Watcher in the Woods: A Rockton Novel

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Just up ahead.”

  I start marching toward it, but Anders catches my arm. He doesn’t say anything, just rubs his finger against my forearm. I pause and take a deep breath.

  “I could say that you didn’t have a choice shooting Val,” he says. “But that’s bullshit.”

  I stiffen.

  “You chose this job,” he says, “like I chose to be a solider. And neither of us got into it because we wanted to kill people. We got into it despite that. Despite knowing it might come to that.”

  I glance over at him.

  He releases my arm and eases back, hands going into his pockets. “When I signed up for the army, I was supposed to be a medic, and that suited me just fine. Saving lives, not taking them. Then there was a skirmish, in the barracks, and I handled it, and someone decided I made a better cop than a medic. Still, I figured, that’s cool, at least I won’t see actual combat.” He shakes his head. “Didn’t quite turn out that way.”

  I squeeze his hand, but he keeps talking, lost in his thoughts. “I spent a lot of time thinking ‘This is not what I signed up for.’ It’s not fair. I got tricked. That’s bullshit. I joined the army. This was what I signed up for. Yes, I didn’t want to see combat. I wanted to support the troops in other ways. But if I had to fight, and I whined about it, did that mean I thought I was better than them? That I deserved better? Safer? Easier?”

  He shakes his head. “People talk about soldiers, about cops. They disagree with war. They disagree with how we handle crime. That’s fine. You know what? I agree. But someone still has to do the job. It’s better if it’s someone like us, someone who gives a damn. Someone who’s going to feel it.”

  He looks over at me. “Feeling it’s not a bad thing, Casey. It just sucks that we have to. It really, really sucks.”

  I lean against his shoulder. “It does. Thanks. I did sign up for this. And I hope it always hurts. That I always second guess and wonder whether I had another option. With Val, it feels like I didn’t stop to process. I think that’s the worst. It feels like it did with Blaine. No thought; just reaction.”

  “And if you could go back?” he asks softly.

  “Honestly?” I exhale. “I’m glad I didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t pure reaction. I understood the situation and realized I had a split second to respond. If I’d stopped to think it through more, she’d have taken Eric, and when she was done with him, she’d have killed him. I have no doubt of that.”

  “Then you made the right choice.”

  “Unless he could have gotten away. He probably could—”

  Anders puts his hand over my mouth. “Nope. Don’t go there. There are always questions. We see every possibility. What if Eric could have escaped? What if Val had a sudden change of heart? What if a grizzly got her? Mountain lion? Or maybe the heavens would open and God would strike her down with lightning because she deserved to die, and Eric’s a good guy who doesn’t.”

  I laugh softly. “I’ve never actually seen that last one, unfortunately.”

  “Me neither. That’s why I’m an atheist. There are always ‘what if’ scenarios, Casey. You know that. You also know that you had to shoot Val. Doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”

  “I know.” I give his hand another squeeze before dropping it. “So how are you doing? We haven’t had much time to talk.”

  “Doing okay. Too busy to do much thinking. Or much drinking, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You know it’s not.”

  “It’s not really what you’re asking, but it kinda always is, a little. You worry. I appreciate that. I’m doing fine. Could use some downtime to sit and process, you know? When this is over, I propose a day of spelunking. Leave Eric behind and just get out, take some time to clear our heads.”

  Before I came to Rockton, Anders used to sneak off to do exactly that. Go caving by himself. Spend time in the absolute darkness and the absolute silence. Spend time being himself, dealing with what he’s seen, what he’s done. These days, I’ve convinced him to take me—at least for safety—and he does.

  I nod. “We’ll do that.”

  “Onward then?” He waves ahead. “Are we ready for this?”

  “Ready to see two bodies that have been left to the elements and scavengers for four days? Who isn’t ready for that?”

  He smiles and shakes his head.

  “You don’t have to be,” I say. “Ready, that is. You can skip this.”

  “I volunteered. Had to argue to get the job too, with you and Eric so eager to protect my delicate sensibilities.”

