Allison Brennan: The Hunt

During that walk, Quinn stayed at her side. Asked her quiet, firm questions. Never saying he was sorry. Never placating her. Never telling her she should have done something different, as she had the million times she’d questioned herself in the seventy-two hours since she’d been found on the bank of the Gallatin River.

She led them right to the decrepit shack in the middle of Nowhere, Montana, six miles west of the river where she’d jumped to her freedom. She stared at the rotting, worn planks that had been thrown up, seeming too weak to support the corrugated tin roof. She’d seen the outside of the shack for only a brief moment before she and Sharon started to run. But the inside of the cabin was burned into her mind.

Miranda couldn’t go inside. She sat in the dirt and cried.

Quinn went in. The sheriff’s people gathered evidence at his direction. Sheriff Donaldson was nearing retirement and wanted to catch Sharon’s killer as his swan song, so he took all advice from the FBI agent he’d called in the day before.

Quinn then sat down on the ground next to her.

“You’re going to get your nice pants dirty” was all she could think of saying. He certainly wasn’t dressed for a mountain trek, but he didn’t seem to care that his expensive shoes were scuffed and dirty.

“I will find this guy. I promise you, he will pay for what he did to you and Sharon.”

She stared at him, searching his dark eyes for pity, revulsion, or distaste. All she saw was strength, compassion, and anger.

“I will do everything I can to help.”

But in the end, for all the internal agony Miranda endured going back to the shack, searching the woods, finding the bones of a body they strongly suspected was the Butcher’s first victim, they couldn’t catch the killer. They didn’t have any clues to direct them. Little evidence, fewer leads, no suspects.

Two months later Quinn was called back to the Seattle field office. She thought she’d never see him again, and it hurt because she really liked him.

She was wrong. Quinn returned a month later, just to see her.

That was when she really began to heal.

When Miranda was eight, her mother died of ovarian cancer. Devastated by the sudden diagnosis, short illness, and death, Bill Moore quit his high-level marketing job in Spokane and relocated with Miranda to Montana’s Gallatin Valley. He purchased a run-down lodge thirty minutes outside Bozeman on the road to West Yellowstone, near Big Sky, and lovingly, painstakingly renovated it. By the time Miranda was ten, she knew everything about stripping, sanding, and varnishing. Almost single-handedly, she had refinished the floors on the main level of the inn.

The deep canyons, breathtaking vistas, and endless sky eased the pain of a grieving family twenty-five years ago. The same environment saved Miranda after the Butcher, and again after Quantico. And now, with Rebecca’s recent murder and Sharon’s ghost weighing heavily on her mind, taking a quick detour to the Gallatin Lodge seemed necessary. She told herself she needed to stock up on provisions, but the truth was she just wanted to see her dad.

Bill Moore sat behind the registration desk filling out the ubiquitous paperwork he loathed. The enormous moose head-which Miranda named Bruce when she first saw it twenty-five years ago-was the Lodge’s mascot. It stood sentry over the desk and her father, the sight of which rarely failed to bring a smile to her lips.

Except on days like this.

Glancing up when Miranda walked in, Bill’s face fell. He looked every one of his fifty-seven years. His hair, though still abundant, was now salt-and-pepper. Wrinkles lined his ruddy complexion, and his once strong body was almost imperceptibly sunken. Miranda’s gut twisted. She was the cause of the pain she saw every day in his pale eyes. His love for her was killing him, day by day. Knowing that-and not being able to stop the direction her life took her-heaped even more guilt onto her heart.

“Daddy.” She didn’t need to say anything else.

“Randy,” he said, his voice gruff, “come here.”

He left the desk and she walked into his arms, welcoming the embrace. Her father had never been stingy with hugs. “It was him,” she whispered.

Her father’s arms held her close. She breathed in the unique combination of spicy aftershave, rich coffee beans, and pipe tobacco. He smelled like home and love and everything good in her life.

“You’re going out again.”

“I have to.” She stepped back, took a deep breath, and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

“I’ll pack some sandwiches. How many will be searching?”

“Maybe twenty, twenty-five. Nick’s calling in volunteers to pair off with his people. Training them now. I don’t have much time.”

“Go get your things. I’ll put together something for you all to eat.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

He touched her cheek, then turned toward the kitchen.

She would have given anything to turn back the clock and protect her father from what he’d endured since she came home twelve years ago broken and hollow. Sometimes, she thought her father still saw her half-drowned and naked on the riverbank. Beaten, damaged, past exhausted.

But alive.

Which was more than she could say for Rebecca. Or Sharon. Or Penny, Susan, Karen, Ellen, and Elaine. Or the nine other girls who’d disappeared without a trace during spring over the last fifteen years.

Under normal circumstances, Miranda enjoyed the peaceful walk down the winding gravel path to her private cabin. Her father had it built for her when she returned from the FBI Academy at Quantico ten years ago, announcing, “Randy, you need your own place. But I’d be mighty lonely if you moved to town.”

Bill Moore would never be alone. He was well liked and admired by everyone in Gallatin County, and his lodge did well with both the summer tourist trade and winter skiers, as well as locals coming in for dinner or Sunday brunch throughout the year. The lodge had eight suites upstairs for guests; twice as many cabins dotted the eighty-some acres Bill owned. Longtime friends visited often; strangers were like family. That was Bill’s way.

Miranda longed to sink into her private hot tub and watch the day go by through the picture window. Soak until she was red and raw from water almost too hot to tolerate. Cry until there were no tears left.

Instead she grabbed extra ammunition for the.45 auto she carried and retrieved her shotgun. Her dad would provide food, but she packed her survival kit. Three days of dry food and water pouches, knife, flare gun, and matches stacked into the bottom half of a backpack. She added the ammo, as well as a lined Gore-Tex jacket, change of clothes, and thermal blanket.

She would never be caught unprepared.

Fifteen minutes later she walked into the commercial-sized kitchen and watched as her father and Ben “Gray” Grayhawk-cook, general handyman, and friend-loaded an ice chest with water bottles and individually wrapped sandwiches. There were at least forty meals. Six thermoses were packed into a box, along with Styrofoam cups and a green garbage bag for trash.

She put her backpack down by the door and wrapped her arms around her father. “Thank you, Daddy.” She smiled her appreciation at Gray.

“Your father won’t say it but I will,” Gray said. “You watch yourself, young lady. Don’t be going traipsing off into the woods without backup. Don’t be the hero. Be smart.”

“I’ll be careful.” Miranda loved Gray, even though he worried constantly about her. A few years older than her father, his long, braided silver hair, high cheekbones, and flat face bespoke his Indian heritage, but his green eyes favored his European mother. Born in Bozeman, he’d moved away as a teenager, returning after serving three tours of duty in Vietnam.