The Light we Lost : A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (Lost Light Book 1)

by Kyla Stone

  Jackson knew.

  “This is all hypothetical, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s say our hypothetical businessman is moving considerable product. He’s the main source for the entire UP and has been gaining traction downstate as well. Branching into new services, reaching new clients. Business is booming. But now he needs a secondary location for certain…exchanges. Away from prying eyes.”

  He shrugged. “What is it realtors always say? Location, location, location. Let’s say that Easton’s private dock afforded us the advantages that we needed. Two businessmen worked out a deal. That’s it, Jackson. No more, no less.”

  “Then why would you kill him?”

  “Why indeed. And that why is critically important, Jackson. Hypothetically, that certain individual is devastated that Easton is dead. Things were working out just fine before he got himself axed.”

  Jackson let Sawyer’s words sink in. Considered them, turned them over like stones in his mind, looking for the cracks, the weaknesses, the defects. He found none.

  “I had no reason to eliminate him, Cross. You’re looking in all the wrong places.”

  Jackson had the same unsettled feeling. “And Cody Easton?”

  “What about him?”

  “Cody Easton was using a small aluminum fishing boat called the Little Neptune. It’s registered in your name.”

  “I lent it to him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he asked. He likes to go night fishing. A boy needs a pastime, a real one. Not that drawing and poetry crap. He was going to buy it. I hired him to work it off.”

  “What did Cody do for you?”

  “Odds and ends.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Am I talking to a cop or a concerned citizen? My answers depend on you.”

  “I want the truth.”

  Sawyer looked across the water. “Cody isn’t a bad kid. Too soft. Moody. He needs to be toughened up. He wanted out of this town, so I told him he needed money to do that. Real money, from a real job, not serving ice cream to drunk tourists three months a year for minimum wage.”

  Jackson felt sick. “It’s true, then. You had him dealing at the middle school, you pig.”

  “Name calling will get you nowhere,” Sawyer said wryly.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “It’s business, Cross. That’s all it is. Good business. Seeding the next generation. They’re going to do it anyway; I might as well be the one who gets rich off it.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “That kid will go to college now. He can paint toilets for art galleries or write poetry or whatever the hell he thinks he wants. But it’s going to get him out. He won’t be trapped here like…” Sawyer’s voice trailed off. He looked away, out across the bluffs, and shook his head. “I’m giving him a future. Which is more than you or anyone else can say.”

  Anger filled him. Everything he did to keep this county together, to make it a safe place for kids to grow up. Men like Sawyer came behind him and knocked it all down.

  Crystal meth was an epidemic in the Upper Peninsula, as it was elsewhere. It had eclipsed the opioid epidemic in wide, rural swaths of the state where treatment was scarce and the drug was anything but.

  “You’re a monster and you don’t even see it, do you?”

  “Settle down, Jackson. You’re always so uptight. I don’t give the babies the hard stuff, okay? They get Adderall, Ritalin and Vyvanse. The usual suspects. I have a soul.”

  Jackson doubted it. “You’re destroying lives, not saving them.”

  “You say ‘tomato’, I say ‘to-mah-to’.”

  “Did Cody use?”

  “Nah. My people don’t use. They’re not stupid.”

  It didn’t make him feel better. “You have no conscience.”

  Sawyer gave a dark laugh. “Conscience? What’s a conscience but religious and social structures designed to keep the individual small and docile and under their thumb?”

  “There’s right and wrong.”

  “There’s no such thing. There never was.”

  Jackson shook his head. There was no use arguing with him.

  Sawyer was a different sort of monster. He wasn’t the kind that Jackson was searching for today. He’d have to verify Sawyer’s alibi, not that Sawyer’s friends were reliable, but he did believe him. As long as everything he’d said checked out. Sawyer would have no reason to kill Easton.

  Much as Jackson hated it, that left Cody.

