Jenna sighed. “Back is a little stiff but I’ll be fine.” She looked up at him. “I hope we find June Harris today. I’ve thrown every resource out there to hunt her down. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.” She glanced out the window at her ranch. “Look at the state of my house. I hate the thought that someone trashed my home.”
“It will be as good as new soon.” Kane rubbed her back. “No one is going to get on the ranch again. You’ll be safe once the upgrades are finished.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t account for seeing a similar man in the alleyway last night.” Jenna chewed on her bottom lip. “It might have been a harmless prank, but it gave me the jitters. I mean how would anyone know about the intruder at the ranch? How come the man I saw was identical?”
“I don’t know, but most of the men wear cowboy hats in town and it was dark and misty.” Kane shrugged. “You’ve been through a traumatic event and seeing a guy in the alleyway would naturally spook anyone in the same situation. You know we have Adams in custody, so it couldn’t have been him. Try not to worry, it’s all going to be a distant memory soon.” He rubbed her back.
It would be hard to forget someone invading her home and trying to kill her. She’d been on edge the moment she stepped back on the ranch. Jenna rested her face on Kane’s chest and nestled against him. She’d missed human contact in the time before Kane arrived in Black Rock Falls. It had been a very lonely time for her, with no friends and trying to act normally when everything she’d ever known had been snatched away from her. At the time, she hungered for justice and never fully realized that being a witness against a drug cartel boss meant her job as a DEA agent and life as she once knew it would be over. Both she and Kane had ghosts in their pasts, and the hugs had been the small comfort that had kept them both sane when
everything around them had suddenly gone crazy. “It will be if the DA charges Adams with the murder of Payton Harris and the home invasion, but we still have to find June.”
“True.” Kane sighed and rested his chin on the top of her head. “After all this time, if she’s injured, she wouldn’t have made it through the night in the forest. If she didn’t die from exposure the wildlife would have killed her.”
Jenna nodded. “Yeah, but if she got away, there’s still a chance Atohi might be able to track her. One thing is for sure, from what Wolfe reported last night, she didn’t go anywhere near Adams’ house or truck.” She stepped away and looked up at him. “I hope the Buffalo Ridge sheriff hunts down a close relative of June Harris today. Now we know the blood in the forest and the ear attached to my porch match, I need to know if it’s her or not.” She pushed her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Wolfe worked late last night to get the results for us, we should get a confirmation soon.”
“Search and rescue and volunteers have been all over the forest, every hunter that passes through the forest warden’s station has been notified she’s missing.” Kane hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Unless we can get Adams to talk, I doubt we’ll find her. If he killed her, he could have stashed her body anywhere. Not that it makes sense, leaving her husband in the forest in plain sight and hiding her, but I have the feeling he’s playing with us. I’ve seen overconfident psychopaths before, but if I’m reading him all wrong and he is as innocent as he claims, I’ll need to be retrained.”
Jenna nodded. “Then I will too. He ticks all the boxes for me. I hope the DA decides if he’s going to charge him soon. Once we have Adams in county, we can concentrate on finding June Harris.” She waved a hand behind her. “I’ll go take a shower. I’d like to head into the office as early as possible. I want to speak to search and rescue and then get out another media release. We need to keep the townspeople aware she is still missing.”
Thirty
Cold seeped through Deputy Zac Rio’s clothes as he stepped from the truck. Each freezing breath sent clouds of steam into the pristine alpine air. The forest smelled like the inside of a freezer with an over fragrance of pine and damp leaves. His first winter in Montana would be a challenge. He glanced at Rowley beside him, rugged up and wearing a liquid Kevlar vest under his jacket. He frowned. “I’m cold already. My blood is thinner than yours. I’m going to suffer over winter.”
“Yeah, we could find snow this high, and winter seems to be coming earlier each year and lasting longer. The sheriff had an idea you might need some extra clothing.” Rowley indicated with his thumb to the back of his truck. “Your winter gear was delivered yesterday. It’s in the back of my truck, I grabbed it when I arrived for you.”
Surprised, Rio lifted his eyebrows. “The sheriff didn’t mention anything to me.”
“She’s kinda busy right now.” Rowley smiled at him. “I completed the order when you arrived. We get new jackets, gloves, and extra boots every year. Wear the vest—it will help keep you warm.”
