CHAPTER FIVE
Five years ago, July
“I’m not ready to tell them.” Madison double-checked her pack for the sixth time in ten minutes, her nervousness demanding she do something with her hands. She’d effectively put off this conversation for a couple of weeks—longer, really, when she added in the time since she’d gotten her college acceptance letter.
“Mads, you don’t have to apologize for wanting to get the hell out of here.”
She finally put her pack on the ground and straightened. Ashleigh leaned against the door frame of her closet, her arms crossed and her eyes bright. Her grip on her elbows was white-knuckled, and Madison felt sick when she thought about why. “You have a reason to leave—several reasons. It’s different for me.”
“Your mom and dad are good people. Mine aren’t. That isn’t what this is about.” Ashleigh pushed off the wall. “Look, they already told you they support you. I support you, even if I’m cranky for selfish reasons that we aren’t going to the same college—at least we’ll be in the same city. Even if you decided to go to New York or, hell, London, I would still be supporting you. It’s about you. It’s not about them.” She jerked her thumb at the window.
It didn’t matter that they’d had a variation of this same conversation at least once a week for the last month. Madison still felt sick over the thought of leaving.
No, not over leaving—just over leaving her friends.
Over leaving her family in Montana, which had been the only home she’d ever known.
Over leaving Glacier, which was almost the hardest part. She knew there were other parks, and that Seattle and the Sound were beautiful and she’d never lack for outdoor activities to keep her occupied . . . but it wasn’t the same.
Admitting to the others that she’d been accepted into Seattle Pacific University meant she was one step closer to actually leaving after summer was over, and she just flat-out wasn’t ready.
Ashleigh narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t thinking about changing your mind, are you?” They’d been best friends since Ashleigh’s family had moved to Kalispell when they were both in first grade. They’d bonded over their shared love of pink and mutual dislike of gross boys . . . and the rest was history.
Am I thinking of changing my mind? Madison didn’t know.
That was a lie. She did know. She was just too cowardly to face it.
But her best friend was still waiting for an answer, so she forced a smile. “No, I’m still going. But just let me have this trip, okay? I promise I’ll tell them after we get back.”
One last trip where everything was perfect—before it all changed.
They’d graduated three weeks ago, and Lauren and Ethan had been talking about the trip they’d put together for months previous. They’d hiked through Glacier on overnight trips, weekend trips, and spring-break trips, but this was different. This time, they were all adults.
Whatever the hell that meant.
The future stretched before her, terrifying in its possibilities. She didn’t know if she’d stay in Seattle forever, but even her parents were in agreement—a partial scholarship to SPU was a dream come true. A good school was now affordable. She could always move back after college, but if she didn’t leave now, she might never leave.
And that was more terrifying than anything else.
At least until she thought about facing down Ethan, Josh, and Lauren.
Madison took a deep breath and straightened. “Promise, Ashleigh. Promise you won’t tell them until I’m ready.”
For a second, it looked like Ashleigh might argue, but she finally sighed and lifted her hands in surrender. “I promise. But it’s just going to get harder to pull the trigger the longer you let it go. It’s better to rip off the Band-Aid now and get it over with.”
“Like you have with Josh?” That was petty, and she regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth.
Ashleigh just shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a coward. Maybe we can just text them after we hit the town limits and call it a day.”
She laughed even as she shook her head. “We can’t.” No matter how attractive that solution sounded. She didn’t like confrontation, and ever since they were in grade school, their friends had had a plan. The plan itself had changed over the years—superheroes, secret agents, park rangers—but it had one constant: them, together.
And now she and Ashleigh were breaking rank.
A horn honked outside, and the tension between her shoulder blades ratcheted up. “That’ll be the twins and Lauren.”
Ashleigh closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was herself again. “We can get through a five-day trip. We’ve done it before.”
“Yep.” She secretly hoped that being in Glacier would soothe her like nothing else seemed to, but it might be a long shot. “Ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.” She laughed. “And, hell, worst case, they freak out, we freak out, and we move away and just never come back. Easy, peasy.”
Ashleigh was right. The worst case was that they severed friendships that had been years in the making . . .
God, that sounded seriously crappy.
It was different for Ashleigh. She’d been born and spent her first seven years in Seattle. As a result, she’d never felt at home in Kalispell, and she’d had a countdown to college—and leaving—on her wall since they were in sixth grade. There had never been a single doubt in her mind that she was destined for somewhere else—anywhere else.
She’d never understood that Madison loved their town. The decision to leave was one Madison had waffled over for long enough to drive herself nuts, and now that the time was coming to actually pull the trigger on it, she kept finding herself wondering if maybe it’d be better to stay. She could keep her job at the general store and fall back on . . .
