CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Five years ago, July
Madison didn’t realize that she had no intention of going back to camp yet until darkness fell with her still in the forest. She blinked in the low light, part of her wondering how it’d gotten so dark so quickly. But she knew better. Once the sun made contact with the top of the mountains, everything went fast.
That didn’t change the fact that she was going to have to be careful making her way back to Fifty Mountain if she didn’t want to get hopelessly lost. She hadn’t brought her pack, though she still wore her lightweight jacket.
Compared with what waited for her at their camp, getting lost would almost be a relief.
She knew she was being hypocritical, but she couldn’t help it. Her secret wasn’t poisoning and hurting those around her . . . was it?
No. It wasn’t even in the same league. There might be hurt feelings when Lauren and Josh and Ethan found out that she was planning on leaving town, but it wasn’t like she was burning bridges. That’s exactly what Lauren and Josh were doing.
Relationships came and went. Friendship was supposed to be forever.
There would be no coming back from this once Ashleigh and Ethan knew. Ethan and Josh might be okay in a couple of years, if only because they couldn’t avoid each other indefinitely since they were twins. But everyone else?
There was no escaping it. Lauren and Josh had ruined everything.
“Mads.”
She jumped half a foot and bit down a curse before realizing she had no reason not to curse. She wasn’t hunting or camping with her parents. So she gritted her teeth and forced the word out. “Fuck.”
“Mads?”
She turned, wishing it was anyone else who had come to find her. “Ethan, what are you doing here?” He moved between two trees, his broad shoulders scraping against the bark. Josh was big, but Ethan had always been more giant than man. In grade school, he’d been teased for being too quiet—too weird—until he came back in the fall of seventh grade six inches taller than anyone in their class. No one had dared provoke him after that.
Not that he’d done much to deserve the reputation he’d acquired. Josh was the one with the hair trigger. Ethan only got into fights because he couldn’t stand to let his brother go it alone.
And Josh had repaid his loyalty by sleeping with Ethan’s girlfriend.
Fury rose, smothering her lingering guilt and leaving only ash in its wake. She was so freaking tired. For the first time, knowing she was leaving town before summer ended was a relief instead of a burden.
“You’re going the wrong way.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Camp is back there.”
“Maybe I’m not going back to camp.” She wanted to tell him, to take his hand and lead him away from camp and just . . . go. It made her sick to her stomach thinking of Ethan left alone in Kalispell while Lauren and Josh screwed around behind his back.
“Really?” Interest lit his dark eyes. “Where are you going?”
Nowhere. Everywhere. Anywhere that wasn’t there.
She swallowed hard and managed a smile. “No, you’re right. We should both be heading back.” If she was smart, she’d keep her mouth shut, ride out the rest of the trip, and get the hell away from everyone. But if there was an innocent in this mess, it was Ethan, and Madison had never been the type of person to sit silently when she saw something wrong. “Ethan . . .”
His expression immediately closed. “Yeah?”
He was giving her a chance to back out of whatever she was about to say, but she’d already decided on her path. Madison looked away, realized what a cowardly move it was, and met his gaze. “Your brother and Lauren . . . I saw them . . .”
“I know.”
“What? If you knew, why . . .” She sounded so bitter, but she couldn’t stop. Madison pointed back the way she’d come. “How long has this been going on?”
“More than once, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since the first time.” He finally looked away. “I can’t give Lauren what she needs. I tried. It didn’t work.”
She grabbed his arm, turning him to face her. “Don’t you dare. This isn’t your fault. If things weren’t working out, then she should have ended the relationship. That’s how it’s supposed to go. She’s not supposed to fuck your brother.” She flinched. “I’m sorry. I’m making this worse, aren’t I?”
“No.” He covered her hand with his and then let it fall away. “You’re trying to help.”
Which wasn’t the same as saying that she was actually helping. She ran her hands through her hair. “It’s not fair. They shouldn’t be doing that to you.”
