Chapter Four
Cooper nearly slammed his head into the window with relief when they finally parked at the end of a service road. He and Park had gotten into Christie’s truck and Miller was following behind. If he thought Miller’s back seat was bad, Christie’s was worse. The cramped quarters made Cooper feel trapped and jittery. But he’d wanted to take the opportunity to question Christie, and Park had wordlessly tagged along. Talking had turned out to be a waste of time. Getting information out of the grim-faced ranger was like consulting a Magic 8-ball. The answer to everything was yes, no or an unfriendly frown that may as well have meant “Reply hazy, try again.”
Park wasn’t any help, sitting in silence in the front again.
What Cooper had managed to pull from Christie was slim. Yes, Gould was a consistent worker. No, he didn’t know if Gould had any enemies. No, he didn’t know if Gould had any relationships or friends. No, Gould hadn’t mentioned anyone strange talking to him or any recent run-ins. In fact, no, they didn’t talk personal lives at all. No, he didn’t know if Gould had known Kyle Bornestein.
The only interesting thing was that Christie apparently had run across Bornestein a couple times during hunting season himself. He’d cited him for illegal use of artificial light and off-season hunting.
“He had a trespassing charge as well, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” There was a long pause and then Christie said, “I didn’t like Bornestein.” The first unsolicited opinion he’d offered thus far. A bit of a doozy at that. Apparently he didn’t care about speaking ill of the dead. “He wasn’t...good.”
The hell did that mean? Park was looking at Christie with a contemplative expression on his face, so maybe he got it.
“What about Gould? Did you like him?” Cooper asked.
Christie just shrugged. But the frown on his face was answer enough.
Don’t count on it.
Cooper wondered if Christie liked anyone.
As soon as Miller parked and joined them, Christie handed each man a small emergency pack of water, rope, flare and bear spray.
“Is this necessary?” Cooper asked.
“The crime scene’s an hour hike in, partly off-trail,” Christie grunted. “It’s rugged land. Some of these pits can be more than six stories deep and there’s no cell service. Do either of you have hiking experience?”
“Yes,” Park said absentmindedly, squinting into the woods.
“I’m good,” Cooper said.
“Um—” Miller started.
Christie pointed to Miller. “You, follow behind me. Let’s go.” He turned abruptly and started up a packed dirt trail a weather-beaten wooden sign identified as Caribou Speckled Mountain Wilderness. Miller gave them a sort of embarrassed smile and hurried after him. Park followed, still looking distracted, and Cooper brought up the rear.
The air was cool and damp under the trees. Cliff faces and boulders sprang up and receded lest anyone forget this was mountain country. The rocks wept tiny trails of spring water. Cooper couldn’t resist pressing his palm against the stone. It was frigid in a way that sent a chill up the underside of your arm. He wiped his hand on his jeans. It was easy to get lost in melancholy in old woods like this.
After Cooper’s mother had passed when he was eleven and Dean was fourteen, his dad had taken them hiking, boating and fishing most weekends. It was great. Really great.
Well, he could have done without some of it, to be perfectly honest. He wasn’t that big on fishing, which was pretty much hours of standing occasionally interrupted by brief bouts of violence, and the long, gloomy silences while hiking had left Cooper with a lot of time to obsess over his mom. But it had been Sherriff Dayton’s way of reaching out to his kids.
Jagger Valley, Maryland, didn’t look like this, of course. Flatter, for one. Warmer too, on the oak pine savannahs. But something about marching in a line through an oppressively quiet forest made him feel like he was back there now, trudging after his father and wandering around the floodplain forest. He and Dean struggling to keep up as Sheriff Dayton strode faster and faster, silently looking around as if searching for something, someone or some way out.
Cooper had sometimes wondered if he fell behind, would his father even notice? Would he come back for him? Even when he did look back at them, something in his expression told Cooper he wasn’t quite seeing. For a long time there was a desperation in his eyes that had been shocking to see as a child looking at his parent. Thankfully the look faded after about five years. But even now, when Cooper visited, his dad still insisted the three of them go hiking through the floodplains. This was what the remaining Daytons did, happy memory or not.
He felt a shudder travel up his spine. He didn’t think he’d made a noise, but Park turned and looked at him curiously and raised an eyebrow. Cooper ignored Park and looked past him.
