A Dark Lure

by Loreth Anne White

  Cole dug a little deeper, following links to the camps mentioned in her bio. It all stood up on the surface, but his sister was right. He could find no online reference to this particular Olivia West prior to eight years ago. No social media links. Zip. He heard his seating section being called and closed his laptop, grabbed his bag. As he joined the queue to board, Olivia’s words taunted him . . .

  . . . You’re no survivor, you know that? You know dick about surviving. All you know is your own narcissistic pursuit . . .

  What did she know about survivors that made her so angry with him? While he knew squat about her, she certainly knew personal things about him, and she’d judged and found him wanting. Curiosity nibbled at him.

  He handed over his passport and boarding pass.

  A woman with a mystery past? Exerting undue influence over his tough-ass father—the man who’d put his dead wife on a pedestal to the detriment of the rest of the family? It was unlikely.

  Just as unlikely as him going home after all these years.

  Broken Bar Ranch. Friday. Dawn.

  Temperatures had dropped below freezing during the night. Down near the dock, red rose hips and dead leaves sparkled with diamonds of hoarfrost. The sun hadn’t yet broken over the mountains, and mist rose in ghostly tendrils off the mirror-still lake. Trout darted in shallows beneath the untroubled surface.

  Early morning gunshots cracked through the hills, echoing through the valley. Olivia huddled deeper into her down jacket, frosted grass crunching beneath her boots as she tramped out a half-mile track for Ace to follow, dropping scented articles at intervals along the way—bits and pieces of fabric, a leather glove, some wood, plastic bag ties, a hair clip . . . items she’d stashed under her sheet while she slept so that they’d absorb her scent. She was still pissed at Cole McDonough’s rudeness. Arrogant, self-indulgent, narcissistic drunk. What kind of man had zero interest in his dying father?

  Yet she remained selfishly relieved he wasn’t coming.

  Once the track was laid, Olivia circled around and back to her cabin. She stomped up the three steps onto her small porch that looked out over the misty lake. A loon quavered out on the water.

  Behind the door Ace was snuffling, whining.

  “Whoa, old boy,” she said as he tried to nose through the door the instant she opened it a crack. “Go wait on your mat.”

  He dutifully obeyed, panting, watching her with milky eyes as she took out his tracking line and harness.

  Crouching down near the door, harness and line in hand, she called him over. “Okay, boy, you wanna track? Huh? Come on then!”

  Ace squiggled excitedly over. Her heart did a funny little squeeze as he tried to lick her face while she clipped on his tracking harness. She loved him with all her heart. He was about eight years old now—not ancient for a German shepherd by any means, but he’d had a rocky start in life, and it was showing. His teeth were ground down to nubs, and he was having some trouble with his hips. He was also going blind.

  She’d found him just over three years ago along a deactivated logging road shortly after she’d released herself from hospital. The bandages around her wrists had been fresh, and she’d gone straight from the hospital to the liquor store. Her goal had been to drive out into the wilderness, get drunk, and end her life properly this time, where no good Samaritan who happened to be a paramedic could rescue her again in the nick of time.

  She’d made good inroads into a bottle of vodka and shouldn’t have been behind a wheel at all. But it was almost winter, the logging roads empty, and she was driving to nowhere when she’d slowed at the sight of a matted brown-and-black shape lying on the side of the road. She’d thought it was wildlife roadkill at first. But something made her stop.

  With shock she’d realized it was a dog and it was alive—a bag of bones in mangy fur, unable to walk, with eyes so beseeching it had clean broken her in two. Carefully she’d felt the animal’s body and had detected fractured bones. She’d carried the dirty, stinking, flea-ridden pile to her truck. Shoving the half-empty vodka bottle off the seat, she’d used her jacket to make a bed on the passenger side where she could rest her hand on the dog as she drove. Then she’d turned her truck around and steered back toward civilization in search of a vet.

  Ace had been the U-turn in her life. He’d forced her to act outside of herself, given her a simple purpose.

