This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(73)

“How far away were you?”

“From here to the campsite. I was in the forest, and he was on the path. He was walking away with some of our stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“I saw a rabbit and a food pack.”

“Can you describe the man you saw?”

“I wasn’t that close, like I said. But he was on the path, and there was moonlight. I could see light-colored hair. Straight, I think. Longer than . . .” She gestures toward Dalton, in the clearing. “But not long like yours. No beard. He had pale skin. That’s how I saw the blood on his cheek. I couldn’t tell his height, but he looked normal-sized. And he was wearing clothing like you people.”

She’s describing Brady. Oliver Brady killed these settlers. Slit a guard’s throat. Slaughtered an old man in his bed. Chased down and brutally murdered a fleeing old woman. There is no way I can say these were acts of desperation.

Also, there was no sign of Jacob with him. Brady was seen a half kilometer from the scene alone.

Brady is not an innocent man.

Brady does not have Jacob.

That is everything I need to hear. Everything I want to hear, too.





40





We hide the bodies under evergreen boughs, which should help mask the smell from scavengers. Then we escort Harper to the First Settlement. She walks while we ride slowly. I offered her a spot behind Dalton, but pride won’t let her attempt to ride as a passenger. And, I suspect, it wouldn’t have let her ride Blaze alone and risk looking foolish.

Harper walks holding Storm’s lead. Now that I’m certain we are dealing with a monster, I cannot risk Storm taking off after her target. I explain that to Harper, who has never heard of using a dog to follow a smell, and she peppers me with questions, distracting herself from the memory of what happened tonight.

We don’t talk about what happened. That is how, as a homicide detective, I handled dealing with a victim’s loved ones so soon after the deaths. Let them set the tone. If they want to talk about it, I will, while giving away nothing about the investigation. More often, when it’s this soon afterward, they either haven’t fully processed the death or they are desperate to discuss anything else. For Harper, that distraction is talking about how dogs track scents. Every now and then she’ll trail off and look back the way we came, only to shake herself and keep talking about Storm.

It’s 4 A.M. when we near the settlement. We don’t take Harper inside. We don’t even take her to the edge. Three settlers are dead. Edwin—the leader of the First Settlement—will figure out that the killer came from Rockton. That puts us in danger.

The First Settlement is like many splinter groups that break away over issues with its parent organization. They don’t hate us. They don’t wish us ill. But there is no warmth there either.

I once asked why Dalton doesn’t trade with the settlement. We don’t need their game, but we can always use it, and what they’d want in trade is paltry to us—some coffee, a new shirt, a gun or ammunition. More important, though, is the bond it would forge. The goodwill it buys. Trade links provide us with valuable partners in this wild life. While Ty Cypher might not tell us that ducks are particularly plentiful on a certain lake, he will mention if he’s spotted strangers or a worrisome predator.

To the First Settlement, though, such a partnership would smack of weakness. If we initiate trade, that suggests they have things we need, and that we may be weaker than they think. Weak means ripe for raiding. I will admit I didn’t fully believe that until I saw the way the settlers looked at me when I suggested they watch out for Brady. I may have been right—tragically right—but to them, Brady was just a lone outsider. No match for them.

We leave Harper about a kilometer from town. Dalton tells her to explain everything to Edwin and let him know that we had to hightail it back to Rockton, in case the killer heads there. He promises that we’ll come by later to discuss the situation. By “later” he means “after we catch Brady.”

We don’t return for our tent and sleeping blankets. We’ll get them another time. Right now we do need to hurry back to town. Jacob doesn’t seem to be with Brady, and we’ll willfully interpret that to mean Jacob is safe. We must return to Rockton, regroup, and organize a full manhunt for Oliver Brady . . . before he does circle back to Rockton, once he realizes that escape isn’t a simple matter of a half-day hike to the next town.

As we near Rockton, I hear a sound that must be an audio hallucination. I’ve been working through the case as we ride, and I was analyzing the beginning to figure out what we could have done better. Then I hear the very sound that started this whole mess. Therefore, I am imagining things. Or so I tell myself until Dalton says “What the fuck?” and I glance back to see him squinting up at the midmorning sky . . . as a prop plane flies into view.

Once again, we reach the landing strip just as the plane touches down. Cricket hears the racket and declares she’s not going a step closer, and if I insist, then she’ll send me there by equine ejection seat. Even Blaze flattens his ears and peers at the steel monster with grave suspicion.

We leave our horses and walk down the airstrip just as the passenger door opens. Out steps the kind of guy who’d seem more at home on a private jet. He’s tall and trim, in his late fifties, with silvering dark hair. He has a magazine-cover smile that’s dazzling even from fifty meters away. Dressed in pressed khakis and a golf shirt, he looks around with the grin of a big-game hunter, ready for his first Yukon adventure. When he spots us, the smile only grows, and he strides over, hand outstretched.