Primal Obsession (30 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

“We didn’t camp at the designated spots,” Nora Lopez informed Justin and the others. A calm, maternal sort of woman, she appeared intelligent and proud of the group’s accomplishment. “That’s why your search teams didn’t find us.”

“Damn right.” The contractor, Carl Pulsifer, puffed up like a courting male pigeon. “I couldn’t trust Kincaid’s judgment that the killer would follow them. I had to hide our trail.”

Everyone sat around the picnic table inside the screened shelter. Justin was asking the questions, with occasional prompts from one of the FBI agents. Peters and the other state detectives took notes and taped the debriefing.

Ben Kincaid had arrived in his van with the canoe racks on top. He paced the beach as he kept watch outside the shelter.

The two red canoes had paddled in around noon, with the Lopez woman and her son and the blow-hard Pulsifer. To Justin’s amazement, they brought Ted Wolfe’s dog. The animal lay by young Frank’s feet as if the teenager had always been his owner.

At first, Justin had sagged, but Annie and Sam would come from a different direction. From northeast, not northwest. They had no transportation. Would they send up flares to signal this side of the pond?

Dusk dimmed the hazy sky to gunmetal. The air smelled damp. Fog ghosted above the water’s surface and blurred the lake edges. His throat tightened. How would Ben see a flare? Or people on the far shore?

The campers’ tale had taken up most of the afternoon. All three identified Holden Smith from his W & V Technologies company photograph. His computer background made it child’s play for him to masquerade as the computer tech Ray Hadden.

Another body to find. God, let it be the last. A Boston detective was on his way to talk to Hadden’s mother. Justin blew out a breath. Delivering that sort of bad news was the part of the job he hated.

Volleying the details among them, the three campers covered the last week. Bad luck, miscalculations, and accidents that turned out to be concocted by the Hunter plagued the expedition until Annie and Sam figured out the truth. And separated from the others to draw off the killer.

Justin shook his head at the fear and guilt Annie must have experienced to force that kind of decision. At the courage she must have to carry it out.

His sister was no longer the family’s spoiled baby.

Ms. Lopez continued to describe their last two days of hiding in the forest at night and canoeing in shadows and beneath overhangs during the day. “Except for not having a fire to warm us at night, we were fine.”

These people were in good shape with no injuries. Justin had the Eagleton ambulance on standby for when Annie and Sam arrived. They might not be in such great shape. He forced himself not to dwell on the possibilities.

“The navigation rocked, and hiding was mega cool,” the gangly teenager said. His enthusiasm morphed into an angry frown. “I knew that jerk-off wouldn’t find us. He was nothing but a poser. He pretended to be my friend, but he was fu—”

“Frank.” Nora’s hand on his arm stifled his heated words.

The dog raised his head and whined at his new owner’s distress. Then he lay back down with a deep sigh.

The boy had been through a lot, according to his mom’s quiet confidences earlier to Peters. Ignored by an indifferent father, then used and betrayed by a calculating murderer. Some combo for a volatile teenager to deal with.

Justin looked straight at Frank until the boy’s gaze rose to meet his. “I commend all of you for what could have been a hazardous ordeal in the wilderness. It took courage and strength. And maturity.”

Frank shrugged. “Worst part was the food.” Mischief danced in his eyes. “You try living on cold canned beef stew and ravioli for a few days.”

“Heads up, everybody, here they come!” Ben Kincaid raced toward the shelter. “A canoe out of the Eagle River.”

Justin reached the water’s edge before Kincaid could turn around. His hands were sweating as he raised the binoculars.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

His eyes glued to another set of binoculars, Special Agent Tavani stood beside him. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” He clapped Justin on the back.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the three people in the canoe. An older craft, low in the water with all their gear. Mud colored, it sported a duct tape patch gleaming like a headlight on the port side.

Pink cap as sassy as ever, Annie paddled in the bow, Sam Kincaid in the stern.

Amidships with the packs sat a man Justin recognized. Holden Smith.

The Hunter
.

“They did it, by God. They did it. They caught the fucking Hunter.”

When the vessel drew nearer, Annie waved. “Justin! What are
you
doing here?”

He laughed, with genuine humor for the first time in days. “Not much, Sis. Looks like you don’t need any help.”

“Something’s wrong with my brother,” said Ben Kincaid.

“We’ll need a doctor,” she yelled. “Sam’s been stabbed. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

For the first time, Justin noticed the erratic way Kincaid was paddling. Not out of the woods yet. “Let’s get out there and help them.”

He and Tavani pushed an inflatable into the water. Justin jumped in as the agent yanked on the starter.

A splash
.

The brown canoe had tipped over. Two heads and three packs bobbed in the water.

Shit and double shit!
“Gun it.”

The inflatable churned toward the swimmers. Sam gripped the overturned canoe, but he was slipping. Annie splashed beside him holding onto one of the backpacks with one hand and the canoe with the other.

As soon as Tavani pulled up beside them, Justin extended an arm to Annie. She scrambled in and helped him haul her companion over the rubber side. Sam collapsed, pale and silent, in the bottom. Bright blood soaked the bulky bandage on his shoulder.

As soon as Justin handed her a pack, his sister opened it and extracted more gauze to press on the wound. From the looks of it, her tender solicitousness had more basis than nursing.

City-girl and the jock?

“He... must have untied the rope somehow,” she said. “He tipped over the canoe.”

Frantically, she searched the water’s surface. “Oh, God, he’s the Hunter. Justin,
the Hunter
. You have to find him. He's headed to Canada. Don’t let him get away.”

The second inflatable scribed ever widening circles around the abandoned canoe.

