The boy shook his head. “Naw, it’s too far out. They would have found a closer place.”
Emma stared at him. “I was kidding, Mikey. And how can you talk about your mother as if she … she … well, as if she were just another woman?”
He put his hands on his hips and stared back, looking defiant and angry and lost all at the same time. “She stopped being my mother the day she left.” His face sharp with anger and his chin held high, he continued. “For that matter, she never was much of a mother before she left. All my childhood memories are of you. Kelly was just a woman who lived with us.”
“That’s not true, Mikey. Your mother loved you the best she could.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. “She was just so lost inside, Michael. When Dad died, and she found herself pregnant, she never fully recovered. Being weak is not a crime, Mikey. It’s human. And you have to love her no matter her shortcomings.”
She sighed when she felt his unsteady arms wrap around her. “She was advised to put you up for adoption, but she didn’t. As much as she was capable of, Kelly loved you. She just didn’t know what to do with you once you arrived.”
“You didn’t seem to have any problem dealing with me.”
She pushed away with a scowl. “Ha. I had more problems with you than I can count. I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to keep one step ahead of you.”
Michael let his arms fall to his sides as he looked around. “Does this place give you the creeps, Nem?” he asked softly.
Emma felt a sudden chill go down her spine at his words. She rubbed her arms and looked around. “Yes,” she whispered. “Now that you mention it.”
“I feel as though we’re being watched,” he said, stepping closer.
Emma attempted to shrug off the feeling. “It’s probably just a bobcat. You know how they like to sneak around. I’ve been stalked by them several times while out hiking.”
“That woodpile’s looking pretty good, all of a sudden. How about we head back?”
Emma mentally shook herself. This was the forest they knew and loved, not the setting of a Stephen King novel. She walked over to Homer and took him out of his cage. “Not until we give this little guy a head start for home.”
Mikey pulled a message canister from his pocket. “What do we want the note to say?”
“‘The last one home is a rotten egg’?”
Mikey smiled as he wrote. “How about ‘The last one home has to cook dinner’?”
Emma wrinkled her nose. “Or bedinner? Homer can’t cook.”
Michael stuffed the message in the canister and carefully secured it to Homer. “But he could pick up a few crickets on the way.”
Emma rolled her eyes and released the bird. “Watch him, Mikey. You could take flying lessons from that little guy,” she said as they watched the bird rise into the sky. He circled once, then twice, and landed on a branch fifty yards away.
“Well, that’s a brilliant homing pigeon,” Mikey said. “He’s just sitting there, watching us.”
“He’s young. He doesn’t know he’s suppose to hurry along yet.”
Mikey snorted. “He wants to ride back in the plane. Do you suppose the flight here messed up his internal compass?”
“Maybe he’s just enjoying his freedom,” Emma suggested, raising her hand to shade her eyes as she squinted up at the tree. “Or maybe he’s enjoying the view.”
“Or maybe we willhave him for dinner,” Mikey said.
Emma handed him his pack. “Come on, Daniel Boone. Let’s look around and then get airborne ourselves. Those clouds look like another storm is headed in.”
Mikey followed her line of vision as he hefted his pack onto his back. “There’s supposed to be a cold front moving down tonight.”
“It’s early this year.”
“We’re ready for it. There’s only two boats left to be put up. And snow will make good tracking for the hunters.”
“Speaking of hunters, where’s Pitiful gone off to? I haven’t seen him all week,” Emma asked, hefting her pack onto her back. “I hope he’s okay.”
“No one in their right mind would shoot that moose, Nem. He’s no trophy with that missing antler, and no one would dare eat his meat. They’d be afraid of catching mad moose disease or something.”
Emma fished out the GPS and turned it on, then studied the screen as the satellites lined up and gave her a reading. “I don’t get it. Why would Wayne have kept these coordinates? His desk had no clutter, no scraps of paper anywhere else. Everything was organized and efficient. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe this is where he buried all the bodies,” Mikey suggested, raising his hands and pretending to choke someone. “He’s probably a serial killer. He’s certainly weird enough.”
Emma shut off the GPS and slid it back in her pocket. “He is a little … different,” she conceded. “But just because you don’t like the man is no reason to brand him a psycho.”
“This coming from the woman who ransacked his room looking for nonexistent letters, and who is now trying to find out what he’s got hidden out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Maybe Wayne’s running drugs, and he’s using this as a drop site.”
Michael slowly nodded. “That makes sense. He would have the opportunity to run drugs, since he can roam these woods without suspicion.”
“It’s a far-fetched idea,” Emma said.
“But a brilliant one, Nem.”
“Then where’s all the drug money? Wayne’s not exactly living the high life.”
“He’s socking it away. One day he’ll just disappear, only to turn up with a new life in a faraway place.”
Michael was clearly warming to the idea.
“Okay, Sherlock. Let’s work out a scenario. How do the drugs get to this spot?”
“An air drop. Which Wayne picks up and brings into town.”
Damn if that didn’t make sense. “That would mean there has to be a road nearby.”
Michael pulled out the topographical map from his pack and opened it, turning so the lowering sun would light it through the trees. “Here’s one.” He looked off to the east. “It comes in from the Golden Road, but according to the map, it’s old. It may not be passable by truck.”
“So we find it and see if its been traveled,” Emma suggested, picking up Homer’s empty cage and heading east.
Mikey folded his map, leaving the area they needed exposed as he fell into step beside her. “And if it has? What then?”
Emma picked her way through the underbrush. “We could maybe have a talk with Ramsey. Tell him about our suspicions.”
Michael snorted as he held a branch for her to pass. “He’ll laugh us out of his office. We have nothing for proof but some illegally gained coordinates marking nothing.”
Emma stopped and glared at him. “We’re going to tell Ramsey our suspicions, and then we are dropping the whole thing. You are notgoing to look for proof, understand? You are notgoing to stick your nose into anything remotely dangerous.”
“I wonder what Dad would think we should do?” he asked, knowing darn well that Ben would love to bring down a world of trouble on Wayne Poulin.
“If you tell Ben, then you’re going to have to tell him we stuck our nose in this in the first place. How do you think he’ll take thatnews?”
“He’ll lecture a bit, but then he’ll realize that maybe we can’t pass up the opportunity.”
“Michael Sands, I’m going to lock you in your room for a year,” Emma said, pushing past him through the underbrush.
She’d opened a can of worms with this little excursion, and now she didn’t know how to put the lid back on the damn thing. God help them all if Ben decided to get involved.
They found the road a quarter of a mile to the east. As the map indicated, it was an abandoned old logging road leading up a mountain that hadn’t been harvested in over forty years. The bushes had grown in, but not enough to make passing impossible. Emma and Mikey stood in the middle of the old track, looking in both directions.