The Lost Brother Read online

I tried calling Bailey again. Still no answer, either on her cell or at the ranger’s station. I sighed with frustration.

  Just then a uniformed police officer strolled into the cafeteria. I recognized him as one of Rich’s guys—he’d been helping search the campsite earlier.

  “Hey, did you guys find anything?” I asked, hurrying toward him.

  “Oh, hi, Joe. Sorry, no luck yet. Most of the guys are still out there, though. I just went off duty and came to check on Kurt on my way home.”

  “You’re off duty?” I shot him a grin. “Okay, then I hate to ask. But I’m stuck here without a ride. Can you drop me off at the park?”

  “Sure thing. Just let me grab a cup of joe.” The cop hurried over to the coffee machine with me right behind him. “You going back to the campsite?”

  I hesitated. I did want to see if anything was happening out there. Then there was Bailey—I still needed to track her down and find out why she’d tried to call me, especially given my new suspicions.

  But first there was something else I wanted to check out. “Can you drop me at Farley’s cabin?” I said.

  The cop looked surprised but nodded. “Ready to go?” he asked, popping a lid on his coffee cup.

  Fifteen minutes later I was ducking under the yellow police tape draped across Farley’s doorway. There were still several hours of daylight left, but it was shadowy and dim inside thanks to the tall trees surrounding the cabin. With the crime scene tape hanging everywhere like huge cobwebs, the place was kind of creepy.

  “Chill out,” I muttered to myself. I’d been letting this park—and all the crazy stories about it—spook me way too much. It was time to channel Frank again and start being logical.

  I poked around a bit, not quite sure what I was looking for. Anything suspicious. Anything showing that Farley and Bailey knew each other better than she let on. Anything that might tell me where to look for Frank.

  I knew it was a long shot. But ATAC had taught us to follow up on every lead. Besides, I didn’t have any better ideas.

  There was a small, cluttered desk in the main room. A calendar was sitting atop a stack of papers. I peered at the notes scrawled all over it, but couldn’t make heads or tails of them. If Farley had written them, the guy had seriously bad handwriting.

  I tried to turn on a lamp to get a better look, but nothing happened. Great. Farley had only been dead for, like, twenty-four hours. Had the power really been cut off already?

  Pulling out my phone, which had a pretty snazzy camera built in, I carefully snapped several photos of the calendar. I sent them straight off to HQ. Let the handwriting experts there figure it out.

  “It’s probably just Farley’s notes about what he had for dinner,” I muttered as I stuck the phone back in my pocket. “The guys will rib me about that for sure. . . .”

  I let my voice trail off. Was I going crazy, or had the floor behind me just creaked?

  “Hello?” I said, spinning around.

  The room had gotten even darker since I’d come in. I peered around. Nothing moved.

  CREAK!

  There it was again! This time the sound came from around the corner.

  I hurried that way, all my senses on the alert.

  “Is someone there?” I called out in my best tough-guy tone. “Identify yourself!”

  Silence. If there was someone in the cabin with me, he didn’t want me to know it.

  I spun around as a soft shuffling noise came from somewhere behind me. Digging into my pocket, I pulled out my ATAC-issue flashlight. I aimed the beam in the direction I thought the sound had come from. But the only thing I caught in its beam was a chair. Plus, the bright but narrow light made it even harder to see the rest of the room. Anyone—or anything—could be lurking in one of those shadowy corners. . . .

  Before I could figure out what to do next, there was a flare of headlights outside. My heart pounding, I rushed to the front door and saw Rich’s cruiser pulling to a stop in front of the cabin.

  “Joe!” the detective called out the open car window. “There you are—Marcus said I might find you here.”

  “You found me,” I said, hurrying out to the cruiser. “What’s up?”

  Rich’s face looked grim in the fading daylight. “It’s Justin,” he said. “He disappeared again.”

  Asking Alice

  “Where are we, Alice?” I asked the little girl on the other side of the door. “What is this place?”

  She shrugged, seeming disinterested in my questions. “Do you know where my brother is or not?”

