Chapter Four
As promised, we take the evening shift, which is me following up on the Roc break-in while Dalton makes notes about our hiker encounter and does the occasional walk through town.
These days, most of our law enforcement consists of those walks, like constables on a beat, reassuring people of our presence.
Otherwise, our jobs are heavily town-management oriented.
Also, the lack of actual law-enforcement issues allows us to work fewer hours and spend more time as a family.
Tonight, though, since our daughter was claimed by my sister, we have a relatively quiet shift.
I don’t know what to make of the break-in at the Roc.
I investigate, in the sense that I take fingerprints and poke around checking for anything that could have been stolen or damaged.
In the end, though, I’m not sure there’s much point in doing more.
Nothing was taken. Nothing was damaged. We have no idea who broke in or why, and any other time, I probably would take the excuse to solve this puzzle, but we have other things on our plate.
Partway through our shift, I check in with April to make sure Rory isn’t giving her trouble, but today’s long hike has put the baby to sleep, so there’s no reason for me to quit work early.
Dalton and I take advantage of the rare opportunity to enjoy dinner together at the restaurant, staying past closing, which is one of the perks of being in charge.
By the time we pick up Rory and Storm, it’s eleven.
Perfect timing to get a good night’s sleep and then hit the road at five.
Except, we have a baby, who needs her nighttime feeding.
She wakes up shortly after we get home and then she doesn’t want to go back to sleep, being well rested and also cranky from her teeth.
I insist Dalton go to bed before I feed Rory, and I try to keep her quiet afterward, but he must have set an alarm to be sure I don’t spend the entire night dealing with a fussy baby—which, yes, I have done, reasoning one of us should get a good sleep.
He comes down at two and bullies me up to bed.
Rory must eventually drift off in his arms, and I find them like that when the alarm wakes me at four thirty.
I decide we don’t need to leave right at five. There’s little chance the hikers will move on early when it’s not full light until after seven.
Dalton’s still up by five. I have breakfast packed, so I enjoy a coffee with Anders while Dalton runs Rory to Yolanda. By five thirty, we’re on our way.
We reach the area a little over an hour later.
There’s no scent of campfire smoke in the air.
If we were the ones heading out, we’d have started the day with a fire, hot breakfast, and hot coffee.
But every hiker does things differently, and the lack of smoke doesn’t necessarily mean they’re still asleep.
I tell Anders where I expect to find the couple camping—in the spot I’d suggested. We split up to approach from different directions.
I take Storm, which means I get the route least likely to bring me near the actual site.
Storm’s not exactly a sure-footed wilderness wraith.
Neither am I, to be honest. I’ll try, and so will Anders, but the person who can get closest is Dalton.
That means he’ll circle around to come in from the opposite direction, which is also the way the couple will walk if they’ve already headed out.
Anders’s route takes him up, where elevation will give him a bird’s-eye view.
He might not be a silent stalker, but he’s an expert climber.
I get the direct route down the faint trail to the campsite.
If I’m spotted, I’m the least likely to worry Gretchen and Blake.
Just “Katie” and her dog come to make sure Blake’s ankle is okay.
Still, I’d rather not be spotted. Our goal is for them to never know anyone is here, so we can honestly confirm that they’re heading west, as they claimed.
Storm and I hike along the path, which is really just a game trail that we’ve used often enough for it to remain clear, even if our scent probably means animals no longer go near it.
It’s familiar enough terrain that I know where it’ll curve just before the campsite.
I pause there and tell Storm to stay. Then I listen and sniff again.
Is that smoke? It’s very faint, suggesting I’m smelling a fire long since put out.
The only sound I hear is a distant raven, and it goes silent after a few croaks.
I check to make sure Storm is staying put. She’s lying down, and she lifts her head in hope, only to huff a sigh when I repeat the stay signal.
I creep around the corner. The empty clearing is just ahead, maybe twenty paces, off to the right side. As I ease closer, the babble of running water whispers beneath the silence. The creek is on the other side, and it’s very small, just enough to provide clean water when we overnight here.
