Two
The Previous September
CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH and Wildlife Special Ops Game Warden, Braden Keehn, sensed he was heading straight toward pay dirt. The feeling of victory wedged itself deep in his veins and he could almost taste it. The investigation on the De La Costa Norte gang for illegal marijuana growing on public lands and drug trafficking had been going on for nearly two years. Braden had been documenting the illegal activity of the various gang members since the investigation started. He had been intimately involved since finding the marijuana plants growing in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest and discovering the illegal fences and gang signs posted on public lands.
At the time of the discovery, Braden was a State Fish and Wildlife warden. His promotion to the Special Operations Unit happened primarily because of this case. He liked undercover work, and the amount of traveling involved satisfied his need to remain unattached to any one location.
Undercover fieldwork gave him a higher sense of accomplishment in his career. Braden could be in the heart of the city one week, or scoping out the harbor the next. The cartel gang members moved around the state and across borders frequently, and it was Braden’s job, along with a small team, to document their actions.
Today, Braden returned to where this had all started. Driving an unmarked state truck with falsified plates to Shasta-Trinity National Forest, he followed state route 511 until he reached trail marker 180. There, he parked the truck in a low spot behind some young sugar pines and unloaded the four-wheeler and his gear. It would be twelve miles north by ATV and then an additional four miles on foot to the grow sites mapped out ahead of time. It was up to him to photograph and video document the latest crop of illegal drugs, mark coordinates proving the plants were growing on federally protected lands, and gather other incriminating evidence. The DA was ready to issue arrest warrants for members at every level of involvement, from the growers, to distributors, to the head of the family. Attorneys and law enforcement agencies unanimously wanted the De La Costa cartel shut down and in prison where they belonged.
With careful study and calculations of the previous years, he believed the De La Costas and their men would begin harvesting the marijuana crop in the next few days. He should have plenty of time to set up and document before the harvest began. With luck on his side, Braden would get the footage he needed and be out of the way as the DEA came in to confiscate the crop and make the arrests. Hopes were high that the arrests of these men would lead to the intelligence and needed confessions to arrest the head of the cartel. Braden’s work on the case was key in the investigation and accomplishing the arrests that would bring guilty verdicts all around.
That was the plan before all hell broke loose and months of preparation fell to ruin.
* * *
Three days later, Braden huddled beneath a rock ledge near the shore of Long Lost Lake with his Glock snug against the palm of his hand. His leg had stopped bleeding, for the most part, but he was less than thrilled about being shot. The bullet had passed through his right calf and grazed his left shin. He used strips of his shirt to wrap around his wounds and it helped staunched the flow of blood, but the pain seared when he moved certain ways. His left shoulder and upper arm refused to move laterally at all. When he moved his arm forward or back, the pain was so intense that he nearly lost consciousness. As he tumbled down a rocky slope to his current position, a tendon or ligament in his shoulder must have torn. He held his arm close to his body to make the pain bearable. Bandaging the wounds on his legs had been a test of his willpower to overcome unimaginable difficulty and pain, but he’d pushed himself through the task.
As the night wore on, he contemplated the idea of never getting out of the forest alive. The images were unpleasant to say the least. He wouldn’t let this day be his last.
He lay beneath his rock shelter and the previous seventy-two hours replayed in his mind. The work he completed had been textbook. His training at the Covert Wildlife Investigators Academy had prepared him well for what he needed to accomplish. There hadn’t been one sign that the cartel members had been onto him. He had found their cameras and the guards’ camp right away and was overly cautious, staying out of sight and moving silently. He’d taken every precaution to ensure he wouldn’t be detected. He had used his scopes and listening devices, and followed procedure to a T, plus improvised when he needed to make adjustments. Braden thought he had plenty of time to do his surveillance and rest. The hours of lying low and catching some shut-eye gave him time to think about other aspects of his life. Especially his brother, Justin, and the lake house they’d purchased in Granite Lake.
Justin called a month earlier and after a long spiel about how his business was booming and the real estate market was hot right now, he confessed that he was slightly overextended and wanted to invest in one more property. The majority of his capital was tied up in three other properties. The lake house was a sure thing and the profit was practically guaranteed, but his window of opportunity to buy the property was right then because the owner was getting ready to list with an agent. Justin wanted to avoid the extra commission if at all possible.
Braden had no intention of buying a house. He liked the cabin he rented in Mendocino County and he liked that he paid for it month to month. It was a place to store his few personal belongings and someplace to rest when he wasn’t working. Braden Keehn appreciated his mobile lifestyle and the luxury of having nothing holding him down. When Justin first told him about the house in Granite Lake—the mountain town where his grandparents used to own a home—he wanted nothing to do with it.
But Braden’s interest in the fixer-upper piqued when long-suppressed memories of his senior year of high school agitated the back of his mind. Granite Lake had been the place he had run to when he needed space from his parents and from his brother. In his twenty-nine years of life, Granite Lake had been the only real place he considered home. He didn’t know if it was because his grandfather lived there when he took Braden in, or because the small mountain town was where he started being the person he wanted to be in life. Eleven months seemed like an inconsequential amount of time to claim he’d grown up and become a man, but he knew that Granite Lake and the people there changed his life for the better. If he had never had that year with his grandfather, there was a good chance he wouldn’t be alive today.
