A Stranger in Town

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Huh. Are you sure she’s okay?”

  “I’ll check in when I drop off dinner.”

  “Should I send April by later?”

  “No, no—” Petra stops. A heartbeat of a pause that says so much before she forces lightness into her tone with, “Sure, that can’t hurt, right? Émilie will say she doesn’t need it, but she won’t argue. I’ll tell her April will stop by. No need for your sister to set a specific time. Émilie won’t be going out.”

  If April could come by at any moment, Émilie must stay put. Yet Petra was fine leaving Émilie home alone, though, so maybe I’m reading too much into this.

  Anders offers to pick up food for the search party, and I let him do that while I go talk to April, and Petra heads home to speak to Émilie.

  There’s no change in Jay’s condition. He’s stable and still comatose. As I’m talking to April, I notice a report on the counter. It looks like an autopsy, but the name on it is Sophie’s. I pick it up, and before I can read anything more than a few words, April snatches it from my hand.

  “You will receive the report when I complete my examination.”

  “Why are you autopsying Sophie? We know how she died.”

  “It is not a complete autopsy. Now that she is deceased, I am free to more thoroughly examine her wounds, which may provide greater information on the earlier attack she suffered.”

  “Ah. Okay, then. Thanks.”

  April relaxes, though her answering nod is abrupt. Did she think I’d give her shit for taking initiative? Rockton is all about initiative. If you have spare time and you want to go beyond the call of duty, by all means, go for it, even if only to satisfy idle curiosity. Staying challenged keeps the cabin fever at bay.

  That’s a conversation for later, though. Right now I’m just here to check on Jay and ask April to stop by later for Émilie, and then I’m zooming off to find Dalton and get our asses on the trail.

  * * *

  Anders has the militia mustered for extra patrols, but we don’t want them going too deep into the woods. Mostly they’re just listening and watching, in case an attack on Edwin and Felicity preludes an attack on Rockton.

  The search party is only three people and a dog. That’s for our own safety. Each of those three has a gun. Each is trained to use it. No dead weight allowed on this mission. Dalton and Storm are our searchers. I’m in charge of Storm. Petra is our guard, allowing us to focus on the hunt.

  We don’t have time to eat before we head out. It really is grab-and-go, the only exception being Storm, who ate and rested while we bustled about preparing.

  We’ve asked Sebastian to walk out with us. We part ways about a half kilometer from where the settlers wait, where he hops on the bike and goes. From there, while we can’t hear the conversation as he meets them, we’ll hear trouble. We don’t.

  We set Storm on the trail right out of Rockton. She knows Edwin, and while he’s never paid her much attention, she’s happy to track Felicity.

  We asked the settlers to wait down a side trail for Sebastian, and when we’d returned to Rockton post-bear, we’d avoided the main path. That kept the scent as pristine as possible for Storm.

  Now we backtrack to that main route and have Storm pick up Edwin and Felicity again. The problem with a scent trail like this is that they walked all the way to Rockton, and then headed back on the same path. Figuring out where they stepped off the path is trickier than if they’d been diverted on the way to Rockton. Fortunately, Storm has been trained for this. She won’t just keep her nose to the path. She’ll be looking for places where a leg of the scent trail branches off.

  That happens almost as soon as we rejoin the main path. Storm signals that the scent veers right. Dalton has already seen the same diversion; a freshly cracked bush branch and disturbances in the dirt tell him someone left the path. I let him take the dog as Petra and I wait. A minute later, he’s back, saying, “Piss break,” and we continue on.

  Another hour passes. It’s a quiet walk. That isn’t easy for me. Petra is right beside us, and I so badly want to confront her about Émilie. Yet the more noise we make, the more we risk alerting anyone who might be around.

  When I notice Dalton’s gaze surveying the wider landscape, I murmur, “Everything okay?”

  “Ridgeback Peak,” he says, nodding to the right.

  I pause two heartbeats. Then it hits. We’re in the rough vicinity of where we found the dead tourists. It’s also where Cherise and Owen found the settlers. I hadn’t realized it because we took a different route then.

