CHAPTER 59

Spiritsburg, Vermont

Wyatt’s instinct told him something big was happening.

His meeting with McDade in Derby all but confirmed the FBI was close to a breakthrough on the Hydra.

And it was linked to Samantha Moore’s disappearance.

But he was struggling to get a handle on it.

He understood that McDade couldn’t reveal details to him, but he knew he was on the right track. That they’d questioned Fletcher Seaver, and that McDade was quick to dismiss it, was a likely line of pursuit Wyatt could take. It prompted him to drive to Hemlock Creek Estates to see what, if anything, he could find out from Fletcher.

What questions did they ask? Is he a suspect? If he was the Hydra, why would they release him? I must talk to him.

But Fletcher wasn’t home. The door to his place was locked, all the curtains drawn. For nearly an hour, Wyatt went from unit to unit talking to Fletcher’s neighbors in the mobile-home park. They told him how Fletcher kept to himself, and was short-tempered. They knew very little about his arrest.

Wyatt then drove to Spiritsburg and the Green Rolling Hills Inn to talk to Seaver’s father about Fletcher. But he wasn’t there, and the part-time person behind the office counter—a man in his late 20s named Miller—said Jonas Seaver was out, and he didn’t know when he’d be back.

Wyatt had reached a dead end. And he was hungry.

He walked over to Edna’s Diner, ordered coffee and a club sandwich, and took out his notes to determine his next move. He was halfway through his meal when his phone rang.

It was Chase Lockner in New York.

“Ray, what’s going on there with the Moore investigation?”

Wyatt took a moment to process his editor’s urgency.

“Something’s going to break,” Wyatt said, “I’m digging into it. Why?”

“So, you know about the recent arrests?”

Arrests? Plural?

“I know about a guy they questioned in Derby; Fletcher Seaver, the son of the owner of the motel where Moore vanished.”

“No, a man and a woman.”

“A man and a woman? When? Where?”

Wyatt’s phone pinged with an email, as Lockner, continued. “The Associated Press just moved a short hit out of Waterbury, Vermont. I just sent it to you. Give it a read.”

Wyatt’s stomach writhed as he burned through the item.

WATERBURY, Vt. (AP) — FBI agents and Vermont State Police detectives have arrested two people in the case of a college student who vanished from a Vermont hotel nearly six months ago.