Inside the Echo

by Jen Blood

  “If you don’t find anything out soon, I can call some of my contacts there,” Jack offered. “I made some enemies before I left, but I still have a few people I can check in with.”

  “That would be good,” Hogan agreed. “Thank you. I’ll take whatever we can get at this point.”

  “So no word about Whippet?” I asked.

  “It looks like she’ll be fine. They think she ate something, but it’ll be a while before toxicology comes back. In the meantime, Michelle was on it fast enough to get her the help she needed. They won’t be back in the field today, though.”

  #

  The afternoon wore on. Shortly before one, we reached a narrow trail of snow and ice that skirted along a frozen waterfall, one of many in this park. Hogan had been called away a couple of times as he tried to help marshal the warden service’s dwindling forces. Jack had taken a quick break to answer nature’s call, which meant I was on my own. Phantom moved closer to the edge of the waterfall, peering down below. I went to her, following her gaze with my own.

  Water frozen mid-stream hung like crystals, some of them as much as a foot thick, while down below portions of the fast-moving creek still flowed. It wasn’t a huge drop, only about twenty feet, but it was high enough to be deadly if one of us fell. I ordered her back, keeping my distance as well.

  “It’s pretty stunning, isn’t it?” someone asked behind me. I started. When I turned, Chase stood watching me.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were working with another team.”

  “Got separated,” he said with a shrug. “I’m lucky I found you. I could have been wandering out here for hours.” The response sounded rehearsed. He didn’t even try to inject some realism into his tone, and I realized that right now, for whatever reason, he wanted me to know who he was. Beyond the façade he’d built for years now, he wanted me to see the darkness he hid from the rest of the world.

  “What’s she looking at?” Chase asked, nodding toward Phantom.

  My focus shifted below once more, trying to see whatever it was that Phantom had spotted. The dog seemed to decide that, whatever it was, it wasn’t worth her attention. She moved and left me standing there.

  “Check out that spot there,” Chase said, pointing to a narrow overhang of rock that looked out over the whole scene. “Come on – I bet we’d get a great view from there.”

  “That’s all right. I can see just fine from here.”

  “Afraid of heights?”

  “No,” I said evenly. I held his gaze, willing myself not to look away. “I’m not afraid of much, actually.”

  “Really? Hmm.” He paused, seeming to consider my words. “That sounds like a challenge to me.”

  I couldn’t hide my surprise – shock, even – at his words. Had he really just said that out loud? He studied me, appearing to enjoy the reaction.

  “Didn’t Sally tell you I like games during your chat?”

  I wet my lips. Phantom had moved on ahead, and Jack still wasn’t in sight. Suddenly, a shiver of fear inched under my skin. “I told you: Sally didn’t tell me much of anything this morning. It was an innocent, unexpected meeting. We parted ways, and I never saw her again.”

  “Did she tell you that she doesn’t like me? That she tried to convince Violet not to marry me?”

  “No,” I said. His eyes darkened.

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  He stepped closer. I held my ground. He was tall, over six feet, broad and muscular. A man who took his time at the gym seriously.

  “I’m not lying. Step back, please,” I said. I kept my tone even, but my anger was rising.

  “Or what?” he said quietly.

  “Or I’ll make you take a step back,” I said.

  A grin touched his lips, and a spark of something – arousal? – sparked in his eyes. I fought the urge to wipe the look off his face.

  “I’d like to see that,” he said.

  Before I could respond, or push him back, or throw him over the side of the damned waterfall myself, Phantom’s barking pulled us back out of the moment.

  Rather than her usual double bark to alert me to a find, she let loose with several throaty woofs and low growls that raised the hairs at the back of my neck. This wasn’t an alert; it was a confrontation.

  “Phantom!” I shouted.

  More snarling followed, along with growls that I knew didn’t belong to my dog. A fresh rush of adrenaline had me pushing past Chase to get to my dog. On the way, I caught a quick glimpse of his face again, and almost stopped at the cruelty there; the cool cast of his eyes, and the venomous smile.

