Monster (10 page)

-Quinn-

The August sun beat down on me as I bent over, showing a new guy how I wanted the work done.

I'd been working for Hal for just over a month, and I had been surprised by just how much I liked the job. I always knew what I should be doing, the work was straightforward but satisfying.

Owen might be great at building a wall, but he couldn't manage people for shit.

I knew I was useful.

Best of all, I didn't have any fucking paperwork.

Show up, work for ten or twelve hours, go home and take a shower. No goddamn reports to write. I missed Dragon, but the rest seemed like a dream come true.

At night, more than half the time, I'd knock on Annie's door, or she'd knock on mine, and we'd fall all over each other.

I'd had her in her apartment and in mine. On the couch. Over her kitchen table. In the shower and against the wall.

She was always wet and ready for me, and I could just slide inside her depths and take her over the edge with me. If there was one thing I was good at, it was fucking.

Sometimes we had dinner or watched a movie or something, but we always ended up naked.

Annie was more willing to suck my cock than any other woman I'd ever been with.

I repaid the favor by spending blissful time with my head between her legs.

Her moans and shrieks would get me harder than any porn I'd ever seen. Just the thought of them could get me stiff as a rock.

One night, I headed off the library site and looked forward to getting home.

I realized that home meant wherever Annie was.

Fuck.

I was falling for the woman, no matter what we'd told ourselves.

If she knew, she'd stop.

I'd been with her enough to realize she was stubborn as shit. She said no strings attached, so if I tried to tell her that she was fucking amazing and I wanted more from her, she'd be gone like a shot. Probably set Urso on me if I tried to walk into her apartment again.

That damn dog was another reason to stick around.

It took him weeks to warm up to me, but he finally let me rub his belly, and he was sunk.

He still barked at me, but I flattered myself that it was excitement, rather than a warning for Annie's safety.

I didn't blame the bearlike dog for not liking anyone who spent that much time with Annie.

It was his job to protect her.

Even though I wanted it to be my job, too, it wasn't.

It was my job to bend her over tables and make her scream.

-Annie-

I was woken out of a sound sleep by the buzzing of my phone on the nightstand. I opened my eyes and waited a moment, trying to figure out if I had imagined it or someone was really trying to call me in the middle of the night.

Pause.

It rang again.

Fuck.

I groaned. It didn't help relieve my irritation at all.

Urso whined from the bed in the corner, and I hushed him absently.

I reached over and grabbed the phone, squinting at it in the dark.

Someone had, in fact, just tried to call me.

I checked my texts, and a jolt of electricity went through me. I started fumbling with the phone, calling back the last number as I threw off the blankets and stood up, crossing to my closet.

"I'm up," I said.

"Good," Dan's voice came through clearly. There was no sign of sleepiness in it, only calm decision. "Are you up for your first op?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'm getting dressed now. Urso's kit is packed. I can be out the door in five minutes."

"Take fifteen," he said. "Time is important, but we'll lose more if you crash your car. Make a cup of tea or stop for some coffee or something. Clear your head."

I got off the phone after I agreed to be careful and he promised to send me the address of where we were meeting.

Hunting through my closet, I found a long-sleeved cotton shirt in the back. It would be colder if we had to go up on the mountain at night than in town on a sunny August day. No sense in risking getting a chill or getting bit by some sort of nasty creature. A shirt would help.

I dressed quickly, in layers.

Urso prowled around my feet. He clearly knew something was up.

"You get to go too, buddy," I said, rubbing his ears as I headed down the stairs. "This is what we've been practicing for."

A girl had disappeared. Kelly Morris, age fourteen, had left a note for her parents to find when they got home from work, saying that she should be home by four in the afternoon, she was just taking a quick walk.

It was after midnight and no one had seen her.

The excitement I felt at finally getting to head out on a case was mixed with guilt and fear.

It felt wrong to be excited about getting to use Urso's training, when a teenage girl might have been abducted or fallen down a ravine.

I excused myself a little, reminding myself that at least I was able to help, and not just stand by and wring my hands.

Dan's warning stuck in my head, and I was able to make myself sit for a minute while the electric kettle boiled, ticking off everything I needed on my fingers.

Clothing for me. Check.

Urso's reflective working vest. Check.

Food and water for us both. Check.

Four flashlights - two small ones for my pocket, one hung on Urso's collar, and an enormous Maglite for me.

Check.

I had packed and repacked the go bag every week, making sure everything in it was fresh and ready to be used. My diligence was paying off.

The fear was starting to prickle up my neck.

I was going to be alone, except for Urso, in a stretch of woods where someone had just vanished.

Was Kelly's hair blonde?

Was this the work of the Blue Ridge Killer?

I hoped fervently that it wasn't.

Maybe Kelly had just run off to a friend's house, or fallen and twisted her ankle and was staying put until dawn.

Even as I thought it, the cold twist in my belly reminded me that I didn't believe it. I thought that the likeliest thing was that Kelly Morris was dead.

Murdered.

If she wasn't, though, it would be up to me and Urso to save her.

No one else could find her in dozens of acres of dark woods.

I stood up.

The hot water was ready, and I needed to get the hell on the way. Needed to be doing something.

My excitement was gone.

The responsibility felt like it might crush me. If Urso couldn't get the scent, if I gave him the wrong commands or hadn't trained him right... a teenage girl could die.

