“Anytime Yolanda wants time off, her grandmother will send a private plane.”
“Yet Yolanda only goes home for family stuff,” I say. “Shenever takes an actual vacation, because she doesn’twantÉmilie sending her plane.”
“Good point.”
“Eric’s right,” I say. “You know half the reason she’s in Haven’s Rock is to deal with her Parkinson’s diagnosis—and keep her family from finding out. She’ll leave for family stuff, but otherwise, I don’t think she wants a solo vacation. Once I get my pilot’s license, I’ll suggest a few of us fly out for a girls’ weekend. I’ve just been derailed by the unexpected arrival of a tiny creature who can’t have Mom take off to do her qualifying training. You should totally ask whether Yolanda wants to go with you.”
“I will, but I’m not sure that’s proper payback.”
“Cover her hotel room and meals.”
He snorts. “Cover the small bills of a billionaire’s granddaughter who’s a successful business owner in her own right?”
“It’s Dawson. The billswon’tbe small. Also, it’s the thought that counts. Yolanda will have fun ordering ten-dollar sodas from room service just to make you regret it. You should—”
Storm whines. She’s looking to the left, and the whine is her signal that she’d like to leave the path to check out something. I’d taught her this as a pup, a lesson that seemed doomed to failure, as she’d leap off after anything that caught her attention. But she’d aged into it, and now she looks from me to the left side of the path.
“Animal?” I say.
Another whine, which doesn’t mean anything. This is one of the lessons that never quite worked—getting her to give us some ideawhatshe smells or hears. I still try, but mostly, it’s up to me to interpret her body language. She’s calm and only vaguely curious. In other words, something has caught herattention but it’s neither alarming nor urgent. She just knows that she’ll be rewarded for alerting us to anything unusual.
Dalton and Anders stop and get out their canteens, perfectly content to let me investigate this non-emergency. I follow Storm into the trees. She alternates between sniffing the ground and the air. Following a scent?
From behind me, Anders calls, “Watch out for unexplained puddles.”
Yes, there’s a good chance that the scent she’s following is either Gretchen or Blake cutting off the route for a pee break. So I do keep an eye out for suspiciously damp trees or foliage. But after ten paces into an open area, Storm stops at an oddly placed pine bough. Oddly placed because it’s lying on open ground, as it if fell during the last windstorm… except the nearest pine is twenty feet away.
Also, the bough has been cut.
Dalton joins me as I’m examining the branch. “Hacked,” he says.
“With a knife maybe? Something not big enough for the job. Strange.” I lift a rock off the bough. “Someone cut it, placed it here and put a rock overtop to make sure it didn’t blow away. Either marking a spot or covering something up.”
I pick up the bough. Underneath, the soil has been disturbed.
“Please don’t tell me there’s a body under there,” Anders says as he draws up beside us.
“If you hide a body, are you gonna mark the spot?” Dalton says.
“Fair point. Mostly, I’m just glad it’s not a body. In fact, I’m so relieved, I’m going to offer to dig.”
Anders takes off his pack and rifles around before pulling out a small collapsible spade. No one can dig a body-sized holewith it, but it’s useful for putting out fires. It’s also useful when it comes to digging out a loosely filled-in hole.
Dalton and I chill with our water canteens as Anders digs. We barely get a couple of sips in before he’s dragging something out.
I push to my feet and move closer. “Is that…?”
“A backpack.”
I take the dirt-covered pack and shake it off. It’s big—camp-sized, not hike-sized. I sniff it first, making Anders arch a brow.
“Damp but not moldy,” I say. “It hasn’t been down there long.”
“Think it belongs to our campers?” he asks.
“I didn’t take a good look at their packs, but I did notice two on the ground. One was larger, like this.” I glance at Dalton. “You okay with me opening it up, boss?”
He reaches and takes it from my hands.