“What about Ashleigh?”
“Ashleigh can take care of herself.” She wasn’t lacking in guilt, either. “What are you going to do?”
“Leave.”
Of them all, Ethan loved this place even more than she did. If she’d been forced to choose one of her friends who’d leave Kalispell behind—besides Ashleigh—he would have been at the bottom of the list. But that was before the truths this trip revealed. “Where will you go?”
“I enlisted in the Army.” He shrugged when her eyes went wide. “My grades aren’t good enough to get into college. Even if they were, that’s not what I want.”
“What do you want?”
He looked at her for a long moment, and she found herself holding her breath, though she couldn’t admit why. Finally Ethan gave a half smile. “To get out of here. To be free. To create enough time and space for me to figure out what I really do want.”
She released her pent-up breath. “That sounds like why I’m leaving.”
“College?”
“Yeah. In Seattle.”
She’d been so worried about what kind of reaction he and the others would have, but he just nodded as if it was something he’d suspected all along. “You’ll be happy there.”
“I hope so.” She hesitated. “When are you going to tell Josh and Lauren?” She wasn’t sure what she was asking. When he’d tell them he knew what they’d been doing. When he’d tell them that he was leaving. Maybe both.
All the warmth left his face, making her feel like she was looking at a stranger. “I’m not.”
Tuesday, June 20
3:00 p.m.
Vic’s phone rang as they walked out of the high school. He recognized the number instantly. “Give me a second?”
“Tell Britton I said hi.” Maggie’s smile was almost wistful as she accepted the keys from him and walked to the rental car.
Well, hell. Vic was feeling pretty damn wistful right now, too. He answered before the emotion could get the best of him. “Sutherland.”
“I have something for you.”
That was new. Normally, Britton called for reports and used those short conversations as a way to let his agents off-load frustrations and get a new perspective. It had bugged the shit out of Vic originally, because he took it as criticism of his ability to do the job right. Now he saw it for the benefit it was. When an agent was in the middle of a case—especially a case that stretched on for months—they often lost the ability to see the forest for the trees.
Even considering that, two calls in as many days was unusual.
He stopped walking and checked to ensure no one was within eavesdropping range. “We’ve had some developments as well.”
“Ethan Conlon was in the Army—a Ranger.”
Vic stopped short. “There’s nothing in the files about him having served.”
“He was in for four years, as best I can tell. Dishonorably discharged, though someone rather high up the line has ensured that it doesn’t pop in normal background checks.”
That was hard to do, and a waste of time. It was easier to mask what a soldier did during their time enlisted than it was to mask the enlistment itself. Why bother? “Either he did something very, very bad, or he was the tool of someone who did the same.”
“I’m inclined to agree. The discharge came a little over a year ago, so he’s still fresh. It’s something to take into account—both for the case and for the safety of you and the search-and-rescue folk.”
Because an Army Ranger was a whole different story than your average lost hiker. Though Vic was starting to get the feeling that none of the lost hikers were exactly what they seemed. “It’s possible—probable, even, at this point—that the unsub is one of the missing hikers. With the exception of Ashleigh Marcinko, they’re all more than capable of hunting in the same way he’s been hunting.”
“Careful with your pronouns, Vic.”
He exhaled. “Yeah, I know. The profile leans male, but there are no guarantees, and after how things fell out with the case in Clear Springs, I’m not willing to make assumptions anymore. Easier to just stick a he on there when we’re talking, though.”
“Just ensure that it’s not coloring your view of things. This case reads strange to me. Hunting is a traditionally masculine hobby, though that may be overgeneralizing it.”
“There’s something off about this one.” It wasn’t until he spoke that he realized what had been bothering him. “There’s no frenzy, and even though the unsub gets up close and personal with the bodies, the killing blow is delivered from a distance. That should make the whole thing methodical, but there are breaks in the pattern. The unsub smeared honey on the last male victim’s eyes postmortem.”
“A significant amount of anger there.”
