Read The Hunted for Free Online

another woman?”
    “An affair, yes, ma’am. We get a lot of missing persons around these parts, and other than the occasional skier or backpacker in the mountains getting lost over the side of the road in a snowdrift or some such problem like that, it’s a man doing something with a woman on the side.”
    Lauren sat there, trying to decide if she should be angry with the deputy or give serious credence to what he was saying. “Michael wouldn’t do that to me.”
    “Is it possible he just up and left, walked away from some kind of stressful situation? ‘Cause that’s also a major reason—”
    “No,” she said tersely.
    “Well, then. Let’s take this from another perspective. Do you know—”
    A loud buzz on his phone interrupted him. “Deputy Vork, line three, please,” the voice on the intercom said.
    “Excuse me a second.” Vork punched the line button, then listened for a moment. “Well, tell Detective Jimenez I’ll be out soon as I can. And have the people from Channel Thirteen wait with the good people from Channel Ten. I’m in the middle of an interview here.” He nodded another couple of times, then sighed. “Look, LuAnne, do me a favor and set up a press conference. Do it in the break room and give me fifteen minutes, okay? I’ll talk to all them reporters together. I’d rather not go through the same story five times.” He slammed the phone down and looked at Lauren. “Sorry again, Dr.... Chambers. As I was saying... do you remember what it was that I was sayin’?”
    “All you said was ‘Do you know...”’
    “Oh, yeah. Do you know if your husband had any enemies, anyone he’d had arguments with recently or in the past?”
    “If he did, it wasn’t something he told me about.”
    “Any business problems he complained about?”
    “He was a supervisor, so he had a lot of people under him. I think he had a good relationship with them. But he never brought his work home. He never complained about anything.”
    “What about financial problems? Did you handle the family finances or did Michael?”
    “Michael did. I was never any good at math, and after the first few bounced checks, I just let him handle it all.”
    Vork sighed, then stroked his mustache. “Okay. When you go home, I want you to look around and see if you can find something that might have the name of your husband’s college or fraternity on it. If we get that, I can put someone on it, track down his friends. Meantime, I’ll alert the sheriff’s department in Vail, let them know we may have a group of people stranded somewhere. Maybe we’ll get lucky. If they’ve got a report of another family member missing, one of your husband’s buddies, we’ll know we’re on the right track. But again, I want to be honest with you, Dr. Chambers. If they haven’t had other calls, they may not put much effort into it. We’re not sure of our facts, and they don’t want to be wasting their time. And sending up a whirlybird in the high country is expensive and risky business. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to put anyone in danger if we didn’t know for sure your husband and his buddies were even out there. I don’t even know where to tell them to search.”
    “Then they’re not going to do it, are they?”
    “Honestly, I can’t say they will. I wouldn’t. But I will make the call, I promise you that much—”
    The phone buzzed, followed by a filtered voice through the intercom speaker. “Deputy Vork, please report to the break room.” Vork shook his head. “Sorry again.”
    “There is something else.” The deputy nodded for Lauren to continue. “I got the feeling last night that I was being followed, when I was driving home.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “I think so. I mean, I was sure of it at the time, but... I think so. Yes.”
    “What kind of car was it?”
    “I didn’t see it, it was dark out. All I saw were the headlights.”
    “How many people were in the car?”
    “I—I don’t know. Like I