I poured the hot water into a travel mug and added a few chai teabags and a lot of sugar. The hot, sweet tea should help me wake up.

"Come on, Urso," I said.

He didn't need telling twice.

Once he'd gotten used to it, he was excited to be up in the middle of the night. As we got into the car and I turned it on, the dashboard light read 1:16AM.

Hell of a time to be driving out.

The little ranch house I drove up to looked like any of a hundred others in the area, except for the police cars parked three deep. When Urso and I walked into the circle of flashing lights, looking for Dan, I saw a woman maybe ten or fifteen years older than me, looking grey and drawn in the blue light.

I didn't need the tear tracks shining on her cheeks to know that that was the girl's mother. The look on her face, the set of her shoulders, told me that she was a woman who had given up hope.

There was nothing I could do for her but work with Urso.

I turned away.

Her hair was blonde, I noticed.

Dan found me then, coming over and meeting my eyes with grim determination.

He didn't think this would be a good search either.

"I'm sorry to drag you out like this in the middle of the night your first time," he said. "My Layla is limping, though. If I pushed her through a search, she might give up in the middle, or she might push through and wind up lame for good."

"No," I said. "No. It's okay. We're glad to help. Poor Layla."

He nodded, once.

There were other dogs in the ring of flashing light.

Urso, vest on, was in working mode and didn't even glance at them. His attention was fully on me, waiting for his next command.

"Let's get started," I said.

I shifted my shoulders, trying to settle the backpack I wore into a more comfortable position.

Dan led me and Urso into the darkness. I found myself briefly afraid, afraid of walking into the unknown with a man.

Anyone could be the killer.

I knew it was wrong, and Dan was a good man, but nothing could stop my stretched nerves from screaming at me that I should flee from all of this.

Two officers detached from the others and joined us.

"I'm Nora Allen," the woman said abruptly, running her fingers through her curly black hair. Her skin was cocoa-brown and her dark eyes were serious as the grave. "This is officer Sandlin. We'll come with you."

"Got it," I said. I nodded tersely at them.

I didn't want them to think that I wasn't taking this as seriously as it deserved. The officers both seemed drawn and upset.

The man, Sandlin, even more so than Allen. He was strikingly pale in the night, with brown hair and eyes that were almost black. A muscle in his jaw was twitching and his eyes were darting around, looking in every corner.

"Let's go," he said. "If you're sure the dog is trained. Dan said you were new. Shouldn't be on a case like this."

"If you hadn't fired half your K9 team, maybe you could have kept this in-house," Dan said. His voice was surprisingly cold. "Remember that Miss Watson is a volunteer called out of her bed in the middle of the night."

Sandlin grunted, but Allen shot me a small smile that did nothing to ease the worried lines of her face.

"Thanks," she said. "No one wants a call like that, I know."

"Kelly's mother said that she usually takes this path down here," Dan said. We'd only walked about five houses down, and I saw the steep, narrow path, marked with a fencepost and a small sign. "She walks a lot. Reads a lot of poetry out in the woods."

"Even now?" I asked.

"One of her friend came by for a few hours," Nora said. "The girl said Kelly felt pretty safe because we're only one street away from a police station. Cops sweep these woods pretty often."

It was one of the nature preserves in-town, suburbs blossoming up around the edges of it. It was shaped like a peninsula, surrounded by the town on three sides, but opening out into the wider woods of the state park we bordered.

"Let's get to it," I said, to break the grim silence.

Dan handed me a sealed plastic bag with a pink shirt in it.

“We have five,” he said, indicating the pack on his own back. “Plenty of scent. Her mother brought them out from the missing girl's dirty hamper.”

"That's something on our side, at least," I said.

The others nodded, but didn't say anything. I squared my shoulders and opened the bag, holding it out and letting Urso take some long sniffs.

"Find," I said.

I kept my voice serious and didn't repeat myself. Even tired and afraid, I wanted to impress other people with Urso's training.

Nothing wrong with being proud of my dog.

I handed the bag back to Dan and held my Maglite in one hand and switched it on. Urso's long line was in my other hand, but I unclipped it and reached back to stow it in an open pocket of my backpack.

Behind me, one of the cops snorted when I unhooked Urso. I thought it might have been the man. Maybe I shouldn't have let my dog off his line, but it was dark and the trail looked terrible. I wasn't going to risk me or him tripping the other up and injuring ourselves.

I wanted to make a good impression for volunteer SAR. That would not be it.

Dan passed the scent back back and Urso sniffed around the area, drawing the scents deep into his nose.

I was pleased to see that he did a proper ground scent, keeping his head down and focusing on that, not lifting his head up to scent the air. That was less reliable, but some dogs could never be trained out of it.

Urso whuffed once.

He had the scent.

The four of us humans with flashlights followed him as he made his way down the path, stopping frequently to sniff the ground.

His movements were confident.

My only fear was that it was an old scent. I didn't know if he could track where she went three days ago as opposed to twelve hours ago. Would he follow the newest scent?

"Come on, Urso, you can do this," I whispered to myself. "Find the girl."

I dropped back a little, to make sure I wasn't crowding my dog as he did his job. The two officers stayed put a few feet behind all of us. There was something that I wanted to ask Dan.

"When did Kelly get reported missing?"

"Five-thirty," he said.

"Why did you wait so long to call me and Urso?" I asked him.