The sky was clear now and the storm had passed to the east. The ground felt soft and muddy beneath Kiera’s feet as she stomped down a vague trail along the creek. She needed to clear her head. To be the heir to so much misery and pain was more than she could handle.
What was the right thing to do here? Tell Amanda about the photograph? Let Beth Lauder’s sister publish it and begin the circus she’d tried so hard to avoid all her life? Her father was a drunk, a cheat, a liar, a charlatan, but those who believed in his discoveries wouldn’t stop arguing with anyone who debunked the photographs.
But Beth Lauder’s face rose up in her memory. A beautiful blonde woman with a brilliant smile and a quirky sense of humor, she’d been a goddess to a thirteen year old Kiera who was all legs and bones. Beth had never treated Kiera like an annoying kid, but actually talked to her. It wasn’t until Beth got in Doc McConnel’s way that things changed.
Beth had been so enamored with Kiera’s father that she’d excused the drinking and the cruel things the man said when he was drunk. Kiera’s mother was oblivious, deep in denial. Beth cosigned the man’s bullshit.
At twenty-two, Beth had fallen in love with a forty-year-old man. Grown up now, Kiera understood better how it all happened. At thirteen, she’d been appalled and angry at her friend for the excuses she made for a man she now detested.
Kiera stopped, her feet sunk in mud, and remembered how she’d tried to tell Beth about the photograph, but the woman wouldn’t hear her, wouldn’t believe her. In Kiera’s mind, Doc McConnel had robbed her of her belief, her trust, and her friend. At the time, it seemed if Beth didn’t believe her, no one would.
A knot formed in Kiera’s gut. Unshed tears backed up in her throat. She’d liked Beth. And Beth was dead. Guilt swamped her. Not because she felt responsible. She wasn’t. But because she’d never tried to find Beth later when she could have. Maybe if she had…
What?
Impatient, Kiera turned on her heel and headed back to the tent. She couldn’t change the past or heal the damage done by her father. Would telling Amanda about the photograph make any difference? Beth hadn’t believed her. Dodo would, but only because she was his angel, and he knew she wouldn’t lie.
What about Ben? Would he believe it? And what would this do to her mother?
As she strode back into camp, Ben stood outside the tent and placed a finger on his lips. “She’s sleeping,” he whispered.
Kiera opened her mouth and closed it. There was nothing to say. For ten years she’d kept this secret. She just couldn’t blurt it out now. He cocked his head and stared at her. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. No.” She threaded her hand through her hair. “Beth was my friend.” How else could she say it? The words wouldn’t come. The tears wouldn’t come. She was dammed up, blocked, screwed. “Forget it.” She straightened. “Do you want Bigfoot evidence or not?” All the hostility that she’d begun to let go came back with a vengeance. She tried to ignore his curious gaze and get down to business. “This is Fanning Creek and I know this area like the back of my hand. If you’re looking for Bigfoot tracks, or hair or whatever, this is the place to look.”
For a moment, he stayed still and did nothing. Then, he busied his hands and made checks on his equipment from his pack. She stood silent.
He murmured. “Do you think Amanda will be okay if we leave her?”
“Yes. We’re not going far.” Her tone rang hollow in her ears. “There’s a faint trail back through that brush.” She pointed across the creek in some bushes. “That’s where my father’s photograph was taken.” The lie stuck in her throat. Ben glanced up at her from his gadgets, and she was surprised to see not curiosity or doubt, but compassion. But those tears sat like a stone in her chest.
She gazed at that brush. It was here that she was weaned on Bigfoot lore. Here, her father trained her to know bear, deer, and other large animal tracks so that she could differentiate them from Bigfoot’s footprints. Here, her father told her stories he’d collected for twenty years from railroad workers, hikers, and park rangers. And it was here he introduced her to the Indian legends that eventually led her to the journal.
The journal.
She turned her attention to Ben’s bent head. Was Dodo right? Should she tell him what she found all those years ago in the historical records? Even years later, the words of Caleb Bridesdale were burned in her brain. His difficult script etched on her memory forever since his words exploded her whole world.
