by Jen Blood
“I’m sorry about your nieces,” I said. “I know everyone’s doing what they can to bring them home again.”
Wendy nodded, terse, her lips thinning at my words. Otherwise, she offered no response.
“And another of my younger brothers,” Dean continued. “Barrett.”
I didn’t care for the way the man’s eyes never quite found my face, lingering instead on my body. An oily smile touched his lips as he extended his hand.
“A pleasure, ma’am. Thanks for coming out to lend a hand.”
I ignored the proffered hand and focused instead on Dean. “I want to join up with the others as soon as possible,” I said. “Is there anything else you need from me before I get to work?”
“I think we’re good for now,” Dean said. “You’ve got your radio. I’ll get in touch if anything comes to mind.”
At my snub, Barrett pulled his hand back and stuck it in his pocket. I got the sense he wasn’t used to such treatment. Indeed, he was a good-looking man, with thick dark hair, straight white teeth, and well-placed dimples. Too pretty and far too slick for my taste, but I doubted he had any trouble finding other women more amenable to his charms. I thought of what Claude had said earlier about what Ariel and Melanie had told him before they’d left.
We’ve got an escort.
Who could possibly be escorting them out here in the middle of nowhere, if not family?
“Is your whole family sharing a house here?” I asked suddenly, before anyone could disperse.
“Mostly,” Dean said. “There are a few cabins that came with the land, up on the ridge up there, but we stick close to each other.” He nodded toward a peak southwest of us.
“Who else lives in the house with you?” Jack asked, following my line of questioning.
“Wendy, Claude, the girls, and me live together. My wife passed about four years ago.”
“I’m sorry. And what about you?” I asked Barrett. “Are you bunking with someone else, or are you on your own?”
“I’m on my own for now,” he said. “Make me an offer, though. We’ll see what we can work out.”
“Knock it off,” Dean said sharply. Barrett’s jaw ticked and his eyes hardened, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he took a step back, head lowered. Interesting.
We went over the last of the logistics and Jack asked a few more questions that yielded very little in the way of answers before the Redfields seemed to be in agreement that they’d told us everything they could. Dean and Wendy took their leave, but Barrett lingered. Jack went to touch base with Wade, still waiting in the SUV.
Phantom was still at my side, but she hadn’t been nearly as warm with the others as she’d been with Claude. Barrett seemed determined to wear out the tenuous welcome I’d extended. His attention inevitably turned toward the dog, and he took a step forward.
“Sweet dog,” he said. He stretched out a hand. Phantom growled, her hackles up. Barrett withdrew with a frown. “Or maybe not so sweet. No dog of mine would get away with greeting somebody that way.”
“Would you prefer she not growl and just get straight to biting you, without the warning?” I asked. “I’m not fans of everyone I meet, either—I’m not going to insist my dogs be more gregarious than I am. Besides which, she’s not a pet. She’s a working dog. She doesn’t need to win Miss Congeniality to get the job done.”
He returned his hands to his pockets. When he looked at me, the chill in his gaze was more than embarrassment—I sensed hostility there with some seriously deep roots. Barrett might make a pretense of being a playboy who loved women, but what I saw in his eyes just then was anything but love. This was a man who loathed the opposite sex, and got off on showing the world just how much control he had over them. I’d made an enemy, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to try and make nice.
“We should get going,” Jack said, coming to my rescue. “Wade’s getting restless, and everyone’s got a lot to do. Thanks for coming out to meet us, Barrett.”
“No problem,” Barrett said. “Just bring the girls home, all right?” For the first time, he appeared genuine. “That’s all any of us cares about right now. Just bring Mel and Ariel home.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Jack said. Barrett nodded. He walked away without saying goodbye to me, his head down, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t the last I’d heard from him.
“Sorry about that,” Jack said when he was gone. “Barrett’s a jackass, but it won’t hurt to have him on our side over the next few days.”
“I don’t know that I did anything to help that,” I said. “I’ve never been any good at politics.” I shrugged, shaking it off. “I’m not here for politics, though. Let’s get on with this, shall we?”
I took a breath and looked around. The temperature hovered right around fifty-five degrees. The rains had cleared for the moment, but based on the weather report and the clouds overhead, that wouldn’t last long. I was guessing these were the best conditions we’d get in this search, and I was wasting them.
“I still don’t know what anyone thinks I’m going to do that Cheryl and her team aren’t already doing,” I continued, “but I’d just as soon get to work and give it a shot. Whatever hope we have of finding these girls alive is running out fast.”
Jack nodded, and the look in his eyes said all I needed to know on the subject. He knew all too well the odds we were facing at this stage of the game.
* * *
Chapter 6
BEAR AND REN WALKED together for a solid mile without speaking, content to watch the dogs work their magic. It smelled of wet earth, pine, and decaying leaves. Bear listened to the high-pitched shriek of a woodpecker nearby, then separated out the warbling whistle of what sounded like two red-eyed vireos high up in the trees. He searched the forest for a sign of the distinctive birds, but couldn’t find them.