  “We just—”

  “I know. Now let’s get these bodies home.”

  He waves for me to lead the way. I do steel myself as I walk through into the clearing. It’s not the condition of the bodies that will bother me. I’ve seen worse. Saw it on my very first day in Rockton, with a mangled corpse.

  But Anders is right. This isn’t about seeing a body. It’s about seeing Val. Seeing a woman I knew, a woman I tried to help, a woman I shot, slumped on the earth, brains splattering the trees, blood soaking the earth, body ravaged by the elements and every hungry beast that has passed this way.

  Oh, yeah. I knew exactly what I was about to see. I could picture it in vivid technicolor detail.

  I still had to see it, though. Had to face it. Anders is right in that, too. I signed up for this, and that’s not saying I wanted this—it’s saying that I accepted the very real possibility that Blaine Sorrentino wouldn’t be the only ghost hovering in my mind’s darkest corners. That he might not even loom the largest.

  He still does, though. For now. I can take comfort in that. That seems an odd word to use, but it is comforting in its way. Val’s death weighs lighter than Blaine’s. The hostiles I had to shoot in combat weigh lighter still. Things like this should not be compared on a scale, but they are, for people like me. For people like Anders. Those who’ve had to kill. And those who’ve killed when they didn’t have to.

  Val falls on the middle of that scale, yet she does slide just enough to the “had to” side that there’s no danger of me slipping back into that dark hole where I had been after Blaine. This is a temporary hollow, where I’ll lie for a while, bruised but still able to function.

  I take a deep breath, pull back a pine bough and . . .

  The clearing is empty.

  I pause. Then I step through and look around. Anders walks in behind me.

  “Wrong place?” he says.

  “I . . . No, I’m sure it’s not. Brady and I came down this path. Eric held that bough back for me as we left. It’s broken, see?” I point to where the branch hangs, base cracked, needles already brittle.

  I turn around. “I had Brady. I stood right here.” I walk over, the memories rushing back. “I heard a voice behind me, and I turned. Eric was standing there. Val had led him in at gun point. She mocked him. She’d lain on the path, and he’d rushed to help, never thinking to draw his gun, never thinking it was a trap.”

  “He saw her hurt, and he ran to help.”

  I nod. “She mocked him for it. For being a decent person.”

  “Bitch.”

  I nod. I’m sorry, Val. I’m sorry that you had a shitty life. I’m sorry it broke something in you. I’m sorry you grew up cold and empty. But I’m not sorry I shot you. I had to. There was nothing good in you, and I could not trust you to let him go.

  I walk around the small clearing, checking each spot before I put my foot down. Anders stays where he is, awaiting orders. Yes, Dalton sometimes not-too-subtly pokes him for being a “good soldier,” but that also means Anders is a good cop. Dalton and I have no problem taking charge. We don’t need our deputy fighting for the reins. Right now, I don’t want Anders poking about, trying to find clues and prove he’s a detective. He’s not. So he’ll stay out of the way, and the moment I need him, all I have to do is ask.

  “The only predator that’ll drag off prey whole is a cougar,” I say. “And our forest isn’t exactly teeming with those.”


  We’re north of their traditional territory. There’s been one female, and she’s a man-eater. She also had cubs up here a few years ago. I had to kill one a few weeks ago. Another death to weigh on my conscious, one I’d rather have avoided.

  “I can see a cougar dragging off Val,” I say, “but Brady wasn’t a small guy. He’d outweigh the cat. Even if she managed to take one body and cache it, why come back for the second?”

  Anders says nothing. He knows I don’t expect a response. I’m just thinking aloud. If he disagrees, he’ll speak up. He doesn’t.

  “Any other predator would only take pieces,” I say. “Maybe they could eventually cart off the scavenged remains but . . .”

  I don’t see signs of that. I find blood. I find trampled undergrowth. I find exactly what I’d expect to remain after we took the bodies.

  “Someone cleared the scene,” I say.

  “Petra?” he asks.