I squint into the thick woods. In a largely coniferous forest, even autumn doesn’t thin out the viewing obstacles. When I can’t see a tent, I take another two steps. Then I stop. There’s movement to the north of the path, right around where I’d expect to find the site.
I ease into the trees and move a little closer. There’s definitely someone there. I can just make out a shadowy figure, tall—
“It’s me,” Dalton grunts.
I walk into the clearing. “How’d you know it was me?”
He rolls his eyes. “How’d you not know it was me?”
“Shadows.”
He shakes his head. Then he gives a birdcall telling Anders to join us.
“Shouldn’t we let him take a look around while he’s on higher ground?” I say. “If they got an early start…”
I trail off as my detective brain kicks in, and I assimilate my surroundings. I can see the remains of a campfire that’s probably been out since last night. Otherwise, the clearing is completely empty.
I check my watch. “They didn’t just get an early start, did they.”
“Yeah, I think they stopped here for dinner but didn’t spend the night.”
“Shit.”
“Yep.”
If they only stopped briefly, that lends credence to our fear that they weren’t just hikers and Blake wasn’t actually injured. They paused long enough for a meal, in case we returned, and then they moved on.
I peer around as thumps and sliding gravel from the north tell us Anders is taking the speedy way down.
Dalton sighs. “Charging bears are quieter.”
“Oh, don’t grumble. There’s no one around to hear him.” I walk a few steps and bend, my fingers moving aside short grasses. “Who used this spot recently?”
“Kendra’s been out with Tish. They camp deeper in the woods, though. The overnight excursion stayed by the lake. So we’d have been the last to camp here—a few weeks ago with Rory.”
“And we don’t pitch our tent over here, but these peg holes look recent.”
He bends and then moves at a crouch to check for the other three holes. “Fuck. I missed those.”
“Someone also moved our chairs.”
I motion at two pieces of trunk we use as fireside seating. When we leave, we clear everything, including covering up the campfire spot, but someone found our cut logs and brought them in, only to move them just outside the clearing before leaving.
“No sign of our alleged hikers?” Anders says as he arrives.
“Actually, they did camp here,” I say. “Or, at least, they erected a tent.”
“So they left really early?”
“Seems so.” I hunker back on my heels. “If the guy was hurt, they might start before dawn so they can maximize break times for him.”
“Or he woke in enough pain that they decided to head out.”
“Could be. Okay, time to put our trackers to work. See which way they went.”
The answer is “west,” just as Gretchen and Blake claimed.
Storm and Dalton lead us along the trail for a couple of kilometers, and we decide that’s enough.
As we head back, Anders groans and says, “I owe Yolanda now. I argued the strongest that this was something sketchy, and she disagreed, and I don’t even want to know how she’ll collect. ”
Oh, I could joke about how Yolanda might want to collect. I could also tease Anders that I suspect it would be a debt he wouldn’t mind paying. But I say nothing. In a town this tiny, when you see two people gravitating toward each other, the worst thing you can do is give them a shove.
If Yolanda and Anders want a fling, they’ll have it.
God knows, Anders had enough of those in Rockton.
It slowed as his drinking did, and he’d finally started to fall for someone, only to have her turn against him when she learned why he drank.
Anders and I share pasts of screwing up, and we share years of paying the price, most of it self-inflicted.
Yolanda knows what Anders did. After it came out in Rockton, he wanted staff here to at least understand the basics.
I haven’t embraced that degree of openness myself, but I applaud him for it.
That means, though, that Yolanda knew before she decided Anders was someone she wanted to get to know better.
I don’t play matchmaker. I certainly have the urge, in that way happily paired people might. But if I’ve resisted pushing my sister toward Kenny—despite the fact that there’s been obvious interest on both sides for years—then I can resist nudging along this relatively recent development.
“You’re going to Dawson next month on a supply run,” Dalton says. “Ask whether she wants to come along.”
“Anytime Yolanda wants time off, her grandmother will send a private plane.”
“Yet Yolanda only goes home for family stuff,” I say. “She never takes an actual vacation, because she doesn’t want émilie sending her plane.”
“Good point.”