by D. K. Hood
After eating a quick meal, Jenna collected the sandwiches and a to-go cup of coffee for Riley Adams and they headed back to the office. While Kane delivered the prisoner his meal, Jenna correlated the evidence to present to the DA for an arrest warrant for Adams. She glanced up at a knock on the door. “Ah, Zac, what do you have for me?”
“Nothing much, I’m afraid.” Deputy Rio stood hat in hands just inside the door. “We have his quiver and Wolfe has identified small fragments of wood on them that could be from the holes in the trees I noticed in the forest.”
Jenna straightened in her chair. “Or from my house. He did make the effort of removing most of the bolts before he left. If Wolfe finds a match to my house, it will be all we need. I’d say the pine trees in Stanton Forest will all come back as the same species but not the interior of my home.” She pushed both hands through her hair. “Nothing else?”
“Not in the house.” Rio smiled. “We went over that place with a fine-tooth comb, vacuumed the carpets, checked for any trophies, took his dirty laundry and a pair of his boots. Wolfe will check everything back at the lab but the tests he did on scene didn’t show anything of interest. It looks clean. The vehicle is immaculate, I figure he had it cleaned this morning, but Wolfe will do a forensic sweep as soon as possible.”
“Okay, thanks.” Jenna stood, collected the documents from the printer, and tapped them into a neat pile. She turned back to Rio. “What’s your take on Adams?”
“The evidence points to him.” Rio shrugged. “It would be a slam dunk if we had some physical evidence.” An expression of remorse crossed his face. “I’ve been checking in all day with search and rescue as you asked. It’s as if June Harris has disappeared without a trace.” He rubbed his chin. “I hope Blackhawk is as good as you say and he can track her from the marks I found in the trees. I’m convinced the blood in the forest belongs to her.”
Jenna nodded. “He’s the best tracker I know, and we should have an answer on the blood you found this evening. I know Wolfe set up the DNA sequencing machine before he left with you but that’s to see if it’s a match for the ear we found at my ranch. He’s still waiting for a DNA comparison from a close relative of June Harris.” She smiled at him. “Go home and get some rest. You’ve an early start in the morning.”
“I will, thank you.” Rio turned and headed down the steps.
A few moments later, Kane walked into the office with his phone pressed to one ear. He glanced at Jenna. “One moment, I’ll ask Jenna.” He muted his phone. “I have caught the DA at his office, he’ll wait for the paperwork on Harris and go over it at home tonight if it’s ready?”
Jenna slid the documents from the printer into a folder. “Yes, everything is here. We’ll update him if any forensic evidence comes to light overnight.”
She listened as Kane relayed the details. When he disconnected, she handed him the document. “You’ll have to run through this with him.”
“I already have over the phone.” Kane grabbed his coat from a peg behind the door and shrugged into it. “I’ll take this to him now.” He picked up the folder. “Oh, by the way, I sent Maggie home when the night shift arrived.”
Exhausted, Jenna stood and walked around the desk. “Thank goodness. I’ll grab my coat. We can drive over to the DA’s office and then head straight home. It’s been a long day.” She looked down at Duke curled up in his basket, eyes tight shut. “Even Duke is tuckered out.”
“He doesn’t need an excuse.” Kane chuckled and collected the bag from the gun store. He peered inside. “Mmm, cookies.” He looked at Jenna. “Did you buy these for me?”
Jenna followed him down the stairs. “Yeah, and I have cakes too, but after seeing the man in the alleyway, they slipped my mind.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “I hope you have hot chocolate to go with the cookies?”
“Sure.” Kane headed for the front door. “I’ll make you some as soon as we get home.” He glanced at his phone. “I hope this new phone opens the gate, or we’ll be sleeping in the truck.”
