by C. J. Miller
Her heart fell. Her brother’s wanderlust was in full control and Blaine was running away from his problems. “The FBI wants to talk to you. You should at least stay around and meet with them. You can give them your alibi and clear the air,” Autumn said. Maybe they could convince Blaine that being on the trail was dangerous.
“I’ll see,” Blaine said, not looking at her. What was he not saying? His tone had changed when she’d mentioned the most recent victim.
Roger Ford wanted Autumn to alert him when she’d heard from Blaine. Could she talk Blaine into meeting with Ford? Her other options were to withhold the information from the FBI or rat out her brother. Where did Nathan stand on the matter? Would he call Ford to inform him that Blaine had shown up at the Trail’s Edge?
“Offer for the shower stands,” Autumn said.
“By the time I clean my gear, the water will be hot. Night, Autumn. Night, Nathan.”
As abruptly as he’d arrived, Blaine left, closing the door behind him.
Nathan hadn’t moved from his chair. He ran his hand along his jaw. “That’s strange.”
People had been saying that about Blaine’s behavior all his life. “He’s not normally so cranky or standoffish. He’s probably tired.”
“Not that. He was vague about how he knew about the latest vic.”
He’d picked up on Blaine’s change in tone and behavior, as well. Autumn felt torn between Nathan and Blaine. While she didn’t believe her brother was involved, she didn’t want to raise doubts in anyone’s mind. To this point, Nathan had been firmly on her side and in the Blaine-is-not-guilty party.
Something in Nathan’s tone sent a torpedo of worry to Autumn’s gut. The urge to defend her brother rose in her chest. “He needs sleep. We’ll talk to him tomorrow. He’s not much of a talker anyway. My dad and uncle used to joke that Blaine spoke a hundred words a day. We probably got as much as we did from him because he’s been alone for months and has barely spoken a word to anyone. He had those hundreds saved up.”
Her attempt at humor didn’t lift the corners of Nathan’s mouth or scrub the look of concentration from his face. “He knows something about the victim he’s not telling us.”
Autumn didn’t care for the implication Nathan was making. Blaine was not involved with the Huntsman or the murders. She ruffled Nathan’s hair. “Don’t get FBI on him. He’s just quirky.”
Nathan smoothed his hair. “You mentioned that Blaine was a loner and had some trouble in high school.”
Was Nathan profiling her brother? Building a psychological sketch to use against him?
The adrenaline rush from her brother’s visit had subsided, and in combination with the interrupted sleep and the early-morning hour, irritation rose in her veins. “I didn’t say he was a loner. I said he was hiking the trail alone. And most people have some problem or another in high school.”
Nathan stood. “I’ll talk to him alone tomorrow.”
Autumn stared at Nathan, shocked she had fallen into this emotional pit again. Nathan, the man who had made love to her hours ago and held her tenderly, was gone. Blaine’s presence had brought back Nathan, Special Agent. The distance widened between them and a chill speared through her.
She turned away, unable to look at him. She might shatter if his eyes were cold and expressionless.
“Ready for bed?” he asked.
She was angry at his accusations and frustrated by his attitude, but she didn’t tell him to go to his cabin. She was physically exhausted, emotionally wrung, and being alone wasn’t high on her priority list, especially with a killer lurking in the area.
She crawled into bed and shut off the light at her bedside. Nathan climbed in beside her, but he didn’t reach for her. Closing her eyes, she tried to fall asleep, willing her restless mind to quiet.
An hour later, still wide awake, she rolled over and found Nathan was also awake, staring at the ceiling. She set her hand over his chest. “What’s the matter?” she asked. Was he thinking of the same things she was? Or was he thinking about her? Wondering how she felt?
“The case,” he said.
A bruise to the heart, but not a break. When did a man ever admit to his feelings? “What about it?”
“Trying to put the pieces together.”
She’d thought up until now they’d done a good job working as a team. “Anything in particular you want to share?”
