Page 61 of Northern Escape


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Bree released a breath. She wasn’t the only one looking anymore. Somehow, that was both a relief and an irritation. “I’ll help however I can.”

“What makes this case a priority now?” Ellis asked.

The two officers exchanged a quick, indecipherable look, then Strickland cleared his throat. “We think this situation is… more dangerous than your average missing person. We found Ms. Ives’s plane—nice flying, by the way,” he said to Bree. “The geography around that lake couldn’t have made for an easy landing. We were surprised to find the plane in one piece and good condition… except for the fuel line. Someone had tampered with it. There’s no way you would’ve reached Solitaire from Anchorage with the rate you were leaking fuel.”

Bree sat up straighter. “Someone wanted us to crash.” She’d known it, but it had been easier to accept pilot error rather than listen to the little niggle in the back of her mind telling her she’d done everything right. “Do you think it was the same person who shot at us?”

“No way to know for sure, but the evidence is pointing that way.”

“Someone doesn’t want us looking.” She shook her head. “Why?”

“That’s for us to figure out,” Strickland said. He tilted his head toward Freya. “Once you speak with Ashby about the search, I want you—” He paused and shot a look at the brothers. “Allof you to go home. If you feel unsafe at home, we can assign protective details—”

“No.” The thought of having cops intruding on her cozy, people-free bubble nearly sent her into a panic. “That won’t be necessary.”

“All right.” Strickland returned his attention to the brothers. “Have any of you spoken to your father recently?”

Nobody moved or said anything for a long five seconds.

At a nudge from Nate, Damian stepped reluctantly forward. “He called about two weeks ago asking if I wanted to buy Northern Rescue.”

Freya started typing again. “That’s the animal hospital out by Thunderbird Falls?”

“Yeah. He was in danger of losing it. He’d mortgaged it to the hilt and hadn’t paid his property taxes.” He paused and looked at his brothers like he wasn’t certain he wanted to say more in front of them. After another reluctant beat, he returned his attention to Freya and continued. “I didn’t want to lose Northern Rescue—it was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a happy home—so I agreed to buy it and pay off his debts. The sale was finalized late last week.”

Strickland frowned. “Right before Will disappeared?”

“The day before.”

The two cops again exchanged an unreadable glance.

“Okay,” Freya said and closed her laptop, folding her hands across the lid. “We’re going to do our best to find him, but I want you all to be aware of the realities of this situation. The first seventy-two hours after a person goes missing is the most critical time, and we’ve already passed that. Now that doesn’t mean we won’t find him, but we have to brace ourselves for the likelihood that this is a recovery mission rather than a search and rescue.”

Someone made a pained noise. It wasn’t until everyone looked her way that Bree realized the sound had come from her.

Ellis finally crossed the room and sank into a crouch next to her. He pulled her in for a hug and she let him because she needed the comfort.

“We’ll find him, Bree,” he whispered into her hair. Then to the cops: “He’s not dead. He’s too stubborn and he knows how to survive in the bush.”

“And we’re going to proceed as if that’s true until the evidence shows otherwise,” Freya said. “Bree, are you up to talking me through your search efforts so far?”

She took a moment to pull herself together, then gently pushed Ellis away. He stood and backed up, but stayed close behind her chair, one hand a comforting weight on her shoulder. Amazing how his presence made her feel simultaneously stronger and like she could fall apart into a sloppy mess of emotions at any second.

It was all too much.

She needed air. She stood, her chair scraping too loudly on the wood floor. “I have to tend my dogs first. They’re hungry.”

Freya inclined her head. “No problem. We can talk again in a bit.”

27

Tage Strickland waited all of two seconds after Brielle Ives and the Hunters left the room before he kicked back in his seat with a big shit-eating grin.

“So…” he said, drawing the word out. “You and the big redhead, huh? And you didn’t even know his name until today, did you? Tsk tsk.”

Freya squeezed her eyes shut as embarrassment heated her pale skin. No doubt she was the color of a tomato. Damn her Swedish roots. “I’m not talking about it.”

Tage stuck out his lower lip in an exaggerated pout. “And here I always thought we had a future together.”

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