  I felt his hand at my back before I could react – a quick brush, barely making contact at all, but he caught me at just the right angle. My foot hit the patch of ice beneath me, and lost purchase.

  Chapter 19

  IF I WERE A FOOT HIGHER UP on solid ground, it would have been fine.

  But I wasn’t.

  I landed hard on my tailbone at the very edge of the falls, slid an inch or two farther, and grabbed for a hold to catch myself before I fell straight down. I caught nothing but empty air. I screamed, as much out of surprise as fear, and managed to catch hold of an icicle that made up part of the falls long enough for it to slow my descent – only to have it break an instant later. Meanwhile, my handheld GPS – my link to Phantom – plummeted to the water below.

  “Jamie!” Jack shouted.

  An instant later he was there, his hands wrapped around my wrists as he fought to pull me back up.

  “Help me, damn it!” he shouted to Chase.

  I could feel his gloves starting to slip off. On top of that, I could still hear the snarls and yaps of Phantom and another, as-yet-unidentified animal. Jack shouted at Chase one more time, this time with a violence I’d never heard from him before.

  Finally, mercifully, Chase lay down on his stomach beside Jack and grabbed hold of my arms. Together, they pulled me back to solid ground.

  I lay on the ground beside Jack, Chase on his feet and safely away from us. Jack stood, and helped pull me to my feet.

  “You hurt yourself,” he said. He brushed at my cheek, coming away with blood.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Phantom…” I didn’t bother finishing the sentence before I turned my back on them both and took off, running for my dog. The sounds that had been coming from the brush had stilled, the silence painful.

  “Phantom!” I called. Without the GPS now at the bottom of the waterfall, I had no way to find the dog unless she led me to her. “Sound off, girl.”

  It was a command I’d taught her early on for exactly this reason. If we were ever separated and an electronic tracker failed, I wanted some way for her to reach me.

  An endless few seconds passed before I heard the dog’s answering bark. My stomach was tied in knots, my body shaking, but I kept going.

  Within another five minutes, I found her. Phantom sat holding one paw in the air, her head down. As I got closer, I could see blood on her neck and torso. My attention was momentarily diverted, however, by the dog’s find.

  A body.

  Lying on its back in a snowmobile suit, face unrecognizable after what looked like a gunshot followed by the first stages of animal predation. A Maine State Warden Service snowmobile was stopped on the trail just a few feet away.

  I went straight to Phantom, careful to avoid the body she’d found. Pink-tinged snow and scuff marks marred the area, signs of the struggle she had just survived.

  “Hey, girl,” I said, my voice choked with emotion. “Good find.”

  She leaned away from me as I touched the wound at her neck. There were puncture marks, but no tearing. Her foot, likewise, didn’t look badly damaged. I did a more extensive exam, but saw no evidence of further injuries. That meant the biggest dangers were infection and shock. Whatever else might be happening around us, I needed to get her to a vet stat.

  Jack and Chase came down the path after me a minute or two later, and stopped short at the scene th
ey found.

  “Oh my God,” Chase said, and I hated that trace of theater in his voice at sight of the body. “Who is that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said shortly. I ignored him and my own rage, and focused on Jack. “Phantom must have caught the scent and startled an animal who thought they’d found a free meal – fisher or maybe a mama coyote, based on how hard they fought. Anything else just would have run away.”

  “Is she okay?” Jack asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. I have to get her looked at.”

  “She looks fine to me,” Chase said. “A little bloody, but not too bad. I guess she’s a scrapper, huh?”

  The words were all it took for my rage to finally boil over. I stalked over and pushed him full in the chest when I reached him, catching him off balance enough that he had to take a step back to keep from falling.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? Huh? You almost killed me back there.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I lost my footing and bumped into you – I didn’t do it on purpose. When I saw what was happening, I froze.”

