Agent’s Mountain Rescue

by Jennifer D. Bokal

  Well, he deserved that for sure. Perhaps Liam had been too quick to judge Wyatt. Maybe next time, he’d give him another chance.

  Learn from the past, damn it. This has to work out.

  Chastened, Liam cleared his throat. “Since we’re hunting for Darcy, I can guess what Wyatt chose,” said Liam. “I can also imagine that’s why Rocky Mountain Justice is involved. The organization is cleaning up a mess it helped to make.”

  “It’s a bit of a harsh assessment, but you’re right,” said Julia.

  “I guess it helps me understand Wyatt a little better,” said Liam. “By the way, how’s his girlfriend?”

  “Thankfully, she survived the attack and is doing great,” said Julia. “She was a PR exec in Chicago before moving to Wyoming. Now, she’s working for the town of Pleasant Pines—promoting the area for tourism and such. Her latest crusade is to find a new sheriff.”

  Liam remembered a heartbreaking detail about the last sheriff from the case file. “That’s right. Sheriff Haak was a victim of Darcy’s, too, right?”

  “Yeah. He was shot while trying to save Everly’s life. She feels that she owes it to him to find a good replacement,” said Martinez.

  Staring out the window, Liam watched several large birds circling, their rotations becoming tighter. Vultures.

  A sign that they had located their prey?

  Bracing his hand on the dashboard, Liam said, “Stop.”

  Martinez dropped his foot on the brake.

  “See that,” said Liam, pointing through the windshield. “They’re scavengers and hunting carrion. From the looks of that flock, there’s something there we should check out.”

  Julia said, “I’d say it’s several miles through the woods without any trails.”

  “There’s a cutout about half a mile up the road. From there, we’ll have to make our own trail,” said Martinez.

  “Then let’s get after it.”

  Already Liam’s palms tingled, itching with the need to be in the woods. As a very small boy, Liam spent his summers in the forests of Wyoming—not far from where he was now. It was those early days, running through the woods, camping with his grandfather, learning how to track animals and follow trails, that had led Liam to a life of a tracker.

  Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that he was back in the state where his mother’s family had lived for generations. After all, wasn’t there some saying about all roads leading home?

  After reaching the end of the road, Martinez killed the engine and used a switch to remotely open the rear liftgate. “Your gear is in the back,” he said.

  Liam rounded to the back of the vehicle, where Julia waited. She held a black backpack by one strap. “You have two days of rations and water in here. Walkie-talkie. Satellite phone. Set of keys to the SUV. First-aid kit. Rope in a rappelling sack. We all have the same equipment.”

  He took the backpack, then slipped his arms through the straps.

  “This is...” said Julia as she held out a semiautomatic pistol “...your sidearm. It’s a Glock. The magazine holds fifteen rounds and there’s one in the chamber. Yours for as long as you’re with RMJ.”

  He gave the firearm a quick once-over. “It’ll do just fine,” he said. Since he hadn’t worn a holster, Liam was forced to tuck the gun into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back.

  All the same, Liam had thought to bring his own machete. It was in a scabbard with a thigh strap. Unsheathing his blade, he watched as the edge glinted in the light. He gauged the heft and balance. He often needed it when working in the woods, to cut through thick branches. It looked as though he’d been right to bring it today.

  “Let’s go,” he said, taking a step off the road.

  Overhead, the frenzied call of birds filled the morning. He inhaled sharply. The tang of pine scented the air. There was also the deep, dark aroma of earth and rotting vegetation. And a deeper, darker smell lurking beneath.

  Death.

  Refocusing, he turned his gaze to the sky. The air was thick with birds.

  “There’s something up ahead,” he said. “Birds don’t get excited like that for nothing.”

  “What do you think it is?” Julia asked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” he said. “Come on.”

  The farther they ventured into the forest, the thicker the woods became. Using his machete, he hacked through brambles that clung to the trunks of trees, creating a wall of green. Sweeping his arm back and forth, it was as if the blade was an extension of his body. Sweat dampened his back and dotted his upper lip. The branches became thicker, denser.

  Liam wondered if he’d gotten it all wrong. There was no way that anyone—even a professional tracker, like him—could have gotten through these woods.

  He lifted the machete, then brought it down, cleaving a limb in two. His shoulder burned from the exertion, but the woods thinned out and Liam stepped into the clearing. His breathing came in gasps and sweat covered his back, chest and arms. A stiff breeze ushered in a bank of clouds, blotting out the sun and turning the sky gray.

  Dozens of birds carpeted the ground. Beneath the swarm of wings and feathers was a heap of blood and gristle. It was a body, certainly. Was it even human? Had they come all this way for nothing?

  As the trio from RMJ approached, the birds screamed in protest and took flight.

  Julia stopped short. “Oh, my God,” she gasped.

  Liam immediately found what Julia had seen. A head, without a body. Because of the damage done by the birds it was impossible to identify the victim. Yet, parts of a beard clung to the skull, so there was no way it could have belonged to Darcy Owens.

  Then he took in the whole scene. There was more carnage than just a head littering the clearing. And Liam wondered just who in the hell had killed the poor bastard.

