The Shark (Forgotten Files Book 1)
Mary Burton
CHAPTER ONE
Monday, September 12, 5:45 p.m.
When Riley Tatum vanished twelve years ago, no one sounded an alarm. No one called the cops, gathered a search party, or posted flyers. She simply disappeared from the streets into an abyss. Swallowed whole. She should have died. Been long forgotten. But for reasons she didn’t understand, the darkness spat her out.
Now a Virginia State Police trooper, she and her five-year-old Labrador retriever, Cooper, enjoyed a solid reputation as a tracking team. They trained routinely in both rural and urban settings, reinforcing his skills and her ability to read his body language alerts when targets were close.
All that training was now in play as the sunlight faded above the canopy of trees, bathing the woods in deepening shadows. Even this late in the day, the temperature inched past ninety degrees while 100 percent humidity thickened the air into soup. A lightweight shirt wicked away moisture, battle dress uniforms protected her legs from the brush, hiking boots guarded against twisted ankles and snakebites, and a floppy hat covered her honey-tanned face and dark hair coiled in a knot.
A tug at the end of the tracking line directed her focus to Cooper. He dropped his nose to the ground, closed his mouth, and wagged his tail—all signs their quarry’s scent was strong. They were close. She knelt on the narrow trail and inspected barely bent foliage angling toward the top of the ridge.
Their quarry was Jax Carter, a pimp and drug dealer. According to his prior arrest record, Carter worked the I-95 corridor between Richmond and Washington, DC. He and his girlfriend, Darla Johnson, prostituted two or three girls at any given time out of a motor home, often found parked at truck stops or large events. Carter and Johnson found their girls on social media, seducing each with words of love and promises of family. The couple kept the girls under close watch, and if any considered leaving, their tactics shifted from charming words to threats and brutal violence.
Riley first noticed Carter’s motor home a month ago at a truck stop halfway between Richmond and DC. She was on a break and parked in the shadows when she spotted a young, scantily clad girl get out of a big rig cab. The girl hurried across the lot and vanished inside the motor home. Minutes later another girl, bone thin, followed a similar path. Riley had been ready to summon backup when a call came over the radio, pulling her to the scene of a five-vehicle accident. Hours later when she returned to the site, the motor home was gone.
Earlier today, a trooper had been called to help a badly beaten girl near Carter’s motor home, which was parked near a truck stop diner. The eatery’s surveillance camera caught Carter beating the girl, whose bony body absorbed several hard blows. It appeared as if the kid had been knocked unconscious, but as Carter moved closer, fist cocked, she pulled a blade from her pocket and stabbed him in the leg. He recoiled in pain, staggered a step, and regrouped to strike again when approaching sirens scared him off. He fled in a red Camaro, making his way west into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he abandoned his car in a deserted driveway overgrown with weeds.
Local news stations picked up a bystander’s cell phone footage of the girl’s beating and ran it several times. The video quickly went viral. Cops in four counties were alerted, and when Carter’s Camaro was found, Riley and Cooper’s tracking skills landed them on point position. By the time she arrived, a collection of sheriff’s deputies clustered near the car, which was nosed under heavy brush. Media rolled up. It was a circus.
She hoped the knife wound would slow Carter enough so she and Cooper could catch up to him before nightfall.
The plan was for Riley and Cooper to guide three deputies up the trail. A private firm called Shield Security, headquartered near Quantico, had offered to assist, but she declined, fearing a civilian crew that she did not know could hinder the search.
Using one of Carter’s shirts found in the car, Riley allowed Cooper to sniff and lock in on the scent. Barking, he led her and the three deputies into the woods.
Two hours into the search, one deputy twisted his ankle on a log. Three more hours in, the second succumbed to the heat and the third dropped back to assist a return to base. Riley should have quit the search, but when she pictured the girl’s bloodied face she thought about another young girl, Hanna, a runaway she’d taken into her home and would soon adopt. Over the last five years, she’d seen Hanna blossom, though she could easily have ended up like the beaten girl in the video.
So Riley asked to continue. She wouldn’t engage until additional deputies could be dispatched. When she received the green light, she checked her sidearm, a SIG Sauer with a ten-round magazine, and shifted Cooper’s tracking line to her nondominant hand in case she needed to draw her weapon. She promised to check in every fifteen minutes.
A half hour later, she spotted the outlines of fresh boot prints. The trajectory of the impressions confirmed a westward bearing. The right foot impression was deep but the left shallow, a sign Carter was favoring the leg. His stride appeared shorter, suggesting his pace was slower.
Good.
As Riley’s gaze now swept over the lush green foliage, she spotted red droplets of blood clinging to leaves ahead. Like all the markers on the trail, the color and patterns of blood told a story. Dark-red blood implied a punctured vein. Light red meant blood diluted with gastric fluids from an abdominal wound. Pink and foamy signaled a possible chest wound.
This blood was dark red. Unoxygenated. No doubt from the stab wound, which had sliced a vein. Ahead, the path forked and traces of red dotted leaves on both sides.
Close to Cooper’s ear she whispered in Czech, the language he’d been trained to follow while working. “Aport.” Fetch.
Cooper sniffed the ground around the first blood droplets and then around the second set. At the second location, his sniffing increased and his tail wagged. “Good boy,” she whispered.
As they continued, crimson splashes were smeared on more leaves. The distance between drops shortened to less than four feet. The track was now in its sixth hour and had begun to open his wound. He was suffering, likely angry, and primed to make a mistake if pressed.
Even better.
She lifted a leaf and touched the blood. Still viscous. Fresh. She raised her boot to step when she heard the snap of a twig. She drew her weapon. Cooper’s head rose and he glared toward the right. The dog watched the woods, but his body language didn’t alert her that Carter was close.