Free A Killing Sky by Andy Straka Page B

better hold off until I knew more. “Tell me one thing. You think Cartwright Drummond's been greased?”
    “Don't push it, Frank.” He craned his head out the door and took a long look down the garage to make sure no one else was within earshot.
    “Pretty please?”
    He coughed. “Wouldn't that have been your supposition?”
    I nodded.
    “Like you said, no body, though,” Carol interjected. “For now, it's officially still just an abduction.”
    “I'm impressed,” I said.
    Ferrier cocked his head at me in a curious manner.
    “ ‘Supposition.’ You know, most people would've just used the word ‘thinking’ or ‘guess.’ “
    “Get the hell out of here. And no leaving the state. You so much as breathe the wrong way and you'll be doing your peeing in a steel toilet where privacy ain't been heard from in years,” he said as the elevator doors closed in front of them.
    Ouch.
     

12
     
    Marcia sat across from me in the Ford. We were headed west on 1-64 toward Afton Mountain, sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups, Armistead tucked in her hawk box in the back of the truck. Marcia had only been hunting with me a couple of times, but she'd volunteered to come along and play bush beater this morning. The sun had just winked over the horizon behind us, spreading its flaxen light over the hills, the cold gray of the day before a distant memory.
    “It always looks so beautiful,” she said as we topped a rise in the highway and the Blue Ridge suddenly popped into view.
    “Yup.” I yawned and flexed my shoulders, just beginning to feel the effects of the coffee.
    Needless to say, it'd been a night of little sleep for both of us. Dr. Karen Drummond had arrived from Richmond and turned out to be, for once, almost exactly the type of person the media had portrayed: an intelligent, compassionate, no-nonsense kind of individual. I could see why Marcia and she were friends.
    Still in shock, Dr. Drummond was furious and maybe even a little frightened about the possibility of her husband's involvement in her daughter's disappearance. She agreed with the approach of keeping Cassidy's whereabouts a secret, although she was a little reluctant, at first, to keep that information from the police. By the time she left to go talk with them, however, Marcia had convinced her that Toronto and I could be trusted and that Cassidy would be safer where she was.
    “Have you heard from Jason?” I asked.
    Jason is Marcia's son. Has lived with her since her marriage ended years ago. A little younger than Nicole, in his senior year at Charlottesville High School.
    “Oh.” She swatted comically at the air. “He called last night from Nags Head. He said they're having a great time, even though it's still cold down there too. He caught a bluefish off the pier.”
    “Don't mind him spending time with his dad and stepmom?”
    “Not really. In a way, I'm glad he can experience a husband and wife functioning at least seminormally. Lord knows, his father and I hardly ever did.”
    A mile or two down the road we approached the exit that would take us into the stretch of piedmont fields and woods where I had permission to hunt.
    “You ready to talk more about Tor Drummond?” I asked.
    She shifted in her seat a little. Nodded.
    “Talk to me.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “He's got this goon tailing his daughter. The other twin's disappeared, and he's having late-night phone conversations with her. Then we find her bloody car. He capable of murder?”
    She didn't answer at first. “I don't know,” she said finally. “Maybe.”
    “What went on between you two?”
    “Who says something went on?”
    I checked the impulse to say something.
    Her lip quivered a little; her eyes darted away from me. She seemed to be marshaling her thoughts, perhaps arranging memories in a way that would make sense to someone else.
    “I told you I was a volunteer,” she said.
    “Right. When exactly was that?”
    “More than fifteen years ago—seventeen,