“Yeah, but also squeamish.” He shook his head. “There’s something there, some piece that we’re missing. Bill Haglund was the Conlon twins’ cousin, but I have a hunch he wasn’t killed because of that connection. I think he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.” Though that didn’t explain why Jennifer Haglund didn’t have the same thing done to her.
“Time will tell.”
That was the problem—they didn’t have enough time. Vic looked up at the sky. It was still raining, the overcast giving the afternoon the feel of pending night. “You got anything else for me?”
“Be careful, Vic. This case is becoming complicated for a variety of reasons, and I don’t see it untangling itself before the end.”
On that, they could agree. “We’ll find this guy.” The question was whether they could find him before he did any more damage. “We’ll keep an eye on any of the hikers we find—make sure it’s not the unsub in sheep’s clothing.” They wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at them. This guy had managed to pass well enough not to be caught up until this point, but he’d only been at it for a year. “There had to be a trigger. Something happened to push the unsub over the edge—from fantasizing about killing people to actually killing them. Normally, given the evidence of the other two murders in the other parks, I’d assume there were kills we never found—or at least some kind of criminal history.”
“But?”
“But it doesn’t feel right for me. Something about this group makes me think this is personal. This is skewing almost into spree-killing territory. If it wasn’t for the exact same MO being in all the murders, I’d almost think we had two separate killers.”
“Is that likely?”
Vic considered it. “No. Not with the timeline. It’s possible, but I think calling it probable would be stretching the definition to the breaking point.”
“I tend to agree.” Britton sighed. “This one is going to get messy. When are you heading back into the park?”
“I was aiming for tomorrow, but I think it’d be wiser to stay in town and continue this avenue of investigation until either the hikers or another body is found. Tucker is with the local Feds, digging deeper into the hikers’ background—they’ll need to talk to locals who graduated with them and see if that offers any insight—and we still need to get a warrant to dig into the financial background of the hikers to see if there’s any record of any of them buying the weapons the unsub uses. It’s a long shot, but it needs to be done. I want this guy buttoned up and gift wrapped for the lawyers, and short of finding him in the act of murdering someone, that’s going to be impossible unless we have the evidence to back it up.” The rain chose that moment to pick up, and he headed for the car. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“See that you do.”
And that was that.
He was so focused on getting the rental going and the defroster up and running that it took Vic a few precious minutes to realize Maggie hadn’t said anything. He found her arms crossed, her gaze straight ahead, though it was pretty obvious that her mind was elsewhere. “Something wrong?”
“Hmm? No, not exactly.” She shrugged. “I just didn’t expect to miss it.”
Even though he knew what she was talking about, he still asked. “It?”
“This. The investigating. Pitting ourselves against the worst humanity has to offer. The whole team atmosphere that Britton has cultivated. It’s not comfortable being in this position where I feel like I’m back, but not really back.” She ran her hands through her hair, dislodging her hair tie. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Maybe it was time to finally clear the air. Vic had always trod cautiously when it came to Maggie. Not because she was sensitive and fragile—the exact opposite—but because when he was around her, he was likely to react before thinking.
He wanted to comfort her, to make her happy, even if what he really should be doing was spitting hard truth. “I said it before, but that doesn’t make it less true. That Drover case would have broken any new agent. I’ve been doing this damn near nine years, and cases involving kids still have me questioning everything about this world and what good we’re actually doing.”
“I thought I wanted kids.”
For a second, he was sure he must have misheard her, but of course he hadn’t. Vic reached across the console and took her hand before he could think of a reason not to. “Maggie—”
“Knowing what’s out there . . . that’s something I can’t unknow. How can I bring a kid into this world knowing they might end up prey to one of the monsters? It’s wrong and it’s selfish, and I won’t do it.”
She was breaking his heart. He squeezed her hand. “Maggie, the BAU spends all its time hunting monsters, which gives us a disproportionate reality about how many of them there actually are.”
