Mountain Refuge (Mountain Mutineers #1)

Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Josephine

Four Months Later

I sat outside Jack’s General Store in Whitefish, Montana and, not for the first time, wondered if this bounty was worth all the time and money I’d spent on it.

For starters, I’d been given false information by the children’s own father as to when they’d been kidnapped. That alone had sent me on a wild goose chase that had taken up the better part of two months. Then a hefty bribe to one of the household servants had told me the actual date of the kidnapping. Except the father claims to have been out of town that day, according to his calendar and the plane ticket stubs he had. Which is in complete contradiction to the father’s claim to be the only witness to the fact that his nanny, Adam Greene, had taken his children. No other staff or security guards could or would corroborate the man’s story. Per the head of Gunther’s security, Greene, a former schoolteacher, had disabled the cameras, motion sensors, and gate locks to make his Great Escape.

None of which made any sense. He was no Virgil Hilts, after all .

Gunther was offering a million-dollar bounty for the return of his daughter and her kidnapper. A million dollars was still a million dollars, but any idiot would know that million had blood on it. That was the type of man Sebastian Gunther was. I didn’t need to see his bank records to know that. It also struck my notice that there was no bounty out for the safe return of his infant son.

I was very protective of children, and most women. I added the ‘most’ before the women because I knew firsthand that being my gender did not automatically make them harmless or innocent.

Adam Greene was being labeled as a pedophile, as well as a murderer. Gunther was portraying himself as the concerned and grieving father, but he was enjoying the media attention too much for me to buy it. The children’s older brother was also suspiciously absent during every press conference.

Whether Greene had nefarious intentions or Gunther was the psychopath I believed him to be, it didn’t change the fact that there were two missing children. I was determined to find those children. Other bounty hunters would be out for the money, not caring about the children. While I certainly wasn’t going to turn down a million dollars—girl’s got to eat—my main concern was the welfare of those kids.

When I’d first taken the case, I’d reached out to a contact of mine who specifically specialized in making abused and vulnerable women and children disappear. For the past fourteen years, Art Jackson had made a name for himself as a protector. I’d never met the man, but I knew his reputation and, more importantly, I knew his phone number.

I’d come across Jackson’s group, the Mountain Mutineers, several years ago when I’d been hunting a pedophile who had escaped custody. A single phone call with the man had revealed just how big a reach he had. We’d come to an understanding that, while I was in it for the profit and he was in it out of the goodness of his heart, we both had similar goals.

Problem was, when I’d reached out to Jackson initially, I’d had misinformation. Everyone, including the police, did. I’d nearly given up on this case entirely, which was not something I did lightly, when I’d decided to go to the people who saw and noticed everything within the household.

Donna Novak had been a maid in the Gunther household for nearly twenty years. I’d approached her at the bus stop on her way home from her shift. It had taken some prodding, and most of the cash I had on hand, for her to tell me the children were not taken on the date their father claimed. That was all she would say, but it was enough to get me to look into the claim further.

One month. The children had been gone twenty-nine days before their father had reported them missing. When I’d confronted Gunther, he’d told me I had been misinformed and, if I wanted to get my bounty, I should be more careful about who I bought false information from.

My first conversation with Jackson had been more informative on my part to clue him in to the situation. While I didn’t want to give away my chance of getting the bounty, I also knew that, if anyone would know about the missing children, it would be Art Jackson.

My conversation with him a month ago had been far different. I’d told him about how suspicious the father was acting. While Gunther’s actions were strange, it did not prove that Greene was not the pedophile he was reported to be. Jackson had thanked me for the updated information and assured me that he had not heard anything but that his contacts were still looking. Frustrated that a schoolteacher with no history of criminal activity could disappear so thoroughly, I started back at square one .

It was convenient for Gunther that, on the date of the real kidnapping, the security tapes were also suspiciously blank. I had no video evidence to prove or disprove Gunther’s version of events. But Donna Novak’s story seemed more believable than Gunther’s, so I started looking into it further.

