“Bliss? The pop singer? Who hasn’t? Vic plays her songs down at the Midnight Sun, sometimes. I actually walked in on her playing Bliss’s televised concert on the flat-screen last fall. Wait—your girlfriend isBliss?”
He keyed the mic. “Yeah, sorta. She was up here on ... sort of a vacation, and ... she’s keeping it all on the down-low.”
“For sure. If the world knew she’d been kidnapped—”
“Which we don’t want anyone to find out. The media would lose it.”
“You think they know who she is and want her money?”
“I can’t put anything else together. Maybe Thornwood—Sorros—recognized her when he got on the plane. Except, why would he threaten Wilder Frost and take a plane down because of it? We thought it might be because of the trial, so that Wilder couldn’t testify.”
“Where did the plane go down?” Echo asked.
“Northwest of Woodcrest and the Bowie cabin.”
“Near the cache cabin, then.”
Right. He hadn’t thought about that. Wait—“Do you think one of the other brothers was waiting for him at the cache cabin?”
“It’s pretty remote. But it’s safe and warm and usually uninhabited.”
“They planned on the plane going down,” he said quietly.
Static on the other end.
“Keely put a thorn in those plans by surviving,” he said.
“Or by getting on the plane in the first place,” Echo said. “You could be right. Plans changed when Sorros recognized her. Do you know what brother it was?”
“Not for sure. Keely said he had a scar under his eye.”
“Oh, that’s Conan.”
“You know this guy?”
“The whole family, sort of. Jago, Conan, and Mars. Conan got in a fight in school, and his younger brother, Jago, sliced open his cheek with a knife. Mars has a forehead tattoo. And their cousin Sloan came around in the summers. He was a couple years older and taught them all his tricks. They terrified me. Don’t you remember them?”
“Vaguely.”
“They were a few years older than us. My dad got in a scrape with them once, years ago. Caught them poaching. Their dad was a mean guy. Went to jail for dogfighting for a couple years.”
He couldn’t help but glance down at Caspian, who met his gaze with his big brown eyes. “Sounds like a fantastic role model.”
“I think their mom might have moved them to Anchorage after that.”
“To start their life of crime there.”
“Yeah, but they started haunting the Copper Mountain area maybe seven years ago. Poaching. Squatting. Then into drugs and trafficking, growing their seedy empire. They’re not to be messed with.”
Oh, he was going to mess with them.
Static. “I can’t believe you’re dating Bliss.”
Dating seemed not the right word. “Maybe that was overstated.”
“I just could never see you with someone so ... dramatic. She once wore mechanical wings during a concert, had pulleys lift her into the air so she could fly over the crowd. And she’s pretty famous for this crystal-encrusted bodysuit that she wore for her Grammy performance a few years ago.”
“For a woman who’s lived off the grid most of her life, you know a lot about Bliss.”