  Sawyer steered them closer to the rocks. Massive boulders slipped by beneath the surface of the water. It appeared that the yacht would strike them, but somehow, they skimmed over the surface. The boulders were deeper than they appeared.

  “This county is balanced on a precipice, Cross.”

  “I know.”

  “You aren’t stupid. That’s one thing you never were. Naïve, yes. Blind, certainly. And pathetic. But not stupid.”

  “Is there supposed to be a compliment in there?”

  Sawyer responded with a question. “You know what’s happening, don’t you?”

  Jackson turned his attention from the rocks and faced Sawyer. The afternoon sun had burned off the last of the fog. The surface of the water barely ruffled, smooth as glass, the whole world reflected upside down. “You tell me what you think is happening.”

  Sawyer grinned. The light hit his eyes for the first time. He looked happy as a kid at Christmas. “So glad you asked. You think the power is coming back?”

  Jackson hesitated. There was no reason not to say it. “No, I don’t.”

  Sawyer nodded, like he was confirming something to himself. “So many people are still too slow to get it. They’ve had what, a week now of these freak light shows? They’ve watched the news until they lost power and their TVs went dark. They can’t use their phones, can’t sign onto the internet, can’t get cash from the banks, can’t get gas from gas stations. They can’t use their credit cards. And still, how many people think everything will go back to normal? At least half.”

  “Agreed.”

  “It’s an opportunity.”

  “It’s a disaster.”

  Sawyer sighed. “You have no imagination. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  The sun burned bright overhead. Shaking his head as if disappointed, Sawyer swung the yacht around and headed back to the harbor.

  “There are finite resources, Jackson. Always have been, but now it’s for real. For keeps. Someone is going to be king of the mountain, and it’s not who you think.”

  “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t try it. You won’t win.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  Seagulls arced overhead, squawking to each other. Their cries echoed as the Risky Business sailed past a massive cavern carved out of the rock face. A pile of huge boulders the size of cars had buried a narrow band of shoreline.

  “Remember that I helped you, Jackson. When the time comes.”

  “Remember that I didn’t arrest you, when the time comes.”

  Sawyer grinned. “Touché.”

  A few summers ago, a two-hundred-foot shelf of bluff had collapsed without warning. That was the way of things out here; you never knew when solid ground might crumble beneath your feet.

  Sawyer’s grin broadened. “Pay attention, Jackson. Things are about to get very interesting.”

  43

  JACKSON CROSS

  DAY SIX

  Jackson had been on Sawyer’s boat for less than two hours; it had felt like an eternity. The temperature was in the low sixties, but he was sweating, damp wet circles beneath his armpits.

  He stood on the dock, watching a few boats entering and exiting the harbor. The big tourist tours had been canceled. Hand-written signs on most of the shop doors stated “Closed until further notice.”

  The view was stunning. The white boats against the pristine green of the lake. The air was cool and still
. Birds wheeled in the eggshell blue of the sky. A dog barked somewhere.

  Still, he felt the darkness pressing against him. Insidious, invisible. How could you fight what you couldn’t see? How could you stop a train thundering down the tracks?

  He could feel the vibrations beneath his feet, this terrible thing that was coming.

  Sawyer was right in some ways. They could imagine, they could predict, they could prepare and warn and try to ready themselves. Thing was, no one knew how bad it would really get.

  Even here in paradise, in a place this isolated, there were shadows. Enemies both seen and unseen, lying in wait, ready to rise up.

  Did he have what it would take to fight the encroaching darkness?

  Did any of them?

  Jackson’s radio crackled. “Cross, come in,” Devon said.

  He hadn’t had his radio with him on Jackson’s boat. He brought the radio to his mouth. “This is Cross. What happened?”

  “I’ve been trying to raise you all morning,” Devon said, breathless and alarmed. “Couldn’t get signal.”

  He tensed. “What happened?”

  “Tourists reported an accident outside of Au Train, off an old forest road near County Road 552, near Candle Creek. A crashed ATV at the bottom of a ravine.”