“I’ve been on the Western slope of the Trinity Alps for two days now. Last night my mule died and I’m thinking I may perish out here. Lost for over a week, I can’t find the pass south to lead me back to camp.
I’m going to try and reach the other side today, but without my mule, I can only take a few of my supplies. The earthquake that blocked the western trail also loosened a lot of the shale on the mountain so the mule wouldn’t have made it anyway.
Yesterday, I scouted ahead and found a group of stones laid out in a grassy plateau. They looked to me like graves, but I never got a chance to find out. Something was watching me up there.
I’m leaving my journal here, in the chest I can’t carry out. Tell my wife I love her and my boys to take care of the mine. If I don’t make it out of here alive, my gold is buried in Liar’s Gulch.”
He never reached the camp. Bridesdale had gone on to describe Liar’s Gulch, but it wasn’t on any map. Speculation grew that Caleb Bridesdale had been murdered for his gold, but Kiera focused on something everyone else ignored in that journal.
The group of stones.
As Ben continued to pack his equipment, Kiera gazed up at the western slope of the Trinity Alps just to the east. Somewhere up there was a group of stones, graves. She knew because she’d seen them, hidden in thick, steep brush on a small plateau on the northern twisted side of the mountain.
Most people didn’t travel the trail there without rock climbing equipment. And even then, it was treacherous since the shale rock was unstable. Kiera had fallen twenty-five feet off the face of that mountain at thirteen.
“I’m ready.” Ben broke into her thoughts.
She dragged her gaze away from the mountain. He wanted Bigfoot. What she’d seen up there wasn’t Bigfoot.
It was something else.
*
With his heavy equipment slung on his back, Ben followed Kiera along a trail riddled with deer sign and small animal tracks. He noted them in the soft earth, wet from the previous storm. The air smelled clean and fresh. Water droplets dripped from the needles of the Douglas Fir that grew in thick clumps along the valley floor.
Soon, it grew a little darker, as the trees crowded around them and blocked out the sunlight. Beneath the canopy were thick brush and a carpet of brown needles that surrounded mushroom clumps. Their footsteps were silent as they hiked on a flat terrain of soft mud and decaying bark.
Birds chirruped and an eagle’s cry broke the silence. The sound of Fanning Creek faded as they hiked north away from the creek bed. They’d gone about half a mile when Kiera stopped dead in her tracks.
The birds were silent. No insects buzzed around them. A heavy quiet dropped around them. Then, a rank, musky smell drifted in the air and Ben froze. He’d never smelled anything like it. It was a combination of wet hair and some foul body odor.
Something was out there.
Kiera met his gaze over her shoulder. She pointed to his pack and he scrambled to get his equipment out. The infrared camera was out in a heartbeat. He aimed it to the east where the breeze drifted from and the smell seemed to be emanating. The digital screen lit up as life teemed around them, but nothing big seemed to be out there.
On tip-toes, Kiera crept between the trees and led them northeast. The smell grew stronger. A crack of a branch to their right made Kiera freeze in place. Ben pointed the camera in the direction of the noise, but it was tough to locate the source of the sound.
Something big flashed across the screen. Ben bolted toward the locatio
n and Kiera pounded after him. The large figure turned abruptly and headed south with Ben and Kiera behind it. The tree branches slapped his arms and face as he sprinted across the pine needles.
It ran for almost a half a mile until Ben was sure they were near Fanning Creek again and he could hear the sound of gurgling water. Suddenly, the figure disappeared to the east. Ben broke through the branches and noted they were just east of where they’d set up camp. Kiera burst in behind him.
“Wait. I think I’ve got him again.” A figure showed on his screen. It was stationary so Ben was able to follow it. Was the thing waiting for them? Why wasn’t it running? Ben led the way south along the creek, passed their tent, and further south. The reading was faint, but there.
It led them through a clump of bushes and a stand of oak trees in the midst of the Douglas Fir.
They found what Ben saw on the screen.
