Page 24

TWENTY-FOUR

GAbrIEL

Friday

Gabe listened and stared out the front window, hoping he’d spot Elton shuffling up the road with some wild explanation for disappearing, while Casey talked to the TCSO. Neither of them had realized how late it was, and Casey was talking to dispatch instead of his friend. But from Casey’s responses, the dispatcher was concerned too.

After a few more questions and repeating what Gabe supposed was his cell number, Casey ended the call and slid his phone back into the pocket of his coat.

“They’ll drive around the island and keep their eye out, but there’s no call to activate a Silver Alert.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Idly, Gabe picked up Elton’s phone off the table where Casey had set it down so he could call the TCSO. He poked at the screen, making it light up. The outgoing calls taunted him. Who was the unknown number?

“For that matter, what are these two incoming numbers?” Gabe asked, holding the phone out for Casey to see. “Maybe it isn’t who he called, but who called Elton? Of course, his disappearance could have nothing to do with phone calls at all.”

Casey snagged the phone out of his hand and stared down at the glowing screen.

“That number seems familiar.” Frowning, he jabbed a finger at the most recent incoming call.

“Whose is it?”

“Greta, my coworker. She’s in Thailand right now though.”

“Dude, it took you this long to recognize it?”

Casey glowered at Gabe and pulled his phone back out again. “Did she try to call me first and I missed it? Damn, she did. She left a message.” He pressed Play and put his phone on speaker.

“Hey, Casey. I’m going to make this quick. Abby and I are just about to board the plane home. We got an alert that one of the house alarms is going on and off, no idea how long. The cameras aren’t showing anything, so it could just be a false alarm. If you aren’t too busy, would you mind stopping by? Just leave a message on my voicemail and I’ll check it when we land in Tokyo.”

They stared at each other for a second. Gabe couldn’t read Lundin’s mind, but he obviously thought this was a big deal.

“Sorry, Greta, I just saw your message. It’s been a day,” Casey said after pressing the Call button. “We’ll—I’ll head over right now.” He shoved his phone away again.

“Don’t even think you’re heading wherever you’re heading without me.”

Bowie, who’d been lying on the carpet with his head on his paws, jumped up and stood next to him.

“Oh, you too?” Casey said to the dog. Bowie wagged his tail in response. “Well, your nose might be useful. ”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Aw, I just can’t win with you, can I? At least your dog seems to like me.”

“There’s no accounting for taste,” Casey responded, shooting the dog a dark glare.

Bowie’s tail swished back and forth once before he padded to the door.

“Right, let’s get going.”

Greta-the-coworker lived in a relatively isolated part of the island, which was saying something seeing how sparsely populated it was in the first place.

“Nice,” Gabe remarked as he took in the three-story craftsman home with the big front porch. The house sat at the back of the lot, and had what, in daylight hours and in the city, would be a mini woodland for a front yard.

Ranger Man leaned across and opened the glove box, grabbed his fancy ranger flashlight and shut the compartment with a bang.

“It is. It’s one of the older homes on Heartstone. She and Abby have done a nice job fixing it up. Abby’s in cybersecurity, she makes the big bucks.”

“Cool,” Gabe said as he climbed out of the Wagoneer.

There weren’t any lights on that he could see inside the house. The three-story structure sat on slight a rise above the road that crossed in front of the property, and during the daylight hours, the owners might even have an incredible east facing view.

“Gordon’s truck was down the road that way.” Lundin flicked on his light and pointed toward a spot off in the distance.

“You think Gordon’s here?” Gabe asked. “That seems close, walkable if he was mobile.”

“Maybe. It would be the tidiest solution.” Which meant that yes, Ranger Man hoped Gordon was there and the reason the alarm was going off. “Yeah, that hasn’t worked out for me lately, so luck and easy are all on you.”