Ahead, Miller attempted to keep up one-sided conversation so determinedly it almost made Cooper miss the stilted silence of the car ride. Too bad it wasn’t Miller he’d been hoping to pump for information. The eager young officer was a geyser. Cooper shook off his mood and tried to focus.
Miller talked about Florence, moving here from Portland, the nonexistent crime rate and, most frequently, his wonder if perhaps this was all a big mistake.
“Gould could have gone to Portland for the weekend. Or he’s sleeping off a bender. It wouldn’t be the first time, you know what I mean?” Miller directed his talk to Cooper. Apparently he’d singled him out as the only fool willing to respond.
Cooper grunted. It was hard not to know what he meant when he was saying it plain as day. “You don’t think Gould disappearing around the same time two homicide victims are discovered nearby seems suspicious?”
“Are you saying you think Gould is a suspect, Agent Dayton?”
Cooper hadn’t been saying that. But now that Miller had, he considered it. Could Gould be a wolf who took off when he learned his kills had been discovered? Would Park have known if Gould was a wolf? Just because he was familiar with some local wolves didn’t mean he knew them all, did it? Would he have necessarily told Cooper if Gould was?
“Anyway, are we even sure these are homicides?” Miller continued. “The injuries are consistent with animal attack. Bears or wolves or something. They might have been attacked, survived, but were injured and lost in the woods, unable to get medical help, which would account for the time between disappearance and death.”
“ME says the men died days apart. Are you saying an animal attacked our vics at two separate times and then their bodies ended up in the same spot? Animals aren’t supposed to collect kills like that.”
“Wolves aren’t supposed to be this far south in Maine either, but they are,” Christie said suddenly from up front. “Caribou aren’t supposed to wander so close to town, but they have been. Plenty of animals around here aren’t acting like they’re supposed to.”
“What makes you think that?” Cooper said. “About the wolves, I mean.”
“Seen them.”
“Tracks?”
“Yeah. And the animals that make them.” It was hard to read Christie’s attitude. He continued to walk straight ahead while he spoke without turning to them, and his voice was a permanent state of gruffness. An almost reluctance to be heard.
Miller, on the other hand, looked at Park and Cooper, bewildered. “You ran into wolves in the woods? What happened?”
“Nothing.” Christie’s shoulder twitched. An aborted shrug. “We looked at each other. I backed away. Wolves don’t attack people. It’s mama bears and bobcats you want to avoid around here.”
“Well,” Miller said, turning around to look at Cooper and Park again. “That still means there are predators out here that could have—”
“We’re leaving the trail now,” Christie interrupted, turned right and started stomping through the leaves and underbrush.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said “off-trail.” Cooper had been expecting an unmaintained path or maybe a deer trail, but this just seemed like a random veering off-course. The forest floor, uphill now and littered with rocks and thick roots, forced Miller to be quiet in order to focus on his feet. Without his chatter the group was silent and so were the woods. So much green. Cooper liked to think he had a pretty good sense of direction, but there was little to no way he could get back on his own now that they’d left the trail.
Cooper eyed Christie speculatively. He was marching without hesitation, without using any apparent navigation tool, and had retreated back to his tense, silent frown. The guy was odd, no doubt. Odd enough to lead them hopelessly lost and continue on as if everything was okey-dokey? Hopefully not. ’Cause Cooper sure as hell couldn’t rely on the wolf to have his back.
Speaking of backs... Cooper let his eyes drift over Park to distract himself from the steady uphill climb. He had taken off his jacket and his T-shirt pulled across the broad muscles of his shoulders. It wasn’t long enough to cover a nice firm ass swaying in front of him as they hiked uphill. Cooper’s face heated and he quickly looked away. Not liking Park didn’t stop him from noticing other...attributes. Cooper wasn’t made of stone.
He wished again they hadn’t shared that metro ride. Wished he hadn’t felt that body pressed against his for just a moment or Park’s rough fingers at his wrist. But most especially he wished Park hadn’t seen how interested in his attributes he was. Cooper felt the familiar prickling of embarrassment. Not because he was ashamed of his sexuality, but it just wasn’t Park’s business. Wasn’t anyone’s business but Cooper’s, and now he felt distinctly exposed. Disadvantaged. He didn’t even know Park’s first name, for fuck’s sake.
Cooper focused on Park’s neck, which seemed safest. There was barely the slightest indication of perspiration there. The guy hadn’t been lying when he said he could hike. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. Cooper, on the other hand, to his chagrin, was huffing and puffing like a drowning man.