  And, more important, where was the killer?

  * * *

  Holly already knew she wasn’t going to spend much time in the classroom today. Yet, keeping Saplings in business was as important as any lesson she might teach, and that meant doing everything in her power to get the money for that payment to the bank. Taking her cell phone to an empty classroom, Holly pulled up her contact list and placed a call. It was answered after the third ring.

  “Hello?” said a male voice.

  “Franklin,” she said. “It’s Holly Jacobs. It’s, ah, been a while.”

  “It certainly has,” said her former literary agent, Franklin Nelson. “The last time we spoke, you were turning down my offer to write a second book. How have you been?”

  “Uh...” she said. “Good. Pretty good.”

  “What have you done with yourself for the past six years?”

  “I moved back home to Wyoming. I took all the money I earned from the book and opened a day-care center. I get to help people every day,” she said.

  “You helped millions of people with your book, you know that.”

  “But not personally,” she said. She started to sweat, defensive of her decision to come home and help her community.

  “It’s hard to help a million people without using some kind of mass media,” said Franklin. “I’d love to catch up with you more, but to be honest, I’m busy with a deadline. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  She did need Franklin’s help, but was she really willing to travel the same path twice?

  Her runaway bestseller had only meant to be a doctoral thesis. The book on childhood trauma struck a chord in the market and Holly became an overnight sensation. Bestseller lists. Talk shows. Parties. Conventions and conferences. She was living every author’s dream of success. There had even been speculation about a TV talk show.

  Then the book fell off the bestseller lists and almost overnight, Holly felt as if she were forgotten. It had broken her heart and shattered her soul. Was she really ready to try again
?

  “Holly,” Franklin said, bringing her back to the present. “Is there anything I can help you with? I mean, you called for a reason.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, Holly asked, “Does the offer still stand? Is there still interest in another book?”

  “Wow. Of all the things I thought I’d hear today, that was not on the list. I just have to wonder, why the change of mind?”

  There was no sense in lying—or even hiding the truth. “I need money.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  Whistling through his teeth, Franklin said, “You haven’t written a book in years and I can’t justify asking for an advance that large, especially not without a viable proposal that I can submit.”

  Holly rubbed her forehead. She shouldn’t be surprised by the answer. “What can you do?”

  “When can you get me pages to read? Once I see, what your thesis is, I can possibly shop the project around.”

  Possibly. No guarantees at all. Well, what the hell did she expect?

  “That’s just it,” said Holly. “I don’t have anything—not now. Not yet.” She quickly changed tactics.

  “It sounds like you want something other than to reenter the publishing industry. Why don’t you tell me what’s really wrong?”

  “Unless I get twenty thousand dollars by the end of the week, the bank will take my school.” In speaking the words, Holly understood how truly dire her situation had gotten. Her eyes stung and her throat began to close.

  There was silence for a moment. “I can’t help you right now. Not without a book—or at least a few chapters.”

  “Thanks, Franklin,” she said. “It was worth a try, right?”

  “And, Holly, if you ever put together a proposal for that second book, let me know.”

  “Of course,” she said, even though they both knew it was a lie.

  As she disconnected the call, the coldness of her reality set in. If she couldn’t convince the bank to give her an extension on her loans, she was going to be out of more than the school. Holly would be out of a job.

  Chapter 4

  Liam stepped into the clearing and knelt next to the skull. Even he found the scene repulsive—and he’d found dozens of bodies in all phases of decomposition. Swallowing down his revulsion, he asked, “There’s no way to ID him. Nothing...” He turned away and coughed, then turned back to the ruined head. “Nothing left. Did anyone live out here? Or have a vacation cabin?”

  Julia hung back, a hand still covering her mouth. With a shake of her head, she said, “Not a clue. I’m calling this in. We can get a CSI team here by helicopter within a half hour.” She swung her backpack off her shoulder, unzipped the top pocket, then withdrew a satellite phone.

  Liam stood; a plan had already been formed as he listened to Luis and Julia. “This is a fresh body. Whoever killed this guy might still be close by.”

  Glancing over her shoulder, Julia said, “You’re right. They could be watching us right now.” She wore a sidearm on her hip and instinctively rested her palm on her holster.

  Liam said, “Make the call, Julia. Then we have, what’d you say, thirty minutes? That’s about the time we need to try and find the person who did this.”

  Julia made the call. As she stowed the satellite phone, she said, “The choppers’ on the way. ETA half an hour.”

  Liam dropped to his knee once more and examined the skull. “Do we suspect this is a victim of Darcy Owens?” he asked.

  “I’m not so sure,” said Martinez. He kneeled next to Liam. “Her standard MO was to poison her victims, not hack them to pieces.”

  “Maybe the carving up was done postmortem,” suggested Julia. “Maybe he was poisoned and then cut up for transport.”

  “No such luck,” said Martinez. He pointed to what was left of the throat. “See that—it’s bruising. This person was strangled before they were struck.”

  Liam grunted.

  “You have a problem with our profile?” Martinez asked.

