer.

“What if one of the other convicts is there?”

“There’s only one more other than Doherty. Doug Chapman. He should be considered armed and dangerous, got it?”

“Yes, Sheriff.”

“How’s Wyatt?”

“I stopped the bleeding, but he lost quite a bit. He’s conscious. The bullet is still in there. I know first aid, but this is out of my league.”

“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Everyone was looking at him when he hung up the radio. He didn’t need to repeat what had happened. “Nash, can you go to the lodge?”

“Absolutely. And if you need to bring the scouts here instead of the lodge, do it. Peter can go with you.” Peter was Nash’s son, a military veteran of thirty who didn’t say much and had been standing quietly next to his father the entire time.

“Agreed. When we arrive at the homestead, we’ll contact the lodge and ascertain whether it’s safe to bring the boys there. Otherwise, they’ll come here.”

He continued, “Bianchi, Billy, come with me and Peter to the homestead. Peter can lead. He knows the valley better.”

“We’ll take the lodge,” Vigo said.

“Be careful. We don’t know if Chapman is dead or alive.”