The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (35 page)

She glanced at Rachel in the seat beside her. She was out. Maybe she’d given her too much. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have time to think about Rachel now. Quinn was dead quiet.

Ash-mud smeared thick across the windshield. She bent forward, straining to see through the streaks. Smoke was obliterating everything. Suddenly she made out the lights of the Thunderbird Lodge.

With a shaking hand, she palmed her wet ball cap off her head, trying to think this through. It shouldn’t have been like this. Her only weapons were bear spray, ice ax. Ropes. Her strength and endurance. The ketamine was gone now.

Shit.

She’d gotten this far. There was no going back now, surely? Perspiration dampened her body. She pulled in next to the gondola terminal entrance. The fire was still raging on the Mount Barren side. Wind was fierce, smoke swirling. The gondola would shut down in wind this strong. But she was one of the patrollers who’d received the emergency evac and ropes training. She knew how to override and jam the thing.

All she had to do was get them all into one gondola cabin and send them over into the furnace consuming the Mount Barren terminal. If they didn’t burn when they docked, they’d never get down that mountain alive, not with the way the wildfire was engaged and the wind was going. But she was scared. She’d never killed anyone. She could do it. She could. Quinn suddenly rammed her seat from behind again and started moaning like some horrible animal. Brandy started to shake violently. She was doing it for Adam. She had to make sure he hadn’t told anyone, wouldn’t confess. She reached for Rachel’s phone, dialed his number.

It rang. Again, he didn’t pick up. Brandy started to panic. She left a message.

Jeb swore at the traffic clogging the highway southbound. Smoke was dense. Sirens everywhere. Forty-five minutes Brandy had said.

J-J-Jeb, I want my m-m-mo
m . . .
Brandy h-hurt Rache
l
. . .

He’d never make it in forty-five. He flicked on his hazard lights and leaned on the horn as he swerved round the line of cars. He raced down the oncoming lane, blaring his horn, hazard lights flashing. Headlights came at him head-on. He ramped up onto the opposite curb and bombed along the sidewalk, clipping a lamppost and a parked car, then he veered back into the oncoming lane once the vehicle had passed. A wailing siren approached behind him. Jeb glanced into his rearview mirror. The strobing lights of an ambulance were coming up behind him fast. It was also driving in the oncoming lane, cars were pulling over where they could. Jeb ramped back up onto the curb, and as soon as the ambulance passed, he tucked in right behind the ambulance’s rear, following it almost into town, where he cut down a side street and wound round to the base of Bear Mountain.

The skiers’ parking lot was deserted. The dark shapes of humans were silhouetted against pulsing emergency lights as they ran through the village, evacuating things. Someone was watering down the Shady Lady Saloon with a fire hose. A giant sprinkler was watering other buildings near the base. Jeb started up the dirt road that led up Bear Mountain.

Mud was slick under his tires. Rain came down hard, and it was gray and sludgy against his windshield. The deluge, however, was doing nothing to kill the fire raging on the Mount Barren side, where orange flames licked and leaped into the blackness. As he climbed, the lights of the village below disappeared into smoke. Higher up, he saw that the Barren fire was creeping down into the Khyber drainage. It looked like the whole town would burn if the wind didn’t change in time. Everyone was fleeing the other way, and he was going up. Into the inferno. Because everything that meant anything to him was somewhere up there in that smoke.

His heart hammered. It was a trap. Brandy wanted him. He had no idea why, or how she was tied into this thing. But he’d do anything to save his child and his woman. Anything.

He had his proof.

He now wanted his life. His family. He’d tasted it. What it could be like. He’d been given everything to live for.

And die for.

Adam always thought if the time came when he was forced to take his own life, it would be by eating his weapon. Cop-style. The honorable way. That time had come. He had the balls to come clean, but not for being arrested, facing trial. Or for sitting in a prison cell. A cop in the slammer? It never ended well.

This was the honorable option. The only option.

His boys wouldn’t have to grow up with the stigma of him on the inside. Lily would be free to move on, to hold up her head. But he couldn’t eat his gun, not if he wanted to look after them. He had to make it look like an accident, or Lily and Tyler and Mikey wouldn’t get the life insurance.

As Adam sped north along the twisting highway toward the narrow bridge that spanned the aptly named Suicide Gorge, he felt an incredible sense of relief. Almost elation. All the loose ends had been tied. He’d left instructions in an envelope on the table for Lily. He’d passed the confession to Pirello, who would have given it to Mackin by now. He’d said his good-bye to Brandy. She would get over him. She was young, beautiful, had her whole life ahead of her, and it was best that Lily never found out about her.

When he neared the bridge he began to accelerate, his wet tires screeching. He had to hit the barrier hard, and sideways, as though he were swerving in an effort to avoid the collision.

His phone rang. Something pinged through his determination. He clenched his jaw, trying to ignore it. It rang again. Heart thudding, perspiration breaking out over his body as he neared the barrier, he suddenly slowed, snatched the phone off his seat. He checked the incoming number. Rachel? His heart jumped up into his throat as panic hit him, and reality. He slowed right down and pulled over, scrubbed his hands over his face while the call went to voice mail.

