“Miss Avery?” It was Mike Aklaq, back from the docks and whatever else he’d been doing.
“Here!” she called.
A look of annoyance crossed over Kimball’s face.
Clara smiled. “I’m here, Agent Aklaq!” She slipped past Kimball and looked back into her room, just briefly. But she was sure she saw a slight indentation in the bed where Amelia had been sitting.
And yet, as Clara hurried down the hallway, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was suffering from whiteout hysteria on the island, along with a massive dose of stress.
*
“They end here,” Thor told Jackson.
He was off his snowmobile and had been since they’d reached the tree line.
It had been easy enough to follow the tracks in the light powdery snow—harder once they reached the massive pines and the ground became a wet bed of earth, snow and pine carpeting.
Thor hunched down, studying the tracks and the broken branches and needles.
He’d seen prints; he’d seen broken, dislodged branches. He hadn’t seen any other indication that a bear had come this way—not a speck of fur, not a scratch on a tree, not so much as the whiff of a scent of a creature marking territory.
Jackson came carefully behind him.
“Well?” Jackson asked.
“Snowshoes, I think. Custom snowshoes. Short and broad prints—hard to tell them from the tracks of a real bear, unless you find fur or droppings. Look ahead—you can see where the pine needles are cracked. Not enough to catch something like an actual footprint, but whoever came here tossed the ‘bear’ feet, and started through the trees. It’s really dense here. I know the state police were through this area yesterday, but we’re going to have to get them back. Somewhere on this island, we’ll either find someone or find proof that someone was here.”
“You’re sure?” Jackson asked.
Thor nodded gravely.
“You’ve spent a lot of time out here, on this island?” Jackson asked him.
“When I was a kid, there were absentee owners who weren’t so rich,” Thor told Jackson. “The Mansion existed, but it wasn’t like it is now and it wasn’t called the Mansion. The Alaska Hut existed, too—again, not as is it now, but just as a big log cabin with small rooms to allow for heat circulation. We used to come out here without telling our parents. The island was really taboo for kids growing up here—too many places where someone could get lost or hurt.”
“Bears?” Jackson asked.
Thor paused and looked back at his old partner, grinning. “Enough for me to know that a bear didn’t get to the forest and stop being a bear.”
“Sorry,” Jackson said. “I have to admit, in all my years, I never had to wonder if it was a man or a bear that had run through the wilderness.”
“What I’m trying to figure out is how this guy got into the mainland hotel, killed Natalie—decapitated her—walked out without being seen, and came out here to the island,” he said.
“The cops on the mainland are looking all over for anyone with a boat—anyone who could have gotten the killer over here. So far, nothing. And the Coast Guard has skirted the place. If there is a boat here somewhere, it’s incredibly well hidden,” Jackson said.
“Yeah.”
“Two separate killers?”
“That’s a terrifying thought.”
“And what was their motive?” Jackson murmured. “The main office has been scouring the records for anyone who had a beef with the company.”
“I hope they find something,” Thor said. “That seems the logical conclusion here—that the producers ‘got’ the wrong person with their Gotcha show.”
“And still...” Jackson said.
And still, neither of them could forget that Tate Morley had escaped from prison.
Thor kept walking carefully through the pines, avoiding the broken areas, studying the trees. As they moved deeper into the woods, the world darkened; not even the bright Alaska summer sun could penetrate through the thickness of the pines and brush.
He stopped suddenly, seeing a patch of light ahead. It looked as if the pines were just as dense as ever, but there had to be something different for the sun to be breaking through.
He had to crawl over fallen branches and weave his way along.
And then, at last, deep in an area that appeared to be impenetrable, he saw the break—the place where the sun was shining through.
Taking even greater care, he squeezed between two tree branches. And there, he found it, a pool of dark liquid that had melted the snow beneath it and now darkened the carpet of earth and pine it covered.
“What is it?” Jackson called, coming up behind him.
Thor stopped dead and hunkered down again, looking around.
He reached out with his gloved hands and grasped a tuft of blue fabric.
A tiny piece of the jeans Amelia Carson had been wearing. At least, a good chance that was what he’d found.
He touched the ground.
Still damp. Dark and damp.
It was the blood pool, the place where Amelia Carson had been severed in two.