Chapter 33
WOLF
“Forest and River have guys all up and down the eastern leg,” Hawk says after cutting the engine on his ATV. He leaves the headlight on as he swings his leg off it and ambles over as I focus on not vomiting, passing out, or losing my head altogether. “Wolf?” Hawk prods.
I’m crouched on the dried-up riverbed off the south access road. Hawk hollers my name a second time, which makes me jolt, and I finally look up from Molly’s abandoned fishing pole in my hand.
After getting off the radio with him, I continued covering terrain and sweeping the grounds with my flashlight beam.
I knew something was wrong when Molly wasn’t back by dark.
But when I stumbled upon her fishing gear…
something happened deep in my chest, and my legs gave out, bringing me to the ground.
From that point on, all I’ve been able to do is stare at the pole in my hand and will myself to fucking think.
“Someone took her,” is all I manage to say on a shaky exhale. There’s no way she’d just drop her pole and walk off.
“You don’t know that.” Hawk’s voice is heavy with authority from being in work mode.
I should be as well, it’s just… I never thought I’d be in this position, and the emotions… They’re threatening to consume me and take over my entire body. A perfect storm of grim anxiety and dread whirls inside of me.
Hawk bends and takes the pole from my hands. “This hers?” he asks like the cop he is.
I want to rage at him, but I’m thankful at the same time. I need someone’s head screwed on straight.
A sudden clatter of thunder rumbles in the distance, and my heart turns frantic as I pick up the scent of rain in the air.
The organ thrashes against my ribcage. The sound that used to bring me so much peace and comfort is now an alarm bell.
“That’s thunder…” My feeble statement probably sounds so miniscule to Hawk, but he doesn’t say so.
“She can’t be out here…” My breath scrambles as if it’s trying futilely to match my heart rhythm.
“She can’t be out in a thunderstorm.” My hand knocks the cap off my head as it threads into my hair, pulling hard at the strands.
“Wolf.”
I look up at my brother as I wring my hands together, and I stand. I don’t say anything, instead just meet his gaze and wait for him to either talk me down or give me some kind of prickly speech about how this is somehow my karma.
“You’re the one out of the four of us who almost never uses a vehicle. You’re the best tracker I know. Losing your shit won’t find Molly. Get your game face on and do what you do best.”
I close my eyes, trying to reset myself, because he’s right. My heart still shakes with trepidation in my chest, but I can overshadow it by putting my brain in charge. I take in a hard breath and let it out slowly.
Hawk clears his throat, shifting on his feet. “Now you’ve found her fishing gear. What else have you noticed about our surroundings?”
“The ground is fucking dry,” I spit out right on the heels of his question. “There’s always a network of streams here, from the west.”
He looks down to regard my observation, then we both turn, trekking in that direction, our flashlight beams sweeping the terrain as we go. The access road isn’t far, and when we reach it, the blocked-up culvert sticks out like a sore thumb.
“The fuck?” I huff out in disbelief and hurry my pace so I can get close and examine it. I start pulling at mud and leaves, but my fingertips hit hard, reinforced metal of some kind.
“What’ve we got?” Hawk arrives quickly at my side.
“Foul play,” I voice out loud as Hawk shines his beam over my shoulder.
“This isn’t nature’s work.” I wipe my hands on my jeans and back away from the culvert, immediately scrambling up the embankment to see what I can find on the road.
I’ll have to call in the blocked pipe later, after I’ve found my wife.
Hawk is right behind me, keeping me on task. “Say Molly was still on her own at this point… What would she have?—”
“Home’s this way.” I turn and start rapidly striding north before he can finish.
Hawk hollers from behind me, booking it in the direction of his ATV. “I’ll circle the perimeter and meet you.”
My hurried pace turns into a jog. As the first raindrops begin to fall, it turns into a full-on sprint.
Listening hard over my own breath, I slow to a brisk stride and kill my flashlight.
I can’t see shit, but I know I heard something—a commotion or scuffling of some sort.
There’s a soft bend coming up in the dirt road, and I move over to the narrow strip of grass between the road and the trees.
As the path straightens out again, I see a large, dark mass.
My vigilance is already at high capacity, and I ready myself for the prospect of it being a bear, unlikely as that would be.
My ears pick up more movement, and I halt, listening hard, eyes still on the large, black mass.
A rustling, then two masculine voices. I resume my pursuit, pulling my gun from my waistband.
I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I don’t have to.
With the help of the darkness and their conversation, I’m able to close in undetected.
The object in question has come into view, revealing itself to be an SUV, and I’ve gathered all the information I need to click my flashlight back on.
“Freeze! Ironvale game warden!” I bark out my orders and identify myself.
Two men—one being that familiar pile of shit Damen Riley—stall their movements on the driver’s side of the vehicle.
Riley looks a little ruffed up, shirt untucked and a scratch across his face.
The rain is coming down hard, and a couple strands of greasy hair are matted to his forehead.
Though, he’s better off than his unlikely companion—a stocky, bearded man I don’t recognize.
Blood drips down his shoulder and, along with the rain, soaks his shirt, and he wields a shotgun weakly at his side.
“Drop the weapon!” I shout, pointing my Glock right at him.
He does what he’s told, listlessly letting his gun clatter to the dirt, but he doesn’t raise his hands like the frightened little fuck Riley.
“Riley, start talking,” I demand, not wasting time with questions I’m pretty sure I already know the answers to.
I know he knows where my wife is, and that’s all I need right now.
The pathetic pissant swallows hard, his pupils narrowing with the hot light I have pointed at him.
“Molly…she… She found, she caught… We took her in the woods—l” He’s barely coherent, and I advance a couple of aggressive steps, hell blazing in my eyes.
“She fell!” He’s quick to get to some kind of end point, before his cohort starts wobbling unsteadily.
“I’m unarmed, he can’t shoot me,” he slurs out lazily.
With the amount of blood he’s lost, his moments of consciousness are numbered.
He starts trying to amble towards the driver’s side door as I lock my grip on my gun and take a shot at the front tire, the bullet whizzing right passed his leg and making him stumble and Riley startles in my peripheral and the loud crack of the shot.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I inform him gruffly and shine my light back on Riley “Where the fuck is my wife? Where did she fall?” I demand.
“The ravine! She fell in the ravine!” He gets the words out as quickly as he can, and I wish I had time to take delight in his pathetically terrorized face, but the puttering exhaust of my brother’s approaching ATV approaches.
Riley shakes as I slowly step into his personal space, and his cohort tries to make his way to the driver’s side door of the SUV as Hawk roars around the bend into view. “You better pray to whatever God will listen to your pointless ass that my wife is all right,” I growl.
Hawk swings his machine into a skidding stop before cutting it and dismounting. “Sheriff’s on the way,” he reports, reaching for the cuffs at his waistband.
I give Riley one more menacing death glare from hell before backing away from him.
I hand my flashlight off to Hawk and tuck my gun back behind me before rounding back to Riley’s cohort, who’s now using the SUV as a wall to prop himself.
I get in his face, grabbing a fistful of his shirt, chest hairs included.
“Did you shoot at my wife?” I demand, my voice so ominously low it could rival Satan’s.
He doesn’t answer, and I don’t have time.
Balling my fist and drawing back, I deliver a hard straight punch to the side of his face, making his head swing to the side before I let him drop.
“Whoa, what was that? I didn’t see anything,” I catch Hawk’s voice behind me as I tear through the nearby brush, bolting as fast as I can toward the woods.