This time she blew out a breath. “Good. Okay, good.” She opened the bag. “This is his. He wore this sock and it hasn’t been washed. Even I can smell him on it.”
She gave both dogs the scent. “This is Eckle. It’s Eckle. Let’s find Eckle. Find him!”
As the dogs scented the air, noses twitching, heads lifted, she and Simon followed.
Thirty-One
As they covered the first quarter mile, Simon swore the dogs consulted each other. Ear flicks, tail wags, a duet of sniffing. The temperature eased down under the cover of trees, along ground soft with its bed of needles, and rose again in the open, through wild grass and juts of rock.
“If he brought her this way,” Simon wondered, “why didn’t he use the road, keep her in the trunk until he found his spot? And if he did that, why is the car back at the cabin, and the cabin empty?”
“He didn’t bring her this way. At least I don’t see any sign of it.” Fiona trailed her flashlight over the ground, over brush and branch. “He left tracks, he wasn’t being careful. But I don’t see any that could be hers. It doesn’t make any sense, but I know damn well we’re following his route. His solo route.”
“Maybe he spotted the cops, or got wind of them somehow and got out. It could explain why he left everything.”
“Panicked, ran.” She nodded. “We’ve only been on a couple of searches where the person didn’t want to be found. A pair of teenage lovers, and a guy who stabbed his wife during an argument when they were here on a camping trip. The teenagers had a plan, such as it was, and covered their trail, hid out. The man just ran, and that made him easier to find. I wish I knew which category Eckle falls into. If either.
“I have to check in with Mai.”
Simon watched her take out the radio. “Decide yet what you’re going to tell her?”
“We’re still in our sector, so I’ll tell her the truth. Just not all of it yet.” She stared at the radio in her hand. “I should tell her all of it. I know that in one logical part of my head. Tell Agent Tawney or at least the sheriff. I could tell Meg to tell Sheriff Tyson. We could pull a couple of the deputies in on this trail.”
“You could,” he agreed. “And spend time arguing with them when you’re told to go back to base.”
Which wasn’t an entirely bad idea, Simon considered. “Can any of them—Davey, McMahon, Tyson—handle the dogs on a search?”
“Davey might. That’s a maybe. The reality is he hasn’t had much more training or experience than you have. Which isn’t enough, not without an experienced handler on the team. I know how to read my dogs. I can’t guarantee any of them can.”
“I guess that’s the answer.”
She called in, gave their location. “I’ve made some tracks,” she told Mai, “and the dogs have a good scent.”
“Tawney wants to know if you’ve spotted any blood trail, or any signs of struggle.”
“No, none of that.”
“James and Lori found blood, and strong signs of someone falling, possibly being dragged. Their dogs have multiple alerts. I’m working on narrowing the sectors.”
Fiona looked at Simon. “I’d like to follow this for now. I don’t want to confuse the dogs when they’re alerting.”
“Understood, but... hold on. Stand by.”
“I gave the dogs Eckle, and they took his route. It must be fresher than the trail James and Lori picked up. I can’t lie to Mai, to any of them,” Fiona told Simon. “The unit’s built on trust.”
“So give it to her straight. Argue it out. You’re still going to do what you have to do.”
Even as she nodded, the radio crackled. “All teams, Agent Tawney’s just relayed that Eckle sent a timed e-mail from Starr’s computer. They’re speculating that he wanted it traced, wanted the authorities to find the cabin. Fee, he wants you to head back, now. They think this might be a lure to get you out there.”
“I am out here,” Fiona responded. “And we’re tracking him. Eckle, not Starr.”
“Fee—”
“The dogs are alerting, Mai, and I’m not coming back in while the rest of my unit is out here. I’ll stay in contact, but I need a minute to think this out.”
She shoved the radio back onto her belt, turned down the volume. “I have to see this through.”
“I’m standing right here,” Simon pointed out. “That makes it we. Where are we in connection to James and Lori’s area?”
“Give me a minute.” She pulled out her copy of the map. Okay, okay,” she murmured as she studied. “They’re east of us, here. Plenty of places off the trails or on private property. But if they’ve got the scent, and found blood, he had to cross this road.”
“So he had to do it at night. He’d need the dark, and the relative assurance he wouldn’t be seen.”
“Yeah, but we’re here. Well west. In fact, he veered west all along, which is more like panic, more like trying to distance himself from wherever he took her. But...”
“New element,” Simon put in. “If he sent the e-mail to bring the cops in, and to bring you out, where’s he going? He thinks you’ll be following Starr’s scent, not his. If he’s set a trap for you, it’s not here.”
“You think she’s bait,” Fiona murmured. “He brought her here, to my place, even used the cabin of a friend, a partner. God, of course she’s bait.” How, she wondered, did that make it worse? “He walked her, dragged her, left a blood trail because he wanted to lead us—or me—to wherever she is. But he can’t be sure I’d be the one to find her.”
“He’d need a place where he could watch. If you’re the one who finds her, he takes or kills you there. If you’re not, he moves over to your location, does the same.”
“But... No, I see. He doesn’t need to abduct me, to string it out. He just needs to kill me. I’m Perry’s. I’m payment.” She stared straight ahead, spoke calmly. “We need to water the dogs.”
He crouched down with her to fill the bowl. “Fiona, you don’t have to be a cop or a shrink to figure out this guy’s gone over an edge. Once he slipped over, changed Perry’s agenda, method, criteria—whatever the hell—for his own, he went over.”
“Yes.”
“Starr had information, some she’d printed, some she probably was still trying to confirm. He probably knows they’ve got his name, his face, everything there is about him. He probably knows Perry turned on him.”
“Yes,” she said again. “And she’d have told him anything, I imagine, anything he wanted to know if he told her he’d let her live. Maybe he didn’t need to ask. He had her laptop, her phone. He knew the FBI was closing in.”
“Where does he go, Fiona? When he’s paid his debt to Perry, where does he go? How does he get off the island? Steal a boat? A car? How does he get through all the search teams to manage that? Long odds. Even if he did it, how does he get through more cops to get on the ferry or get a boat off the island?”
“He doesn’t.” She picked up the empty bowl, stowed it. “It’s not panic, it was never panic. Maybe, back in April when he rented the cabin he thought he could get to me, take care of it and move on, but all that changed when he took Starr. When he brought her here knowing I’d gone to see Perry, when he read her article. It ends with me, one way or the other. Maybe he tries to kill the dogs, and you. Maybe as many as he can manage. But he knows it ends with me.”
“Blaze of glory.”
“He’s never had it.” She took out the scent bag. “But he’s tasted it now. Starr gave it to him, so he made her part of it. This is Eckle,” she said, forcing enthusiasm into her voice as she freshened the scent. “Let’s find Eckle! Find him!”
As they started again, she turned up her radio, winced at the chatter and the demands that she respond.
“Let me do it.” Simon held out his hand. “You need to focus on the dogs.”
He was right. There wasn’t just one life on the line but many. Starr was either alive or she was dead—that depended on Eckle’s whim.
Her unit, her friends, they were subject to that whim, too. As Greg had been to Perry’s.