Harvest Moon (6 page)

“Dawn, go back in the kitchen,” Jim was trying to tell
her, but she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were locked on Agent Kevin Nash’s as
panic bubbled up in her throat.

“What happened?” she demanded of the agent who so
easily held her gaze. “Tell me what’s going on!”

“Ms. Garrett,” he said. His voice was steady and
strong, but his green eyes betrayed a sense of sadness. “I hate to have to do
this, but Courtney Frey has officially been listed as a missing person.”

A deep sense of dread began to course through Dawn’s
veins long before the mysterious federal agent’s words truly sunk in. Courtney
couldn’t be missing. It couldn’t be true. Sure, she was a little impulsive and
sometimes a bit flakey, but she wouldn’t just go missing.

“No,” Dawn argued before her brain realized she was
speaking. “She isn’t missing. She just went home with that baseball player. Go
check his place on highway seventy-nine. She’s probably just staying there.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” one of the agents told her. He was
older than his partner by what appeared to be a few years, and older than Agent
Nash by a decade. He had a stern, unsympathetic look on his face. “We’ve spoken
to Mister Mosley after Mrs. Frey suggested the same thing. There was no sign of
her there.”

That was when his partner stepped in. “Right now, this
bar is officially under investigation.”

“Investigation for what?” Jim cut in. “Nothing
happened here. We want to find Courtney more than you do!”

“I assure you,” the oldest agent told him, “that we
are very concerned with finding the whereabouts of Miss Frey. We need everyone
here to cooperate with that effort.”

Dawn couldn’t tell if Jim was ready to scream or cry.
The old guy looked like as tough as a grizzly bear, but inside he was all mush
and heart. Even Gabe, who put on such a tough show for everyone he encountered,
had a glazed, semi-present look in his eyes. The only one who could even think
to question the agents was Dawn.

“But I saw them leave together,” Dawn said. “You saw
them leave together,” she said as she turned her attention toward Agent Nash.
“Tell them what you saw.”

Agent Nash wasn’t the one to answer her line of
questioning, though. Instead, the senior agent cut in before Nash was given a
chance.

“We are aware of who you and Agent Nash saw our victim
leave with,” he began.

“Victim?” Dawn stopped him. “Oh my God, is she dead?”

“No,” Agent Nash finally spoke up. “Not that we know
of, at least. Victim was…” he shot the other agent a scathing glance “…a poor
choice of words. Miss Frey is only a missing person at this time.”

“And we talked to Mosley,” the third agent said. “He
dropped the girl off in front of her house. There was no sign of her at his
place or anywhere near it. Not a single trace. He tells us...”

“Agent Hart,” the senior officer stopped him, “I think
at this point in our investigation, we should keep the details confidential
until we have suspects on the line.”

“Are you calling me a suspect?” Dawn said, her panic
deepening at the agent’s off-the-cuff suggestion.

“You aren’t a suspect,” Agent Nash cut in. “We just
want to get our ducks in a row before we start spilling too much.”

“But the other missing hikers,” Jim said. His normally
deep, burly voice was now a shaken shadow of its former self. “They say it’s an
animal attack. There are no suspects in an animal attack, right?”

“We can’t rule anything out,” Agent Hart said.

“Are you saying there’s some kind of serial killer out
in the woods?” Dawn said, unable to stop herself. “She’s the fifth person to go
missing in a month, and you won’t even consider that ball player is who is
behind it? His word is good enough for you, is that it?”

Dawn’s voice was turning accusatory, and she was only
narrowly avoiding shouting.

“Ma’am, just settle down,” the senior agent told her.
His tone was downright condescending.

“Don’t tell me to ‘settle down,’ ” she shot
back. “My best friend is missing, and you want me to ‘settle down?’ ”

“Okay, okay, enough,” Agent Nash cut in. “Listen, we
need to ask you all a few questions. Miss Garrett, is there a place here that
we can talk alone? Off the record, for now.”

“Now, listen here,” the senior agent stopped him,
anger touching the corners of his eyes. “You’re just as much a witness as the
girl might be. We can’t have you leading her or tainting her memories of last
night. I’ll have a word with her.”

“No way!” Dawn said. As much as she wanted to find
Courtney, sitting down one-on-one with an agent whose name she didn’t know sent
spikes of panic down her spine.

