Butterfly Ops

by Jen Doyle

  Would you die for her, Ian thought again. Not a threat, but a declaration of love? But Ian didn’t say anything out loud. No need to add any more fuel to Lyndsey’s widower fire. She’d get there soon enough.

  “So this is like Valentine’s Day gone wrong,” Lyndsey said. “Pretty sunrises and broken hearts. Do rose petals show up anywhere?”

  “No,” Matt answered, “but we do have butterflies. Wait. Let me pull up Tessa’s email.” He paused for a moment. “Okay. So it turns out they’re a thing, well, pretty much everywhere you look. In Slavic cultures, for example, the butterfly represents a witch that will enter someone’s body while they’re sleeping and take possession of their soul. In cultures throughout Europe, Japan, Pacific Islands, and some Native American tribes, it’s the soul itself, returning to earth after someone’s dead.”

  “Whose souls?” Ian asked. “The dead hikers recruiting for their band of merry men?”

  “Or…” Lyndsey tensed. With a guarded look back at Ian, she mumbled, “Never mind.”

  Ian wasn’t sure what that look meant. But she left it at that so he asked, “Does any of what Tessa found fit in with the princess legend?”

  “Not that I can tell. Some cultures worship the butterfly as a god, most often as the Creator.” He was clearly still reading. “In Mexico it represents the earth’s fertility. In Ireland, a butterfly near a corpse signals eternal happiness, although they also say butterflies are the souls of the dead waiting to pass through Purgatory.”

  Something about what Matt was saying struck a chord, but Ian couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Anything from the pictographs?”

  “Nothing illuminating,” Matt answered. “As far as Tessa can tell, the pictographs are pretty basic: ‘I took my canoe down the river. You came with me.’ Stuff like that.”

  Then no connection with the princess there, either. “So where does that leave us?”

  Matt responded, “Rodrigues’s and Sprague’s teams have a few more places to hit. They think they can meet up with you again in three days. Brady’s got one more place to check out tomorrow, then he’s done. That leaves you guys with two.”

  Ian could feel Lyndsey’s hands tighten. “And then we go to McAree Lake?” she asked.

  “Don’t sound so excited,” Matt said, laughing as Lyndsey eagerly referred to the area where the guides and rangers refused to go.

  “What?” she replied. “Name me one person on this squad who isn’t aching to get in there.”

  Also smiling—the bears had done nothing to hurt her appetite for adventure—Ian asked, “Do the satellites show anything about that area?”

  “Nothing that shouldn’t be there,” Matt answered. “And it’s fairly well-traveled—a lot of people have gone in and out without incident. If it weren’t for the guides getting spooked, we wouldn’t be giving it a second look.”

  “What about the forest fires?” Based on the reports they’d been getting, Ian knew the fires were mostly under control, though there were still a few hot spots. “Any limitations there?”

  “Not at the moment. They seem to be under control so you should be able to get to where you need to go.”

  “Which is…?” Zachary said.

  “We don’t really know,” Ian answered. “I figure we’ll just head in and see if there’s anything to be found.”

  “Nothing like a good, solid plan—gotta love these well-defined ops.” Matt laughed. “If there’s nothing else…”

  They said their good nights and Lyndsey settled back into Ian’s arms as he took off their headsets and placed them on the ground. He could feel her relax when he brushed the hair over her shoulder and kissed the back of her neck.

  She let him do that for a minute or two before turning and kneeling in front of him. “You’re really interested in this princess, aren’t you?”

  Was she pouting? She was actually jealous? He realized he had absolutely no idea what that looked like on her. It hadn’t exactly been a problem back in the day.

  “What can I say?” He reached out and began to play with the buttons on her shirt, slowly undoing them. “I have a thing for strong women.”

  When she closed her eyes he smiled, figuring there was no reason not to lean forward and put his mouth over the bra she wore—she’d removed her two remaining bandages earlier that day, back around mile six, saying they got in the way of her paddling.

  She pushed him back against the rock and came forward, climbing onto his lap as she shrugged the shirt off her shoulders. “Don’t try and sweet talk me. Do you think she’s real?”

  Sweet talk? He thought he was doing more than that. Leaning his head back, he said, “I think Joe does.”

  “Where does she fit in, though? Is she the one taking these men?” Lyndsey took his hand and stared at his ring. “Putting their souls in Purgatory until she finds her trader-man or something like that? What’s she going to do when she finds him?”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Ian snaked his hand around her waist and pulled her flush against him. “You be the princess; I’ll be the trader. We’ll figure it out.”

  That seemed to placate her for a few minutes, and he was already heavily involved in the kissing when she pulled back suddenly, a not at all happy look on her face as she said, “He dies a premature awful death and she’s been in prison pretty much since then.”

  Well, uh, good point. Ian put his hand behind her head and pulled her back to him. “Then I guess we’ll have to change the ending.”

  26

  Ian stood in the clearing, watching as Brooks and Malek went about collecting samples. Last crime scene, make it count.