A contact at the NYPD traffic watch had let me pull up the license plate scanner readings for Greene’s car. It had cost me front row tickets to Hamilton .

By the time I’d finished with this case, I wondered how much of the million I would even have left after all these bribes. Not to mention the ones I’d wasted before I’d known the correct date of the kidnapping.

That really did not sit right with me. Why would a father lie about the day his children were kidnapped? If I had been on a wild goose chase, I can’t imagine what information the police were following. I’d read the profile that had been released on Adam Greene and had to wonder if someone had doctored some of the information.

It was hard to believe a powerful man like Sebastian Gunther, who could afford to hire the best and the brightest tutors in the world, would specifically choose a man who had already been arrested once on suspicion of child molestation to be his children’s nanny. While Greene hadn’t been charged with the crime, the arrest was on record.

Gunther claimed this was why the elementary school had let Greene go eight years ago. Gunther, giving the perfect performance as a grief-stricken father who was so worried about his children, had claimed he’d foolishly believed Greene’s story about being falsely accused, which had ruined his career and reputation. Gunther had hired Greene out of the goodness of his black heart.

I wondered if the man even had a heart. If he did, it was probably old and decrepit with cobwebs around it .

The police had record of the last time Greene’s car had been seen in the city before the kidnapping. Exactly twenty-nine days before. I knew then that what the police believed to be a regular ride through the city a month earlier was the actual kidnapping in progress.

What I found interesting is the gap of time between when Greene’s car had been spotted crossing Park Ave and again when he’d reached the Lincoln Tunnel. There was a partial plate of a parked car that could be Greene’s read on Twenty-Fifth Street, but that would have been off the direct route to the tunnel from NoHo. Since nothing so far about this case was what it seemed to be, I decided to work off the assumption that it was Greene’s car parked at that intersection. It would explain the extra time between Park Ave and when he’d reached the Lincoln Tunnel. So what had been on Twenty-Fifth Street that had been so important he’d made a stop with two kidnapped children in the backseat of his car?

The partial plate had been read near the intersection of Twenty-Fifth and Sixth Ave. Upon arriving at that intersection, my first thought was he’d stopped at the Goodwill NYNJ store across the street. It was diagonal and in the line of sight of where the plate had been read. None of the clerks claim they remember seeing Greene in the store, and they immediately recognized his face from the wanted announcements on TV. That made me believe that they would have connected him to a customer if he’d been in the store.

From Goodwill, I went to a grocery market. If Greene was going on the run, he’d need food and supplies. Based on what was left in Greene’s and the children’s bedrooms in the police report, Greene had not taken much with them. A couple hundred to the wannabe cop in the security office had let me see the tapes on the day of the kidnapping. I watched specifically for a man with a little girl and a baby in or out of a carrier. Since Greene likely would have been wearing glasses, a hat, or some form of a disguise if he was taking kidnapped children into a public place.

Except there was nothing. I had the urge to check on the day Gunther reported the kidnapping but knew it would be a waste of time. By the time Gunther had reported his children missing, Greene had already had them for twenty-nine days.

I was beginning to wonder if I was chasing ghosts. The children could have been dead and buried before Gunther had even noticed his children were missing. The man clearly was not an attentive father. I still found it interesting that the oldest brother, Trenton Gunther, was not available for questioning. The police had been unable to locate him at the resort in Maui that Gunther claimed he was at.

An interesting thought had occurred to me as I had walked the block of Sixth Ave and Twenty-Fifth Street. What if the reason Trenton Gunther couldn’t be found was because he was with Adam Greene and his siblings? What if Trenton was the real kidnapper? Could Greene have been taken against his will or been a willing participant in the kidnapping of his charges?

I had to put a pin in that thought.

I hit pay dirt when I checked the surveillance footage at the CVS on Sixth Ave, less than a block from where the partial plate had been recorded. I watched as a clearly flustered Adam Greene walked into the pharmacy with a baby carrier and an upset little girl in his arms. He went immediately to the register and bought a burner phone. At the last minute, he threw a coloring book that was in a magazine rack by the register and a box of crayons on the counter too.

