by Jeff Carson
TO THE
BONE
By Jeff Carson
http://jeffcarson.co
[email protected]
Published By
Cross Atlantic Publishing
Copyright © 2015 All rights reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
David Wolf Series In Order
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Foreign Deceit (Wolf #1)
The Silversmith (Wolf #2)
Alive and Killing (Wolf #3)
Deadly Conditions (Wolf #4)
Cold Lake (Wolf #5)
Smoked Out (Wolf #6)
To the Bone (Wolf #7)
Wolf #8 – Coming Winter, 2015
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Chapter 1
The girl was rooting around in her trunk at the side of the road and looked up at the approaching vehicle.
Wolf recognized her immediately, and she must have recognized him because her first reaction was to step back and drop her jaw.
Skidding to a halt, Wolf rolled down his window just as a cloud of dust engulfed them both.
“Hi, Cassidy,” Wolf said peering through the choking dirt.
“Hi, Mr. Wolf.”
Her pristine red German sedan was tilted to the rear passenger side.
“Flat tire?”
“Yes,” she said waving a slender hand in front of her face.
“Sorry,” Wolf said, squinting his own eyes as a hot blast of air came in the window. “Let me pull over, I’ll give you a hand.”
“Okay, thanks,” she said with a mixture of relief and what Wolf thought to be dread in her voice.
He pulled behind her car and shut off the engine. Stepping out onto the shoulder, the weeds snapped and crunched under his old leather work boot, flushing out some grasshoppers that scattered like popping popcorn. Their snapping wings and the burbling Chatauqua River below the opposite side of the road were the only sounds.
It was only 9:00 am and the early August sun was cooking the back of his neck.
The wind cleared the dust and Cassidy Frost stood with her hands in the pockets of her frayed jean shorts, which were barely more material than a bikini bottom in Wolf’s estimation.
Wolf knew Cassidy Frost, had known her well for the last seven months, because she was dating Wolf’s fifteen-year-old son, Jack. She was just older than Jack, and two months into her sixteenth year with a driver’s license, and since Jack was living with Wolf, and without a driver’s license, she had been burning a lot of gas driving up and down this road lately.
But today? He hadn’t expected to see her today.
Her eyes were wild looking, adrenaline still pumping through her veins from the tire, and she stutter-stepped forward with an outstretched hand.
Wolf nodded and took it. Her hand was thin, almost dainty, but her parents had clearly taught her to grip firm when she shook someone’s hand, and so she did.
She really was quite beautiful. Her large blue eyes always reminded Wolf of his late ex-wife, Sarah. And then there was her straw-blonde hair streaming across her face. The resemblance was uncanny, and he knew it was more than coincidence that Jack was drawn to this girl who looked like his mother.
A grouping of skid marks were gouged into the gravel, and here she was pulled over a few yards from that. It was clear she had been travelling just above unsafe speed when the blowout had happened, and now the adrenaline powered look in her eye made sense.
“You all right?”
She nodded.
“You have a spare, right?”
“Yeah, it’s in the trunk.”
He walked to the open trunk. There was a piece of carpeted plastic pulled aside, revealing a thin spare tire and a cheap, insufficient-looking jack. Next to the compartment a sleeping bag was pushed into the corner, and next to that was a duffle bag, dusty with a piece of pine bark clinging to the fabric.
Pretending not to see those two items, Wolf pulled out the tire and jack.
“I was trying to call for help,” she held out her phone, “but there’s no service here.”
“There’s never any service all the way down this road until you hit our house.”
Wolf wondered where Cassidy’s tent was.
“I’m going to help you do this, all right?” he said. “Every sixteen year old needs to learn how to change a tire.”
She smiled sheepishly and put her phone in her back pocket. “I know. My dad keeps saying the same thing.”
Wolf helped her set up the jack, and remove the tire, and put on the spare. She was a quick study, asking intelligent questions and all in all diving into the whole thing with a commendable attitude.
Wolf’s mind reeled as he watched the sixteen-year old girl tighten the last lug nut.
Just a sleeping bag and a duffle bag. Where was her tent?
“Mr. Wolf?”
“Yeah?”
“I … was asking what next?”
“Oh, yeah.” He showed her how to lower the car safely and stow the damaged tire and jack—once again playing the unobservant idiot with the camping gear as he pushed down the trunk with a thump.
“Take it in to Mitch’s tire shop as soon as you can,” Wolf said keeping his hand on the warm paint of the trunk.
They stared at one another for a few seconds.
“And Cassidy?”
Cassidy swallowed. Her face dropped and her lip quivered as she looked into Wolf’s eyes. “Yes?”
“Were you camping with Jack last night?”
Her eyes welled up with astonishing speed.
“What’s the matter?” Wolf asked.
