If I could have stopped Wallace before he said that, I would have. But once the words are out, there is no taking them back. And there is no way of walking out of this village with him.
We must leave Wallace behind. Leave him, and trust that no harm will come to him. He is a smart man. He didn’t interfere as we dealt with Edwin, so I feel confident he’s not going to do anything that will endanger him in our absence. It just won’t be the most comfortable way to spend his Yukon trip.
They don’t let us speak to Wallace in private. All we can do is talk to him, within earshot of the others, reassuring him.
A group of settlers escort us into the forest. Then they put our weapons on the ground and tell us to stand with our backs to them, while they retreat. We do. Only when they give us the signal do we pick up our guns. Then we walk in the other direction.
“Can we go back to the scene of the massacre?” I say when we’re out of earshot.
Dalton nods. He leads me there. The bodies are gone. Even the blood has seeped into the ground and disappeared, and when we arrive, the only thing that tells me this is definitely the right place is a red fox. It’s in the clearing, so busy sniffing around that it doesn’t see or smell us. It’s snuffling madly, smelling death and seeing no sign of it.
When Storm spots the fox, she lets out a bark of greeting. The fox’s head jerks up. It sees her. And it bolts into the undergrowth, leaping logs and ripping through dead leaves while Dalton digs in his heels and clenches the leash in both hands.
Once the fox is gone, I pat Storm and head into the clearing. Then I search. After a few minutes, Dalton says, “Tell me what you’re looking for, and I can help.”
I shake my head, as if I don’t know, too distracted to answer. That’s not entirely a lie. I don’t know specifically what I’m looking for. But I’m here with a purpose, a question niggling the back of my mind, not ready to be voiced. Maybe never ready to be voiced. Not unless I find evidence to support it. So I just look. Then I hunker in the middle of the clearing and observe.
When I finally start to rise, Dalton says, “You gonna tell me what happened?”
“Hmm?”
“With that girl. She lied, didn’t she. Outright lied.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
I take another look around before answering his unspoken question. “She wanted Storm.”
More silence. I glance over, and he’s just standing there, brow furrowed.
“The dog?” he says finally.
I drop to all fours and peer about near ground level, still searching. Then I say, “An error in judgment on my part. When she was interested in Storm, I jumped on that as a topic of conversation. Of connection.”
I rise and brush off my knees. “I told her how we’ve taught Storm to track. I showed her how well trained she was. I said how gentle she was. How much bigger she’d get. Apparently, that was like showing off your new vehicle’s special features to a car thief.”
“You’re serious?”
I nod.
“That’s fucked up.”
“It is.”
I stand in the clearing. Think. Think some more. I’m so enrapt in my thoughts that I don’t realize Dalton is right there until I turn and bash into him.
When I lean against him, his arm goes around me.
“You okay?” he says.
“I wasn’t the one accused of murdering three people.”
I feel him shrug as he says, “It was all for show. Just pissed me off.”
I chuckle and shake my head. His arm tightens around me. “Something’s bugging you.”
“Everything’s bugging me,” I say as I step back. “We’ve left Gregory Wallace with people who know his stepson murdered their friends. To get him back, we need to turn over Brady. Which means finding Brady. Which we’ve been trying to do since this whole damned thing started and—”
Another squeeze as Dalton kisses the top of my head. “We’ll get Wallace back. In the meantime, they won’t hurt him. No point in it. If we’d left Storm, that’d be a whole different matter, apparently. But no one’s going to want Wallace.”
I give a strained laugh.
Dalton continues, “This just raises the stakes. Motivates us. Because, you know, we were just sitting on our asses before, trying to decide if we wanted to bother looking for this Brady guy.”
I shake my head.
“Let’s get to Rockton,” Dalton says. “See if Phil made it back okay.”
“Phil . . . Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, I know. Come on. We’ll—”
“One last thing. Sorry. I just want to check . . .”
I trail off as my brain finally homes in on the source of that niggling thought.
As Dalton follows, he says, “Something’s up.”
“Just . . . I just want to check this.”
A grunt says he isn’t happy with my answer. He doesn’t ask again, though, just lets his dissatisfaction be known.
“This is where we found Harper’s grandmother, right?” I say.
“Yeah.” He points, and I see that some scavenger has rooted through the dirt, looking for the source of the blood.
“Harper came from . . .” I turn. “This direction.”
Dalton nods.
I walk that way and find a spot where vegetation has been crushed. “She watched us from here. Which means . . .” I look around.
“She came that way,” Dalton says, pointing. “That’s what you’re looking for, right?”
“It is. Thanks.”
“The path where she saw Brady is over there. We can follow it, but if I thought that would do any good, we’d have tracked him from there right away.”
“I know.”
A soft growl of frustration. “So what the hell are you looking for, Casey?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Three beats of silence as I backtrack on Harper’s trail. Then he follows. He wants to demand answers, but he knows that’s not how I work. My ego needs proof before I’ll voice any outlandish theories.
Harper’s trail doesn’t lead directly to the path. She meandered, and when Dalton sees that, he says, “She was trying to decide what to do. Follow Brady or go back to the camp.”
I’m nodding when I spot something on the ground. I walk over and bend. It looks like the shredded remains of an animal. I prod it with a stick, expecting to see a head or leg or tail. I don’t. It’s just hide.
“A food pouch,” Dalton says.
A hide pouch that must have held food, now ripped apart, with no trace of what it once contained.
He lifts and turns it over in his hand, examining the craftsmanship.
“First Settlement.” He peers into the forest, both toward the camp and out in the direction of the path. “So Harper saw Brady on the path and then followed his trail back to the camp. That’s why it meanders. He was making his way in the direction of the path but didn’t quite know where it was. He dropped this.” He shakes the pouch. “So . . .”
He peers up and down the path. Then he goes still. His head jerks up. Storm’s muzzle does the same, her nose wriggling madly.
“Back up,” Dalton says.
“Wha—?”
His hand wraps around my wrist as he starts propelling us backward. I take each step with care, rolling it, but Storm’s paws crunch down on dead leaves. Dalton whispers a curse just as she starts to whine. Loudly whine, while straining at the lead.
Dalton stops. His gaze swings across the landscape. Storm dances and whines.
“What did you see?” I whisper.
“Movement. Something big.”
Something big that Storm desperately wants to get to. Dalton has the leash wrapped around his hand, but he’s distracted, looking about. When I see Storm hunker down, I know what’s coming.
“Eric!” I say, and I lunge to grab the lead.
Storm leaps. A powerful leap that catches Dalton off guard, and he stumbles, the leash whipping free, my fingers grazing it, wrapping around it, only to feel the leather burn through my hand as the dog takes off.
“Storm!”
I run after her. I am aware, even before Dalton shouts, that I’m making the exact same mistake I made when she went after the cougar. But that doesn’t mean I stop. I can’t.
I hear Dalton coming after me, and I double down, terrified he’s going to stop me. The messed-up muscles in my bad leg scream for mercy but—
Dalton shoots past.