  “I’m not sure,” I hedged. “Maybe he’s with Luke. Do you know where Luke is?”

  She frowned. “He’s not with Luke! Don’t be silly.”

  Interesting. It sounded as if she knew who Luke was.

  “Are you sure?” I said, hoping for more information. I pressed my face against the window, watching her carefully. “Where is Luke, Alice? Can you tell me?”

  “Uh-oh, guess you’re still too forgetty,” Alice said with a loud sigh. “But you came from the outs, right? Did you see my brother there? His name is Lee. I’m afraid he’s lost!”

  Her lower lip was starting to quiver. Uh-oh. If she started crying, I’d never get any useful information out of her. Plus, I hate seeing little girls cry. Or big girls, for that matter. It makes me nervous.

  It was time to try another tack.

  “Oh, Lee is your brother?” I said in what I hoped was a cheerful voice. Not easy to pull off under the circumstances. “Why didn’t you say so? I know exactly where he is!”

  Alice gasped. “Really?” she cried.

  “Uh-huh. If you let me out of here, I’ll take you to him.”

  Okay, I felt like a world-class schmuck lying to a little girl like that. But what other choice did I have? Besides, I figured if I could get us both out of here—wherever “here” was—she’d definitely be reunited with that brother of hers soon enough.

  “Let you out?” Alice echoed, sounding uncertain. She stared at me for a second, then looked up and down the hall. “Um, I guess if you really know where Lee is . . .”

  She reached toward the door.

  BZZZZZZ!

  A loud buzzer sounded overhead. With a squeak of terror, Alice jumped away from the door.

  “Alice!” I called.

  But it was too late. She was scurrying off down the hall without a backward glance.

  I banged both fists on the door in frustration. So close, and yet so far!

  Then I wandered over and collapsed on my cot, thinking about what had just happened. Okay, so I was still stuck in this cell. But at least I had a little more information.

  It seemed Justin wasn’t the only lost kid who was still around all these years later. Alice was here, and probably Luke, too. But where were we?

  It was easy to guess why I was being held, even if I still didn’t know why Alice and the others had been taken. Whoever had nabbed those kids must have thought Joe and I were a threat to whatever they were doing here. If only they’d known we’d still had pretty much no clue what was going on . . . CLANG!

  The door swung partway open again. I leaped to my feet, ready for anything.

  An enormous, beefy young man stepped in. He had a round face and short, greasy hair. He was holding something in one hand. I winced as I recognized what it was. A taser.

  He brandished it threateningly in my direction. “So you’re the new one, eh?” he said in a slow, disinterested drawl. “Kind of old. Guess the Big Bossy B is branching out.”

  He seemed to crack himself up with that comment. Laughter spurted out of him, along with a few snorts and sniffles.

  “Who are you?” I asked him.

  He ignored me. “Guess you weren’t hungry, eh?” he said with a glance down at the untouched tray of food.

  I watched him carefully, looking for my opening. The door was still ajar behind him, and this guy didn’t look too agile. If I could dart past him and avoid that taser . . .

  “Yo, Baby Doc!
” a different voice barked impatiently from the hallway. “Hurry up. We still got four more dinner trays to pick up before we can go off duty.”

  That changed things. Even if I could get past the first guy, I’d have to deal with at least one more outside in the hall.

  Before I could figure out what to do, the big guy grabbed the tray and scurried out. The door clanged shut behind him.

  I was still trapped. And I still had no idea what was going on here. But I was starting to feel like I was putting some puzzle pieces together. Now I knew it was probably evening—dinnertime. And that there seemed to be at least a couple of shifts of people working in this place.

  “But what is this place?” I murmured under my breath. “Why’d they want all these kids?”

  If only I could get out of this room, maybe I could figure out the answer to that.

  I spent the next half hour or so trying to come up with a plan. Various buzzers and other noises came out of the speaker, but since they meant nothing to me, I did my best to ignore them.

  Then the light blinked off, leaving me in total darkness once again. A few seconds later, tinny music tinkled out of the speaker. It took me a second to place the tune.

