CHAPTER ONE
Casey
“Bigfoot,” Anders whispers at my ear. “I can’t believe we’re searching for Bigfoot. This is so cool.”
I glare at our deputy. Anders only grins back and waggles his brows.
“I’m joking,” he says, his voice still low enough for only me to hear. “I wouldn’t say that in front of anyone else. Poor kid’s been through hell. If I were him, I’d be too damn scared to go into the forest at all. Hell, sometimes I am too damn scared, and I’ve been living out here for six years.”
Looking at Will Anders, it’d be hard to believe anything could frighten him. He’s over six feet tall and built like a quarterback. An army tattoo on his biceps speaks to an early career in the military police. But, yes, despite his years in Rockton, he’s not entirely comfortable in the forest, as evidenced by the big .45 at his hip. Dalton and I carry smaller guns and accept that we aren’t likely to stop a grizzly. Anders hedges his bets in any way he can.
An hour ago, ten-year-old Max saw something on a hike. It seems to have been a grizzly. Max described a tall brown-furred creature, which is also what Gunnar saw. But Max swears when the beast looked at him, it had human eyes. So, yes, that naturally leads to jokes about Bigfoot. Jokes that I know Anders would never make in front of other residents. Jokes that we need to ensure other residents don’t start making themselves, in case Max overhears. He’d already admitted he’d been reluctant to report hearing something after a similar incident turned up nothing.
Max is a smart kid. He’s also a kid suffering from PTSD. Being smart and traumatized means he’s aware that he might be jumpy, and he doesn’t want to be the boy who cried bear. But worrying about that led to a situation where a group of hikers had been stalked by a grizzly, and the only one who noticed had second-guessed himself until it was almost too late.
“Fuck.”
I follow the curse to the guy standing off to my left. Sheriff Eric Dalton. My partner in … well, everything. Husband, colleague, best friend, co-founder of Haven’s Rock, our tiny sanctuary town in the Yukon.
The curse makes me smile. He’s been trying to cut back on profanity, particularly his affinity for every variation on that particular word. I’m mostly just amused by his efforts.
Dalton strides over with brown hairs pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
“Moose, right?” I say, half joking, half hoping.
He shakes his head. That curse told me what I needed to know. It’s grizzly fur.
“Storm was right then,” I say, patting our Newfoundland. She’s our tracking dog, or that was the excuse Dalton used for buying me my dream-breed puppy. We have trained her in tracking, though, and her reaction earlier told me we weren’t dealing with a moose. She smelled bear.
“Any prints?” Anders asks.
“Ground’s too dry. Found a couple of scuff marks, but all I can tell from them is that they’re big and they aren’t hoofprints. Got a few broken branches. Bit of trampled undergrowth. And this”—he lifts the fur—“four feet off the ground.”
“Shit.” Anders casts an anxious glance around. “That’s a problem, right? A grizzly stalking a group of six. It should know better.”
“We’re lucky Max noticed it,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s good he noticed, but I’m not sure they were in real danger. Bear was looking for an opportunity. Would it have attacked if Gunnar and Max fell behind for longer? Or was it just getting closer for a better look?” Dalton shrugs. “Hard to say. The fact it fled is a good sign.”
“It’s still a concern,” I say.
“Hell, yeah. The question is how to play it. In Rockton, I’d have leaned in hard. Possible man-eating grizzly on the loose. No one takes a single step outside town until we’ve dealt with it. Scare the shit out of people.”
“But we have children in town now, children who’ve already been traumatized.”
“Yep, and I don’t know shit about dealing with that. We’re going to need to consult with the experts.”
Copyright © 2024 by KLA Fricke Inc
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
