North by Northeast Read online

  North by Northeast

  By Cherime MacFarlane

  Copyright  2013 Cherime MacFarlane

  Copyright Notice:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events or locales is completely coincidental.

  Author's Note: Hyder really does exist. It is worth the side trip to Stewart B.C. over Bear Pass. Be sure to count the bears that you will see in broad daylight.

  Amazon Edition, license notes:

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedicated to:

  The man who dropped everything to rescue me.

  Artwork: Cherime MacFarlane

  "Lori MacGrough?" The knocking on the door sounded again drawing her out of the Walkman into reality.

  "I didn't order anything!" She mumbled while draping the headphones around her neck. The sketchpad slapped down on the coffee table as Lori unfolded her legs out from under her. She decided to open the door to get rid of the unwanted interruption.

  "Yes?" She turned the handle and looked past the crack to the hallway. Everything went black as a cloth covered her head.

  "Hamish!" Lori cried out for her husband as something sharp, a needle, pricked her arm. Blackness replaced consciousness. A drawing pencil fell from her fingers to roll under the couch.

  Two men stuffed the now unconscious woman into a large garment bag. The first man opened the door. He checked the corridor quickly, not really expecting to see anyone. At close to 3:00 a.m., the possibility of encountering another individual was small. The plan had unfolded as expected.

  One man carried her down the stairs and tossed the unconscious woman into the interior of a van. Then he got inside with the drugged woman and slammed the sliding door shut. The other man opened the driver's door, got in, started the van and drove away.

  No one in the Seattle hotel saw anything. Lori MacGrough disappeared into the dark, rain-soaked Seattle night.

  The rocking motion she woke to caused nausea to engulf her. Lori sat up and the throbbing in her head intensified. When she rolled her tongue around in her mouth, the taste reminded her of the morning after a Glasgow pub crawl. Between the horrid taste in her mouth and nausea, Lori was sure it would be a long time before anything stayed in her stomach.

  The morning sickness might be manageable if she was on solid ground, back in the hotel. The random rocking motion made matters worse. Her entire body rebelled when a particularly violent roll bounced her around.

  As Lori tried to move, she discovered her right wrist weighted down by something. Turning on her side, Lori encountered a chain draped over the inside of her arm. A hard metal ring on her wrist told her something quite bad had happened to her.

  "Damn it," Lori moaned.

  She had been incredibly stupid. Hamish had warned her to be careful. Her husband tried to explain she had become a celebrity on two counts. First in her own right as a popular artist and second as his wife.

  Too busy with planning this new show and finishing up a commission, she’d ignored what he was saying. In their own little world in the glen, she didn't see the need. He’d made her promise to be careful. But opening her hotel door to strangers at 3:00 a.m. could hardly be termed careful.

  She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Lori encountered something hard at the edge of the mattress. Her fingers told her it was part of the bed. She sat quietly and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Assessing her situation was necessary.

  There was hardly any light, but she could make out the handcuffs which encircled her wrist. Only one part of the handcuffs rode on her wrist. The other cuff went through a link in a piece of chain. Above her head, a large ring held the other end of the chain. The bolt portion of the ring appeared to go through the wall.

  When the floor beneath her feet suddenly listed heavily, she sucked in a breath. A sharp jolt at the end of the violent roll slammed the thing she was contained in against something on the other side of the wall. Her stomach roiled, and Lori involuntarily spewed vomit on the floor beside the bed. At the last second, she managed to turn her head, so the puke landed elsewhere. If she fouled the bed she sat on, it would be far worse to deal with.

  A door opened at the foot of the bed. A young man stared at her for a moment. "Jesus H. Christ! What tha fuck? I'm out of here!"

  Lori wondered why he’d opened the door. His face looked pale in the half-light, and fear twisted his features. She wondered what he was afraid of. Again the motion threw her to the side.

  She had to be on a boat. That answered one question. She was on a ship that appeared to be moored somewhere. The motion as it rolled against the pier got worse, without any pattern to it. In a marina, when other boats went by, the one she sat in jerked and rolled. With every roll, she heaved up her guts.

  With a moan, Lori looked around. On a table with a ledge around it to keep things from slipping off sat a carafe and glass. Lori hoped the metal container held water. She had to put something in her stomach to have something to vomit. Dry heaves might harm the child she was confident she carried.

  She hoped whoever her kidnappers might be, they would make the ransom demand quickly. She wanted to go home to Hamish. He didn't know she was pregnant. A thought slipped into her mind: perhaps his ignorance was for the best. What if they took the money and killed her anyway? It would devastate Hamish if he found out he lost her and the baby.

  "Oh God! Please, get me out of this!" she prayed.

  With both hands, she poured a small amount of water into the glass. Lori did get a sip down before she found herself retching. She wouldn't tell her captors of her condition. It might make everything worse and give them another way to torment her. She would let them think she got violently seasick.

  Lori took a few small sips of water before lying back down on the bed. If she kept on vomiting it might cause a miscarriage anyway. Never in her life had she been so sick.

