The rocks beneath Annie started to spin, and her stomach clenched. Ben was right. Theydidlook like hands. Tight fingers that had gripped this woman’s throat until blackness took over. How long had it taken for that to happen? How long had she suffered?
From some forgotten lesson of years before, Annie recalled the rule of threes. A human being could live for three weeks without food. Three days without water. Three minutes without air.
Annie stared down at the lifeless face with its bright brown eye fixed unblinkingly on the darkening sky above. Three minutes was an eternity.
Jake leaned in close, snapping another shot, then shuffled sideways to photograph the woman’s back, the torn dark shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Annie wished she were the one behind the camera, keeping a degree of distance between herself and the dead woman.
Finally, Jake lowered the camera and sank back on his heels. He wore the same crumpled look he’d had speaking to Ben on the phone as he stared down at the woman’s face.
“Who is she?” Annie asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s not local. I’ve never seen her before.”
He leaned over the woman and checked her pockets, one at a time.
“No ID.” He looked away, scanning the valley unfolding below them. “Tourist season’s almost here though. Out-of-towners from all over the country show up to hike the mountain during the summer, so she could be from anywhere, I guess.”
Pity swelled in Annie’s chest. This woman was a stranger in town, just like her.
Jake lifted his face, squinting as he scanned the top of the ridge where the wooden railing was barely visible. “Tourists almost never come out here alone though. It’s always families… or couples.”
Annie watched the train of thought as it unfolded on his face, his eyes tracking the downward drop from the ridge, the blood around the woman’s head, and the marks on her body. He was running through the timeline, but Annie had already done the math.
The fall was not an accident. Someone who had lost their balance at the top would have fought for their life the whole way down, clawing at the hillside, lashing out with their arms and legs for a hold, any hold; twisting, scratching, scraping. And there was none of that. This woman had either jumped of her own volition or been thrown, already dead.
As for the gashes on her body, they were horrific, but there was someconsolation in knowing that she hadn’t felt them. They were clearly postmortem, deep, but clean. Her heart had not been pumping blood when the scavenger found her.
The bruises were the key, and the autopsy would either confirm or disprove the theory that was forming in Annie’s mind. But until they knew for sure, she had to keep all possibilities open. She had to stop picturing it in one specific, horrible way—a man standing atop Lewis Ridge, holding this girl’s neck in a vise grip until the life faded from her eyes. Dumping her body over the railing, watching as she fell down, down, down, until the dull thud when she hit the rocks below. An act of pure brutality. Unimaginably cruel.
“What do you think?” Jake asked, gesturing at the marks on the woman’s back. “Cougar? Bear?”
For a moment, Annie didn’t answer, but paced the rocks, searching, her braid wild in the wind, freed strands clinging to her mouth and cheeks.
There were little pockets of mud and earth on the hard, dented surface, and Annie searched them one by one until at last, in a smear of dirt behind the woman’s shoes, she found what she was looking for.
“Cougar.”
“You sure?”
Annie nodded, turning to face him. “I’m sure. It’s the male I’ve been tracking.”
Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Here.” Annie beckoned him over and pointed to the print, placing her finger on the slightly asymmetrical dent atop the pad. A cat with a limp.
The heavens rumbled with a long, low peal of thunder, and Annie looked up at the sky. They were running out of time.
“And there’s no way the cougar could have killed her?” Jake asked. “Maybe he fought with her at the top and followed her down when she went over? I mean, I know what the bruises look like, but could they be from the cougar pinning her down by the neck?”
Annie frowned. Cougars did sometimes pin animals down by the neck as they fed.
“I don’t think so. If she was still alive when he got to her, she’d be covered in blood, and if they fought at the top and she died in the fall, I can’t imagine him working his way down the ridge to get here, but I guess it’s possible.”
Jake nodded, twisting the lens of the camera back and forth in his fingers as he stared at the body.
“Do cougars do that? Scavenge? Eat something that’s already dead?”
“They’re opportunistic, just like any other predator.” Annie nodded. “They need food, water, and shelter and will do just about anything to keep those resources at hand. Even scavenging, if it comes to that, just like the big cats on other continents. They prefer to hunt, but they’ll sometimes claim kills that aren’t their own.”
