The Forgotten Girls

by Owen Laukkanen

  There was a cliff here, not a tall one, maybe fifteen feet high. There was a stunning view from the top, the next valley over, Anchor Creek almost all the way down to town. The mountains on the other side of the valley, the Flathead National Forest. Hurley had taken the view before, on his hunts. He’d learned to be wary of the rocks.

  But the girl hadn’t been as prudent. Hurley could see the impression in the snow at the base of the cliff where she’d fallen. He could see the trail where she’d dragged herself to cover in the forest, a few yards away. He lifted his rifle, scanned the tree line for any sign of her. Didn’t see anything. Then he put the rifle down. Cocked his head and listened.

  Another engine. Somewhere back through the forest, on the other side of the mountain. It must be close, if he could hear it from here. It must be almost at the cabin.

  Damn.

  Hurley looked out over the forest, the valley. Scanned the trees for the girl, still didn’t see her. But he could still hear the engine, loud and clear. Hurley listened. He waited.

  Then the engine stopped.

  Damn.

  72

  Mila Scott’s stolen pickup was blocking the road.

  Kerry Finley climbed from her SUV and walked up to the hairpin where Mila must have lost control, locked the steering, and slid the truck into a stand of pine trees just beyond the edge. The front wheels lay in deep snow, but the pickup’s ass end hung out over the road, its back tires barely touching ground. The road was too narrow for Finley’s Explorer to squeeze by. And from what Stevens could see, Mila Scott hadn’t stuck around by her wreck.

  On the mountain above, there was nothing but silence, eerie and foreboding. Behind them, the sun was already settling down toward the mountains on the other side of the Stillwater River Valley. Night would be here before long. Mila Scott was up the road somewhere. And Stevens, Finley, and Windermere had no way through but on foot.

  “Let’s just ram it,” Windermere said, pointing at the pickup. “Pardon the pun, but why can’t we just muscle that damn truck out of the way?”

  Finley scratched her head. “I don’t like it.”

  “Why? Afraid you’ll mess up your paint job?”

  “Heck, the county will cover that. No.” Finley gestured at the truck, the snowy road. “It just won’t work, is all. Not enough traction coming up that incline, and that’s a half-ton truck we’d be trying to bully. More than likely we’d just end up spinning our wheels.”

  “Literally and figuratively,” Windermere said. “So you want to just hike it?”

  “Looks like Mila did.” Stevens was up the other side of the hairpin. “I have boot prints leading from the wreck up the road,” he said. “Look too small to be Hurley’s.”

  Windermere checked out the wreck again. “Shit,” she said, drawing her Glock. “This just gets better and better.”

  —

  But the road leveled off a few hundred yards farther. Stevens stopped for breath just shy of the summit, hands on his knees, red-faced, panting hard. Not exactly the condition you wanted to find yourself in when you arrived for the big showdown with the killer, but hell, there was no way around it. Even Windermere looked bagged.

  “I can see why this guy Hurley got away with it for so long,” she was telling Finley. “Nobody wanted to make the trip up here to confront him.”

  Finley gave her a grim smile. She had her rifle strapped to her shoulder, her service pistol holstered. She wiped the sweat from her brow. “Shall we?”

  They stuck to the side of the road, as close to the tree line as the snow would allow. Ducked low, crept fast. Made the last rise and found themselves in a clearing, a cabin at the far end, nobody around, Hurley’s old Suburban nowhere to be seen.

  “Anybody home?” Windermere whispered.

  “Guess we’d better find out.” Stevens caught Finley’s eye. “Give us some cover, would you? We’re sitting ducks once we’re out in that clearing.”

  Finley retreated to the trees. Trained her rifle on the cabin. “Good to go,” she told them. “Be careful.”

  They broke apart and crossed the clearing on either side of the cabin’s front door, leaving a clear shot for Finley in between them. Windermere arrived at the porch first. Stevens ducked in behind her, stayed low.

