The Hunt (13 page)

When most of the sheriff’s people started down the old logging path, Ryan stood and brushed the dirt from his worn jeans. He had to be getting back, anyway. Because he’d left Ranger in the stable, it’d take him an hour to get home and he didn’t want his mom to worry. She didn’t ask a lot of questions, but she always knew if he was lying.

Ryan didn’t lie, really. But sometimes, he didn’t want to tell the truth. Avoiding conversations was the best way to handle his mom.

He followed the narrow springtime creek down the ridge, toward the wider path that led to the boundary of their ranch. He spotted hoofprints and frowned. They looked fresh, but he hadn’t noticed any of the searchers coming this high up the ridge. Whoever it was, though, needed to reshoe his poor horse. The right hind hoof had lost a couple of nails, and the loose rocks and dirt would be getting under the shoe and embedding in the horse’s hooves.

Lost in thought, he almost missed it.

The sun reflected off something in his path and he stopped to bend down and examine it.

At first he thought two snake eyes were glaring at him, ready to strike, and he teetered back onto his heels. He regained his balance and looked more carefully at the object.

It wasn’t a snake, of course. The two eyes were small, dark gems. Deep green, like the pine trees at dusk. The gems were embedded in a simple silver belt buckle carved to look like a bird. Like an eagle. The gems were its eyes.

He reached out and picked it up, surprised when a piece of leather came with it, still attached to the buckle. Examining the end, it was obviously frayed and probably broke off when a hunter or hiker stopped on this high ledge to take a pee.

Ryan hesitated as he stared at the buckle. Should he take it to that FBI agent? Maybe it would be important to the investigation. His heart beat with excitement.
The Untouchables
was his favorite movie, and he never missed
Without a Trace,
the show about finding missing people.

But his excitement turned to worry. His father had told him specifically not to bother the sheriff. And he’d lied to his mother about where he was going. She would flip. She wouldn’t yell or spank him or anything, but she had this
look,
and the look was scarier than any punishment.

He shivered and pulled his jacket closer, though the day was warming nicely. Stuffing the buckle into his pocket, he continued down the narrow trail toward home. If he saw Sheriff Thomas again, he’d show him the buckle.

It was probably nothing, anyway. Just some guy pissing in the woods.

CHAPTER

10

Every muscle in her body tense, Miranda followed Quinn, Nick, and the others down the path to the clearing they’d discovered the day before.

Nick had called in Pete Knudson, a ranger she’d often worked with on searches. If they found a bullet lodged in a tree, he would either cut out a segment or fell the whole tree in order to collect the bullet for evidence.

The tension gave her a mind-numbing headache she attempted to tame by swallowing three aspirin with a swig of water from her canteen. She could easily blame her pain on lack of sleep, a sparse appetite, or the stress of the Butcher claiming another victim. But she held Quinn responsible for the bulk of her discomfort. His presence unnerved her in ways she hadn’t imagined.

For years, she’d lied to herself that his betrayal at the Academy hadn’t mattered. Though hurt at the time, she reasoned, she’d come back to Bozeman and made a good life for herself. After four years on the Search and Rescue team, she accepted the lead position when her boss, Manny Rodriguez, took a job down in
Colorado
. Her team, the two paid staff members and the more than two dozen volunteers she could call upon, trusted her.

“Miranda?” Nick said, falling into step with her, his ruggedly handsome face tight with concern.

“I’m fine,” she answered the unspoken question.

“Yeah.” He glanced at Quinn, who led the group.

“What happened at the autopsy?” She tried to sound professional but was unable to keep her voice from cracking.

“I left before Doc Abrams was done, but it’s the same guy.”

“We knew that.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Quinn,” Nick said, his voice low so no one could overhear.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you yesterday. You didn’t deserve it after seeing Rebecca like that.”

Nick still tried to shield her from reliving her seven days in hell. He didn’t understand that while she couldn’t escape the past, helping to find these girls gave her a measure of peace. She was doing everything she could to find the Butcher. And someday, he would be stopped.

She hoped to be there when he was captured. She had to be, as if helping to catch him would release her from daily remembrance and nightly terrors.

