Page 21 of Taming Her Bears

“It’s okay,” she said kindly. “You strained your throat. The doctor said it’s better if you don’t try to speak right now.”

The large, slightly tilted dark eyes, no longer sparkling with innocence, shifted urgently as though trying to spill her story from them and hoarse sounds once more gurgled up from her throat.

“The nurse said you have been writing down what you want to say.”

The girl nodded, so Natalia handed her a pad and pencil. “I’m Natalia. This is Lee. Do you mind if he is here? He’s the one who found you.”

She wrote down, “Silly man.”

Natalia grinned. “That’s the one. The doctor tells me your name is Amy and that your parents will be here this afternoon. They matched your identity to a missing person’s list. You’ve been missing four weeks. Where did they pick you up?”

She wrote down, “Visiting in Seward.”

“Was that before or after they got the Coast Guard vessel?”

“Before,” she wrote. “First, I was on a big fishing boat with two other girls. We stopped once and they picked up two others. One more stop and we all transferred to the Coast Guard boat. Then to the big house and waited.”

Lee stood a respectable distance behind the chair and kept his big mitts laced in front of him. “Was anyone in the big house when you got there?”

She shook her head. He lowered his voice and asked, as gently as he could, “How many girls are there?”

She wrote painstakingly, “Twelve. There were fifteen. Two died, and now I’m gone.”

Natalia was becoming emotionally involved. I stepped forward to intervene, but Natalia had already asked the question. “Who died?”

The girl shrugged. She was becoming tired and the questions were starting to invoke unpleasant memories, but Natalia pressed one more time. “Why did they leave you behind?”

She wrote, “Because I escaped.”

Natalia’s eyes filled with tears and the big blubber bear next to her pawed at his cheeks. She leaned over the girl, taking her hands and kissing them. Restoring some of her composure, she said hoarsely, “I escaped from the group they picked up in Valdez. They abandoned me on an island. I was there with a friend named Rhoda.”

“Rhoda’s alive,” wrote the girl. “I heard of you. We thought you were dead.”

“Well, I’m not and neither are you, so we both got lucky. I know you’re tired, but if you can think of anything else to share, contact me at this address.”

Natalia wrote an e-mail address on the pad and the girl folded it up carefully. “Wait!” she squealed in her damaged voice as we started to leave. “I know where they’re going.” The effort caused her to wheeze heavily. We waited as she sucked in extra air, then breathed out, “Vancouver.”

Vancouver! He had a marine class boat that could slide through the water like a fish out to sea and that could hide anywhere among the hundreds of islands along the U.S.-Canadian coastline. He had a three-day head start on us. I called the team into the ready room for a brain-storming session. Of course, Natalia joined us. You couldn’t pry her loose with a crowbar.

I spread out several large maps of the island chain and leaned over them. “What have we got? We know for a fact they hit Seward and Valdez. There was one more destination before Ketchikan.”

“Juneau?” suggested Natalia.

I shook my head. “Too risky.”

“Glacier Bay,” said Darkhorse positively. “It’s ideal. Heavily forested yet close to the Southeastern hub. No one would think twice about a Coast Guard cutter.”

“We know they’re well-organized,” added Roy. “Everything was timed. They knew when McCarthy and his team were going on vacation and where they were going. They used a fishing vessel for the first part of the operation, then transferred to the stolen cutter in Valdez.”

“They had an inside man,” Lee pointed out, forever one to state the obvious. “The lieutenant.”

Darkhorse leaned back, folding his arms over his chest. “They’ll probably ditch the cutter before entering Canadian waters. You know how ruffled the Canadians get when they see us crossing their line.”

I looked at the myriad possibilities dotting the map. “Then we need to find them before that happens. We’re nearly at the end of the line.”

“Maybe we’re too late,” suggested Lee, wincing at the disagreeable thought. “They’ve got a head start. They weren’t in a hurry when they left, which means their transport was probably already lined up. Maybe we’re at the end of the line.”

I allowed my bear hairs to slither out enough to prickle against my clothes. “Not until we recover the boat. The boat is U.S. property.”

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