He paid in cash.

By the time I left the CVS , I was out nearly a thousand dollars, but I had the footage of Adam Greene, Lydia Gunther, and a baby carrier which I could only assume held Henry Gunther, though I never saw the baby’s face to make a visual confirmation, and I had the number of the burner phone Adam Greene had purchased.

A former military buddy who now worked in private security was able to get me the phone records for that burner. I was out a couple thousand dollars, a promise of a date when I got back into town, and a no-questions-asked favor. While I had no romantic feelings towards him, a date wasn’t the worst thing in the world, and he was too honorable a man for the favor to be something morally questionable. It was worth the trade.

The burner phone had called a Chinese restaurant in Lansing, Michigan once but the call had only lasted nine seconds. Enough for him to realize he had the wrong number? Several hours later, he called another number, which led me to Jack’s General Store in Whitefish Montana. That call had lasted eleven minutes.

While I didn’t know where Greene had been when he’d called Whitefish, the fact that the call had lasted eleven minutes this time meant he had spoken to someone specifically. Two hours and forty-one minutes later, Greene called the number again. This time, the call had lasted only nine minutes.

The fact that the second call had taken place at eleven o’clock at night struck me as odd. Was the General Store open twenty-four-seven? There was no website for me to find out that information on and Google hadn’t had hours of operation on their site. Still, Greene had called the store twice for a total of twenty minutes.

A lot could be said in twenty minutes.

I felt this warranted an in-person look at the store and to speak to whomever was working from eight-thirty to eleven-thirty that night. Which was how I found myself standing in snow slush in a small town in Montana at the end of April.

The town was small. It had a single main road with a single traffic light. There was a sign on parallel light posts proclaiming a Spring Festival this coming weekend. There was a raffle to dunk the mayor in a bucket of slime.

It was obvious that outside of the winter months when the ski resort was open, there was not much going on in this town.

I spotted a diner down the road from the General Store and wondered if that was the only place to eat in this town.

The store itself was nothing special. It was on the corner of a block of buildings and probably took up four times the space as the other shops on the strip. There was a single door with a glass window that held an OPEN sign on a chain. No hours of operation sign was posted either.

A cowbell above the door rang as I walked in. A quick glance around showed no surveillance cameras or sensors on the display windows. The single lock on a wood door with a glass window was also a big indicator this was not a high-crime area. Geez, I really was in the middle of small-town America.

I’d lived all over the country since getting out of the Corps, but this was definitely the smallest ‘small town’ I’d ever stepped foot into.

Upon walking in, I saw shelves of canned food. There was a single stand-up display refrigerator that held dairy products to my right. I hadn’t seen a Walmart or any grocery store driving into this town. Was this their version of a grocery store?

A display near the register proclaimed local jerky was for sale, which did look hand-bagged rather than factory made. Guess so.

There was a man at the counter talking to the older gentleman at the register. The man purchasing the items was huge . No other way to describe him. He was probably six-foot-seven or eight. He had shaggy black hair that fell past his shoulders and a long beard that was braided. A pink bow tied off the end, which I found peculiar. The man looked tough. He was clearly not a stranger to hard work. Having seen a lot of those guys in the military, I knew the man’s man persona very well. None of the men I’d served with would ever be caught with a pink ribbon in his beard—in public, that is. They’d rather do a thousand burpees before running ten miles in full gear.

A chuckle from behind the counter drew my attention to the older guy. He was tall too, though nowhere near the giant’s height. He was maybe six-foot. He had salt and pepper hair, a clean-shaven face, and kind green eyes. You could tell a lot about a person from their eyes. It was one of the reasons I knew Gunther was lying about caring for his children.

I unintentionally wandered closer to the men in my perusal of the store. In the back was more outdoorsy gear than grocery. Hunting supplies, including a lot of guns.

My Glock was tucked away in the holster at the small of my back. I wore a longer jacket that hid the bulge. I’d need to keep in mind that this area had a lot of gun owners.

