Finding Answers Read online

  Yukon headed into the dense foliage of the nearby forest and I followed. I glanced at Wyatt, who was perhaps fifty yards to my right, and then Landon, who was fifty yards to my left. They nodded, letting me know they were able to follow despite the rough terrain. I glanced at Yukon, who sniffed the air and headed deeper into the forest. While we searched, I kept an eye on him, but basically let him do his thing. After several minutes, he alerted, showing interest where a fallen tree blocked the path. “Did you find something?” Yukon sniffed the log and wagged his tail. “Good boy.” I looked around and called Vinnie’s name. Nothing. I stood perfectly still and closed my eyes. I waited for a vision to appear. I could sense the boy, and, as before, he didn’t seem frightened. But there was something. Something dark. Something menacing. I tried to hone in on it, but I couldn’t get a clear reading, so I tied a flag to a tree branch to mark the spot, then took the pajama top out of the bag. I once again held it under Yukon’s nose. “This is Vinnie. Find Vinnie.” Yukon set off down the trail. I went after him.

  I knew once Vinnie realized he was lost, fear would overcome him. That would help me to connect with him, yet I hoped for his sake we’d find him before he became terrified. The forest was thick with evergreens and underbrush. Yukon had left the trail after we’d come across the fallen log, which meant Vinnie most likely had left the trail as well. The area was home to a variety of wildlife, including grizzlies, wolves, and cougars. It was dangerous for anyone to veer off the established trail, but it was especially dangerous for little boys who had no idea that danger lurked in the dark places beyond the clearing.

  It wasn’t easy to both follow Yukon and focus on Vinnie. If we didn’t either hear from Jake or find him in the next few minutes, I’d call to the dog to take a break.

  As we approached the lake, Yukon alerted again. As before, I stopped and looked around. I called for Vinnie and then listened. I closed my eyes and tried desperately to make a connection. This time, the vision was a bit clearer. Vinnie had stopped what he was doing to look around. He must have realized he was lost and, as predicted, curiosity had been replaced by fear.

  “Harmony to Jake,” I said through the radio.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I have a vision. He’s near Glacier Lake.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  I closed my eyes and focused again. He was terrified. Fear and panic fueled the boy as he ran through the underbrush. I cringed as I saw him trip over something. Pain. Now the fear was mingled with pain. He got up and tried to run, but the pain was too much. When he fell again, he simply sat on the ground, clutching his ankle and screaming for help. I took a deep breath. There was something else. Darkness. Danger.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Yukon. “Find Vinnie. We need to find Vinnie.” I gave him another sniff of the pajama top and waited. He sniffed the air, then took off at a run. I tried unsuccessfully to keep up with him and was about to call him back when I heard three sharp barks.

  “Vinnie,” I called as loudly as I could.

  “Here. I’m here.”

  I headed down the trail as quickly as I could manage. Sprawled on the ground was a terrified little boy with his arms around Yukon, who gently licked the tears from his face.

  “Good boy,” I said to Yukon. I knelt next to Vinnie. “Are you hurt?”

  “My ankle. I hurt my ankle.”

  I radioed Jake to let him know I’d found Vinnie. He would need to be carried back to the cabin, so I waited for Wyatt and Landon to catch up.

  “Other than your ankle, do you hurt anywhere?” I asked.

  The boy shook his head. He was smiling now that Yukon had settled in next to him. “I was lost. I was on the trail, but then I looked around and nothing looked right. I was so scared. I ran as fast as I could. I wanted to get home, but then I fell.”

  I looked back the way Vinnie had traveled. “Did you trip on a log?”

  Vinny wiped the tears from his dirt-streaked face. “I don’t know. I didn’t see.”

  “Help is on the way. We’ll get you home in no time. You’re safe now.”

  “Mama will be mad. I’m not supposed to leave the yard.” The boy began to sob. “I’m going to get a time-out. I hate time-outs.”

