Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
After two months of combing the Alaskan tundra for my unhinged brother, a Turbo Beaver, a hydroelectric log cabin, or anything that might lead me to Frankie, I’m hollowed out.
I would be in the skies right now, flying over the next grid, but a major fucking winter storm stands in my way. The deadly blizzard is moving across the Interior to the hills north and east of Fairbanks.
Not even I can fly in that.
So I’m grounded in Anchorage until it passes, a prisoner in my hotel suite, surrounded by luxury and consumed by restlessness.
I pace worn tracks into the plush carpet, my gaze frequently drawn to the expansive windows. The postcard views of downtown Anchorage, Cook Inlet, and the Chugach Mountains are buried under snow, offering no solace.
My mind races, haunted by unanswered questions and gnawing fear.
The revelation that Denver still breathes after three decades is a torment on its own. But the possibility that my wife has fallen into his twisted, depraved hands? That she could’ve given birth to my child while at the mercy of such malevolence?
It’s more than I can bear.
It guts me with talons of pure, paralyzing dread. It’s an agony that eclipses all others, a horror so visceral it permeates my every waking moment and preys upon my rare attempts to sleep.
Nights are the worst. The darkness amplifies my fears, turning the shadows into ghosts of my soulless brother. I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, envisioning nightmare scenarios that leave my heart racing and my body slick with a cold sweat.
Sleep, if it claims me, is fractured and fraught with visions of Frankie’s fear, her pain, her calling out for me in a place where I can’t reach her.
The dawn brings no relief, only the harsh light of day and the return to a reality where she’s still missing.
She was one to two months pregnant when she took that test the morning of her disappearance.
Nine months ago.
Wilson, my head investigator outside of Alaska, checked every birth center in the country for patients matching Frankie’s description.
Another dead end.
I’m a shell of myself, driven only by the singular obsession to find her, to bring her back to the safety of my arms.
Food has lost all taste, becoming a chore that I force down, if I remember to eat at all.
Work, once my domain of ambition and power, is now a distant, meaningless endeavor. My desk is piled with tasks left untouched, emails unanswered, calls unreturned.
Doesn’t matter. News of my brother’s crimes spread far and wide, dragging my name through his filth.
I shut it all out.
My world has narrowed to one purpose, and every minute is consumed with the search.
I pore over maps, cross off grids, chase down leads, interrogate sources, anything that might bring me a step closer to Frankie.
Every instinct screams that Denver’s the linchpin in her disappearance. Maybe Kaya’s, too.
But I don’t have proof.
The bank account he set up for Alvis Duncan is untraceable. Just like my father’s offshore accounts.
Without solid evidence, like the location of that goddamn cabin, my hands are tied.
Winter in the Arctic Circle is brutal. On days when the pilots of my search parties won’t fly, claiming the risk is too great, the weather too unpredictable, I turn to my own plane and fly alone, battling the elements and continuing the operation.
Using what we learned from Alvis Duncan, we narrowed the search to the region between Whittier and the North Slope Borough. That’s two hundred thousand square miles of wild, sprawling wilderness.
We’re looking for a needle in an area that’s larger than the entire state of California.
The constant raging storms make the effort infuriatingly more challenging.
Like today.
Where the search parties see a blizzard with insurmountable risk, I see a day slipping away, another day without Frankie.
Waiting is not an option.
Yet here I am, doing exactly that, because not even the most experienced pilots can fly in this storm.
I turn back to my maps, the marked-up pages spread across the table. My eyes ache from strain, my body tense from constant stress, leaving me frayed at the edges, operating on a razor-thin margin between determination and despair.
“Where are you, my beautiful girl?”
With each sweep of the land, each grid I mark off, I feel a step closer to finding her, to unraveling the mystery that has decimated my life.
She’s out there, somewhere, and I’ll move heaven and hell to find her.
A sudden knock on the door shatters the monotonous thrum of my thoughts.
I find Sirena on the other side, her appearance a rare interruption to the solitude I’ve cloistered myself in.
She stands in the hallway, her phone clutched tightly, and her back stiff as a board. The usual glimmer in her eye, the one that hints at crafty flirtation, is gone.
“Monty.” Her voice trembles slightly. “I just got word of a plane crash. A small turboprop outside of Fairbanks.”