Perfect Touch: A Novel Page 12

  His eyes were bleak beneath the shadow of the hat brim. Though his mouth was in sunlight, it was equally forbidding. He lifted the gelding’s reins and followed the small herd down the back way into Fish Camp. The tension in his body increased with every step closer they came.

  Where in hell are the Solvangs?

  The trail came in at the rear of Fish Camp, where there was a fenced pasture, corral, and small barn. The pasture was empty, because the caretakers had traded in their horses for ATVs.

  Maybe they’re off on a long ride.

  Then they damn well should have taken the radio. They know the rules. And they would have to be hell and gone for me not to hear their ATVs.

  “We’re putting the herd in here,” he said, gesturing toward the pasture.

  Sara didn’t say a word. The tension pouring off Jay had scuttled any thoughts of Shangri-la.

  The dogs herded the cattle into the pasture. The water trough was full and there was plenty of grass to keep the cattle entertained. Jay took a battered tin bucket off its hook on the fence, filled it with water from the trough, and set it against a fence post for the dogs. Then he gave them the signal to guard the cattle. After a final look at the pasture, he shut the gate.

  She wanted to ask questions, but held her tongue. If he knew any answers, he would have told her.

  They headed for the small corral, which was close to the barn. The horses must have caught Jay’s mood, because they minced and snorted and shied all the way to the weathered rails. He opened the gate for Jezebel to pass through, then closed it behind Amble.

  “Loosen the cinch and take off the bridle,” Jay said, working quickly over his horse. “The water trough is full. Feed can wait until I see what’s going on.”

  It used to be good up here, he thought. No matter how rocky things were with Liza, how bad things were with the family, up here was always a sanctuary.

  It didn’t feel like a sanctuary anymore. He hesitated over the rifle, then left it in the saddle sheath. The Glock should be enough.

  After Sara saw to her horse, she leaned against the corral fence and absorbed the silence. The sky between clouds and what she could see of the lake were a blue so brilliant it made her ache.

  Jay walked toward her, then stopped.

  “What?” she asked, turning.

  He held a hand up, a signal for silence and stillness.

  A single glance told her that the stranger was back in Jay’s skin.

  She couldn’t see Fish Camp’s calm and quiet anymore. Instead, she saw the motion in the wind-blown trees and occasional small patches of grass, and the cougar that had been desperate enough to try for calves and to hell with the people and the dogs on guard.

  But there isn’t a cougar lying in wait between the cabins and the main house.

  Is there?

  Get a grip. There’s nothing but my overactive imagination out there.

  She followed Jay as he walked around the back of the barn toward the main house, which was farther away, closer to the lake than either of the secondary cabins. As soon as the caretaker cabin was in sight, he reached behind his back for the Glock. He pulled out the pistol and held it down along his side. His left hand went from relaxed to a flat, open palm that silently told Sara to stay back.

  She hesitated, then moved slowly backward, watching the cabin as she did. In the dappled shade of the surrounding trees, it looked like the back door was ajar. Or might be. It was hard to tell. At this distance it could have been her imagination.

  “When I say go, we’re going to move quickly and quietly into the trees on the far side of the larger cabin,” Jay said. His words were barely audible, carrying no farther than her ears. “Go.”

  She was stunned that someone as big as he was could move so silently, so fast. She felt clumsy and noisy in his wake. It seemed like forever before she was under the trees on the other side of the caretakers’ cabin.

  With a signal for Sara to stay put, Jay carefully approached the side of the cabin.

  I’m going to feel like a fool when nothing is wrong, he told himself.

  Better a live fool.

  He ignored the niggling voice of civilization and went with the paranoid, pragmatic side of his mind. He didn’t know exactly what had put his hackles up. He only knew that every survival instinct he had was screaming that something was very wrong.

  He held up his left hand, balled in a fist, and hoped that Sara knew enough about hand signals—or plain common sense—to stop forward movement.

  “Wait here,” he said, the words barely audible. “I’m going to check the cabin. I won’t be long.”

  She started to say something, but he was already moving. If she hadn’t been looking right at him, she wouldn’t have associated the faint rustle of sound with a human being.

  Like that cougar. Fast. Invisible until he went for the kill.

  Jay slipped around the corner, still holding the Glock along his right leg. He didn’t look back to see if she stayed in the relative safety of the trees. All his attention was focused on the cabin itself.

  Slowly Sara worked her way through the trees until she could reach out and feel the planks of the caretakers’ cabin, rough beneath her fingers. She shivered with the cold.

  Nerves, she told herself. It’s not that cold.

  Or maybe it was simply that the wind off the lake was especially cutting. Her fingers ached.

  Gradually she realized that she was gripping the wood so hard her hand was almost numb. Very carefully she eased the pressure on her fingers. Drawing slow, deep breaths, she waited for whatever happened next.

  Jay stopped at the back of the house and listened. He heard nothing but his own heartbeat, even and steady. His body had been trained for stillness even when his mind screamed that he move and move fast. Up close, he could see what had set off his instincts. The door was ajar, leaking heat from the woodstove in the kitchen.

  Not that there was a lot of heat. Barely different from the outside, in fact.

