Kaden took the keys to his truck and paid the man in cash. The man started counting it back and reaching slowly into his pocket to make change, but Kaden waved him off. The man was old and slow, his coke bottle glasses almost comical on his narrow, wrinkled face. When the man kept up his sloth-like counting, Kaden put his hand on the man.
“Keep the change,” he shouted loud enough for the man to hear him.
The man started to protest, and Kaden shook his head, closing the door slowly so he didn’t hit the man. As soon as the old man was clear, Kaden sped off, heading in the direction he was sure Ty Mahigan and his sidekick had gone.
He was furious, and when he got his hands on that woman, he was going to make her pay. He only had two spares, so he’d wasted more than two hours finding a place that could tow his custom truck and put new tires on it immediately.
But even immediately took time in these situations, and Kaden tried to remind himself that he had time. After the ruckus that Ethan had caused flying from Silver City straight through to Denver despite the daylight, Kaden knew he would be too tired to continue until nightfall. He had a few hours, and if he didn’t find Ethan by then, he would track him when Ethan finally flew out of hiding and went wherever he was headed.
Satisfied that he had a plan and Ethan wasn’t going to slip through his fingers, he continued on, taking his time and trying not to draw attention to himself.
Kaden took a tiny bottle from his glove compartment and opened it, downing the energizing elixir and tossing the bottle to the back of the cab. Within seconds, he felt fully awake, though he knew he couldn’t sustain this forever. He had just showered and was about to sleep when Ty and that woman had shown up. He didn’t remember the last time that he’d had a full night’s sleep, but he was so close to Ethan and the money that he couldn’t risk letting all that go. It was more than just the money; he was looking for answers, and he was sure that Ethan had them. If he didn’t, at least the money would give him the time and the freedom to search for answers himself. Kaden lived simply and well-below his means. That kind of money would last him decades.
If he lived that long.
But he must be close to the truth if they were sending people to stop him. He’d dealt with Ty before, though he had never had a problem with the man. But the so-called FBI Agent was a nice touch. He didn’t believe for a second that she was with the FBI. He knew how they worked, and he knew that they used lies to convince people to do their bidding all the time. Kaden wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t going to let a couple of shifters pull one over on him.
He’d learned that lesson.
He needed to find Ethan and deal with him. When he was done with that, he would make the other two pay for slowing them down. With any luck, they would reveal who they were working for, and Kaden would be that much closer to his real target.
He checked the monitor, but it was no help to him in this place. The area he’d ended up in was a hotbed of shifter activity. There were always hundreds of shifters within a few miles of national parks. That’s where they lived so they could run wild when they needed to and still hide their true selves from their human neighbors. The Shifter Detection System only went out so many miles and wasn’t even close to foolproof. It only picked up the bio markers of the larger shifters, and it didn’t even register hybrids. He didn’t really understand how the technology worked in the first place, but it was only helpful if he was within a few miles of his target and the shifter he sought was full-blooded and hiding where humans lived. At this moment, the part of the forest that was on the screen was infested with shifters. It was a beautiful day, and the weather was perfect. He wasn’t even remotely surprised that they were out, stretching their legs and finding a place to bed down until nightfall so they could run on four legs.
He still didn’t see any signatures that suggested dragon, but the sheer number of mountains, trees and hard stone peaks in the area really hindered everything anyway. The dozen or so shifters he saw could be two or three, and their signatures could be echoing and causing the SDS to “see” more shifters than there were. Or there could be two dozen, and the SDS could only pick up half. The further into the mountain range they went, the worse it would get. It was one of the kinks in the system that hadn’t been worked out yet. It frustrated him to no end, but since most of the places he went in search of fugitive shifters didn’t have a massive mountain range throwing his system off, the SDS helped more than it hindered and was worth its weight in gold.
It was possible that the shifters gathered in the woods knew something about the dragon Kaden sought, but there was no way he was going to confront that many shifters and hope for a good outcome. Except for a few cases, shifters stuck together.
If they only knew that so many of their own kind were hiding an ugly truth, maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to trust.
Kaden sighed. The SDS was useless, and he was going to have to find another way to find Ethan, Ty and the woman Ty was with. He was going to have to get creative.
