Danger In The Backcountry (Red Rock Murders #5)

Chapter One

All she saw was red.

Lettie Larson smoothed her hands over crimson sheets as a shrill ring pierced through the early morning haze.

Her phone. Batting her hand across the thin mattress, she tried to shake the disorientation of sleep, but she’d gotten so little of it.

She still wasn’t used to all the sounds a van made in the middle of the night, even after six months of moving into Zion National Park’s backcountry.

Every single one had sounded like an ax murderer trying to break through the skylight over the bed or the windshield.

Another shriek rang from her phone.

“I’m coming.” Her hand knocked the phone she’d plugged in on one of the kitchen counters to the floor.

Along with the mug she’d set out to dry last night.

Glass shattered across the hardwood, and Lettie couldn’t stop the groan escaping up her throat.

That was her last mug. The first two had suffered the same manner of death.

She really had to find more space in this van.

She swiped her thumb across the screen. “Yeah?”

“Dr. Larson?” Static ticked through the line. “It’s Shawn. Sorry to call you so early.”

Her laugh took some of the crushing weight she’d been carrying from all the thoughts that rushed her in the moments before sleep took over.

It was easy to get caught up in it, the loneliness, the anger and confusion.

But it was a new day. She blew her shoulder-length blond hair away from her face as she collapsed back onto the bed.

If what she slept on could be considered a bed at all.

True, there was a mattress, pillows, sheets she’d gotten her hands on before selling the house, but absolutely no support.

The thin wood supports dug between her shoulder blades and her hips.

“Yeah. I know, Shawn. I have caller ID. What’s up? ”

“We’ve got another call.” A nervous innocence coated Shawn’s voice.

Almost pure, like the Nebraskan pregraduate had never once been rejected by the mean, cruel world outside the window holding Lettie’s attention now.

Shawn had signed on to intern with the science department for more lab experience six months ago, following through with every task without argument, enthusiastic to a fault and with an enthusiasm for life Lettie just couldn’t bring the energy to search for anymore. “About Sam.”

“Damn it. Where is he?” Lettie threw blankets back and set bare feet into the gaps between glass shards skidding across the floor.

The van itself wasn’t large, but there were a lot of nooks and crannies she’d never be able to reach unless she took the van apart.

And that just wasn’t happening. She’d spent too much time getting it perfect.

From the sand-colored laminate floors, to the built-in collapsible bed, the quartz countertops and sink with the perfect white cabinets. It was perfect. It was all hers.

“A hiker reported seeing him covered in blood about a mile south from your location.” Shawn’s inherent nervousness, like there was some part of him that lived as a raw nerve ending, echoed through the line. “I know it’s your day off. I can send—”

“No. That’s okay.” Lettie pinched the phone between her shoulder and ear, dragging one arm out of the oversize jersey she slept in every night.

She didn’t even like the Golden Knights or know the player’s name stitched into the back above the giant “7,” but she couldn’t convince herself to get rid of the memento from her past life.

Maybe someday she wouldn’t need it. If she ever got answers.

But not today. “I’m closest. I’ll find him and call you back. ”

She didn’t wait for Shawn to respond, ending the call and tossing the phone on the bed.

It was her day off, but she’d hauled the miserable pieces of herself out into Zion National Park for a reason.

Sam was that reason. Well, part of it. Her work to study the unique natural ecosystems and organisms inside the park included a black bear that had somehow gotten a taste for human flesh over the course of the past year.

Three hikers had already been killed. Mauled to death with very little left to identify them if it hadn’t been for their IDs still discovered on the remains and DNA to confirm.

Law enforcement rangers had handled the bodies and the investigations into each death, but there weren’t handcuffs or a cell big enough to fit Sam.

Leaving Lettie to clean up his metaphorical mess and explain his change in behavior.

If someone had seen him wandering around covered in blood…

Dread settled at the base of her spine. No.

There was nothing to suggest Sam had taken another hiker’s life.

She didn’t have to worry about what might come next.

She just needed to put on some pants. Collecting her jeans from the dirty hamper stashed inside the floor-to-ceiling cabinet holding the few remaining clothes she’d kept, she shoved her legs in and jumped a couple times like a toddler trying to dress themself.

They were running too big, as were the rest of her clothes, but she didn’t have the resources or the energy to replace her entire wardrobe at the moment.

Things with the divorce were still dragging as slow as a snail riding a turtle walking through molasses.

She’d signed the papers just like her ex had asked—could she actually call him her ex?

—but the attorney she paid ridiculous amounts of money to had yet to see the final divorce decree.

Well, if “asking” for the divorce included leaving the papers on the dining room table when she got home from work to find he’d already moved out of their house without a single word.

The entire van rocked with her as she pulled out the toilet and took care of her business then darted to the sink to brush her teeth, slather on deodorant and run a brush through her hair.

Who was she kidding? Sam didn’t care how she looked, but she could at least manage her smell for the ten-year-old black bear.

She grabbed her phone off the bed. No messages or missed calls from her date from last week.