  “Maybe. At this point, we have no shortage of council spies who could have gotten the order to move the bodies. Petra, Phil, Mathias . . .”

  “Me.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Yeah, I know. But I need to address it, right?”

  This is why Anders got into Rockton despite his violent past. He’s here to spy on Dalton and report back to the council. They’d told him that Dalton was violent himself—and corrupt—so Anders had been fine with the task . . . until he realized the council was full of shit. He still plays spy. He just gives them small indiscretions that can never be used against Dalton. We know that’s the best way to play it, even if I’m pretty sure by now the council realizes where Will Anders’s loyalties lie.

  “I didn’t clear the scene,” he says. “They never ask me to do anything like that.”

  “Someone has, and I doubt they did it as a favor. I came here to see if the bullet that killed Brady matched the one that killed Garcia. Now I can’t.”

  “Petra’s your most likely suspect for clean up, too,” he says. “I can’t see Phil or Mathias dragging around dead bodies.”

  “Hmm.”

  “How many shots did Petra fire?” he asks.

  “Just one. He was standing over here.”

  I position myself in Brady’s place and then turn to see the trajectory of the bullet. It’s possible that it passed through Brady. I wasn’t paying enough attention to that—I only know that he died. Anders and I both search for the bullet. Then we go to where I saw Petra, and we hunt for the cartridge. We search for at least an hour. As the sun drops, we shine our flashlights on the ground, in hopes the beams will bounce off the metal cartridge.

  “It’s not here,” Anders says. “Which really suggests it’s Petra.”

  “Or that she grabbed it before she went.” I sigh and ease back on my haunches. I’m tired, though, and when I shift my weight, I topple onto my ass.

  “A fine idea,” Anders says, plunking down beside me. He stretches out, arms braced behind him and says, “Does it even matter?”

  “Does what matter?”

  “Any of this. Petra shot a serial killer. Someone shot a guy threatening to expose Rockton. Do we actually care?”

  I look over at him. “Do we care whether our resident comic-book artist is a highly trained assassin? Do we care whether someone may have murdered a law enforcement official who came to enforce a Federal warrant?”

  Anders sighs. “Yeah, I know. I’m tired and cranky. Sometimes it just feels like we’re killing ourselves trying to solve crimes no one cares about. No one except us. Fighting the council. Fighting the people we’re trying to protect. Everyone watching, everyone judging, no one giving a shit how much we put into this, how much we risk for it.”

  “Like being back in the army.”

  He barks a laugh. “Actually, yes.”

  “It’s like policing down south, too. The difference is that there, we hear only the criticisms. We have to trust that the silent majority appreciates what we do—the risks we take, the constraints we work under. Up here, I actually see that. I hear that. I feel appreciated. It just gets hard to remember that when I’m running on two hours sleep while watching other residents toddle off to bed at ten PM.”

  “No shit, huh.” He stretches out on his back. “We could stay here. Pretend we’re searching all night. Super, super busy, doing super, super important police work.”

  “Do you think Eric won’t notice?”

  “He’s probably already on his way, making sure we haven’t been devoured by cave bears.”

  “Those damned cave bears. They’re everywhere.”

  He flashes a smile my way at the old joke, “Fortunately Eric will always protect us. He’ll be here any moment, and then you’ll have to sweet talk him into staying with us. Sleeping under the stars.” He squints up at the thick tree cover. “There are stars, right?”

  “There will be, once it’s dark.”

  “Perfect.” He rolls his head to the side to look at me. “And do not tell me that we can’t have the entire police force spend the night in the forest, how it’s irresponsible and shit like that.”

  “I wasn’t going to say a thing.”

  He sighs and pushes himself up, sitting again. “I suppose we should go.”

  “Never said it.”

  “Yeah, but I still hear it.” He starts to rise and then pauses. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Hmm?”

  He nods, and I catch a glimpse of a dark shape. He opens his mouth with, “Hey, we—”

  I cut him off by gripping his arm. He looks over at me. I shake my head. He frowns. I shake it again, and he peers at the figure long enough to realize it is not Dalton.

