Page 96 of Storm Warning

Hawk pressed forward. “We can draw them in here and take them down.” Hawk moved to the door but found it bolted shut. “What?”

He pounded on the door. Jo must have come back and made sure no one could be locked up inside again. He didn’t blame her.

But now we’re trapped.

39

Remi stared at the picture. The completed puzzle was an image Remi had taken. The church. Sergei. But other people were in the background. Why send her this image and think it would trigger her memory?

“Look at this.” Jo tugged a face mask from the bottom drawer.

“What’s that?”

“This was in the garbage too.” Jo turned the combination face mask and hat inside out.

Remi looked closely at two blue hairs. “What are you thinking?”

Jo sighed. “Hawk’s brother didn’t abduct me. Erika did.”

“Erika? How do you know? How’s that possible?”

“Think about the guy who attacked you in the woods. Really, think about it. Did you see him? It could have been Erika. Did you ever hear him speak? My abductor never said a word.”

“How did she get you to the bunker?”

“I don’t know. I’m small, she’s big. A fireman’s carry. Awheelbarrow. She had help? I’m telling you ... I think it was her.”

Remi closed her eyes and thought back to that moment on the road. The guy approached with a knife. But he was covered in a thick raincoat and a mask. She fought him in the woods. Could she have fought Erika instead? The guy had dark eyes. Erika had blue eyes. But sometimes she had green eyes or purple eyes. She loved her colors. Hair and contacts.

Remi eased into the chair at the desk. Erika had been the one to tell her about Paco. Erika had suggested Jo’s ladder over the radio. In the woods, she and Hawk had been running to hide from someone. Then he’d gone back and run into Cole. No mask, the guy had made himself known.

At gunpoint, Cole had abducted Remi at John Marshall’s secure island home. He was a medium-height guy. Muscular. Smaller than Hawk, who was more like a lumberjack in her mind. Erika was bigger than Remi, bigger than the average woman, and she was strong. Chopped wood and carried it in like it was nothing.

Still, Remi struggled to wrap her mind around this.

“Nothing is as it seems. I don’t get why someone would send this picture and tell me to remember. This doesn’t seem important.”

Jo looked at the image closely. She pressed her fingertip near a woman walking on the sidewalk. “Who is that?”

Remi peered closer.How could it be?Her heart rate kicked up. “I’m not sure, but ... she definitely resembles Erika.”

“I didn’t want to say anything until you said it,” Jo said. “But I agree. That’s Erika. She was there and now she’s here. How does Erika tie into this?”

Remi took a step back and drew in a breath, her head spinning. She hadn’t remembered this part because she hadn’t even noticed.

“She was working here before I even got here.” Remi didn’t understand.

“For like a week. Maybe you coming here had been the grand plan all along.”

“To wait for me to remember something? And if I did...” Erika had tried to kill her. “And what was Cole’s role?”

“I don’t know, but I’m thinking that Cole never rented that cabin. Erika was in charge of the rentals, remember? She put Collin Barclay’s name, an alias, but it was her. She changed into her scary-man-in-a-mask outfit there in the cabin. I walked in on her, and she pulled the mask on so I couldn’t tell it was her. She could have killed me.”

“How do you know it was her if she had the mask on?”

“Because I’m the one taking out the garbage from the cabins, and I noticed the mask inside the plastic. It made me shudder. Reminded me, and I dug it out. That was a mistake on her part. It’s not like people don’t wear them around here in the winter, but she has blue hair.” Jo lifted a shoulder.

Right. That danger was always so close sickened her. “Where is she?”

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