  I murmur an explanation to Petra. She hasn’t asked for one. Anders jokes about being a good soldier and not questioning orders. I suspect Petra is even more accustomed to that, having been in the line of work where you complete your task without always understanding the rationale. Sometimes, she’d have been better off not knowing. Plausible deniability.

  We slow our pace while Dalton studies the undergrowth. When a distant rumble sounds, our gazes swing up, and my first thought is plane. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes looking for the missing tourists, and we feel that ticking clock. There’s no plane, though. Just darkening clouds to the south.

  “Please don’t roll this way,” I murmur.

  Dalton grunts his agreement. A storm would disturb the scent trail. For now, those clouds seem to be staying in place, the rumble of thunder equally distant.

  I’m turning back to the path when Storm’s head snaps up. Her nose rises, sniffing the air. There are two types of scents a tracking dog can follow: ground and airborne. The former indicates a past trail—sloughed skin and hair wafting to settle on the ground. Airborne, though, means you’re picking up an active scent-emitting target.

  “Is it a person, Storm?” I ask. “Person?”

  She knows this question. We’ve had to train for it, hour upon hour of presenting her with both human and animal scents, until she could reliably tell the difference. She keeps sniffing, nose raised, and lets out a tiny whimper.

  Yes, human.

  Dalton’s scanning the undergrowth. His grunt says he doesn’t see a breaking point—a spot to indicate someone left the trail here. That only means they might have gone in farther down. He paces, looking for a spot to get through the dense brush. He finds one and motions for Storm’s leash. I pass it over and he takes the lead, cutting a path into the forest for us to follow.

  Ahead, Storm strains at the leash. She’s well enough trained that no scent will have her tearing into the forest. The leash only signals that this is work.

  We’ve gone maybe twenty feet when a sound makes my stomach explode with panic. My knees lock and my throat dries up.

  A snuffle. The low snuffle of what sounds like a bear. That panic explosion assures me that while I may seem to be coping with what happened earlier, I am not past it. My psyche has done me the favor of tucking that trauma aside so I can proceed with my day … until I hear this wet snuffle.

  Thankfully, no one notices my overreaction. Dalton is in front of me, Petra behind, and she only bops into me before stopping. A noise in her throat says she catches the same sound. Dalton has, too, and he’s stopped, gun rising. In the front of the pack, Storm has gone still. Or so it seems until I see her back quarters quivering.

  Something moves twenty feet ahead, on the other side of a bush. Brown fur shimmers, and my heart thumps double time. My grip on my gun slides as my palms sweat.

  Dalton scans ahead. I do the same. We won’t be caught off guard this time. There’s no sign of a second beast, but it’s dense forest, and we can only make out that fur-shimmer of the first.

  Dalton passes the leash back to me. I’m to stay where I am while he investigates. A wave tells Petra to circle wide and cover him. As I take the leash, he glances back and our eyes meet. He catches something in mine that makes him do a double take, and I cover my fear with a reassuring nod.

  He returns my nod, and then his gaze is back on the bush, now shaking as the bear brushes against it, stil
l snuffling, the occasional snort mixed in. Then a grunt that tells me it’s eating.

  The beast is distracted. That’s good. Stay distracted.

  Dalton pauses and then chooses his direction. Petra fans out farther. I wrap the leash around my hand and then take a careful step in the other direction. Another step. Another. I’m trying to get a visual on the bear’s head without attracting its attention.

  One more step, my gun raised, as my gaze sweeps the scene, making sure we aren’t missing a second bear—

  I stop, heart slamming as I catch sight of something on the ground. A brown lump. My mouth opens to get Dalton’s attention, but there’s no way to do that without alerting the feeding bear. I swallow hard and step to the right, ducking to peer under the foliage.

  A long length of tan tops the dark brown lump. My brain tries shoving the image into bear shape, but it doesn’t fit. I blink, and then I realize what I’m seeing. A boot and a leg and, above it, the dark hump of a body. Someone lying in the clearing. Lying on their back, while a bear is ten feet away, feeding—

  I clamp my jaw shut against the urge to warn Dalton. My stomach twists, but I know I can’t say a word. I also know, as horrifying as this is, that it doesn’t actually matter what the bear is eating. Not at this moment.