  The vet figured the dog was about four years old but said it was hard to tell given his malnutrition. He’d been chained probably most of his life, a rope still partially embedded in flesh around his neck. That had slayed her. She knew what that felt like. And from that moment she’d known she could never let this dog down.

  Ace had saved her. Ace gave her unconditional love. And she gave it back in buckets. Loving had started to mend the dead things inside her.

  She’d been forced to secure a motel room in that tiny northern town where she could wait for Ace to heal enough, where the vet could follow through on treatment. It was in the town’s only diner that she’d found a newspaper on the table declaring that Sebastian George—the Watt Lake Killer—had been found hanged in his cell. She’d sat stunned until the waitress asked if she was okay.

  It was then that she’d decided Ace was her charm. Her guardian angel. Because in that same newspaper was Myron’s employment ad, seeking a fishing guide at Broken Bar Ranch, something for which she was uniquely qualified. The job came with a cabin right on the lake. It was seasonal with an option for long-term, year-round employment if the right applicant was willing to take on additional winter responsibilities with the horses. It was the perfect place for Ace to run free.

  For her to start over, yet again, this time with the knowledge he was gone. Dead and burned to ash in some prison crematorium.

  She’d bundled Ace into her truck, driven south, and found Myron, who had looked beyond the obvious mess she must have been, and hired her. She’d discovered a measure of peace and friendship on Broken Bar. She’d found a home.

  Ace, the ranch, and Myron had formed the skeleton, the backbone, from which she’d been able to flesh out a new life. Now she was losing Myron, and in all likelihood her home, too. Even Ace was fading slowly. She wondered if she’d crumple into a formless puddle without those bones to prop her up.

  She led Ace out the door and down toward the lake where she’d stamped out a scent pad for the start of his track. He pulled energetically against the line.

  The vet in Clinton said he’d probably go fully blind within the year. And while he was proficient in air-scenting search games, where he worked off-lead looking for human scent, with his failing sight she was worried he might run himself blindly over a cliff or into some other kind of physical danger, so she’d started him on on-line tracking, where he needed to slow down and drop his nose in order to work meticulously from footprint to footprint. Mostly this was just for fun. Their bonding time. And it jibed with a passion Olivia had always had for tracking both game and man.

  She opened a large plastic ziplock bag containing a sweatshirt she’d worn earlier, and held it down for Ace to smell.

  “This, Ace, find this.”

  He nosed into the bag, cataloguing the scent he was being asked to follow, then sniffed the ground looking for a match, circulating air loudly through his nasal passages. As he hit the scent pad she’d stomped out, he muscled into his harness and was off, nose low to the ground, zigzagging from footprint to footprint in the frosty grass.

  She held the line and trotted behind him, her own breath crystallizing into white mist. They moved first along the lakeshore, and then up into a field where she’d laid a box track, and then a ladder track. He handled the corners on the box expertly, and Olivia watched for the negative in her dog—the moment he lost the scent at the end of the ladder track. As soon as she saw it in his body posture, she raised the tracking line high, letting him work in a wide arc until she saw from
his posture that he’d picked up the scent from the top of the next ladder.

  “Good boy, Ace. Good tracking,” she panted as she trotted behind him.

  He slowed and suddenly lay down. Between his paws at the tip of his nose was a glove, the first article she’d dropped.

  “Yes! Way to go, boy!” She picked up the glove and slipped it into her sling pouch, then held her hand to the ground again. “Track, boy. Keep going.”

  They entered a stand of skeletal deadfall—pine trees that had been killed by the beetle blight, dry and crackling and eerie. Two huge deer, gray, startled at the sight of them and crashed through the dead brush into a swampy area.

  With each article Ace alerted on, she gave hearty encouragement. They’d been going almost a quarter mile when they crested a ridge and Olivia caught sight of a second track through frosted grass.

  Man track.

  She slowed to study the trace. Boot prints. Big.