Park rolled his shoulders and shook his head suddenly, as if shaking off Cooper’s gaze. Had Park felt him staring? Was it some kind of unspoken threat?
Cooper hadn’t actually been in the continuous presence of a werewolf before. His interactions were limited to chasing, questioning and arresting. Spending all this quiet time with Park was making him think of shit he hadn’t wondered about before. It was weird how little you could know about the community your job focused on. But that was as much the Trust’s fault as the BSI’s. They were notoriously tight-lipped. Wanting to be understood without really being known.
What Cooper did know he’d mostly deduced from the job. He knew how to recognize a wolf kill. He knew wolves were all extra fast, strong and nimble fuckers. Most, Jefferson had told him, had bad tempers, too, though Park had been an icy-cold cucumber so far.
From the little informational booklets the Trust distributed, Cooper knew that wolves had “enhanced senses” and tended to either live alone or in packs, which could be any size from two to twenty.
He’d found that funny because, shit, wasn’t it sort of true of everyone? Growing up, Cooper, Dean and their dad were like a little pack. Everyone knew them, the Dayton boys. Jagger Valley hadn’t been that much bigger than Florence. Of course, it had helped that his dad was the sheriff and the whole town knew the sheriff’s boys were following in his footsteps. Sort of.
These days Cooper would definitely fall into the lone-wolf category. He and Jefferson got along, they spent enough time together that they had to, but he was more like a mentor than a friend. Cooper liked Santiago a lot, but she was his boss, not a buddy. He had even fewer non-work friends.
Well, he always had Boogie. So there was that. His pack of two. Him and his cat. What a badass.
Cooper swatted at his face where a persistent mosquito kept coming at his eye. That was another thing he could have done without on those weekly camping trips, the fucking bugs. He swiped at it again and his knee suddenly collapsed. He had stepped in an animal hole and stumbled forward. A large, warm hand grabbed his arm and prevented him from face-planting into a rotted log.
Cooper straightened quickly and shrugged out of Park’s powerful grasp. “I’m good,” he said gruffly.
“Of course you are,” Park replied, deep voice reassuring and solemn, but there was a teasing narrowness to his eyes and the slightest quirk of his mouth. He had a full lower lip and a slightly crooked upper one. Crooked, Cooper realized, because there was a small scar that split the left side. The scar disappeared when his mouth was fully smiling, which it started to do now.
Cooper jerked away from staring at Park’s lips back to his eyes. There was nothing subtle about the amusement in them now.
“Still good?” Park said.
“I didn’t schedule time for breaks, boys,” Christie said from up ahead. Park raised an eyebrow. There was no way Christie was older than either of them. Park looked at Cooper with an almost conspiratorial expression, inviting him to laugh with him. But Cooper, feeling overheated, annoyed and painfully reminded of their run-in that morning, was not interested in conspiring with wolves. He stalked past Park and hurried to catch up with the heavily panting Miller and Christie.
He regretted it immediately. Now Park was behind him. Which, while it was good he was no longer looking at the wolf and getting...distracted, it was also bad because he could feel Park’s gaze on him now. A slight tingle on the back of his neck. The gaze of a predator. Cooper felt his pulse pick up and his breath caught slightly in his throat. He hoped Park couldn’t hear that. Smell that. Whatever “enhanced senses” meant.
That was his problem—or one of his many problems—with the Trust. This cleaned-up, low-information, high-ambiguity version they spoon-fed the government, who in turn tube-fed BSI agents.
The only difference between a wolf and a human is we can listen really well... Yeah, right.
Cooper didn’t think all wolves were brutal monsters by any means. It was hard to look at someone like tiny, perky Trust Director Margaret Cola in those stupid informational videos and think she was returning to a cave of bones.
No, wolves weren’t innately bad. Not any more or less than humans. But they all did have instantaneous access to lethal claws and teeth. They all did have intensely strict rules of dominance and hierarchies. And most tended to identify as belonging outside of society and society’s rules.
Was it really unjust profiling to be wary of a guy who carried lethal concealed weapons on him at all times, had issues with authority and identified as a proud outsider? Hell no. It was just common fucking sense.
The prickling between Cooper’s shoulders intensified and he resisted the urge to spin around and face Park.
Stop looking at me, Cooper thought. Too bad telepathy wasn’t one of their enhanced senses.