  I release his arm, and his hand goes for his gun. I’m already gripping mine.

  Again, Anders and I communicate through seamless gestures and expressions. A frown. A jerked chin. A gaze cutting left. A nod. It’s not even so much an attempt to be silent as it is almost second nature, an effortless telepathy, our minds working so in sync that we don’t need to whisper a plan. It’s my plan, but he does consider a moment before nodding, assessing and agreeing rather than simply following the chain of command.

  Anders stays where he is, still crouched, moving to one knee as he watches that still figure.

  It’s nowhere near dark yet, but the sun has begun its descent, long shadows stretching through the forest. The figure is nestled in one of those, making it little more than a featureless blob. I can tell it’s human. I can also tell it isn’t tall enough to be Dalton.

  THIRTY

  The figure moves. It’s hunched down, creeping forward, gaze on the clearing where we were sitting. It stops, and its head tilts, and something in that tilt suggests it’s a woman.

  She starts forward again. Soon she’ll be close enough to spot Anders poised on one knee, looking straight at her. Through the undergrowth, he catches my eye, and I make a split-second decision. I tell him to turn around. Turn his back on the approaching figure. He does, without hesitation, and my breath catches, heart thumping harder. He trusts me implicitly. Now I need to prove I deserve that. I lift my gun, finger still off the trigger.

  I take another step. The woman creeps forward and then ducks her head, as if to see through an opening. She must spot Anders, because she goes still. Then she sees that he has his back to her. She reaches up, and my gut goes cold. There’s something long and dark in her hand.

  My mouth opens to shout a warning to Anders. Then she pulls back a branch for a better view, and she uses the hand holding the object. It’s not a gun. I squint. The object is black, maybe a foot long, thin enough that she can move that branch while gripping it. Thinner than a knife. Lighter too, from the way she moves it. A stick?

  My gaze moves to her other hand. She’s holding something in it, too. Something round. A rock? A stick and a rock?

  Anders keeps his back to her, and she takes another step. I can’t see her face, but I see her clothing. It’s hide, which isn’t unusual out here. Some settlers wear well-mended j
eans and shirts. Others wear clothing homemade from hides. The homespun clothes are works of art, craftsmanship well beyond what we buy down south. What this woman wears is another thing altogether. The hides have been roughly cut out and roughly sewn, the sort of thing you might expect to find on someone lost in the forest for years, forced to create her own clothing lest she freeze.

  Yet this woman isn’t lost. Not in the literal sense of the word. She’s chosen to be here, like the settlers. She hasn’t chosen their lifestyle, though. She’s chosen one beyond my comprehension.

  She is a hostile. That’s our name for them. Those who go into the forest and revert to something that I’d call animalistic, if Dalton wouldn’t mutter that’s an insult to animals. When I met hostiles, though, I didn’t see people who’d willfully reverted to something baser. No more than I’d see someone ranting on a street corner, lost in the throes of mental illness, and decide they’d chosen that. Yes, people do choose to not treat their mental illness, deciding the cure is worse than the disease. Yes, people do choose to live on the streets. But I don’t believe they choose that—wandering the cities, lost in the mazes of their own disturbed minds. They make a choice, and it turns into something they wouldn’t have imagined. I’ve talked about my past as falling down a dark pit. That’s an exaggeration. The true pit is the woman I see before me.

  She takes one more step, and a lone strip of sunlight illuminates her face. With no start of surprise, I realize I know her. The moment I saw that it was a woman, I’d thought immediately of Maryanne, who we’d met in the forest a week ago. Shot by Val, she’d taken off into the forest before we could stop her. Now she’s here, and I proceed as carefully as I can, knowing one false move will send her fleeing like a spooked deer.

  I move forward, and so does she, slipping toward Anders, who still stands with his back to her. She’s focused on him, and even when a leaf crunches under my foot, she doesn’t notice. She takes two more steps. Then she crouches, dropping from view. A moment later, she rises, her hands now empty, and she steps backward, retreating.