But that was the problem. She didn’t want to fall back on a plan. If she ended up back in Kalispell, she wanted it to be her choice to come back, not the result of her being too afraid to take a risk.
Madison took a long breath, held it, and exhaled. “They’ll be mad, but we’ll get through it. We’ve gotten through everything else.” In the years since first grade, they’d had fights and dramas and high points that made the bad look small by comparison. Not even junior high or high school could drive a true wedge between them—though things had gotten a little strained when Josh and Ashleigh started dating two years ago.
The truth was that her friends being mad at her was a crutch she’d been using to convince herself that maybe staying wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
She had to make this decision for her.
She had made this decision for her.
Her friends might see it as a betrayal, but they would get over it. It was just college.
It wasn’t the end of the world.
Sunday, June 18
10:59 p.m.
“Wyatt? Wyatt, come in.” Maggie had been trying to radio him for fifteen minutes. Reception was spotty in these mountains at best, so her phone was next to useless. She adjusted the frequency and tried again. “Wyatt, we need you.”
Finally, finally, an answer came through. “Maggie? What’s going on?”
“I think someone is being attacked.”
Silence, only broken by the crackle of the radio. Vic sat next to her, a respectable distance away, a rock in the midst of what was becoming a seriously shitty situation. Finally, Wyatt said, “You think?”
She realized what it sounded like. First-year rangers often got spooked in the park at night. A whole wide world spread out beyond the faint light of their campfire, and that bone-deep terror of the darkness became something real and overwhelming for some people. She’d felt the same the first couple of summers she worked here, though she’d never admitted it because she knew how it would look—that she was a woman who couldn’t handle her job. Wyatt might not think she was a hysterical female—especially almost six years into the job—but some of the other rangers were less than pleased to have her on staff, so she always had to be stronger, better, less afraid. Jumping at strange sounds and flickering shadows wasn’t the way to do that.
She was used to it now. She’d learned when to keep her head down and her mouth shut—and when to snap back.
Snapping back now, when she was on the verge of losing control, was a mistake. Maggie swallowed her instinctive sarcastic reply. “We heard screams farther up the trail. Hard to pinpoint, but they were possibly coming from Porcupine Lookout.”
His sigh almost blended in with the static. “Maggie, you know very well I can’t authorize a helicopter or search-and-rescue team on the basis that you think you heard screams. There are a lot of animals out there that can sound like a human.”
She knew that and resented that he was implying that she didn’t. But Maggie also recognized a losing battle when she saw one. Wyatt was a good ranger and a good boss, but he would always put the bottom line first. And the bottom line was that, without evidence that something had actually gone wrong, he wasn’t going to call in expensive resources.
“I’m going after them.” Whoever they were. It could be the group she’d interacted with earlier today, or it could be someone hiking north from Many Glacier. It didn’t matter. What mattered was figuring out who was hurt and helping them.
“No, you’re not. Not tonight.” More static. “Take the Fed south along Mountain Trail to the Loop. I’ll have someone meet you there with a car. It will only add half a day to your trip, and you can investigate on your way.”
“But . . .”
“That’s an order, Maggie.”
He was her boss, not her commanding officer, but he had a point. The park was tricky to navigate in the middle of the day. Even knowing it as well as she did, charging out there at night was the very height of stupidity. She tried to take a deep breath and acknowledge that. It took several breaths before she got control of her anger. “In the morning, then.”
“Report when you have something.”
She set the radio down even though she wanted to throw it into the darkness. That was a childish response, and she wasn’t going to cut off her nose to spite her face. That didn’t stop the frustration from nearly overwhelming her. “Damn it.”
“He’s right,” Vic said. “If we can’t follow a trail from the murder site into the woods in the dark, we shouldn’t be running into an unknown situation.”
She hated how calm he was. It reminded her of their time as partners, when she was constantly on the verge of freaking out, and he was totally and completely unperturbed. “Someone could be dying out there.”
“If they are, they’re already dead.”
She stopped short and turned to face him. “How can you say that? We could—”
Vic’s face showed nothing, though she could see a shadow of the frustration she felt in his pale eyes. “Maggie, you said this could be coming from Porcupine Lookout. How long would it take us to get there?”
“In the dark? Hours.” Realization crept over her, and she sagged. “The person would be dead by the time we got there.”
“Yes.”
She faced the night again. Somewhere out there, a person could be fleeing for their life, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Frustration and fear combined, melting away in the face of her fury. “I’m going to find whoever is doing this in my park, and they’re going to see justice.”
