“Budge?” Claire said as she raised the back of the engine out of the water so the props wouldn’t catch the shallow bottom. “What’s going on?”
“I ... I—” He was seized by a bout of coughing. Releasing the gunwale, he doubled over, hands bracing on his knees as he hacked and wheezed.
Maddocks hopped out of the boat, boots splashing into water. Angie followed suit, her waders and boots keeping her feet dry as she walked through the shallows and placed her palm on the man’s shoulder.
“You okay, sir?” she said.
He raised his hand, indicating he was fine as he coughed out his fit. Coming erect, he thumped his chest with his fist and cleared his throat, eyes watering. “Damn cigarettes. I got no cell reception on this side, but I saw the Predator Lodge logos on the boats, and I know you guys got radios and can relay a message back to the lodge. The folk up there can call the cops down in Port Ferris. I ... I—” He was racked by more coughs.
“Take a few breaths, sir. Relax a moment,” Angie said.
He nodded, wheezing as he drew in a slow, deep breath. He came slowly upright again. “I found a body—a skeleton.”
CHAPTER 3
Angie took up the rear as the old-timer who’d identified himself as Jim “Budge” Hargreaves led them single-file into the darkening forest. Each held a flashlight taken from the boat, and their haloed beams bounced off shifting fog, making shadows dart and loom then vanish. Tucker the dog strained against his lead up front. Primeval ferns grew large, and water dripped everywhere as rain fell with a soft patter atop the tree canopy.
A sound reached them. They all stilled. Even Tucker fell silent.
It came again—a distant howl, rising in pitch then dying in a series of yips that echoed into the snow-capped hills.
“Wolves,” Claire whispered. “They’re getting bolder. They come closer and closer to the lodge each fall.”
Goose bumps shivered over Angie’s skin as a vestigial childhood memory stirred to life. And suddenly she was back in the forested grove where her biological father had held her and her identical twin sister captive as children. Where he’d murdered Angie’s twin and their mother. There’d been wolves on those islands where he’d imprisoned them. Angie had heard them some nights, their howls coming through the bars on their high windows. Fear curled into her; old neural responses reawakened. She fisted her hands at her sides in an effort to marshal control, to remain present. PTSD was the pits. It rose its hooded serpent head and struck when she least expected it.
The wolves quieted. As if on cue, Tucker resumed panting and yanking on his leash to reach the human remains. Yet as they resumed their trek through the woods, Angie found her mood had shifted. A wet branch snapped back, smacking her in the face. She jumped and froze solid in her tracks.
Breathe.
Breathe. It’s fine.
It’s going to be fine. Just memories. Keep moving.
“You okay?” Claire said, turning to wait for Angie as the others continued ahead. Claire sounded cool. Composed. On familiar ground. This frustrated Angie. Not because the woman was young and naturally beautiful with thick black hair and moss-green eyes, or because she was skilled in the wilds where Angie was not, but because Angie hated her own fear. She resented what her buried past could still do to her. Shedetestedthat she couldn’t shake this post-traumatic shit that still dogged her and probably always would.
“How do you know Budge Hargreaves?” she asked Claire, her voice clipped as she resumed walking. The question was in part to deflect the tension she felt. As an ex–sex crimes and then homicide detective with the Metro Victoria Police Department, interrogating people had been Angie’s forte. Even though she was no longer a cop, defaulting to old police procedure at a potential crime scene was an easy coping mechanism, a way of guarding her emotions from others.
“Everyone around here knows Budge,” Claire said. “He worked as a logger in this region for over two decades before retiring. I feel bad for him. He lost his wife in a tragic accident about twenty-six years ago and went off the rails, started drinking heavily. Sold his place in town and built a homestead in the woods just east of here on land he rents from my family. Pretty much keeps to himself now. When he’s not wandering around in the bush, you’ll find him at the Hook and Gaffe tavern in town.”
“Your family owns parts of this forest on the south side of the Nahamish? I thought all this area inland from Port Ferris was Crown land.”
“Big tracts of it are Crown, but we’ve got private pockets from when my great-granddad settled this area and opened a mill.”
Up ahead Budge and Maddocks came to a stop, Tucker going nuts barking and jerking against his collar. As Angie and Claire joined them, Budge pointed his flashlight into a dim grove. “The skeleton’s in there, behind all that devil’s club growth.”
“Oplopanax horridus,”Claire said quietly. “You don’t want to let that stuff touch bare skin.”
“Claire, Budge, why don’t you guys wait here?” Maddocks said. “Angie, you come with me.”
“Yes, sir,” she muttered. “You’rethe cop.”
He shot her a glance, eyes glinting in the twilight. Tension quickened between them. This edge was never far from the surface since Angie had been fired from the MVPD.
“That is, if youwantto come with me,” he said quietly.
She didn’t reply. Parting a hedge of ferns, they entered the grove. The moss was springy beneath their wading boots. A heavy hush pressed over the area. Even the dog had quieted. It was as if a reverence was owed by those entering this grove of ancient trees.
Maddocks panned his beam across the moist ground behind the devil’s club bushes. What was once a uniform carpet of emerald-green bryophyte growth had been peeled back like slabs of commercial turf, exposing the glistening black loam beneath. Sticking out of the recently disturbed soil was a section of rib cage. Above the ribs lay a half-buried human skull. A fecund smell rose from the grave. Tendrils of mist sifted through the trees like ectoplasmic fingers reaching out to caress the bones.
