Page 125 of Love Me Fierce

“All right. Thanks,” I say.

“Hope it’s useful,” Hutch replies.

We end the call, and I shut my laptop lid and pocket my phone. “You going somewhere?” Zach asks, frowning.

“Yep. Bear Mountain.”

“Should we wait for Ballard?” Zach asks.

“We’ll check in.” There’s a good chance I’m going to regret this, but I’m not wasting another hour pecking away at dead ends. If this guy has a cabin, I’m going to find it right fucking now.

“We?” Zach’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Come on, it’s time we knocked on some doors.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

EVERETT

Bear Mountain isa ski area run by one of Finn River’s founding families, the Raffertys. It started as a single rope tow in the 1950s and even though it now boasts three high-speed chairlifts and summer mountain biking, it hasn’t succumbed to the commercialization of other areas like it.

“You ever ski here?” Zach asks from the passenger seat as we round the final curve leading to the residential community that flanks the ski area. Ski and summer cabins mostly, but some folks live here year round.

“Never been much of a skier,” I reply.

“Me neither.” He eyes the bald swaths of the ski area and the empty, motionless ski lifts waiting for winter just above us. “What’s our plan?”

“We say we’re doing a neighborhood survey to find out how many homes are permanent residents, who’s only here on weekends.”

“Got it. Then we can use that narrowed list to fine tune our research.”

“Exactly.” I park at the corner of the first of four loops on thisside of the mountain residences. I offer him my fist, and he bumps it. “Happy hunting.”

“Happy hunting,” he replies.

At this hour, not many people are home. I talk to three residents, all retirees. The first two, a schoolteacher and her part time ski instructor husband, leave on the weekends to visit their grandkids. The third resident I find at home is a former postal worker who hikes every day. He offers lots of details about their neighbors that I scribble in my notebook. Of the sixteen homes in this loop, only five are occupied by permanent residents. Six are VRBOs, and two are only used on weekends. When I ask if he knows the people in the weekend-only cabins, or where they’re from, the postal worker tells me they have “2L” plates—meaning they’re locals.

Because of our county-coded licensing system, at a glance, it’s instantly clear where a person’s vehicle is from. Finn River’s plates all start with the code 2L, a detail people are very aware of. I’ve had plenty of calls in my career from locals complaining about “some asshole with 1A plates” speeding through their neighborhood, or “this woman with 5D plates” taking up two parking spaces at the grocery store, and other such offenses.

It’s the reason I knew the stolen Taurus wagon was from Bonneville County the second I laid eyes on the license plate. Idaho Falls is in Bonneville County. License plates registered there start with 8B.

Zach and I meet back at my rig and compare notes. It’s still slow work and we aren’t getting all the answers, but it feels good to make an effort.

“Let’s try the next loop.”

By eleven o’clock, we’ve covered two more. Our list of known weekend-only cabins has grown to almost twenty, but it’s better than what we started with.

Luke Ballard is due to the station any minute, and with each tick of the clock, my stomach tightens. What I’m doing goes against theprotocol he’s insisted we follow and defies the FBI’s cautious, methodical approach.

But fuck waiting for trash day. What if Tisdale kills again before that?

At my next stop, there’s a minivan in the carport and lights are on inside the one-story house, with woodsmoke rising from the chimney. On the dead grass in front of the house are a red plastic bat and two large balls, a tiny pink scooter bike, and on the right side, a half-finished raised bed garden project.

A young woman comes to the door with a baby in a one-piece sleeper on her shoulder. From deeper inside the house, the television is on, the chirpy notes of a cartoon blending with a little girl’s chatter.

The mom in front of me looks tired, but she tries to smile.

“How can I help you, officer?” she asks, patting the baby’s bottom.

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