What they found was Bobby hung on a hook in one of the trees with blood pooled beneath his dangling feet.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Kiera rushed to a clump of trees on the left and fell to her knees to puke. It was odd. The sound of her retching was the only thing that broke the silence. Somehow, with something so violent hanging there, Ben expected some noise, some sound, to fill the air.
Ben’s skin prickled. His stomach rolled, too, but he’d seen some pretty grotesque sights before. The man hadn’t been up there long. The blood was still dripping.
There’d been no scream, no cry for help. Whatever happened to Bobby Gonzales had been silent and deadly. And recent.
The horrific sight was burned on his brain. Long, bloody streaks ran down the man’s dangling legs. His head bobbed like a rag doll and the hook dug deep into the man’s upper torso and protruded out the front of his neck. Blood was everywhere.
He turned away, certain there was nothing they could do. As he helped Kiera to her feet, the terror in her green eyes made his heart clench. Her voice was thick and fearful. “What about Dodo, Ben? What happened to Dodo?”
With a firm grip, Ben led her away from the body and along the creek back to their camp. They needed to get the hell out of there. “I don’t know. But we need to leave.”
She stumbled and tripped along the creek’s shore. They reached the campsite and he began to gather their supplies. “I think Amanda can travel. We’ll have to make a stretcher. Use the pack Dodo left.” Urgency crept into his voice. For some reason he couldn’t name, he sensed danger to Kiera. He didn’t have any evidence for that feeling except his gut, but he’d learned to trust his gut.
Kiera nodded and whirled around to the tent. Ben heard Amanda questioning her. “What happened? You look green?”
After some low murmuring, he heard Amanda’s curse. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What the hell is going on?”
“We’re leaving.” Kiera’s tone was firm. “Now. We’re not waiting for help because it may not be coming.”
After about two agonizing hours, they were packed and ready to try and carry Amanda out of the woods.
She was being difficult. “I can walk. Really.”
Kiera shook her head. “No. If your leg gets worse, we’ll have to stop. We can’t afford to do that.”
“How are we getting back since the trail is gone?” Amanda asked her.
Ben was fascinated by the expression of fear and loathing on Kiera’s face as she stared to the east. “Why don’t we check the topo map?”
He rummaged through his gear until he found it.
His stomach dropped into his shoes. The valley they were in was surrounded by a ring of mountains. To the west, where they had entered, was the easiest to traverse. Or had been. With the trail disintegrated, carrying Amanda over it was impossible. To the south, the valley ended in a huge lake blocked in by jagged peaks on all sides. There was probably a way to get through it, but it was a long way from anywhere once they got through. That trail would take six days or more. To the east was the western slope of the Trinity Mountains. Dangerous, unstable and steep, that way seemed impossible.
But it was short. And there was a trail over the mountain. At the end of that trail was the small town of Junction City and some scattered ranches. That way led them out of the wilderness in two days instead of six or seven.
And Kiera knew it.
He stared at her. Something was scaring the shit out of her. She did not want to climb that trail into the Trinity Alps. He wanted to ask her why. He wanted to question her, press her, for answers. But the terrified expression on her face stopped him cold.
If Kiera was afraid, it was something to be concerned about. “We have to try and climb Little Trinity, Kiera.” He kept his tone soft and yet, she still started as if he’d shot a gun off.
“I know.” She bit her lip.
Amanda, who rested on the stretcher they’d fashioned from Dodo’s pack frame and some sticks, looked from Kiera’s face to Ben’s. “What’s wrong with going that way?”
Kiera took a deep breath. “It’s dangerous. Footing is difficult and it’s steep. There’s no water there so we’ll have to carry jugs.”
He frowned and held her gaze. There was definitely something else there. Kiera wasn’t afraid of the difficult terrain. She couldn’t hold his gaze for long and stared at her boots.
“We need to leave a message for the rescue team if they come,” Ben said.
Kiera’s head snapped up. “They’re not coming.” Her voice was high and strained.