  “See the size of those picture windows?” Windermere asked him. “If anyone’s in there, they know we’re out here.”

  “So either they don’t care or they’re waiting to trap us,” Stevens said. “Whichever it is, let’s stay sharp.”

  Windermere gave a silent count. At three, they dashed up the steps to the doorway. Stevens tried the handle. Unlocked. Windermere stepped back, trained her gun on the entrance. Nodded to Stevens, who pulled the door open, free hand tight on his pistol, ready to react as soon as the shooting started.

  But nobody fired on them. Windermere ducked into the cabin. Stevens followed her. It was a single room, small. Nobody inside. No one hiding under the bed.

  No sign of a struggle, either, just dust hanging in the air. The bed made, the clothes put away. A rug on the floor. No telling when the last human being had been in here.

  “So where the hell are they?” Windermere said.

  Stevens didn’t have an answer. Couldn’t decide if it was a good sign or not that they hadn’t found Hurley or Mila yet. Had been counting on finding one of them, at least, up here at the cabin.

  Then Kerry Finley called their names from outside, and Stevens and Windermere hurried out. Found the deputy standing in the middle of the clearing, pointing at the snow.

  “Tracks,” she told them. “Boots from the front door, right there, into the forest. And here.” She pointed again. “I could be mistaken, but that looks a lot like snowshoes.”

  Stevens followed the trail. “I guess they’re onto each other. That sure looks like a chase.”

  “And we’re late to the party, as usual,” Windermere said, starting for the trees. “Come on, team. Let’s see if we can’t catch up.”

  73

  Hurley listened.

  The sound of the engine had not returned. The air was still again. Below the cliff, in the trees, nothing moved. Hurley listened and tried to work out his options.

  It was not a coincidence that another vehicle had come to his cabin. That engine, whatever it was, belonged to friends of the girl. It might even belong to the law. Whoever they were, the new visitors would surely search the cabin. They would find what the girl had found. His treasure chest. His souvenirs.

  If they weren’t the law, they would call the law soon enough. And if they were the law, they would know who he was. They would know what he’d done.

  Hurley scanned the base of the cliff with his rifle’s scope again. Searched the trees for the girl. But the trees were thick and provided good cover. Hurley couldn’t see more than a few feet into the forest.

  He’d been looking forward to capturing the girl. He was enjoying the hunt. He would have liked to have talked to her, coerced her into telling him how she’d come to be here. Now he supposed he might not ever know.

  The mountain was quiet. Nothing moved in the forest. Hurley listened and pondered his next move.

  —

  Mila hugged her knees to her chest and forced herself to be still. Tried to blend in to the shadows around her.

  She’d barely dragged herself from the cliff when Leland Hurley showed up above her. She couldn’t walk; she’d busted up her ankle pretty bad in the fall, though she guessed she should be thankful that the snow was deep and she wasn’t hurt worse. She’d pulled herself to cover, biting through her lip to keep from crying from the pain. Made the tree line and looked up to see Hurley come onto the ledge.

  He was smart enough not to fall, she saw. She’d hoped he would make the same mistake she had, but he’d either known the area or known enough to be careful. Damn.

  M
ila backed into the forest, where her dark clothes would camouflage her from Hurley and his sniper scope. She found a small break in the tree branches that afforded a view of the cliff, and she watched him, hardly daring to breathe, her ankle throbbing with pain.

  Hurley stood there a long time, his head cocked, like he was trying to listen for her. Mila didn’t move. Didn’t make any noise, even as her muscles began to ache. She fought the pain, felt herself losing. Then, just as she realized she would have to shift position or cry out, Hurley disappeared from her sight.

  Mila waited. Searched the break in the branches, but Hurley didn’t return. She stretched out her legs, tested her wounded ankle. Couldn’t bear any weight. Either broken or badly sprained, she wasn’t sure, but it hurt like a mother. Damn it.

  There was no noise from up on the cliff. Hurley still hadn’t appeared through the break in the trees, but Mila knew he was out there. Knew he was coming for her. And with her ankle messed up as bad as it was, Mila knew, with a sickening certainty, she wasn’t ever going to outrun him.

