1
GARRETT
The radio crackles at 0347.
"Hawk, you copy? Got a situation on the south ridge."
I'm already moving. Boots on, jacket grabbed off the hook by the door, Ghost at my heels before I've finished swinging my pack over my shoulder. Twenty years of this and my body still wakes up before my brain does. Feet on the floor, rifle in hand, three escape routes running through my head before the first question forms.
"Go ahead, dispatch."
"Hiker called in. Says she saw someone down in the ravine off Trail 7. Female, possibly injured. Didn't stick around to confirm. She was hauling ass back to the trailhead when she got bars."
"Location?"
"Mile marker four, east fork. You want backup?"
"Negative. Send Sheriff Parker an update. I'll call it in when I lay eyes."
I don't wait for the response. Ghost jumps into the passenger seat of my truck, gray muzzle settling on the console like he's done a thousand times. He's twelve and mostly retired. Arthritis in his hips, eyes cloudier than they used to be. Doesn't matter. He still works better than most active dogs, and he goes where I go.
The engine turns over on the first try. I back out of the station yard and hit the fire road hard, headlights cutting white tunnels through the dark.
South ridge. Trail 7.
That's a dead zone. Ravine runs narrow through granite, steep on both sides, gets flash floods when it rains and rattlesnakes when it doesn't. Nobody with a map goes in there. Which means either the hiker got turned around bad, or she wasn't a hiker at all.
I push the truck harder.
The road narrows to two ruts and then to one, and then it's gone. I kill the engine, grab my pack, whistle Ghost out. He drops to the ground beside me and waits for the command. Classified the world in tactical terms fifteen years ago and never learned how to turn it off. Neither did he. We're a matched pair.
"Find her."
He's off before the word's finished, nose down, moving fast for an old dog. I follow the beam of my headlamp, rifle slung across my chest, the cold bite of predawn mountain air in my lungs.
Forty yards in, Ghost goes still.
Not a point. A freeze. Head low, ears pinned, tail rigid. He's telling me something's here, and it's not just a hurt hiker.
I drop to a knee and sweep the slope with my light.
She's wedged against a deadfall about twelve feet below the trail edge. Dark hair, braid half unraveled, field vest with toomany pockets. Not moving. One leg bent wrong, caught under her at an angle that makes my stomach tighten.
But that's not what Ghost was telling me.
I kill the headlamp and go still. Listen past my own heartbeat.
Footsteps. Somewhere above us on the ridge. Slow. Measured. A man not in a hurry because he already knows where his target is.
Son of a bitch.
I signal Ghost down into the brush and drop myself behind an outcropping of granite. Thumb the safety on my rifle. Wait.
The footsteps pass about thirty feet north of my position. Headed toward her. I catch the silhouette when he crosses a gap in the tree line. Single male, moving methodical, something long slung across his back. Not a hiker. Not search and rescue. He's hunting, and she's what he's hunting.
Two choices. Engage him up here and leave her bleeding out in the ravine. Or get her out first and pick up his trail later.
Not really a choice.
