by Paula Munier
“D and D,” translated Amy.
“Right.”
Brodie’s other passion, besides Amy and archery, was Dungeons & Dragons. Most of his conversation revolved around these three obsessions. Mercy didn’t understand half of it; it was as if he were speaking in Orc.
“Why don’t we try it again, together this time,” said Mercy, eager to move the conversation away from her and Troy and what may or may not develop between them and back to archery.
“Okay.”
Mercy handed Amy the bow and stood behind her, shadowing her movements as she settled once more into the proper position. Feet shoulder-width apart. Limbs relaxed. Left arm outstretched, holding the bow. Eye on the target. Right arm drawing back the string. The kiss at the corner of her mouth.
“Inhale,” she whispered as she gently steadied Amy’s stance.
Let it go.
Be the arrow.
Om.
“Exhale.” She’s got it this time, thought Mercy.
“I heard Madeline Warner’s back in town,” said Brodie.
Mercy flinched, jostling Amy’s elbow just as she released the string. The arrow flew straight over the target, past the lawn’s edge, and right into the forest. Elvis sprinted after the blasted bolt, disappearing into a blaze of sugar maples.
Well, in that hit you miss: she’ll not be hit with Cupid’s arrow.… Forget Zen, thought Mercy. Shakespeare nailed it every time.
“Brodie!” Amy rolled her eyes at him. “Way to go.”
“What?”
“Her mother is having knee-replacement surgery,” Patience told Mercy.
Whatever, she thought. The subject of Madeline Warner would have to wait. “Elvis shouldn’t be in there.” She whistled—a sharp, penetrating trill that would grab the ear of any New York cabdriver, designed to order Elvis back, pronto. She and Amy collected their equipment and joined Brodie and Patience and the baby. They all waited for the shepherd to streak back into the yard and up to the porch and bring the lost arrow to Helena.
“He’s not wearing his hunter orange.” Patience rose from her chair, baby in her arms.
“He knows better than that.” Mercy whistled again, and waited. No response. She held her breath. It was hunting season. No dog or human should be venturing into the woods without the protection hunter orange could provide.
“Maybe he’s having a hard time finding the arrow,” said Brodie.
“Impossible,” said Patience.
“Maybe he’s chasing turkeys,” said Amy.
Wild turkeys often roamed the front yard, and Elvis loved playing with them. The Belgian shepherd protected the property from most two- and four-legged creatures with a fierce aggression, but he liked the turkeys. The big birds visited most days, gobbling along, headed for the crab-apple trees fronting the forest line, while Elvis ran around them in circles. It was like herding cats. The wild turkeys would ramble on, pecking at insects and nuts on their way to the apples. Elvis would escort them to the edge of the forest—but he’d stop there. Eventually, the turkeys would go into the woods.
Where the hunters were.
Elvis would not follow them; he knew his job was to guard the perimeter unless and until Mercy said otherwise. She’d posted NO TRESPASSING and NO HUNTING signs on her acreage, but in the forest beyond her property, hunters were looking to bag their Thanksgiving dinners.
The Malinois was not doing his job now.
“This is taking too long.” Mercy shook her head. Something was wrong. This wasn’t like Elvis.
Her grandmother shot her a look. “It’s open season on bear and deer and turkey. All kinds of hunters with all kinds of weapons will be out in force.”
As if to confirm that, they heard a couple of faint booms coming from the forest. Gunshots. Hunters.
“I’m going after him.” She couldn’t let anything happen to Elvis.
“Change your clothes and your shoes first,” said Patience.
“No time.”
“At least take your pack and the vests.” Patience handed the baby to Amy, and then turned to Mercy. “I’ll get the pack. You get the vests.”
She jogged back into the cabin, her grandmother on her heels. Hurrying through the living room to the hallway at the front door, she grabbed her orange Orvis puffer vest from the hall tree, along with Elvis’s hunter-orange vest. She slipped the puffer vest over her long-sleeved T-shirt. On her way back out of the house, Patience handed her the pack and an orange Field & Stream baseball cap.