Nick let out a long breath. “Truce?”

“I can never stay mad at you for long.” She smiled at him. She loved Nick. Just not the way he wanted.

She had tried. For three years she struggled to give him her heart. She
wanted
to fully love him. But the more she tried, the harder it became. Friendship, loyalty, strength—these were things she freely gave and received from her ex-lover. But her heart was still broken, and Nick couldn’t put together the pieces.

She glanced up at the only man who could.

Quinn felt like he was being watched. He paused at the edge of the clearing to collect his bearings, looked behind him, and caught Miranda’s eye. For a split second, he thought he saw something other than anger on her long, narrow face. For a moment he saw a flicker of desire in her dark eyes, a physical need and emotional longing he vividly remembered from their past. A bolt of lightning would have jolted him less. He blinked.

Whatever he thought he saw was gone. Miranda’s lips were locked in a rigid line, her face blank, her eyes narrowed and filled with suspicion and caution.

He turned back to the crew, eased his backpack off his shoulders, and removed his jacket. He took a long swig of cold water from his canteen to quench the heat that had risen inside him at the thought that Miranda still had feelings for him.

While the temperature had been in the midforties this morning, the sun now spread a pleasant blanket of warmth on the new growth field. Under normal circumstances, the hike they’d just made would have been invigorating and enjoyable.

Nick’s deputies looked at him with a mixture of arrogance and wariness. Taking directions from a Fed was not in their rule book, but damn if he was going to let inter-agency hostility interfere with this investigation.

Quinn cleared his throat and said, “You’ll see the orange flags where Ms. Moore and I discovered evidence yesterday. I want to find the bullets fired, if possible.” He turned to address Deputy Booker. “Sheriff Thomas says you’re the best shot in the department.”

The deputy stood straighter. “I won the county competition, sir, but—”

Nick cut him off. “Deputy, go down to that flag over there,” he gestured to the spot a hundred feet down-slope, “and position yourself as if you were shooting a high-caliber rifle at a moving target the size of a five-foot-two-inch woman entering the path there.” He pointed to another flag about twenty feet away.

Booker swallowed, adjusted his hat, and glanced uneasily at Miranda. “Uh, yes, Sheriff,” he said.

“Then you tell Ranger Knudson the trajectory and find the damn bullets.” Nick turned to the rest of his men. “Fan out. You know what you’re looking for. And if you find anything at all, call out for Agent Peterson or myself. No chatter on the com, just be thorough. The rain really hurt our chances at preserving evidence, but we might get lucky.”

God knows we could use a little luck right now.
Quinn glanced at the clear sky.

He walked to where Nick and Miranda stood at the opening of the path. “. . . the cabin,” Miranda was saying as he approached.

“What?”

She barely acknowledged him. “I’m going over there to find the cabin.” She gestured down the slope, past the flags where Deputy Booker worked with the ranger.

“Not without me,” Quinn said. What was she thinking?

“Nick and I can handle it just fine.”

“I’m staying here,” Nick said. “I need to be accessible.”

Quinn watched Miranda struggle with the prospect of being partnered with him again. Tough shit. She wasn’t going out there by herself. And if she was right about the cabin being near the clearing, he had to go with her. For safety, as well as to gather evidence.

“Fine.” Her voice was clipped and weary. She probably hadn’t gotten much more sleep last night than any other night since Rebecca went missing.

Quinn sure as hell hadn’t slept worth a damn, thinking about what Miranda had been doing for the past ten years. How her life had changed—and not changed. Wondering if he had done the right thing at the Academy. No, he had been right. But he’d done it all wrong.

He couldn’t figure out how to fix it then, and now the divide between them seemed so much deeper. He’d given her time and space; he’d attempted to contact her, tried to talk to her, to explain. Hoped she’d come to realize leaving the Academy was the right thing to do at that time. But she never returned his calls and marked his one letter
return to sender,
unopened.

That hurt.

He pushed the memories aside and pulled out his canteen again. He took a long drink, then said, “Let’s go.”

