He rolls his eyes. “How’d younotknow it was me?”
“Shadows.”
He shakes his head. Then he gives a birdcall telling Anders to join us.
“Shouldn’t we let him take a look around while he’s on higher ground?” I say. “If they got an early start…”
I trail off as my detective brain kicks in, and I assimilate my surroundings. I can see the remains of a campfire that’s probably been out since last night. Otherwise, the clearing is completely empty.
I check my watch. “They didn’t just get an early start, did they.”
“Yeah, I think they stopped here for dinner but didn’t spend the night.”
“Shit.”
“Yep.”
If they only stopped briefly, that lends credence to our fear that they weren’t just hikers and Blake wasn’t actually injured. They paused long enough for a meal, in case we returned, and then they moved on.
I peer around as thumps and sliding gravel from the north tell us Anders is taking the speedy way down.
Dalton sighs. “Charging bears are quieter.”
“Oh, don’t grumble. There’s no one around to hear him.” I walk a few steps and bend, my fingers moving aside short grasses. “Who used this spot recently?”
“Kendra’s been out with Tish. They camp deeper in the woods, though. The overnight excursion stayed by the lake. So we’d have been the last to camp here—a few weeks ago with Rory.”
“And we don’t pitch our tent over here, but these peg holes look recent.”
He bends and then moves at a crouch to check for the other three holes. “Fuck. I missed those.”
“Someone also moved our chairs.”
I motion at two pieces of trunk we use as fireside seating. When we leave, we clear everything, including covering up the campfire spot, but someone found our cut logs and brought them in, only to move them just outside the clearing before leaving.
“No sign of our alleged hikers?” Anders says as he arrives.
“Actually, they did camp here,” I say. “Or, at least, they erected a tent.”
“So they left really early?”
“Seems so.” I hunker back on my heels. “If the guy was hurt, they might start before dawn so they can maximize break times for him.”
“Or he woke in enough pain that they decided to head out.”
“Could be. Okay, time to put our trackers to work. See which way they went.”
The answer is “west,” just as Gretchen and Blake claimed. Storm and Dalton lead us along the trail for a couple of kilometers, andwe decide that’s enough. As we head back, Anders groans and says, “I owe Yolanda now. I argued the strongest that this was something sketchy, and she disagreed, and I don’t even want to know how she’ll collect.”
Oh, I could joke about how Yolanda might want to collect. I could also tease Anders that I suspect it would be a debt he wouldn’t mind paying. But I say nothing. In a town this tiny, when you see two people gravitating toward each other, the worst thing you can do is give them a shove.
If Yolanda and Anders want a fling, they’ll have it. God knows, Anders had enough of those in Rockton. It slowed as his drinking did, and he’d finally started to fall for someone, only to have her turn against him when she learnedwhyhe drank. Anders and I share pasts of screwing up, and we share years of paying the price, most of it self-inflicted.
Yolanda knows what Anders did. After it came out in Rockton, he wanted staff here to at least understand the basics. I haven’t embraced that degree of openness myself, but I applaud him for it. That means, though, that Yolanda knew before she decided Anders was someone she wanted to get to know better.
I don’t play matchmaker. I certainly have the urge, in that way happily paired people might. But if I’ve resisted pushing my sister toward Kenny—despite the fact that there’s been obvious interest on both sides foryears—then I can resist nudging along this relatively recent development.
“You’re going to Dawson next month on a supply run,” Dalton says. “Ask whether she wants to come along.”
