If I Should Die

THREE

Lucy accepted the water from Annie Lynd and greedily guzzled the sixteen ounces. Her throat was raw from the smoke, and soot covered her skin and hair. She watched as the Fire and Rescue team did their job of extinguishing the fire and checking for hot spots.

“The fire’s out,” Tim said as he approached, taking a water bottle from Annie. “The kitchen’s a total loss.” He kicked a metal chair and it skidded across the wood porch.

Annie spoke timidly. “We can use the kitchen in Joe’s house until-”

Tim cut her off. “How can we open at all? What if we had guests here when that fire started? What if someone got hurt?” He turned to Lucy, fury and helplessness in his eyes. “Have you heard from Sean?”

She shook her head. It had been nearly an hour, and she’d been trying to reach him for the last ten minutes.

“Unless we find the asshole behind the vandalism and fire and put him in prison, this is just going to continue,” Tim said. “I’m not putting my guests at risk. I’ll just-I don’t know.” Collapsing on the porch swing, he glanced at Annie. “Sorry I snapped,” he said before burying his head in his hands.

Lucy pulled out her cell phone. Sean had set up GPS tracking so they would be able to find each other any time-after a couple of harrowing situations, Lucy didn’t object. He’d set it up so no one else could track her phone, only the principals at Rogan-Caruso-Kincaid, his security company.

His phone was sending out a strong, steady signal nearly three miles away. She frowned and tried him a second time through the walkie-talkie feature. No answer. Maybe there was too much interference, though she didn’t think she’d be receiving his GPS signal if there were.

She said to Tim, “We need to find Sean. He’s been stationary for at least the last twenty minutes. Do you have two more quads?”

Tim shook his head. “The arsonist took one, Sean the other.” He looked at her, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s not answering my page.”

“Where is he?”

She showed him the map on her phone.

“That’s Travers Peak, near the Kelley Mine,” he said. “We can drive there-it’s accessible through an old logging road off the highway. I’ll get my truck.”

“I’m going to grab a first aid kit,” Lucy told him. “I’ll meet you back here.”

Annie called after her, “I’ll put together food and water in case you need it.”

Lucy ran back to the cabin, her lungs still burning from helping put out the fire. The police hadn’t arrived yet, but Spruce Lake was so small it didn’t warrant a police force or even a substation. Tim had reported the crime to the sheriff’s office in Canton. They were sending an investigator and she wanted to be here to talk to him. But first she had to find Sean.

Lucy didn’t tell Tim he should have brought the police into this situation sooner, because he now understood his mistake. Maybe they could have prevented this expensive attack. The good news was no one was hurt, the fire hadn’t spread to the rest of the lodge, and there was another kitchen that could be used. But if she and Sean couldn’t find the culprit, it was clear by Tim’s reaction that he wasn’t opening the resort as scheduled on Memorial Day weekend, a real shame because Tim and Adam cared so much about creating a viable economy for the dying town. She hoped Sean had some idea who was behind this after his pursuit.

After packing a duffel bag with emergency supplies she ran back to the lodge, where Tim was waiting in his truck.

“I still can’t reach Sean,” Lucy said, as she climbed in.

“Are you getting his GPS signal?”

“It hasn’t moved.”

Lucy couldn’t dismiss her worry. It wasn’t like Sean to not check in-not when doing something like this. If he was moving, she wouldn’t be as concerned, but he’d been driving an ATV over unfamiliar terrain pursuing an unknown arsonist who might have a gun. Sean was smart, but he wasn’t invincible.

“Ever since the sabotage began, I’ve been trying to figure out who would do this,” Tim said as he drove down the private road. “Maybe I was wrong-maybe it isn’t someone who doesn’t want tourists. Up until now, he only went after small stuff, easily fixable. Disabling my truck. Stealing supplies during construction-I started ordering twice what I needed. It’s not about the money. I have more money than I know what to do with. It’s that this resort will be good for the town. I’ve done all the comparables; I know it’ll work.”

“Arson is a big step up from theft and vandalism.”

“That’s why I’m wondering if it’s personal. Maybe someone hates me. I just can’t figure out why. I wasn’t raised in Spruce Lake. I don’t know anyone.”

“Adam does.”

“He left five years ago, when he went to college. I can’t imagine someone would hold a grudge that long.”

Five years was nothing for someone dead set on revenge. “We need to talk to him,” Lucy said.

Tim turned off the road onto a two-lane highway. Two miles north was the main road into the town of Spruce Lake, but Tim turned south. “The logging road is four miles down the highway.”

