This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(91)

So many questions. All of them unanswerable until we have Brady.

Jacob had spent today tracking his quarry. Plan A had been to capture him at night and march him back at knifepoint. Plan B had been to wound him from afar and do the same. But Kenny’s arrival kiboshed that.

Then, as Jacob tracked them, he heard the First Settlement men who’d escorted us into the forest. He overheard enough to realize we were in the area. So he’d made note of Brady’s current location and hurried to find us.

We reach Brady’s camp. He’s not there. That’s only mildly disappointing—we figured he’d only pulled over to rest. But he’s been here, very recently, so we’ll find him.

There are two wrappers in the clearing where Jacob had seen Brady and Kenny sitting on logs. Protein bar wrappers. The kind we keep stashed in the militia equipment shed.

I pick one up and examine it.

“Yeah, that’s ours,” Dalton says.

“I know.” Something about the wrapper nudges at me, though, telling me to look closer. I see these bars almost daily—Dalton insists we inventory any pack before taking it out.

This flavor is my personal favorite— chocolate peanut-butter. Or it used to be my favorite. The company revamped the recipe lately and changed the packaging, sticking on a New & Improved Taste! band, which I’d grumbled should read New & Cheaper Ingredients! because it definitely did not taste better.

“This is old stock,” I say, confirming as I check the expiration date.

Dalton shrugs. Jacob has already headed out to find the trail, and Dalton’s struggling against telling me to put the damned wrapper away and come on before the trail gets cold.

“We ran out of these months ago,” I say.

“Yeah, okay.” He peers into the forest, head tilting as if he’s listening for his brother. Storm tugs at the leash, seconding his impatience.

“Did we have old stock anywhere?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Is that important?”

It isn’t. Not right now. But it’s bugging me, like so many things.

I fold the wrapper and put it in my pocket as I follow him from the clearing.

Jacob finds the trail easily. Brady is no outdoorsman. Once he got far enough from Rockton, he stopped using even amateur methods of hiding his trail. He’s walking along what he probably thinks is a path, but it’s really just a deer route. That means it’s narrow, and we find freshly broken twigs and crushed vegetation, and even footprints when the ground gets marshy.

Jacob is in the lead, maybe twenty paces ahead. It’s impossible to walk silently with an eighty-pound Newfoundland panting and lumbering alongside us, so we’re hanging back. When Jacob finds the footprints, he gives a birdcall and, through the trees, I see him gesture at the ground. Then he keeps going.

We reach the spot, and I see what he was indicating and crouch to examine footprint impressions in the soft ground. Some of the prints are partials, just a toe or heel squelching down, the rest of the foot on harder ground. But I count five nearly complete and distinct shoe impressions. Three come from sneakers. Brady had been wearing sneakers the last time I saw him.

When I motion for Dalton, he puts his foot beside one print and I can confirm it’s the same size, a nine. Average-size feet from an average-size man. Yet they give me that now-familiar niggle. I didn’t expect Brady would still be wearing sneakers. Why not, though? That’s what he fled wearing, and it’s not as if he’d have been able to find other footwear in the forest.

“Those are his,” Dalton says. “Since you seem to be wondering.”

“I am.”

“They match the prints he left when he first ran. I remember thinking they’re shitty shoes. The kind of fancy sneakers that wear out after a month out here.”

I nod. He’s right. But something . . .

I turn to the other prints. These are boots. Rockton boots. We don’t exactly have a shopping mall of selection in town. Dalton finds a couple of styles that fit his criteria—good for outdoors, readily available, durable and reasonably priced—and that’s what you get. These are the type I wore until I went down to Whitehorse with Dalton and bought a pair better suited to my small feet.

I flash back to last month, in the station, waterproofing my new boots. Anders came in with Kenny and picked up the boot I’d already done.

He whistled. “Nice.”

“Yep, I’m spoiled. Perks of sleeping with the boss.”

“You mean compensation for sleeping with the boss.”

Kenny chuckled at that and took the boot from Anders. “These are nice. Good arches. That’s the problem with mine. Not enough support for high arches. Hurts like a bitch after a daylong hunt.”

“How long have you been here?” Anders said. “And you’re just telling us now?”

Kenny shrugged. “I didn’t want to complain.”

It’d been too late to get him special boots, and when Dalton said we had a stash of other ones—different designs for those who couldn’t wear the usuals—Kenny had brushed it off. That’s how he was. Never wanted to make waves. Never wanted to ask for anything special. Like the bullied kid who found his way into the cool clique and just wanted to ride that out, behave himself in case the others decided he was a pain in the ass and kicked him out.