Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) Read online

  TAHOE

  DARK

  by

  Todd Borg

  THRILLER PRESS

  PROLOGUE

  “We got your son Jonas,” a voice on the phone said. It was a strange, buzzy voice, vaguely feminine, warping like it had been hung in the wind to twist and turn. The words stunned David Montrop and made him freeze in place like a prey animal sensing a deadly threat, unsure of its source.

  Until that moment, it had been a good morning. David Montrop had spent an hour on his stand-up paddle board, moving among the huge boulders that dotted the waters of Lake Tahoe just north of Sand Harbor State Park. Eventually, the fatigue from the chemo came back. But Montrop felt less nauseated than normal. The sun was out. Spring snow flurries had given way to the warmer days of June. Tahoe glowed blue as sapphires.

  After his paddle, Montrop sat on one of the boulders for a bit to gather his strength. When his breathing slowed, he lifted the 32-pound paddle board, one end at a time, to the roof rack of his Mercedes. The effort made him begin to faint. He leaned against the hood and lowered his head to give his blood pressure a moment to return. Montrop was glad that he could still get the board on and off the car. It was one of those small things that he never used to think about.

  Feeling tired but rejuvenated from the exercise and fresh air, he drove north to his home in Incline Village and unloaded the paddle board, leaning it against one of the garage doors. After he changed clothes, Montrop made a shopping list and headed to the supermarket.

  He’d just parked and gotten out of the car when his phone rang.

  David Montrop fished the phone out of his pocket and was shocked to see his stepson’s number. After all the stress, all the drama, it was a major gift to have the boy actually call him. The day was going to be great.

  Montrop smiled as he tapped the answer icon. “Hey, Jonas,” he said. “Good to hear from you.” He wanted to add, ‘It’s about time,’ but he refrained.

  Then came the voice sounding diseased and disturbed, claiming to have Jonas.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Montrop said, his gut tightening.

  “Dad!” a normal voice broke in. “Do what they say! These guys are craz…” Jonas’s voice was cut off.

  “Jonas?” David said. “Is that you? What’s going on?”

  The twisted voice came back. “Listen real careful. If you don’t do just as I say, we kill the kid. Shoot that bro dead. You unnerstand?”

  For a moment, Montrop thought it must be a joke. This was like in the movies, the disguised voice, the dumb speech.

  “What do you want?” Montrop asked, his voice cracking, serious fear creeping into him despite the fact that the situation seemed ludicrous. His throat felt like sandpaper.

  “We know you’re in the parking lot at the grocery store. Walk next door to the bank. There’s a path between the parking lots. See it?”

  “Yes,” Montrop said, barely able to make a sound. The woman on the phone – if it was a woman – was making Montrop shake. He glanced around behind him, looking for a cargo van or someplace where the caller could be hiding. A place where the caller held Jonas against his will. Montrop saw nothing. How did someone know that he had come to the supermarket?

  Montrop walked across the asphalt, found the short path, and went through some trees to the bank’s parking lot.

  “Okay,” the voice said, as if the person could see every step that Montrop took. “Go to the left corner of the building. There’s some bushes. See ’em?”

  “Yes.” Montrop’s voice wavered. He walked toward the building, feeling dizzy, as if he were about to lose his balance.

  “Go over to the bushes,” the voice said. “There’s two paper grocery bags. One has some dirt in it. The other’s empty. Carry the bags by their handles. Keep holding your phone. Keep the phone line open and turn it on speaker. Unnerstand? Go in the bank. Act real normal.” The words, spoken in the warped voice, were hard to make out. “Take out twenty-five thousand in cash. You do anything funny, your son dies. Got it? I wanna hear you as you talk to the teller. If you hang up, or if you cover up the phone for even two seconds, he’s dead!”

  “I don’t think the bank keeps that kind of cash,” Montrop said, his voice small and weak.

