The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  That was fine for the town of Cuchara. As grisly as it all seemed, the townspeople could have closure and eventually move on with their lives.

  For Dak, however, this twist of events had brought about more problems. As he drove down the road heading back to the cabin to collect his belongings, he was left wondering—who killed Billy, and if they could find Billy, could they find him too?

  Was it Nate? Or had Bo resurfaced here in Colorado? The coincidence in timing seemed unlikely, but the evidence was written in blood soaked into Purgatory Mountain.

  He had to leave town immediately.

  Suddenly, Dak felt the overwhelming sensation that he'd gone from being the hunter to the hunted.

  Fifteen

  Cuchara

  The Southern Rocky Mountains cradling the small town of Cuchara gradually grew smaller in the rearview mirror as Dak headed east. He held the phone against his ear, thinking hard about the problem.

  "You still there?" Will asked.

  After a few seconds, Dak answered. "Yeah."

  "I've been working on this one the last few days. I know that these things take time—months, maybe even years. But it could help expedite things if you gave me a little more information."

  Dak made the call the second he passed the signs announcing that he was leaving Cuchara. He needed to track down Nathaniel Collier as fast as possible, in no small part because Dak feared the crazy ex-teammate might be on his trail.

  Someone had killed Billy and the local sheriff. And they'd made it look like the two men killed each other in an argument.

  Maybe Dak was being paranoid over rationalizing things. There was nothing wrong with being careful, though, and at that moment it felt prudent.

  "I don't know," Dak said finally. "I've given you everything I can think of."

  "That isn't much," Will quipped. "Is there anything else you can give me? The physical descriptions of people can change, but their habits, tastes, characters don't."

  "What's the point of counseling, then?"

  Will laughed. "I've wondered the same thing myself many times. My guess is that counseling isn't meant to change people, but help them deal with who they are and manage their feelings or thoughts in a productive and socially acceptable way."

  Dak considered the statement. "No one ever really knew what Nathaniel was thinking, or what he felt. The man was unusually quiet, mostly kept to himself in a way that creeped out even Bo. Nothing got to Bo. He wasn't afraid of much."

  "Sounds like a psycho."

  "Sociopath, actually," Dak said. Then it hit him. "Wait." A memory filled his head with a vision from the past he wished wasn't there. He'd all but forgotten that stream of events, or done the best he could to purge it from his mind.

  "What is it? You got something?" Will sounded hopeful.

  "There was something." He paused again. "Once, when we were in Iraq, we had a mission where we were sent into a village to take out some insurgents." Regret and a tinge of pain scratched at Dak's voice. Then it grew distant. "We advanced into an old home barn on the outskirts of town. We heard that's where the group conducted their meetings to plan out attacks. When we arrived, we found the insurgents. A few of them were older men, but most of their soldiers were young men under the age of fifteen.

  "I took out the two of leaders immediately. Bo eliminated one. But we both hesitated when we saw the boys. They were unarmed, watching one of the men in charge as he conducted a lesson on improvised explosives." Dak snorted derisively at the way he'd said it—a lesson.

  "What happened, Dak?" Will pressed after the phone fell silent again for nearly a minute.

  Dak lost himself in the memory, the sickening, wretched recollection he wished had never happened.

  "Nate entered the building after us. He saw the young men, thought they were a threat, and mowed them down. He slaughtered them without mercy, as if he was demolishing an anthill."

  Will didn't say anything, but the silence over the line spoke for him.

  "When he was done," Dak continued, "Nate waded through the bodies. He laughed at the sight. It was one of the few times he ever laughed that I can recall. Then he made a strange comment. Strange doesn't even come close to describing it, actually."

  "What? What did he say?"

  "He said—" Dak sighed. "He said that he wished he could take a few of them back home as trophies, that he'd always wanted a collection like that."

  Dak stopped speaking, his words falling away from trembling lips.

  "Wow," Will breathed. "I've seen some messed up people in my time. Saw some stuff that I still can't shake. But that's—"

  "Crazy. I know. I feel like the military was the only place that could contain Nate and who—what he really is. He was a tool when he was in the army, an instrument of death. Now that he's out, I shudder to think what he may be doing."

  "Most of us were instruments of death," Will countered.

  "Not like this guy. He enjoyed it." The SUV rolled over the crest of a long rise and then began its descent down the other side. "Luis said he was in Kentucky."

  "That's what you told me. What are you thinking?"

  Dak grimaced at the thought. The question prodded disturbing images from his mind, things he could only picture in the darkest recesses of his imagination. "Check and see if there have been an abnormal number of missing persons reports occurring in the state. If so, is there a pattern?"

  "And what if that search comes up empty?"

  Dak knew that question was coming. "Then the good news is Nate hasn't done what I feared. That will make it more difficult for you to find him."

  "I'm okay with difficult."

  "I know you are." Dak paused and looked out at the expanding prairie leading away from the Rocky Mountains. "Call me when you have something."