  Inge will have a fit. She’ll put up with a lot from her man, but messing with her kitchen isn’t tolerated.

  Jay stepped along the outside of the two stairs at the back door. They creaked, but no more than the cabin itself under the heavy caress of the wind. When the wind swirled, the door moved, showing him more of Inge’s kitchen. The old wood floor gleamed with polish in the low light.

  He nudged the door fully open and waited with his back to the outside wall.

  If anyone was in the house, he or she didn’t come to close the door. And Jay knew from experience that the draft from the open kitchen door could be felt in every room of the cabin.

  He ghosted through the small mudroom and across the floor. A pot of pasta waited on the stove. The noodles had swollen to grotesque proportions. The stove beneath the pot was barely warm. An iron skillet full of crumbled, browned hamburger had congealed next to the pot. Whatever fire had been in the stove once was cooling ashes now.

  Woodstove could have been running for hours, depending on how much fuel Inge put in and what position the damper was in. No way for me to know. Just another thing that is wrong, like the abandoned food and the door left open for the wind.

  The comfortable living room was quiet but for the insistent rush of the wind and an occasional rattle of the front door, which hadn’t been closed hard enough to latch. The compact hearth was cold.

  Wherever they are, they’ve been gone for hours at least. Depends on whether the spaghetti was for last night or tonight.

  There was no way to tell. When Inge and Ivar were alone, she cooked enough to last several days.

  Swiftly Jay walked through the rest of the cabin. The Solvangs were tidy folks, but there was enough mess everywhere that he wondered if they were the only people who had been in the cabin.

  When he went through the back door, he found Sara waiting. She looked pale, tight, and her eyes were almost black. He wanted to hold her, but he had another cabin and the main house to search. And the barn.r />
  “What did you find?” she asked.

  “Nothing definitive. Nobody home, no notes, nothing obviously missing or out of place.” His tone was clipped, information only, no emotion.

  “Have they ever left without telling someone before now?”

  “No.”

  The word was like the man himself—remote.

  “I wish I could shut down like you, but I can’t,” she said. “I’m edgy. Scared.”

  He holstered the pistol and took her hands in his own. Soldiers might be used to cold facts, but she wasn’t.

  “We’re both okay,” he said, stroking her hands gently. “We’ll find out what happened. There’s probably a simple explanation and I’ll feel like an idiot. But until then, I have to check the barn and the guest cabin and the main house, just to be sure. I can do it faster alone. Okay?”

  “No.”

  “No, as in you think I’ll be faster with you?” he asked.

  “I’ll feel safer with you,” she said bluntly.

  As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t argue that fact. “How about I whistle up Skunk for company?”

  “Won’t that give us away?”

  “Anyone who was interested would have seen us coming down the ridge to the pasture. Hard to hide thirty-odd cows, two dogs, and two horses with riders.”

  “Then why are we sneaking—Oh, you think someone might be hiding in one of the buildings.”

  “Possible, not real probable. But I’ll feel better once the buildings are secured.”

  “So will I.” She rubbed her arms. “Since we’re working in possibilities, not probabilities, I want to stay with you. I’ll do what you do, not ask questions, and in general not be the stupid blonde in the movie.”

  He hesitated, then half smiled. “I don’t think you could be stupid if you tried.”

  “You should have seen me as a teenager,” she said under her breath.

  “I’ll go from here to the barn,” he said. “You wait to come until I signal. Clear?”

  Her lips tightened, but she nodded. She knew better than to argue with him when he was in captain mode.

  He watched the barn for a minute from the kitchen of the cabin. Then he walked among the widely spaced trees separating the cabins from the barn, keeping to cover when he could. The back of his neck was twitching before he got to the side door of the barn. He really hadn’t liked coming across the open patches.

  No bullets, so no sweat.

  Inside, the barn was quiet, smelling more of machinery than horses or cows. Half the stalls had been converted to hold two ATVs, two snowmobiles, and the Jeep Scout that the caretakers used to go to town.

  Either someone came to get them, or they walked out of here.

  The vehicles were sitting oddly. Jay moved closer to investigate. The tires on the ATVs and the Scout were flat. A closer look told him that the air stems on the tires had been cut off. Easier than slashing tires and just as efficient. When he looked into the old tack room, it was uninhabited. Messy, too.

  Either Ivar has been sick, or someone was looking for something in a hurry.

  The hayloft had been taken out when the Solvangs converted to machines, so Jay didn’t have to climb up to check for anyone hiding.

  He left the barn, took the path through the trees to the guest cabin, circled it, and waited. Only the wind moved, herding clouds until they stacked up again the Tetons. He listened carefully, then signaled for Sara to come over.

  She was out of the house and across the yard like a sprinter leaving the starting blocks. Even so, by the time she got to the front of the guest cabin, he had already been through its small rooms. Messy rooms.

  The more he saw, the less he liked any of it.

  And the less sense it made.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked quietly.

  “Messy rooms. Flat tires.”

  “What?”

  “The ATVs and the Scout in the barn.” Before she could ask another question, he said, “The main house is next. Stay behind me.”