She stuffed Elvis’s vest into the pack, tossing it over her shoulder.
“Wear that hat,” said Patience.
“Okay.” Knowing her grandmother was still watching, she slapped it on over the red tangle of curls her mother called The Mess as she raced out on the deck and onto the lawn toward the forest.
“Be careful,” Amy called after her as she huffed into the woods.
More gunfire.
Mercy hoped it wasn’t aimed at Elvis. She hoped it wasn’t one of the turkeys. She hoped she wasn’t too late.
CHAPTER TWO
Early Bear Hunting Season: Hounds are allowed, provided the person in charge of the dogs has a bear-dog permit, no more than six dogs are used, and no commercial guiding occurs.
—VERMONT FISH AND WILDLIFE REGULATIONS
MERCY TRACKED THE BELGIAN SHEPHERD by the broken twigs, shuffled leaves, and paw prints left in his wake as he barreled through the forest. The Malinois didn’t bother with the trail; he was traveling as the crow flies, toward a target he could smell—and she couldn’t. She knew he’d eventually come back to her, if only to lead her to whatever he’d found, just as he always did. But that was little comfort. He was out during hunting season, a mammal roughly the same size and color of a doe, with no blaze-orange protection. She plowed on, listening hard as she scrambled through brush and scrub and over downed tree limbs.
She’d heard no more gunshots since she’d entered the forest. That was good. Elvis had reacted badly to gunfire when they first came home from the war, but in time he’d gotten over that, enough to help catch a murderer a few months ago. But that didn’t mean he could outrun a bullet.
She heard faint baying of hounds. She ran toward the riotous bawling, which grew louder and more frenetic with every yard.
Most likely bear dogs.
Likely cornering a bear.
And quite likely accompanied by a billionaire.
Daniel Feinberg—known to the world simply as Feinberg—owned most of the forest around here. They were friends and neighbors, operating on a first-name basis now, but in truth she still thought of him as Feinberg, just like everyone else.
His groundskeeper Gunnar Moe had recently acquired a pack of Norwegian elkhounds, with the aim of helping Troy Warner and his fellow game wardens deal with nuisance bears. Ever since the state of Vermont had established regulations to help restore the population of black bears, more bears were wandering out of the wilderness and onto private property looking for food. These nuisance bears often ended up dead.
Elkhounds offered an alternative. These dogs, originally bred by Vikings, were arguably the fiercest bear-hunting dogs in the world. Not to mention wild boar and the elk that graced their name—known here on this continent as moose. These days, they were used as often to scare nuisance bears back to the forest as they were to hunt them.
Gunnar had bragged as much to Mercy when he introduced her and Elvis to the sturdy, lively silver-gray dogs he’d named after his native Norse gods and goddesses. Elvis treated the elkhounds with respect; they were somewhat smaller than he was but just as tough and determined. They worked hard and played hard. Just like he did.
She’d find Elvis with them, but now they wouldn’t be playing. They’d be confronting bears.
Elvis had searched for missing persons, sniffed out explosives, and taken down armed intruders, but he had never faced off with a bear before. Mercy quickened her pace, racing toward the racket. She barreled through a thick copse of young bi
rch trees, through a stand of red-yellow beech trees, and into a clearing rounded by golden oaks.
Half a dozen excited elkhounds encircled the tallest and thickest oak tree. These were Gunnar’s dogs. She recognized the leader of the pack, Thor; the smallest of the bunch, Modi; the brothers Balder and Odin, and the females, Saga and Freya. All six hounds were jumping and yelping, dark noses pointing up. Mercy followed their snouts up to a black bear perching some twenty feet above them in the crook of two massive branches of the oak. Elvis danced around the howling hounds, and they greeted him enthusiastically, even as they kept their eyes on their quarry.
Mercy estimated the bear was at least four hundred pounds. A healthy beast, with shiny blue-black fur and huge paws and those long lethal claws curling around the limbs of the tree. At six feet long, maybe more, by Vermont standards this was a big bear. And he didn’t seem particularly worried about the elkhounds. So much for scaring bears back up to higher ground.
