Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)(98)
“You said they,” I say. “She wasn’t alone. You saw her with someone this morning?”
“Yep, her and her husband, out looking for their little one.”
Petra’s gaze cuts my way, but I pretend not to see it.
“So you saw this girl…”
“Sidra. Yes, I saw Sidra.”
“And some guy…”
“Her guy. Baptiste. I saw Sidra and Baptiste across the river this morning, and I’d strongly suggest that you set your pup on their trail, because that sky says snow, and their trail isn’t going to last.”
FORTY
Cherise shows us the trail, and I put Storm on it. The trail is a mess, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re being tricked. Whoever walked this way is following in the tracks left by a herd of caribou. The temperature is rising, and it’s got to be above freezing, the sun beating down on a trail through relatively open land, meaning not only are the human prints almost lost among the caribou ones, but they’re all melting into mush. And then it starts to snow, almost as if Cherise called for the skies to open and make it even more impossible to confirm her story.
“Here,” she says, pointing at a clear footprint. “And before you say that’s mine…” She puts her own foot beside it. Hers are about a size bigger. I don’t trust Cherise, but she plays the long game, looking into the future and setting out her pieces for the moves that will ultimately benefit her rather than the ones that’ll fill her pocket at this moment. It’s not in her interests to trick us for one reward when she might be able to parlay this transaction into a long-term relationship.
They leave, and I set Storm on that print, the only one I’m relatively sure comes from Sidra. She snuffles around a bit. Once she’s confident, she starts tracking.
“He lied,” Petra says. “That son of a bitch Baptiste lied. I don’t know how you bought his story, Casey. I’m sorry, but that was dead obvious. First his kid is kidnapped and then his wife? Not even by the same person? I’ll tell you what happened. That hostile woman—Ellen—took Abby for good reason. Those two kids abandoned the baby or they were talking about it or they were just shitty parents. Ellen took Abby and ran. They caught up and shot her, and left their own baby to die in the forest.”
I glance over at her. That’s all I do. Heat rises in her face, and then her jaw sets. “Yes, I find it hard to believe any parent would do that, but as a cop, you know it happens. Even more likely, it was just him. My ex was the ‘maternal’ one in our relationship. Maternal in the traditional, ignorant sense that women are the ‘real’ parents, and the guys are just sperm donors and bottomless wallets. That’s how men are raised. My ex grew up sneaking his sister’s dolls to play with. If his parents caught him, they took them away, terrified it meant he was gay. That’s what we do to little boys, and we do the opposite to little girls who don’t want dolls. The result is that Mom usually is the maternal one, the protective one. How many family annihilators are women?”
“A few,” I say. “But, yes, they’re overwhelmingly men. Your point being, I presume, that you think Baptiste didn’t want this baby. So he tried to get rid of her, shot Ellen, and is now leading us on a wild-goose chase after a fictional kidnapper.”
“You saw his gun. Does it match the murder weapon?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you still think the kid’s telling the truth and Cherise is lying about seeing them together this morning?”
“No, I don’t think Cherise is lying.”
“Mistaken, then?”
“I’m not sure.”
She grumbles at that. An idea is forming in my brain. It’s been there since Cherise mentioned seeing Baptiste and Sidra across the river, and my gut screamed that she was wrong. Not lying. Just mistaken.
My brain demanded—and then supplied—an alternate explanation … and berated me for not asking more questions while I had Felicity and Baptiste here. Simple questions, easily answered, and yet I didn’t ask, because they didn’t seem germane to what was happening.
Baptiste or Felicity could tell me what I need to know. I also want to find Dalton to bounce this theory off him. He didn’t hear our voices and come running while we were talking to Cherise. That bothers me, and I’m trying very hard not to freak out over it and shout for him. That would risk tipping off others in this forest. I must trust that Dalton is fine.
I could be wrong about Baptiste. If I am, then that may answer my “where are they?” question. My only consolation is that I haven’t heard a shotgun blast. Which doesn’t keep me from wishing we’d kept the damned weapon we’d taken from Baptiste.
After another half kilometer, I can’t silence that fretting anymore. We might be hot on Sidra’s trail, but we need to reunite with the others.
Petra agrees.
“I’ll play signpost and mark the trail,” she says. “You take the pup and go find Eric.”
I set out with Storm. I’ve told her to find Dalton, and I’m hoping she’ll catch his scent on the breeze. We walk through unbroken snow wherever possible, leaving bread crumbs back to Petra. It’s less than ten minutes before Storm goes still. She sniffs the air. It’s not Dalton. If it were, she’d veer that way without hesitation.