Lundin shot Gabe another one of his indecipherable looks. Gabe didn’t how to interpret them. Was he tolerating him? Or did it mean that, when Gabe wasn’t paying attention, he’d push him down a hill? Could go either way.

“Bowie, stay by me,” Lundin commanded the dog. Bowie looked like he’d been considering snuffling off into the shrubbery that lined the driveway and was offended his owner had called him on it. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on.”

Gabe wasn’t entirely sure why Lundin had agreed to let Gabe tag along. Maybe he thought it better to know where Gabe was than to leave him behind at Elton’s where he could get into trouble. Not that he could get in much more trouble than he already was in.

Let’s not tempt the fates, Chance.

“Let’s check around the perimeter house first and see if a window or door is open. Then we can check inside, I know the code. I’ll go this way”—he motioned toward a corner of the building—“and meet you on the other side.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine without a light of my own,” Gabe said, heavy on the sarcasm. He would be fine. It was dark but the path that led around the house was made of what seemed like river rock so it wouldn’t be hard to follow.

Gabriel was, by his calculation, almost halfway around the imposing house and had seen nothing unusual except the occasional flare from Ranger Man’s flashlight on the other side of the home when he heard a muffled thumping. Then something inside the house fell and landed with a thud. Gabe paused for a second next to a gigantic rhododendron and waited, listening; there had to be someone, or something, in the house. After a moment, he started moving again, thinking—well, he wasn’t sure what, but probably Lundin had heard it too and together they could form a plan.

Seconds later, a figure burst out of the darkness, coming right for him. Probably because Lundin was shining that damn flashlight everywhere and the intruder didn’t expect Gabriel to be there.

“Hey, stop,” Gabe yelled.

Whoever it was did not stop or slow down. Gabe set his feet, grounding himself, but had a premonition that this had the potential to end badly. The trespasser lowered their shoulder and ran right at Gabe, smashing into him, knocking them both to the ground and most of the air out of Gabe’s lungs.

Gabe grabbed for him. He had the impression it was a guy, and he was strong. He wrestled out of Gabe’s hold to jump back to his feet. His booted foot caught in the fabric of Gabe’s jacket, and Gabe grabbed wildly for his ankle, anything he could reach. For a second, he thought he had him, but his grip was weak, and Gabe was rewarded with a grunt and a vicious kick in the ribs instead.

“Motherfucker.” His arms flopped to the ground and Gabe rolled to his side, wanting nothing more than to relieve himself of the contents of his stomach. His attacker thudded away. Gabe heard Lundin shouting for the person to stop and then Bowie barking and Lundin ordering him to stay the fuck put .

Then, for just a second, Gabe closed his eyes and rested his sore body back against the cold damp earth and waited for the pain to recede. Had the intruder kicked him on purpose or was it a panic reaction? Had the need to escape overwhelmed their common sense?

There is no such thing as common sense, Chance. If there was, we Karne’s would be forever out of luck.

“Karne, you okay?”

Gabe opened his eyes again. Lundin was squatting next to him, his expression concerned. It was better than the pissed-off one Gabriel normally saw. A car’s engine started up and then faded into the distance. Bowie trotted over and stuck his nose in Gabe’s ear.

“Thanks, dog. Yeah, I think I’m okay. Except for being run over by a human freight train.” He started to sit up, but a wave of nausea washed over him and he decided to hang out on the cold, wet ground for another second or two. “Did you see who it was? What are you looking at?”

Lundin’s attention was directed at something near Gabe’s feet. With a frown, he reached over and picked it up. Gabe raised his head to see what had caught his attention. Between his thumb and index finger, Lundin held a ballpoint pen.

Shaking his head, Lundin rose to his feet and stared intently across the front of the property, the pen still in his grip. “No, I didn’t see who that was. I heard noises and then you yelled. Whoever it was ran down the driveway to the road. But I thought I’d better see if you were dead or not. This,” he said, holding up the writing instrument, “is a pen. The Sheriff’s Office hands them out like candy. The question is, did our intruder drop it when they ran off or was it here already? It was lying on top of the grass here, so I tend to think it was recently dropped.”