No ripples, no bubbles. No sign of life.

***

Portland

Annie wavered outside Sam’s hospital room. The fluorescent lighting stabbed at her eyes, and vague smells of antiseptic and cleanser stung her nose. The incessant drone of the public address speakers grated on her brain. The voice seemed to repeat,
Go in. Don’t go in.

Her throat was frozen, her voice locked. What was she going to say to him? How did she thank him for risking his life for her? Especially since she’d fallen in love with him. What could she say except good-bye, have a nice life? The idea churned a cold eggbeater in her stomach.

Leading a parade of media vehicles, an ambulance had rushed the two of them to the hospital, the nearest one more than thirty miles away in Presque Isle, where they’d slathered her with antiseptic head to foot and bandaged the worst of her cuts. From the emergency room, Sam was wheeled into surgery, so she hadn’t seen him since their arrival. She knew only that he was out of danger.

As soon as the doctor released Annie, her family surrounded her. Her parents and Thomas drove the four hours from Greenville once they learned of the other campers’ arrival at the take-out point. Having feared never to see them again, she hugged them with tears in her eyes, but her mind kept straying to Sam. She allowed her mom to cluck over her until Justin whisked her away.

He escorted her to a conference room away from medicinal and antiseptic odors, where he and the other detectives interviewed her. Justin sat beside her at the oak table, but an FBI special agent named Tavani conducted the interview.

“That’s an adventure right out of a novel, Ms. Wylde,” said the agent, when she finished her tale. “You’re the only woman we know of who has bested Smith.”

Images of Sam flickered in her mind—guiding her across the Hump, protecting her, building the traps...loving her. She swallowed back the emotion clogging her throat. “Sam Kincaid bears much of the credit. I wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

“So I gather the subject talked to you,” the agent said. “What else did he tell you?”

“Everything. He told me
everything
.” Her breath hitched. She searched the faces around the table for signs of triumph. Nothing. “You haven’t found Smith yet, have you?”

Justin squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. This is the biggest manhunt in the history of the state of Maine. We have divers scouring the lake and more search teams and choppers in the Gomagash. They’ll bring him in, drowned or bound.”

She stiffened. “He didn’t drown. Count on it. Tell your people to be
very, very
careful.” She pictured the mist-draped lake with its clumps of tall grass. Cover for a desperate and clever man. A chill threaded up her spine.

Tavani looked up from his notes. “What did you mean, he told you everything?”

“On the long canoe ride down the Eagle to Big Loon Pond, he talked. Big-time. The interview he wanted me to do all along.” If the paddling and navigation hadn’t required much of her attention, the graphic descriptions of his “hunts” could have sent her screaming over the canoe’s side. Especially at his description of conning Emma into riding to Waterville with him instead of on the bus. What he’d done to her—

Her stomach nearly rebelled at the dispassionate way Smith had described the details. She forced herself to return to the interview. “He started with his mother’s locking him in the coal bin and his stay in a youth center, and he finished with the murder of the Gomagash caretaker.”

All the agents and detectives sat at attention.

“When he goes to trial, we’ll need you to testify,” Tavani said.

“Gladly.” She unzipped the waterproof backpack and slid out her tiny digital recorder. “But I can do better than that. I recorded everything.
Every word
.”

At her announcement, stunned silence ensued, followed by nervous chuckles and a couple of masculine hoo-rahs.

After the interview, she learned that they’d moved Sam from ICU. When she was ready, Justin would face the clamoring media with her, then drive her to her parents’ motel.

So here she stood, palms clammy, staring at the door to Sam’s room. He didn’t love her, so she had no choice.
Play it cool
.
We agreed it was just a fling, a one-night stand. Say good-bye and get the hell out.

Once she saw him, could she do that? Or should she blurt out her true feelings and see what happened? Someone said—she forgot who—that playing it safe never got you anywhere.

Before she could push the door inward, it swung open.

“Annie!” Frank grabbed her hand and tugged her inside. “This is so cool. I was just going to look for you.”

Nora left Sam’s bedside and came to hug her. “I thought we might never see you two again.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

Annie chatted with them for a moment, but couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the hospital bed.

Sam sat propped up by pillows. A long tube connected him to an IV stand. Aside from his sling-bound right arm and a blue-striped hospital gown that concealed his bandaged shoulder, he looked no worse for his ordeal. Yeah, aside from that.

He watched her as inscrutably as a sphinx. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” She cleared her throat, leaned one hand on the bedside table for support. “Dr. LaPlante says your excellent physical conditioning saved your life. Gave you the stamina to keep going.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to drag me out of the woods. But I bet the only good arm I have left there’s not much you couldn’t do.”

“That’s high praise coming from you, Mr. Maine Guide.”

“Seems like time to excuse ourselves from this mutual admiration society,” Nora said, her hand on her son’s shoulder. They edged toward the door.

Annie turned to them. Her eyes flooded with tears. “I’m so glad I didn’t miss you. I’ll mail your backpack to you.”

Nora shook her head. “No rush. I was glad to help.”

“I want to say good-bye and thank you. To both of you. I’m so sorry—”

“Stop, Annie,” said Nora. “What the Hunter did wasn’t your fault. Besides, Frank views some of it as a big adventure, way beyond one of his computer games. Right, son?” She smiled at the boy who had caused her such anxiety. Pride glowed in her eyes.

“Outrageous.” Tanned and sure of himself, beaming with enthusiasm, he stepped closer to Sam. No longer was he the battery-powered, sullen rebel. “Doing those last three days on our own. That was frigid, man. I could navigate and make camp and take care of myself. All the junk you taught us.”