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)
So we handled it quietly. I convinced him to enlist one of his hitmen, to make it clean and quick.
Denver disappeared a month later. My father assured me it was done, and that was the end of my relationship with my parents.
For ten years, they blamed me for forcing them to murder their son.
They despised me until the day they died.
But Rurik Strakh lied to me.
Rather than removing my depraved brother from the planet, he protected him. He built an off-grid cabin, isolated Denver from the world, or at the very least, kept him on a short leash by monitoring his comings and goings through Alvis Duncan.
He fucking hid this from me.
How often did he visit Denver? Did they spend holidays and vacations together?
Were my parents visiting him the day they died?
My hands fumble for the logbook, flipping through the pages, searching, scouring, my mind spinning, and my chest aching so badly I can’t breathe.
There.
The date of their deaths.
Denver was here. Right fucking here in Whittier the day they died.
Did he tinker with the engine and cause their plane to crash? He’s capable of that. He has no emotion or compassion yet every bit of the mechanical aptitude to make it look like an accident.
But what would’ve been the motivation?
“You said you’ve worked for Denver for twenty-five years.” I glance up at the man beside me, who appears to be stunned into silence. “Who flew the Beaver before him?”
“It’s always been him. But for the first decade or so, he was just a job, someone I kept tabs on. I reported his flight schedule to your father’s men and didn’t interact with him. He was young and quiet, kept to himself, didn’t ask for nothing.”
“When did that change?”
“About twenty-five years ago. He started paying me to gather supplies for him. Hard to find things. Rich folk stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Designer outerwear. Crystal dishes. Rare and exotic foods.” He heaves a sigh. “If Rurik Strakh died twenty-five years ago, why did his men keep coming? They collected my flight logs for years after. Doesn’t make sense.”
“They must’ve been under contract with my father. When the contracts expired, they were no longer indebted to him. Does Denver know about the flight logs?”
“Yeah, he knows. But we’ve never talked about it.”
I wonder if those logs kept him in check, if they kept him from hunting his favorite prey.
Children.
My soul recoils, cornered by unspeakable memories. “What kept him from flying to other towns, other ports?”
“Nothing, I suppose. But the Hobbs meter makes him liable. You know what that is?”
“Yes. Denver and I got our pilot licenses at age seventeen. But the meter can be manipulated, much like an odometer on a car.”
“Sure. If he runs the engine without leaving the ground, it puts more time on the clock and makes it look like he went farther than he actually did. But he can’t reverse the hours without tampering with the meter itself. I check the mechanism every time he arrives and log the hours.” He points at the entries in the logbook. “I would know if the meter was tampered with. It never is. And according to the logged hours, he’s never flown that plane longer than four hours in each direction.”
“That means he’s not flying anywhere but here.”
“That’s what I reckon.”
“That also means he lives four hours from this location.”
“Give or take, depending on the payload and the speed he sets. Unless he’s letting the engine idle and running up the hours. It’s not a reliable gauge to estimate distance.”
I leaf through the pages of the logbook, noting that the flights average about five times a year. “Why did you continue to log his flights after my father’s men stopped coming for them?”
“You were right about the threats. I got a daughter and grandchildren in Fairbanks. Those men told me to keep the logs until the day I died. If I stopped, they would kill my family. That was the deal.”
“And you agreed to it?”
“I was a young, naive man when they first approached me. Offered money when I didn’t have any. The threats came later.”
The tread of Sirena’s footsteps draws our attention to the door.
“Detectives are driving in from Anchorage.” She heads straight toward me and rests a hand on my arm. “You doing okay?”
No. I’m far from okay.
Denver is alive.
I’m drowning in a canyon of disbelief, where shadows whisper truths too monstrous to bear, and every beat of my heart is a drum of horror and dread.
I’ve seen first-hand what Denver is capable of, and he was only eighteen then.
At age forty-eight, what kind of monster has he become?
He has a brilliant mind, understands the mechanics of things, including people. He can outsmart and out-manipulate the sharpest, strongest person. And he does it without mercy or feeling.
There’s no limit to the depth of his evil.