“I know.”
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, as if he’d reached for her, but the touch never came. Instead, Vic turned back toward the fire. “Do you want first watch or second?”
Watch. Because whoever was out there in the darkness, hunting, could potentially come for them next. She shivered. “I’ll take first.” She didn’t know if she could sleep at all, so there was no point in wasting both their time by being awake.
Vic gave her a long look, but he didn’t argue. She watched him settle into the sleeping bag and close his eyes. Within two minutes, his breathing evened out and his body relaxed completely. She’d never been able to master that particular skill—to shut off her brain and fall into unconsciousness at the flick of a switch. If old habits held, he’d be able to burst back into wakefulness without the webs of sleep clinging to him, so she took a seat across the fire from him and settled in to wait.
Time passed, and she tensed with every rustle in the shadows around the campground. There was going to be no sleep for her tonight, even though she knew she needed it. The adrenaline rush she’d gotten after hearing the screams faded away, leaving her tired and cranky, and she only got more tired and cranky as the night went on. Her mind wouldn’t stop, though. She reviewed the pieces of information—the few that they had—over and over again, trying to see them in a new light.
Hunting people wasn’t a novel concept. It’d existed for time unknown, though modern civilization frowned on that sort of activity. But the BAU wouldn’t exist if human predators didn’t. They specialized in bringing down the monsters lurking inside the most unassuming of people. Because that’s exactly what those serial killers and rapists were—predators.
Most of them didn’t hunt in quite so literal a sense. It was easier to pick victims in suburban areas and cities, to stalk their victims as they went about their lives, and to attack at a time of the unsub’s choosing. Organized killers usually liked things planned down to the smallest detail, even when they were first starting out.
This unsub left so much open to chance. There was no way to divine the habits of the victim, because the unsub would have to hunt them over the course of multiple hikes, and, even then, things constantly changed in these parks. A rock slide or avalanche could put a trail out of commission and force a different route—the same with animals and weather. This unsub couldn’t just follow the victim into the park. Bows—hunting weapons of any kind—were illegal, and any ranger worth their salt would catch and detain the person carrying it. To bring it in without risking notice, the unsub had to hike in without using a trailhead or try to time it to when a ranger wouldn’t be around. Risky.
Maybe he gets off on the challenge.
If that was the case, she had to wonder how many potential victims had just missed death because of circumstances beyond the unsub’s control.
Maggie counted down the minutes until dawn put enough light in the sky to see the trail. She wasn’t an FBI agent anymore. It wasn’t her job to figure out how the unsub’s brain worked or what he would do next. All she was responsible for was guiding Vic around the park without getting him killed or injured or doing something to jeopardize the rangers’ relationship with the Feds.
That was it.
She’d do well to remember that.
She chewed her nutrition bar methodically and shoved the wrapper into her pack. It might as well have been sawdust for all she tasted it, but passing out because she hadn’t taken in enough calories wasn’t an option. Neither was being too weak to help if her worst fears were realized. She checked the time. “Vic.”
He opened his eyes and instantly frowned. “You should have woken me.”
“I know.” Too late to worry about it now. If they got through the day, she’d let him take first watch. You’re already planning on another night in the park. Pessimistic much? “Let’s get moving.”
“Maggie.”
She turned away from the concern in his voice. She didn’t want his pity now any more than she had when they were partners. “I’m fine—but whoever we heard screaming last night isn’t. How long do you need?”
“Five minutes. I can eat while we walk.”
It took her a good five minutes to get herself in order, too, and then she and Vic dismantled the tent as if they’d done it a thousand times before. She didn’t look directly at him. What was there to say? Part of her wanted to reassure him that, no matter what they found on the trail, she wouldn’t have a meltdown. She was stronger than she used to be. She wasn’t the weak link anymore. The rest of her didn’t feel like she owed him a damn explanation.
They started south up the trail without a word. Usually the rhythmic movements of hiking and the calm of the park brought her peace. There was none to be found that morning. She forced herself to a slower pace that wouldn’t burn her and Vic out, but all she wanted to do was run full tilt up the trail.
“How sure are you that the screams came from this lookout?”
She didn’t look back but turned her head to the side so he’d be able to hear her. She wished she had a nice, easy answer for him, but the truth was more important than her pride. “Not sure enough.”
Monday, June 19
6:10 a.m.
Vic was furious with himself. He should have known better than to let Maggie take first watch. He’d never had the particular skill of being able to set an internal clock and wake himself up, otherwise he would have put a stop to that shit last night. The worst part was that he wasn’t even surprised. This case would bother a normal person, even if they didn’t have her knowledge concerning the monsters in human skin. Maggie knew all too well what people were capable of.