Somehow he had to reassure her, but he didn’t know how. “Kiera—” He started but she talked over him.
“Dodo is dead. Probably just like Bobby hanging somewhere like a piece of meat, like—” She stopped. Without another word, she turned her back on Ben. Amanda caught his eye and shook her head. Kiera was on the edge, and if he didn’t step carefully, she was going to lose it. After what they’d seen, he knew he’d been shaken. Kiera had been scared to death. Now, they were heading into territory that also frightened her. Ben wasn’t sure how much more she could take.
He scribbled a message on a small piece of paper from his pocket notebook and picked up one end of the stretcher at Amanda’s head. Kiera lifted the other side with her back to them both. Her silence was painful and uncomfortable.
Amanda sighed. “Ah, the great outdoors. It’s so relaxing, isn’t it?”
Ben snorted. “Right.”
Chapter Nine
The first leg of the trail wasn’t too bad and the view was spectacular. From the edge of the Little Trinity, Ben could see across the valley and far to the north where the tip of Onion Mountain was visible. He could see the lake to the south and the length of Fanning Creek that emptied into it. The trail headed in a southerly direction up the mountain and twisted switchbacks curved up the slope.
The sky was now a brilliant blue as the sun stretched into late afternoon. Ben was aware that the trail up to the top of one of the peaks where they could make camp was a good six miles straight up. It would be dark before they reached it.
Not a good combination. Lack of light and dangerous trail conditions made for accidents. But there was no way they could stay down in the valley. Whatever was going on down there was more frightening to Kiera than the possibility of losing her footing.
His legs burned as they climbed higher, and he couldn’t talk anymore. Initially, Amanda kept up a steady stream of conversation, which only emphasized Kiera’s silence, but even she grew quiet as the sun dipped lower in the sky.
Finally, it was late evening and the sun had almost completely disappeared behind the horizon. Amanda spoke up. “Let me try and walk. You’ve carried me far enough.”
Kiera’s breath was labored. “No. It’s not much further.”
Darkness brought a cold chill on the breeze and the chitter of crickets and night noises surrounded them as they trudged up that mountain trail.
Just when he thought he couldn’t go another step, they reached a flat spot. On the northern slope of Little Trinity was a flat area near the t
op of the peak. It wasn’t very large, but there was shelter from the wind by the rock around it and grass covered the sparse dirt.
He set Amanda down and collapsed onto his back, exhausted. His knees throbbed and his feet hurt. He glanced over to see Kiera also lying down. Face down.
Amanda struggled to her feet and limped to Kiera’s backpack. She opened one of the water jugs and handed it to Kiera. “Here. Take a drink. My God, woman, you’re amazing.” After Kiera drank a few huge gulps, Amanda gave the jug to Ben. “And you’re a friggin horse.”
“Neigh,” he quipped. That was the extent of his humor at that moment with the night all around them. He closed his eyes and drifted. Vaguely, sounds of rattling and clinking reached him, but he didn’t move. But when he smelled food, he opened his eyes and sat up. Kiera also stirred.
Their eyes met and she grinned. There were dirt streaks on her cheeks and her blonde hair was plastered to her scalp from sweat and exertion. In the lantern light Amanda had turned on, he noted the dark circles under her dull green eyes. And yet, Kiera was beautiful at that moment. That smile on her fatigued face gave him an unfamiliar warm feeling and made him a little nervous.
The food finally won over his thoughts, and he and Kiera practically crawled to where the smell came from. Amanda sat and stirred a pot of something with a smile. “Hungry? Have a seat. I’ll serve it up.”
After the first bite of beef stew from a freeze dried package, Ben decided beef stew was his new favorite dish. Forever. He ate until the edge of his hunger was off and then glanced around.
The tent was up and the sleeping bags were rolled out. Amanda had gotten it all done while he and Kiera were out cold apparently. Gratitude relaxed his whole body. He was definitely not used to be surrounded by capable, independent women that weren’t related to him. His sisters were, but he always thought they were an exception to the rule. He glanced at the woman limping around and wondered about her.
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