Cooper recalled some of the images that unwittingly passed through his mind when he was looking at Park’s tight ass and hastily retracted that wish.
“Hikers found the bodies?” Cooper asked.
“Yes,” Miller said, looking back over his shoulder and stepping right on a skunk cabbage. “A couple from Virginia. Amateur hikers enjoying their retirement. They check out.” A cloying sweet and rotten smell oozed through the air from the plant and followed them through the woods.
“Why were they wandering off-trail?” Cooper asked.
“They said they wanted to follow the brook for a while.” Miller gestured to their right. “You know, ‘really get away from it all.’” He snorted. “But eventually they confessed they were looking for somewhere secluded to hook up. Apparently the outdoors does it for them. They found John Doe and reported it. We found Bornestein nearby.”
“Must have been quite a mood killer,” Park murmured, and Cooper coughed.
He was embarrassed he hadn’t realized they were following a brook. Not that he could see it from here, but that did explain Christie’s confidence in their direction and all this goddamn skunk cabbage that Miller could not seem to avoid stepping on.
“We’re here,” Christie said suddenly, stopping.
Yellow crime scene tape was wrapped around a few trees ahead of them. It was surreal to see something so unnatural after an hour of hiking through the nearly undisturbed forest.
Cooper moved around Christie and ducked under the tape. Nothing seemed special about the area. It wasn’t a clearing. There were no markers. The dead leaves and shrubbery appeared more crushed and scattered, but that was just as likely from the investigation than anything else.
“The hikers stumbled over John Doe here,” Miller said, coming up behind Cooper. He pointed about ten feet away to freshly excavated ground. “CSI discovered Bornestein there.”
“Bornestein was buried but John Doe was not?” Cooper asked, surprised.
“Shallowly,” Miller said, and looked at Cooper intently. “Does that mean something, you think?”
Classes of psychology and criminology said yes, it meant something. The killer may have felt more guilt and shame over Bornestein. It was more likely he or she had known him. But did the same thing hold true for wolf psychology?
It also meant John Doe’s body had been more vulnerable to scavengers, making him unrecognizable and further impeding identification. Had that been the intention? But why conceal the identity of one victim and not the other?
Cooper shrugged to answer Miller’s question. “Maybe,” he said, and turned away.
Park was crouching at the edge of the crime scene and surveying the area. To Cooper’s annoyance he appeared to be actually figuring something out. Cooper looked around, too. Nope. Still just woods.
He forced himself to walk over to Park and crouch near him. Close enough that they could speak quietly, but not too close. “Got anything?” he asked.
“I smell death,” Park said quietly.
“Well, this is a crime scene,” Cooper said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Park’s dramatic phrasing. To be fair, he was a Trust agent—whatever that meant, Cooper doubted it included solving murders, and this was probably his first real investigation. Cooper wondered if he was expected to teach Park things.
“No. Something is still decaying. Not far from here.” Park’s eyes slid shut slowly and he tilted his head as if thinking.
“Sure it’s not eau de la skunk cabbage? Miller’s certainly dosed us all with enough of it.”
Park’s eyes twitched open and he smiled. “No.” He stood up suddenly and Cooper found himself eye-level with his crotch. He quickly scrambled to standing as well. “They weren’t killed here,” Park continued in a louder voice. “This is just a dump site.”
“He’s right,” Christie said, and Cooper suppressed a twitch. He hadn’t heard the ranger approach. Christie was so quiet. Not that Park was a blabbermouth like Miller, but his presence was still louder, somehow. At least Cooper always seemed to feel acutely aware of where he was.
“Techs found minimal blood on-site,” Miller added, joining them. “Definitely not the carnage you would expect from those wounds.”
Park nodded politely, though he’d clearly already figured that out. He wandered around the edge of the crime scene, and then suddenly ducked out under the tape and stalked farther into the woods, away from where they’d come, without a word.
“Where’s he going?” Miller asked, sounding concerned. Park had disappeared into the foliage eerily quickly. But that was more of a testament to the power of dense old forests than any inhuman speed on the wolf’s part.
Cooper just shook his head. If that asshole assumed Cooper would go trotting after him like a dog to heel, he had another think coming.
“Does he know what he’s doing?” Christie asked quietly. “I don’t want to have to put together another search party.”
“We should all stick together. There’s no cell service out here and he doesn’t have a radio,” Miller added.
Cooper sighed and walked in the direction Park had gone, with Miller and Christie following. Damn Park. Leading them around by their noses. With his nose.