  74

  Hurley climbed through the forest. Retraced the girl’s steps to where she’d turned down toward the cliff, and kept climbing. Cut a branch from a fir tree, used it to brush the snow behind him, clear his tracks as he climbed. It was painstaking work, but Hurley hoped he had time. It would take a while for the girl’s friends to discover her trail. It would take longer for them to follow it here.

  He climbed up the mountain and across, aiming north, back toward the cabin, but thirty yards up the grade. Climbed until he could no longer see the girl’s footprints in the snow below, then continued across the mountain. He was high enough now that the girl’s friends wouldn’t see him. He could slip past them in secret, make his escape.

  That’s what this was now, an escape. Hurley had wanted badly to hunt the girl down, but he’d realized on the cliff that to do so would be suicide. The girl’s friends would follow her trail. If he continued to track her, he risked giving away his position. The girl could scream for help. She could make noise if she fell again. Or maybe they would just hear him kill her.

  Hurley had hunted long enough to know that sometimes the prey got away. He’d learned to weigh the risks, knew when to concede the chase, retreat, and regroup. This girl wasn’t worth the risk to his freedom. He could hunt her, and kill her, but she would likely be his last.

  And he wasn’t through hunting. Not by a long shot.

  Hurley kept a smooth, steady pace as he trekked through the forest. Knew he didn’t need to overexert himself. The girl’s friends would follow her trail to the cliff face. With any luck, they would follow her down.

  It would be night soon, anyway. The temperature would drop, and the girl and her friends would find the mountain very uncomfortable. They’d quite likely get lost. They might even die. The mountain wasn’t kind to outsiders.

  Hurley heard something through the trees, somewhere below. Voices. The girl’s friends. He knelt in the snow and took his rifle from his shoulder. Put the scope to his eye and scanned the forest.

  —

  The snow was deep. Windermere could feel her boots soaking through as she slogged after Stevens. Could hear Kerry Finley behind her, breathing heavily, the swish of her pants as she trudged down the trail.

  Stevens was leading, his pistol drawn, his eyes on the ground in front of him. The trail was an easy one to find, not so easy to follow. Mila Scott’s footprints attested to that; they dragged into one another, sloppy, as if she’d lacked the energy to lift her feet fully out of the snow.

  Of course, the snowshoes had made easy work of the terrain, Windermere could see. They made a much lighter impression in the snow, seemed to glide through the forest. Leland Hurley would have had little trouble catching up to the young woman.

  Windermere stuck close to Stevens. Searched the forest ahead. Prayed they weren’t closing in on a murder scene.

  —

  Hurley dropped down the mountain as stealthily as he could manage. Dropped as low as he dared, then ducked behind a tree and raised the rifle again. Watched as the intruders came into view.

  There were three of them, two women and a man. The man and the black woman stank of government. They wore big dark jackets, hats, and gloves, carried pistols like they knew what to do with them. State cops, Hurley figured, or maybe even feds.

  The second woman was local, a sheriff or a sheriff’s deputy. She dressed like the law, a well-worn coat with a badge and a fur collar, carried a rifle at her hip. The cops waded through the snow, struggling, the man’s face red, all three breathing heavily. Hurley tracked the man in his sight. Followed him through the trees, brought his finger to the trigger.

  He could kill this man. Put him down quick, before he knew what was happening. The notion was tempting. The shot was right there. With one squeeze of the trigger, he could rain hell on this interloper.

  The man kept marching, oblivious, head down, working the trail. The black woman must have been his partner. The other must have been their guide. Her eyes swung left and right, like she expected an ambush. She was probably quick with that rifle.

  There was a fair chance the first two were feds, Hurley realized. If the law had followed him up the mountain, the chances were they already knew what he’d done to the women. And that made him a prime target for the FBI and their ilk.

