Long Way Home Read online

  Contents

  Disclaimer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Author's Note

  Copyright © 2019 Tom Crown

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.tomcrownbooks.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  HE SLID THE knife across her throat and then glanced out the tinted window to take in the jagged silhouette of the dark forest outside.

  Blood kept pouring through his fingers, warm against his skin like the baking sand of a summer beach. The image didn't stay with him long, with the gloom outside, and that patchy layer of heavy Lapland clouds shifting and twirling far above. It had been barely sixty degrees when he got out from the driver's seat and circled around to the back of the van.

  He let her go. The flow had almost dried up and she was long gone, already down that tunnel people imagined, plunging headfirst into the light. He watched the body slide from his hands and fall over on its side. The hair had been irritating, nastily wrapping itself around his fingers and leaving sticky strands in the most unlikely places, but he hadn't killed her for such a trivial reason. He had killed her because he had needed a body, and hers was an excellent body.

  Stretching his fingers, he watched the knife fall and bounce against the plastic sheet, reflect the dim light outside, and then settle right before her frozen eyes. He removed his latex gloves, stuffed them into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a fresh pair.

  He gazed around and took everything in — the pale body on the floor, the rusty metal walls now stained by splotches of glittering red, and her hair tangled and soaked like a floor mop. He leaned over and grabbed the knife again.

  This would get bloody before it was done.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “CHECKING IN?”

  Ryan West nodded and took a step forward.

  The woman behind the reception desk was still on the phone, her question to him just a whispered aside, and he listened in carefully as she continued her conversation in incomprehensible Swedish. She was an undeniable beauty, with curious blue eyes framed by an unruly blonde mane just long enough to brush across her shoulders, and from the slight smile on her lips, she seemed to know it.

  With the phone finally down, she sized him up in the most obvious manner, until he finally glanced away, flustered by the attention. Maybe it was the scar. He wasn’t the quarterback type, never had been, but the slight mark left by the splintered butt of a Kalashnikov an inch below his hairline made him appear more rugged. In fact, he was now more rugged, both inside and out, and some women did seem to notice. Of all the things to remember the Taliban by.

  He reached for his passport and pushed it across the desk. “Ryan West.”

  “Thank you, Ryan. And welcome to Lapland.”

  “Thanks.” His eyes tracked the movements of her fingers as she typed his name on the keyboard.

  “I’m Jenny, by the way,” she said, still focusing on the screen, pursing her lips. She grabbed the passport and flipped through the pages with blatant curiosity, her cute smile turning into a frown, and then back into a smile again. She took a moment to study his photo, tilting the passport left and right, and then resumed browsing.

  Then her smile disappeared altogether, and he knew what she was looking at. He had looked at the page a thousand times.

  Kandahar, Afghanistan.

  Standing in the street, cleaning dust from his camera, he never even saw the shadows. Only that blinding sun and then darkness as the hood slipped over his eyes. After that came the smell, and the barrel of a weapon pressed hard against his back, nearly cracking his ribs. A cloth in his mouth followed, and a flash of pain at the back of his head as they knocked him to the ground. He only felt it for a moment, and then again, a much longer pain in the darkness. When he woke, he found himself in the back of a moving van. His face was bruised, probably from the beating, but also from banging hard against the metal floor. Somehow he adjusted to the situation in a matter of seconds. He was a hostage, a Westerner taken for ransom or worse — precisely his most dreaded nightmare.

  Jenny closed the passport and shot him that playful smile again. “So, just arrived?”

  The tightness in his throat loosened and he took a deep breath.

  “Yeah, just,” he said, nodding. “A full day in Europe though, driving up here. Beautiful continent, from what I could tell.” He grinned at his awkward attempt at humor, but saw that it hadn’t even registered with her. He didn’t know why he even tried. He wasn’t used to being around beautiful women. He wasn’t used to being around people at all.

  “Europe,” Jenny said with a slight shake of her head. “Right. Paris.” She smiled again and peered at the endless Lapland forest outside the window, a landscape that didn’t seem to fit her definition of Europe. The sun still hung high in the sky where it would stay all through the night. Whatever day and night meant then. There simply would be no night.

  She seemed to drift away for a moment before she turned back. “I only work weekends, so depending on how long you stay, you may notice. That I’m gone, I mean.”

  “I’m booked for a week.”

  “Yes, I know.” She glanced at him, her head to one side, her hair falling slightly down over her eyes. A decidedly cute look. “You like it here so far?”

  “Here? Sure. It’s very nice. Come winter, I guess it’ll be spectacular.”