“Nothing yet. Get some sleep. The sun’s almost up.”
Dismissed. He had shut down emotionally and he had shut her out of his thoughts, out of the case.
She rolled away, tucking herself under the blankets, and squeezed her eyes shut, promising herself it was the last time that she’d let Nathan Bradshaw bruise her heart.
* * *
Blaine might know something about the murders. His evasive answers replayed in Autumn’s mind. At 6:00 a.m., Autumn showered and dressed and took care of a few chores. Unable to think of anything except the Huntsman, she knocked on her brother’s door until he answered it.
Despite the late hour when he had arrived the night before, Blaine was awake and coffee was in the pot on the kitchen counter.
“Let me pour you some coffee. You seem wound up,” Blaine said. He poured her a cup and handed it to her, then walked out onto the porch.
Autumn followed. “Blaine, if you know something about the Huntsman you have to tell Nathan.”
Blaine sat on the wooden chair facing the Trail’s Edge entrance. “I don’t have to do anything.”
Autumn dragged a seat in front of Blaine and sat, forcing him to look at her. “This is important, Blaine. This isn’t high school pranks or practical jokes. People are getting hurt.”
“What makes you think I know anything?” Blaine avoided making eye contact and took a sip of his coffee.
“Cut the bull, Blaine.”
Blaine narrowed his eyes and a long pause passed. “I don’t know anything for sure, Autumn. I just have theories. The killings. Something about the killings is strangely familiar.” His voice took on a haunted tone.
An uneasy feeling skittered down her spine. “Familiar? What do you mean? We’ve never had murders along the trail, at least, not like this.”
Blaine rubbed his bearded jawline. “What about the locations of the murders?”
“You mean the one between here and the trail?”
Blaine shook his head. “I can’t figure that one out. Think about the other ones.”
“Backcountry. Less accessible to most hikers,” Autumn said, trying to guess where Blaine was headed with this line of thinking.
“Not just that. What about the hanging from a tree? It’s almost ritualistic.”
Nathan had used similar terms in describing the Huntsman’s killings. “No doubt, it’s creepy. Nathan thinks it has something to do with keeping the trail clean.”
Blaine stood. “Do you have Dad and Uncle Ryan’s nature books?”
Autumn came to her feet. “I have a few. Why do you want them?”
“Get them. Please. Don’t tell your boyfriend I want them.”
Autumn didn’t bother correcting him about Nathan. It didn’t matter what Blaine thought and she didn’t waste time explaining. Autumn jogged to her cabin and went inside, trying to think what she could tell Nathan. Turned out, she didn’t need to tell him anything. Nathan was gone. A note on the counter had his cell number and a message. “At my cabin—work.”
At least with him gone, she wouldn’t need to lie about what she was doing. She retrieved the box of books she had crammed under her bed. After removing her books, layered on the top, she reached the ones that had belonged to her father and her uncle. They were among the few items she had kept to remember them. The books had belonged to her grandfather and he had passed them to his sons. Lifting the box with the remaining books, she carried it t
o Blaine’s. She dropped the box at his feet. “I haven’t read these in years.”
Blaine picked up the first book and turned it over in his hand. “I saw the last victim. It was a woman. Expensive equipment. Her boots weren’t even broken in. She had no business being on the trail and I told her so. She had a fancy camera and said something about working on a thesis project.”
Autumn froze and her eyes snapped to Blaine’s face. What was Blaine saying? “Why didn’t you say something to Nathan when he asked what you knew about the victim?” The FBI could still be looking for her identity. Blaine could have helped them.
“She was burned almost beyond recognition. At first, they didn’t know if she was male or female,” Autumn said.
“It’s always females,” Blaine said, a heavy edge on his voice.
Autumn watched her brother, growing afraid to ask more questions while feeling compelled to know more. “Blaine, what are you saying?”
Blaine ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I don’t want to get involved in this. I can’t get involved in this.”
