Holgersen drove as Angie fiddled with her Garmin satellite GPS, in which she’d preflagged locations. They came upon a track that led into the trees to their left. Holgersen slowed, peering into the woods. “What’s down there?” he said.
“Looks like it leads to Budge Hargreaves’s spread,” Angie said, studying the GPS map. The area appeared unfamiliar to her from this approach. She and Claire had hiked in from the back. “This road we’re on should veer away from the river shortly and curve in a big arc. On our right we’ll pass a hiking trail that leads down to the grave site. Then should come a smaller vehicle track that’ll take us down into Axel Tollet’s spread.”
“Pretty damn remote out here,” Holgersen said as the forest grew denser around them. “Nothing but mountains and rivers for miles from whats I can see. Can’t imagine anyone wanting to live out here.”
“Apparently that’s exactly why Tollet and Hargreaves do. Isolated.”
Clouds thickened. The landscape turned inhospitable as trees crowded in tightly along the side of the road, tall, drooping branches draped with old-man’s beard. Holgersen turned up the heater and sped up the wipers. Snow was now starting to settle on the track in a slippery, gelatinous layer.
“Whoa, slow down a sec,” Angie said suddenly as something in the road ahead caught her eye.
Holgersen eased off on the gas.
She pointed to marks in the slushy surface. “Tire tracks?”
“Sure looks like,” he said, bending forward to peer through the arcs carved by the windshield wipers. “Fresh. Maybe made by more than one vee-hickle.”
The interior of the Crosstrek started to fog. He turned up the fan. Tension mushroomed softly between them, Angie could sense it. To her untrained eye it wasn’t possible to tell whether those tracks on the road had been made by vehicles heading east from whence they’d come or going west in the direction they were traveling. They could have been made by Axel leaving or arriving at his own property. Either way, he’d had company. As far as Angie knew, there was no reason for anyone to drive beyond Axel’s homestead. It was just wilderness from his place all the way to the remote west coast of the island.
“Hunters, maybe?” Holgersen said with a quick glance at her.
“I thought the season was done by now, but yeah, maybe.”
Holgersen clicked on the headlights and fog lights as they went deeper into a forest that swallowed what little gray daylight remained. It was only around 2:00 p.m., but it seemed like twilight.
“There!” Angie pointed to a fork in the road. “That leads down to Axel Tollet’s place.”
Holgersen swung the wheel and took them onto a bumpy, narrow track. The indentations from the tire tracks were still apparent under the fresh layer of snow. They saw the trees open up ahead. Her pulse quickened.
“Slow down,” she said. “Stop at the entrance so we can get a lay of the land from this perspective and see whether he has company.”
Holgersen brought the vehicle to a halt at the entrance to the clearing. Angie and Holgersen oriented themselves, engine running, wipers carving arcs in the wet snow.
To their left, behind a clump of trees, was the converted shipping container set back into the mound of earth and overgrown with berry scrub. Brambles hung down over the window and around the door cut into the side of the container. To the right of the container was the small log cabin. The lights inside glowed yellow in the gloom. Smoke came from the chimney and blew in the wind, melding with the low cloud. The shed doors were all closed. Axel Tollet’s truck was parked under the carport, as was his ATV. Snow was turning the ground white, further obscuring the tire tracks that had led into the property.
“Looks like he’s home,” Holgersen said, watching the cabin. “All cozied up by his fire. But where’s those other vee-hickles that left them tracks?”
Angie scanned the area again, this time moving her gaze carefully along the forest fringe around the boundary of the homestead.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Is that them cages over there?”
She nodded.
“Freaking weird. Like something outta Grimm’s fairy tales,” he said. In her peripheral vision, Angie noted Holgersen’s hand moving to check the position of his sidearm in its holster under his jacket. He was edgy. She felt it, too—something off.
“Since when do you read fairy tales, Holgersen?” she said quietly as she slowly scanned each of the outbuildings next, checking to see what might have set her warning senses prickling up the back of her neck.
“I knows about Hansel and Gretels. And hows their woodcutter moms and pops tried to kill them kids by leaving them in the dark woods. My gramps read us them stories.”
That’s when Angie saw it. A small black shape in front of one of the sheds. Wings spread out in the snow. “Poe,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Over there. Axel’s crow, or raven, or whatever it is. Or was. He rescued it, and Claire Tollet named it. It was a pet. It looks dead. Something happened to it. This place doesn’t feel right.”
“Not even close. How you wanna do this?”