“Really? Because I think you have pretty damn good job security. Almost nine years as a federal agent, and have you ever shown up for work and not had a case demanding your attention?”
She had him there, but she was also missing the point. “If you don’t want children, there’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t let fear dictate your decision.”
“Do you want kids?”
He started to jerk back and caught himself.
Not soon enough, because she gave him a sad smile. “Didn’t think so.”
“Now wait a damn minute. You know the divorce rates in any law-enforcement–type job are significantly higher than those of civilians. I’m a statistic now. I’d have to be in a rock-solid relationship to even consider it, and that hasn’t happened yet.”
“You were married.”
“And you know what my marriage was like—through no fault of Janelle’s. We just didn’t fit, and neither did our vision for what our relationship should be like.” He hated thinking about how he’d failed his ex. He hadn’t set out to end up divorced when he proposed all those years ago, but time had a way of changing people, and he and Janelle had changed in separate ways. Instead of their experiences forging them tighter together, they’d cleaved them apart.
For a long time, he’d taken full blame for things ending. It was only in the last two years that he’d realized Janelle had as much a hand in their divorce as he did. She’d gone into their relationship expecting to be able to mold him into the husband she’d always wanted. He could have tried harder, true, but people didn’t change. Not really. If he’d tried, he would have failed, and the final implosion of their marriage would have been far uglier as a result.
“Even with the right person . . .” He took a deep breath. “I’m gone more often than I’m home. It’d come down to a choice between my family and the BAU.”
“Exactly.” She carefully extracted her hand from his. “It’s okay, Vic. You don’t have to explain it to me—and you’re not going to change my mind. I love Glacier, and I love being a park ranger, but sometimes I catch myself wondering if I could be doing more good if I was back in the FBI.”
He flipped the windshield wipers onto a higher speed and turned onto the street. “No one can decide that except you.”
“Thanks, Obi-Wan.” But some of the darkness left her tone. “But enough about me. We have plenty to worry about otherwise. The school was a dead end.”
“Yeah.” The principal had held the position for more than a decade, and the man claimed to remember clearly every one of the missing hikers—and the Haglunds. According to him and every teacher they could track down who had worked at the school at the time, the entire group of kids had been those type of people who seemed to get along well enough with everyone. The Conlon twins—Joshua, specifically—got into a bit of trouble with fighting, and Ashleigh had been caught bringing vodka to school in a water bottle on two occasions, but there weren’t any giant red flags. And if the unsub wasn’t one of the hikers, they were still no closer to answers, because it didn’t appear that anyone had trouble of the variety that would cause five years of pent-up rage.
“Could be love.” When Maggie just stared, he realized he’d spoken aloud. “I was thinking of motive.”
“I gathered that you weren’t professing it to me.” She laughed, the sound forced.
Vic checked the clock. “You know what? Let’s put this on hold. I’ll drop you off at home, meet up with Tucker for a few, and then swing back to take you to dinner.”
The break was what they needed right now. They could keep beating away at the case, but the facts weren’t going to magically reform themselves into an answer. More information was needed, and until they had that, they were stuck.
And he wanted time without having to share her with the case.
He flat-out wanted her.
Tuesday, June 20
5:49 p.m.
Maggie showered and changed into jeans and a tank top as soon as she got home, forcing herself to slow down and take her time. Then she made a sandwich, even though the last thing she felt like doing was eating. Even after all that, she still had ages until Vic was supposed to show up, which left her with nothing to do but pace and flip-flop over whether she was really willing to go on a date without dressing up a bit, or if she should just call the whole thing off. Desperate for a distraction, she called Wyatt.
“Good lord, Maggie, when I told you to take the night off, I meant actually take the night off. Do you know what time it is?”
The clock said it was twenty to seven, which was still a reasonable hour to be making phone calls. She frowned. “Have you slept since this started?”
“When would I have the time to sleep?” He seemed to realize he was in danger of yelling at her, because when he spoke again, he’d tempered his tone. “Is there a reason for this call?”