  Jenny laughed. “Yeah, right. We’re so looking forward to that.” She pushed his passport back at him.

  Ryan chuckled. He would be nice, not funny. Nice was easier. He wouldn’t look directly at her too much either. That would be easier as well.

  “Winter triples the population,” she said, “with all you photographers and test drivers and all. And then it seems half the girls go with you when you leave.”

  Ryan looked at her, despite himself. “Really?”

  “Really.” She smiled and pushed the key across the counter. “Your room. It’s upstairs.” She nodded toward a wooden staircase across the room. “Enjoy.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I will. Thanks.” He took the keys and his passport and picked his bags up from the floor. He started toward the staircase, then stopped, turned, and looked back. He wanted to say something wittier than he just had, but she was already busy with a new stack of papers.

  After trudging upstairs with his bags, he unlocked the door to his r
oom and swung the door open, revealing a narrow space with a wooden bed, a cabinet with drawers, and a small desk placed underneath a paned window. Some would term the place a hostel rather than a hotel, but Ryan had seen far worse. Still it was too small for him. Too much of a prison. Too much of a cell. He would sleep in that narrow wooden bed eventually, but not until he crashed.

  He left his bags inside and backed out again.

  Jenny was shutting down the lights around the reception area, her back to the stairs as she flipped the last switch to kill the lamp on the counter that had cast her face in such a flattering glow.

  Ryan stepped off the staircase and heard the floor creak underneath his feet.

  Jenny flinched and spun around. “Hey there,” she said when she spotted him. “Trouble already.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Oh, I don’t scare that easily.” She smiled, then frowned. “Was your room okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Well, that’s good, because they’re pretty much all the same.”

  He nodded, as if that warranted further consideration. She kept looking at him, waiting for more. An explanation as to why he was downstairs again, perhaps.

  “I don’t know if it’s lingering jet lag,” he ventured, “or the midnight sun, but I guess I don’t feel like calling it a day just yet.” He never did, but he didn’t say that. Maybe they would get to know each other well enough for her to find out, but probably not.

  “Up for a midsummer party?” she asked, fingering her necklace as she waited for his reply. Ryan thought he saw the remains of a bruise underneath her blouse. He had learned plenty about bruises and it seemed like she had been healing since the weekend.

  “Right now?” he finally asked. He looked down at his wrinkled jeans and shirt. “No dress code?”

  She laughed. “No, not even close.”

  “Right. Well, sure, thanks.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me yet. It may not be all that exciting.”

  He chuckled in reply and watched as she took a look around the darkened hotel reception, apparently satisfied with the shape it was in.

  “No more guests tonight?”

  “Not for another couple of days. You have a car? Actually, I know you do.”

  He nodded. “The Volvo outside. So, we’re driving?”

  “If you want to?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay.” She reached for a padded envelope on the counter and tucked it under her arm. “Let’s go.”

  * * * *

  This remote Lapland town housed test driving facilities for some of the world’s largest car manufacturers and Ryan checked them off in his mind as they drifted by outside his windshield.

  “It’s a slow place in the summer,” Jenny said, glancing around, fidgeting with the envelope in her lap. Perhaps she was finally getting nervous about getting in a car with a complete stranger.

  “I excepted as much,” he said.

  “In the winter, it’s completely different. Every single spare room will be rented out by then. And there will be plenty of cars around. Out on the lakes, especially, when the ice is good and thick.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolutely. That’s where they build the best tracks. Any kind of shape you’d want.”

  He grinned. It sounded like a speech she had given before, part of a sales pitch for the region, and it was really the first time she had attempted something resembling actual professionalism.

  “I’d like to see that,” he said.

  “If you stick around, you will.”

  He nodded. That kind of winter cold was still four or five months away, and he expected to be long gone by then. He had come for the peace and quiet, hoping to find just enough business to go around in the off-season with the test driving companies mapping routes, scheduling their winter testing, and perhaps even sneaking their most secretive cars in when not too many eyes were trained their way. He wasn’t at all sure it would work out to his advantage, but he knew he needed to give himself a chance to heal, and Lapland seemed to be the place to do just that.

  The narrow road ahead snaked slowly around barely visible hills, the ground on either side of the worn asphalt framing the road evenly with its tall spruce. He spotted a herd of reindeer in the distance, their gray a near perfect camouflage against the spruce and granite. He had seen plenty of them earlier in the day, but it was still magical to watch them drift silently among the trees. It represented the peace he had come here to find.

  Jenny ripped the padded envelope open and shook its contents into her lap, a set of photographs, from what he could tell.