It hadn’t only been his grandfather that influenced his life the year he turned eighteen. A large portion of the change in him happened because of a girl named Melanie Jamison. A girl with wavy brown hair streaked with sunshine, legs that stretched on from here to the moon, and beseeching blue eyes like a contented doe’s. Melanie fell into his life when he didn’t care if he took another breath. Where his grandfather gave him a sturdy foundation to stand on, Melanie gave him a reason to dream about a world outside his screwed-up parents and a family that existed to make life hell. Somehow, unwrapping the layers that made Melanie who she was had a similar effect on Braden, and the more he uncovered about Melanie, the more he learned about himself and what he wanted out of life. It felt like a miracle had hit him square in the chest, and it made it all the more painful when he was forced to leave it behind with absolutely no forewarning. Melanie Jamison had become a myth, a legend, a fable. She could have been a very long wet dream for all he knew. Except that wasn’t totally true. Melanie had been the cleansing fall of rain when he needed his life to be cleaned up. She had been the reality he so badly needed. She had unknowingly healed his childhood wounds when the cuts were exposed and raw. Braden never explained any of his problems to her because he never wanted to spoil the moments they shared. She made him smile again and he never wanted to burden her with his pain.
Granite Lake rested quietly in his heart like a tiny nest of comfort. Even though he never allowed himself to dwell on what could have been, he let the memories stay hidden in that one secret place inside. When Justin asked him to invest in the house as a fix and flip project, Braden immediately said no. He’d gone back to Granite Lake one time to bury his grandfather and move out of the house. By that time, Melanie’s family lake house was also empty. That was the only added memory to his collection regarding his time at Granite Lake. He never wanted to return.
So how had he become a silent partner in a house he’d never stepped foot in? The complexities of real estate investing, coupled with family dynamics, a healthy dose of guilt, and a weakness for loyalty toward a brother who didn’t deserve it was the answer. Justin’s construction business was faring well considering he had held out during the worst of the economic crises and managed to stay afloat. With the economy picking back up, Justin had managed to land three large projects at once. This meant Justin’s capital was revolving between all three job sites. Equipment, tools, materials, and sub-contractors had to be bought, rented, and or paid while his own paychecks, and loans, were in a constant state of cycling through various banks. Such was the construction business. Braden understood this well enough. He’d been pleased that Justin had handled the business fairly well for almost a decade and not entirely surprised that Justin had little savings set aside for anything but business. At first, he’d told his brother he’d pass on the lake house. But Justin pushed harder and even brought up the fact that his grandparents loved Granite Lake and houses on Piñon Court never came up for sale. A friend of their grandparents somehow managed to contact Justin and discuss the empty house. When Justin told Braden the house was on Piñon Court, he felt his insides perk up a little. It was the same street Melanie’s family home had been on. He searched online maps and stared at the street view for a long while. Justin gave him some numbers and Braden wire transferred the funds. He had become co-owner of 322 Piñon Court.
With all the preparations and safety measures in place, the De La Costa Norte gang members had found him anyway. He may have missed a hidden camera. The men destroyed his four-wheeler, hidden miles away, and ambushed him when he least expected it. If it weren’t for the scree-covered slope he had accidentally tumbled down, and the cavity within the rocks he fell into and now hid inside, he’d certainly be dead. Boulders continued to slide and tumble into the lake below the scree slope. His body should have been mangled and dumped in the water along with the avalanche of rocks, but he’d survived. The gunshot wound, the fall, and the cover of night served to keep the gang members from pursuing, but Braden didn’t know for how long. They could show up by raft on the lake with floodlights and his hideout would be exposed. Or they could wait until morning and rappel down the rocks to make sure he was nothing but a corpse. Braden had documented their actions for nearly two years. He knew their tactics were ruthless and they never left witnesses. The gang members would go to any length to make sure Braden didn’t get away. The micro SD card with the proof of their activity was in a waterproof bag inside his pocket and would be more than enough incentive to kill him and make his remains disappear.
Braden stared across the black velvet lake and tried not to picture it as his grave. He knew that taking a swim across the water would be his best chance to get out of his current situation. Heading southwest was his only option for leaving the forest alive. The other logical road to civilization was three times the distance, and without gear and with his injuries, he’d never make it on foot. He let time stretch into the wee hours before he chanced moving out from under the cover of the boulder.
When the sliver of the waxing moon rose and traversed across the night sky and started dropping toward the western horizon, Braden tucked his Glock into its holster and slid down the remaining slope into the water. His skin numbed to the cold temperature of the water and it helped ease the pain in his legs and shoulder. It was a strange feeling going numb while exerting so much energy, but Braden had always been determined to succeed in every endeavor he set his mind to. Swimming in mountain lakes was a pastime of his and he visualized this swim as one he’d done a hundred times before. He put aside the fact that he swam with one good arm and he was losing blood and pretended it was just another camping trip.