Page 73 of Wind Valley

“You know what they say. Behind every great fortune is a crime. The idea of one person hoarding so much wealth bothers me. They always want more. Just ask Andrea Reed. She could tell you.”

Lachlan raised himself onto one elbow. “What do you mean?”

“She’s the daughter of a billionaire.”

“Damnit, that’s right. Bear said she came from oil money.”

“Yup, but she was the black sheep of the family. She ran off with her college professor at the age of eighteen. He was nothing but a nerdy scientist, after all,” she teased.

He tickled her to get revenge, and they spent the next few breathless moments rolling around in each other’s arms.

“When did you learn all this?” he asked, when they were done with their sex-wrestling.

“After I called her, I did another search. That was right before we got to the airport in Fairbanks, remember? All this running, it blends together. I guess I forgot to mention it.”

“Did you catch the name of the company her family owned?”

Maura shook her head. “I don’t remember. Something generic and corporate. Initials, maybe.”

“It wasn’t TNG, was it? Andrea’s maiden name was Garth. Maybe the G is for Garth?”

She screwed up her face. “No, of course I would have remembered that. But it could be a subsidiary of TNG, or vice versa. I’d ask Charlie to look into it, but I haven’t had a peep of a signal since the storm hit.”

Lachlan sighed and went quiet for a moment, following a rabbit hole of speculation. “I wonder if her family bankrolled their trip out here.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t cheap, flying all his research equipment into Wind Valley, not to mention everything they’d need to survive for a winter. I’ve been wondering about the Apache helicopter that picked them up. A billionaire could probably pull a few strings and get the use of one. Unless…” Now the wheels were really turning. “Unless he was doing research on behalf of the military.”

“Okay, now you’re really going out on a limb. I haven’t seen anything in the sketches that looks military. No camouflage or army tents.”

“That’s true. Dr. Reed’s field notes haven’t mentioned it either.” There went that idea. But he was onto something, he just knew it. Every brilliant discovery involved a few wrong turns along the way.

He sat upright in bed, oblivious to the cold air outside their blanket fort. “Theory time. This might be like throwing darts, so bear with me.”

She sat up too, a blanket wrapped around her shoulder. “Okay, hit me, so long as these darts are only metaphorical.”

“Professor gets a wild hair to do research in the wilderness. Wife doesn’t want to die, so she goes to her family to request financial assistance on their quest. She lets the cat out of the bag and tells them that her husband is researching something that might revolutionize the energy industry. She promises them the inside track on whatever he’s doing.”

Maura was nodding along. “I can buy that. Here’s another scenario. They went to Wind Valley on their own, but she got fed up with her situation and called her family for help when she wanted to leave. Remember that phone call that Bear overheard?”

“That makes sense too.” He was less sure about what came next. “But I think they both wanted to leave. They were getting sick and so were the kids.”

“Okay, so was Dr. Reed warning us to stay away from Wind Valley because we might get sick there, like they did? I don’t know. That didn’t sound like what he was saying. And what about the other people he said were calling? And the fact that Andrea Reed isn’t picking up her voicemail messages?”

Good point. He thought about it, trying to make all the bits and pieces of information fit together. “I’ve noticed that Dr. Reed’s notebooks were written in a strange way. The formulas make sense, but there’s always one crucial piece of information left out. His design would be almost impossible to replicate based only on what’s in these journals. At first I thought that was due to his cognitive difficulties. But now I wonder if he did it deliberately.”

“Because he didn’t trust anyone.”

“Right. Not even his own wife. If her family had provided the funding, he might have been afraid she’d tell them too much.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve been wondering why he left these boxes here. Maybe he wanted to keep them away from Andrea.”

“Their relationship was already cracking,” Maura said thoughtfully. “I wonder how long it took them to get divorced?”

Lachlan continued with his theory. “Let’s just say, for the sake of argument and throwing a dart, that Dr. Reed and Andrea were at odds over his research by the time they left.”

Maura nodded along. “Yes! He didn’t want a big oil corporation claiming his discovery, so he just abandoned it. Tossed it to the wolves, so to speak.”

“That’s my theory. The question I still can’t answer is, did his device work or not?”

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