“Park?” Cooper called out.
“Over here.”
They found Park about one hundred feet away, crouching again. At his feet was a huge pile of matted dark fur.
“Jesus,” Cooper murmured. “Is that...”
“Bear,” Christie said, bending over Park and examining the carcass. “Juvenile.”
Park tensed and shifted slightly away. Christie just seemed to take this as an invitation to crouch down beside him and get even closer. His knee brushed Park’s, who twitched and froze.
Cooper walked over and clapped Christie on the shoulder. “Mind if I get in here and take a look?”
Christie had taken off his sunglasses. He had icy blue eyes that were startling in their sharpness, especially now, cold and annoyed at Cooper’s rudeness. But Christie said nothing, stood and moved back. Cooper took his place and put a respectful distance between him and Park. If there was one thing he’d figured out about wolves on his own, it was that they liked their personal space. But again, who didn’t?
He glanced at Park, who was watching him with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Seems like a strange coincidence for this to be here,” Cooper said as Christie stood on the other side of the bear.
“Not a coincidence,” Park said, taking a pen out of his pocket and prodding the body. “Can someone radio the station? I want to get a vehicle up here to transport this bear down. We need to find out what killed her.”
“You want us to do an autopsy on a bear?” Miller asked. He was standing a short distance away and looked vaguely nauseated.
“Black bears don’t have any natural predators. Nothing would have had reason to kill a healthy young female. And less than a hundred feet away from our crime scene?”
“Maybe Bornestein killed her in defense, but not before she injured him,” Miller suggested. “He stumbled away and died before making it back to the trail to call for help.”
Park frowned and Cooper had to agree. Was it supposed to be a coincidence that John Doe then died a few feet away from Bornestein a couple days later? Was Doe supposed to have buried Bornestein? “Officer Miller, would you radio down for a transport, please?” He might not know much about bears, but even he felt it was weird to find a large predator like this.
Miller took out the radio and walked away from them, murmuring a call to the station.
Christie was running his hand over the fur, looking for something. He had a heavy white bandage around his palm. If Cooper had a healing wound he would not be touching mysteriously dead animals in the woods. “No hunting tags,” Christie said. “Even if this was an accident, it should have been reported. I’m not an expert, but these wounds look more pre-mortem than typical scavengers, and I’ve never known another animal to attack a bear. And win.”
“What was that?” Park said, and ran his own hand over the bear. Cooper saw it too. Something in the fur. Park pinched a piece and held it up. They all leaned closer to see.
“Dirt?” Cooper suggested doubtfully. It looked more like a tiny black insect egg or gritty fungus.
“No. It’s synthetic,” Park said. He didn’t notice the curious look Christie shot at him.
Christie combed his fingers through the fur. “Whatever it is, there’s a lot of it.” There was something vaguely familiar about it when all seen together. Something niggled at Cooper’s brain, an almost nostalgic feeling prompting the smell of crisp fall air in Maryland as a child, but the memory didn’t come into focus.
“Found something!” Miller yelled from a short distance away. Park slipped the mystery grit into his jeans’ pocket and the three of them joined Miller.
“ATV tracks,” Miller said, pointing at slight indentations in the mud and leaves.
“Florence PD uses ATVs?”
“Not like these,” Miller said, grinning, clearly proud. “We had some larger terrain vehicles come in south of the scene, but they had no reason to be over here.”
“Nice work, Miller,” Cooper said, reevaluating the young officer. Even having them pointed out to him now, Cooper wasn’t sure he’d have recognized the ridged mud as tire tracks. Park, on the other hand, was following the tracks with apparent ease farther into the woods.
“I’ll radio the coordinates down and get some techs up here to take casts as well,” Christie said.
“I think one of us should stay on-scene, mark off the trail and wait for techs to get here,” Miller added. “I won’t be any good getting you back to the trail, so I can stay.”
Cooper couldn’t be that much older than Miller, but he could hardly remember when he was that green and eager, volunteering to stay behind alone to protect the scene. Cooper hoped the officer would get the brownie points he so clearly wanted. Either that or the officer wanted a break before the return hike.
“Are you armed?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Miller said, pulling his PD jacket back to reveal both his gun and a stun gun. “Not to mention the bear spray. Animals need to be more afraid of me.”
Park returned shortly, his footsteps unnaturally quiet across the leaf litter and twigs of the forest floor.