“…so excited. She’s been counting down to her birthday since the start of the New Year.” That was the giant who spoke. He had a very deep voice with a slight New Jersey lilt if I had to guess. A quick glance at his items on the counter and I saw birthday gift supplies. Not surprising, given the conversation the men were having.

“Belle deserves a great birthday after the winter she’s had.” The cashier finished ringing up the items on a manual cash register. Did this place even have internet? The giant handed over cash.

“Yeah, Mom’s making her a spaghetti birthday cake.”

“A what?” The cashier paused in counting out the man’s change to ask for clarification. I also had no idea what a spaghetti cake was.

“You heard me. I have no idea what my mother is doing or how she is going to do it, but she swore to Belle she would have her cake.”

The cashier seemed to ponder this for a moment. “I’m sorry I’ll miss that.”

“You’re invited, you know that.”

“I know and I appreciate the invitation, but I have a lot to do around here to get ready for spring.”

I looked around the store and did notice a mixture of winter and summer supplies. It must take a lot of time to switch things over with the seasons. Disney boasts that they can do it in one night, but I doubt the owner of this store has that much help.

The cashier reached under the counter and brought out a wrapped gift with a pink bow. “Tell her this is from Super Jack.”

Ah, Jack. As in Jack’s General Store . Good, I found the owner.

“Will do.” The giant took his purchases and the gift. “Thanks for everything, Jack.”

He nodded once. “You never have to thank me.”

The giant left, and I was alone in the store with Jack. I tried to look like I was examining a plaid shirt that was in front of me. I’d never be caught dead in plaid. Leather was more my style because it provided better protection.

Jack came around the counter. “You know, it’s not polite to eavesdrop, Josie.”

I froze. What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck.

I turned in time to see Jack lock the door and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. My hand went to my Glock at the small of my back. I did not like being locked in.

“Take it easy,” Jack brushed off my concern. “If I meant you any harm, I would have stopped you long before you arrived here.”

Before I’d arrived… What the fuck? Who was this guy? How did he know my name or that I would be here ?

He kept his hands in plain view as he approached me. The guy was probably in his sixties. I doubted he was a physical threat to me, but I knew well that there are a lot of other types of threats that most people didn’t see coming.

Something tickled in my brain. This conversation was far too similar to one I’d had years ago with… Oh fuck. I’m an idiot. Jack. Jackson. Art Jackson.

“Son of a bitch,” I breathed out. I dropped my hand from my gun but didn’t drop my guard. “ You’re Jackson?”

I’d never met the man in person. Only had a number that I called to leave a message that I needed to talk to him and then he’d call me back. Always from a different number that never traced back to the same location.

The man’s lips twitched like he was fighting a smile. “I was impressed with your investigation from the start. You cared more about the welfare of the children than you did the million dollars. I figure that’s the difference between you and the others, who are still chasing their tails.”

He tipped his head, indicating for me to follow him. While I wasn’t keen to follow him into an unknown room behind yet another door, I did appreciate that he walked in first and didn’t block my exit.

“I don’t understand. You’re Jackson? As in the man who runs a vigilante group that secretly hunts down murderers, rapists, and pedophiles?”

“I don’t like the word ‘vigilante’. It always makes me feel like I should be wearing tights and a cape—and believe me, you do not want to see me trying to fit this ass into a pair of tights.” He shuddered for effect.

Walking into the back room, I saw what appeared to be a standard stockroom for a grocery/convenience store. Jackson, or Jack, continued to the wall opposite the door we entered, and pulled the fire alarm.

Except, no alarm went off. Instead, a series of beeps occurred and then a hidden door sprang open. Jack took the time to put a chair in front of the door to hold it open. I assumed that was for my benefit, because it made no other sense to prop a secret door open. That kind of defeated the purpose of a secret door.

My jaw dropped as I walked into this room. Holy Mother of the Internet. Tony Stark would have an orgasm walking in here.