  ***

  Elden ran up the dock. He wanted to get as far away from the Sunny Day as possible. The big schooner lay moored at the end of the last dock. Its draft was too deep to allow it to tie up in a slip. Day didn't care about the extra charge for the big berth. The bastard had enough money for the additional fees.

  The creep didn't give a damn about much. He wanted to be at the end of the dock; it was the best place in the marina to be if you kidnapped people for fun. The far end was away from the other boats and unless you had business on the schooner, you didn't have a reason to walk that far out.

  The ship avoided unwanted attention there. Not to mention, being on the end of the pier afforded a quick getaway. Cast the lines off, and the Sunny Day slipped away off into the ocean.

  The rain-soaked dock was slightly slippery, which caused Elden to stumble. He righted himself by pushing against a small skiff which leaned against a storage shed. Elden tugged his jacket up to shield his head from the pouring rain. Up in the parking lot, the young man looked around.

  A taxi sat at one end of the empty parking area. Elden stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled. The driver saw him and put the cab into gear, swinging around to pick up his fare.

  Elden hopped into the front seat as he hurriedly rattled off the address to the driver. Right at this moment, the
only place Elden could go was to his mother's apartment. He wouldn't be able to stay there long. Nor could he tell his mother where he planned to go. Jerry Day would be after him once his defection became apparent.

  Where to go from there was another question. He had to have a minute to think. Something would come to him. It had to. If he didn't find a bolt-hole quickly, Day would make sure he didn't get an opportunity to escape. His boss would have him killed. Elden hoped his mother would be okay once he left.

  He tried to recall exactly what he entered on the employment application. At the time, he was fighting with his mother again. A vague memory of putting his girlfriend's address down flitted across his mind. They split up shortly after he got hired, and both of them moved on. She was probably in the clear. Now to figure out how to get his own ass out of this particular sling.

  ***

  The old man under the boat woke immediately when the skiff wobbled, threatening to overturn on him. Someone had bumped into it hard. He lay curled up under the shelter of the boat with a tarp wrapped around him. Lousy Seattle weather. The whistle almost made him jump out of his skin. A car came to a stop and picked up the person who’d come so close to ruining his night.

  It seemed the individual was a relatively young man and was taking a taxi. The old man listened to the address and sighed. He recalled the place. It was an old apartment building in White Center. Years ago a guy he knew, a fisherman, lived there. At the time, he had enough money to have a dry place to sleep. The old man wiggled in the sleeping bag and tried to get comfortable again. He needed to catch a couple more hours before the marina came to life. At least the skiff hadn't fallen on him.

  ***

  Hamish hated missing Lori's phone call. When he played the recording back, she sounded happy, upbeat, riding the euphoria of a successful show. Nothing pleased his wife more than seeing her work find good homes.

  Again, Hamish wished he had gone with her. With headphones on, he was busy laying down a bass track and missed her call when it came in. The music in the headphones kept him from hearing the phone ring. Nor had he seen the light blinking.

  Keeping watch for the red light in the office while concentrating, constituted a chore. If the piece Hamish was working on was particularly difficult, he often failed to hear the ringing. The flashing red light had been installed to alert him to an incoming call.

  Maybe I need a big bleeding gong! He thought. Hamish didn't dare install a dinner plate-sized flashing light. Lori would have his hide each time the thing went off. Most of the time sharing a studio with her went smoothly. He enjoyed being in the same room with his wife.

  But two drawbacks did emerge. Her dislike of large flashing lights, accompanied by Klaxon horns to alert him to incoming calls, was one. The other was her insistence that he answer the phone.

  She said the majority of the calls were for him, and she didn't want to be disturbed. He would let the bloody thing go to the recorder, but the light and noise distracted her. To continue to be allowed to share studio space with Lori, he would answer the thing.

  As things appeared to be going well in Seattle, his wife would be a happy woman when she returned. Hamish missed her terribly and wanted her home. A glance at the clock on the wall and a quick calculation had him shaking his head. With eight hours between the MacGrough glen and Seattle, she should be sleeping. He didn't want to wake her.

  Turning from the phone, he decided to leave the message on the recorder for the moment. Leaving the office and combination control booth to walk back into the studio, Hamish thought about Lori. After walking past the keyboard where he had been working, he went to stand in front of the piano.

  He hated it when Lori went off alone, but she would be home in a few more days. A song by Bill Withers, Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone, slipped into his thoughts.

  It expressed his feelings about Lori. Everything in his world would brighten when he picked her up at the airport. Hamish planned to take her out for dinner before he brought her home.

  Lori would probably be wired and exhausted all at the same time. Nasty combination, and one he understood all too well. The only good thing about it would be the sex; it would be grand and last for a while. It was the only way either of them knew to take the edge off.

  Thinking about making love with Lori always produced the same result, his groin filled with heat. But since she wasn't available to take the brunt of it, it wasn't a good idea at the moment.