“You think I’m some sort of slut. I know it.”
Wolf’s mouth dropped open and his face went red hot.
“I see it. I know you do.”
Wolf felt like he was getting punched repeatedly in the stomach. “Cassidy, I don’t think that.”
She was openly weeping now, tears splashing in the dust.
He reached out a stiff arm and patted her shoulder, unsure of what else to do. “I don’t think that.”
“I hope you’re telling the truth.” She looked up with desperate eyes and sniffed.
It was the truth. He often questioned where the second half of her outfits had gone, but he’d known a lot of sluts in his day, and Cassidy Frost was not one of them. Her parents w
ere good people and he knew they were good parents, and she was a good kid. And if Jack and Cassidy were now … ugh … “I just saw your sleeping bag. Jack didn’t tell me you were included in the group of his friends going camping.”
Her eyes narrowed for a second and then she looked away, and Wolf knew there was no “group of his friends”.
“Take the tire into Mitch’s tire place. You know it?”
She nodded.
“Tell him I sent you. Or tell him your dad sent you I guess, he knows your dad too. But get it taken care of. You don’t want to get another flat tire and be stranded out the middle of nowhere without any way out.”
She nodded and stared up at him, and then her lip started quivering again.
“That would suck,” Wolf said with a smile.
She burst into a smile. “Yeah, it would.”
Wolf saw a perfect moment of escape so he backed away. “Okay. See you around. Drive careful. Drive slow.”
“I will. Thanks, Mister Wolf.”
She wiped her nose and climbed in the car, started it and drove away.
Wolf watched her trail of dust disappear around the bend.
Wolf drove at a steady clip along the meandering Chatauqua River toward his house. It was times like these Wolf missed Sarah the most. Not that he thought she would know what to do in this situation. In fact, he could picture Sarah’s eyes darkening with a distant gaze, and her jaw screwing shut at the news that her son may have just spent the night with a girl.
He smiled at the thought as he drove up the hill to the head gate of his ranch. He missed having a partner, a teammate, to work these things through with. But she was gone. The problem was all his to bear alone now.
Nate Watson was there already, parked in front and standing on the circle drive next to the tall lanky figure of Jack. Wandering by the barn was Jet, a retired German shepherd police dog Jack had adopted six months ago.
Wolf came to a stop behind Nate’s full-sized pickup truck, which had scrawled on it Watson Geological Services Inc. with a professional looking logo above it.
“There he is,” Nate said with a smile.
Jet lifted a leg and took a leak on the side of the barn and then wandered away with his nose on the dirt.
Jack waved and kicked at a weed.
“Sorry I’m late,” Wolf said, closing his door. “I had to help a motorist with a flat tire. Hey Jack. You’re home early.”
Jack nodded with no further explanation.
Walking to them, Wolf took Nate’s hand and shook it. “I thought you weren’t coming back from the trip until tomorrow morning. Heck, you made a big enough deal about it.”
Jack shrugged, still averting his gaze. “Mitch Henderson drove, remember? His mom called and wanted him home for some emergency reason.”
“Really? What emergency?”
“Psh. I don’t know.”
“I hope it’s not serious.”
Jack shrugged and pointed to the north. “Nate says you guys are cutting trees because there’s a fire up north?”
Wolf nodded and said nothing.
Jack squirmed under his gaze. “Well. All right. I’m going to go inside.”
Wolf nodded.
Jack loped away on his stick legs toward the house. He picked up his camping gear and started stacking it by the door.
Nate Watson stepped forward and clamped his hand on Wolf’s, shaking the thoughts from Wolf’s head with each pump of his hand.
“What was that about?” Nate asked in a low voice.
Nate was a thick stump of a man. Standing at five foot seven, he was at least two hundred pounds, with a thick chest and delta shaped torso, like the men Wolf had served with as an Army Ranger.
Nate’s blond hair was shaved to the scalp nowadays, hidden under a sweated out Colorado School of Mines hat—both ways of coping with his growing bald spot on the top of his head.
Nate and Wolf had grown up playing football together. It was where they had bonded, with Wolf at quarterback and Nate at running back—always there to block for Wolf, always there to throw a bail out pass to when there were no other options.
Through the years, despite the missed blocks and footballs that had hit Nate in the back of the helmet, Nate had always been there for Wolf in time of need and Wolf had always been grateful for it. And true to undying form, Nate was here now.
“I just saw his girlfriend. She blew a tire on the road down to town. He was camping with her, not his friends.”
Nate nodded and gazed into the distance. “Yeah. I know. I was here when she dropped him off.”
Wolf frowned and looked him up and down.
“I was going to tell you.”