Twenty-Nine
Wednesday
Wind buffeted the cottage and rattled the windows, but it was Kane whistling a tune that woke Jenna on Wednesday morning. She peered from under the blankets to the light streaming from the hallway across her bedroom floor and listened to Kane clattering around in the kitchen. She turned to look at the clock on the bedside table. It was almost six, and by this time Kane had probably already tended the horses. She moved and Pumpkin, her black cat, stretched and rolled onto her back with four feet raised and front paws kneading the air. Cats seemed to stretch from the tip of their tails to the ends of their claws, and watching her fascinated Jenna. Pumpkin had arrived at the cottage when they returned home, tail held high and complaining bitterly about being left alone with strangers.
They’d been stopped at the gate, their creds scrutinized, and escorted to the cottage. The ranch resembled a building site crossed with a scouts’ jamboree. Tents and the smell of cooking greeted them the moment they climbed out of the Beast. The noise of men working went long into the night. To Jenna’s surprise, the horses had been tended, too, and the stables were spotless. She’d wanted to enter her house and see what progress had been made during her absence but had been prevented by the guard at her front door saying it was too dangerous to go inside. The smell of paint spilled from the house, and through the open door she could see men working in organized chaos.
She sat up and shivered. There was a chill in the air, which was unusual, as Kane usually kept the heat turned up. She dropped her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed her feet into her slippers. Pulling on her coat as she walked because she’d left most of her clothes at the house in her rush to escape, she headed for the kitchen. “Morning.”
“Hey.” Kane flashed a white smile at her. “I’ve just put on the coffee. You could’ve taken your time this morning, everything is done. “I had help with the horses this morning; in fact, I hardly did a thing. The team Wolfe organized to repair the house is doing just about everything.” He frowned. “You look kinda lost, Jenna. Is your back still sore? Come here.” He walked toward her and pulled her against him, enclosing her in a bear hug.
Jenna sighed. “Back is a little stiff but I’ll be fine.” She looked up at him. “I hope we find June Harris today. I’ve thrown every resource out there to hunt her down. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.” She glanced out the window at her ranch. “Look at the state of my house. I hate the thought that someone trashed my home.”
“It will be as good as new soon.” Kane rubbed her back. “No one is going to get on the ranch again. You’ll be safe once the upgrades are finished.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t account for seeing a similar man in the alleyway last night.” Jenna chewed on her bottom lip. “It might have been a harmless prank, but it gave me the jitters. I mean how would anyone know about the intruder at the ranch? How come the man I saw was identical?”
“I don’t know, but most of the men wear cowboy hats in town and it was dark and misty.” Kane shrugged. “You’ve been through a traumatic event and seeing a guy in the alleyway would naturally spook anyone in the same situation. You know we have Adams in custody, so it couldn’t have been him. Try not to worry, it’s all going to be a distant memory soon.” He rubbed her back.
It would be hard to forget someone invading her home and trying to kill her. She’d been on edge the moment she stepped back on the ranch. Jenna rested her face on Kane’s chest and nestled against him. She’d missed human contact in the time before Kane arrived in Black Rock Falls. It had been a very lonely time for her, with no friends and trying to act normally when everything she’d ever known had been snatched away from her. At the time, she hungered for justice and never fully realized that being a witness against a drug cartel boss meant her job as a DEA agent and life as she once knew it would be over. Both she and Kane had ghosts in their pasts, and the hugs had been the small comfort that had kept them both sane when
everything around them had suddenly gone crazy. “It will be if the DA charges Adams with the murder of Payton Harris and the home invasion, but we still have to find June.”
“True.” Kane sighed and rested his chin on the top of her head. “After all this time, if she’s injured, she wouldn’t have made it through the night in the forest. If she didn’t die from exposure the wildlife would have killed her.”
Jenna nodded. “Yeah, but if she got away, there’s still a chance Atohi might be able to track her. One thing is for sure, from what Wolfe reported last night, she didn’t go anywhere near Adams’ house or truck.” She stepped away and looked up at him. “I hope the Buffalo Ridge sheriff hunts down a close relative of June Harris today. Now we know the blood in the forest and the ear attached to my porch match, I need to know if it’s her or not.” She pushed her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Wolfe worked late last night to get the results for us, we should get a confirmation soon.”