“It wasn’t a request,” the agent growled at her, but
Agent Nash came to her rescue.

“Hey, cool it,” he said, his own snarl meeting the
older agent’s head on. “Can’t you see she’s freaked out enough as it is?”

That much was true. Everyone was staring at Dawn, and
that was when she looked down to see that her hands shaking. She hadn’t even
noticed their violent spasms until then, but as soon as she did, she began to
feel faint.

“Whoa, there,” Jim said. He caught her just as she
started to lose her balance. With more agility than he looked like he might
possess, he pulled over a nearby barstool with the toe of his boot and helped
guide Dawn to sit on it.

For a second, no one said a word as Dawn struggled to
calm herself down. Between Courtney going missing, the feds now wanting to talk
with her, and everything else going on, it was no wonder that she’d momentarily
lost her constant grip on the calm and cool mask she carefully wore each day.

When it was obvious that she wasn’t going to pass out,
the men in the room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Though her
hands still shook, the moment of panic was over, and Dawn struggled to regain
her composure.

“Here, sweetie,” Jim said as he leaned over the bar
and poured a pint of beer. “This’ll help those nerves.”

“Thanks,” Dawn said as she reached for the mug, but
the senior officer’s voice stopped her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded of Jim.

“What do
you
think I’m doing?” Jim shot back.
“I’m giving the poor girl a beer. I think she’s earned the damn thing.”

“During an investigation, you’re giving a girl who
looks barely nineteen a drink?” Agent Hart answered for his partner. “That
seems a tad irresponsible of you, sir.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass how irresponsible it seems,”
Jim shot back at him, his grizzly side showing through. “She’s worried sick
about her friend, and you fools aren’t doing anything to help her with that. If
a beer calms her down enough to remember something that might help, I think the
fact that she’s a few months under twenty-one isn’t going to hurt nobody.”

“The law is the law,” Agent Hart argued, his
stubbornness only irritating Jim more.

“Enough!” Agent Nash stopped them both before either
of them did something they’d regret. “This is ridiculous. None of these people
are suspects and she can have a beer if she damn well wants to, got that?”

He might have been younger than his fellow agents, but
Agent Nash held his head high and his shoulders back as he roared at them.
Everything about him commanded not only respect, but an overwhelming show of
dominance that reminded Dawn of the rutting bucks she’d seen the few times her
dad had taken her out hunting. His stance, his voice, even his eyes told the
room he was in charge, and anyone questioning that fact would regret it.

“Now,” he said once he had command of the room, “I
said I would like to speak to Miss Garrett privately for a minute, and I mean
to do just that. Hart, Connors, I believe these gentlemen could have seen
something that may add to our investigation. Perhaps your time would be better
spent talking to them rather than chewing out a traumatized young woman over a
single glass of beer.”

Agent Nash’s suggestion was taken as a command, and
Dawn offered him an appreciative look. If she had to talk to any of the three
agents, she was glad it was him. Even though they’d only spoken briefly, there
was something about him that made her wonder if she might just be able to trust
him.

“We can use Jim’s office,” Dawn said as she led the
agent through the galley door that led into the kitchen.

“That’ll do just fine,” Agent Nash said, but he might
have regretted that after he saw the space.

Jim’s office was small for one person, but with the
two of them inside, the door barely had room to close. Jim only had space for
one chair, and Agent Nash gestured for Dawn to take it before he leaned back on
the table that doubled as a desk.

“Please,” Dawn said as she sipped the beer that was
still in her hands. It wasn’t until she’d sat down that she realized her grip
on the frosty mug was so strong that her knuckles were turning white. She had
to force herself to relax her grip, and she gently stretched out her fingers
while she thought of what to say.

“You were there last night,” she finally settled on.
“You saw Courtney leave with that guy. You can’t tell me that you don’t think
he had something to do with this.”

It took Agent Nash a moment to reply to her, and he
wouldn’t meet her eyes until he settled on what to say. “There isn’t any
evidence, not yet at least, to indicate his story doesn’t check out. He dropped
her off outside her house and went home. Until we have more to go on, there
isn’t much the FBI can do.”

