In Harm's Way by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online Page B

said, “I might try the Pioneers or the Boulders. Someplace north.”
    “You see?” he said to the woman, blaming her for all their trouble. He called for their dog and started off down the trail.
    The woman stayed behind and gave Brandon their names and phone numbers.
    “Sorry about that,” Brandon said.
    “Oh, well,” she said. “He’ll get over it.”
    “I can sit on this campsite,” Menquez offered. “Maybe we get lucky and he comes back.”
    “Observation only,” Walt said. “No action. These guys . . . A guy like this, Gilly . . .”
    “Yes, I understand, Sheriff. If he’s the one breaking into people’s houses, I would want backup. Don’t worry.”
    “Couldn’t you sweep the area?” Fiona asked. “The other campsites?”
    “Could, I suppose, but there’s just too many,” Walt said. “It would take too much manpower, too many resources for just petty theft and vandalism.”
    “But what if he knows that?” she complained. “What if he’s counting on that?”
    “Then he’s right,” Walt said. He whistled for Bea. The dog arrived with a deer bone in her mouth.
    With the woman down the trail, the four stared at the pale white bone in the dog’s mouth. It represented a violent death. No one spoke what was on their mind, if anything, but Walt looked down the trail toward the hiker, hoping that she and Jimmy would heed his advice.

7
    F iona waved her finger through the gauzy column of steam rising from the teacup alongside her computer, breaking apart and swirling into separate coils. She considered trying to photograph the image, to capture it, to stop it in time. This was the part of photography that fascinated her: the stoppage of time, owning a particular moment. Forever. Leave composition and color to others, she thought of herself as an archivist.
    She dragged a shot of the Berkholders’ vandalized refrigerator to her “best-of ” folder, admiring how it offered something new to the collection.
    As she clicked the computer mouse, she heard a synchronous thud against the cottage’s outside wall. At first she allowed herself to believe it was the aspen tree on the southwest corner; the tree grew incredibly close to the wall, often banging against it when the wind blew.
    But there’s no wind tonight , she thought.
    And though the woods were full of such sounds—unexplainable creaks and cracks—she’d come to discern a difference between the sounds of nature and the sounds of animals in nature. The sound hadn’t resulted from a tree limb falling, or a pine tree splitting; it had sounded more like something slapping the cottage’s clapboard siding.
    Bear! She spun in her chair, her elbow bumping the mug and sloshing some tea onto the table. She jumped up. Something— someone? —moved off quickly through the woods, snapping twigs and swooshing branches. She lunged forward, killing the interior lights and switching on the outside floods. The computer monitor cast a glow into the room as she raced to the wall and peered out a window. But too late. If there had been anything out there it was long gone, amid the harsh shadows knitting in the woods.
    It can’t be!
    A deer or elk antler making contact with the wall—that made sense. But the escape into the woods had sounded like something big and fast, which brought her back to a bear. The bear. Except that Walt had now convinced her that the destruction at the Berkholders’ had not been the work of a bear, but instead an itinerant who’d vandalized the place and had worked hard to make it look like the work of a bear.
    It can’t be . Her chest was tight, her throat constricted. Heat flooded through her, immediately followed by a penetrating cold.
    A man, out there creeping around her cottage.
    Not possible .
    She glanced to the front door and then threw herself across the room to the phone, stabbing the intercom button.
    “Kira! Pick up! Pick up!”
    “Yeah?” Kira said over the main residence’s speakerphone. A television