One too much, one missing and spot on

Chapter 1

Ed Brown was drowning. He needed some air urgently. He tried to fight his way back from the bottom of the sea to the surface, but his lungs seemed to burst. When his head finally broke through the surface of the water he gasped for breath. Agony threatened to rob his conscience. It was a nightmare.

He knew it was a nightmare, he had dreamed it a hundred times since 1973, when Ted Ollinger had been murdered and Ironside had sent him out to find out what had happened to him. The murderer had tried to get him out of the way as well. But it wasn't 1973 anymore, and Ed wasn't Ironside's assistant anymore. He was now working for the Denver police, and more importantly: he was Eve Whitfield Brown's husband. He would never understand why she had agreed to marry him, but she had made him the happiest man on earth. They had adopted a wonderful, though very special boy, Danny. Life was perfect. Ed didn't know why such nightmares from former times kept haunting him. And he didn't understand why the agony felt so real... and why something about the nightmare was different this time. The hands he was seeing blurrily in front of his eyes weren't the ones of a young fellow, but the sinewy ones of a middle-aged man. He wasn't clinging to a pier now. It was a tree stump. This was all wrong.

This wasn't a nightmare... It was reality!

Where in blazes was he?

Slowly sense was flooding back into his brain. A fight. Two men. Only for a moment he'd been able to defend himself against one of them, and even then just barely. Then the other one had come from behind. He'd hit him in his back with a thick tree branch, right where his back had been broken a long time ago. The pain had almost made him lose consciousness. Then he'd been pushed over the edge of the rocks, down into the lake. But why had he been there in the first place...?

He and Eve had taken a night and a day off and had gone for a long, wonderful hiking tour. It was one of these rare days where time should be frozen for a year or two. They had soaked up the beauty of nature like sponges, and he had felt that it must be possible to escape the office every now and then.

They had almost been back to the car when the two men had assaulted them. Eve had tried to fight one of them, but the man had pushed her away like a doll...

Eve! What had they done to her? Oh, Lord, please... not Eve! Frantically he looked around. Although his vision started to clear he couldn't see her. If she had been knocked out and thrown down the slope like him she could not be far away. Ed filled his hurting lungs with as much air as possible and started to dive. He plunged into the water again and again. And again. And again.

At one point he found himself lying on the lakeshore, unable to move. He refused to give up. He wanted to stand up and continue searching, but his limbs just didn't obey him. For a long time he lay there, panting, angry at himself, but unable to move.

After what seemed to be an eternity he managed to get up. His wet shirt and jeans were clinging to his body and he felt very cold. He glanced at his watch. It was still working – it was a good Swiss watch, Eve's wedding present to him. It showed 4.30 pm. At least an hour must have passed since the two masked men had attacked them.

Ed threw a last glance around. Since Eve's body had not shown up until now chances were intact that she wasn't here. There was room for hope, although he had to assume that if she wasn't here she was lying somewhere in the woods – or had been abducted.

He looked for a possibility to climb up to the road. In a big detour he reached the spot where they had been assaulted. He searched the area thoroughly. It hadn't rained for over two weeks, therefore the soil was hard and didn't show any traces. None whatsoever. Where was the backpack they had somehow torn off his back? He only found the tree branch he'd probably been hit with. Slowly he advanced to where he had parked his car that morning. It wasn't there anymore. Again – no traces, neither of his car nor of a second one.

Eve, my dear Eve – where are you?

It was getting dark. He wouldn't accomplish anything alone here. He had to get help. Put out an APB on his car. Get the entire police machinery going. As if it weren't his beloved wife, but just any missing person.

He started to walk downwards, towards Denver, wondering why he and Eve had been bushwhacked in the first place.

He would not get home on foot, since it was almost 100 miles away. He would have to find someone with a car or at least a phone.

"I need to talk to Chief Ironside."

Katherine Ironside stared at the phone, bewildered. There was no greeting, no name, just a strange voice – a child's voice, but somehow flat...

"Robert! Somebody wants to talk to you! It may be Eve's and Ed's son."

Ironside picked up the handset. "Danny, is that you?"

"Yes. You have to come."

Ironside didn't laugh. He probably would have at such a request from any other child, but with Danny it was different. He was autistic. He would have trouble to word what was on his mind. Although his voice sounded emotionless, Ironside sensed that he was shaken. Ironside would have to talk to him in short, precise sentences, if he wanted to find out what was bothering him.

"I understand. Please tell me why you need me."

"My parents are missing."

"I see. You are not alone, are you?" Danny was only twelve years old.

"No, Suzanne is babysitting me."

"Does she know that your parents are missing?"

"No."

Ah, that was interesting. Suzanne Dwyer, Eve's daughter from her first marriage, had been expelled from the police academy because of her alcohol abuse, but she still worked in the police department - as far away from Ed as possible, to avoid any suspicion of nepotism. She was smarter than most police officers. Was the boy imagining things? Maybe, but there had to be something wrong. Ironside knew how much Danny hated phone calls. He would not have called him if he weren't really upset.

"Why do you believe it?"

"Daddy promised me they would be back by 6 p.m. It's 6.30."

So Danny expected him to fly to Denver because his parents were thirty minutes late!

"Where did they go?"

"They went on a hiking tour in Rocky Mountain National Park."

"Don't you think they may just be a little late?"

"You know my dad. He would never let me down."

That was true. Ed knew how important agreements were for his son. He had a car phone. He would have phoned if they were just late. Of course there were still lots of harmless possibilities why they might be late and unable to call Danny. It would have been unreasonable to drop everything and travel to Denver.

"Listen, Sonoma is quite far away from Denver, and it's expensive to fly to you. Let's find another possibility to find your ..."

He was interrupted, "Suzanne is coming back. I have to hang up."