  "Ah, well, nae help for it." With a laugh at himself, H.M., Heavy Metal MacGrough, former keyboard player for the band Bushmaster, ran the fingers of his right hand over the keys of his old upright. In no mood for the piano, he looked around his portion of the studio.

  A glance over his shoulder brought the electric keyboard into view. It drew Hamish toward it. With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Hamish seated himself. The mixing project he had been engrossed in no longer appealed. Now, he wanted to play. He switched on the board, adjusted the volume, and selected a sound.

  For some reason, he found himself playing the keyboard in bagpipe mode. The skirl, the reverberation, pulled him into the sound. In his mind, Hamish saw the glen as it had been hundreds of years ago, when the bagpipes called his kin to battle.

  The rush of adrenaline, combined with the hope and fear his ancestors must have experienced, took hold of Hamish. The pipes called to his blood in a way he had no explanation for. Then the tune changed.

  "Bloody hell!" Hamish pulled his lean fingers away from the keys abruptly. That damn fecking lament again!

  The black hair on the back of his neck rose. Goose flesh skittered across his forearms. His mother had called it the sight. When it came to Hamish, there was no "sight" to it, it was all feel. A wicked something had caught his scent. The certainty of it churned in his stomach. His gut burned with anxiety.

  "Aw, God preserve us!" Hamish stood with a rush which nearly knocked the keyboard over. The keyboard and its stand rocked slightly as he backed away from it. With a muttered curse, Hamish rushed into the office and jerked up the phone's handset. Regardless of the time, 3:00 a.m. in Seattle or not, he needed to hear her voice. He had to call Lori.

  The front desk of the hotel put his call through. The ringing on the other end went on and on. Hamish gently put the receiver down.

  Either she had the tape player and headphones on and was drawing, or she was asleep. Later, he would try again.

  When she did not answer his second call at 8:00 a.m., or the one placed at 1:00 p.m. Seattle time, Hamish vacillated between two alternatives.

  He wanted to charter a jet for a mad dash to Seattle. While pacing the floor, Hamish cursed. If he did as his gut told him to and everything was as it should be, Lori would come undone all over him. She hated it when he got too protective. The goose skin again crawled along his forearms.

  "Shite! Fecking bloody hell! I'm gontae explode here! Sweet Jaysus, Mary and Joseph! Answer the feckin bloody phone, woman!"

  As he ranted, Hamish paced around the office. He stayed well away from the keyboard in the studio. It wasn't logical or reasonable. Why did he always let the sight shite unnerve him? Unable to answer the question, he had to acknowledge something inside screamed a warning.

  "Mayhap I'm just losing me bloody wits," the Scotsman muttered as he paced behind the big sound board. The keyboard drew his glance again. He refused to touch the miserable thing. The lament played on in his head. If he touched the keys, he would play it again. He dare not go near the thing. One leg of the track he paced into the carpet brought him closer to the phone.

  Try ringing her again, Hamish told himself.

  As he reached for it, the phone went off. Hamish jumped back with a curse before lunging forward to grab the handset.

  "Mr. MacGrough?"

  "Aye. What?" Hamish growled into the speaker. He couldn't help it. The woman on the other end of the line was not Lori.

  "SeaSide Gallery here. Mrs. MacGrough planned to meet an important client for lunch. But we can't reac
h her. She doesn't answer her phone. No one at the hotel has seen her. She hasn't ordered room service and..."

  "When did ye close tha show yesterday?" Hamish cut the young woman off.

  "The last client left at 10:00 p.m. Her limo dropped her off at the hotel by 11:00 p.m."

  "Call tha bleeding polis. Something verra bad has happened. I'll be there as soon as I can."

  "But Mr. MacGrough..."

  "Bleedin hell! What, woman?" he shouted into the phone.

  The girl on the end of the line burst into tears. "Who are the polis?"

  "Fecking coppers. Call tha shites! Have them do ah welfare check on her. Go on now, get off tha line."

  He dialed Warren Hale, his business partner in WarLoch productions, immediately. Hale hadn't left for the office yet, and Hamish caught his partner at home.

  "Hello, Hamish, how..."

  "We've nae time for pleasantries. Lori has disappeared from Seattle. There's nae ransom demand. Ye ken what it means, Warren?"

  "Unfortunately, yes. How long?"

  "Tae long. They dropped her off yesterday at 11:00 p.m. Somethin is horribly wrong. I got tha bleedin lament again. Tha bloody feckin lament, tha one I got before Vince's death."

  Hamish never quite understood what drove him when it got like this. But he stopped fighting and went with the ache in his gut. On an extended play in his head, the lament refused to be ignored. "I'm chartering ah jet. Told tha gallery tae call tha feckin coppers. I'll need tae go there first."

  A question slid into his mind. "Have any other artists gone missin? Has anything of that nature been in tha media? Do ye ken?"

  "I can't say I keep close tabs on the art scene," Warren replied. "But I don't recall seeing anything in the papers regarding artists disappearing."