  From the Author

  I appreciate you taking the time to read this story, and the others if you’ve been keeping up. I did take a few liberties in this one, such as using the name of the town Cuchara, which is a real place and is as close to my description as possible. There is also an abandoned ski resort there, though it has been purchased and—I believe—converted into a tourist information center. The second resort I described does not, to my knowledge, exist. Purgatory Peak is a real place, though it is spelled differently and its appearance is somewhat different than how I entailed.

  Thanks again for reading the story, and I’ll see you in the next one.

  Ernest

  Other Books by Ernest Dempsey

  Dak Harper Origin Stories:

  Out of the Fire

  You Only Die Once

  Tequila Sunset

  Purgatory

  Scorched Earth

  The Heart of Vengeance

  Sean Wyatt Adventures:

  The Secret of the Stones

  The Cleric's Vault

  The Last Chamber

  The Grecian Manifesto

  The Norse Directive

  Game of Shadows

  The Jerusalem Creed

  The Samurai Cipher

  The Cairo Vendetta

  The Uluru Code

  The Excalibur Key

  The Denali Deception

  The Sahara Legacy

  The Fourth Prophecy

  The Templar Curse

  The Forbidden Temple

  The Omega Project

  The Napoleon Affair

  The Second Sign

  Adriana Villa Adventures:

  War of Thieves Box Set

  When Shadows Call

  Shadows Rising

  Shadow Hour

  The Adventure Guild:

  The Caesar Secret: Books 1-3

  The Carolina Caper

  Beta Force:

  Operation Zulu

  London Calling

  Paranormal Archaeology Division:

  Hell’s Gate

  Acknowledgments

  Big thanks to my editor Anne Storer and all the readers who helped out while the book was being written and post
ed each day on my website. I can’t thank you enough. There were so many of you kind enough to send your comments. I appreciate you.

  For Jim

  Copyright © 2020 by Ernest Dempsey

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Scorched Earth

  A Dak Harper Thriller

  Ernest Dempsey

  One

  Brown’s Ferry, Kentucky

  No one ever thinks they'll get lost in a forest. There are landmarks, noticeable differences in the wilderness that make it impossible to lose your way.

  But the forest can be a serene and terrifying place. To a young boy, the danger never seems present until it is too late. One moment, you're walking along a trail, enjoying some laughs with your brother, taking in the sights. The next, you find yourself twisting around in circles among hills and trees that all look the same.

  Jamie and Oliver McDowell were on a camping trip with their parents in the hills around Fall Rock, Kentucky. They'd been to this place many times since their younger days as small boys.

  Jamie, the older of the two having just turned fifteen, felt adult enough to take his little brother, Oliver, out on the trails for a walk while their parents cooked lunch at the camper.

  The two boys were a mix of their parents, both lightly tanned with a combination of their father's dark hair and their mother's sandy locks. Their mother often commented that the boys' blue eyes were going to cause problems for them later on in life, suggesting the girls would be powerless against them.

  An hour after the brothers left the campsite, they still hadn't returned.

  The food on the folding picnic table grew cooler by the minute and Martha, their mother, grew frustrated.

  "I told those boys to be back in thirty minutes," she said to her husband.

  Tim McDowell, ever patient with the two, tried to calm her down. "You know how boys are," he said, using the eternal argument of a father for his sons. "They're probably catching crawdads down at the creek. Just lost track of time, that's all."

  She only partially accepted the answer. With hands on hips, she glowered back at him. "Well, the food is getting cold."

  "It's slaw and brats. We can reheat the brats. Slaw is cold anyway, Martha." He touched her shoulder. "Let's eat. They can have theirs when they get back."

  She reluctantly agreed, and the couple sat down to enjoy their meal. Martha must have looked at her watch a dozen times during their conversation. Something deep down just didn't seem right to her. The feeling continued to nag at her for twenty minutes after they finished eating.

  When the plates were thrown away and the boys' food covered in plastic wrap, she began pacing, looking down the trail in the direction her sons had hiked.

  "Tim, should we go look for them?"

  Tim and Martha McDowell had been married for twenty years. He knew her like a secret handshake—every nuance, every wrinkle, every personality trait. He loved her, but Tim also knew that his wife tended to worry too much about things. He'd wondered now and then if she might have been different if their children were girls instead, but he doubted that would have changed a thing. In fact, she probably would have worried more.

  He grinned at her, disarming her concerns the way he always did. "I'll go look for them, honey. I'm sure they're not far away. And I'll be sure to let those two knuckleheads know their food is cold and they can reheat it themselves."

  She smiled back at him, accepting his offer, and watched as he trudged down the trail into the forest.