  From the flagging of the grass, the person, probably male, had headed in the same direction she’d been going when she’d laid Ace’s track. She guessed the prints to be about size twelve. Someone with a long stride. And the flagging was fresh. She lifted her gaze, following the line of the track. It perfectly paralleled her complex box and ladder track. Hairs prickled up the back of her neck.

  She told herself it was coincidence.

  “Let’s go, Ace, keep at it,” she said softly.

  But as he shouldered back into the harness, a chill lingered. Something was off. Ace came to another article on his track, sniffed it, and then passed over it.

  “Whoa, easy up, boy. Back up. You missed one.” She restrained him as she crouched down to gather up the missed article. A scarf. Not hers.

  Not her scent. It was why he hadn’t alerted.

  The scarf was a soft cashmere thing woven in tones of burnt orange, gold, and ochre, with stylized images of cacti and mesas. A tiny tag sewn into the seam said Handwoven by Lulu Designs, Arizona. The chill deepened into her bones. She glanced up.

  Ace sat expectant, panting. Her attention shifted back to the boot prints paralleling her track on the left, then to the dark spruce forest into which they were headed.

  The sun was still not up yet, the shadows black among the trees. She scrutinized the shadows for a sign of movement.

  Nothing.

  Slowly she turned in a circle, carefully cataloguing her surroundings. Above her a hawk flew. She recognized the fwap fwap fwap rhythm of the wings.

  A duck made a panicky frappity frappity frappity sound. A ruffed grouse was similar. A crow’s feathers produced another kind of sound against currents of air. Out on the lake a fish jumped and slapped on water. All normal.

  Once more she scanned the trees. And this time she felt suddenly ice cold. There was something in those trees, dark, tangible, and it was watching her. She felt it in her gut.

  Twelve years ago she should have trusted her gut.

  She trusted it now.

  “Okay, Ace,” she whispered as she crouched down, removed his harness, and clipped his regular lead onto his collar. “We’re done. Let’s go back, boy.”

  He looked confused as she led him briskly up to a path that was clear of trees and from which she would be visible from the lodge windows.

  As they hit the path, the sun cracked over the horizon, and color spooled in warm shades of yellow and red across the fields. Steam began to rise instantly from the grass as hoarfrost started to melt. The lake shimmered from a flat gray color into a deep turquoise green, and the ranch looked suddenly like a chocolate-box-perfect image of autumn, complete with white-barked aspen and shivering gold leaves. And from the rise, she could see boats heading out from the campground. Tension lifted from her shoulders.

  Her fears suddenly seemed absurd. And as her spirits rose, Olivia’s thoughts turned to the hot coffee she’d left brewing and the breakfast she’d eat before heading out on her rounds.

  But as she and Ace approached their cabin, she noticed something on the mat outside the door. She climbed the stairs, taking a moment to register what it was.

  A small basket of wild blueberries.

  Words, unbidden, curled like smoke into her mind, his voice thick velvet over gravel. Intelligent, seductive, alluring. Dark . . .

  There are some beautiful wild blueberries in a patch down at the river bend, Sarah . . . They’d make a gorgeous Thanksgiving pie . . .

  Her mouth went dry. Her world narrowed. Her hands started to shake.

  A crack of gunfire shot through the hills. Sweat broke out over her skin in spite of the morning chill, time spiraling back with a sickening nausea. She saw his eyes. Watching her. Pale amber like a mountain cat. Lucent like fireweed honey. Rimmed with thick, dark lashes. His smile—teeth so white and perfect. Wild black curls the color of a raven’s feathers. Sarah . . .

  No.

  She braced her hands on the railing of her porch.

  Stop.

  No flashbacks.

  You’re not a victim. Not a prisoner of the past. No memories allowed. He’s dead. Gone. You’re safe. Sarah has gone with him. You are Olivia. This is your haven. No one can take this from you now. No looking back . . .

  Anger fired slowly back into her veins. She scooped up the basket of berries and opened her door. Once inside, she stoked the fire in the stove to a ferocious roar. She fed Ace his breakfast and poured a stiff coffee. Taking a hot, welcoming sip, she let it scald down her throat, the sensation forcing her firmly back into the present.