When Tim turned onto the logging road, he slowed down as the truck bounced over rocks, branches, and potholes. Lucy spotted an ATV partly hidden in the trees, about twenty feet down from the logging entrance. “Stop! Is that your ATV?” she gestured.

Lucy barely waited until Tim braked. She jumped out and ran into the woods. It was definitely the yellow Raptor that Sean had been driving, parked between two trees. The keys were in the ignition.

Lucy glanced at the GPS on her phone. Sean’s cell phone was transmitting half a mile directly southwest of their location. He could have lost his phone while pursuing the arsonist, but that didn’t explain where he was now.

Tim caught up with Lucy and checked the gas gauge. “It still has fuel.” He held his hand over the engine, then touched it. “Warm, not hot.”

Lucy looked around the woods for a sign of the second ATV. Not only was it not within sight, but there was only one set of tracks. It was unlikely that Sean would have pursued someone on foot then just left the ATV here-or would he?

Tim ran down to the highway, then across it. She didn’t see anything that gave her a clue as to what happened to Sean. She walked a wider circle, still picking up no signs that there was more than one rider. She followed depressions in the mulch that led back to the logging road, forty feet from Tim’s truck, then ended at the packed gravel and dirt road. She knelt. It was nearly impossible to make out tire impressions, but gouges from taking off too fast clearly came from a vehicle wider than an ATV. Several drops of fresh oil stained the gravel near where the tracks stopped.

Tim returned and said, “Nothing. No sign of foot or vehicle traffic or the other ATV.”

She rose and gestured to the oil spot and four gouges. “Someone was parked here and left quickly. We need to find Sean’s phone.” She didn’t want to say it out loud, but he could be lying injured anywhere between here and his phone. Finding the phone was a starting point to tracking him down. Then she would contemplate the idea that he’d been forced to leave with the arsonist.

Except that there was only one set of tracks leading from the ATV to the car.

Tim handed her the keys to his truck. “Continue down this road until you reach the signal. I’ll take the quad and retrace its route, and hopefully we’ll meet up at some point.”

Lucy nodded. She ran back to the truck and got in the driver’s seat. Deep pits and debris littered the path in front of the vehicle. Lucy was forced to drive slowly, and it took her nearly ten minutes before she saw the other ATV.

She stopped the truck and jumped out. She could hear Tim’s ATV in the distance, but with the echo couldn’t gauge how close he was.

On the ground was a blue helmet-the one Sean had been wearing. She smelled some sort of fuel, but it wasn’t gasoline. She looked under the vehicle and saw a large dark spot on the ground.

There were signs of a scuffle, the dirt freshly turned, branches broken, bushes trampled. She followed the destruction and saw Sean’s backpack next to a tree.

She searched it. All his emergency supplies were there, including his phone.

The ATV, the backpack, the helmet-everything but Sean. And no sign of the arsonist.

Lucy bit her lower lip. Sean was resourceful, smart, even cunning at times-there had to be a logical explanation as to why his things were here, while he wasn’t.

“Sean, where are you?”

Tim drove up, stopping close to where Sean’s helmet lay on the ground. Lucy said, “Did you find anything?”

“Nothing.”

“There was a fight over there,” she pointed to where she’d found Sean’s backpack, which she now had over her shoulder. “I found his pack and phone.”

“We need to be careful,” Tim said. “There are several ventilation shafts for the mines in the area, and it’s easy to miss the warning signs. The mines are all closed now, but they’re still dangerous.”

“We’ll start where I found the backpack and go from there.” Her pulse raced. “How deep are these mine shafts?”

“Fifteen, twenty feet, some deeper. They’re narrow, six to eight feet wide, used for ventilation and to haul supplies in and out. They’ve been boarded up for years.”

They followed the tracks which made a sharp turn to the right. They skirted a tree stump, and Tim said “Watch your step.” He gestured toward a bright orange tie around one tree. “See that ribbon? There’s a shaft around here.” He looked, then pointed. “There.”

Lucy saw a gaping black hole in the ground. Except for a few broken boards along the edge, the wood was gone.

“Sean-”

Footsteps led to the hole’s edge. Only one set ran away. The side had caved in, lower than the ground by a foot, as if someone might have pulled a chunk of earth with him when he fell.

Tim pulled her back. “Hold it.”

“He’s in there. I know it.”

“Go slow. Test the ground with each step.”

Lucy did exactly as Tim instructed, though it was killing her. She got down on all fours at the edge of the pit. “Sean? Sean! It’s Lucy! Are you there?”

She heard only the echo of her own panicked voice.