“Thanks for checking on me. I bet that was a hard decision.” Gabe slowly sat up. “I didn’t see a face either. It was too dark, and I think they had a hat pulled down low. The way they came at me, I don’t even have a good idea how tall they were. Maybe my size?” he speculated.

Gingerly, Gabe pushed his body up off the ground, managing not to vomit, which he counted as a win. His side hurt where he’d been kicked, but he didn’t think anything was broken, his pride was just bruised.

“Now what?” Gabe asked as he bent and started to brush off. “If Gordon knew the owners were away, he might have thought it was a safe place to hide out. But that wasn’t him, I don’t think.”

Lundin tucked the pen into a coat pocket. “I’d like to know if it was our intruder who dropped this pen.”

“I didn’t see it fly out of his pocket, but I think we should assume it did. Does that mean he’s with the Sheriff’s Office though?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Straightening up again, Gabe stumbled, still a bit lightheaded from being used as a human punching bag. He would have face-planted had Lundin not grabbed his shoulder, using his body as ballast. Gabe should not have had the time to notice that he smelled good. Earthy.

Clearing his throat, Gabe stepped away from uninvited temptation.

“Greta’s going to want a report,” Ranger Man said absently.

As if the man needed a reason to check out the interior other than some jackass had set off the alarm. And when they’d arrived, he’d panicked and run.

“Well, Abby is going to want one. I might as well get some pictures to send to them.”

“Whatever it takes for you to justify coming inside with me, because I’m going in no matter what,” Gabe informed him.

After all, they weren’t breaking in. The intruder had taken care of that for them.

But first, Ranger Man made his dog get back in the car.

“There could be broken glass. Do you want to go to the vet?”

Bowie stared up at him. Gabe could see that the dog’s mental arms were crossed as he appeared to debate the question .

“I didn’t think so,” Lundin said after a moment. “Get your furry butt in the car.”

With a disgusted huff, Bowie leaped into the back of the Wagoneer but he didn’t immediately flop down. Once the door was shut, he jumped into the front passenger seat and stared at them through the window.

“Hm, I think you’ve been voted off the island by your dog,” Gabe said, rubbing his side again. He was going to have a hell of a bruise.

“No doubt. It isn’t the first time. Let’s go.”

They tromped around to the back of the house. Casey took a few pictures of the door frame and then they eased through the half-open sliding door that led into a sleek and modern kitchen. Lundin flicked on a light switch near the door. Gabe blinked; he’d expected the room to be a wreck, but it wasn’t. Nothing obvious seemed to be out of place. What had they heard breaking? He started across the room, heading for a doorway that looked like it led to a living room or great room.

“Hello,” Lundin called out. “Anyone here?”

Unsurprisingly, there was no answer.

“Don’t touch anything,” he snapped before Gabe made it through the archway.

“As if,” Gabe responded. “This isn’t my first rodeo, Ranger Man.”

Gabe was rewarded with another one of Lundin’s special looks.

“I’ll call the Sheriff’s Office and report this,” Lundin told him. “After we look around. Once they get here, we’ll be persona non grata.”

“Don’t I remember something about you being law enforcement?”

Lundin shot Gabe a sideways glance. “Yeah, but the non- park parts of the island are Rizzi’s jurisdiction, and he’ll already be pissed that I got here first.”

In a hallway that led to another area of the house, a signed and framed Patti Smith concert poster had been knocked off the wall and lay on the tile floor, the glass shattered. Casey took another picture, presumably to send to the homeowners.

“Should be salvageable,” Gabe commented.

It was in a bathroom on the main floor that they found evidence that someone with an injury had been there, and recently. A first aid kit sat open on the counter, and in the trash were wads of bloody bandages and medical tape.

“Gordon, you think?”

“I assume so. He must have been hurt when his truck went over.”