Like the other people Wolf chose to surround himself with, Nate was a reliable man, but he was also a man that liked to sugarcoat things. He also had the habit of omitting information if he deemed it would cause someone unneeded stress.
Wolf shook his head. “No you weren’t.”
Nate ignored him and turned to the north. “So you’re freaked about this new fire, huh? I thought you and Jack already had a hundred feet of defensible space cleared around this joint.”
A horrific smell swirled around them for a few seconds and then dispersed on the wind.
Nate wrinkled his nose. “What the hell is that?”
The huge German shepherd had appeared again. Sitting straight upwind of them, Jet sat with a leather glove in his mouth. He dropped it and backed up a couple steps, proud of his find.
Wolf bent over and picked it up. “I lost that glove months ago. Good job, boy.”
Jet’s tail swished and thumped on the crispy grass.
“That’s cool he finds things,” Nate said, “but what’s wrong with his ass?”
“Let me guess,” Wolf said to Jack, “you forgot to give him the medicine before you went camping?”
Jack was back outside, picking up his tent next to the kitchen door. He stared at the sky in thought.
“Why don’t you go get it,” Wolf said.
Jack looked at him.
“What?”
“I don’t know where it is.”
Wolf shook his head. “Maybe Cassidy can give you a ride to refill the prescription today.”
Jack nodded and disappeared back inside.
Six months ago Wolf had gotten a call from a friend on the Vail Police Department asking if he was interested in adopting a retired German Shepherd police dog named Jet. Wolf had looked at the implications of taking in the dog, and knew he wouldn’t have time to take care of it with his job, so he’d said no.
Overhearing Wolf talk about it the next day, Jack told him categorically that he wanted it.
With Jack losing his mother a year ago, and the depression, anxiety, and anger that followed finally showing signs of lifting, there was no way Wolf was going to say no to his son. So he called his friend back and said yes.
When they’d driven up to meet the dog, Wolf had been impressed. He was massive, which concerned Wolf at first because like other German Shepherd police dogs, Jet had been taught various other commands, such as fass!, which was German for attack. But the dog’s demeanor had been calm and stoic, like a wise old man who had been into battle.
When visiting, they learned Jet had had a nine-year career with the Vail County Police Department as a tracking dog, busting countless smugglers and criminals along the I-70 corridor over the years. In the end, they were charmed by the dog and brought him home.
On many occasions since, Wolf had seen the animal’s intelligence, and had also seen bursts of impressive speed and strength. But Jet was quick to tire, and getting on in age, there was no doubting that.
Along with fatigue and a passion for finding things his human master might find useful or illegal, Jet had developed a bacterial overgrowth in his small intestine common with German shepherds, and now unless Jet kept up with a regimen of pills from the veterinarian, Jet tended to live up to his name—shooting a jet of hot air out the back of him.
Nate cleared his throat and slapped Wolf on the shoulder. “The fire?”
Wolf nodded. “Yeah. Have you heard about it?”
“The brush fire north of Cave Creek? I heard about it from you this morning.”
“Right. Well I had Jeff Adkins up here the other day and he was saying I should clear those trees on the southwest corner.”
Jeff Adkins was the local fire chief and he had been doing house calls making sure everyone was ready if and when a fire hit.
Nate put his hands on his hips and looked to the southwest. “They haven’t been touched by the beetles.”
“They haven’t, but everything out there has.”
The forest to the south howled as a hot blast of wind blew through the trees.
It had been one of the driest summers on record, and after a hundred years of fire suppression coupled with the widespread pine beetle infestation of the Rocky Mountains and mountain west, huge tracts of forest that had once been green and thriving were now rust colored, dead and hollowed out by the voracious bugs.
At least half of the trees visible to the south and west of Wolf’s property had been hit by the beetles.
“And that fire to the north has you spooked, and you want to make sure you’re prepared if some jackass tosses a cigarette butt out the window on Williams Pass.” Nate nodded.
“You know me well my friend.”
While the acreage to the south and west was thick forest, the trees on the east mountainside behind Wolf’s house had been charred and scarred from an explosion years ago, and now saplings grew where the new gaps had been made. As for reconstruction of his house, it had been long, and Wolf had lived in a half-shell of a house with no running water through the long winter. He’d likened it to living in a shallow cave and he wanted none of that again.
“Whatever. I guess you have another two hundred ninety-nine acres of trees to make up for it.” Nate turned and pointed at the trees, counting.
“Seven,” Wolf said. “There’re seven to cut.”
“Piece of cake.” Nate picked up the plastic case at his feet. “I’ve got my Stihl. Yours probably won’t start, so, you just want me to get started?”
Wolf ignored him and went to the barn to retrieve his own chainsaw, knowing full well Nate was probably right and it was going to take some doing to get the finicky motor of his much older saw to turn over.