“Sure.” Rio opened the hatch to Rowley’s truck and noticed the brown paper wrapped packages, some with his name on them and the others with Rowley’s. He went through them, found his vest and a fine thick jacket with a hood, numerous pairs of gloves, and woolen hats, along with boots, pants, and shirts. “Wow! She went all out.”
“We do a ton of work in the snow and the winters here are long.” Rowley collected his rifle and checked the load. “Our department gets a generous allowance from the town council and since Black Rock Falls has become a tourist destination, there is more money in the budget.” He pulled on his gloves. “The tech comes through the ME’s office, so I assume Wolfe gets a substantial amount to run his office as well.”
Rio touched the tiny in-ear wireless com he’d been given. “I’ve only seen the FBI with these coms.”
“Yeah, we get the new devices because we have so many serial killers in the county.” Rowley frowned. “Well, that was Wolfe’s explanation.” He looked over Rio’s shoulder. “Ah, here’s Atohi.”
After going through his findings from his last visit to the mountain, the blood, and the fact it belonged to the person who’d lost an ear, Zac waited for Blackhawk to scan the images he’d taken of the scene. “What do you think?”
“I think that’s not enough blood for a severed ear.” Blackhawk lifted his gaze to him. “You’ve worked in the big city, surely you’ve seen what happens if an ear is sliced let alone removed from the head.” He stared at the images again. “This is no more than a small cut or perhaps an injury from a crossbow bolt. If the bolt passed through the skin of the arm or leg or more likely became lodged in a person, I’d expect a small amount of blood. It’s a puncture wound and, from this, it didn’t hit an artery.”
“Yeah, but people rarely use a crossbow in the city.” Zac shrugged into the new jacket, noting how it slipped over the liquid Kevlar vest without a problem. He liked the new lightweight body armor and thought it was only available to black ops and the like. “I’ve seen through and through wounds from a twenty-two hardly bleed, so it could be the same.”
“It is.” Blackhawk rolled his eyes and shook his head. “We’re wasting time leaving from here.” He motioned to the images. “I know this part of the forest. I can see Bear Peak in the background. If we drive there, we can come down the rockface and follow the likely trails back to that area.” He pointed to another shot of the scene. “Where the bushes are flattened and the ground disturbed, if the woman had run away, there’d be more signs. I figure the person who hurt her carried her over one shoulder.”
“So, we should assume he knocked her out first?” Rowley’s mouth tightened into a grimace. “If he’s carrying a crossbow, moving through the forest would be difficult enough without a squirming woman.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Atohi waved them into the truck. “It also means she may still be alive. Let’s go.”
The bumpy drive along a small overgrown road didn’t take long. The parking lot had a line of old cabins set to one side. The place looked deserted and unkempt, apart from a late-model SUV parked on one end. Rio turned to Rowley. “What happened to this place?”
“Murder.” Rowley shrugged. “Bear Peak seems to be a great place to dump bodies or keep little girls prisoner.” He indicated to the SUV. “It obviously didn’t bother those people. They’re out of town plates, probably tourists hunting down a thrill.”
“It’s not a good place for sightseers.” Blackhawk grimaced. “There are many spirits trapped in this part of the forest. Many hear voices, children crying, or the screams of the dying.” He climbed from the truck and waved a hand at the trees. “The spirits that walk this part of the forest are revengeful and seek justice. Many will never find the peace they seek.”
A shiver crept up Rio’s back like the stroke of a frozen finger. He wiggled his shoulders and peered into the dense forest, pushing away the sudden feeling of foreboding. Dark shadows and filtered, watery sunlight greeted him as he followed Blackhawk and Rowley down a mountain path and into the trees. He had the awful urge to keep looking over one shoulder; the forest had closed in around him, and not being claustrophobic had suddenly become a huge bonus. Ahead of him Blackhawk and Rowley moved silently, the deep layer of pine needles muffling their footsteps. Above, a pale-blue sky peeked through the pine branches in small patches of normality, but all around him the dark shadows could not be trusted. Anything could be in the darkness, waiting to pounce. He sniffed the air. Bears were still filling their bellies for their winter hibernation but as the wind was blowing toward the men, the smell of one close would be recognizable.
They trudged on, moving down the slope of the mountainside, and soon the roar of the falls broke the eerie silence, only to be replaced by a thick fog of water vapor. As shafts of light hit the branches, the drops of water looked like a mantle of diamonds, each with its own rainbow. The sight amazed Rio, but the drips of freezing water spla