  “You didn’t lose your footing. You pushed me.” I stayed in his face, something so patently not my style that I felt like I’d somehow left my body. “Don’t lie to me. I know what you did.”

  Jack pulled me away, but I was grateful that he said nothing to defend Chase’s actions. “Take it easy,” he said. It was good that he didn’t try to touch me just then – I thought for sure I would spontaneously combust if he did.

  “Keep him away from me,” I spit out.

  “I will,” Jack promised, an edge of anger seeping into his own words.

  After a few seconds, I came back to myself enough to make the call to IC Steiner that we needed assistance. I used the code for officer down rather than saying the words aloud, uncertain whether the press might be monitoring the channel. Of course, chances were good that they knew the code as well as I did, but it was the best I could come up with on the fly.

  Hogan and half a dozen other wardens, along with police and paramedics, showed up within twenty endless minutes. Hogan took one look at the body and paled before he turned away.

  “Can you tell who it is?” I asked.

  “Charlie Babcock,” he said, and I thought immediately of the young man who’d been rooming with us at the house. “The kid was just getting started.”

  He shifted gears, taking in the blood on Phantom’s fur and my own disheveled state, then Chase’s presence among us. “What else is going on out here? What the hell are you doing here, Chase?”

  “I got separated from my team,” he said. “Jamie was nice enough to invite me to join you guys.”

  I ignored him, focused instead on my dog. “Phantom got into it with someone who thought he’d found a free lunch. She chased him off, but not without a fight.”

  Hogan took in my state with some concern, and I realized I’d never wiped away the blood on my face or pulled myself back together in my concern for the dog.

  “And what about you?” he asked, his tone softening. “Did you get in the middle of the fight too?”

  “No,” I began. My anger returned as I cast a glance toward Chase, who stood just off to the side of us now. “We were over by one of the waterfalls, and he pushed me—”

  “I think Jamie’s got things a little bit off, thanks to all the drama,” Chase said, stepping in. “I’ve already apologized – I inadvertently bumped into her beside the waterfall, and she slipped and fell—“

  “—and if Jack hadn’t come when he did, you would have let me drop all the way to the bottom of the falls,” I said. “That’s not me being hysterical. That’s fact.”

  “Hogan,” Chase said smoothly, a shadow falling across his face, “I swear to you, I never meant for any of that to happen. I guess maybe I’m a little more shaken by all that’s happened than I realized. I froze.”

  “You were there,” Hogan said to Jack. “Did you see what happened?”

  Jack reluctantly shook his head. “I was farther back on the path – I’m sorry. I got there just as Jamie fell.”

  Hogan shifted back to me only briefly before he looked at Chase once more, forehead furrowed and anger barely contained. “If you’re that shook up, you’re no help to us out here,” he said. “We’ll take you back to the hotel, and you can stay with the senator while we continue searching.”

  “But—” Chase protested, but Hogan cut him off.

  “No arguments,” he said. “We’ve got enough problems without having to worry that one of our own will freeze at a critical moment.”

  I expected more of an argument, but this time Chase merely nodded. “You’re probably right, Jamie,” he said, tears standing in his eyes. “I really am so sorry for what happened. Please know, I would never purposely hurt you. Or anyone.”

  I held his gaze, not taken in for a second. My stomach turned when a familiar voice whispered on the wind.

  Looks like you’ve got two devils on you now, sweetheart.

  I fought to remain impassive, but I thought I saw something in Chase’s eyes – some recognition of, and delight in, my fear. He may not have any idea what I was hearing or experiencing, but there was no doubt in my mind that Chase Carter was a man who fed off the fear of women. God knew, I’d dealt with the type before.

  “Why don’t you catch a ride back to the hotel with those guys heading out now,” Hogan said to him. “They’ll drop you there.” He nodded toward a trio of wardens walking toward the trail back down the mountain. “You’ll need to run to catch up.”