Now that she had him on the phone, she felt kind of silly. “I was just checking in to see if there were any developments.”
“If something had happened that required your presence, you would have heard about it.” There was background noise that sounded a lot like him knocking things around on his desk. “The search parties are still fine, though Jerry got a nasty cut on his shoulder that he’s going to have to get looked at when he’s back. No one has found anything, and what little signs there were are gone with the storm. Our people are camping out tonight, and then I’m sending a secondary team out tomorrow—which I’d like you to be part of, FBI agent tagging along or no.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good. Enjoy your night off and show up ready to spend a few days out there. The weather is supposed to clear for the next four days at least, so we need to make headway before then.”
The longer those hikers were missing, the less likely they were to be found alive. The unsub had nothing to do with those odds—the weather and exposure and half a dozen other things could kill a person in Glacier. She hung up, not sure if she should feel disheartened that no one had been found yet or grateful that she’d be back in the park and doing something that would keep her moving and her mind off all the things that had been twisting her up since Vic rolled back into her life.
Maggie checked the clock—a grand total of five minutes had passed. She paced from one side of her tiny place to the other. Too much time across the board. So she did the only thing she could think to do. She called Ava.
“Why are you calling me? You actually have a night off, and you’re wasting both our time right now.” She could almost hear the frown in Ava’s voice. “Unless you’re calling to gloat, in which case I might have to kill you and bury your body in the park.”
“That joke isn’t nearly as funny now as it was two weeks ago.”
Ava chuckled. “I know.” A creak sounded over the line, confirming that she was in the minuscule office they mostly used to store paperwork that hadn’t made its way into the digital age yet. “So if you’re not gloating and you’re not calling to try to get me to convince Wyatt to let you back early—which I won’t, by the way—then why are you calling?”
Now that she had her friend on the phone, she barely had the courage to admit what a mess she was. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“This? Or him? Because if I have to explain how tab A goes into slot B, I think we might need to have a completely different talk.”
“Ava, be serious.”
“I am being serious.” She could almost see her friend roll her eyes. “Let me guess—and correct me if I’m wrong. Hot Fed finally got the balls to ask you out, and now you’re a picture of Catholic guilt because you think you should be killing yourself to close this case and not jumping at the chance to jump Hot Fed.”
“I’m not Catholic.”
“You might as well be.” Ava snorted. “Bet you five bucks you already called Wyatt just in case you missed something or he changed his mind about flying you in in the dark.”
“Shut up.” Her skin flared hot, and she didn’t need to look in a mirror to know she was blushing. After living together for three years, she and Ava knew each other better than most married couples, but that didn’t mean she liked being called on it. Maggie took half a second to consider ending the call, but she’d just go back to driving herself nuts. “What am I supposed to do on this date?”
“What normal people do on dates—eat somewhere they have cloth napkins, drink something fruity, and have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around murder. Bonus points if you manage to skip talking about work, too.”
“You’re not helping.”
“Wrong. I’m helping. You’re just being difficult.” Ava sighed. “Look, this is your what-if guy. Missing a chance to find out the answer to that because you feel guilty over something outside your control is just downright stupid. You’re not stupid, Maggie. Stubborn to a clinical degree, yes. Stupid, no.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Ava didn’t bother to be sarcastic. “Now, you’re wasting both our time. Hang up and pour yourself a shot of that vodka I stashed in the freezer. Breathe. Relax. Actually try to enjoy this break and see where it goes with Hot Fed.”
Maggie opened the freezer and snagged the promised bottle of vodka. “You make it sound so reasonable when you say it like that.” She didn’t bother with a shot glass, pinning the phone between her ear and shoulder while she unscrewed the cap and took a healthy swig. She closed it before she could drink more. One was enough.
“Because it is reasonable.”
A knocking on her flimsy front door had her turning toward the sound. “He’s early. No surprise there.”
“Go get him, tiger.”