  “Yeah, they do. Jonas told us that’s where you get your cash for the bands. If they ask what it’s for, you say it’s for a band. And I want different sizes.”

  “Sizes?”

  “The bills! Some hunnerds and the rest twenties. When they hand it over, put the money in the empty paper bag. That way each bag has something in it. The one with dirt will be the bag to fool people. You got it?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it. The money goes in the empty bag. The one with the dirt is the decoy.”

  There was a pause. “Right. The decoy.” The voice seemed to shift in space. “Then you walk outside and I’ll tell you what to do next. The whole time, you hold your phone in your hand. And the phone line stays open, right?”

  “Phone line open,” Montrop repeated.

  “Okay, time to put it on speaker.”

  Montrop started to panic. “I don’t know how to put it on speaker.”

  “Look on the screen!” The voice was yelling. “There’s a button on the bottom. See it?”

  “Okay, I found it.” Montrop put the phone on speaker.

  “Now go!”

  Montrop’s heart thumped as he walked over to the bushes. A small, sharp pain stabbed at his trachea, constricting his throat.

  Behind a row of junipers were two paper grocery bags just as the voice had said. They stood under some branches, easy to miss.

  Montrop held his phone in one hand and reached with his other to lift the bags out by their handles. The heavier bag, the one with the dirt, caught on a twig. One of the handles ripped off, and the paper tore down the side. Montrop stopped to breathe. He couldn’t get enough air.

  Already, things were going wrong. Montrop nearly dropped his phone as he shifted his hands, gripping the torn bag by its top edges. Holding his phone and the bags with one hand, he pulled the bank door open and walked inside. He felt something touch his leg. Montrop looked down and saw a trickle of dirt coming from the torn bag, raining down his leg, into his shoe, and onto the floor. He repositioned the bag, tipping it so the dirt flowed away from the tear in the paper.

  There were two men talking to bank tellers, two women in line, one guy over in the waiting area where a bank officer worked at a desk, and a couple at the ATM. The woman pushed the ATM’s buttons while the man looked around. The man held a phone in front of him so that he could glance down at the screen. It seemed to Montrop as if the man was watching him even though his eyes weren’t directly on him.

  When Montrop got to the teller, he tried to sound normal. “Hi, I’m David Montrop of Big Lake Promotions.” His voice had a tremor in it. He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “I need to make a cash payment to a band, so I’d like to withdraw twenty-five thousand. You can take it out of my business checking account.” He lay the phone on the counter, then pulled out his wallet and removed his bank card.

  “That’s a big payment for cash,” the teller said. She made a little frown. Montrop didn’t know if he wanted her to figure out that there was a problem or not. If she did, he certainly hoped she wouldn’t say anything, because the person on the phone line could probably hear every word they spoke.

  “I’ll have to get the manager for a cash withdrawal that large,” the teller said. She stood up, walked over to the end of the teller counter, and went through a door.

  After a moment, she returned with another woman. They
came up behind the teller counter, spoke, and looked at the computer screen. The manager gestured dramatically as she asked Montrop for his driver’s license, then had him swipe his bank card and enter his passcode. The manager typed on the computer and then said that they’d have to get the money from the safe.

  “What denominations would you like?”

  “Um…” Montrop felt like his brain went blank. The panic came back. Breath short. Heart thumping. What did the voice on the phone say? Then he remembered. Montrop said, “Half in hundreds and half in twenties.”

  The two women went through another door.

  Montrop waited, trying hard to relax a little. The man who’d been watching him from the ATM was now sitting on a nearby bench. He still had his phone out. He wasn’t looking at Montrop, but he was close enough to hear. The woman he’d been with had disappeared.

  After a few minutes, the two bank women came back. The manager set down five bundles of twenties and two bundles of one hundreds. Each bundle was held together with a tight paper strip.

  “We only had ten thousand worth of twenties. The rest will have to be hundreds. Is that okay?”

  “Yes,” Montrop said.