  Stubbornly, jaw set now, Hogan waited for Chase to argue. This time, he didn’t. Once he’d gone, I returned my attention to the most pressing issue right now.

  “I need to get Phantom to a vet,” I said.

  “I’ll give you a lift,” Hogan said.

  “I can carry her back if you need me to,” Jack said, to my surprise. He was crouched beside the dog, his eyes dark with concern. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “You’re going to carry my seventy-pound dog back to the truck?”

  His cheeks flamed, but he shrugged as he continued petting the dog. “If she needs me to, then yeah.”

  “I called in a trailer to come with one of the snowmobiles,” Hogan said. “I don’t think you need to carry anyone.” Jack looked at me as if to confirm, and I nodded.

  “She’ll be fine in the trailer.”

  He looked relieved, but only marginally. I got the sense that, like me, he wouldn’t believe that until we actually got word from the veterinarian.

  “Lieutenant Hogan,” a police officer called, striding toward our group.

  “Just give me one minute,” Hogan said. “Go on over and get her set in the trailer. I’ll be right there.” He nodded toward a snowmobile and trailer just coming up the trail.

  “You okay to walk, girl?” I asked Phantom, but evidently Jack wasn’t willing to risk it.

  Rather than waiting, he gently picked up the dog and stood for a second, Phantom curled in his arms as though she were a puppy. Men of the world, if you want to make an impression on a woman? Forget playing knight in shining armor to her – try doing it for her dog. Panties will drop.

  I walked alongside talking to Phantom the whole while, then explained to the driver of the snowmobile what was happening and loaded Phantom inside the trailer. There wasn’t a lot of room back there, but I didn’t care; without consulting the driver, I climbed into the trailer with my dog and settled in with her head in my lap. I knew it would be a bumpy ride.

  It took half an hour to get back to the Grafton Notch park entrance. During that time, Phantom was clearly uncomfortable, and I worried that her injuries were more extensive than they appeared. Once we reached the entrance, Jack carried her to Hogan’s SUV and I climbed into the backseat with her beside me, while Hogan and Jack got in front.

  Phantom lifted her head to look out the window as Hogan started the engine. I’d checked her wounds repeatedly, trying to figure out why she wa
s acting so squirrely. She’d been in a couple of fights when I’d first gotten her, but none in years. Was she just traumatized by the incident itself, or was there something more going on that I wasn’t seeing?

  “I wish you could speak, girl,” I said. She thumped her tail against the seat at the sound of my voice, and lay her head back down on my lap. This promised to be one of the longer car rides of my life.

  In front, Hogan got the SUV on the road and pointed down the mountain. He kept his gaze fixed on the road as he drove, his speed down as we navigated along the stretch down the mountain where Sally Price had already lost control earlier today. I glanced at Phantom, eyes closed and now apparently resting comfortably. Her breathing was no longer labored, her body completely relaxed.

  “How’s she doing?” Jack asked, looking back over his shoulder at us.

  “Better, I think. She’s tough. I think she’ll be okay.”

  I stroked her head, thinking of those early days with the dog, back when she didn’t trust a soul – including me. What a gift it was that she’d taken that leap and allowed me into her heart. I knew she was getting older, and retirement would come all too soon. I just prayed I had at least a couple more years with the shepherd at my side, trekking through the woods as a team more unified than any human partnership I’d known.

  “Right, girl?” I said quietly. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You’ll be okay.”

  Chapter 20

  WildFire Expeditions

  February 5, 1:00 p.m.

  AS SOON AS JUSTIN HAD HER away from the dog, he produced a zip tie and wrapped it across her wrists, pulling her hands tight behind her back. He lingered behind her, one hand stroking her arm while she cringed. Try as she might to steel herself, she couldn’t help but flinch when she felt a whisper of fabric around her throat. This was how he would kill her. She’d always known this would be the way. He’d always said that, at the end, he wanted to look her in the eye while he squeezed the life from her.