Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(91)

That’s when it all went ka-pow crazy.

Darden scooped up the bundle, cradled it against his body, and suddenly screamed. “It’s not her!” His voice rose up in a pitiful wail. “It’s just a rolled-up blanket!”

“Dear Lord,” Afton cried.

At the same instant, a volley of shots exploded from beneath the bridge. Thacker’s sharpshooters were firing at the snowmobiler, the shots seeming to come from inside one of the caves as well as from a tangle of brush down near the riverbank.

Afton saw the snowmobiler swerve wildly, trying to take evasive action and escape the bullets that were intended to bring him down. As loud pops continued to ring out, the snowmobiler changed course and went screaming down the steep riverbank. Seconds later, he skittered out onto the flat, dull gray ice of the Mississippi River.

“He’s on the river,” Max shouted.

The snowmobiler was really pouring it on. Zigzagging back and forth, pushing his snowmobile’s engine to the max.

He’d almost made it to the middle of the frozen river and Afton was starting to wonder what his escape strategy would be. Head down the river in the direction from which he’d come? Run straight across and ditch the machine on the opposite bank? Make a run for it and try to get swallowed up by the city? If she could keep the snowmobiler in her sights, she knew it would be a tremendous help to all the law enforcement personnel that had to be converging on the area right now.

All of a sudden there was another crack—a sound not quite as loud as a rifle shot but even more ominous.

“The ice,” Afton said, pointing. “The river’s not completely frozen over in the middle. Look there, it’s breaking up.”

“Must be a fast current,” Max said. “So only a thin skim of ice was able to form.”

Afton and Max watched as the snowmobiler throttled back. The ice was obviously unstable and he was struggling to find a safer route.

An enormous hunk of ice broke loose and suddenly jutted up like a slippery on-ramp. Jagged and dangerous looking, the piece of ice looked like an enormous broken windowpane.

The snowmobiler, far from being an expert with his sled, wobbled slightly as he tried to change direction yet again.

The slowing down was what did it, of course. A snowmobile running at top speed can practically skip across open water. But a hint of hesitation and it suddenly becomes a heavy piece of machinery, subject to the whims and principles of thin ice and basic gravity.

Two more enormous jagged cracks yawned open. Then an entire network of cracks, almost like a spider’s web, spun out from around the snowmobile. The snowmobiler gunned his sled left in a last-ditch effort to save himself.

But it was too late.

From up above, from their bird’s-eye perch on the High Bridge, Afton and Max watched in horror as the ice parted and a gaping black hole appeared. The snowmobile’s skids teetered for one long moment on a snaggle-toothed shard of floating ice, and then it plunged into the dark water.

The snowmobiler sank to his waist in the freezing water. Clearly having abandoned his sled and the duffel bag filled with ransom money, he struggled and paddled desperately amid a froth of bubbles. As hypothermia quickly set in, his arm motions slowed to a pathetic pace and he sank to his neck. Now only his round snowmobile helmet appeared to float on the surface like a dark bubble. He hovered there for another thirty seconds and then, with nary a sound or cry, disappeared completely.


*

BY the time Afton and Max raced back to their car and careened down the bluff, the scene had evolved into chaos. Thacker and Jasper were in the epicenter, shouting at a dozen officers, screaming into their radios.

“Now. Now!” Thacker cried. “Send a helo down the river to see if they can spot any sort of vehicle with a trailer. Our guy had to park and unload his snowmobile somewhere in the area.” His eyes flicked across Afton and Max. “And get hold of the cops in Lilydale and Mendota. Shake ’em out of bed if you have to. I want a full-court press on this. Saint Paul PD is jumping in, too.”

“If we can locate the vehicle,” Max said to Afton, “we can trace the registration and ID the kidnapper.”

Thacker continued to scream into his police radio. “Yes, check marinas. Especially check marinas. I don’t care if they’re closed. This shitbird had to park somewhere.”

Sirens blasted and bright lights split the night as two enormous trucks thundered in. Saint Paul’s Fire and Rescue Squad. A dozen men jumped down, manning ladders, ropes, and long poles with barbed hooks on the end so they could fish around in the murky water. Two men scrambled to pull on dry suits. It was the same frantic scene that was repeated dozens of times all over the frozen Midwest whenever a car, person, or snowmobile plunged through the ice.

“You think they can find the kidnapper?” Afton asked. “Pull him out?”

“If it even was the kidnapper,” Thacker snapped as he came over to join them. He was hopping up and down, stomping his feet against the relentless cold. “For all we know, this snowmobile guy could’ve been a phony who was hell-bent on collecting the ransom money.”

“He’d have to have some pretty decent inside information,” Afton said.

Thacker grimaced as a TV van humped its way toward them. “It happens.”

“Maybe this guy was just the errand boy,” Max said. “Hired by the kidnapper.”