“Nothing’s wrong. And certainly nothing I’d want to discuss with my daughter.” Joe shoved out of his chair and stalked off.
For what? To stare out the window? To bundle up and open the trading post?
Nowadays, trouble sent Joe racing toward the comfort of a familiar routine. But she couldn’t begrudge him the escape. After all, here she was tidying up the kitchen at four a.m.
The phone she’d left on the table jangled and Roger’s number popped up. She seized it as if it were the last life raft on the Titanic.
“Hello.”
“Maggie, we’ve found her car.”
“Thank God! Just a minute. I want to get Joe.” Maggie raced to the door and yelled for her husband, who came on the run. She punched speakerphone. “Go ahead, Roger.”
“Kate’s car is in the ditch on a small side road called Glen’s Crossing about sixty-five miles south of Grand Marsais.”
The ghost of a memory nagged at Maggie, and she felt the chill of an awful premonition. What was it? She was so tired she couldn’t think straight.
“How is she, Roger? Is she okay?”
“She’s not here. We found her suitcase in the backseat and a winter parka in the front.”
“Kate would never leave the car without a coat,” Joe said. “She’s a seasoned hiker.”
“What about her backpack?” Maggie tried to rein in her fear. More and more it appeared her daughter had been taken.
“We haven‘t found anything else yet. I’ve got deputies fanned into the woods searching but the snow last night covered any tracks we might have discovered.”
“I’m telling you, Kate wouldn’t have left the car,” Joe said. “I know that area. It’s isolated. There’s not a single place nearby where she could have walked in this snow for help, particularly when she could have called us.”
“Looks like she had a blowout and the front end of her car is smashed up pretty bad. Considering her GPS tracking information we can’t discount kidnapping. I’m still waiting for a call from authorities in Canada.”
Dread washed over Maggie, and a premonition so horrible she could almost see her daughter, rendered powerless by evil.
“Something about this whole scenario doesn’t feel right, Roger. Give Joe the exact location of the car. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
As Maggie raced out of the kitchen she heard Roger firing off directions followed by the caution, “Storm’s coming. We don’t have much time.”
Didn’t he think she knew that? The latest weather report from Stan the weatherman said the massive storm would hit northern Minnesota in ten hours.
Maggie raced into her daughter’s bedroom and grabbed the raggedy old Pooh Bear off the bed. Kate had slept with it every night since she was born. The wonder is that she hadn’t carried it to college with her. It would hold more of her scent than anything else in the room.
Air scent dogs, unlike tracking dogs, didn’t need an article that belonged to the missing. They worked by sniffing the air for the trail everybody leaves behind, unaware--unseen skin cells and hair that float away when you pass through a place, even the gases you exhale when you breathe. Their uncanny olfactory ability was why air scent dogs were so valuable working landslides, avalanches and other freaks of nature and man that buried multiple victims under tons of debris.
Still, the scent-specific object would let Jefferson know beyond a shadow of a doubt he wasn’t looking for multiple people. His job was to find Kate.
Kate’s bear almost brought Maggie to tears. She hugged the stuffed animal, trying to comfort herself by touching something belonging to her daughter. Finally she said, “Get moving.”
It was the sort of advice she’d once given Kate. When you think you can’t go one step more, give yourself a pep talk. Out loud.
As she hurried about packing everything she’d need for a SAR search in the dead of winter, possibly in the middle of a blizzard, the memory she’d sought earlier hit her with a force that buckled her knees.
The snow. The location, not twenty miles from Glen’s Crossing. The missing girls. Two of them, one year apart. Both college age, both blond. Like Kate.
Maggie had found both of them dead.
Chapter Two
4: 45 a.m
“Maggie?” When she didn’t answer, Joe found his wife sitting in the middle of their bedroom floor clutching Kate’s beat-up old teddy bear. He knelt beside her. “Are you okay? What happened?”
“Nothing. Help me up. I don’t have a minute to lose.”
“You mean we. I’m going with you.”
“You don’t have to. You can stay here in case she shows up. Roger can be my base camp and Jefferson won’t let me get lost.”
“She’s my daughter, too, Maggie.”
“Fine,” she said.
That was it? Fine? It felt cold, impersonal, and nothing like the relationship they’d once had.
He didn’t point out that he knew the Superior wilderness as well or better than any air scent dog his wife had ever handled. He’d hiked the entire three hundred twenty-six miles of Superior Trail many times.
She’d been right about the amount of time he spent there. Nature was the world’s greatest tranquilizer. The grandeur that was both beautiful and dangerous overwhelmed the senses to the point there was no room for anything except awe.
Joe hurried to load his four-wheel drive extended cab truck, shutting down his memories from force of habit. Jefferson jumped into the backseat and promptly curled onto his blanket. He’d be asleep within minutes. Smart dog, conserving his energy for the brutal search ahead.
Maggie climbed into the passenger side. “You got directions?”
“Yes.”
Twenty years ago, when they met, she wouldn’t have asked. They’d been paired together with their dogs, working a mudslide that had trapped hikers on the Superior Trail, and they’d trusted each other—and their feelings--as instinctively as they’d trusted their SAR dogs. Within two weeks he’d moved into her cottage in Grand Marsais.
“To see if our dogs are as compatible as we are,” Joe had teased her.
“If they’re not, I’m getting a different dog.”
Theirs had been a perfect match, both human and canine. Joe had planned to work the search and rescue missions with his wife until they grew too old, and then spend their retirement fishing and boating and dropping hints to Kate to make them doting grandparents.
Now, Maggie sighed and leaned her head against the back of the seat.
“You should sleep while you have the chance.”
“I can’t.” She turned to him in the darkened cab. “I’m fine.”
Joe let her lie slide. The last time she’d said she was fine and really meant it, she’d been holding their baby daughter, watching him load up Clint, his German shepherd air scent dog, for the massive search and rescue after the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Towers.
He tried to shut down the memories, but the stress of his missing daughter and the lull of driving through the darkness in a silent cab on a road with few travelers opened a floodgate. The horrors he’d locked out for years came pouring back. The ash, everything covered with ash, the acrid scent of burning jet fuel, the charred bodies they’d found, one after the other.