She’d be tired today, wired from the hunt, and as a result she’d be a liability.
He couldn’t tell her that without pissing her off, which would push her closer to the edge and make her more likely to do something foolish if they ran into trouble. He had missed his mark with this case already. He searched the trees around them as he considered her response. “The mountains make the acoustics problematic.”
“Yes.”
He wished he’d spent more time studying a map of the trails, but beyond the most popular ones, he didn’t have a clear view of the park in his head. “Tell me about Porcupine Lookout.”
“It breaks from this trail a mile and a half from Kootenai Lake and then rises five miles to the lookout point. There’s a little over twenty-six hundred feet of elevation change from the trail break to the end.”
He considered that. Distances seemed to be deceptive in Glacier, because five miles was a cakewalk, but five miles with a three-thousand-foot elevation change was something else altogether. He did some quick calculations. “That’s a day hike from Kootenai Lake for most people.”
“Yes.”
If he hadn’t known how twisted up she was about being forced to sit on her hands while someone might be dying, her terse answers more than broadcast that. Vic wanted to shake her. There wasn’t a damn thing they could have done, and rushing off to get themselves killed wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It was shitty to have to wait for daylight, but it was the right call.
Instead, he said, “Is there a camping spot up there?”
“There’s a place where rangers can stay, though it’s a rarely used one.” She missed a step. “There’s no way that scream came from Porcupine Lookout.”
He’d started to think the same thing. Even if someone camped up there, it didn’t seem like an ideal spot for their unsub to hunt. Lookouts were, by nature, limited in the number of ways in and out. Their guy liked to stalk and hunt his prey, and it was damn near impossible up on the ridge of a mountain.
“There’s two fords this time of year, and then a switchback trail that’s pretty gnarly and covered in overgrowth for the first half or so.” She shook her head. “There’s no way someone would choose that route if they were running for their life. They wouldn’t be able to find it in the dark. Shit. I should have thought of that.”
“You should have slept.” The words came out harsher than he intended, but once they drifted in the air between them, there was no going back. “Playing the martyr is going to get someone killed. You’re an experienced ranger—you know how easy it is to die in this park.”
She stopped and spun to face him. “Sorry that I can’t just shut my emotions off like a robot the same way you can, Vic. Someone is out there, dead or dying, and maybe you could sleep like a baby, but that wasn’t an option for me.”
It was a complaint he’d heard before. Too controlled. Too locked down. Too robotic. His own mother had called him a freak because of it. The SEALs had seen it as an asset and used him ruthlessly as a result. Janelle had launched accusation after accusation, pulling shitty stunts to try to provoke a response and then using his lack of one as evidence to prove her point.
To have those same complaints coming from Maggie put them on another level entirely. If he hadn’t already been angry, he could have bitten back the words, but she had always gotten under his skin like no other. “It’s called being a professional. You should try it sometime.”
He regretted the words instantly, but there was no taking them back.
She jerked back as if he’d struck her and narrowed her dark eyes. “So the truth comes out. It only took seven years.”
“We don’t have time for this.” No matter what he said right now, it’d be the wrong thing, and he was too angry to carefully consider his words—which would likely be yet another misstep. There was no winning, because she’d already decided to take out her frustration on him.
Normally, that wouldn’t bother him so much, but he thought better of Maggie. Or, rather, he was letting his past feelings cloud his current situation.
Her mouth twisted. “Fine.” She charged up the trail. “Since searching the entire park is damn near impossible, we should follow the trail and see if anything stands out.” She shifted her pack higher on her shoulders. “I’d like to check on the hikers I saw yesterday, though they should be almost a full day ahead of us.”
He glared at the back of her head, more irritated than he should be that she’d taken the change of subject in stride without arguing further, even though that was exactly what he’d asked for.
Vic tried to focus on the case instead, though he hadn’t expected this turn of events. They were supposed to spend today searching the area surrounding where the body was found, but here they were, hiking farther into the park and farther away from anything resembling civilization—and calling the Goat Haunt ranger station civilization was a stretch.
His partner, Tucker Kendrick, would have landed not too long ago after taking a red-eye flight from Quantico, and he’d be expecting an update from Vic as soon as he got to the park. He had no doubt Tucker would think this was a wild goose chase . . . and Vic wasn’t sure he would be wrong.
But he’d heard that scream, same as Maggie.
There was no way that had been an animal.
It took what he clocked as nearly half a mile to get himself back under control, and even then, he could feel the anger broiling beneath the surface. It wouldn’t be an issue if his guide was anyone other than Maggie, and that fact should be enough to keep him in line.