  The dry, cool air smelled of crisp leaves and Tim took it in through his nose in huge, deep breaths. He loved fall, and this one had been particularly wonderful. He'd always considered this part of the country to be one of the most undervalued when it came to fall colors. As he ambled down the path, the surrounding trees assaulted his vision with an explosion of colors. It was fine with him if this place was lesser known. He preferred to keep it that way. Fewer tourists meant the camping was quieter, other than for the locals who frequented the wilderness at Fall Rock. This weekend, however, had turned out to be a good one. Tim had only seen a couple of other families since they arrived, which meant he could get some much-needed relaxation time.

  He'd spent the last 22 years of his life working for the same insurance company. The work wasn't anything spectacular, but it was a steady paycheck with benefits, and over the decades he'd built up a solid 401k that would allow he and Martha to travel when they both retired. Her job as a high-school science teacher also had a strong retirement fund, though she often teased him about moving down to Tennessee at some point and double dipping—a term educators used to refer to earning a paycheck from one state's retirement fund while collecting full-time pay from a neighboring state.

  He scoffed at the notion, knowing, or maybe just hoping—she was messing with him. Eight more years and they could hit the road. He had plans and lots of them. A new RV—a smaller one—would be in order. When the boys were off to college, they wouldn't need the behemoth of a camper they'd been using for the last ten years.

  There were Europe plans too, and maybe a cruise he'd always wanted to take. He'd been on a casino boat once out of Cape Canaveral, but never on a real cruise ship.

  Tim was glad he'd still be young enough to do all those things when he retired. He and Martha had made sound economic decisions throughout the years, saving as much as they could without skimping on important memories for the boys and a few for themselves. He'd seen some of his friends from high school and college go down different paths, spending recklessly on things that quickly devalued or making bad, short-term investments.

  He sighed as he rounded a bend in the trail. The creek appeared on the right, just down a short slope. It babbled constantly—another thing he loved about this spot. At night, the sound of the flowing water mingled with a crackling fire.

  It was heaven for a guy stuck a cubicle for most of his career, though he'd moved up to his own office eight years prior.

  He only relished the scene for a second as he realized there was no sign of the boys.

  A scowl crossed his face, and he decided to try shouting. "Boys? Jamie? Oliver? Where are you?"

  His voice faced into the trees amid rays of sunlight that poked through the red, orange, and yellow canopy overhead.

  His frown deepened at the lack of response.

  Tim kept moving, concern growing with every few steps. After another ten minutes, he figured he'd gone as far as his sons would have, and wondered if they had—perhaps—taken another way back, maybe up over the hill and down the other side.

  He stopped on the trail with his hands on his hips, turning 360 degrees as he scanned the silent forest for his sons.

  "Oliver?" He yelled again. "Jamie?"

  Tim waited, but no answer came. He called out again and again. Still nothing.

  He was about to turn around and double back, hoping to bump into them along the way, when he noticed something down by the creek bed.

  Tim cut off of the trail and hurried past the sparse undergrowth, stopping short on the sandy, rock-strewn ground next to the babbling stream.

  He stared for several breaths at the disturbed earth. Rocks were dug up and moved in random directions. That wasn't what bothered him. The footprints in the soil belonged to his sons. He would have recognized the distinct indentations of their two shoe sizes anywhere.

  A distant fear that resided deep in the abyss of every parent's mind began to surface as he gazed at the thing that caught his attention.

  Oliver's red daypack sat on the ground next to the water.

  Panic flooded Tim's chest. He called out over and over again, yelling their names as loudly as possible, but the answer remained the same as all the other times—a agonizing, hollow silence that brought the nightmare
to life and gripped every fiber of his soul.

  His boys were gone.

  Two

  Lexington, Kentucky

  "You see that?"

  Dak didn't respond to the question right away. He stared at the computer screen, analyzing the data that corresponded with the circle overlaying the map.

  "Yeah, Will. I see it."

  "Two more this week."

  Dak nodded, barely glancing at the cell phone on the hotel desk next to him. Will was on speaker so Dak could focus all of his attention on the monitor.

  It hadn't taken Will long to zero in on the pattern evolving in Kentucky. Nine people had gone missing in the Daniel Boone National Forest during the last four months. All but one were young boys under the age of fifteen. The one outlier was a young woman in her twenties, though she was suspected of being involved with a local heroin dealer.

  The circle on the map shaded an area Dak had only been to twice. He'd traveled to the Cumberland Gap to meet a girl who was in college near there. The drive had taken nearly four hours, much of which was through beautiful, albeit remote, countryside.

  "Seems like the town of Browns Ferry is in the middle of it all," Dak noted, zooming in on the name.

  Browns Ferry was a small town of less than two thousand people spread out in the hills of Southeastern Kentucky. Dak clicked on the link and then on the images tab to look at some pictures from the area.

  "Sure is pretty," he commented.

  "Yeah, it definitely is," Will agreed. "Looks like a nice place to get away from it all and relax, do some camping in the woods."

  "Or abduct young boys."

  "Yeah," Will said reluctantly. "I've pulled the records, although it took some doing. It's amazing how these small towns are often more difficult to squeeze information from than the bigger cities. They get so uptight about giving anything away."