“We’re already involved. We’re part of the trail. We can’t turn our backs and pretend otherwise.” If he knew something, he had to tell the authorities. The FBI had dozens of agents on the case. If they found anything that implicated Blaine, they’d be thrilled to have a suspect in custody.
Blaine set his jaw. “Things haven’t been right since Dad died.”
Following the jump in conversation, Autumn knelt at his side. “I know what you mean, I feel—”
Blaine cut her off by slicing his hand through the air. “You’ve kept going, Autumn. You’re running this place and you’re living your life. But I can’t shake it. It catches me off guard, and I can’t handle it. I’m angry. I’m angry at Dad for dying and angry at the world that doesn’t care. We’ve lost everyone except each other.” Blaine looked at the floor as if embarrassed by his emotional outburst.
Autumn hadn’t realized her brother had been having this much difficulty dealing with his grief. Losing their father had been hard on them, and Blaine hadn’t spoken much about it since the funeral. She’d assumed he’d coped as she had, with time alone, reading and thinking. She couldn’t give a precise explanation for how she’d managed, but somehow she had. Her grief wasn’t nearly as raw as it had been in the months following her father’s death. Day by day, it had gotten easier for her. Had Blaine not felt any healing change?
Autumn set her hand on his arm. Blaine didn’t pull away, so she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him, wishing she could take some of the grief from him, if only for a little while. “I’m sorry, Blaine. I didn’t know you were having such a rough time. You can talk to me about it, if it helps. I’m there, too. I know it hurts and it sucks and it’s a total awful time.”
Blaine let her hug him for a few moments, then shoved her away abruptly, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin. His eyes were damp but his cheeks dry. “Why did you keep these?”
She’d kept the books for their sentimental value. They had been a part of her childhood, her father teaching her and Blaine lessons from them, basic first aid, essential information for living in the forest. Now it was quicker and easier for her to look up information on the internet.
“I wasn’t ready to throw them away. They were Dad’s and Uncle Ryan’s and they loved them. But I don’t know what this has to do with the murders.”
Blaine squatted next to the books and pulled each out, setting them on the floor in a stack. Near the bottom was a maroon-colored leather-bound book with the gold-embossed title on the front, Nature’s Secrets.
It had been a favorite of their grandfather’s and their uncle Ryan’s, listing plants and their healing properties, how to create headache medicine from boiled leaves and soap from mashed roots. He held up the book, shaking it in his hand. “Do you know what this book says about purifying the land?”
Autumn shook her head, uneasy about where this conversation was headed. Blaine had seen the victim and he’d lied to Nathan about it and now he was obsessed with these books. “Blaine, tell me what’s going on. You’re freaking me out.”
“It talks about removing litter from the land,” Blaine said, opening the book and holding it in his palms. He started flipping through the pages.
Autumn shivered. “I don’t understand what that has to do with the murders.” She didn’t want to make a connection between the murderer and her brother. Blaine was all the family she had left. He wouldn’t hurt another hiker. It wasn’t in his nature. But his behavior was bizarre, and her stomach knotted with worry.
Blaine’s gaze shot up. “The vines around the bodies. Didn’t you think that was weird?”
When Autumn had told Blaine about the body she’d found, he had been so blasé about it. Now, the intense look on his face caused her to lean away. “I guess so. I didn’t know why someone would do that.”
“The hiker on the trail, the last victim, was moving quick, too quick to have any idea what she was doing. She would have exhausted herself in hours. When I saw her veer off the trail, I followed her, wanting to warn her.”
Autumn wished he would stop. She didn’t want to hear this. But the words caught in her throat.
“Because of the weather, I lost her. I set up camp for the night and the next day, I found her. She was swinging from the tree. She had an arrow through her chest and the vines wrapped around her. The way the body was burned, I knew she was dead.”
Autumn’s stomach twisted in a mixture of horror and fear. Blaine had been in the vicinity, in the backcountry where another killing had taken place. Why had he been spared? Blaine was quick and quiet in the woods. Had the killer not seen him? Was one victim enough? She grabbed Blaine’s forearm. “You have to tell Nathan what you saw.”
