“Storm?” I say.
The dog rises from where she’s been resting, and she ambles over. Then she sees me on one knee, holding out the shirt, and she picks up speed.
“Fuck,” Dalton says. “Yes.”
I thought we didn’t have a scent marker for Gretchen. We did. I just forgot about it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It’s dusk when we find that scent marker, and when dark falls, we’re still tracking. It’s not that Storm spends that long finding the trail. It’s that there are too many trails to follow. We end up turning in for the night and then heading back out at dawn. Storm follows the scent back to where we met Gretchen, east of their camp site. Then to the camp site. Then on multiple short detours into the forest.
She also follows the trail to where Blake died. It goes to the creek, right in the spot where he’d been. From there, Storm snuffles around and then heads out. I call her back to see if she can find a trail north, where Blake’s body was dragged.
She does not.
“We can’t read too much into that,” I say. “There’s a lot going on here.”
Dalton nods. “And if Gretchen did drag him, the smell of the tarp might overpower her scent.”
I agree. Still, I make a mental note. Storm did follow the trail to the water, where we know Blake died. Yet… well, it’s water. That could be why Gretchen went there.
I tuck all that in my pocket and take Storm back to the main trail. From there, she gets confused. Or maybe I get confused. It’s hard to tell sometimes. She returns to the campsite, which could mean she was only retracing Gretchen’s steps or could mean Gretchen went from the creek to the camp, which would also make sense. This is where they’d have been washing up and gathering water.
Storm walks around the campsite a few times… and then continues west to the point where we’d stopped her before.
Is she following Gretchen’s exit trail or her entrance one?
We let Storm continue on that way for nearly a kilometer. At that point, we have to stop her.
Did Gretchen leave along the route we gave her? Or is that an old trail?
This is what happens when a non-scent dog is trained by someone getting their own training from books. We’ll never progress beyond this state, where Storm can follow simple trails, which is all we usually need.
Blake and Gretchen had camped in this area. They’d gone back and forth on this trail. Beyond that? We don’t know.
We’re about to give up when Storm catches a scent on the ground. We’re heading back toward Haven’s Rock, still on the path Gretchen had taken. Then Storm stops and looks south for the first time. She snuffles the ground right at the spot where a thin game trail branches off this one.
Dalton moves past her and examines the undergrowth.
“Someone came this way,” he says. “Broken twigs on the bushes.”
He backs up to let Storm lead. It’s hard going for her—the trail isn’t wide enough to accommodate her bulk, and the branches keep snagging her thick fur.
“I can do this,” Dalton says.
Storm and I back out to the larger trail. After a few moments, he says, “It’s wider here. Bring her on through.”
I’m doing that when I hear a voice. I stop, my hand lowering onto Storm’s back. She waits. I carefully edge around her and then move to catch up to Dalton.
“You hear that?” I whisper.
He nods. His gaze is trained east, in the direction I heard the voice.
It comes again. All I can make out is that it’s male. Another male voice answers.
I back up to Storm and ask her to stay. Then I regroup with Dalton and follow him toward the voices.
We go maybe twenty feet before they come clear. Two men, talking in that way guys sometimes do when they think no one can overhear. Loud joking and teasing about sex.