“You can’t believe that, though,” Dawn insisted.
“There has to be something you can do. A stakeout, or a warrant, or something.”

“The FBI’s hands are tied unless we have more to go
on.” Agent Nash’s words were firm, but his green eyes were almost apologetic as
Dawn’s gaze caught his.

“What if I got you more to go on?” she offered. “What
if I can find a clue or something?”

It went against her better judgement. Getting involved
in an open FBI investigation was the last thing she needed if she wanted to
remain unseen in Goosemont, but it didn’t seem to matter as much with Courtney
missing. All that mattered was getting her friend back.

Before she could finish her own internal debate over
whether her idea was a wise one, the agent cut off her train of thought. “Do
not,” he said, his voice so stern that he almost sounded like an angry teacher,
“even think about doing something that stupid. You have no idea if this man is
really behind your friend’s disappearance and what he might be capable of.”

“I can handle myself,” Dawn said, turning indignant.
Now that she was finally free, the idea of someone else telling her how to live
her life sent spikes of resentment coursing through her.

“No, you can’t,” Agent Nash said, cutting off her
indignant attitude with only a few words. “You have no idea what might be
lurking outside of town, and if you go looking for danger, I guarantee it will
find you. I can’t have another pretty young woman go missing.”

“Excuse me?” Dawn balked at that. Sure, patrons at the
bar called her pretty. They often slurred it after slapping her ass. But having
an actual FBI agent say something so unprofessional, yet weirdly flattering,
cut the last of her protests to ribbons.

“You heard me,” the agent said, though there was
something uncomfortable settling in the room. “Though I’ve wondered why you
wear colored contacts. The dyed hair I can get behind, but who in this hick
town are you trying to impress with the contacts?”

The discomfort turned to panic in Dawn’s chest. No
one, not once, had called her out on her contacts before. The hair was bound to
get noticed, but the contacts were subtle. So easily did they change her brown
eyes to a shade somewhere between hazel and green. Even she had trouble telling
they weren’t real.

“It’s aesthetic,” she finally stumbled on as she tried
to decide what to tell the agent. “I thought it would be exciting to have a bit
of a change.”

“Don’t be afraid to show their real color,” Agent Nash
said as his eyes locked on hers. “I’m sure the real you is plenty exciting.”

“Only so long as I don’t go trying to find my friend,
right?” she shot back at him. His compliments were making her fidget in her
seat and she didn’t know how to accept them, so instead she went with defiance.

“You know as well as I do that it’s a bad idea,” Agent
Nash reminded her. “Please, just stay in town. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and
she just took off for the day and will call you soon enough.”

“I doubt it,” Dawn sighed. “I just... God, I shouldn’t
have let her go off with that guy.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Agent Nash told her. “You
had no way of knowing this would happen.”

“I guess,” was all Dawn could say. She was exhausted
from worry, the beer wasn’t even touching the panic still roiling in her belly,
and she blamed herself for what happened to her friend. All she wanted was to
rewind the world by twenty-four hours and stop Courtney from leaving with that
stupid guy.

It was him, it had to be, yet no one seemed to
understand that.

“Here,” Agent Nash said as he fished a card out of his
pocket and handed it to her. The paper it was printed on was thin and flimsy,
and it was creased from being in his pocket. There was a slightly blurred FBI
insignia on it with his name and a number, nothing more.

“What’s this for?” Dawn asked as she eyed the
cheap-looking card.

“If you hear anything, anything at all,” Agent Nash
said as he pushed himself up from Jim’s desk, “I want you to call me. That’s my
direct number, and it’s always on.”

“Thanks,” Dawn said as she ran her thumb over the thin
embossing of the letters. “Listen, do you, uh, think I’m nuts for insisting
it’s Mosley?”

“You have reasonable cause,” Agent Nash said. “But we
need more than that. Go home, get some sleep, and if you think of anything,
call me.”

“Okay.” Dawn nodded as she rose from the old chair.
She had to leave the closet of an office to make room for the agent to leave,
but once they got back out into the bar, she saw Gabe and the agents were
having it out.

“You can’t just interrogate us with no reason,” he was
telling the senior agent. “She’s been in there for twenty minutes!”

“It’s not an interrogation,” Agent Hart was insisted.
“It’s just to talk.”