“Is this Walden’s place?”
“Used to be. He built a hunting cabin but told me once he never used it and was thinking about selling. That was years ago. So either Seabright bought it from him or he’s renting from whomever did.”
After the team took up position, Quincy on the southeast corner and Zee on the northwest, Sun and Levi took the stairs to the porch. Sun stood to one side, and knocked. When they got no response, she knocked again. “Sheriff’s office. We need to talk to Eli about his uncle. Is he in?”
Still nothing. She tested the doorknob. Despite having three dead bolts, the front door was unlocked. She glanced back at Levi in question.
He shook his head. “He’d never leave it unlocked.”
A tingling sensation raced up her spine. She drew her weapon and eased inside. Small for a house but rather large for a hunting cabin, the interior was bright and airy with finished walls and a loft on one side. Large windows allowed for natural light to filter in through the trees when it could and solid furnishings graced a corner here and there.
“Eli?” Sun said, crisscrossing one foot in front of the other, her duty weapon in both hands at her side. “Your uncle Keith has been injured. We just want to make sure you’re okay.”
She came to a small room under the loft. It was filled with the usual plethora of weapons one would expect to find in a hunter’s cabin, but it also had a TV and an Xbox that ran on a generator next to an outbuilding. There was also a small desk and a bookshelf lined with books. Fiction mostly, both kid and adult, but several textbooks as well on every subject from history and English to science and algebra.
“Has Seabright been homeschooling him?” Sun asked.
Levi’s expression would suggest he was just as surprised.
One of the books sat open on the desk with a pencil and notebook beside it. Elliot, or Eli, seemed to be working his way through Algebra Two. “Not bad,” Sun said, checking over his work.
Sun went to the back door and let Zee in. “Nothing, boss.”
“Thank you.” She turned to Quince as he entered.
He shook his head. “Not a sign of him.”
They did a quick survey of the rest of the cabin, then holstered their duty weapons.
Quincy lifted a pan. “It looks like they haven’t been here in days.”
“That’s a decoy,” Levi said.
Quincy raised it to show him. “It’s a pot of beans.”
He grinned. “A pot of decoy beans. It’s not real. It’s meant to throw anyone who might be looking for them off their trail. He was here this morning.”
Sun’s heart raced into overdrive. After all this time, could she really be this close to finding Elliot Kent? “How do you know?” she asked him.
He grabbed a toothbrush out of a small medicine cabinet in the bathroom and tossed it to her.
“It’s damp,” she said to Quince.
Quince took out an evidence bag, and she dropped it in. If nothing else, they could test the DNA, make sure it was Elliot.
Levi tested a towel hanging on a rack. “I’d say he’s only been gone a couple of hours.”
“Seabright’s good,” Zee said, inspecting the corner of the cabin where Eli clearly slept.
Sun noticed it was nearest the pellet stove, the best place to be in the winter, but between two windows to catch the cooling breeze in the summer. “Good in what way?”
“You said Eli was from Bisbee?” Zee asked Levi.
He nodded.
“See this?” She lifted an ashtray with the word Bisbee displayed across it, and Levi smiled knowingly.
“A decoy?” Sun asked.
She nodded. “A decoy.”
“How do you know?”
“Look at all of this stuff.” She gestured to the multitude of cheap keepsakes. “You would only find these at a travel center off the highway. Have you ever been to Bisbee? Nobody who’s actually from a town has this much dime-store crap on display. He’s no more from Bisbee than I’m from Mars.”
“I drove through there once,” Quincy said, helpfully. “Bisbee. Not Mars.” Again, helpful.
Sun was one step closer to finding the kid. Elliot Kent. She’d dreamed of him so often. Prayed he was okay even though statistically the odds were beyond astronomical.
“He could be watching us right now,” Levi said.
“You think?” Sun walked to a window that looked out over the mountainside. “Levi, he sent us a signal in the Quick-Mart. A clear cry for help. Why would he do that if he weren’t in danger?”
“If that were the case,” Quincy said, “why not just go to the sheriff’s station?”
Levi shook his head. “I don’t know, but something spooked him. He would never leave the door open.” He looked at her. “I can track him. But he probably took off on his dirt bike.”
“Thus, he’s long gone.”
“Right, but let’s think about this. Seabright and the kid came back out here after the run-in at the store.”
“Right,” Sun said. “Maybe Seabright brought him out here to keep him safe? Then he went back into town to try to figure out what was going on? That man tried to stab him outside the store. He had to know it wasn’t random.”
Levi nodded. “That’s why he was being so hypervigilant. He knew someone was after him.”
“He knew there was a hit out on him,” Quincy said.
Sun chewed her lower lip. “If that’s true, why wasn’t he carrying that night?”
“No firearms inside of any business that serves alcohol,” Levi said, eyeing her like she’d lost her mind. “No exceptions. I thought you knew the law.”
“I am well aware of the law, but then why go into the bar in the first place? If he couldn’t carry a weapon inside?”
Levi dropped his gaze and cursed under his breath. “He needed to talk to me. Son of a bitch. If I’d known … I was outside …talking to another patron.”
“Ah, yes. Crystal.” Only according to Crystal, there wasn’t a lot of talking going on.
He cast her a curious glance. “Yes. She was talking about her boyfriend. And she asked me for a job.”
“Classic. So, you’re a counselor, too?”
“All bartenders are counselors.”
“In all the years your family has owned that bar, I have never once seen you tend bar.”
“Because you’ve been in there so often,” he said, his words dripping with sarcasm.
Quincy lifted a serrated hunting knife. “You said Seabright headed back to his truck before he got to talk to you?”
“Yes,” Levi said. “He probably knew he’d been drugged.”
She turned to her team. “I need to get to Santa Fe and talk to Elliot’s mother personally.” She looked at Levi. “Can you give them a lift and I’ll take your cruiser, Quince?”
“I’ll take you,” Levi said.
Quince looked at her askance. She nodded in agreement, so he asked, “Should we call in a team to process this place?”
“Not just yet. Let’s try to get Eli to come to us first.” She sat at his desk, ripped a page out of his notebook, and began a letter. “But just to be safe, try to get some fingerprints and a DNA sample.”