Page 89 of Fire Peak

“Have you sensed anything more?” he asked urgently. “Charlie told me you thought Hailey was in danger.”

“No, nothing. I’m sorry. It doesn’t really work that way anyway. But I do have something. Let’s drive to my house.”

At the hardware store, she pointed to something mounted over the door. “After the camera, and the break-in, I installed my own camera. Sam helped me set it up. It only keeps twenty-four hours of video, but that should be enough to show you something.”

“That’s brilliant, Lila.”

“It’s connected to an old laptop Sam passed along to me. I’ve never even tried to look at it, so I hope you can figure it out!”

She beckoned for him to follow him inside.

“I’m not Charlie Santa Lucia, but I can handle a tech challenge.”

“There’s only one Charlie Santa Lucia,” she said as she led him to a small Dell laptop sitting on top of a pile of books. “And only one man to equal her.”

Did she mean him? Is that what that little gleam in her eye meant?

He couldn’t think about that now. The only thing that mattered was Hailey.

It took a few minutes to find what he was looking for, but the moment he saw Hailey’s profile in the passenger seat of a big Dodge truck, he knew he had his clue. Gunnar would know that truck, if it belonged to a local. He played back the three seconds of video several times, trying to get a clear view of the driver. All he could see was that he was a big man, gray hair, older, burly. But it had to be Vasily.

He dropped Lila back at The Fang, and took the opportunity to send a text to Charlie. He didn’t get a response right away, but didn’t worry too much about it. She probably had her hands full tracking down the originator of the photo. Or maybe she was reverse engineering the photoshop job or unearthing metadata that no one else could find.

It felt damn good to know he had Charlie on his side.

Pinky waved at him from his usual spot at the bar, a tankard of ale gripped in one hand. “Sit down and take a load off,” he called to Nick.

“Sorry, no time.” He put away his phone and hurried toward the door, then stopped and strode back to Pinky’s side. Pinky had been around when Bulldog was killed. He knew Solomon, he knew April. He remembered Vasily.

“Hiya, Pinky. Got a quick question for you. Remember we talked about Vasily, Bulldog’s friend from back forty plus years ago?”

Pinky gestured with his tankard. “Sure. Russian guy. Excellent hunter. Used to talk politics with Bulldog, the two of them gabbed ’til the sun came up, or went down, depending on the time of year.”

“Was Vasily close to anyone else besides Bulldog?”

Pinky had to think about that. As the minutes ticked past, Nick clenched his fists to keep from shaking the man’s memory back to life. “Solomon, for a while, but then they had a falling-out. Hated each other after that. Lot of folks said that’s why Vasily skipped Bulldog’s memorial, cuz Solomon gave the eulogy.”

So Vasily and Solomon feuded … good to know.

“What about the Chilkoots?” The Chilkoot territory would be a good place to keep Hailey captive. Maybe she’d been tricked into searching for Elias out there.

“Chilkoots? Nah. They weren’t even here back then.”

Well, hell. Dead end.

But maybe not completely. There was something in what Pinky had told him. Something important. He just needed to pin it down.

He checked his phone one more time to see if Charlie had texted, but saw nothing from her. Odd. He hoped the Wi-Fi hadn’t dropped up there. But he didn’t have time to wait around. He loped out of The Fang and headed for Gunnar’s garage.

37

Just as Charlie was digging into the metadata on the photo, the message alert on her tablet pinged.

Hello Charlie

This was it—the contact she’d been expecting. Her heart in her throat, she did as the message from “unknown” said.

We are watching you. Do everything we say and the young ones won’t be hurt.

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