Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 189782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 949(@200wpm)___ 759(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 189782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 949(@200wpm)___ 759(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
“Why did you return the flight logs and the book of Pushkin poems to Kodiak Island?” I grit my teeth.
“Your search went stale. I knew you would eventually look there and wanted to lead you to Alvis Duncan. Of course, I had to do it in a way that didn’t feel suspicious.” He pauses to squint at the illuminated chandelier over the table. “The blueprints for the cabin included instructions for the hydroelectric generator. I kept those instructions. That’s how I got the power back on.”
“Was it a missing circuit board?” Leo straightens.
“I’ll never tell.” He winks.
“Did you tell Sirena where to look for clues when we were searching Rurik’s estate?” I ask.
“I may have given her a little direction.”
That lying, traitorous bitch.
“Why did you tell her to seduce me?” I flex my hands.
“To test your loyalties. There’s something about you.” Rhett tips his head, studying all of us. “Something about the Strakh family that fascinates me. You’re resilient, faithful, and extraordinarily strong, physically and mentally. I tried to break you apart with Sirena’s propositions. I told her to seduce all of you.” He glances at her corpse. “She was a beautiful woman, yet none of you surrendered. Not a weak bone among you. It’s impressive.”
Jesus fucking Christ. He wants to be part of this family. I see it in his crazed eyes. Talk about hero worship. I get the feeling we’re here because he wants to take Denver’s place and rule over us in these fucking hills.
“How did you find the cabin?” I ask again.
“I searched for it, same as you. While you and Sirena spent months flying over the Interior, I told her where to look, taking you off course while I narrowed down the grid. I found it the week Denver died. I was here when Leonid and Kodiak dragged Denver’s body out into the tundra. I collected his remains the same day I pulled Wolf from the river.”
He goes on to boast about his bravery in the arctic climate and the difficulty in landing a bush plane in torrential snow.
“Wolf,” I say, cutting through his monologue. “Where has he been?”
He smiles. A twisted, self-satisfied smile that makes me want to saw his lips off his face with a dull knife. “That’s where Alvis Duncan fits in.”
My gaze shifts to the dead man across the table, and my stomach drops to my feet.
“That’s right.” Rhett pushes the gun against Frankie’s head. “When you went to Whittier to interrogate Alvis, he was holding Wolfson in an old outbuilding on another property not far away. I knew I could trust Alvis. He collected those flight logs for decades, took money from a Russian mobster, and never told a soul. He feared for his family, and I put that same fear in him when I left Wolf in his care for ten months. He and Thea fed Wolfson and kept him safe. They also held Denver’s body for me in one of their freezers.” His smile fades, replaced by something darker, more sinister. “He was a loose end. You know how it is. I had to deal with that when I collected Denver and Wolf.”
I want to roar, rage, leap across this table, and annihilate him. I can’t stay still. The chair feels like it’s confining me, suffocating me. I need to move, to act, to destroy.
I glance at Kody, and he meets my gaze, his expression broody and relaxed. But his eyes. The fire in them blazes with brutality.
“You’re insane.” I return to Rhett, my voice guttural. “You’ve done all this, killed all these people, for what? Some twisted sense of control? You think this makes you powerful?”
“It’s not about power. It’s about order. You and your family…you’re chaos. You make a mess of everything. Someone had to bring us all together.”
“Is that why we’re all here? To be together?” I feel lightheaded. Queasy. Anxious.
“If you’re willing.” Rhett turns his attention to Leo and Kody. “After I saved Wolf, I returned to check on you.”
“We saw you.” Leo hisses a breath past his teeth. “We built an SOS signal.”
“I know. But you were exactly where I wanted you. I went back to retrieve Monty. I was going to bring you all here. But I got sidetracked with the cardiac program at the hospital. It was my alibi for all the traveling, but I still had to run the damn thing.”
“So you just left us here to die?” Kody snarls.
“You didn’t die. You figured out how to fly. That really fucked up my plans.” Rhett takes a breath. “I didn’t expect Denver to warn you about me, either. That fucking riddle…it delayed this by five months. You locked down security and didn’t leave the island. And when you did, you were always surrounded by guards. I had to get creative.”
He knows about Denver’s riddle, our security, every detail of our lives because he’s been watching and listening through Frankie’s phone.