“Wait,” Wyatt said. “This is linked to the Hydra. It’s why you’re here.”

“You’re making an awful big leap.”

McDade saw Noble was ready to go, and she started to leave.

“Come on,” Wyatt said. “Help me get this right. Talk to me on background.”

“I can’t.”

“Jill,” Wyatt said, “can we meet later somewhere?”

“All right, but before you write or report anything, check with me.”

“Check with you?”

“On background to get it right.”

Wyatt watched her drive off, knowing that something big was breaking.

CHAPTER 47

Derby, Vermont

“Did you abduct Samantha Moore?”

Noble tapped his pen on a yellow pad as he and McDade waited for Fletcher Seaver to answer.

“Did you abduct her at the motel vending machine after stalking her and her boyfriend at Lucifer’s Notch?”

McDade said, “Or, maybe your father’s involved. Tipped you to a vulnerable couple at the motel?”

Seaver shook his head.

He was sitting across from them at a table in a small interview room in Derby Barracks; he’d waived his right to an attorney. “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”

“Well, you’re not being charged,” Noble had said. “We just need your help clarifying a few things, Fletcher.”

For more than two hours now, they’d gone back and forth, questioning him about his whereabouts the night Samantha vanished.

“Like I keep telling you,” Fletcher had said, “I wasn’t even in Vermont.”

In the time they’d been questioning him, police had moved fast securing warrants, getting forensic people to begin searching Fletcher’s trailer and truck, while other investigators tracked his credit cards, bank cards, and his computer and cell phone records for the critical period of Samantha’s disappearance. Still others were studying Seaver’s camper and the camper in the bird cam video, to determine if it could be the same vehicle.

“Let’s run down the key facts again,” Noble said. “Your father owns the motel. You knew the security cameras weren’t working.”

“So?” Fletcher scratched his face.

“We believe she was taken by someone driving a camper. You have a camper,” McDade said.

Fletcher eyed her as Noble continued.

“You know the Northeast Kingdom better than most people, and volunteered for every search for her,” he said. “Was that to ensure you could direct people away from areas you didn’t want them to search?”

Fletcher said nothing.

“You’ve got missing-person posters plastered on your walls, like a shrine to Samantha,” Noble said. “And you’ve got that mannequin, like some sort of Norman Bates fixation with her.”

Fletcher’s eyes narrowed.

“You can see how this looks,” Noble said. “Not good.”

Fletcher’s nostrils flared.

“Samantha’s pretty,” he said. “I get lonely, you know. I think of her as my girlfriend.”

Noble and McDade nodded, as if what he’d said made sense.

“Nothing wrong with that. Right?” Fletcher said.