I nodded, set my hands on my hips. “She is. I’ll find out from her boss where she is and head out.”
They stared at me wide-eyed.
“What? I’m a fucking SEAL. A hike in the woods is child’s play.”
Thirty minutes later, I stood across from Brandon, the ex, in the guide office. If I wasn’t in such a hurry to get to Indi, to ask her everything she knew about the necklace, and also to apologize, I’d have punched the idiot in the face. This guy was Indi’s ex?
“She isn’t on the rafting trip,” he told me. “I traded her out to take a group up to Glacier Lake.”
“Fine, what trail do I take to get there?” I asked.
“I heard you two were together,” he countered, crossing his arms. The fucker wasn’t answering my damned question. “I don’t want your… relationship to mess with the trip.”
“Do I look like the kind of man who’d fuck with your business in a way you’d know about?” I countered, my voice low.
He swallowed, then held up his hands. As if they’d protect him.
“Look, man, I told the other guy they’re not on a trail.”
I stilled. “What other guy?”
“The friend of her brother who insisted he had to see her.”
“Friend of Buck?” Every friend of the Buchanan family lived in Sparks.
“How the hell should I know? He was as pushy as you.”
I had a bad fucking feeling. My SEAL spidey sense kicked in. I grabbed my cell and called Kennedy. “Text me a pic of the suspect.”
I hung up and waited twenty seconds for the image to come through, glaring at Brandon the entire time. I held up the photo of Cameron Tully in front of Brandon’s face. “Him? This the family friend?”
Brandon tipped his head back but studied the image. “Yeah man, that’s him.”
“When did he come by?” I snapped.
“Yesterday afternoon.”
Holy fuck. Almost twenty-four hours ago.
“You tell this friend where she lived?”
Brandon gave a weak smile. “Well, yeah. He was a friend of Buck’s. I thought she’d want to see him.”
I was practically seething. If there was a moment for inner fucking calm, it was right now. I dialed Kennedy again. “He’s here and after Indi. I need you three here double time. Bring my gear.”
“Hooyah.”
I reached across the counter and grabbed the front of Brandon’s shirt with my free hand. “Listen to me, you little shit. You gave your employee’s home address—your female employee—to a total fucking stranger. Then you told him where to find her in the fucking wilderness. You’re going to pull out a fucking topo map and show me where they were going.”
“Dude, she has GPS. I can pull up her exact location.”
With difficulty, I released my hold on him, one tense finger at a time, and he moved quickly to the computer. “There,” he said finally, pointing at the screen.
I turned the monitor around, so I could see it. “Print a topo map of this. Where she is, where Glacier Lake is. Then get on the phone and call the sheriff’s department and get them mobilized to track down that group. While I’m gone, you’re going to shut this fucking business down and move out of Montana, or I swear my SEAL friends and I will kill you as slowly and painfully as we’ve been trained.”
Chapter
Eighteen
INDI
* * *
I normally loved the hike to Glacier Lake. It involved veering off-trail, which meant no other hikers. The entire wilderness to ourselves. Usually my idea of heaven.
This time, though, my mind wouldn’t stop looping around Buck and the video. A man’s murder. And the way I’d left things with Ford.
In comparison with the bigger picture–the fact that I’d lost my brother because he’d tried to do the right thing in the face of evil–my tiff with Ford now seemed trivial. Like I was a pouting kid.
Did I want to lose him, too? Over me getting my feathers ruffled for feeling like the left out kid sister again?
No. That was stupid.
Ford may have tried to keep me out of things, but I was in them now. As fully in them as could be. Buck had sent the video to me. He could’ve handed it to Ford, told him what had been going on, but he hadn’t. I’d seen the video, and knowing Ford and his team were on the same side made me feel a whole lot better.
But none of it mattered out here in the backcountry. Buck was gone. The video was with Ford. I was five miles from the nearest road. It was only me, nature, and the group I was leading. Turned out, they were amazing. A family of four–a lesbian couple and their two energetic sons, ages eleven and twelve. On trips like this, I packed in the food, so the hikers only had to carry their own personal items, tents, sleeping bags, and water.