  Well, that at least sounded optimistic. Ian had absolutely no expectation of finding anything even remotely promising here, just as they hadn’t found anything useful at any one of the places they’d meticulously examined since they’d gotten to Quetico Park.

  The only good thing—although “good” probably wasn’t the best word to use considering the circumstances—was that another body had been found not more than five miles away from where Sprague’s team had spent the night. Matt had spent some long hours negotiating with Monica and the Minister’s office, but the end result was that it had paid off, and Sprague and his squad would be the lead investigators at the site. They’d have to wait until two rangers got to the location; once the Park administration was represented, though, Sprague could take all the samples he wanted.

  Matt had set up the comms so that anything said by someone on Sprague’s squad could be heard by everyone. It would create a lot of noise on the lines, but Ian and Matt felt it was necessary. Up until now everything had been so vague; if a stray comment sparked one good idea then it would be worth it, and the more people listening, the more of a chance something would get said.

  “Body looks the same,” Sprague said. “Same markings but otherwise no obvious trauma.” His voice lapsed into a detached tone as he described the location of the body, its positioning, and the surrounding scene.

  Ian watched on his PCD, trying to make out the details while also paying attention to what was happening on the ground in front of them. He sighed and looked down at the screen as he heard Sprague say the victim had blond hair. He had been hoping it would be red, which would therefore mean it was Annika Willett’s fiancé. Because then she could at least start mourning; as horrible as it would be, it still beat those awful hours of not knowing if you should be planning a funeral or praying for a miracle.

  Forty-six hours and twenty-three minutes was what it had been for him, the time between the phone call telling him the chopper had gone down and the time it took for a rescue team to reach the wreckage. The longest two days of his life. Annika had been waiting for weeks.

  “What was that?” Ian asked, his subconscious picking up on something Sprague had just said.

  “Fourteen stones in a ring, probably for a campfire,” Sprague answered.

  “Bag it,” Ian said. “Let’s do some analysis on the stones.”

&nb
sp; “For what?” Matt said, clearly wondering if Ian had lost his mind.

  Ian wasn’t entirely sure Matt was wrong. “I don’t know—ashes, organic material… For something that shouldn’t be there but is. Or vice versa. Sprague, make sure to get some soil samples from inside the ring and directly outside of it.”

  One thing all the scenes they’d examined had in common was a ring of stones. Considering these were campsites and a lot of people used campfires, that wasn’t unusual. But this was the first scene where they were getting to it before unknown numbers of hikers had a chance to contaminate the evidence. At the very least, it was worth a shot.

  He turned his attention back to the scene his squad was examining. Their own ring of stones had clearly been used recently for a fire—whether that was the case on the day the body had been found here was impossible to tell. The pictures in the files hadn’t been extensive: basic shots of the scene taken by park rangers who had very little experience in crime scene investigation and probably even less experience with dead bodies. Or at least dead human bodies.

  “Lyndsey and Joe aren’t back yet?” Ian asked Brooks.

  Brooks shook his head. “Joe said the pictographs were back in the woods a bit. Said it would probably take twenty-five, thirty minutes to reach them.”

  Ian nodded and tried to tell himself there was no need for concern. For God’s sake—if anyone could handle herself, it was Lyndsey. And since her run-in with the bear, she’d taken to carrying weapons with her wherever she went. On her own she was brutal, but with a Ka-Bar and her favorite dagger? Lord help the next thing that tried to attack her.

  Of course, there was also the whole thing about believing in Joe’s innocence, which Ian was pretty certain he did. And he knew without doubt that Lyndsey did. Not that any of that meant a damn thing when the vision of her body in Joe’s arms kept invading Ian’s thoughts. When her voice finally came over the comm, he breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  “You got it, Tommy?” Lyndsey asked, sweeping her gaze slowly over the pictures on the granite. She’d been careful not to talk at all on the walk out here knowing Matt had enough to listen to right now, but she figured that was worth a little noise.

  “Lots of wolves, caribou,” Tommy was saying. “Yep. Got it.”

  “We’re heading back. ETA twenty-five minutes.” So maybe ETA wasn’t technically a military term. She hadn’t quite gotten the lingo down, although lately she’d found herself talking in acronyms on a much more consistent basis. Next thing you knew, she’d be wearing camo.

  Unsurprisingly, the pictographs Joe had led her to looked a lot like everything else she’d seen over the past couple of weeks: very pretty, kind of cool… Ultimately inconsequential.

  “Hey,” she said as Joe took a path that led further into the woods. She looked back over her shoulder. “Shouldn’t we be going that way?”

  Her statement probably wasn’t going to make Ian any more comfortable than he already wasn’t with her being out in the woods alone with Joe. Anything that veered from the pre-established path would most likely get him going. Heading into the woods when she was supposed to be heading out of them, well, she had to admit; she wasn’t entirely happy about it herself. She didn’t like handing the reins over to someone else, and here, in this unfamiliar setting, she wasn’t exactly what you’d call in control.