  I stare at the boot and I struggle to remember what Felicity and Edwin had been wearing.

  With Storm on a tight lead, I step forward until I can make out the shape of the bear’s head as it yanks back, a sickening wet noise as it rips into its meal, snorting and …

  I see hair not fur. Bristly hair and upright ears and a snout longer and smaller than a bear’s.

  “Hie!” Dalton shouts, and I swear I jump two feet in the air. “Hie, hie!”

  He rushes forward, a dark shape charging at what I now realize is a boar. The beast tears past us. Storm whines and dances in place, but I don’t release her.

  This isn’t my first encounter with one of the wild pigs. Technically, they don’t exist in the Yukon, but years ago, Rockton experimented with livestock, including a crossbreed for northern climates. The herds had escaped and gone feral.

  I keep my gun aimed at the fleeing porcine as it crashes through the undergrowth.

  “Hey, Casey,” Petra says as she tramps toward Dalton. “You had a perfect shot there. Could have caught us some bacon.”

  “I don’t think anyone would have wanted it,” I say, cutting my gaze toward where the boar had been feeding.

  “Why—?” Another step, and she can see what I meant. “Oh God. I … I don’t think I’m going to be eating forest-pork ever again.”

  A man lies on the ground. A stranger with a bloody gaping wound at his stomach where the boar had begun eating.

  It’s a hostile. The clothing, the rudimentary tattoos, the mud-smeared face and matted hair—they all leave no doubt. The man’s face is scored with deep gouges and there’s a bloody divot in his temple, where someone struck a fatal blow.

  My chest tightens, and I spin toward what I’d seen earlier. The sight I’d almost forgotten.

  A boot protruding from the undergrowth. Tan khakis over that boot, a leg ending in the heap of a human body. A second body.

  “Fuck,” Dalton exhales.

  I move toward the man on the ground. It is a man. A stranger, I can see that from here. He’s covered in blood and dirt.

  Despite the modern clothing, he could be a hostile or settler, having stolen the clothes from the Danish tourists. His hands tell me otherwise. So does his hair—worn a little long, but fashionably so. Despite the blood and dirt, it’s not the hair of someone who lives in the forest and makes their own soap.

  The clincher, though, is the hands. There’s blood under his nails, those nails have been manicured, and his fingers are smooth. Not the digits of a man accustomed to chopping logs or hauling water.

  The man lies on his back, eyes half open, mouth agape. Staring up at the forest as he breathed his last. Blood plasters down his hair. His shirt is bloody and shredded. A knife attack.

  There’s also a rock clenched in one hand.

  The hostile attacked with a knife. The man managed to hit him in the head with a rock and kill him, then collapsed over here and died alone in the forest. He defeated his attacker, but too late to give him more than a moment of satisfaction.

  “Two feet,” Dalton says.

  I blink up at him.

  “He’s got two feet. Two boots.”

  That means he’s not the missing fourth member of the Danish tourist party. This man is dark-haired, and the leg we’d found seemed to have lighter hair, but that wouldn’t have precluded it being the same guy. This man, though, clearly has all his appendages.

  He seems dressed like the Danes, but on closer inspection, I amend that. He’s dressed in a similar manner. Khakis, hiking boots, lightweight shirt. Except the brand name is one I wear myself, the kind of good-quality outerwear worn by serious outdoors types, unswayed by trendy brands.

  I tell Dalton.

  “Shit.” He rocks back on his heels, looking down at the dead man. “Searcher?”

  “I really hope not.”

  I reach into the man’s pocket, leaning over him to get my fingers in at the odd angle. When I touch something like an ID wallet, I tug … and the man jerks up, gasping.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I yelp and scramble back, crablike. Dalton swings his gun on the man, and Petra does the same. The man is flat on his back again, his eyes half open, mouth open, exactly as he’d been a moment ago.