“Search and rescue and volunteers have been all over the forest, every hunter that passes through the forest warden’s station has been notified she’s missing.” Kane hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Unless we can get Adams to talk, I doubt we’ll find her. If he killed her, he could have stashed her body anywhere. Not that it makes sense, leaving her husband in the forest in plain sight and hiding her, but I have the feeling he’s playing with us. I’ve seen overconfident psychopaths before, but if I’m reading him all wrong and he is as innocent as he claims, I’ll need to be retrained.”
Jenna nodded. “Then I will too. He ticks all the boxes for me. I hope the DA decides if he’s going to charge him soon. Once we have Adams in county, we can concentrate on finding June Harris.” She waved a hand behind her. “I’ll go take a shower. I’d like to head into the office as early as possible. I want to speak to search and rescue and then get out another media release. We need to keep the townspeople aware she is still missing.”
Thirty
Cold seeped through Deputy Zac Rio’s clothes as he stepped from the truck. Each freezing breath sent clouds of steam into the pristine alpine air. The forest smelled like the inside of a freezer with an over fragrance of pine and damp leaves. His first winter in Montana would be a challenge. He glanced at Rowley beside him, rugged up and wearing a liquid Kevlar vest under his jacket. He frowned. “I’m cold already. My blood is thinner than yours. I’m going to suffer over winter.”
“Yeah, we could find snow this high, and winter seems to be coming earlier each year and lasting longer. The sheriff had an idea you might need some extra clothing.” Rowley indicated with his thumb to the back of his truck. “Your winter gear was delivered yesterday. It’s in the back of my truck, I grabbed it when I arrived for you.”
Surprised, Rio lifted his eyebrows. “The sheriff didn’t mention anything to me.”
“She’s kinda busy right now.” Rowley smiled at him. “I completed the order when you arrived. We get new jackets, gloves, and extra boots every year. Wear the vest—it will help keep you warm.”
“Sure.” Rio opened the hatch to Rowley’s truck and noticed the brown paper wrapped packages, some with his name on them and the others with Rowley’s. He went through them, found his vest and a fine thick jacket with a hood, numerous pairs of gloves, and woolen hats, along with boots, pants, and shirts. “Wow! She went all out.”
“We do a ton of work in the snow and the winters here are long.” Rowley collected his rifle and checked the load. “Our department gets a generous allowance from the town council and since Black Rock Falls has become a tourist destination, there is more money in the budget.” He pulled on his gloves. “The tech comes through the ME’s office, so I assume Wolfe gets a substantial amount to run his office as well.”
Rio touched the tiny in-ear wireless com he’d been given. “I’ve only seen the FBI with these coms.”
“Yeah, we get the new devices because we have so many serial killers in the county.” Rowley frowned. “Well, that was Wolfe’s explanation.” He looked over Rio’s shoulder. “Ah, here’s Atohi.”
After going through his findings from his last visit to the mountain, the blood, and the fact it belonged to the person who’d lost an ear, Zac waited for Blackhawk to scan the images he’d taken of the scene. “What do you think?”
“I think that’s not enough blood for a severed ear.” Blackhawk lifted his gaze to him. “You’ve worked in the big city, surely you’ve seen what happens if an ear is sliced let alone removed from the head.” He stared at the images again. “This is no more than a small cut or perhaps an injury from a crossbow bolt. If the bolt passed through the skin of the arm or leg or more likely became lodged in a person, I’d expect a small amount of blood. It’s a puncture wound and, from this, it didn’t hit an artery.”
“Yeah, but people rarely use a crossbow in the city.” Zac shrugged into the new jacket, noting how it slipped over the liquid Kevlar vest without a problem. He liked the new lightweight body armor and thought it was only available to black ops and the like. “I’ve seen through and through wounds from a twenty-two hardly bleed, so it could be the same.”
“It is.” Blackhawk rolled his eyes and shook his head. “We’re wasting time leaving from here.” He motioned to the images. “I know this part of the forest. I can see Bear Peak in the background. If we drive there, we can come down the rockface and follow the likely trails back to that area.” He pointed to another shot of the scene. “Where the bushes are flattened and the ground disturbed, if the woman had run away, there’d be more signs. I figure the person who hurt her carried her over one shoulder.”
