CHAPTER ONE

Monday, September 12, 5:45 p.m.

When Riley Tatum vanished twelve years ago, no one sounded an alarm. No one called the cops, gathered a search party, or posted flyers. She simply disappeared from the streets into an abyss. Swallowed whole. She should have died. Been long forgotten. But for reasons she didn’t understand, the darkness spat her out.

Now a Virginia State Police trooper, she and her five-year-old Labrador retriever, Cooper, enjoyed a solid reputation as a tracking team. They trained routinely in both rural and urban settings, reinforcing his skills and her ability to read his body language alerts when targets were close.

All that training was now in play as the sunlight faded above the canopy of trees, bathing the woods in deepening shadows. Even this late in the day, the temperature inched past ninety degrees while 100 percent humidity thickened the air into soup. A lightweight shirt wicked away moisture, battle dress uniforms protected her legs from the brush, hiking boots guarded against twisted ankles and snakebites, and a floppy hat covered her honey-tanned face and dark hair coiled in a knot.

A tug at the end of the tracking line directed her focus to Cooper. He dropped his nose to the ground, closed his mouth, and wagged his tail—all signs their quarry’s scent was strong. They were close. She knelt on the narrow trail and inspected barely bent foliage angling toward the top of the ridge.

Their quarry was Jax Carter, a pimp and drug dealer. According to his prior arrest record, Carter worked the I-95 corridor between Richmond and Washington, DC. He and his girlfriend, Darla Johnson, prostituted two or three girls at any given time out of a motor home, often found parked at truck stops or large events. Carter and Johnson found their girls on social media, seducing each with words of love and promises of family. The couple kept the girls under close watc

h, and if any considered leaving, their tactics shifted from charming words to threats and brutal violence.

Riley first noticed Carter’s motor home a month ago at a truck stop halfway between Richmond and DC. She was on a break and parked in the shadows when she spotted a young, scantily clad girl get out of a big rig cab. The girl hurried across the lot and vanished inside the motor home. Minutes later another girl, bone thin, followed a similar path. Riley had been ready to summon backup when a call came over the radio, pulling her to the scene of a five-vehicle accident. Hours later when she returned to the site, the motor home was gone.

Earlier today, a trooper had been called to help a badly beaten girl near Carter’s motor home, which was parked near a truck stop diner. The eatery’s surveillance camera caught Carter beating the girl, whose bony body absorbed several hard blows. It appeared as if the kid had been knocked unconscious, but as Carter moved closer, fist cocked, she pulled a blade from her pocket and stabbed him in the leg. He recoiled in pain, staggered a step, and regrouped to strike again when approaching sirens scared him off. He fled in a red Camaro, making his way west into the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he abandoned his car in a deserted driveway overgrown with weeds.

Local news stations picked up a bystander’s cell phone footage of the girl’s beating and ran it several times. The video quickly went viral. Cops in four counties were alerted, and when Carter’s Camaro was found, Riley and Cooper’s tracking skills landed them on point position. By the time she arrived, a collection of sheriff’s deputies clustered near the car, which was nosed under heavy brush. Media rolled up. It was a circus.

She hoped the knife wound would slow Carter enough so she and Cooper could catch up to him before nightfall.

The plan was for Riley and Cooper to guide three deputies up the trail. A private firm called Shield Security, headquartered near Quantico, had offered to assist, but she declined, fearing a civilian crew that she did not know could hinder the search.

Using one of Carter’s shirts found in the car, Riley allowed Cooper to sniff and lock in on the scent. Barking, he led her and the three deputies into the woods.

Two hours into the search, one deputy twisted his ankle on a log. Three more hours in, the second succumbed to the heat and the third dropped back to assist a return to base. Riley should have quit the search, but when she pictured the girl’s bloodied face she thought about another young girl, Hanna, a runaway she’d taken into her home and would soon adopt. Over the last five years, she’d seen Hanna blossom, though she could easily have ended up like the beaten girl in the video.

So Riley asked to continue. She wouldn’t engage until additional deputies could be dispatched. When she received the green light, she checked her sidearm, a SIG Sauer with a ten-round magazine, and shifted Cooper’s tracking line to her nondominant hand in case she needed to draw her weapon. She promised to check in every fifteen minutes.

A half hour later, she spotted the outlines of fresh boot prints. The trajectory of the impressions confirmed a westward bearing. The right foot impression was deep but the left shallow, a sign Carter was favoring the leg. His stride appeared shorter, suggesting his pace was slower.

Good.

As Riley’s gaze now swept over the lush green foliage, she spotted red droplets of blood clinging to leaves ahead. Like all the markers on the trail, the color and patterns of blood told a story. Dark-red blood implied a punctured vein. Light red meant blood diluted with gastric fluids from an abdominal wound. Pink and foamy signaled a possible chest wound.

This blood was dark red. Unoxygenated. No doubt from the stab wound, which had sliced a vein. Ahead, the path forked and traces of red dotted leaves on both sides.

Close to Cooper’s ear she whispered in Czech, the language he’d been trained to follow while working. “Aport.” Fetch.

Cooper sniffed the ground around the first blood droplets and then around the second set. At the second location, his sniffing increased and his tail wagged. “Good boy,” she whispered.

As they continued, crimson splashes were smeared on more leaves. The distance between drops shortened to less than four feet. The track was now in its sixth hour and had begun to open his wound. He was suffering, likely angry, and primed to make a mistake if pressed.

