This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(90)

Dalton stops. His gaze swings across the landscape. Storm dances and whines.

“What did you see?” I whisper.

“Movement. Something big.”

Something big that Storm desperately wants to get to. Dalton has the leash wrapped around his hand, but he’s distracted, looking about. When I see Storm hunker down, I know what’s coming.

“Eric!” I say, and I lunge to grab the lead.

Storm leaps. A powerful leap that catches Dalton off guard, and he stumbles, the leash whipping free, my fingers grazing it, wrapping around it, only to feel the leather burn through my hand as the dog takes off.

“Storm!”

I run after her. I am aware, even before Dalton shouts, that I’m making the exact same mistake I made when she went after the cougar. But that doesn’t mean I stop. I can’t.

I hear Dalton coming after me, and I double down, terrified he’s going to stop me. The messed-up muscles in my bad leg scream for mercy but—

Dalton shoots past.

“Gun,” he snarls. “Get your damn gun out.”

I do. Ahead, I can still see Storm, her black rump bobbing. Then I spot a figure with its hands out to ward her off. Dalton shouts. The figure says “Whoa—” and Storm takes him down. Then laughter rings out. Sputtering laughter.

Dalton slows, shaking his head. As I jog over, Jacob struggles to get to his feet while pushing Storm off.

“No one can sneak up on you guys, can they?” Jacob says.

“Yeah, because sneaking up on people who have these”—Dalton waves his gun—“is such a good idea.”

“Cranky.” Jacob grins my way. “That’s the word you use for him, right?”

“Yes,” Dalton says. “I’m cranky because my damned fool brother just tried to get himself killed by sneaking up on me when I’m in this fucking forest looking for—”

“The guy who killed all those people?”

Dalton eases back. “Yeah. He escaped and—”

“Found him.”

“What?”

Jacob’s grin widens. “Does that make you less cranky, brother?”

“Depends on how much longer you stand here instead of taking me to him.”





50





We’d speculated that Jacob might have abandoned his camp because he got wind of irresistible prey.

And he had. His prey was Oliver Brady.

Jacob was camping after taking down the bull caribou when he spotted the man he’d met with us a week ago, and he knew Brady ought not to be out wandering the forest alone.

Jacob had his bow and knife and a waterskin, and that was all he needed. He followed Brady for two days, waiting for an opportunity to take him down. He didn’t get one. The first night—when Brady massacred the settlers—Jacob lost him late in the day. He managed to find him again yesterday afternoon and planned to capture him that night but . . .

“He met up with a guy,” Jacob says.

I glance at Dalton. He says nothing but shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Can you describe the person?” I ask.

“I didn’t get too close, but I could tell he was smaller than your guy.” Jacob moves a limb from the path. “No, not smaller. Shorter.”

Jacob goes on to say the guy had short, dark hair, maybe graying, but he wore a hat so it was hard to tell. Clean-shaven. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a bulky jacket. Carried a gun.

I reach for Dalton’s hand, our fingers interlocking. Jacob notices and says, “He’s one of yours?”

I nod. “Our lead militia. He took off last night. He was due to go home the day Brady arrived. We suspected he helped Brady escape, but we hoped Brady had just conned him into it, convinced our guy he was innocent.”

“That could still be the case, though, right? Brady tells your guy he’s innocent, and gets his help escaping, and then they meet to get through the forest. Paid escort.”

“Yeah,” Dalton says, “but if we keep telling ourselves there’s a logical explanation, we’re going to end up on the business end of a gun, finding out there isn’t.”

“I guess so.”

We keep walking. I ask Jacob where Brady has been, what he’s been doing. Jacob first encountered him over by the mountain, where we found Val’s body. From there, Brady wandered. Or so it seemed to us, but as Dalton points out, without wilderness navigation experience, he probably thought he was getting someplace.

It’s even possible that he climbed the mountain to get a better vantage point and in the distance spotted the First Settlement. Because that’s the direction he seemed to head. From the mountain, he must have met up with the hunting party and killed them. When Jacob found Brady’s trail again the next day, he saw him watching the First Settlement.

“He scaled a tree on the far side. He kept his distance, but he stayed up there until early evening before he came down and took off.”

Had he seen the village from the mountain, thought it was a town, and made his way there, only to realize those people lived even more primitively than we did? That they had no ATVs or motor vehicles or horses he could steal?

But the First Settlement was only two hours’ walk from where Brady massacred settlers for their belongings. Why do that if he thought he was close to the end of his journey?