  Stay calm. Stay focused.

  There was a simple explanation for the scarf and blueberries. Had to be. She’d find it.

  Coffee consumed, Ace done with his breakfast, she grabbed the scarf and basket of berries and marched up to the lodge.

  From the shelves of the sporting goods and logging supply store he selected rope, bolt cutters, duct tape, a fly-tying vise, forceps, packets of beaver back hair, some brightly dyed cock’s hackle, grouse feathers, a roll of lime-green surveyor’s tape, a packet of shiny red beads, size 1/0 and 2/0 looped eye hooks, and a spool of holographic thread. He then added to his selection a field skinning knife with a slight hump to the blade. The blade was an odd-looking leaf shape, but once the tip was inserted under an animal’s belly hide, all one need do was rock the hand back and the skin would peel away like butter. This skinning knife would complement the all-purpose knife already in his possession in the camper. It would have made things a lot more pleasurable at Birkenhead the night before last.

  On his way up he’d managed to liberate from a hunter’s camp a scoped, bolt-action Remington .308, and a 12-gauge, pump-action Winchester Model 12, along with several boxes of ammunition. Guns were tightly regulated in this country—buying one without requisite documentation was out of the question. He was content with these acquisitions. The rifle had good heft, ideal for hunting deer in thick timber. He’d keep the shotgun and give the rifle to her, like the last time he’d set her out for a hunt. Yes, it would be challenging. Yes, he could lose his own life. But that made for a real hunt. A hunter should always face possible death when up against worthy prey.

  The woman behind the counter was charming and flirtatious as she rang up his purchases and took his credit card. She chatted about the bad weather coming and the big buck her brother had bagged over the weekend. Eugene smiled and held her eyes. He watched her cheeks warm and her pupils dilate in response. It reminded him of the girl in the library. But there was only one woman for him now. One game left.

  From the sporting goods store he made his way to a small supermarket, where he bought food. He perused the newspaper and magazine rack.

  No news about the body. His message was not out yet.

  He’d make the one-hour trip to Clinton to check the papers again tomorrow.

  The housekeeper was ferrying a basket of linen up the big wooden staircase
when Olivia entered the hallway.

  “Adele?” she called up the stairs, “Did you leave this basket of berries outside my cabin door for me?”

  Adele halted midway and frowned down at Olivia. “No, why? Is everything all right?”

  Olivia hesitated, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “I . . . was just wondering. There’s no note.”

  “Jason brought some fruit and veg boxes up from the Clinton market this morning. He has wild mushrooms, too—maybe he or Nella left them.”

  Relief washed through Olivia. Yes, of course it was probably Jason or Nella. She’d cracked for some reason. She was making connections that were not there.

  “I’ll ask them. Thanks. And if anyone comes looking for a scarf, I found this down in the field near the abandoned wrangler cabins.” She held it up for Adele to see.

  The housekeeper nodded and continued on her way up the stairs.

  Olivia made straight for the big kitchen. Pushing open the door, she was assailed by a warm, hearthy-home feeling. Something delicious was steaming away on the gas stove. Copper and stainless steel pots hung from cedar beams above an island with a thick wood counter. Herbs frothed in clay containers along the large sunny windowsill.

  Grace, Myron’s deceased wife, had designed this kitchen when they’d first opened the ranch house to guests. Myron never came in here. He said her presence lingered here, even after all these years.

  Olivia set the basket of berries on the wood table.

  “Jason?” she called out the chef’s name as she hooked the scarf around the back of her neck and peered into the pantry. It was empty. He couldn’t be far, given the bubbling pots.

  She went out the back door into the fenced kitchen garden. Jason Chan was not there, either. Neither was his young daughter, Nella.

  As she re-entered the kitchen a muffled thud came from the walk-in cooler. The cooler door was partially open, chill air seeping out like smoke.