He glanced at Ren, whose attention was still focused on Minion as the dog worked the scent, pulling hard at the lead Ren held. Phantom was the only search dog Bear knew of who was allowed to work off-leash. Casper and Minion were both great dogs, but there was no way he’d want to risk just letting them run during a search in woods like these—especially if there were traps laying around. The downside to that was that both he and Ren spent a lot of time being yanked around the countryside by their dogs. It was something they both accepted willingly, knowing that the average pet golden retriever was trained to heel, but a good working K-9 had to have that fire in their belly that meant they’d do anything to get the job done. Including just about pull you off your feet once they caught a scent.
Bear kept his attention fixed on the dogs. A couple of times, Casper froze with his head in the air. He sniffed at the breeze, tail wagging, then turned back and worked in ever-tightening circles for a minute or more. Every time, it seemed he lost the scent before he got far. Bear made note of the places where the dog had paused, though, logging them on his handheld GPS before he sent Casper back through again. Nothing. He made a mental note to recheck one more time on the way back through, just in case.
As though sensing his thoughts, Casper turned his muscled, wiggling body toward Bear, pink nose quivering.
“Keep looking, Caz,” Bear said. “Find them.”
Casper wagged his whip-like tail in Minion’s face. He looked toward Minion, then back at Bear. Woofed twice. There was a bully grin on the fool’s wide face that suggested Casper had better things in mind.
“Focus,” Bear said, more stern now.
The pit bull ran toward Minion, almost knocking her over as he overtook her on the trail. Minion woofed after him, indignant, and Bear shook his head. Hopeless.
“He’s getting better, you know,” Ren said.
“Yeah, he is,” Bear agreed. “It’ll still take some time, but I’ve never seen a dog want the find more than he does. That has to count for something.”
Just then, Casper came back toward him in a burst of speed, braking a second after colliding with Bear’s legs. B
ear struggled to stay upright under the force of the impact. Any other dog and there would have been a reason for the drama, but this was just Casper’s way of checking back in. Minion followed at a more sedate pace and stopped in front of Ren.
Bear stooped to ruff Casper’s head, while Ren doled out a quick treat for Minion. “Fool dog,” he said. “You know, sometimes I think someone a little less rowdy could be a nice change of pace.”
Casper butted the top of his head against Bear’s thigh, body still wagging. Ren laughed at the antics. “You would be bored with another dog.”
He sat on a felled yellow birch and Casper angled closer, slurping a kiss across his chin.
“Probably,” Bear admitted.
They settled in for a break, the dogs eager for water and a chance to let off steam before they got back to business. A minute or two passed in silence while Bear and Ren watched the dogs, before Ren cleared her throat. Bear tensed at the look on her face—a calculated attempt at appearing casual, when he could tell she was anything but.
“I’ve been thinking about all the disappearances they’ve had out here—about the curse they talk about.” She paused and looked at him expectantly.
“Yeah?” he prompted. “What about it?”
She took a long drink of water, wiped her mouth, and avoided his eye when she spoke again. “What do you think of it?”
“I don’t know,” Bear said with a shrug. “It’s a lot of woods. Frankly, five people in terrain this tough, woods this thick, over the course of a few years doesn’t seem like much of a curse to me.”
Ren watched him for a second. He felt himself tense at the look in her eyes. “So…?” she prompted him.
“So…what?” he asked, though he knew full well what she was asking.
“So, do you sense anything? Or see anyone?”
He felt himself blush, and looked down at the ground. He’d known Ren for almost four years before he finally told her about the whole sensing thing, when he felt like he couldn’t really hold back in good conscience any longer. Ever since, though, things had been strained between them. Different.
“It doesn’t work that way,” he lied. Though in truth, that was exactly the way it worked: he went to a place where someone had died, or their spirit was somehow tied. If there was something there to see or hear or sense in some way, most of the time he was able to do exactly that.
Ren looked at him doubtfully. “They disappeared a long time ago,” she said. “So maybe you just can’t sense spirits that long dead. The ones out on Windfall Island have only been dead since 1990.”
“Or maybe there are no spirits to sense out here. Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean there’s some part of them still hanging around.”
“So sometimes there’s no trace?” she asked. “They just…die? Then where do they go?”
“I don’t know,” he said. Irritation crept into his voice. “It’s not like I’m some expert on ghosts or something. I don’t understand how I see what I see, and I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I have no control over it.”
She was disappointed, he knew. Ren’s family—all except her father—had been murdered in Africa. She’d been trapped under her older brother’s body, pretending she was dead. She was only three at the time; her father was a soldier with the Nigerian army, and had been away during the raid. When he came back to his home six months later, the village had been burned and everyone he knew was dead. It took another year before he was able to track down Ren.
All of this Bear knew thanks to Monty, who made it his business to know everyone else’s. With that kind of history, Bear could understand wanting to know what happened when someone died; maybe even finding a way to contact them. He softened his tone.
“I wish I could tell you more. I just don’t really understand it myself.”
“I know.” She nodded, then rose before he could say more. “That’s ten minutes—we should be going. According to everything I’ve read, there’s a stretch up ahead where a couple of the disappearances took place. There may be something to the terrain that makes it harder to navigate.”