They walked in silence, searching the ground for evidence. The occasional freshly broken branch or unusually deep impression proved they were on the right path. At one spot Rebecca had obviously fallen; a clump of long blonde hair was snagged on a bush, torn from her scalp. Quinn silently placed a bright orange flag at the spot, photographed it, and cut the branch, putting it with the hair into an evidence bag.

When he stood after completing his task, he noticed that Miranda had stopped as well and was staring at him. No, not at him. Beyond him. Seeing something that wasn’t there.

His heart beat faster. It tore him up inside watching Miranda put herself in these situations where she relived what had happened to her; her anguish was tangible. He remembered Miranda finding Sharon’s body, her grief, her pain undeniable. She was strong, but not indestructible.

He wanted to reach out, touch her and hold her.

“Miranda,” he said softly. “Are you okay?”

She snapped her attention to him. “I’m thinking,” she said. “She fell here. Why? No limbs to trip over. She’s in the clear. He shot at her.”

“You don’t know—” he stopped. Could be. He followed her line of sight as she turned in a slow circle. “Maybe,” he continued, “but where’s the evidence?”

“She changed direction here,” she mumbled, as if talking to herself.

“What?”

“She wouldn’t have gone in a straight line after he shot at her, she would have detoured, turned, done
something
different to throw him off her trail.” Miranda started walking in an arc, back and forth, until she stopped, fifty feet away and downslope, at a forty-degree angle from the path they had been traveling.

“Here!” Her voice was tinged with excitement.

Quinn met her down the slope. Two more casings. He flagged the spot. “We need to go down,” she said, pointing down a precipitous slope.

“It’s steep,” Quinn said.

“Yeah, but this is the way they came.”

She was right. A sapling had been stepped on and broken twenty feet in the direction Miranda led him. The edge of the clearing ended abruptly another fifty feet away. He stopped Miranda when they reached the perimeter.

Twelve years ago they had walked a similar slope together to the shack where Miranda and Sharon had been imprisoned. Quinn would never forget Miranda’s courage that day.

“Are you ready for what we might find?” he asked quietly.

“Of course,” she said. But when he caught her eye it wasn’t anger brightening her dark eyes, it was memories.

Was she thinking of that day, too?

He reached out, wanting to connect with her, but she shook her head almost imperceptibly. He dropped his arm, angry with himself for trying, but wishing Miranda didn’t insist on carrying the weight of Rebecca’s pain solely on her shoulders.

They walked along the edge of the clearing, then stopped a moment later when something out of place caught his eye.

“Here,” he said. He squatted to examine trampled undergrowth.

“Let’s go.”

He pulled out his firearm and nodded when Miranda did the same, holding a smaller nine-millimeter Beretta. He’d never forget her coming in third in the Academy shoot-off. Third was damn good in a class of one hundred.

But she’d been upset with herself that she hadn’t come in first. Competition was tough at the Academy, but no one put more pressure on Miranda than she did.

Miranda breathed deeply, gathering every ounce of strength as she inched deeper into the descending woods. The forest became thicker when they left the sun-dotted clearing, the air cool and damp. The chill kept her adrenaline high, her eyes discreetly scanning for any sign of movement.

For the Butcher.

Scurrying animals, the call of birds, and their boots squishing the soft, wet, leaf-covered ground were the only sounds as they tracked farther into the woods. The air was fresh, clean from the rain, renewing the earth. But at the same time, an underlying, unpleasant scent of rotting mulch assaulted her. Reminding her of falling, of being filthy and cold and in pain.

Quinn paused to examine the path. This mountainside had a gentle slope, far from the higher, rocky terrain on which Miranda had escaped. Rebecca had been kept relatively close to civilization, only five miles as the crow flies.

Miranda closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. When she opened them a minute later, everything appeared brighter, more vibrant. The greens were greener, the browns browner. Shimmering sunbeams cut through the trees, flooding the ground with streaks of light. Miranda loved days like this best, after a cleansing spring rain, when everything was fresh and new, and her guilt at being alive faded.

A sparkle caught her eye.