  Her hand went to the hilt of the dagger on her hip. If the demon who sold it to her was to be believed, it dated back to King Arthur’s court, handcrafted for the lady-in-waiting whose job it was to protect Guinevere. Truth in advertising? Lyndsey really didn’t care—the reasons she bought it had much more to do with it being old, being pretty, and having “Happy 3-0 to me” written all over it.

  The dagger—and the Ka-Bar strapped to her thigh—could probably be considered overkill since when it came down to it, Lyndsey was pretty sure Joe hadn’t had anything to do with the bear; she just didn’t get that sense. Mind-reading, however, was not among her powers. And, even though she could take Joe down in about two seconds—ten seconds if he had some extra-special powers up his sleeve—it probably wouldn’t hurt to let everyone listening over the comms know precisely where she was, just in case she’d been wrong about that whole Joe is innocent thing.

  “What a beautiful…” For heaven’s sake, what in the world kind of tree was that? “…big, tall white tree. Is that an eagle’s nest?”

  There was laughter in Joe’s eyes as he said, “We’re on the Silver Falls Portage.” Then he got right up to her comm and clearly repeated, “Silver. Falls.”

  She glared at him. So much for the stealthy Nancy Drew stuff. “One ‘l,’ one ‘v’?” she asked brightly.

  Now he just laughed straight out.

  Tommy came over the comm, not helping matters at all. “They’re called birch trees, city girl,” he said. “But the sign that says ‘Olson’s Trail’? That’s probably the thing I would have mentioned.”

  “You know, Tommy,” she said, annoyed at having forgotten the whole comm-that-was-not-only-audio-but-video-too-thing, not to mention missing the obvious directional sign, “you’re really not that funny.”

  His laughter indicated he didn’t agree.

  Turning to Joe, she said, “Fine. So then where are we going?”

  Her attention was suddenly captured by the thundering roar of water, and she wasn’t even sure if he answered her. Silver Falls, presumably, a spectacular waterfall that appeared below them seemingly out of nowhere as they stepped out past the trees. “Oh…”

  She was still appreciating the scenery when Joe’s voice cut through the din with the oddest of questions: “Do you believe in true love?”

  Ordinarily, she wouldn’t feel a need to share her thoughts with him, but there was a challenge in his voice, and she got the sense there was something riding on how she decided to respond.

  She turned to face him and then she nearly jumped back, taken completely by surprise at how close he was standing to her. Although mind-reading wasn’t one of her abilities, space-reading was—part of the whole Sekhmet deal was knowing precisely where she was in relation to everything else, pretty much at all times; most especially at times when there was very little between her and the raging water swirling below. Given the particular circumstances, the fact that Joe had been able to come up behind her without her knowing set all of Lyndsey’s spidey senses tingling.

  She stepped away from the brink and watched him carefully as she considered the question. A somewhat awkward one, by the way, given the radio audience. “Like, as in a Danny Zuko/Sandra Dee kind of way? ‘True love vows’ and all that?” Despite her light tone, her hand went to her hip again, ready to grab her weapon should it prove necessary.

  Joe gave her a look that, if it had come from Ian would have been accompanied by a smile, albeit an irritated one, and possibly a, ‘Could we come to the point, please?’ Seeing as it was Joe, though, who she really didn’t know too well—obviously didn’t know too well given that she had no clue if he was plotting to push her to her death or hoping to chat her up over a cup of tea—it could just mean that he didn’t catch the reference.

  “Grease?” she clarified. “John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John? Rydell High, old-school?” Damn, she loved that movie.

  Or, rather, she had loved how much it bothered her stepmother whenever she sung the words to all the songs at the top of her lungs. Which was kind of awful, come to think of it, and she probably deserved everything Kate sent her way. Karma and all that.

  But whatever. He caught the reference. That was definitely irritation. Too bad since she certainly had no intention of sidling up to him and kissing him in the way she would have done with Ian. Not that Joe would have minded any more than Ian would have—she was a damn good kisser after all.

  “True love,” Joe stated in a tone indicating he was not at all joking. “What some people never find once, much less twice.”

  Oh, yes. Very awkward. What, after all, was ‘true love’? Crazy, intense, I-might-
die-if-I-can’t-touch-you early-days first love? Or, mature, adult, I-think-I-might-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with-you-even-though-it’s-only-been-three-weeks current-day love?

  And did it even count as True Love if they kept trying to break up with you? Probably better not to go there.

  Plus there was always that whole don’t answer more than you’re asked thing, so she decided to just be safe and say, “Yes.”

  Apparently, that was all Joe needed, and she relaxed her grip when, after barely a moment’s hesitation, he turned away from her and crouched down. He took out a knife and began cutting some brush away from a rock covered in moss. The moss came away next; then he brushed away the dirt and stood back.

  She had no idea what he was doing; she couldn’t even tell what she was supposed to be looking at until the spray from the falls began to hit the newly exposed granite, revealing the markings imprinted on the rock—markings completely different from those on the pictographs, yet incredibly familiar. With an eye still on Joe and his knife, she dropped to her knees and pulled out her water bottle, emptying it over the rock and washing the soil away.

  “Tommy…” She couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.

  “I see it,” Tommy answered. “Wait. Don’t move.”