Even better.

She lifted a leaf and touched the blood. Still viscous. Fresh. She raised her boot to step when she heard the snap of a twig. She drew her weapon. Cooper’s head rose and he glared toward the right. The dog watched the woods, but his body language didn’t alert her that Carter was close.

Slowly she crouched, gently pulling the tense dog to her. Her heart revved from steady to overdrive, forcing her to slow her breath and listen to the wind whispering in the trees. Tense seconds passed. But there was no more movement. Only silence.

She could fall back, but that was a gamble. Carter’s odds of escape greatly increased if he found his way out of the woods and got hold of a car. Cooper could track people, not vehicles.

Again, the grainy black-and-white surveillance footage of Carter’s fist pounding the skinny girl jabbed her gut. If Carter escaped, he would find that girl and drop her into a hole so deep no one would ever find her.

Standing, she looked up the trail into the dense brush. At five foot nine, she was tall for a woman, and though she was in peak shape, wrangling an injured, possibly armed suspect off the mountain in the fading light would be reckless. She’d stay close but would not engage, knowing at worst an overnight without food and water would drain Carter’s energy reserves, making him a softer target when backup arrived at first light.

Again, Cooper’s gaze cut right. This time she caught a faint flicker of movement. Someone else was there. Freezing, she searched the dense thicket. Had additional police arrived, or worse, one of Carter’s kin?

Her right hand tightened slightly around the gun’s grip as she waited. Watched. There was stillness. Silence. As hard as she searched, she saw no threat. Finally, Cooper looked away. Mouth closed, he sniffed faster as his tail wagged.

Up the trail, the snap of twigs was followed by a painful grunt. Carter. He was up ahead. Close. Grabbing her cell, she texted an update to the base station and seconds later a reply fired back.

Two deputies are one hour out.

Cooper remained alert and silent, a sign her hours of continuous training had paid off.

She typed, Roger.

Wanting a visual on Carter, she tucked her phone back in her pocket before she and Cooper inched forward through the branches. Monitoring her foot placement and her breathing, she made almost no sound. When she crested the next rise, she spotted Carter staggering toward a tree, one hand on a gun and the other on his bleeding thigh. He pressed his back to the thin trunk, slowly lowered to the ground, and pulled a water bottle from his pocket. He drained the container, then tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He thought he was alone. Safe.

Now it was a waiting game.

A sudden flash of movement flickered in her peripheral vision. Her head snapped right. This time, instead of fluttering leaves, she saw a very tall man. He wore fatigues, an olive-green T-shirt, black hiking boots, a jungle hat, and green camouflage paint on his face and hands. He wore a small backpack and a knife strapped to his thigh. Slung over his shoulder was a Colt M4 Carbine rifle.

What the hell? Adrenaline flooded her body as the stranger’s dark gaze pinned her. He was alert and calm all at once. He wasn’t an amateur.

With a stiff, precise flick of his hand, he pointed up toward Carter. He knew. Who is this guy?

And then it clicked. Shield Security’s offer to send personnel. Despite a refusal, they hadn’t listened. This guy had been at least an hour behind her, and yet he had easily caught up without her or Cooper detecting his presence until a few minutes ago. As they were for most of the former-military personnel at Shield, field operations and tracking were second nature to him.

His frown suggested he considered her a liability.

If not for the need for silence, she’d have laughed. Really, pal, you think I’m the problem? She shook her head. This is my show, and I’m not backing off.

Without comment, he was on the move again, his long legs easily moving up the trail. Tightening her grip on her SIG, she moved parallel to him, heart hammering in her chest. He circled to the north, and without a word spoken she moved south. Their trajectories would converge near the top by Carter.

They’d never trained together, a recipe for getting one of them killed. Neither intimately knew the other’s thoughts or patterns, nor did either want to be positioned directly across from the other if they had to fire on Carter in the middle.

She reached the top of the rise where the woods opened to a small clearing where timber had been harvested. Certainly big enough to give Carter time to see who approached.

Carter sat on the far edge of the clearing, his bloodied hand cupping an outstretched leg. Lying on the ground next to his right hand was the weapon. His breathing was labored, a sign he was running on empty.

She glanced to her right and discovered the stranger gone. She listened. Wind in the trees. No movement. A ghost. Whatever sounds he’d made before were intended to get her attention. Where the hell was he?

Dusk was closing in; soon it would be dark.

As she watched Carter’s chin sink deeper into his chest, she recognized an opportunity to act. She tied the dog’s tracking line to a tree and rose. She advanced several steps as she leveled her gun at Carter’s chest.

In a blink, Carter’s eyelids popped open. His gaze telegraphed wild, desperate fear, pain, and anger. Sweat dripped from his nose as his dirty, bloodstained hand reached for his gun.

“Don’t touch it!” she shouted.

Carter’s fingers were inches from the gun when a shot cut through the air and struck the ground by the weapon. Carter recoiled but reached out again. Another shot hit the ground by his leg. The well-placed bullets gave her the seconds she needed to reach the gun and secure it.

Carter stared up, his eyes burning into her. “Bitch!”

Out of the thick woods the stranger moved into position behind Riley, silent, alert. She grabbed the cuffs from her belt and tossed them at Carter. “Handcuff your right hand.”

Tags: Mary Burton The Forgotten Files Thriller
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