This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(67)

When she comes back, she takes it slower, unraveling scent trails. She follows the one we came in on and then pauses, as if considering. We’ve been working on teaching her to “age” scents—parse older ones from new.

She circumvents the camp again. Then she takes off on a trail leading into the forest. She commits to this one, which makes things tricky when it goes through trees too dense for the horses. I go back for them, climb onto Cricket and take Blaze’s reins. Dalton’s gelding isn’t thrilled with that plan, but he follows and we circle around while whistles from Dalton keep us going in the right direction.

We spend an hour like that. I ride and lead Blaze while trying not to stray too far from Dalton’s signals. Twice Jacob’s path joins a trail, which makes it easier, until he cuts through the bush again.

Dalton finds no sign of trouble. No indication of an ambush or a fight. But eventually we hit a rocky patch, and Storm loses the scent. She tries valiantly to find it again, grumbling her frustration when she can’t. We have some idea of the general direction Jacob was headed, though, so we continue that way, both on horseback now, while Storm runs alongside, her nose regularly lifting to test the air.

“Satellite phones,” Dalton says after a while.

“I know.”

I’ve been advocating sat phones. I remember when I first moved here, I thought that’s what Val used. When it turned out to be some kind of high-tech dedicated radio receiver, I presumed that was because nothing else would work. But Dalton and I did some research when we were down south, and we discovered there was no reason sat phones shouldn’t work. We just don’t have them, because they’d allow us to call out, which is against Rockton rules. Also, even calls between phones in such an isolated region could trigger unwanted interest.

We have discussed getting them anyway, for emergencies, and now is the perfect example of when a satellite phone could be a lifesaver.

“We’d need to know whether they could be detected,” I say. “And figure out how to get an account without a credit card and ID. They aren’t like cell phones. You can’t grab a prepaid.”

“Yeah.”

“It might be possible to buy one on the black market. Yes, I’m talking about that as if I have a clue how to get anything on the black market. But I might be able to figure out . . .”

I trail off as Storm stops. She’s sniffing the air. Then the fur on her back rises, and she reverses toward me . . . which means toward Cricket, making my horse do a little two-step before snorting and nose-smacking the dog.

I pull Cricket to a halt and swing my leg over, but Dalton says, “Hold,” and I wait. Storm growls. I resist the urge to comfort her. If she senses trouble, I want her warning us.

Storm is sitting right against Cricket’s foreleg. The mare exhales, as if in exasperation, and nudges the dog, but there’s no nip behind it, and when Cricket lifts her head, she catches a scent, too.

“Step out.”

Dalton’s voice startles me. The animals, too, Storm glancing back sharply, Cricket two-stepping again. Only Blaze stays where he is, rock-steady as always.

“We’re armed,” Dalton says as he takes out his gun. “I know you’re there, just to the left of the path. Come out, or we’ll set the dog on you.”





36





Silence answers. I haven’t heard whatever Dalton and the animals must.

Then he says, “Storm? Get ready . . . ,” and there’s a rustle in the undergrowth ahead.

A boy steps onto the path. He can’t be more than twelve. I see him, and the first thing I think of is Dalton—that this boy is already older than he would have been when the former sheriff took him from the forest.

The boy looks so young. It’s easy to think of twelve as the cusp of adolescence, but it is still childhood, even out here, and that’s what I see: a boy with a knife clenched in one hand, struggling to look defiant as he breathes fast.

Dalton looks at the boy, and his jaw hardens. Then he aims his glower into the forest.

“That’s a fucking coward’s move, and you oughta be ashamed of yourselves, pushing a kid out here. Did I mention we have guns? And a dog?”

The boy’s gaze goes to Storm. He tilts his head, and I have to smile, remembering how Jacob mistook her for a bear cub.

“Storm?” I say. “Stand.”

She does, and her tail wags. The boy isn’t the threat she smelled, proving Dalton is right about there being others.

“If you’re planning an ambush,” he calls, “you do realize that the person I’m going to shoot at is the one I see, which happens to be a child.”

“I’m not a child,” the boy says, straightening. He pushes back his hood . . . and I realize he’s not a boy either. It’s a girl, maybe fourteen.

“And I’m alone,” she says. “I came hunting and—”

“Yeah, yeah. There are three other people over there, who obviously think my night vision sucks.”

“Sucks what?” the girl says.

I chuckle at that, and she looks over at me. “You’re a girl,” she says.

“Woman,” Dalton says. “And a police detective. Armed with a gun. Now sit your ass down.”

“You can’t tell me—”