It only took about forty minutes for the fires to burn themselves out. They were far too intense to last for very long and consumed both structures leaving nothing but charred foundations and mounds of ash.
The sun was now up, and Jerry inspected Seth’s burns.
“They’re not that bad,” he said after a few minutes of examination. “The worst is on the back of your head. Your clothes took the brunt of the other damage.”
“How did that happen?” Seth asked. He was in mild shock.
Jerry walked over to Bert’s lifeless body and saw the detonator in his hand. He bent down and held it up so that Seth could see.
“I guess he wasn’t quite dead.”
“Son of a bitch,” Seth said.
The crunch of stones beneath rubber drifted down the road. Jerry stuffed his pistol in the back of his pants and stood up.
As the car came into view, Seth let out a long exhalation. Now wasn’t a good time for unexpected visitors. It was only Mark.
Mark pulled up and got out. “What the hell happened here?”
“It’s a long story,” Seth replied as he struggled to get to his feet. “What took you so long?”
“Car problems. Down route eleven.”
“Well, I’m glad that you’re here,” Jerry said as he helped Seth up.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Seth said as he supported himself against Mark’s car.
“I’ll drive the truck,” Mark said.
“We’ll take the plane,” Seth replied. “The route map is in the glove compartment, Mark. Just follow that and you should be okay.”
“When do you want me to be there?”
“Four days max, preferably three.”
“Three days, that’s impossible!” Mark exclaimed.
“I know it’s a long haul, but you’ve got to do it. There’s some pills in the dash. Take one every four hours.”
“I don’t know—”
“Look, we’re down two more guys now. If they were alive this wouldn’t be an issue but they’re not. You need to step it up.”
“Fine,” Mark replied.
Jerry and Seth got into the car and drove toward the plane.
“You ought to see a doctor.”
Seth nodded. He had no time to see a doctor. Right now, all he could think about was the call to Sarah that he was going to have to make. He wasn’t looking forward to it, not in the least bit.
7:44 am FBI field Office, Bangor, Maine
“This is agent Derek Carlisle,” Pell said.
Derek shook Chris’ hand. His grip was weak, almost feminine. His long bony fingers wrapped Chris’ hand like tentacles. When he let go, Chris involuntarily wiped his hands on his pants.
“Chris Foster,” he replied.
The rolled up report was on the table and Derek picked it up, smoothed it out on the edge of the table and then sat down in a chair to read it.
Margaret, the receptionist, walked in. “The carpenters are here. What do you want me to tell them to do?”
“Tell them to fix the door,” Pell replied.
Margaret pursed her lips and huffed before turning and stomping out of the room.
Pell called after her, “Hey, Margaret. Can you make us another pot of coffee, please?”
The receding beat of her heavy footsteps paused, and then she continued without responding.
“She loves me,” Pell said with a smirk.
“Obviously,” Chris replied. “So what are we going to do now?”
Pell joined them at the table. He ran both hands through his hair, pulling it back so that the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed and let out a long slow sigh. Chris knew that look all too well. It would get a lot worse before it got any better.
“I don’t know?” Pell finally said. “Do you see anything there, Derek?”
Derek set the piece of paper on the table and shook his head. He rolled out his long thin index finger and tapped the picture of the young Sarah Burns. “You need to find her. She’s the key.”
Pell nodded. “I’m thinking that we should head up to the County, do a little leg work and see if we can get lucky.”
“We don’t have much time,” Chris said. “David Rose told me that it was going to happen soon – real soon. He could have meant it was only days away.”
Margaret walked in with a pot of coffee and some styrofoam cups. “There’s a call for you on line one, Pell,” she said as she set the coffee on the table.
“Thanks.”
Chris poured himself a cup while Pell picked up the phone.
“Agent Pelletier,” he said, and was silent as he listened. “Really. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
He replaced the receiver. “That was the state police. There was a fire up in Aroostook County last night. They think a state cop died.”
Chris stirred a creamer packet into the coffee and said, “So.”
“So, his name was Bert Nadeau.”
He stopped stirring. “That’s a mighty big coincidence.”
Pell nodded. “Too big. We’re going up there right now. Derek, I want you to start an all-out search for Sarah Burns. Get every asset we have working on it. Somewhere there’s got to be more information on her. Nobody disappears for almost twenty years, not in this day and age.”
“But our guys at Langley couldn’t find anything on her,” Derek said.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist, she’s just off the grid. We need feet on the street with pictures canvasing Aroostook County. Somebody, somewhere has seen her. We just need to find them. We need some evidence that she is alive and we need it yesterday.”
Derek nodded and left the room.
“Maybe this’ll be the break we’ve been looking for,” Chris said as he took a gulp of the hot coffee.
“It could certainly be. Bring that coffee with you. I want to get going now.”
“Sure thing,” he said as he stood up and followed Pell out of the room.
As they walked past the carpenters, who had removed the door and were patching the wall, Chris remembered the report on the desk and quickly turned back to retrieve it before heading down to the car.
Pell placed a spinning blue light on the dash. They sped down the street and once they were on the highway, Pell wound the car up to one-hundred-twenty miles an hour. The suburbs of Bangor quickly turned into the endless woods for which northern Maine was famous for. At this rate, they’d be there in no time.
Chris returned to the report. Something was here, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He was looking out the windshield at the jagged stone of Mt. Katahdin when it came to him.
Turning to Pell, he noticed beads of sweat lined his forehead, and his eyes looked glazed – foggy.
“Are you okay, Pell?” Chris asked.
He didn’t respond. Chris reached over and tapped his shoulder.
“What?” He said.
“I said, are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” he replied as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Let’s pull over. There’s a scenic lookout right up here. Pull in.”
“We can’t. We’ve got to make time, Chris.”
“If we get into an accident because you refused to take a breather, it’s certainly not going to do either of us any good.”
He turned and glared. “Fine.”
They pulled into a scenic lookout on a steep, rocky hillside overlooking a tree-lined, swampy lake that often had moose in it. The dark stone mountain was reflected in the still waters. They got out and walked over to a picnic table. Pell looked terrible. Chris worked the handle of a hand pump mounted next to the table, and soon cool spring water spurted out onto the ground.