She found herself rooting for the bear. It was, after all, his tree. Many claw marks scarring the oak’s trunk—old and fresh—told her that. He was just hanging out in his tree, waiting out the noisy hounds below.
The bear needed to go higher up the mountain to avoid hunters who would be thrilled to take home a prize like this one. He was a real beauty—a win for any hunter.
Mercy didn’t see the sport in shooting any animal cornered up a tree. To her mind, it wasn’t much different than baiting a bear with doughnuts, then harvesting the beast as it licked up the sugary treats. The latter was illegal, but she wasn’t sure about the former. She’d have to ask Troy.
First, she needed to get away from the bear. Black bears rarely attacked humans, unless you were unfortunate enough to get between a mama bear and her cubs. The size of this guy meant he was a male. Although there were cases of predatory males, they were the exception. Mercy was probably safe enough from the bear. Especially as he was surrounded by the stalwart elkhounds.
But she was not necessarily safe from hunters, who couldn’t be far behind these dogs. Thor, the pack leader, had an antenna attached to his collar, a telltale sign that Gunnar was using an expensive GPS dog-tracking system, allowing him to easily trail his dogs.
Mercy didn’t want to be caught between some rich gung-ho weekend warrior and the big-game trophy he wanted to take home. She was glad of her hunter-orange vest and hat, but she wouldn’t bet her life on any color to save her. And Elvis didn’t even have that much.
She snapped her fingers and Elvis trotted over, reluctant but obedient. She secured the hunter-orange vest around the dog, and together they retreated downwind.
They didn’t have to wait long. She heard a rustling to her left, and spotted Gunnar leading a large hunting party toward the dogs. They were trying to move quietly, but there were too many of them—Mercy did a quick count of six people plus Daniel Feinberg, Gunnar, and Joey Darosa, Gunnar’s assistant. Not that any noise they made mattered, given the bellowing of the elkhounds.
The group were carrying longbows for deer hunting, but Gunnar obviously couldn’t pass up the opportunity to show them a black bear.
Mercy watched as they spread out around the edge of the clearing. Two couples. The first, a slim and silver-haired couple with tanned faces and sunglasses, he dressed more for a day on the slopes and she more for a horse show than a day in the woods. The second, a florid-faced middle-aged man and a much younger woman with a long ponytail, both dressed head to toe in spanking new L.L. Bean.
Standing somewhat apart from the couples was a petite brunette with a professional grade camera, her face obscured as she snapped away. Behind her, taking up the rear of the party, was someone she knew: Ethan Jenkins, a Northshire boy she hadn’t seen since he left for New York City after high school.
All wore the required hunter-orange vests over their clothes.
None of the strangers looked like they could hit the broad side of a barn with a gun, much less kill a deer with a bow and arrow. The only ones who seemed at home in the woods were the silver-haired couple. Even Daniel Feinberg appeared vaguely uncomfortable—and it was his woods.
Ethan looked like he’d rather be back in the city, though as a Vermonter he could not be a stranger to the forest, which covered nearly 80 percent of the state. Vermonters loved their woods. She wondered what could have turned a local boy into such an urban creature that the native woodchuck in him did not reassert itself when back home in the woods. As it did with practically everyone else born and bred here, no matter how far away they wandered.
Mercy caught Gunnar’s eye, and he raised his thick blond eyebrows at her. She could feel Elvis shimmy with energy, desperate to join his rowdy canine friends at the base of the oak.
“Stay,” she said sternly.
To his credit, the shepherd stood perfectly still, although his sleek fur rippled with anticipation and frustration.
The florid-faced guy in the group assumed a shooting stance with bow and arrow, standing at a right angle to his target, the bear in the tree.
“No!” bellowed Gunnar.
Florid-face nocked the broadhead tipped arrow.
Gunnar strode toward him.
Florid-face raised his bow, glaring at Gunnar.
Feinberg nodded at the groundskeeper and he called the elkhounds, and they withdrew.
With a gloved hand, the man pulled back his string to his chin and aimed.
Be the arrow, thought Mercy. Not.