Why? Why was it so hard for men to call?

The past four dates she’d been on had all ended with silence.

Within five minutes from hanging up on Shawn, Lettie was pulling the privacy covers off the windshield and side window—because, yes, she still needed privacy to pee in the middle of the desert—and climbing behind the wheel.

Great expanses of desert stretched out in front of her.

She’d angled the van with the door facing west to watch the sunset last night, met with the too-bright rays of sun coming over the mountains.

Holding up one hand, she blocked the assault to her vision as she spun the steering wheel. Heading south.

Rangers had managed to tag Sam with a GPS device a few days ago to track his murderous movements, but black bears were smart.

After the third hiker had been found belly folded over a tree trunk in the park’s backcountry two weeks ago, Sam had disappeared.

Lettie had managed to map out his hunting grounds and guesstimate where he’d dug his den, but none of that helped locate him.

Until he’d showed his smooth, whiskered face around Big Spring.

A hiker had called in the sighting of a black bear chewing on something that vaguely looked like a human arm, and rangers had responded within the hour with a resounding yes.

He was, in fact, chewing on a human arm that belonged to one of the missing hikers to put on as many pounds of fat as possible before winter.

But for him to show up now? Winter was coming.

Sam should’ve already been holed up in his den to hibernate.

Which meant something had either drawn him out or disturbed his behavior.

Lettie grabbed for her phone from the passenger seat and brought up the GPS app the rangers had showed her how to use when they’d tagged Sam with the tracker. “Where are you, big guy?”

A one-dimensional map filled the screen with a blue dot signaling her location and a red dot signaling his.

A random number identified the tracker they’d tagged in the bear’s ear.

He was out here. Far from where he should be.

That sensation of dread slithered up her back.

Something was wrong. Black bears came with a predetermined set of instincts that told them the safest location where to establish their dens, set their hunting grounds around that den, when they needed to hibernate for the winter and how to hunt the food they needed to survive.

Sam was breaking every damn rule he’d set for himself being this far out from home. “Where are you going?”

Lettie swept the landscape through the bug-covered, smeared windshield.

Okay. So she hadn’t always wanted to live in a van down by the river like her parents warned her might happen if she put off college to get married, but doing so put her center stage smack-dab in the middle of the most beautiful place on earth.

The red cliffs dominated over the spread of wilderness rising and falling with rolling hills and cutting rivers that made Zion the answer to her life’s purpose.

Clear blue skies without a single indication of clouds gave the impression of warmth, but a chill had settled into the van throughout the night and sunk into her bones.

The sweatshirt she’d donned and the insulation installed in the ceiling of the van did nothing to thaw her fingers as she navigated toward that blipping red dot on her phone’s screen.

But it was absolutely perfect.

Out here she wasn’t a failed wife. She wasn’t the disappointing daughter or a woman who didn’t know what to do with her life now that she was on her own.

She wasn’t anyone she didn’t want to be.

She could pretend her entire world didn’t revolve around her job by trying out hobbies she’d never had time for—crocheting, yoga, jewelry making, rock climbing, reading—though most of her failed projects had ended up in the garbage or behind her laundry hamper in the closet in frustration of not knowing how to get it perfect.

Out here, she wasn’t Dr. Arlette Larson with a PhD in biology most of the time.

She was just Lettie. Who liked to eat stale cherry Pop-Tarts from the package still in the center console.

Because no one was here to tell her she couldn’t.

Her blue dot on the screen was much closer to the red dot now, but the van wouldn’t make it deeper into the line of trees ahead.

She would have to go in on foot. Brushing away the crumbs from her bottom lip with the back of her hand, Lettie pulled the van short of the tree line and shoved the vehicle into Park.

One second. Two. No sign of the bear. Sam’s dot was a few hundred feet into the trees, straight ahead, but she couldn’t see him from this distance.

Kind of hard to when black bears were a bit smaller than most other bear classifications and dark enough to blend in with their surroundings, though Sam was just as dangerous despite his size.

And she was going to walk right out there and see what was wrong with him.

Her stomach clenched at the thought. Not because of the stale Pop-Tarts, and that was a hill she’d die on.

She shouldered out of the van, holding one hand out to block the sun cutting over the tops of the cliffs.

The entire valley was saturated now, lending a hazy warmth to counter the chilled temperatures of morning.

Lettie headed for the tree line, careful to keep her steps even and as quiet as possible.

No one wanted a panicked bear who may or may not have eaten someone in the past few hours.

The trees consumed her, stealing any heat she’d picked up in the sun.

Phone in hand, she headed for the red dot up ahead but couldn’t make out much just yet.

Black bears were excellent at camouflage, with dark fur, tree-climbing abilities and excellent hearing and smell.

They could ambush their prey without so much as a second of warning.

Her blue dot met the red dot on the screen, and Lettie stopped. Angling her head up, she took a step back with a gasp. And caught sight of the body brutally torn to pieces above.

“Oh, Sam.” Lettie stared up into the tree, her grip too tight on her phone. “What have you done?”

All she saw was red.