A slight reflection off a rusting tin roof. She stared, so focused on her discovery that the sounds of the forest faded and she heard nothing but her own beating heart. The worn, sagging wood that held up the flimsy roof didn’t look like it could have withstood the recent storm, but looks were deceptive. The cabin had survived harsh
Montana
winters, pounded by hard rain, half buried in cold snow.

“Miranda.”

Her attention snapped to Quinn and she pointed. “There.”

He looked, his expression unreadable. Pulling his walkie-talkie out of his belt, he depressed the mic. “Sheriff, we found a shack. About—” he glanced up the steep slope—“six hundred yards from the edge of the clearing. An orange flag marks where we left the field.”

Static crackled. “Roger that,” Nick’s distorted voice broke the quiet. “I’ll send a team.”

“Roger. Out.” Quinn pocketed the com and glanced at Miranda.

She tilted her chin up. She could do this. “Let’s go.”

Miranda stayed behind Quinn, close enough that she wouldn’t miss anything. They both pulled on latex gloves to preserve what was most likely a crime scene.

Where Rebecca had been raped and tortured.

Miranda briefly squeezed her eyes shut, then blinked, surprised to feel tears forming.
Not now,
she admonished, her inner voice severe.

Quinn motioned for Miranda to stand back as he walked the perimeter of the shack. She didn’t argue.

The small cabin had probably been here for decades. The wood was rough, worn, almost black. It should have been lying in a heap, rotting under layers of decaying leaves, covered in moss. Though it didn’t look sturdy, the tiny building had been well constructed. An old, abandoned cabin, like so many others.

Until the Butcher found it.

With one hand Miranda took out her topographical map and viewed their approximate location and the path Rebecca had forged.

Her gut clenched at the visual representation of the co-ed’s journey. Not because her escape ended in death, but because if she had walked four miles in the opposite direction, she would have made it to a dirt road that led to a small reservoir. She still might have died, but the open road would have given her a better chance.

Run. You have two minutes. Run!

The voice came out of nowhere and Miranda’s grip tightened on her gun as she looked around, tamping down her panic while adrenaline pumped through her system.

No one. No one was there. His damn voice, low, gravelly, evil, plagued her. Damn him.

Rebecca hadn’t had any chance in choosing her initial path, any more than she and Sharon had. They ran
away.
Away from their captor. If he stood there, right outside the narrow door, pointing a rifle at her heart, Rebecca would have run up the slope.
Away.

“Miranda?”

Quinn’s voice was soft but firm, and she was once again reminded that he had been her rock during her darkest days after the attack. She remembered the young, up-and-coming FBI agent she’d fallen in love with, a man excited about his life, his job, fighting the bad guys. And through it all, he’d steadied her, given her the strength she sorely needed.

She forced a blank expression on her face—she had a lot of experience perfecting bland interest—and turned to him.

Quinn had grown up. He was nearly forty. He no longer fidgeted, as if he’d forced himself to develop control of his one admittedly bad habit. He stood tall and erect, still confident, intelligent, but wiser. More seasoned.

He wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with any more than she was the same woman he’d claimed to love. He’d grown into the man she’d imagined he could be.

But he was still the man who’d betrayed her.

“I’m ready,” she said quietly.

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Instead, he nodded and closed the distance to the shack. Relieved, she swallowed a sigh and followed.

Fresh scratches on the weathered wood indicated a metal lock had been recently attached. Quinn had his gun poised. So did she.

She would never be caught off guard again.

Quinn tried the door and it opened. Unlocked. Cautious, he swung it slowly in, standing to the side in case the perpetrator was inside.

It was empty. Miranda relaxed marginally. While she wanted to catch this guy in the worst way, she feared seeing his face. Was it someone she knew? Someone she’d gone to school with? A regular at the Lodge? A local? A stranger?

Would she recognize him? Was he someone she saw every day?

That thought haunted her. The Butcher could be someone she considered a friend.

“Miranda?”

“What?” she snapped, regretting her tone. She didn’t need to take her trepidation out on Quinn. It was her personal demons she fought.

Whatever he was going to say, he didn’t. He began a careful search of the premises.