Elvis leapt forward, startling the man. Florid-face wobbled as he released the string. The arrow flew toward the bear. Sort of. Falling short and striking a lower branch and finding its mark in the bark, not the bear. Missing its target by several feet.
Mercy doubted he could’ve hit the bear even had Elvis been playing dead.
The bear scrabbled down the tree. The man started yelling, his ruddy face a flaming scarlet.
Mercy bit back a smile as another line from Shakespeare popped into her head: Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it, Thou canst not hit it, my good man.
“Give me your rifle,” the florid-faced man said to Gunnar. When the groundskeeper demurred, the man turned toward his host. “Danny, I want that bear.”
Feinberg shrugged, and Gunnar handed the man his rifle.
Elvis raced past him and the bear, bounding out of the clearing. He disappeared into the thick of the forest, and the elkhounds chased him, abandoning the hunting party in a riot of barking. The big bear crashed through the brush in the opposite direction, lumbering away from them at a surprisingly fast pace. Florid-face hustled after him.
Bears could outrun man any day. If this one got away, he’d be deep into the thick broad-leaved forest and long gone. Until the next promise of an easy meal was too good to resist.
Mercy shrugged her apologies to Gunnar and ran after Elvis. She left behind the hunting party, the guests squabbling while the groundskeeper tried to restore order and get their hunt back on track.
She heard a shot. Seemed like Daniel Feinberg’s unpleasant guest had tried to bring down the bear again. She hoped to hell he’d missed again. She couldn’t believe Gunnar let him get away with it. He was the kind of hunter who killed out of ego, not for the meat that could see a family through a long winter, but for bragging rights. Like those trophy hounds who shot baby elephants on safari. For all she knew he was one.
With guys like him in the woods, Mercy was especially glad she was wearing her hunter orange.
She found Elvis and his Norwegian pals in a blowdown area a hundred yards south of Feinberg and his friends. The shepherd stood in silence at the end of a large fallen beech, while the elkhounds howled like they were on fire.
“What’s up?”
Elvis held his position as Mercy made her way through the yowling frenzy of bear-hunting dogs. She couldn’t imagine what could distract them from chasing that bear. Unless they were simply chasing Elvis. Who was chasing … what?
Elvis jumped up, laying his front paws on the log. His dark nose pointing
to the other side of the fallen tree.
“Good boy.” She stepped up to join him, looking past his paws to a reclining figure lying on the ground parallel to the downed beech.
It was a woman. A pretty young woman in dark brown leggings and a khaki field jacket. A flower-patterned yellow silk scarf was around her still neck.
An arrow pierced the breast pocket of her jacket.
Mercy leaned in for a closer look.
The point was buried in the woman’s chest. The nocked end of the arrow rose straight into the air above the wound, its green helical fletching marking its human target like a bloodstained bull’s-eye, right through the heart.
Fletching just like that on the arrow the florid-faced man had aimed at the bear. He had missed.
Whoever shot this woman had not missed.
She was dead. There was no question of that. Mercy looked away for a moment. She’d seen too many die too soon. Over there.
She didn’t expect to see it here. But if the army had taught her anything, it was that the darkness could fall on anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Elvis nudged her with his cold wet nose. Bringing her back from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the Green Mountains of Vermont. Where the darkness had fallen on this young woman lying at her feet.
“Good dog,” she said again, patting the dog’s head.
The elkhounds swarmed behind him, yelping and jumping. Desperate to corner the corpse, as if it were a bear up a tree.
“Come!” Gunnar appeared at the edge of the blowdown. Thor bounded toward him, and the rest of the elkhounds followed. He looked at Mercy inquiringly, waiting for her to enlighten him. She knew he’d wait as long as needed. He was not a big talker.
“There’s a dead woman over here.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know. Definitely not a Vermonter.” She pointed at the elkhounds. “If you can get those dogs to stay put, come closer and take a look. Maybe she is one of yours.”
Gunnar growled at his elkhounds, and they dropped to the ground in a collective down.
“Stay,” he told his dogs, and loped over toward her.