  Jackson stopped breathing. “Are there bumper stickers on the back? One says ‘I Heart Paris.’ The other one is New York City, I think.”

  “Yeah,” Devon said. “That’s the one.”

  His heart contracted in his chest. “That’s Shiloh’s. Is she hurt? Is she okay?”

  “We’re doing a sweep of the woods. No sign of her yet. I sent Nash to check the hospital. But the ATV—looks like a hit and run. Someone ran her off the road, boss.”

  “I’m on my way.” He strode down the dock toward the patrol truck parked in the empty parking lot. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Anxiety torqued through him. This was what he’d feared. A little girl, out in the world alone, where anything could happen.

  Jackson sped through town. There was far more traffic than usual. The cabins, hotels, and RV resorts were filling up, and not with aurora-chasers. Almost every vehicle he saw was an RV or a Jeep or truck loaded with supplies.

  People were headed north, bugging out of the cities, planning to hole up and wait this thing out.

  His only thought was finding Shiloh. If something had happened to her…if she was dead…He’d never forgive himself.

  Ruts marred the dirt road. Overgrown weeds choked the shoulder. Tall jack pines, towering oaks, and slender beech trees crowded both sides of the road. The thick canopy cloaked the sun.

  A minute later, he pulled up behind Devon’s car, leapt out, and approached the scene, careful to preserve potential evidence.

  To his left, the ravine dropped a good forty to fifty feet. Birds twittered. The air cooled considerably this deep in the woods. Mosquitos whirled in thickening clouds.

  Small flags marked a deep set of tracks along the shoulder. The tracks were from a pick-up truck, judging by the size, the distance, the depth of the treads. Hopefully, the tech guys could make a tread match.

  The tracks deepened and swerved where the truck had slammed its brakes to keep from hurtling over the precipice. A pair of narrow tracks were smeared beneath the larger tracks of the pursuing vehicle.

  His heart in his throat, he gazed down at the path of shattered underbrush that led into the ravine,

  “Over here, boss!” Devon called from below him. Her voice filtered through the dense trees. “Come down slow. Watch your step. I fell twice.”

  Bushes snagged at his windbreaker, thorns clawed his pantlegs. Damp leaves slid beneath his boots, threatening to send him sprawling. He used vines and branches to steady himself as he descended into the ravine.

  Two thirds down, he caught sight of the ATV.

  The mangled wreck of the four-wheeler lay crumpled at the base of a poplar tree with low spreading branches. He stared at it, his eyes blurring, imagining Shiloh crushed beneath it, battered and lifeless.

  He told himself not to care, not to become emotionally invested. It was impossible, especially with this case. It was that care that drove him. Compelled him. Forced him to work harder and longer, to refuse to give up.

  It also blinded him. Haunted him. Stalked his dreams and nightmares.

  “She was thrown free,” Devon said. “She must’ve been.” She stood ten yards away at the bottom of the ravine. She pointed. “Got a few droplets of blood over here.”

  Jackson stayed well clear of the scene, circling it cautiously, studying the ground, the matted tracks. Two pairs of prints. One smaller, one much larger. He didn’t know if the larger prints matched the unknown prints found at the salvage yard. They needed to make plaster casts.

  Devon set an evidence marker next to the tree. She pulled an envelope from her pocket with gloved hands, swabbed a dark droplet on a section of bark about chest-high, then placed the swab into the envelope and marked it.

  She circled the scene and approached the ATV again. “Boot prints here and here.”

  Jackson saw the same thing she did. “He followed her down.”

  “He did.”

  “Not an accident.”

  “No.” Devon squatted near the ATV’s crumpled rear fender. The I Heart Paris bumper sticker was nearly unrecognizable. “We’ve got paint transfer.”

  She pointed to a faint blue streak, then pulled out her phone and photographed it. He’d given her one of the extra solar chargers he’d purchased in Marquette.