  “It’s a lullaby,” I muttered.

  Weird.

  I lay down on my cot, arms propped behind my head. Staring up into the darkness, I kept pondering my situation. At least for a while.

  I must have dozed off at some point. Because when I heard a soft, scraping noise somewhere nearby, I awakened with a gasp.

  “Who’s there?” I hissed, straining to see in the darkness.

  And this time I could. See, that is. That’s because it wasn’t pitch-black anymore. The door was opening, allowing a gray dimness into the room.

  I jumped to my feet, all senses on alert. The door was still sliding slowly open. This time I wasn’t going to let it shut me in again without a fight. . . .

  Just as I was about to throw myself against the door, ready to take on however many men were out there, a small figure appeared in the opening.

  “Alice!” I exclaimed. “Is that you?”

  “Shh!” she hissed. She darted into my cell, casting a nervous glance behind her. She clicked on a small flashlight, aiming it straight at me so I had to shade my eyes. “I came so you can take me to see Lee. But we’ll be in big naughties if anyone finds out we broke the schedule!”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. But this didn’t seem like the time to discuss it.

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered in what I hoped was a reassuring tone. “Nobody will find out. Come on, let’s go.”

  She nodded, turned off her light, and darted back out through the door. Taking a deep breath, I followed her out into the hallway.

  Scene of the Crime

  “Please, everyone. Let’s just calm down and try to figure out the next steps.” Rich let out a heavy sigh. He looked tired.

  And no wonder. It was almost ten p.m., and it looked like there wouldn’t be much rest for anyone tonight.

  Justin was still missing. I’d gone along to help Rich search his room at the hospital earlier. But we hadn’t found anything too useful. The obvious escape hatch was the room’s wide-open window.

  Then we’d had a few hours’ break. I’d called into ATAC HQ to let them know how the search for Frank was going. Or not going.

  I’d also moved my stuff into a local B and B. Rich had set that up for me. For some reason, he didn’t think it was a good idea for me to keep camping solo out at the park. Go figure. I certainly wasn’t about to argue.

  Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty about it. Like I was abandoning Frank. Leaving him out there somewhere on his own.

  I tried not to worry about that. After all, I wouldn’t be much help to him if I was eaten by a bear. Or nabbed by whoever had taken him.

  Still, I was glad for the distraction when Rich called to see if I wanted to ride back to the hospital with him. First we’d checked on Officer Donnelly. Still out. Now we were standing around in the waiting room talking about how to proceed.

  Dr. Carrini had turned up when he heard we were there, along with Dr. Hubert, Justin’s primary doctor. Justin’s mother, Edie, and her husband, Hank, were there too. They’d gone back to Boise to spend time with their other kids. But they’d rushed back to Misty Falls as soon as Rich had called them about Justin’s latest disappearance.

  “Where could he be? Why would he run away again?” Edie sobbed. “Was it because we left?”

  Hank put a protective arm around her. “Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “We have kids at home who need us too. Justin understood that. He knew you were coming back soon.”

  Dr. Carrini nodded. “I doubt his leaving now had anything to do with you,” he told Edie.

  I winced. Tactful much? Still, the doctor’s bedside manner was the least of my concerns at the moment.

  “This just isn’t fair!” Edie choked out between sobs. “Just when we’d found Justin again . . .”

  Hank tried to comfort her. But it didn’t work. She wouldn’t be consoled.

  Carrini noticed it too. “There, there,” he told Edie. “You won’t do yourself or Justin any good getting needlessly distraught. Why don’t I give you something to take the edge off?”

  That made Edie stop crying for a second. She stared at the doctor.

  “You mean drugs?” she said, sounding indignant. “No, thank you!”

  Dr. Carrini frowned, looking annoyed. “Fine. It’s your choice, of course,” he said in a stiff, offended voice. “But I don’t know why so many people are so opposed to drugs that could help them! It’s completely illogical.”