An entire array of monitors decorated the one wall. There was a single desk in the middle of the room, facing the monitors. I saw videos of intersections with cars passing through, what looked like a baby’s bedroom, the outdoor view of someone’s house from a door camera, some big shot’s office with the Chicago skyline, and so many more. He was monitoring all of these cameras? Why?

Jack pointed to the monitor of the baby’s room. “That baby was abducted from the hospital right after her birth. She was thankfully located but her kidnapper got away. When I heard about it, I hacked into the nanny-cam in her nursery in order to catch the perp if there was a second attempt.”

He pointed to what looked like a kids’ soccer game. “That’s the camera closest to the park with the clearest view of the playing field. There have been numerous reports of a strange man watching the toddler games. I plan to get a look at his face next time he shows so I can identify him and figure out why he’s stalking the park.”

Next was what I assumed to be a big shot’s office in Chicago. “Warren Barrington the Third has had six secretaries in four months. The last reported that he raped her in his office. While a rape kit and police report were made, both have mysteriously disappeared, along with the hospital records. Multiple sexual harassment reports have been made against him over the years and all have been dropped. I have a suspicion Claire Conrad was not the first woman he’s assaulted. One of my men snuck into the high rise and planted the camera in his office. It’s unfortunate that we have to wait for another attack, but, if one occurs, I’ll catch it and my men will take care of him.”

I didn’t know what take care of him meant but I could guess.

“This is…insane.” This wasn’t like Big Brother’s watching; this was like Creepy Uncle is watching and waiting for you to fuck up.

Jack sat down in his chair in front of the keyboard. Since all the monitors were on the wall, there wasn’t one on the desk too. Instead, it was just the keyboard, a notepad with a pen, and a picture of a little girl. It was an older picture from the hairstyle and clothing, maybe from the 90s or early 2000s. The girl was posing with a smile. School photo?

Jack typed into the keyboard. All but one monitor went blank. I was shocked to see myself on the screen. It was last week when I’d been at the CVS store getting the surveillance video. “It wasn’t until you led me here that I even knew he’d made a stop before exiting the city. He told me he’d gone straight to the motel. The man was clearly frazzled, and this stop likely skipped his memory of the events. I’ve deleted the video off the backup servers, but unfortunately you made a copy of the video. Did you show it to anyone?”

My eyes were stuck on myself. “You were following me?”

He spun around in his chair to face me. He seemed extremely calm. “I’ve been following all the heavy hitters who pose a threat to Mr. Greene and those children. You are the only one who figured out Gunther is lying to the police and media. Since I’ve planted enough false trails to keep the others busy, I know they will not become a problem. You, however, might be depending on what you did with the copy of the surveillance video.”

I swallowed hard. A problem that needed to be taken care of, like that CEO bastard who raped his secretary? My heart started thumping in my chest.

“Why bring me here? Why show me any of this? I could have asked you questions, and you remained anonymous. I never would have guessed Jack the General Store owner was Jackson my mysterious contact.”

Jack swiveled around in his chair again to face the keyboard. He typed in something else, and the monitor changed.

Again, it was a picture of me. This one was an actual picture though, not a video. I was in my military uniform surrounded by my squad of Devil Dogs. Good men, men who had lost their lives needlessly.

I both loved and hated that picture. It was one of two pictures I kept in my wallet as a constant reminder of how fleeting life could be.

“Josephine Gonzales, age thirty-eight. Single, never married. Born to Hector and Isabella Gonzales in San Jose, California. Parents were illegal immigrants. Your parents were caught and deported when you were seventeen and your sister was fifteen. Your parents could have taken you with them, but they begged Immigration to allow you to stay since your sister and you were born in this country. You were only months shy of eighteen. You received your emancipation status and took guardianship of your sister, Constance Gonzales, or Connie as you called her.”

The picture on the screen changed and I was faced with a picture of Connie and myself outside our school. It wasn’t a posed picture. In fact, we were in the background of the intended picture. But I knew this picture so well. I’d studied it for hours on end until I knew every pixel, line, and color.