  “Look, I respect what you do. But it doesn’t take a lot to put two and two together here,” said Liam. “You hired me to do what I do best, to help you track and find a serial killer who went missing in these woods. And here, we have the victim of an obvious homicide. Unless you think this guy cut himself into twenty pieces?”

  Julia rolled her eyes at Martinez.

  Martinez shrugged and asked, “Okay, let’s say you’re right. Do you think he was killed here?”

  Liam shook his head. Martinez continued, “There’s not enough blood to make me think he was killed here, either. Which means that the body was dumped in the glade.”

  Liam said, “Whoever dumped this body had to be on foot. There are no roads in or out and the undergrowth is too dense for an all-terrain vehicle. Which means if there’s a trail,” Liam said as he scanned the surrounding woods, “then I can find it.”

  Without the sun casting the woods in light and shadow it was easy to find. A gap in the foliage, where several branches had been bent. He moved closer to investigate. There was a single groove carved out of the soil.

  Martinez came up from behind. “What is it?”

  “It looks like a tire track from something small. A bicycle, maybe, but it’d be a hell of a way to transport a body. Still, it could be done.”

  “Or maybe it’s from a wheelbarrow,” suggested Julia.

  Liam stood and dusted his hands on the back of his pants. “Yeah. It makes more sense to carry a body in a wheelbarrow. Still, the person would have to be close—you can’t maneuver a wheelbarrow up and around mountains.”

  “Which means what?” Martinez asked.

  Liam’s eyes followed the path left by the single wheel. It ran straight through the woods. It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

  Holding back a low-hanging branch, Liam said, “This way.”

  As far as tracks went, these were fairly simple, Liam thought. The wheel had cut a neat furrow in the newly thawed ground. The path ran along the spine of a ridge, and as it wound down the other side, Liam stopped. He dropped to his knee and motioned to Julia and Martinez to get low and stay quiet.

  “What is it?” Martinez asked, his voice a whisper.

  “Look there. Do you see it? A trapdoor set into the ground. It’s just beyond the copse of trees.”

  “It must be some kind of underground shelter,” said Julia, shading her eyes from the sun.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” said Liam. “But you’re probably right.”

  Julia said, “If Darcy’s been hiding out in a bunker in the woods for the past two weeks, it would explain why she was never picked up on any infrared searches. They could have flown directly overhead and never caught a glimpse of her. Dirt makes a hell of an insulator.”

  Martinez nodded. “It makes perfect sense. What do we do now?”

  Julia said, “There might be a back door to that bunker, and she could escape if we try a frontal assault. More than that, we don’t know what’s waiting for us down there. Could be nothing or it could be deadly.”

  “You have a point,” said Liam. After all, searching the woods had been his idea. That meant he was responsible for the safety of his coworkers.

  If things went south, it was all on him.

  It was yet another reason he preferred to work alone.

  The double doors were metal and flung wide open. They rested at an angle, supported by the hinges, and weren’t flush with the ground. It reminded Liam of a root cellar he’d seen once, at an old cabin used by early settlers in Wyoming. But there was no homestead nearby—no reason for there to be a door leading into the bowels of the earth. An inexplicable shiver ran up his spine. Quieting his mind, Liam focused. Then he sensed it, felt the evil that had been here.

  Martinez withdrew a pair of binoculars from his backpack and focu
sed on the door. “There’s a ladder,” he said. “I can see the top rungs over the lip of the entrance.”

  “Anything else?” asked Julia.

  “Nothing,” said Martinez. “You want to take a look?”

  “Sure thing.” Julia held out her palm and Martinez passed over the binoculars. It happened without warning. The sun, hidden behind a bank of clouds, broke through. The light glinted off the lens, sending a burst of light straight at the trapdoor.

  “Damn,” cursed Liam. “So much for staying concealed.”

  * * *

  Darcy had washed in the rain barrel, cleansing her skin of grime, blood and the sickly-sweet stench of illness. As she slipped her shirt over her head, she saw it. A single flicker of light, like the flash of a camera, high on the wall.

  The light meant only one thing—someone was outside. For a minute, she actually considered surrendering.

  No. She’d never give up...or give in. Especially since she’d gotten this second chance and had her whole life yet to live. That meant she had only one choice—run.

  She climbed the rungs of the ladder and quickly peeked into the woods, then dropped back out of sight. Three figures, faceless in the noon-hour sun, were advancing on the bunker. They all carried handguns, the barrels glinting in the light. If she hesitated, Darcy would be surrounded, with no chance of escape. Hefting the ax from the corner, she moved to the ladder’s base and held her breath. With one hand, she climbed higher. Higher. Higher.

  There was the faint crunching of boots on undergrowth. The people were close. She counted—one, two... Go. Launching herself upward, Darcy landed on the ground and swung the ax in a wide arc.

  A tall man with a dark crewcut jumped back as the blade passed only inches from his chest. Heart racing, pulse pounding, Darcy kicked out, aiming for the man’s knee. Her foot connected with flesh and bone and sinew. He cried out in pain and surprise as he crumpled to the ground. She turned and sprinted deeper into the woods.