  “We … all saw that, right?” Petra murmurs. “The dead guy leaped up.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like something in a horror movie?”

  “Yes.”

  She gives a tight laugh. “And instead of jumping for joy, we all pulled our weapons on him?”

  “Except me,” I say, my voice still shaky. “I just shrieked.”

  “It was a very small shriek.”

  Storm approaches the motionless man and snuffles him.

  “I believe the dog has a question,” Dalton says. “Like why are we standing here talking when there’s a dead man who isn’t actually dead?”

  We’re all staring, as if waiting for him to lever up again, maybe give a zombie moan. Even as I crouch beside the man, Petra and Dalton keep their weapons aimed.

  I pause over the man, overcome by indecision so strong I could almost laugh at the ridiculousness of it. I should be jolted into EMS mode, jumping in to evaluate his condition. I mean, he’s obviously alive and in need of medical attention. But I’m weirdly unsure of how to proceed. Talk to him? Shake his shoulder? See if I can wake him? Or just start a medical examination, risking giving him another jolt of shock, maybe one strong enough to stop his heart?

  “Hey,” I say, tentatively, and to their credit, neither Dalton nor Petra laughs.

  I lay my hand on the man’s shoulder and give a soft squeeze. “I’m here to help, okay?”

  Again, it’s ludicrous dialogue. The guy isn’t dozing. He’s … Well, I don’t know what state he’s in, which is the problem. His eyes are half open, mouth ajar, and that is not the look of an unconscious man, yet he’s been that way since we arrived, which made us certain he’s dead.

  Is he brain-damaged? In severe shock? I need my sister here. I really do. I’m looking at a man who has almost certainly undergone some sort of neurological trauma, and we have a neuroscientist in Rockton. But that doesn’t help when she’s a two-hour walk away, and he may be in severe medical distress.

  I grip his shoulder tighter. “I’m going to examine you, okay?”

  No response.

  “Can you hear me?”

  No response.

  I adjust my position, shifting in discomfort. I’m certain I’ll make the wrong move, and both Petra and Dalton are relying on me to get this right.

  “Is he definitely alive?” Petra whispers.

  It seems like a silly question. We saw him sit up. I’m 99.9 percent sure that can’t happen as
a postmortem reflex, and now that I’m up close, I can see the artery pulsing in his neck. He is alive. But there’s physical death and there’s brain death. Is it possible that this man’s brain is only alive enough for that physical reaction to being touched?

  I need April. I need her so badly, and I don’t care how much side-eye she’d give me for these questions. I’ll take it, if it means I don’t make a mistake here and shock-kill a living victim.

  “He’s breathing,” I say. “That’s all I know.”

  I raise my voice, as if hearing impairment might be the problem. “I need to examine you. I’m going to start by touching your head to check for skull fractures.”

  That seems the most likely answer, given his mental state and the blood in his hair. With extreme care, I touch his skull, where there’s a thick clot of blood. I verbalize my every move—I’m going to touch your head, I’m going to clean this wound, I’m about to press a damp cloth to your forehead.

  He doesn’t react until I wipe at the blood. Then his eyes fly open. That’s it. Just those open eyes, staring at nothing as I jerk the cloth away.

  We all go still, no one even seeming to breathe. The man blinks. Once. Twice. I’m opening my mouth to speak when he croaks, “Is someone there?”

  I ease into his line of vision, but he doesn’t react. Just that wide-eyed stare past me.

  “Shit,” Dalton mutters.

  The man’s head swings Dalton’s way, and then he pushes up onto an elbow.

  “Hello?” the man says.

  “We’re right here,” I say, as calmly as I can. “My name is Casey. I’m with a camp nearby. I have two other people with me.”

  His head swings, following my voice. “I can’t see you. It’s too dark. I need a light.”

  I look up at the soft yellowish light of early evening. Then I take a deep breath. “I … I think you’ve suffered a head injury. You appear to be temporarily blinded.”

  Is it ethical to say this when I have no idea whether it’s temporary? Maybe not, but it’d be a hell of a lot less ethical to panic a man when I don’t know how badly he’s injured.