  “All right, then.” Rich cleared his throat. “Let’s just—”

  Before he could finish, there was a sudden commotion of shouting voices and running footsteps from down the hall. A moment later Jacob Greer burst in. His girlfriend, a pretty younger woman named Donna McCabe, was right behind him.

  To say I was surprised to see him was an understatement. The dude had taken off for Chicago just the previous morning, claiming he couldn’t deal with the whole Justin situation anymore. He’d been pretty worked up about it, from what I’d heard. If anyone was responsible for Justin’s sudden departure, it was a lot more likely to be Jacob than Edie.

  Everyone else looked startled too. “Jacob!” Edie exclaimed. “You’re back!”

  Jacob ignored his ex-wife, turning right to Rich. “We took the first flight we could get from Chicago,” he said breathlessly. “Is he back yet?”

  Rich shook his head. “’Fraid not.”

  “Never mind,” said Jacob. “We’re ready to do whatever it takes to find him again. Cost is no object. In fact, I’ve already arranged for a top-notch private investigator to fly in from California.”

  “Uh, I see.” Rich sounded a little confused.

  I knew how he felt. Was this really the same Jacob Greer who’d stalked out of here just thirty-six hours ago or so? Talk about a major change of attitude! It seemed more than a little suspicious.

  Jacob had been one of our only suspects until he’d left town. Was it time to put him back at the top of the list?

  “The PI should be here sometime tomorrow,” Donna piped in brightly. “He’s really very good. My family swears by him.”

  “Yeah.” Jacob sounded impatient. “But we don’t want to sit around twiddling our thumbs until he gets here. What’s the plan, Detective Cole?”

  “My men are still searching the hospital grounds,” Rich replied. “If they haven’t found any sign of Justin by morning, we—”

  “By morning?” Jacob interrupted. “Are you nuts? I’m not going to waste time waiting on them. Has anyone searched the park yet?”

  “The park?” I echoed.

  “Yes, the park,” Jacob said in an I’m-dealing-with-idiots voice. “That’s where he supposedly was all this time, right? What if he went back there?”

  “Mr. Greer, Misty Falls State Park is thousands of acres,” Ric
h said. “There’s no way we—”

  “You don’t have to search all of it,” Jacob broke in impatiently. “Why not start with the obvious?”

  “Which is?” Rich raised an eyebrow.

  “The campsite,” Jacob barked out. “Spot where some scum yanked him away from us the first time for who knows what reason. You know—scene of the crime.”

  Edie let out a muffled sob. “Jacob, please!” she wailed.

  Dr. Carrini rolled his eyes. Hank looked anxious as he patted his wife on the back.

  But Rich just shrugged. “S’pose it wouldn’t hurt to go out there and take a look around.” He shot me a look. “Want to tag along, Joe?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I had a feeling Rich was just humoring Jacob, trying to shut him up before he sent poor Edie into a nervous breakdown. I seriously doubted they were going to find Justin at that campsite. But you never knew. Besides, I wanted to keep an eye on the new and improved Jacob, and maybe take another look around for clues about where Frank had gone while I was at it. Not that I was expecting to find much at this time of night.

  Edie and Hank decided to stay behind. Probably a good call. Edie was looking so upset by now that I was wondering if she hadn’t been too hasty to turn down Dr. Carrini’s offer of a little pharmaceutical assistance.

  “We’ll stop at the ranger station on the way in,” Rich said as the four of us—me, him, Jacob, and Donna—climbed into his cruiser. “Let whoever’s on duty tonight know where we’re going. Just in case.”

  I shuddered, the image of that grizzly bear flitting through my head. And then that rattler. But I pushed all that aside. There was safety in numbers, right? Besides, Rich was armed. And judging by the way he’d dispatched that deadly snake this morning, he was a pretty crack shot.

  When we reached the ranger station, all the lights were on. The sounds of a radio playing country music drifted out through the open windows.

  We climbed out of the cruiser and headed inside. It was a small place, just two rooms—a larger one with a desk and lounge area and a smaller one off to the side with a bunch of pamphlets and a few tanks with various species of local wildlife on display inside. There was nobody at the front desk when we stepped in.