Shit.
He’d chickened. He was going to have to turn around and take another run. Unable to stop himself, Adam hit the number that would take him to his messages. One last listen.

There were several frantic messages from Brandy telling him not to give his confession to anyone. Yet. His pulse started to race. With each message she sounded progressively more hysterical. He hit the last one, which had come from Rachel’s phone.

“Just don’t do it, Adam. I have them. Up at the gondola. It’s going to be okay.” She started crying. “I’m making it right for you. Don’t do anything, baby, okay? They’ll be gone soo
n . . .
”

The message cut off

Quickly, Adam tried to return the call. It rang twice, then cut out. He tried again, but there was no longer a signal.

He stared dazedly through the driving rain running down his windshield at the bridge over the canyon ahead. What in hell was Brandy doing? Why was she on Rachel’s cell? The town was being evacuated, the mountain burning. Who did she have up at the gondola? He recalled the look on her face as he’d told her that Rachel and Jeb would get there, they’d find the evidence in the min
e . . .
and it struck him like an ice ax.

Adam rammed his vehicle into gear, spun a U-turn over the bridge, and floored the gas on his way back to Snowy Creek.

As Jeb neared the Thunderbird Lodge, he saw that a building on Mount Barren was engulfed by fire. His gaze flared back to Thunderbird Lodge and he realized it must be the new gondola terminal that was burning on the other side. He’d read about the construction of the Summit-to-Summit in the papers while in prison. He pulled up next to the dark-blue beater of a truck parked outside the brightly lit terminal. It was Brandy’s. He recognized it from when she’d picked up Quinn.

A band of tension strapped tight across his chest as Jeb grabbed the rifle and flung open the door. Ash rain streaked him with gray paste as he ran toward the building. The sky glowed orange behind thick smoke. The door to the glassed-in terminal was unlocked.

He entered, coughing.

The place was starkly lit with neon. Empty. He blinked away the ash grit in his eyes. “Brandy?” he called.

No answer.

He moved toward the line of red gondola cabins. “Brandy?” he yelled again. His voice echoed. The place was deserted.

He spun round, heart thudding. What had Rachel told him about Brandy? Ski patroller. Mountain girl. Had worked on the mountain since she was a kid. Knew mountain operations. Great with children—wanted her own.

Jeb’s throat constricted as he thought of Quinn. Of Rachel being hurt.

Holding his gun, he ran along the line of cabins, looking in each one. Thunder boomed overhead and wind whistled through architecture. Smoke was blowing in through the gaping hole at the end of the dock.

“Quinn! Rachel!”

From the corner of his eye he caught a sudden movement up in the glassed-in control room. He stilled, watching. Had someone just ducked down up there? As he stared up at the control room, he heard a sound. A soft thudding.

He waited, listening under the whistle of the wind. Jeb heard it again. It was coming from one of the gondola cabins closer to the opening at the end of the docking station. Jeb raced to the cabin. As he neared, he saw the dark curls of his daughter in a cabin three from the end. The doors were wide open. “Quinn!”

He entered the cabin. His daughter was tied to the railing with zip ties, her legs bound with climbing rope, her mouth duct-taped shut, her eyes wild. Rachel was also tied to the railing with straps, but she hung from her wrists, the rest of her body slumped on the floor, unmoving. She was covered in blood, ash, her face turned away from him.

His heart kicked into a fast jackhammer.
Triage. Focus.

“Quinn, are you okay?”

She nodded, trembling like a leaf. She was in shock. He dropped to his knees beside Rachel, felt for a pulse at her bound wrists.
Alive.
Relief burned into his eyes. He set his weapon down, turned her head to the side. Her face was encrusted with blood. But she was breathing.

“Rachel?” He slapped her face lightly. No response. He needed to know what had happened to her.

Jeb lurched over to Quinn and began to peel the duct tape from her mouth. She squirmed in pain, tears streaming from her eyes. As he pulled the tape away, it tore off skin, fine hairs from her face, leaving her raw and bleeding. Adrenaline pounded through him.

“What happened to Rachel? How did she get hurt?”

“
I . . .
I’m sorry, Jeb. I was running away.
I . . .
wanted to go h-h-home, to my mommy and daddy. I
t . . .
it’s my fault. B-Brandy got me on the r-road. R-Rachel was looking for me i
n . . .
in the rain.”

“Quinn. It’s all right. Focus. What happened to Rachel?”

“B-Brandy jabbed her with a needle.”

She’d been drugged.

“Did she jab you too?”

“Yes, but I woke up. Rachel did too. Then when she started fighting with Brandy, Brandy wanted to make her shut up and jabbed her again.”

This meant it might wear off again, it might not be fatal.

“Where is Brandy now?”

“She’s gone. I don’t know.”

Jeb shot a glance over his shoulder. He needed a knife, something sharp to cut through the zip ties tying them both to the railing. There was a reason cops used these as emergency handcuffs—they were impossible to remove without a blade of some sort. He dropped to his haunches and fumbled to untie the ropes that bound Quinn’s legs.