  Hurley continued to track the leader. Massaged the trigger with his finger, debated the shot. He could kill the man, sure, and probably his partner, before they cottoned on to what was happening. If he didn’t kill all three of them, though, the survivors would take up the chase. They would call for reinforcements. And dead FBI agents would attract major attention.

  Just how quick can you be with that rifle, big guy?

  Hurley followed the lead fed in his sight. Ached to shoot the bastard, drop all three—bam bam bam—in succession. But he didn’t pull the trigger. Knew he couldn’t take the risk. He tracked the fed until he’d disappeared into the forest. Then he let his breath out, shouldered the rifle. Straightened and continued, reluctantly, back toward the cabin, leaving the law to try to track down the girl, oblivious to the hunter who’d just showed them mercy.

  75

  The cliff nearly killed Stevens.

  He’d been following Mila Scott’s trail as it curved sharply down the slope of the mountain. Looked up and saw the bright spot through the trees, daylight making its last stand, saw the way Mila’s trail led right for it. Stevens followed, nearly tripped on a root through the snow, barely caught himself before he crashed through the tree branches and into the bright. He did catch himself, grabbed on to a trunk and held it for dear life until he was sure he wasn’t going anywhere. Then he peeked through the trees and was glad he’d reached out when he had; on the other side of the branches was a rock ledge about three feet wide, and then a sheer drop maybe twenty feet down to more forest.

  Windermere poked her head out behind him. Took in the view, then the drop. “Whoa,” she said. “Good thing you slowed up, partner. You would have been flying.”

  Stevens waited for his heart rate to calm. “Looks like someone else wasn’t so lucky,” he said, pointing down to the base of the cliff. “That’s an impact crater in the snow right there.”

  Windermere followed his finger. “Hell of a drop.”

  “Sure is. But was it Mila or Leland Hurley who took the leap?”

  There was no way to tell. Whoever had fallen had disappeared again, into the trees.

  “So how do we get down there?” Windermere asked. “I’m assuming you don’t want to jump.”

  Before Stevens could answer, Finley interrupted. “I hate to be that person,” she said, “but that sun is setting fast. We keep going with this, we’re risking getting caught out here come nightfall.”

  “The girl’s out there,” Windermere said. “Leland Hurley’s out there. If we let this trail go cold
, we might never find either of them.”

  “You could die out there with them, if you don’t turn back now.”

  “We’re not turning back,” Windermere said. “Not while there’s a chance Mila Scott’s still alive. Right, Stevens?”

  Stevens looked out over the valley, at the bright spot through the clouds where the sun would be, just about at the top of the mountains in the distance. He realized he could hear something: engines, revving high and getting closer. From the looks on Finley’s and Windermere’s faces, they heard it, too.

  “That’ll be the backup,” Stevens said. “Flathead County deputies finally.”

  “Finally,” Windermere said.

  Stevens listened a moment longer. “Kerry, you go back to Hurley’s cabin,” he told Finley. “Meet the Flathead deputies, explain the situation. See if you can’t get us a helicopter. Barring that, get us some backup. We’ll follow the trail until nightfall. Then we’ll turn back to this cliff.”

  Finley studied his face. “And if you get lost?”

  “We’ll yell as loud as we can,” Windermere said. “So keep your ears open. Come on, partner. We’re losing daylight. Let’s find a way down this cliff.”

  Finley watched them, concerned. She wasn’t happy with this plan, Stevens could tell.

  “We’ll be back at this cliff before dark,” Stevens told her. “Just make sure you have some more deputies waiting for us.”

  76

  The shadows were all-encompassing now. The cold was setting in. Mila could hear movement in the forest somewhere, but she couldn’t see Hurley anymore. She couldn’t see much of anything.

  Hurley’s absence didn’t give Mila any comfort. She wasn’t safe here in the woods, and if she stayed, she would die. The daylight was dwindling. She would freeze overnight. And anyway, Hurley wouldn’t give up on her easily. He’d seen her coming out of his cabin. He must have suspected she’d known.