  I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and used it to wipe away the boy’s tears. “I can’t say for certain, but I think your mom will be so happy to see you that she might forget to be mad. Still, the rule about staying in the yard is a good one. You could have been in real trouble if Yukon hadn’t found you. There are all sorts of things out here that can hurt a little boy.”

  “Like bears?”

  I nodded. “Yes, like bears. And cougars, and wolves, and all sorts of animals that might be lurking nearby, waiting to attack.”

  The boy began to sob hysterically. Yukon began to lick his face frantically to offer comfort. Okay, so maybe I oversold the danger angle. I didn’t mean to traumatize the kid; I just wanted him to understand the potential consequences of his actions.

  “What’s wrong?” Wyatt said, arriving in the nick of time as far as I was concerned. He bent down and picked the boy up in his arms. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” The boy began to hiccup from hysteria.

  “So why all the tears?”

  “I was bad and a bear might have ate me.”

  Wyatt looked at me and raised a brow.

  I lifted a shoulder. “It’s not like I have experience talking to kids. Dogs are more my thing.”

  Wyatt winked at me. “You did good. Yukon too. Let’s get this scared little boy back to his parents.”

  “Wait,” I said as Wyatt turned to head back to the cabin. I stood up and slowly scanned the forest as Landon arrived. I could still sense the darkness I’d picked up before. I couldn’t identify what I was feeling, but an iciness settled into my chest. I felt pain and hopelessness and death. “There’s someone else. Someone near death.” I closed my eyes and concentrated. The image of a man’s face filtered through my mind, but it was blurry and out of focus. It was as if the man was passing in and out of consciousness, letting me in and then pushing me out. “Oh God,” I whispered.

  “What is it?” Wyatt asked. “What do you see?”

  I glanced at Vinnie, who looked scared to death. I tried to level my voice despite the intense grief that had gripped my body. “Go ahead and take Vinnie back to his parents. Landon, Yukon, and I will try to find the source of my vision.”

  Wyatt looked uncertain, but he didn’t argue. He nodded and began walking back toward the cabin. When he was out of sight, I closed my eyes and tried to see the face of the man again. Landon stood quietly next to me, holding Yukon’s lead. He took my hand in his free one and held on tight. He’d been with me long enough to know how draining this was for me.

  “Anything?” Landon asked in a voice so soft I barely heard him.

  “It isn’t focused. It’s a man. I can’t see his face. He’s hurt. His image is fading in and out. He doesn’t want to let me in.” My breath caught as I connected just in time to experience what I was sure was the man’s last breath. I shook my head, then opened my eyes. “He’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  I looked through the dense forest. “I don’t know. I wasn’t linked for more than a few seconds. He was resisting, but I managed to connect right at the end, when his only choice was to surrender. Now that he’s dead I can’t sense him.” I looked around at the thick trees. “We’ll need help to find him.” I radioed Jake and informed him of the situation, then Landon, Yukon, and I began to search for the man I had seen in my mind.

  Jake’s dog, Sitka, had been trained to find missing people as well as those who had already passed on. Yukon was training to follow a specific scent, as we’d just done with Vinnie, but he had no training as a cadaver dog. Our best bet at finding the man whose death I had just experienced was to force myself to remember everything about that moment. Everything I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt.

  “The man was lying on the ground,
” I said in a soft voice. “He was cold. Weak. Wet, perhaps. He was partially covered, but the purpose of the cover wasn’t to provide warmth but camouflage.”

  “You said wet? Is he near the water?” Landon asked.

  “Maybe. It’s dark. The trees in the area are dense.” I opened my eyes and scanned the area. I could remember the pain, the fear, the urge to fight, and then the peace that came with the decision to give in and float away from the world toward whatever came next.

  “Are you okay?” Landon asked.

  I nodded.

  Landon used his thumb to wipe a tear from my cheek. “I know it’s painful.”

  “It’s okay. I’m okay,” I assured him. There are times I want to run from the images and feelings that threaten to overwhelm and destroy me, but I know embracing the pain and the fear is my only path to the answers I seek. “In the last moment of his life, there was fear, anger, and pain, but something else as well.” I focused harder. “Acceptance and,” I tried to remember, “penance. He was sorry for something he did and with his last breath was seeking forgiveness.”