It was the last picture ever taken of my sister Connie before her disappearance.

I had walked into our high school. She had said she was going to wait for a friend. I left to go to class. I left my sister outside our high school, alone and vulnerable.

Her friend Gabby claimed she never saw Connie outside the school and had gone inside, assuming that’s where Connie was too. Then the bell had rung, and it hadn’t been until lunchtime when I’d seen Gabby but not Connie at their usual table.

Connie had vanished into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again. I’d taken guardianship of my sister and I’d failed within months of accepting the responsibility.

A couple of days after her disappearance, a garbage man had called the police to report an unusual find. The police had collected Connie’s purse, backpack with her schoolbooks, and her bloody shirt, pants, and—worst of all—torn panties. Her body was never found.

I’d long ago accepted that Connie was dead. She’d died a horrible and gruesome death while I’d been sitting oblivious in math class. After graduation, I joined the Marines. I refused to ever be so helpless and powerless again.

And I hadn’t been…until that RPG that had taken out my squad. Three of us had survived the initial blast. One had succumbed to blood loss before the EVAC could reach us. The other had taken his own life after returning to the States. He’d been a triple-amputee. His wife had taken one look at him, turned, and never looked back. Rogers had signed the divorce papers before putting a bullet in his head.

So much pain. So much loss.

First my parents, then Connie, and then my squad.

I refused to cry at their memories though. I’d shed tears for each of them a long time ago. I was done crying.

“What does any of this have to do with my investigation to find the Gunther children?”

Jack turned back around to face me. “You and I first met when you were hunting an escaped pedophile six years ago. I came across your name before that, but that was the first time I ever reached out to you.” I remembered. I thought the call was a hoax before I’d figured out that the mystery man’s information was too accurate to be a prank call. “I realized then how similar you and I are. We hunt evil, not for money, but because they’re evil.”

I raised an eyebrow. I was a bounty hunter; I hunted the scum for money.

“You might receive a paycheck at the end of your job, true. But your resume is filled with rapists and murderers. You pass over the thieves and other white-collar criminals.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “So? I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Adam Greene, which by the way you lied to me about both times I called you. Clearly, you’ve been helping him.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “And what makes you think I would help a child abductor and pedophile?”

I paused. Jack wouldn’t help out a child abductor or a pedophile. He’d made a reputation out of hunting those scumbags. Hell, rumor had it that he even had a serial rapist murdered his first night in jail. Other rumors said that he had a secret prison where he held the criminals he caught and made them suffer, Hammurabi style. I wasn’t sure I believed either of those stories.

What I did believe was that he would not help someone who had abducted two children unless there was a damn good reason.

I let out a loud sigh. “Fuck. Greene’s innocent, isn’t he?”

“Of being a pedophile? Indubitably.”

“And you’re helping him hide like you help out the other victims who can’t get away otherwise.” Shit. There goes my million-dollar payday .

Jack’s lip twitched. “I help out anyone who needs it.”

“And you’re showing me all this because you want me to stop hunting Adam Greene?”

Jack bobbled his head side to side. “More of, take your investigation down another path that someone might also try to follow. Preferably if that someone has a badge.”

“I won’t tamper with or plant evidence,” I warned.

“Of course not. I’d never ask you to. I have others who can do that for me or,” he indicated to the computers behind him, “I do it myself.”

Jack was playing a dangerous game. I looked up at the computer monitors, the squares on the wall making me think of a chess board. I guess it wasn’t quite as dangerous when you could see the whole board.

“And if my investigation led me back to Sebastian Gunther…?”

Jack smiled. “Well, then, I certainly won’t stand in your way.”

I nodded. If Adam Greene was innocent, the man had a huge uphill battle to clear his name.

Still, I wasn’t one to take someone solely at their word. I liked evidence. And I wasn’t willing to risk those two children’s lives just on one man’s claim of innocence. I’d take my investigation back to Gunther. If that man had hurt either child, I’d make him pay. But I would find Adam Greene eventually too. Even if it was just to verify the kids were safe, I would find them.