“Well, at least he’s not dead,” Gabe commented, looking at the mess.

“Not yet,” agreed Lundin, “but that does seem like a lot of blood. There’s an entire roll of bandages missing from the kit, which is worrying. Where is he now? Are you sure that wasn’t him who ran into you?”

Gabe replayed what had happened outside and shook his head. “It was too dark. I couldn’t really see anything except a shadowy figure. But”—he gestured at the trash bin stuffed with the bloodied bandages—“if he is badly hurt, would he have been able to move as fast as whoever that was?”

“If he was scared, maybe?” Lundin didn’t sound convinced. “But I think he would’ve recognized me.”

Quickly, they walked through the rest of the house. Upstairs, in what looked like a spare bedroom, they discovered the bed’s covers messed up and the pillow dented as if someone had slept in it. Pulling the sheet back, Gabe noted a couple places where Gordon’s wound had seeped through the bandages. Assuming it was Gordon, which was what he was going with until he knew better.

“Dammit,” said Lundin. “Where has he gotten to?” He glanced around the room again, but Gordon wasn’t hiding under the bed or in the closet. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll call Greta from the car.”

“And the Sheriff’s Office.”

“Them too.”

After Lundin called the incident in, they departed. The house was exactly as they’d found it, except for the sliding door, which they’d secured the best they could.

“That should do it until somebody gets out here to replace it,” Lundin said.

Back in the Jeep, Lundin had started the engine and was reversing down the drive when the cell phone he’d dumped into the drink holder lit up. Because he was nosey, Gabe glanced at it.

“It says Twana Medical,” he told Lundin. “Shit, what if it’s about Elton?”

The car jerked to a halt, causing the seat belt to jerk across Gabe’s injured ribs.

“Motherfucker, give a guy some warning.”

Lundin ignored him and snatched up the phone.

“Hello?” he said. “Elton.” Casey’s relief was palatable. “Damn good to hear your voice.”

“Put the phone on speaker,” Gabe ordered. He wanted to hear what Elton had to say from the man himself.

Lundin huffed irritably but must have realized that Gabe would be persistent. He jammed his finger against the correct button and Elton’s voice was loud and clear.

“—center.”

“What, Elton? Say again? You’re on speaker.”

“I’m at the medical center with Gordon. You need to get over here and hear what he has to say. Hurry, the doc had to call the Sheriff’s Office because it’s a bullet wound.”

Casey nodded and glanced at Gabe. The bloody bandages.

“Shit, that’s not good. Karne’s with me, we’ll be right there. But, one second. Do you know what happened?”

“Gordon hasn’t said a whole lot. It was a job just convincing him to go to the hospital. Took us longer than it should’ve. But he needed stitches and some antibiotic, just in case.”

Gabe felt his eyes go wide. What the fuck? Elton took Gordon to the hospital? How? From the expression on Casey’s face, he was having a similar reaction. How had Elton managed without his truck?

“You got him from Greta’s place?” Casey sounded semi-outraged. “Your truck is sitting in front of your house. And we’re just leaving Greta’s, where someone who wasn’t either of you two was. They ran off, but Karne didn’t see who it was.”

Gabe appreciated that Ranger Man didn’t say he’d been flattened by the intruder.

“Oh, my tabs are expired,” Elton said dryly. “I forgot to order them, so I’m gonna have to go the damn licensing place in person. I drove the ATV.”

The ATV? What ATV? Gabe hadn’t seen one. But he also hadn’t looked around Elton’s property until tonight.

“I forgot you still had that,” Casey admitted, looking chagrined.

“Why were you looking for me anyway? Did you think I wandered off into the ravine?”

Casey cocked his head at Gabe. “You want to field this one?”

“Nope. I think we should get to the hospital, wherever that is, and talk to Gordon.”

Gordon MacDonald may have surfaced, but he was in deep trouble and possibly in no shape to protect himself.