  “From whom?” Landon asked.

  I opened my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe God. Maybe himself. Maybe someone he’d wronged.” I continued to scan the forest, looking for something familiar. The only thing I could see in my vision was trees, which didn’t help me a bit because there were trees everywhere.

  “Do you remember anything from your vision that will help us know where to look?” Landon asked again. “Anything at all that will help us narrow things down?”

  “There were trees and it was dark.” I took a breath and forced my mind to calm and focus. “The ground was gently sloped and covered with wild grass.” I bit my lip as I tried to get a feeling for direction. “There.” I pointed into the distance.

  Landon set off in the direction I indicated with Yukon at his side. I followed closely behind. Shortly after we’d entered the densest part of the forest, Yukon began to whine.

  “Do you have the scent?”

  Yukon barked three times.

  “Let him go,” I instructed Landon. “He may not be trained to retrieve those who have passed on, but he’s a dog and better able to pick up scent than either of us.”

  It didn’t take long. No longer, really, than it took to take a breath for Yukon to find the body. I felt my knees weaken and my stomach lurch. “It’s Pastor Brown.” I gasped as Landon bent down and took a closer look at the man who was partially covered by the thick underbrush.

  “If only we’d been a few minutes sooner,” I said to Landon as he pulled away the vines and ferns that someone seemed to have arranged from the man’s body. He knelt and felt for a pulse, then shook his head. The pastor’s throat had been slit and he had a piece of duct tape across his mouth.

  “He couldn’t even scream,” I said, as if that somehow made it worse.

  “I wonder how he got here,” Landon said.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Yukon began to growl from deep in his chest as I scanned our surroundings. I didn’t see or hear anything, but my intuition told me that Pastor Brown’s killer was still nearby. “Someone brought him here. Someone who’s still here.”

  Landon stood up and looked around. “I don’t see anything. Are you sure you sense a second person?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I do sense someone. I don’t feel as if he’s a threat to us, though. I’ll call Jake to have him fill Officer Houston in on what we’ve found.”

  I made the call, then returned my attention to Landon, who was still standing over the body. We both knew not to touch him because we could destroy evidence, but in that moment not touching was very difficult indeed. I’d felt the man’s life leave his body. There was a voice in my head that demanded I do something better than simply stand there.

  “It looks like he’d been swimming,” I said. He was soaking wet, but he was fully dressed, and it was much too cold to have gone swimming in a lake whose source was melting snow, so the idea was probably ridiculous.

  “I doubt that, but he is wet,” Landon replied. He nodded to the pastor’s bloody wrists without touching him. “It looks like he was bound at some point, though there are no signs of any ropes here.”

  “Maybe he was tossed from a boat and swam to shore,” I suggested. “Once he made it to land, the cold-blooded killer who dumped him in the water slit his throat and left him to die.”

  “Maybe,” Landon replied. “Someone tried to camouflage the body. I’m guessing he’d passed out before he died. Maybe he was tossed from a boat and swam to shore before he was killed.” Landon paused and turned his head. “It sounds like the others are almost here.”

  Chapter 2

  After Officer Houston and his men showed up to take possession of the body, the search-and-rescue team headed toward Neverland, the bar Jake owned, for a debriefing. The team consisted of eight full-time members and a handful of on-call members, in addition to Sitka and Yukon. The full-time members, in addition to myself, included Jake, who had been at the game the longest and was considered by all to be the leader of the pack; Sarge, retired military and Jake’s full-time cook at Neverland; Austin, the newest member of the team and a local firefighter; Landon, a computer genius and the uncontested brains of the team; Wyatt, an eternal child, an unapologetic playboy, second in command to Jake, and a serious mountain climber and backcountry skier; Dani, an intense individual, a helicopter owner, and a backcountry hiker; and Jordan Fairchild, Jake’s current love interest and a local doctor who hadn’t been involved in today’s rescue.