  With every moment, he had become more and more certain that they were alone at Fish Camp. Even so, he approached the main house as cautiously as he had the caretakers’ cabin, paying special attention to the small shed where the generator was kept.

  Sara followed about ten feet behind him, not wanting to get in his way.

  He went in the back door through the mudroom to the kitchen. The layout was similar to the caretakers’ cabin, but more spacious. The woodstove in the kitchen was cold. The cupboards were open. So was the pantry. Some of the canned goods were on the floor. A bag of beans had been cut open, sending the contents spilling out of the pantry into the kitchen.

  A smashed shortwave radio lay on the floor.

  Jay’s mouth flattened into an even harder line. Everything he saw was adding up to something he didn’t want to see at all.

  Sara followed silently as he went through the main house. The living room and dining room were empty, furniture shoved here and there for no reason she could see. She followed him upstairs and saw the same—a mess. Winter gear on the floor, mattress askew, dresser lying on its face. The bathroom down the short hall was no better.

  She felt like she was back in her motel room, putting together the wreckage of her suitcase, and each time she turned a corner things got worse. A cold that had nothing to do with the air made her clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. Slowly she became aware of Jay’s hands running up and down her arms with gentle, steady sweeps that centered her.

  “I’m okay,” she said hoarsely. “Just reminds me of my motel room. I feel like trouble is following me.” She took a deep breath, then another, and said again, “I’m okay.”

  He squeezed her arms gently, then slowly let go and headed downstairs. He heard her footsteps behind him.

  “This looks like someone had a tantrum,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Disappointed meth heads?”

  “Possible.”

  He headed down the stairs to the den, where JD had kept his papers and his poker cards and his booze. The rolltop desk was open. Another smashed shortwave radio lay on the floor near it.

  That explains why Inge and Ivar didn’t answer my call.

  “I’m going to check the boathouse,” Jay said. “Why don’t you lock up and wait for me downstairs.”

  It wasn’t a question. More like an order.

  She surprised both of them by obeying.

  He headed for the front door, the Glock once again in his hand.

  CHAPTER 13

  JAY WALKED THROUGH the trees down the well-used path to the boathouse. Memories fought for his attention with every step on the quarter-mile trail, but he pushed them aside to be dealt with later. He had to stay focused on what was happening now. The past could wait. Nothing in it could be changed anyway.

  Thirty feet short of the boathouse, he stopped under cover of the trees and studied what was ahead. The lake was calm in sheltered areas. The open center of the water showed whitecaps from the playful wind. Marsh grass and plants grew in the shallows of the lake where leaves and soil covered the stony bottom.

  The boathouse and short dock were weathered gray, looking almost velvety in the late-afternoon light. Clouds had expanded out from the Tetons, eating away at the sun. The first few drops of what could become real rain were falling now, bright in the broken sunlight.

  Birds darted and sang in the bushes just back from the lake. Insects hummed and whirred wherever sunlight remained on the edge of the lake. Water was always a magnet for life. These small lives hadn’t been disturbed recently.

  As soon as Jay stepped out of cover, everything but the wind and lapping water fell silent. He pushed open the door to the boathouse. A patch of sunlight dappled the wide opening leading to the water and made bright reflections on the roof and rafters. The exposed beams and tight shadows between reminded him of the rib cage of a huge, long-dead animal.

  The rows of neatly stored, oiled tools on the
wall and a counter down the right side told him that whoever had searched the rest of the buildings hadn’t bothered here. The only thing that caught his eye was the empty place, outlined in white paint, where a screwdriver in Ivar’s tightly organized tool collection was missing. Smudge marks showed on the white, exactly where someone in a hurry would have grabbed the screwdriver.

  “Ivar?” he called. “Come on out. It’s Jay.”

  He held his breath as he waited.

  Go ahead and tell yourself one more time that they just went out for a walk. You haven’t believed it so far, have you?

  Only the wind answered his call.

  A small collection of dinghies lay overturned in a line, hulls facing the ceiling. Clean and well cared for, they waited in neat array for someone to use. One of the dinghies had been kicked or knocked out of place, with the barest smear of dirt accenting the disorder.

  He lifted the boat aside and saw nothing beneath.

  Without expecting to find anything different, he went outside. Nearby was the toolshed and fuel depot where Ivar had built a simple retreat, or “man cave” as Inge delighted in calling it. The old man had often said that the reason he was happily married was that each of them did just fine on their own.

  Beyond the ramshackle retreat was a woodpile.

  Nearly used up, like the one by their cabin. Long winter. There will be lots of wood to cut before the next winter.

  Jay took two steps, then froze. His mind insisted he had seen something out of place in the groundcover. Motionless, he examined the grass and weeds and small shrubs encroaching on the buildings. The different heights and textures gave the ground a mosaic appearance.

  Sitting on his heels, he searched for whatever was picking at his instincts. After a few minutes, he saw that the grass lay differently in places, suggesting someone had walked through, probably in the last several hours. He couldn’t pick up where the trail started, but it became more noticeable toward Ivar’s retreat.

  He followed the trace and ended up losing it. He circled back to the front. There was a single door there, newer than the rest of the building. The wooden door had lightened to a fine silvery blond.