Blaine shook his head adamantly and pushed his unruly dark hair away from his face. “I can’t. Come on, Autumn. I’m telling you because it’s been eating me, but if I tell him, he’ll haul me in for questioning. He might even think I’m involved.”
“If you tell the truth, you have nothing to worry about,” Autumn said, in that moment putting more trust in Nathan than she had in any other man, outside her father. Nathan would treat Blaine fairly, hear him out and give him the benefit of the doubt. He wouldn’t snap to judgment or twist the facts against Blaine.
Blaine closed the book and threw up his hands. “Get a clue, Autumn. This is real life. The police and the FBI want a suspect. They want someone on the hook for these murders. Look how ready Daniel was to point his finger at me.”
“You can trust Nathan to do the right thing.”
The look on Blaine’s face told her he didn’t see things the same way. “Don’t be naive. He might be your boyfriend, but he has no reason to help me. You do not have good taste in the men you choose to date.”
“That’s not true,” Autumn said, knowing it was.
Blaine looked at her sideways. “Come on, Autumn. Ben? Daniel? Now this guy? Are you even sure he’s not using you to get to me? Or using you to work an angle? He could do this with women at every location.”
Autumn shook her head. Nathan wasn’t using her. “Nathan and I are a team.”
Blaine sighed. “I hope for your sake you are right about this. I know how this looks for me. With my record, how long I’ve been on the trail, my history with Sandra and now a victim I spoke with dead, no one will believe me.” His voice had taken on a panicked hitch.
“I believe you. Whatever you tell me, I’ll believe it.” She knew Blaine wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone. “I don’t understand what that book has to do with the vines.” She couldn’t remember anything in the pages about the topic.
Blaine blew out his breath in a huff. “The original pantheistic settlers in this area had beliefs that stemmed from a love of nature and a reverence for its power. They believed they could bin
d evil using vines. They’d wrap vines around criminals to prevent them from hurting someone else as part of a cleansing ritual.”
Autumn recalled something in the book about ceremonies and beliefs along the trail. She’d thought it was folklore, an exaggeration of a story to scare people into respecting the land.
“Are you saying the Huntsman is a descendant of the original settlers? Someone who still practices pantheism?”
“It’s a working theory,” Blaine said.
Autumn didn’t know anyone who openly prescribed to pantheistic beliefs, but plenty of nature lovers put the land first and believed in the earth and nature as their higher power. “Let’s take a few deep breaths and calm down.”
She didn’t suggest talking to Nathan again, but maybe once they discussed this a little more, Blaine would agree to tell Nathan his theory.
Blaine took her arm. “I am calm, Autumn. I won’t tell anyone about this. I have no proof it means anything about the Huntsman or the murders.” His eyes bored into her and she shrugged Blaine’s hand away. She needed to convince Blaine that he should come clean about what he knew.
The sounds of cars approaching had Autumn turning toward the entrance of the Trail’s Edge. Police cars and the FBI. What had happened now?
As the cars approached, Autumn saw Nathan exit his cabin, striding toward Blaine’s dwelling. Had they found another victim? Or caught the killer?
Special Agent Ford approached at the same time Nathan did, holding up his hand to Nathan. “Stay out of this, Bradshaw.”
Nathan didn’t budge. Four police officers got out of their cars.
“Blaine Reed?” Ford asked.
Fear skittered across her spine. Autumn stepped in front of Blaine. “He just arrived home a little while ago. What’s going on?”
Ford didn’t look as if he believed her. “Our video surveillance confirms he arrived sometime early this morning. Were you planning to let me know?”
Autumn didn’t answer. They’d had her under surveillance? Had that been the sensation she’d felt of being watched?
Ford continued. “Step away from Blaine. Mr. Reed, don’t make this harder than it needs to be. We have questions for you.”