“So, we should assume he knocked her out first?” Rowley’s mouth tightened into a grimace. “If he’s carrying a crossbow, moving through the forest would be difficult enough without a squirming woman.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Atohi waved them into the truck. “It also means she may still be alive. Let’s go.”
The bumpy drive along a small overgrown road didn’t take long. The parking lot had a line of old cabins set to one side. The place looked deserted and unkempt, apart from a late-model SUV parked on one end. Rio turned to Rowley. “What happened to this place?”
“Murder.” Rowley shrugged. “Bear Peak seems to be a great place to dump bodies or keep little girls prisoner.” He indicated to the SUV. “It obviously didn’t bother those people. They’re out of town plates, probably tourists hunting down a thrill.”
“It’s not a good place for sightseers.” Blackhawk grimaced. “There are many spirits trapped in this part of the forest. Many hear voices, children crying, or the screams of the dying.” He climbed from the truck and waved a hand at the trees. “The spirits that walk this part of the forest are revengeful and seek justice. Many will never find the peace they seek.”
A shiver crept up Rio’s back like the stroke of a frozen finger. He wiggled his shoulders and peered into the dense forest, pushing away the sudden feeling of foreboding. Dark shadows and filtered, watery sunlight greeted him as he followed Blackhawk and Rowley down a mountain path and into the trees. He had the awful urge to keep looking over one shoulder; the forest had closed in around him, and not being claustrophobic had suddenly become a huge bonus. Ahead of him Blackhawk and Rowley moved silently, the deep layer of pine needles muffling their footsteps. Above, a pale-blue sky peeked through the pine branches in small patches of normality, but all around him the dark shadows could not be trusted. Anything could be in the darkness, waiting to pounce. He sniffed the air. Bears were still filling their bellies for their winter hibernation but as the wind was blowing toward the men, the smell of one close would be recognizable.
They trudged on, moving down the slope of the mountainside, and soon the roar of the falls broke the eerie silence, only to be replaced by a thick fog of water vapor. As shafts of light hit the branches, the drops of water looked like a mantle of diamonds, each with its own rainbow. The sight amazed Rio, but the drips of freezing water spla
shing his face with every step did not.
“Wait up.” Blackhawk stopped where the trail split into three. He bent and lifted a wrapper from an energy bar from the ground and waved it at them. “This is fresh. Someone has been here recently.” He peered down the three choices, checking the ground and vegetation. “This way.”
Rio followed for another hundred yards or so, weaving in and out of the shadows along a narrow path. A stink came on the air and he pulled up his scarf to cover his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“We’ll find out soon. Look above. The crows wait and an eagle circles waiting for us to leave. Something has disturbed them. We’ll need to step softly and stay alert.” Blackhawk glanced behind him. “Have that rifle ready, Jake.”
“I’m on it.” Rowley shouldered his weapon and moved forward at a slow pace.
As they rounded the next bend ahead of him, choked by the unmistakable stink of death, Rio braced himself. Human or animal, the smell was the same. He followed, glancing this way and that, peering into the dark, misty shadows. When both men stopped abruptly, every hair on Rio’s body stood to attention. He edged toward them down the narrow trail, but his friends had blocked his view. “What’s up?”
“Oh, Jesus.” Rowley’s hand went to his mouth and his face drained of color.
Pushing past him, Rio peered into a small clearing and stopped mid-stride. His mind had trouble comprehending the graphic sight before him. He had to force himself to stand and scan the area. The carnage and total disregard for human dignity sickened him, and his hand trembled as he reached for his satellite phone. The men beside him stood grim faced and silent. Neither moved; they stared transfixed on the unimaginable horror before them. Someone had to do something. When Rowley turned and spewed into the bushes, he stared at Blackhawk’s blank expression. “I’ll call it in.” He checked the time for his report. It was a little after nine.