“Right,” he agreed. He wondered if he should say more. He wasn’t good with girls. With people, really. Animals were easier—they didn’t require talking. You just communicated with a touch or a gesture, and it was all they needed to be on the same page. Awkward and less at ease now, Bear got to his feet and gave Casper the command to hit the trail once more.
#
“Before I give Cheryl a call and join up with them, I just want to take a look around the ravine by the house,” I told Jack and Wade when we got back to the SUV. “Everything else aside, it’s just as likely that Melanie and Ariel went out for an early-morning stroll, maybe to meet someone, and they slipped and fell. With the rains this bad out here, Cheryl’s already said mudslides were an issue. If one of them went down, she might have pulled the other with her.”
Neither of the men looked convinced, and I could understand why. If that had happened, why hadn’t one of the girls been heard calling for help by now? One might have been knocked unconscious, but both of them?
“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” Wade said doubtfully as he put the SUV in gear.
“I also wouldn’t mind getting the lay of the land out here,” I admitted.
“Now that I can understand,” he said.
We set out through the muck of the forgotten dirt road, tires spinning every few feet before Wade was able to get things moving again. For a while it seemed we were traveling straight up, the forest so dense a view of the world beyond was impossible. After about fifteen minutes of this, the ground leveled off again and we reached a cluster of log cabins set back from the road. To my surprise, about a dozen people—a couple of kids, but most of them men my age or older—stood in their front yards, watching warily.
“I thought you said only the Redfields lived up here,” I said.
“I think this is Barrett’s doing,” Jack said, clearly not impressed. “He’s kind of a…”
“Hustler’s the word you’re looking for,” Wade interjected.
“Entrepreneur,” Jack said instead. “He’s doing what he can to start a town, provide housing for people who can pay a little rent and help out building things up out here.”
Wade pulled off to the side and stopped the truck. “Good luck with that,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what in hell he thinks he’s going to build.”
“These houses were all just left here?” I asked. “The previous owners just abandoned them?”
“About thirty years ago now,” Wade said, “a bunch of hippie wannabes got the idea they wanted to leave civilization and get back to nature. They built the cabins, figured they’d live off the land.”
“I’m guessing that didn’t work out well for them,” Jack said.
“They weren’t too well versed in what makes for decent farmland,” Wade agreed. “The leader took sick the first winter they were here, and he died shortly after the first snow fell. Once that happened, things fell apart fast. They took off early one morning, and I never saw any of them again.”
“And the cabins have stayed empty since then?” I asked.
“More or less.” Wade shrugged. “Somebody will come out every so often, see if they can make it work. I heard a rumor some developers were thinking about trying to make it a resort destination again.” He got out of the truck and looked around, his collar turned up against a biting chill. “If I had the money, I’m not thinking this is a destination I’d choose. But rich folks are a strange breed. What do I know, maybe Barrett’s right and he’s got a gold mine on his hands.”
Maybe indeed. Apart from the rundown cabins and the suspicious glares from the Redfields and their clan, it was actually very pretty here. The leaves were just beginning to turn, but I could only imagine the riot of colors in October. There were no power lines, no sound of engines or car horns, no exhaust fumes. It was one of the most pristine places I’d ever been. Frankly, I hoped t
he developers stayed away. That everyone stayed away. This felt like a place better left to itself.
“So, where do you want to get started?” Jack asked.
I noticed a lone figure in a smallish cabin on the left side of the road watching us. Barrett. To the right, farther back than the others, was a two-story cabin that looked slightly more well-built but no better maintained than the others. On the porch stood the other siblings I’d met thus far: Wendy, Claude, and Dean. I nodded toward that house.
“That’s where Melanie and Ariel live?” I asked Wade.
“Yeah—that’s the old Smithfield place. It was already here when the hippies moved in. They built the other cabins around it.”
I kept Phantom on leash as we approached the cabin, Jack and Wade behind me. A couple of boys, maybe eight years old, kicked a ball across a scrubby clearing in front of one of the cabins. What looked like a Rottweiler started toward us from the same cabin and I froze. Off-leash dogs are the bane of my existence, though I could understand no one worrying too much about leash laws out here.
Before the dog could reach us, one of the boys grabbed its collar and wheeled it around and back toward the house.
“Sorry,” he yelled toward us. “I’ll keep him out of the way.”
I wondered if the boy—or the dog—had already had a run-in with Cheryl.
“Thanks,” I called back.
We stopped at Dean’s cabin. The porch was in dire need of repairs. Wendy, Claude, and Dean all remained at the railing watching us, and I wondered how the structure could possibly support their combined weight.
“You got the things I gave you from the girls?” Dean asked, looking down at us.
“I’ve got them, thanks,” I said. “I just wanted to start the dogs off here, since you said this was the last place they were seen. That’s right, Claude?”
The man nodded, his eyes fixed on Phantom. “Yep. They was on the porch, sneaking out. I was at the door.”
Wendy watched all of this with her hands knotted in front of her, her lips pressed into a thin line. She was likely in her fifties, and she had effectively erased any trace of femininity from her bearing. Now, she seemed ageless, sexless, as silent as a specter. I wondered at her history, and made a mental note to get more details about the family from Jack once we hit the trail.
