I take a deep breath, pull back a pine bough, and …
The clearing is empty.
I pause. Then I step through and look around. Anders walks in behind me.
“Wrong place?” he says.
“I … No, I’m sure it’s not. Brady and I came down this path. Eric held that bough back for me as we left. It’s broken, see?” I point to where the branch hangs, base cracked, needles already brittle.
I turn around. “I had Brady. I stood right here.” I walk over, the memories rushing back. “I heard a voice behind me, and I turned. Eric was standing there. Val had led him in at gunpoint. She mocked him. She’d lain on the path, and he’d rushed to help, never thinking to draw his gun, never thinking it was a trap.”
“He saw her hurt, and he ran to help.”
I nod. “She mocked him for it. For being a decent person.”
“Bitch.”
I nod. I’m sorry, Val. I’m sorry that you had a shitty life. I’m sorry it broke something in you. I’m sorry you grew up cold and empty. But I’m not sorry I shot you. I had to. There was nothing good in you, and I could not trust you to let him go.
I walk around the small clearing, checking each spot before I put my foot down. Anders stays where he i
s, awaiting orders. Yes, Dalton sometimes not-too-subtly pokes him for being a “good soldier,” but that also means Anders is a good cop. Dalton and I have no problem taking charge. We don’t need our deputy fighting for the reins. Right now, I don’t want Anders poking about, trying to find clues and prove he’s a detective. He’s not. So he’ll stay out of the way, and the moment I need him, all I have to do is ask.
“The only predator that’ll drag off prey whole is a cougar,” I say. “And our forest isn’t exactly teeming with those.”
We’re north of their traditional territory. There’s been one female, and she’s a man-eater. She’s also had cubs up here. I had to kill one a few weeks ago. Another death to weigh on my conscience, one I’d rather have avoided.
“I can see a cougar dragging off Val,” I say, “but Brady wasn’t a small guy. He’d outweigh the cat. Even if she managed to take one body and cache it, why come back for the second?”
Anders says nothing. He knows I don’t expect a response. I’m just thinking aloud. If he disagrees, he’ll speak up. He doesn’t.
“Any other predator would only take pieces,” I say. “Maybe they could eventually cart off the scavenged remains but…”
I don’t see signs of that. I find blood. I find trampled undergrowth. I find exactly what I’d expect to remain after we took the bodies.
“Someone cleared the scene,” I say.
“Petra?” he asks.
“Maybe. At this point, we have no shortage of council spies who could have gotten the order to move the bodies. Petra, Phil, Mathias…”
“Me.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Yeah, I know. But I need to address it, right?”
This is why Anders got into Rockton despite his violent past. He’s here to spy on Dalton and report back to the council. They’d told him that Dalton was violent himself—and corrupt—so Anders had been fine with the task … until he realized the council was full of shit. He still plays spy. He just gives them small indiscretions that can never be used against Dalton. We know that’s the best way to play it, even if I’m pretty sure by now the council realizes where Will Anders’s loyalties lie.
“I didn’t clear the scene,” he says. “They never ask me to do anything like that.”
“Someone has, and I doubt they did it as a favor. I came here to see if the bullet that killed Brady matched the one that killed Garcia. Now I can’t.”
“Petra’s your most likely suspect for cleanup, too,” he says. “I can’t see Phil or Mathias dragging around dead bodies.”
“Hmm.”
“How many shots did Petra fire?” he asks.