  While one woman watched, the other broke open one of the packs of hundreds, ran the money through the counting machine, splitting it into two groups of 50 bills, and then rebundled the two groups with rubber bands.

  The woman pointed to the paper strips on the other bundles. “Are you okay with the currency straps? One hundred bills per bundle? Or should we break them open and run them through the counting machine?”

  “I trust the bundles.”

  The woman nodded. She went through the bundles of twenties, putting each one down on the counter, their violet-colored paper strips vibrant. “Two, four, six, eight, and ten thousand.” She set one of the paper-strapped hundreds next to the twenties. It had a mustard-colored paper strip around it. “A bundle of hundreds is another ten thousand, for a total of twenty thousand. The half bundle of hundreds in the rubber band is five thousand. For a grand total of twenty-five thousand.”

  The two women each signed a slip, had him sign as well, and then handed him the money. “Will there be anything else, Mr. Montrop?”

  “No, thank you.” He put the money in the bottom of the empty paper bag, the one that still had intact handles, and walked out, moving close to the man on the bench. The man seemed not to notice him. He just stared down at his phone.

  When Montrop got outside, the voice came from the phone.

  “Over by your car in the grocery parking lot is a trash can. Don’t slow down. Just walk by the trash can and drop the money bag into it. Hold on to the bag with the dirt. Keep walking to your car, get in, and drive home with the bag of dirt. You got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “We’ll be watching you the whole way. You call the cops or anyone, we pop your son. When you get home, you keep quiet ’til we let the kid go. He’ll call you when he’s free. Unnerstand?”

  “Yes.”

  The phone went dead.

  Montrop did as he was told. He walked from the bank lot to the supermarket lot and headed toward his car and the nearby trash can. He dropped the bag with the money into the trash can. Still holding the bag of dirt, he got into his car, started it, and pulled out of the bank lot.

  At the first red light, he noticed a vehicle pull up behind him so close he couldn’t see its bumper. It was black. The vehicle looked like an Audi, shiny black. The sun reflected off its windshield, so he couldn’t see the person driving.

  When the light turned, Montrop pulled away. The Audi stayed right on him. Was the driver an accomplice of the kidnapper? Someone else?

  Montrop made his way over to 431, the Mt. Rose Highway, and headed up the mountain. When he again looked in the rearview mirror, the Audi was gone. Or was it still back there, several vehicles behind?

  Montrop turned off the highway, wound his way up into his neighborhood, and pulled into his drive, which went up at a steep curve. Montrop’s home was surrounded by forest, out of view from his neighbors.

  As Montrop got out of his car, he sensed movement below. Something dark. Had the black Audi pulled into the entrance of his driveway and stopped? Montrop moved sideways, trying to look through the trees. He saw nothing.

  Montrop waited, but nothing appeared. He turned toward his house. Something seemed different. It took him a moment to remember. Earlier, he’d left the paddle board leaning against the garage so that it could dry. Now it was gone.

  Montrop turned toward the front door. He heard a noise behind him. He turned fast, which made him dizzy. He felt faint again, so he leaned his hands on the hood of the car. With his head hanging down, his glasses slipped until the bow tips caught his ears.

  As his vision returned, he pushed his glasses back up on his nose and looked around. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  After a minute, he walked to the front door.

  Then came another noise. Soft. A whoosh-like air movement. He turned again. Saw movement in his peripheral vision.

  A large shape came through the air behind him. Something sharp and hard struck him on the shoulder and glanced off the corner of his jaw just below his ear.

  The blow was heavy and shocking. Montrop was thrown several feet to the side. He landed on the drive’s paving stones, his chin abrading down to the bone. Montrop was stunned. Panting. His glasses were gone. The world was hopelessly blurry.

  He heard the sound of the car door opening on his Mercedes. Then came an angry shout.

  “What’s this?! Dirt!” The voice seemed vaguely familiar. “Where’s the money?! You double-crossing…!”

