He stopped and casually leaned against the trunk of a tree facing her.“Yes, I did.”
“And what did he say?”
“That they would follow it up.”
Summer gave a loud snort.“That’s their standard line for everything, isn’t it?”She’d picked a long grass stem and was shredding it between her fingers.
Mårten couldn’t disagree; the FBI didn’t give away any information they didn’t need to.But he wasn’t worried either, as there was no way the woman getting into that car this morning could have been Paige.This Tyrone guy wasn’t one to muck around.He had an agenda, and it seemed like nothing and no one was going to get in his way.Including one nosy ranger.Both he and Jacob agreed Paige had been missing too long now.It was unlikely that she was still alive.Not that he would ever admit that to Summer.
“You think she’s dead, don’t you?That’s why you’re not in the least bit worried I might’ve seen her today.”
He looked up sharply.Oh, shit.Perhaps his poker face was no longer as good as he thought.Either that, or she was extremely good at reading him.He straightened against the tree as she began pacing through the long grass in front of him.
“Well, do you?”
Now he was in a pickle.“You know Jacob’s team is doing everything in its power to find her.We’re still hopeful we can locate—”
“Don’t give me that police rhetoric bullshit,” she interrupted.“Answer the question.”
He held up his hands in surrender, and she gave another sort of derision.“Typical.You’ll never tell me the truth because you think you’re protecting me.Well, you’re not.”
Mårten was at a loss.He couldn’t very well tell her he believed that at best they’d find Paige’s body buried in a shallow grave somewhere near where she went missing.And at worst they might not find her at all, because she’d been dismembered and disposed of down a deep dark hole in the middle of nowhere.Both scenarios were possible; he’d seen it all in his years as a cop.But Summer didn’t need to know the awful truth.
“She could still be alive,” he said carefully.“If it is in fact Tyrone who abducted her—and we don’t even know that for sure—then perhaps he’s holding her hostage, to use her as a bargaining chip if we get too close.He might be trying to flee the country.”This was one of the many theories put forward by Jacob’s team.They had to consider every scenario.
“Do you think so?”There was a note of entreaty in Summer’s voice that hadn’t been there before, her face scrunching up in concern.“God, I hope that’s true.Because I really need her not to be dead.”
“Of course you do,” Mårten replied.“I know you must be scared for your friend.And it must be alarming thinking he might be after you too.”
“No, that’s not it.”When she looked up, there was a steely glint in her eye as her hair swung in an angry arc across the shoulders.
Surely she wasn’t still blaming herself?He thought they’d already resolved this on the night back at Jacob’s.It wasn’t Summer’s fault.She needed to remember that she was the victim here.Perhaps he should’ve picked this up sooner; he was trained to see when a person was suffering from survivor’s guilt.But Summer had seemed so together, so strong.And he’d spent all of his energy convincing this stubborn woman that she was in danger and needed to take her plight seriously.So when she’d agreed to come to Sweden with him, he’d thought it was only her physical safety he needed to look after.Now he wondered if he’d been wrong.
“Well, okay, yes, I guess some of it is fear,” she admitted.“But I’ve been thinking a lot about Paige’s secret email address.It’s been bugging me ever since you mentioned it.”
Oh, that caught him by surprise.“That’s probably nothing.”The emails had seemed like a dead-end.Apart from her mentioning the gold mining company at Yellowstone and how it had the capacity to destroy a large part of the park if it went ahead, the IT guys could find else nothing incriminating in the banal communications, which seemed to be mostly about the weather.If there was an underlying message, the specialists hadn’t cracked it yet.The only other suspicious thing about the email trail was that the receiver had since closed their account, and IT was struggling to track down the individual who’d owned it.Mårten took a step toward her, arm outstretched is if to give her shoulder a gentle pat
“No.”She held up a hand to ward him off.“Let me talk.I didn’t want to believe it at first.All I could think was, if I hadn’t taken those blasted photos, then she’d still be eating dinner with her fiancé, and driving to work every day, to do a job she absolutely loved.Not missing, presumed dead.”There was a hitch in her voice as she said the worddead.“But then I got to thinking, dredging up memories from our field trip.And I started to remember little things that I’d ignored at the time, or passed off as Paige just being overly passionate about her job and saving Yellowstone.”
“Okay,” he said.“Like what, for instance?”
“Just a few odd things she said to me when we were chatting by the campfire at night.She was very anti-Trump, and very anti all of his policies, including any notion that mining companies should be allowed anywhere near a National Park.Which on its own isn’t so strange, because she is a ranger whose first duty is to care for the environment.”
“Yeah,” Mårten drawled, distracted by her long, slender fingers as they darted through the air; she liked to talk with her hands when she got animated about a subject.But she was right; none of that specifically pointed the finger at Paige.
“But there were other things,” she continued.“Like when we were approaching the fence surrounding the mine site, she tried to lead me away, to distract me, saying there was nothing interesting to photograph, and we should check out this great little creek that would be teaming with frogs we could photograph instead.But I wouldn’t listen; I was intrigued by what might be hiding behind the big tall fences.”
“Hmm.”
“Then she rushed me past the buildings, saying we needed to make camp before it got dark.But now that I think about it, there was still enough light left.We’d made camp later in the evening before.There was no need to rush.”
“Do you think she knew Tyrone was there?”he asked, his cop brain kicking into high gear.This might explain a few things.It might explain how Tyrone got into the locked mine site.Paige would know the country well; so she could’ve shown him a way to sneak in, so that he didn’t have to go past the guard at the front gate.
“I don’t know,” she replied miserably.“I really hope not.But then, the next day she asked a few questions about the photographs I’d taken, wanting to look at them.She said something like the mining company would be outraged if they found out we were taking unsanctioned photos.She wasn’t happy when I said we didn’t have time to go through them all right then as we needed to get back to the ranger HQ that morning, so I didn’t miss my ride back to the airport, but I promised I’d send her a file with all the photos when I got home, and I wouldn’t publish anything until I’d spoken to her.”
“And did you?Send her the photos, I mean?”
“No, I completely forgot.”Summer gave a noncommittal shrug.“I never thought twice about it.I sent the relevant photos and videos of the black-footed ferret to the lead person on the project, and I cc’d Paige in.All the other images were irrelevant to the project, but I always keep all my photos.Maybe she got that email and thought that was all I had.”