“Anything?” Cooper said.
“Trail ends in the flood banks. Whoever dumped the bodies didn’t want to be tracked and knew exactly where to drive to make sure the brook took care of it.”
Cooper glanced at Miller and Christie, but they were both preoccupied. He lowered his voice anyway. “Can you follow the scent or something?”
Park was already shaking his head. “Vehicles are a challenge to begin with even fresh and this trail’s too compromised. I couldn’t follow it. Not like this anyway.” He gestured at himself vaguely.
“Officer Miller is going to stay behind and mark off the scene.”
Park nodded. “Make sure they bring back that bear.”
“All right,” Christie said, rejoining them and buckling his radio back to his belt beside his own weapon. “You guys done here?”
“I’m done,” Cooper said, as if he had done shit-all since they’d got here. He glanced at Park, who was already looking at Cooper. His eyes seemed slightly lighter than before. An almost yellowish color in the rapidly fading light. Cooper was surprised more people didn’t suspect the truth about wolves. Here, deep in an ancient forest, there was something otherworldly about him, almost magical.
Park blinked lazily and Cooper realized he’d been staring. He hastily looked away, feeling warm and prickly.
Magical? Christ. How high an altitude were they at?
The return to civilization felt quicker than the journey out. Perhaps because Christie, now less inclined to think he was babysitting a couple of yahoos, was a bit more talkative.
He didn’t believe the search parties had a shot in hell of turning up anything. “White Mountain National Forest is almost eight hundred thousand acres in all. Bodies aren’t found for years around here,” Christie said, a little too cheerfully for Cooper’s taste. “This far from a trail it’s pure chance these two were found this soon, or really at all.” The implication that lightning wouldn’t strike twice for Gould hung in the air.
“Chief Brown seems to think there’s hope,” Cooper said. “It’s a lot of ground, but a lot of people are pitching in.”
Christie shrugged. “People like to feel like they’re doing something.”
Cooper frowned. He wasn’t used to being the optimistic one. “Our vics weren’t killed here and they weren’t killed right away. Are there places that they could have been held without drawing attention in the forest?”
“Definitely,” Christie said. “The mountains offer a lot of hiding places. I try to keep an eye on most of the abandoned properties. But there are tons of other places. Abandoned shelters set up by transients. Natural caves. Old gem mines.”
“Gem mines?” Cooper asked. That’d be a first for him. For a brief moment Cooper entertained the fantasy that the murders were part of a cover-up diamond smuggling ring, 007-style. “What kind of gems?”
Park looked back at him, smiling like he’d read his mind. “Not those kind of gems. Amethyst, tourmaline. Quartz. Beryl. Nothing too fancy. Some are still operative, but most have been shut down.”
“That’s right,” Christie agreed with another approving glance at Park. “You seem to know a lot about our little forest as well as being a strong hiker, Agent Park.”
Park shrugged, the picture of modesty. Cooper rolled his eyes.
They made it to the car and Cooper found himself in the back seat yet again while Christie and Park continued to talk about the geography of the forest and mostly ignore him. He felt like a kid on a ride-along.
“I’d like to check out the homes of the victims,” Park was saying in the front. Cooper thought this was a good idea and had been considering doing so as well.
Which was why he was perplexed when he heard himself say, “Negative. There’s only a couple hours of daylight left. I’d rather join the search party.”
“Do you think two more men are going to make a difference?”
“Do you think going to victims’ homes will?” Cooper countered. “Neither Gould nor Bornestein was taken from his own residence. Miller already took statements from family and established a timeline.”
Park’s eyes met his in the mirror. “Is that what you’d prefer to do, Special Agent Dayton?”
No. That’s not what his gut was saying. But it was good, solid procedure. And he couldn’t change his mind now without sounding like a total asshole. Cooper said, “That’s what I’d prefer both of us do. Let’s apply your strong hiker skills to the search party.”
Park tilted his head. “As you wish.”
Cooper looked out the window but could still feel Park’s gaze on him in the mirror, which he ignored.
* * *
Two and a half hours of hiking through the swampier parts of the forest with the search groups resulted in Cooper’s jeans being soaked up to the knees in the most foul-smelling mud he’d ever come across and no trace of Gould. Fortunately, Park had been put in a different group than Cooper and he could avoid any “told you so” looks. Not that Park seemed like a gloater. Or like someone who would gloat over not finding a missing young man, anyway. But Park’s perpetually unruffled attitude was just as aggravating.
