Running Free (Woodland Creek)(30)

“Have you guys seen Frankie in the last two hours?”

Luca swivels in his barstool and eyes me warily. I don’t have time for his alpha bullshit so I fold my arms over my chest and wait with a patience that is wearing really f*cking thin.

“Yep.”

His answer, so smug and simple, infuriates me.

“And is she okay? Where is she?”

He narrows his eyes at me and smirks. “She’s fine.”

I drop my hands to my sides and fist them. “Look, *. I don’t have time for this shit. Last time I saw her, she was running naked through the goddamned woods. There’s a f*cking lunatic murderer on the loose and I don’t want her traipsing around in the dark where she could get killed. Now tell me where the f*ck she is or I’m going to arrest your ass for obstruction of justice in a missing person’s case.”

Casey places a hand on his arm and his features soften. “She went home, man. And she doesn’t want to see you. Give it a rest, Detective.”

But I won’t give it a rest. It makes no sense why she jumped up mid-f*ck practically and bolted from me with no explanation.

“Thanks for nothing,” I grunt and storm out of the bar back to my Tahoe.

The ride out to her place doesn’t take long and when I see her truck parked out front, I sigh in relief. Once I climb out, I notice Otis sitting in the porch swing.

“Evening, Gunnar,” he calls out as I approach.

I cut right to the chase. “I need to see her. Why’d she bail on me? What the hell happened, Otis?”

He frowns and shakes his head. “Leave her be. She’s had a rough night. Came home earlier crying her pretty little head off.”

I run my fingers through my messy hair and groan. “But why? What the hell happened? One minute we were, uh, talking on our date and the next she’s hightailing it away from me. Did I hurt her?”

The old man stands and walks toward me. “She’s hurt. But you didn’t do anything wrong, son. It’s just the way she is.”

Another puzzle piece that I don’t understand.

“Let me in to talk to her, please.”

He starts to speak when my phone rings. Thinking it might be her, I yank it from my pocket and answer.

“Gun, get down to Woodland Pond, north side. We have another body.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

“Be there in ten,” I snap and hang up.

“I’ll tell her you came by. I promise,” Otis assures me with a kind smile. It’s written all over his face. He wants me to win her heart which surprises me. Usually dads don’t want their daughters dating. And despite them not being blood, they’re family.

“Thank you, sir.”




Another f*cking fatality and by the looks of it, the young woman has been gutted by a bear.

“What do you think, Lipman?” I question the forest ranger Fitz brought in to help us with our investigation.

The tall, broad man squats on his haunches and fingers the edge of the gaping wound with his gloved hand. “Definitely a bear. I’m sorry, Detective, but I don’t think you have a murderer on your hands. I believe you have a wild, possibly rabid, animal that’s doing this. Most bears around these parts don’t come around humans — they stick to the woods and occasionally they’ll dig through someone’s trash. Never in my eighteen years as a ranger have I seen anything like this.”

I sigh and run a hand through my hair. My mind keeps wanting to flit back to Frankie but I need to focus on this case. I’ll sort things out with her later.

“Right. So how do we track this thing? How do we take out a bear?”

He stands and peels off the glove before regarding me thoughtfully. “I’ll employ my best trackers. They’ll survey the areas where these bodies were found, search for prints, excretions, and see if we can’t locate this animal. It’d be best if we could tranquilize him and—”

Shaking my head, I cut him off. “A bear that has killed nearly half a dozen people doesn’t need to be tranquilized and studied for science. It needs to be put down. Not to mention, we’re going to have to cut open its stomach and look for traces of evidence that it was indeed the bear linking it to the crimes before I’ll even sleep. I’m still half-convinced someone is making these homicides look like a wild animal accident. So tell me what’ll take down a big-ass bear.”

Lipman seems agitated that I want to harm the precious animal but I don’t give a rat’s ass. I want it dead so it’ll stop taking out half the teenage population in Woodland Creek.

“That shotgun you’re toting, as long as you have twelve-gauge slugs for it, should stop him. But,” he says with a sigh and points to the size of the paw print near the body, “make sure you’re ready to reload. This bear’s at least seven hundred pounds, if not closer to nine. You might stop him briefly but it’ll take a few shots to kill him off. Make ‘em count.”

I nod as he walks off toward Fitz.

Once I get ahold of that f*cker, I’m going to unload every shell in the back of my Tahoe. But even though every single piece of evidence points to a damn bear, something niggles at me. Something deep down inside of me refuses to believe this is the doing of an animal. When Frankie finally talks to me, I’ll ask her if she knows a Jennifer Collins — the young woman who was killed. And if she’s mentored this one too, then I’m going to go with my gut and settle this shit once and for all.