  She screamed.

  Ryan stepped on the brakes and pulled up by the side of the road, almost losing control of the vehicle as the wheels on the passenger side left the asphalt and dug deep into the dirt.

  Jenny was gasping beside him, burying her face in her hands. The envelope was slipping to the floor.

  “Hey.” He leaned closer, to help her somehow, but his gaze kept drifting to that envelope, and the photos slipping out, showing a gruesome scene he couldn’t fully interpret.

  He leaned closer and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. She flinched when he touched her, but then collapsed toward him and began to convulse in his embrace. It felt much too intimate, after their playful but polite conversation, but now he had seen her practically collapse right before his eyes.

  “It’ll be all right,” he whispered and held her close. “It’ll be all right.”

  “I...” She trailed off as more tears streamed down her cheeks. “He... Oh my God.”

  Ryan looked at the photos on the floor. The sight made his skin both flush and cool in an instant. The first photo showed the pale body of a dead girl lying twisted and gutted, spread-eagled on a plastic sheet in the back of a van. Bloody handprints stained the white metal walls. Her facial expression, barely visible under matted hair, told of the horror of her death. He had seen a lot in Afghanistan, and in the end, he had done a lot as well, but this image had a decidedly evil twist that was alien to him.

  His eyes drifted down to the second photo. It was sticking out at an angle under the first and showed a man in a worn leather jacket. His back was to the camera, and he was looking at the girl on the floor, his face out of view behind unruly hair.

  Ryan pushed the envelope with his shoe to try to rearrange the images. He felt Jenny stir in his arms.

  “It’ll be all right,” he mumbled again. The next photo he saw showed the man in perfect view, apparently some time later, cleaning the stained walls with a frantic expression on his face. The girl still lay at his feet, but now she had plastic wrapped around her. The man seemed to want to keep his distance. Ryan didn’t recognize him, and hadn’t expected to, but there was something about his worn clothing and rough boots that made Ryan believe he was someone local.

  Jenny pushed away and steadied herself with one hand on the door. The photos lay open for viewing right at her feet, but she only stared out the window at the endless forest stretching far away into the wilderness.

  “You okay?” Ryan asked. “Want me to call the police?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay,” he said slowly, holding back his surprise. “We don’t have to do that.” He leaned down and gathered the photos together. There were five in total. He slipped them back into the envelope. The addressee was a Mats Jansson, not Jenny, so he wondered why she had opened it, but realized there could be a number of reasonable explanations.

  He glanced up at her ashen face, her red eyes, and the mascara streaking her cheeks.

  “Do you know him?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She hesitated and then nodded slowly. “Oh my God... Yes, I know him.” She gasped and turned away.

  Ryan waited for her to explain, but she didn’t. He put the envelope on the dashboard. “Mats Jansson,” he read out loud.

  She opened the door and stumbled out.

  “Hey!” Ryan flung his door op
en and stepped out. He circled around to the passenger side. “You okay?”

  She kept staring at the ground, breathing hard. “He’s... He was my boyfriend.”

  Ryan nodded. That explained why she had opened the envelope, more or less, and it explained her reaction. But it didn’t explain the photos.

  “It’s not a joke, is it? A prank of some kind?” It was barely a serious question, but at least something that might keep her talking.

  “No.” She looked up. “No, it’s not. But he didn’t kill anyone! He’d never... He... I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happened, but he’d never kill anyone. Never.”

  Ryan had never met the man and couldn’t contradict her, but the photos certainly gave a bad first impression. He had only seen them briefly and wasn’t even sure what was what yet. But he recognized blood when he saw it. He knew all about the different shades of red it could take on, depending on which part of the human body it spilled from. The photos showed a murder, beyond any reasonable doubt, one that made him sick to his stomach. But who was the murderer, if not Mats Jansson? And who was the victim? And the photographer? And why send the photos in the first place?

  “I think he’s at the party,” Jenny said, answering just about the only question not running through Ryan’s mind.

  “And still you wanted to go?”

  “To give him the envelope. I didn’t know... I didn’t...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “He’s not dangerous. Not like that.”

  “Well, all I know about him is what I’ve seen in those photos, and that doesn’t look good.”

  She looked away, down the road they had come from. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. And he’ll tell me. He always tells me everything. He brags and he lies, and drives me crazy, but in the end he always tells me everything.”

  It didn’t sound very reassuring, and he knew he couldn’t possibly trust her judgment on this. Despite the adrenaline in his blood and his strong impulse to help her, she was a perfect stranger, a fact he would make a point of to remember.