He smiled when the perfect plan popped into his head, and he pulled over in an empty parking lot at the head of one of the easier trails. Pulling out his phone, he searched the internet until he found the perfect girl. Her hair was nearly the same shade of reddish brown as Kaden’s, and they shared the same deep brown eyes. She could pass for his daughter, and the picture was lacking any type of watermark or tag that would prevent an internet stranger like Kaden from using the picture for his own purpose. Kaden shook his head and saved the picture to his phone. He couldn’t believe how careless some people were with their family photos.
He made the photo the background of his home screen on his phone, and grabbed a water bottle from the cooler on the seat beside him. Laying the phone out and stepping out of the truck, Kaden opened the water bottle, poured it on his head and let it flow down his face and neck, saturating his shirt front and back in a way that looked like he’d been sweating. There was dirt on the edge of the parking lot. Quickly, he dragged his feet in the fine dirt, covering himself with a thin layer of dust that clung to his shoes and pants. He grabbed a hat and shoved it on his head, then got back in the car and headed straight for the ranger’s station. He wasn’t going to waste time doing this the hard way. Ethan and Ty were on this mountain, and Kaden was going to find them and make them pay.
Like any other park, there were several small ranger shacks for people to get maps and pay for camping and other activities. Kaden bypassed those, going straight to the main ranger’s station. When he got to the parking lot, he floored it instead of slowing down, pulling into a space right in front and parking haphazardly. He jumped out and slammed the door, running straight for the front doors with his eyes wild, cell phone in hand, the water he’d poured on himself already soaked into the fabric and forming a damp stain.
Everyone looked up when he ran into the room, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mother pull her young child closer and scurry out of the building. Good. He must look half crazed, and that’s what he wanted.
“My baby,” he yelled in the direction of the rangers. “You have to find my baby. I can’t find her.”
He was holding the cell phone up like a beacon, the picture of her displayed on his home screen.
“I looked everywhere. She’s just gone,” he added, then sat down hard in a chair and made a big show of mumbling to himself.
It worked like a charm, and within seconds, people were gathered around him and the ranger had to push his way through. A large hand touched his arm, and he looked up to see a frightened ranger looking at him.
“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t have my cell phone with me. I left it in the car. I just wanted to focus on her, you know?”
“I understand. Can you give me a ballpark? Was it an hour ago? Two hours?”
“At least two. I looked for her for a long time and got turned around. It took me a lifetime to find the truck and get here. Maybe it was three. Oh God, help me find my baby.”
“Take a deep breath and stay calm,” the ranger said. “Children go missing on hikes more than people realize. Everything is going to be fine.”
Kaden heard a gasp at this revelation, and quick footsteps, but he didn’t look up. He would lay money that the woman who had pulled her child close had just left, deciding on a different afternoon activity for her precious child.
Too bad children could disappear from your home, too. The woman was protecting her child from the wrong danger, but Kaden didn’t have time to educate her.
Kaden took a few deep breaths.
I deserve an Oscar, he thought, but he kept his stricken father face on.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I’m calm.”
“Okay,” the ranger said, pulling out a small handbook and flipping to the page that listed questions to ask if a child went missing. “Do you know where you were when she went missing?”
“No,” Kaden said, letting his fake panic start to rise again, then making a show of pushing it down. “No, I don’t know where we were. This is the first time we’ve ever hiked, and I thought that it would be a simple, well-marked trail.”
“They are marked, but there are hundreds of thousands of acres to maintain, and we can’t keep them all cut back. Every trailhead has a sign with the name. Do you remember the name?”
“Sugarloaf?” Kaden said, already knowing that the Sourdough Trail had claimed a life the year before and was rarely hiked. “I can’t remember, and that doesn’t sound right. It was something to do with food. I remember Katie though it was so funny. She’s only eight, but she reads at a sixth grade level.”
“Sourdough?” the ranger asked.
“Yes. That’s it!”
“The Sourdough trail is a very treacherous trail,” the ranger said.
“We noticed that when we got out a few miles, but then we found this other trail, and it was a lot easier.”
“Another trail?”
“How is this helping Katie?” Kaden snapped.
