Page 53 of No Hope of Rescue

Trent laughs. “Good catch. You’re right. I’m originally from Hamilton, Ontario.” He pauses. “Canada. Not California.”

“No, I know. It’s good to meet you,” she finally says. “And what exactly do you do?”

Trent wraps up his job with a little more detail, ending with, “Look, this isn’t supposed to be an antagonistic situation. But if you have information that can help us, we would appreciate your cooperation.” He glances around the room and then at me. “And your sister. She isn’t a minor, correct?”

“No,” I say. “But she’s sleeping next door at my mother’s house. It’s where she lives.”

I share a glance with Ross. This is the guy to talk to. This is the guy that can bring in some fed power. But when I sit down to talk, Riley kicks me from under the table.

She lets me have it four times in about a ten-minute period—the last one hard, when I tell them about the large wedge track in the snow. My voice sounds robotic to my own ears, though, and I leave the part out about getting hit. Just stick to the facts that matter.

“What about you, Ms. Delgado?”

Silent until now, she begins her part of the story, starting with finding Savi inside Devon and Luke’s cabin and orchestrating a search party. Being on the verge of deciding “no hope of rescue” as the storm closed in. How she found me. There is so much of the story I didn’t know. To hear it in her words, see it through her eyes, makes me want to kiss her. When the story came to finding me, though, it’s my turn to press my leg against hers.

She doesn’t go into detail about what happened and only offers descriptions of when the two men returned on snowmobiles. But Trent wants different kinds of details.

“How many crates do you think there were? Close your eyes and see if you can imagine them.”

Setting down her fork, she closes her eyes, and my body is instantly on alert, alive. She seems so vulnerable sitting there with the three of us surrounding her, and her pallor turns her skin to alabaster. She’s holding something back, trying so hard to give him what he wants and not reveal too much. We’ve yet to talk about what info we want to give the authorities. I wipe a hand over my eyes and touch her arm.

“It’s okay,” I say. “You can tell him about everything.”

“So you tracked him for two and a half days after he disappeared in a snowstorm?”

Her voice is small. “We don’t give up on our friends here.”

“And you two had no idea this plane had recently crashed?”

I shake my head. “There was enough snow to cover a lot of it up. From where Codie and I were climbing, there was no way to say how long the plane had been down.”

Trent listens, head in hand, taking no notes, and then he suddenly drops his arm and straightens in his chair. “We don’t give up on ours either, Ms. Delgado,” he says, adjusting his glasses. “Listen, I can’t make you trust me. There’s nothing I can say that’s going to tell you that I’m a good guy. But whatever it is you’re hiding, you’re hiding it from him too.” He nods toward me. “Because I know you are hiding something.”

Trent leans forward, toward Riley. “I’ll have to pry it out of that poor girl next door if you don’t share it with me, and she doesn’t know me at all. Imagine waking up with a federal officer in your bedroom.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “You can’t accuse her with nothing to go on—”

Trent deftly straightens his tie. “I have plenty to go on. Ms. Delgado here hasn’t broken eye contact with me except to glance at the coats behind her. You are hiding something correct?”

Riley looks like she might be sick. “Brock, I have to talk to you.”

“No, Ms. Delgado, you have to talk to me.”

I half expect Trent to stand, but he remains seated and suddenly asks, “May I have a plate? I’m sorry. I think I’ll take you up on the offer. This all smells too good.”

The hot and cold of the conversation leaves me slow to react, but I hand him a plate and a fork and then sit down myself. It’s like he’s playing both parts of good cop/bad cop.

I want to shove him into the “asshole” category, but he’s just doing his job.

Riley pushes herself away from the table and stands. “I’m going to show you something, but it was given in trust.”

For the first time, Trent sets down a digital recorder. “May I?” he asks.

She nods as I shake my head, but he’s looking at her, so it’s her permission to give. With a large sigh, she moves to her vest, withdraws something small, and then places the Olmec figurine on the table. The one we nabbed. The one Jace researched. And now I realize it probably helped Trent track us down.

Riley glances to me. “Codie gave it to me at the hospital so the police wouldn’t find it.”

That’s a bald-faced lie.