She worried the scar on her lip with her teeth. Her goal had been simply to talk to Axel, question him further about the old tins with baby formula logos, the bottles with teats, get another look around the property, check out those waders hanging in his shed, see what size they were, see whether there might be something here that would give grounds for a warrant or a more official investigation. Or whether she was completely off about the possibility Jasmine might have survived a plunge over the falls and been brought up here.
“We leave the rental here. I’ll walk up to the front door,” she said. “Plain sight, hands visible, while you go into the trees behind us and come around the back of those sheds over there. Cover me.”
He looked at her. “He’s high risk? You think he—”
“I’m definitely thinking he could be a problem if he feels threatened. And I’m uncomfortable about where those vehicles that made those tracks could be. But I’ll try to demonstrate to Axel that he’s under no threat. Just me out here wanting to play nice and talk to him. Once I feel he’s relaxed, I’ll tell him you’re here, too, and I’ll ask if we can look in his sheds. I can get some pics, talk about the waders and sizing and the stuff on his shelf for feeding animals. See if I can get a read on him.”
But Holgersen had gone quiet. He was staring at something.
“What is it?” she said.
“That container building,” he said. “What’s with the mound of earth over top? And all the vegetation shit growing on top? Like he’s trying to hide it from the air or something.”
“But why would he try to hide just that one building? Not like he doesn’t have a bunch of outbuildings on the property.”
“Let’s ask him. Come, let’s do this.”
As they’d planned, Holgersen left the vehicle and sifted into the shadows among the trees behind the Crosstrek. Angie approached slowly from the front, hands visible at her sides, boots squelching in the slurp on the ground.
Wind blew icy against her ears. Everything dripped. The woodsmoke from the chimney smelled acrid, and it mingled with the scent of pine and loamy detritus in the cold air. Angie knocked on the cabin door. As she waited, she turned to examine the clearing and outbuildings from this different vantage point. Her gaze settled once more on the corvid lying in the snow. Its neck was broken, head lying at an unnatural angle.
A strange sensation feathered into her. She felt it again. A sense of being watched from the trees. She thought again of the tire tracks.
She knocked once more. “Axel Tollet? Anyone home?”
She smelled gas, sudden and strong as the breeze shifted. Adrenaline dumped into her blood. A crack sounded in the trees. She whirled around, heart galloping, her muscles tense.
Holgersen stepped out from behind a shed. “Pallorino! Over here! Quick!”
As she ran over to him, she thought she saw a shape move in the woods. She hesitated in her tracks. But it was just branches swaying in the mounting storm wind. She hurried over to Holgersen.
He was behind the shed, crouched over a human form on the ground.
Axel.
Her heart kicked.
The big man lay spread-eagled in the snow. Two arrows stuck straight up out of his chest. Yellow-and-white fletching. Holgersen was feeling for a pulse at his thick neck. Axel’s eyes, green as the river, stared unseeing into the falling snow. His rifle lay in the snow near his hand. Tension whipped through Angie.
She snatched up the rifle and stepped sideways, her back to the shed. She scanned the shadows in the woods but saw nothing. She checked the rifle. It was loaded, a round chambered.
“He’s gone. He’s dead,” Holgersen said, his gaze darting around, his body tight with coiled energy. “He’s still warm. Whoever did this—”
The whirr, thethwockingsound, was so sudden neither saw it coming. Holgersen grunted. Angie turned to look at him. He was frozen in place. An arrow—the shaft—had gone clean through his neck. Holgersen’s eyes went wide, whites impossibly huge. His hands went to the arrow at his neck. His knees buckled slowly, and he crumpled onto the ground, falling sideways. Before Angie could even process what she’d just witnessed, a whoosh and a bang sounded behind her. The shed burst into a roar of flame.
The force of the explosion threw Angie forward and into the ground, the rifle in her hand going flying. She lay in the slush, disoriented, ears ringing. Time seemed to slow. Slowly, carefully, she turned her head sideways to look at the shed. Black smoke boiled out of the building. Heat radiated from the fire. Flames crackled and hissed in the falling snow. She struggled to come to her hands and knees, head spinning, her vision blurred.
Holgersen.
She crawled to his shape through the slush, hidden from sight of the forest by the roils of black smoke. In the back of her mind she remembered the strong smell of gasoline near the cabin. Someone had rigged this place to blow. She recalled the shed she’d seen earlier with Claire. It was behind the cabin. It housed several natural gas canisters, a generator, containers of fuel. She had to move fast.
Angie reached Holgersen.
He lay motionless, eyes closed, mouth parted. The arrow had gone right through his neck. She reached out to touch him. “Holger—”
Another explosion whammed her into the ground. A second shed went up in flames. The fire roared and crackled. She coughed, eyes watering as she shot a glance in the direction their car was parked. She had to try to get Holgersen to that Crosstrek. A gunshot cracked, and she felt a hot buzzing past her face.
Fuck.