It wasn’t.
He exhaled harshly. “I’m sure those hikers are fine.”
“You’re patronizing me.”
Just like that, his mouth got away from him again. “Christ, Maggie, if you’re going to take everything I say wrong, then maybe we should get someone else in here.”
“Too late. I’m all you have, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.” She sighed, her pace slowing to something resembling reasonable. “But I’m sorry all the same. As usual, you’re right. I’m sure they have nothing to do with what we heard.”
He opened his mouth, reconsidered, and shut it. Better that they keep hiking in silence than for him to stick his foot in it. Again. Vic surveyed the trees around them, all too aware that they could be being watched, and it would be nearly impossible to know.
That’s how he tracks them. Probably sets up some sort of stand near a trail and sits like a spider in his web and waits for his victim—somewhere he can see the trail with ease.
It would be simple enough to shoot his victim right there, but he likes the hunt too much. He does something to push them to flee so he can chase them. It’s probably his favorite part, and a confirmation that he is superior in every way to his prey.
He’d visited the sites of both the other murders—or where their bodies were found—and neither of the other parks felt like this one. Rainier was a quick hop from half a dozen towns, and two hours’ drive from Seattle. Grand Teton was wilder, but the body hadn’t been left more than seven miles from the trailhead. He was painfully aware that they were far enough from any kind of backup that they were on their own. “You radio Wyatt?”
“Shit.” She grabbed her radio and fiddled with the dials. “Wyatt? Wyatt, come in.”
“He’s not here.”
Vic didn’t recognize the voice, but Maggie obviously did. She frowned. “Ava, what’s going on? I thought he was in the station.”
“He’s waiting for a chopper. There’s another Fed at headquarters, says he’s your Fed’s partner.”
She met Vic’s gaze. “He’s not my anything.”
Ava ignored that. “Yeah, well, Wyatt said to radio if you find anything, but otherwise to get your ass to the Loop once the job’s done. We just need about an hour’s notice to get someone there in time to meet you.”
“Got it.” She stashed the radio back in her pack. “So much for that.”
“He’s going to meet Tucker.”
“Your partner.”
“Yeah.” He waited, half expecting some other kind of outburst, but she just nodded. “Okay.”
Time passed, and he let it go without comment. The trail got steeper and then dropped off sharply into a little valley. Even with a murderer on the loose and all the underlying crap going on with Maggie, he still stopped periodically and just took it all in. He could see why people came here and braved the overnight conditions. In a world where everyone was hyperconnected, in this park, he felt small again. A small moving piece against a massive world.
An individual.
At the bottom of the decline, they hit a creek. Maggie skirted the edge of it. “The rocks are slippery. Be careful.”
Since he had no intention of taking a dip in the freezing water, he stepped where she stepped as they hopscotched rocks to the other side. The sun was well beyond the tops of the surrounding mountains now, but the spot where they stopped still stood in shadow. He eyed the tops of the trees. “Not very warm for June.”
“Nope.” She took a swig of her water. “We highly recommend that any hikers who come along certain trails carry ice picks and know how use them to self-arrest if they fall, especially this early in the season. We won’t have to worry about that, because we’re not going far enough into the park. I hope.”
But he wasn’t listening. Vic turned a slow circle, the hair along the nape of his neck standing on end. His hand drifted to his service weapon, but he didn’t draw it yet. He turned again, trying to figure out what had put his instincts on high alert.
There.
He kept his voice low and calm, designed to carry to Maggie and no farther. “There’s something in those bushes.” In the gaps between the leaves, something flesh-colored could just be seen.
Not flesh-colored. Actual flesh.
She followed his gaze and whispered a curse. “Stay here.”
“The hell I will.”
She glared even as she grabbed her bear spray with steady hands. “Trust me, Vic. I wasn’t joking when I was saying this is bear country. If that’s what I think it is, then we need to make sure there’s not a predator lurking. Just . . . don’t make any sudden movements or try to play the hero.”
He watched her stomp toward the bushes, making enough noise for three people. So she doesn’t surprise any animals close by. He’d read somewhere that bear attacks were usually for two reasons—a mother bear protecting her cubs from a perceived threat, or a surprised and scared bear reacting out of instinct.
Understanding the reason behind a bear attack wasn’t going to do anything to make dealing with a potentially furious animal easier.
Maggie stopped short when she reached the bushes. “Fuck.”
Vic was at her side in an instant, and he only barely contained his own curse. A woman’s body lay behind the bushes.
Or what was left of her.