Page 96 of Fire Peak

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The camper door was halfway open, banging in the wind, when Nick reached it. He swore a thousand vicious curses at the sight of the cast-aside ropes that must have been used to tie up Hailey and Elias. He saw no sign of Vasily or Solomon or anyone else, but he was sure they’d been here.

He checked his phone; no service, of course.

What next? Search the forest by himself? Call in reinforcements from the town? Help Charlie at the lodge?

He decided to join up with Charlie—he might be able to talk sense into the kidnappers, and Charlie might be able to pin down their new location.

At the lodge, he jumped off his Jeep and ran toward the crowd gathered at the edge of the property. He caught sight of the cook, Big Eddie, who came running to meet him, dodging guests as if he was back on a football field.

“Charlie’s with April in the gazebo. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s serious, man. It’s good to have some police around.”

He didn’t bother to correct Big Eddie, just squeezed his arm in thanks and hurtled toward the gazebo.

When he burst through the door, he found April and Charlie in a tense standoff. Charlie whirled around. Her face fell when she saw he didn’t have the kids with him.

“Nothing?” she whispered.

“The camper was empty. I think they were taken somewhere else.” He came to her side, taking hold of her hand. “Are you okay?”

“They’re going to torch the lodge. April refuses to stop them. They sent this photo.” She showed him her phone. He glanced at it, then gave it another look. A closer look.

And just like that, everything fell into place.

The blackmail.

The murder.

The stakes.

He drilled April with a hard stare. She gave it right back; she was tough, he’d give her that. Tough enough to do what she’d done one long-ago Alaska winter.

“He wasn’t supposed to come back, was he?” he said, as if they were just having a conversation. “That was never part of the deal.”

“What are you talking about,” whispered Charlie.

But a telltale muscle in April’s cheek twitched. He was right.

“Did you mean to kill him or was it an accident?” His gears were really turning now. “Vasily wanted to tell his people back in the Soviet Union about the Fire Peak mineral deposits. You and Bulldog didn’t want that. What did you do? Pretend to take him hunting and bonk him on the head?”

He caught Charlie’s sharp intake of breath. She snatched her phone back and looked at the photo again. “This is Vasily?”

“It was. But then Bulldog became Vasily, right, April? He was losing his mind that winter. He wanted to become someone else. Become Vasily. He didn’t like being Chadwick Tudor and everything that represented.”

April seemed to shrivel and shrink under his words. “I thought being Bulldog instead of Chadwick would be enough for him, but it wasn’t.”

“You loved him.”

She ran her tongue over her lips. “Yes. And hated him. I suppose today you’d call it a toxic relationship. It still is.” Nick wondered if it was a relief to finally tell the story. “Chadwick was such a true believer. It was always all or nothing for him. That winter, he came so close to ending his own life. He kept saying he couldn’t live being himself. So after…after Vasily…”

“After Vasily died,” he prompted.

“Yes, after Vasily…no. After we killed him.” She hung her head. When she spoke again, it was in a detached, almost dissociated tone of voice. “He was going back to Russia. We begged him not to say anything about what we’d found. He refused. It turned into a fight, a snowy brawl, and Bulldog knocked him into a boulder. He wasn’t dead, just unconscious. We could have saved him. But we had to protect Fire Peak. So we left him there to freeze.”

Nick glanced at Charlie to see how she was taking these revelations. She squeezed his hand, letting him know she was fine.

“So you helped Bulldog become Vasily after that?”

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