  The first thing I noticed when entering Neverland was the fantastic smell coming from the kitchen. Sarge wasn’t only one of the sweetest people I’d ever met but a hell of a cook and a master at the command post.

  “What smells so good?” I asked after hanging my jacket on one of the hooks provided for that purpose.

  “Jake called to let me know the team was on the way, so I tossed some sausages, peppers, and onions on the grill. I have freshly baked rolls for sandwiches and potato salad as well.”

  “Sounds good. I’m starving.”

  “I’ll dish everything up and bring it out while you’re all getting settled,” Sarge offered.

  As soon as Landon arrived, he began to record the details of the search into the logbook we kept as a history of sorts. In addition to the name of the search victim, the team members who responded, the time, date, duration, and topographical and weather conditions of the search, facts such as the health and well-being of the victim at the time of the rescue and any other special circumstances were recorded. I knew today’s debrief would focus almost exclusively on the special circumstance of discovering the body of one of Rescue’s most prominent citizens.

  “So, what do we know?” Wyatt asked Jake once he completed the phone call he’d been involved in when we arrived and settled in with the rest of us.

  Jake began. “Pastor Brown’s body was found in the forest near Glacier Lake by Harmony and her team during a routine rescue operation. It appeared his wrists had been bound at some point, although no ropes were found at the scene, and the duct tape over his mouth appeared to have been there for quite some time. If I had to guess, his hands were bound right up to the point when he died because the wounds were raw and oozing blood. Based on the evidence found, or more precisely not found, at the scene, Officer Houston believed he was abducted elsewhere and then brought to the lake, where his throat was slit. While the crime scene guys are still considering all scenarios, it appeared he was forced into the water, or maybe he tried to escape by diving into the water. It’s unclear at this point how he got wet, although it does appear as if his throat was slit after he’d left the water.” Jake paused and took a breath. “At this point, Officer Houston doesn’t have a theory as to why Pastor Brown was abducted, or when it happened. We’re assuming he wasn’t gone long because no missing person report had been filed.”

  “He lives alone,” I said. “With the except
ion of Sundays, special events, and holidays, he has a fairly solitary job. It’s possible he was missing since after services on Sunday and no one realized it.”

  “Houston is going to interview Pastor Brown’s secretary as well as his neighbors to determine when he was taken. What we do know is that he was killed this morning. Houston said it was lucky for Vinnie that he didn’t wander down to the beach any earlier than he did. Houston estimates Vinnie missed being a witness to the murder by less than thirty minutes, and given the fact that Harmony sensed the pastor was still alive when Vinnie was found, I’d say it was even less.”

  The idea that Vinnie could have stumbled onto a situation that could very well have resulted in his own death sent a chill down my spine. I had to wonder if he had heard or seen anything. I wondered if anyone had asked him.

  “Houston is operating under the assumption that the killer took off immediately after killing Brown and most likely was gone before Vinnie arrived,” Jake continued. “The CSI team is at the site looking for footprints, evidence of a boat, and any other clues that might have been left behind.”

  “No,” I said, almost without realizing I had spoken.

  Jake looked at me. “No?”

  I lifted my eyes and studied the others sitting at the table. “No, the killer didn’t leave right away,” I said. “I felt him. When we first arrived, even before we got there, I sensed his presence. I couldn’t see his face, but I was overcome with darkness.” I looked directly at Jake. “I think he was there. Watching.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “Harmony did seem to pick up both the killer and the victim,” Landon verified.

  “I couldn’t see the man, but I could feel his thoughts,” I continued. “Not all of them. Just random things passing through his mind. He was fascinated by what he’d done, and sorry the boy was there. He thought of leaving when the boy arrived, but his need to experience grief made him stay.” I looked directly at Jake. “He killed Pastor Brown in such a manner that he would bleed out slowly. He was there in the forest watching. He took pleasure in knowing Pastor Brown’s life was slowly fading from his body.”