This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(72)

Dalton stands in the clearing. He’s peering around, gun in hand, but this doesn’t seem like a deliberate trap. The first body wasn’t staged in that position. The second was covered, but only—I presume—in case the woman or girl saw a body and panicked.

Kill the two men. Take the woman and girl.

Dalton’s circling the camp, scanning it. He walks to the tree where the food has been hung. There are rabbits missing from the brace. Two food packs are missing, too, the cut ropes dangling. Two others remain, and scrapes in the trunk bark suggest someone tried to climb and reach them but couldn’t.

“Hostiles?” I say.

Dalton shrugs. He knows I’m just avoiding the obvious conclusion. I don’t want to give Brady that power, make him our bogeyman—everything terrible that happens must be him.

Dalton circles the camp. I realize what he’s looking for: items the settlers wouldn’t need to secure in trees. I spot cups, some cooking tools and blankets. No weapons, though, other than the knife the old man grabbed.

On a second circuit, Dalton finds two bows propped by a tree. I check the pack hidden in the girl’s bed and find a small knife, a sling with stones, a waterskin, and a pouch of dried meat.

I look again at the girl’s sleeping place. There’s no sign that the killer went through the pack before putting it there.

Why wouldn’t he search the pack for supplies?

Why make it look as if the girl was asleep at all?

I walk to the two bows. Neither has the wolf etching.

“She snuck off,” I say.

“Hmm?” Dalton is examining tracks and looks over.

“Harper snuck out.” I motion to the bed. “A classic kid’s trick. Make it look like you’re asleep in case the grown-ups wake and look for you. She took her bow.”

I back onto my haunches and survey the scene. “Intruder kills the lookout first. Then the old man. He leaves the girl because either he doesn’t see her blankets or she’s too small to be a threat. He decides not to bother with the tent—maybe the woman didn’t wake up so he ignored her. He takes what supplies he can. But the older woman does hear him. She comes out . . .”

I move to the tent and shine my light on the flaps and then inside. “No sign of blood. Does she scare him off? Go after him?”

Dalton points at the forest’s edge. I see signs of wild flight, trampled undergrowth and broken branches.

The woman woke and ran.

She did not run far.

We find her body ten meters from the campsite. I would have passed close to it when I’d been circling around, my attention fixed on the campsite, oblivious to the rest.

She is on her stomach. One hand stretches out, fingers dug into soil. Dragging herself away from her killer. A trail of blood smears the ground and undergrowth.

When I see that outstretched hand, I run to her. But she’s gone. Long gone, body cooling fast, her eyes as glazed as the two men’s. Eyes wide open. Fixed in horror and determination, as if she only needs to get a little farther, and she will be fine.

Stab wounds in her back. Her killer finishing the job as she crawled away.

Dalton turns the woman over.

More wounds there. She was attacked from the front and ran. Realized she could not escape. Turned to fight. Weaponless. Powerless.

A dozen stab wounds perforate her chest.

I’m lifting my head to say something when I see a blur of motion. Dalton does, too, spinning, his gun rising. The running figure gives a roar of rage . . . and then skids to a halt.

It’s Harper.

“You,” she says, and there is disappointment in her voice. Her brandished knife wavers for a moment. Then it falls.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Harper says. “They’re all dead.” She looks down at the woman and her voice cracks. “Nonna.”

“She was your grandmother?” I ask gently.

She nods.

I motion for her to turn away, but her jaw sets.

“I have seen death before,” she says. “I am not a child.”

I would like to say this is different—and it is—but she can already see the body, and she’s not going to listen to me.

“You weren’t in your sleeping blankets,” I say.

“I wanted to see your dog again.” She kneels beside her grandmother’s body. “I was heading to where Albie told you to camp. I was almost there when Nonna screamed. I ran back. I . . . I saw him. The man who . . .”

She looks at her grandmother again. Rage flashes in her eyes.

“You saw their killer?” I say.

“I didn’t know that. It was just a man on the trail. He had blood on his face, and I . . . I should have done something—I know I should have stopped him but all I could think about was that scream. I raced back here. Then I saw someone in the camp, and I thought the man had circled back. So I hid.” She bites her lip and then straightens. “But not like that. Not hiding from him. I was preparing for my attack. Waiting until I could see who it was. Only it was just you.”

Dalton murmurs to me that he’s going to get Storm, whimpering back at the campsite. When he’s gone, I say to the girl, “You saw the man who did this?”

“Yes.”

“Where was he? How far from camp?”

“A quarter mile southwest,” she says, with the assurance of a girl who may not know her times tables but must be able to relate distances and directions accurately, a matter of basic survival in the forest.