  The car door shut. Another door opened. Then shut. Fast, angry footsteps barely registered to Montrop.

  The voice shouted from just behind him. “Where’s the money, old man?! Where!”

  Montrop had got his palms on the drive and pushed himself up onto hands and knees. His neck was electric with pain. Slowly, he turned his head to the side. There was the vague shape of a person. Nothing recognizable.

  “Where’s the money!!”

  Montrop struggled to speak through his broken jaw. “I did just what you said. I put the money in the trash, and I carried the decoy bag into my car.”

  “What?!”

  Montrop sensed blurred movement. A big dark shape being picked up off the ground. His paddle board. Someone carrying it away.

  Montrop tried to turn farther, tried to see. But his neck felt broken. Maybe if he stood up.

  He got his hands on his knees and slowly rose, fighting dizziness.

  Holding his arms out for balance, he rotated. The person holding the board was some distance away, maybe 10 yards. The person turned and ran toward Montrop. Montrop struggled to focus, but without his glasses it was hopeless. When the person with the board got up to speed, he lifted the board above his head and released it into the air.

  As the board arced through the air toward his face, Montrop turned his head. The point of the board hit Montrop’s temple, ripping through flesh to his skull bone and knocking him backward. The blow deflected the bow of the board up into the air. The board’s stern hit Montrop on the chest, the sharp fin cutting through his shirt and slicing his skin the length of his sternum.

  Montrop was slammed down. The back of his head hit the driveway, and he was still.

  ONE

  Blondie dropped the Frisbee at Street Casey’s feet.

  “Your dog steals Spot’s Frisbee and then brings it to you,” I said. “Aren’t you worried she’s carrying the Yellow Lab Retriever work ethic a little too far?”

  Street patted her thighs as Spot ran up to her. He looked down at the Frisbee where it lay at Street’s feet. He wagged. Looked at Street, then Blondie. Looked back at the Frisbee with such intensity that it seemed he expected to make it fly by the sheer force of his stare.

  “Maybe His Largeness’s work ethic isn’t quite as robust as Blondie’s,” Street said as she bent a littl
e and gave Spot a hug.

  “No doubt about that,” I said. “You know that Great Danes have the lowest work ethic of all the working breeds.”

  “Unless you consider the couch lounging category,” Street said.

  “True. On that kind of work, he has no equal.” I walked up and gave each dog a pet. “It seems like Blondie’s doing well,” I said.

  “Certainly much better. But she spends a lot of time staring at the front door as if she’s waiting for Adam Simms to walk in. I suppose I should expect a range of residual behaviors from a rescue dog. But yesterday at the lab, it was pronounced. When the UPS driver walked in, Blondie kept looking past him as if Adam was just beyond, maybe in the truck or something.”

  “Anyway,” Street said, “overcoming Newton’s First Law is a lot easier for a fifty-pound Yellow Lab than a hundred-and-seventy-pound Great Dane,” Street said, ever the scientist. “Being small makes it easier to poach Frisbees.” She bent down and pet Blondie. “Doesn’t it, baby?” As Street spoke to Blondie, her voice sounded dull and gray, as if the normal color was gone. I couldn’t tell what it meant.

  Blondie picked up the Frisbee, gave it a little chew, dropped it again at Street’s feet.

  “How does the First Law thing work?” I asked.

  “Newton explained how any object in motion continues to move in a straight line unless acted upon by a force. The more mass the moving object has, the more force needed to change its direction or velocity. Because Blondie is so much smaller, she has more horsepower per pound, so to speak, so she can turn faster than this big lunk.” As she said it, Street thumped her hands on the side of Spot’s chest, playing out a Reggae rhythm. Spot’s wagging frequency ratcheted up a notch.

  “You’re saying that your dog has more horsepower than my dog,” I said.

  “Per pound, yes. The smaller the animal, the stronger per pound it is. Smaller dogs can leap relatively farther than bigger dogs. A squirrel can leap dozens of times its length.”