As the search parties returned to the base before sunset, there was some panic when one of the groups came up short a member. Vince Medes, a volunteering civilian, failed to check in.
“Is it possible this bastard snatched him right from under our noses?” Officer Harris said as Chief Brown put together a new search party, with no civilians this time, to return to the area Medes was last seen.
“Who else was in Medes’s group?” Cooper asked.
Harris flipped through a clipboard of papers. “You think our guy might be in the search party?” He handed Cooper a page of names and signatures that had been with Medes. Cooper skimmed them, though the chances of him recognizing a name were slim to none. He did notice most of the group had been civilian searchers, though. A local wolf might easily have joined. He wished Park was here to look over the list, but Chief Brown had radioed the groups that were still out, including Park’s and Christie’s, and instructed them to head straight to Medes’s last known location.
“I’m not ready to jump to any conclusions,” Cooper said to Harris. “You do think we’re looking for a person responsible for these men’s deaths, though?”
Harris gave him a puzzled look. “As opposed to what, Agent Dayton?”
“Your colleague Officer Miller seems to think there’s a chance these are all animal attacks.”
Harris shook his head and smiled grimly. “Sure, I think it’s an animal. A two-legged one.” He turned to watch Chief Brown directing small groups of officers and rangers back up the trail. Both Cooper and Harris had been asked to stay behind and finish checking in the returning searchers to make sure no one else had gone missing. “If Medes has been taken, what do you expect that means for Gould?”
“Nothing good.”
Fortunately, nothing but a bad ankle and poor judgment had happened to Medes, who finally made it back hanging between Park’s and a state trooper’s shoulders. “He twisted something and turned around to head back on his own. Didn’t want to make a fuss, so he didn’t tell anyone,” Christie grumbled in explanation when they returned, his disgust with the situation obvious. “Got lost and ended up a whole mile east of where he was supposed to be. Good thing your partner’s such a good tracker or he’d have been shit out of luck around now.”
“Park found him?”
Christie grunted an affirmation, but it was a little softer than before.
It was long past dark by the time the secondary search party had returned. Cooper could just make out the missing Medes now, ten feet away. The man’s face was tight with pain and embarrassment, but there was obvious relief and gratitude there too as Park talked quietly to him with a tranquil and kind expression. Medes was slowly relaxing and even laughed a couple of times at something Park was saying.
Smooth. That was exactly the sort of charm and manipulation Cooper expected from the Trust. And that was why you couldn’t trust them. Not because they were wolves, but because they were so damn good at playing politics and no one knew exactly what was on their agenda.
Cooper watched them shake hands and Park neatly sidestep a hug before passing Medes over to Chief Brown and joining Cooper, Christie and Harris.
“I suppose congratulations are in order. Christie was just gushing all about you,” Harris said as Park approached.
Christie looked at the older officer with a blank, cold stare. Harris didn’t appear to notice and continued to smile pleasantly.
“Group effort,” Park said casually, his eyes seeking out Cooper’s like he expected him to say something. Or perhaps wanted to tell him something himself?
“Sure, you led and the group followed,” Christie was saying. His voice, though by no means gushing, had smoothed out a little in what sounded, annoyingly, like respect.
“You a hunter, Agent Park?” Harris said. Cooper snorted.
“I’ve done a little tracking,” Park said politely.
“More than a little, it looks like,” Christie said.
“And a damn good thing that is.” Chief Brown joined them. She made to run a hand over exhausted eyes and knocked into her glasses, surprised they were there. She took them off with a frown. “What a shit show of a day.”
“Nothing lost...” Harris said.
“And nothing gained.” Brown rolled her shoulders and looked at Cooper intently. Nothing lost was obviously Park’s contribution. He wondered if she was thinking that nothing gained was his.
“It does show how easy it is to get lost in these woods,” Harris said.
Christie sucked his teeth. “Robbie—Gould isn’t that stupid.”
“What do you think, Agents?” Brown said. “Is Robert Gould a kid lost in the forest or do we have a serial killer in Florence?”
Cooper looked at Park, who nodded back at him. Short and grim. Whatever else Cooper felt about Park and his motivations, he knew that on this they were in agreement.
“Gould’s not a kid. He didn’t wander off on his own.”
Whether he was being held somewhere or already dead in a bog was just a matter of time.