“We need to know where to start, but that’s going to take some time. I can’t just have any search team on that trail. We’ll need to call the more experienced hikers, and that-”
“No. Katie can’t wait,” Kaden said, his panic at delaying to wait for experienced hikers real. “Katie is a Type I diabetic, she doesn’t have her pen with her and she’s already missed a meal by an hour. She won’t live long without food and insulin.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. You’re right, we can’t wait.”
The ranger stood and motioned to Kaden to follow him. Kaden did as the man asked, following him into the office and waiting until the man closed the door.
“I don’t want anyone to overhear us,” the ranger said. “When parents lose a kid out here, they expect a full-scale search immediately. But the truth is, we usually find them within an hour with hikers working a grid pattern.”
“Katie might not have an hour.”
The ranger held out his hand.
“The Sourdough Trail wouldn’t fall into this one hour window anyway. It’s dangerous, and it’s a long trail with plenty of cliffs and embankments to fall over.”
“Oh God,” Kaden said, putting his hands over his mouth.
“That’s not to say that this is what happened. But when children go missing on such a treacherous trail and have a medical condition, we start with the chopper.”
“Thank you,” Kaden said, his excitement almost bursting out of him.
That was way too easy.
“Now, I have a few more questions so we can figure out where to start. How long were you hiking before you took a side trail?”
“Thirty minutes?”
“Was the trail wide or narrow? Which direction?”
“I don’t know the direction. I’m so sorry. I should have never brought her out here.”
“It’s alright. We don’t start our lives being seasoned outdoorsmen. That comes with time and practice. This could happen to anyone.”
“It was wide. At first. It didn’t get narrow until we’d gone a few miles.”
“Are you sure it was miles?”
“It felt like miles.”
The questioning continued, with Kaden giving the vaguest answer he could to each one.
“All right, Kaden,” the ranger said finally. “Let’s get up in the air. Maybe you can point out some landmarks and help us find her a little faster.”
“Thank you,” Kaden said.
“No problem,” the ranger said. “We’re here to help. We’ll find her. You just have to be patient.”
“I’m trying,” Kaden said. “But when it’s your baby out there-”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
The ranger led Kaden out a back door and to a small chopper that had two seats in the front and a small open area in the back. The ranger handed Kaden a headset, then put on his own and checked their connection.
“We’re short-staffed so I don’t have anyone to work the winch to pull her out of wherever she is. But once we find her, we can set down close and go get her. Or if there’s nowhere to set down, I can radio her location back and send a rescue crew.”
“I appreciate this more than you know,” Kaden said, and that wasn’t a lie.
Kaden did appreciate the man. He would never be able to cover this entire forest on foot or in his truck, and he was running out of time.
The ranger powered up the chopper, and Kaden made it clear that he was nervous going up into the air. On the inside, he felt smug and vindicated. He wasn’t afraid of flying, but he had to play the part of the frightened dad that loved his child so much that he would set aside his fears to save her. He couldn’t let the appearances down for even an instant, so he grabbed the door handle and held on tight until his knuckles went white.
The ranger patted his leg and smiled at him.
“I’m Jack, by the way,” the man said. “I’ll take off easy since it’s obviously your first time.”
“Thank you,” Kaden said. “I hate to seem like a coward, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in the passenger seat of a chopper.”
That was true, he thought. He had piloted many choppers in his life, but he’d never been a copilot. It was going to be an interesting experience, no doubt.
The ranger turned the engine on and went through the checklist before he finally grabbed the throttle and eased it into the sky. Kaden almost laughed at how painstakingly slow the man was going, but he held it in. Jack was one hell of a guy, and if Kaden was actually a dad looking for his child in the woods, he would be grateful to have Jack.
He didn’t know what he was going to do about Jack. Hopefully, Kaden would find the dragon stronghold in this forest, and he could convince Jack to set the chopper down close enough for Kaden to go in.
If not, he would find a way. He always did.
They were off the ground now, and the chopper was headed in the direction of the trail that Kaden had said Katie went missing from. He wondered briefly what the nameless child on the internet was actually called, but dismissed the thought as quickly as it’d popped up. Her picture had served its purpose, and that’s what mattered.
As the chopper sailed into the sky and the ranger began the tedious grid search starting from the trail head that Kaden had claimed he’d been on with his daughter when they’d gotten lost and the child had wandered off, Kaden hid a smile. This was going better than he’d planned, and he knew that by nightfall, he would have the dragon and the answers he needed.