  She glanced up at him, frowning. “We’ll get our tech guys on it. They’ll get a paint match. Together with the tires and prints, we’ll find the perp who did this.”

  Jackson felt impotent. They were the long arm of the law, but their hands were cuffed. “The records are online. And online is offline.”

  A blue jay perched on a branch twenty feet above their heads. He chattered angrily at them for invading the peace of his woods, his sanctuary.

  “We’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way.”

  Devon swatted at a mosquito. “Gotta start somewhere.”

  “Have you called it in?”

  “Can’t reach dispatch. I had to drive back into town just to get within range to radio you.”

  Their radios worked on a repeater system, essentially radio towers that required electrical power. With the repeater network down, their portable radios and in-car radios would only transmit and receive within a short range.

  “Damn it,” Jackson said, frustrated.

  “I’ll go in person. Looks like we’re doing everything in person. What a colossal waste of time and resources.”

  They climbed the ridge, feet sliding in the muddy leaves, breathing hard with exertion by the time they crested the ridge. Jackson walked back, studying the tire tracks along the shoulder.

  Devon watched him, her useless phone in one hand like an extra appendage, her other hand fisted on her hip. “What is it, boss?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Someone found her. Hunted her down.”

  “She was a witness. Like we thought.”

  “A fourteen-year-old boy couldn’t do this.”

  Devon studied the ground, the story it told. “No.”

  “Cody Easton didn’t kill his grandfather. Someone else did,” Jackson said. “And that someone came after Shiloh.”

  “Could be a coincidence.”

  “Someone running a girl off the road less than a week after her grandfather is murdered? It’s not.”

  Devon nodded slowly. “They were both witnesses.”

  “And now they’re both in danger.” Jackson groaned. “Why couldn’t she just come to me like a normal kid? What the hell does she think she’s doing? I can’t protect her if I don’t know where she is!”

  Devon approached him and placed a hand on his arm. “I know you care about this kid. About both of them. We’ll find them, okay? She’s still out there.”

  “Hurt and scared a
nd alone.”

  Devon didn’t blink. “Yeah, she is. But we’ve got a lead. That’s more than we had an hour ago. The perp doesn’t know it, but he just gave us the clue we need to nail him.”

  “We find the truck, we find him.”

  The early evidence had pointed at Cody. Clearly, it hadn’t been him. And then Sawyer, but it wasn’t him, either. Eli Pope had still been in prison at the time of the homicide.

  So who, then?

  The puzzle pieces didn’t fit. He felt like he’d been reading the scene wrong. The whole thing. Going at it backward.

  Jackson shook off his sense of impending dread. “Fred Combs owns the autobody shop off of Adams Trail, near the Bear Trap Inn. The man is old as sin. If anyone keeps a filing cabinet around, it’s him. Bet he knows every vehicle and every driver in the county.”

  Her lips flattened into a thin line. He rarely saw her without a twinkle in her eyes, but there was no twinkle now, only grim determination. “Let’s go.”

  “We’ll take the patrol truck. We’ll come back for your car later. We need to conserve gas. Get in the truck.”

  “Yes, boss.” The merest flash in her eyes. “But I’m driving.”

  44

  LENA EASTON

  DAY SIX

  The fire in the sky flared brighter than Lena had ever seen it.

  Great swaths of burning crimson writhed like translucent snakes eating each other’s tails. The Aurora had never seemed alive, heavenly wraiths pulsing with both beauty and menace.

  It took incredible focus to keep her eyes on the road rather than stare gaping through the windshield. It was surreal, ethereal. Almost supernatural.

  The Tan Turd’s radio spat static. Garbled nonsense erupted from every station. AM or FM, it didn’t matter.

  From the backseat, Bear rose to his haunches and whined. He didn’t like the noise. Lena didn’t either. She switched it off.

  “It’s getting stronger, right? I’m not seeing things?”