When the cabin door opened, Cork woke up and rolled over in his bunk. Dina walked in carrying a tray covered with a white cloth napkin.
“Breakfast in bed?” Cork said, easing himself upright.
Dina put the tray on the table and pulled away the napkin, revealing a plate of two eggs over easy, four strips of bacon, two slices of very dark toast, a small glass of orange juice, and a cup of black coffee. “Eat hearty,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”
He swung his legs out of the bunk and put his feet on the cold floorboards. He’d slept in a gray T-shirt and gray gym shorts, courtesy of Jewell. Like all the clothing she’d loaned him, they’d once been worn by her husband, Daniel. The night before, she’d also supplied him with a pair of clean jeans, a flannel shirt, boxers, and thick socks, all taken folded from the boxes of clothing stacked in the closet. Cork put on the socks and stood up slowly.
Dina pulled out a chair for herself at the table. “How’s the leg this morning?”
“It would be better without holes in it, but I can manage.” He limped over and appreciatively eyed the contents of the tray. “Looks like a condemned man’s last meal.” He sat down, flapped the napkin onto his lap, and took a sip of the juice. “What are we up to today?”
“Trespassing,” Dina said.
While he ate, Dina explained about the night’s events.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Charlie’s a smart kid. Very savvy. I don’t really think she was intercepted on her way to the mine, but I’d like to make certain. If there’s the slightest chance this Stokely got his hands on her…” She didn’t complete that thought.
Cork sipped his coffee. “What did you have in mind?”
“We’re going to the Copper River Club the same way you and Ren did. We’re going to check out Stokely’s cabin.”
“You and me?”
“That’s the plan.”
“What about Jewell and Ren?”
“She didn’t want him missing any more school, and she needed to go to work.”
“They’re both gone?”
“Yes.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty. Jewell said we could use the ATV.”
“Does she know what you’re planning?”
“Not exactly. I thought it best to keep this between you and me.”
“How do we find the cabin?” he asked.
“I talked to Ren about that. He said to follow the river from where you two encountered Calvin Stokely yesterday. It’s a couple of miles farther on, up a small rise overlooking the river.”
Cork picked up the last strip of bacon. “Stokely’ll hear us coming.”
“He’ll hear you coming,” she said.
“I’m the diversion while you slip into the cabin?”
“You catch on quick. One of the things I like about you.”
In half an hour, he was dressed and ready to go. He slipped the Beretta Tomcat into an ankle holster Dina supplied him. Dina took her Glock and a knapsack she said belonged to Ren. The night before, Jewell had put stitches in Cork’s opened wound. He wasn’t worried about bleeding, but he’d been over the terrain they were about to travel and knew the cost to him in pain. He considered taking a Vicodin but finally decided against it. He needed to be sharp.
The morning was damp and overcast, the temperature in the midforties. There was a dreary feel to the woods, a dismal quiet. Dina drove the ATV; Cork held on behind, shouldering the knapsack. The narrow Killbelly Marsh Trail was a stream of gold leaves wet with dew. At the river, Dina turned west and they went upstream. On this gray morning, the water reflected a slate sky. She stopped a few minutes later and pointed up the hillside to their right.
“The mine where Charlie hid is up there,” she said. “Behind all that brush. Wait here.”
Dina swung herself off the ATV and hiked quickly up the slope. She disappeared behind a thicket and emerged again a moment later. Back at the ATV she said, “Still empty.” She restarted the engine and shot ahead.
In less than fifteen minutes, they reached the creek that marked the boundary of the Copper River Club. Dina stopped again and dismounted.
“Give me the knapsack,” she said.
Cork handed it over and she took out a couple of the Motorola walkie-talkies he recognized had come from the resort. She gave one to Cork, kept one herself. She also took out a compact pair of Leitz field glasses in a case with a belt clip.
“Ren said the cabin’s a couple miles up the river from here. Give me half an hour,” she told Cork. “I’ll raise you on the radio when I’m in position and have the place scoped out, then you come roaring in—I mean loud. If you have to, lead him on a merry chase. Just get him away from the cabin.”
“Yesterday he had a rifle,” Cork reminded her.
“Then keep your head down, cowboy.”
She turned and began a steady lope along the river’s edge in the direction of Stokely’s cabin. She was wearing the camouflage fatigues in autumn color. She quickly blended with the foliage and in a minute he couldn’t see her anymore.
He gave her thirty minutes but didn’t hear anything on the Motorola. The problem might have been interference, or distance, or a malfunction of the units themselves. He wondered if he should be worried about Dina, but dismissed that concern. He gave her an extra five minutes, then decided it was time to move, regardless. He gunned the ATV and headed onto Copper River Club property.
He followed a faint but definite path that shadowed the river. Cork, a hunter all his life and used to tracking, spotted the thinning of the underbrush that indicated occasional foot traffic. He figured it was the patrol route for the security personnel. After a mile and a half, the trail veered suddenly north away from the river. Cork held up, puzzled. He decided that Stokely was probably the reason: the patrol route steered clear of his cabin to preserve his privacy. He gave the ATV gas and kept heading west, moving carefully through the undergrowth, following the river.
He’d fully expected to be intercepted. Several times he gunned the ATV for no reason other than noise. When he finally broke from the trees into a long clearing, he still hadn’t seen a soul. A narrow, rutted dirt road split the clearing. At the south end that overlooked the river stood a small A-frame cabin and three outbuildings. The cabin appeared to be deserted, with no vehicles in sight. In a fenced area between two of the outbuildings, a big dog was barking up a storm.
Cork scanned the woods and saw no sign of Dina, which was what he expected. She was there somewhere, watching. He drove the ATV onto the dirt road and turned toward the cabin. A dozen yards from the front door, he killed the engine, swung his sore leg over the seat, and dismounted. In its high-fenced kennel, the dog, a black and tan German shepherd, was doing everything it could short of pole-vaulting to get at Cork. It dashed back and forth, occasionally hurling itself against the chain links in a frenzy of snapping and snarling. Although the fence looked plenty sturdy, Cork was glad to have the Tomcat strapped to his ankle.
He knocked on the cabin door and waited. He tried to peek in a window but the shades and curtains were tightly drawn. Moving to the garage, he peered through a pane and saw that it was empty inside. He approached the kennel. The German shepherd went into a whole other universe of agitation, sending out a spray of saliva and foam as it slammed into the fence. Cork was a little concerned that it might actually harm itself.
The next building was a wood shop, locked. Through the window on the door, Cork saw lathes, planes, saws, worktables, and a floor covered with sawdust and shavings. The last building was a small smokehouse.
He faced the cabin again. It was clear that Stokely was not currently in residence.
He felt a presence at his back.
“Nada?” Dina said.
He shook his head. “No Stokely, no Charlie, no nothing.”
“There is something,” she said. “Out there in the woods. See what you think.”
She led him a short distance into the trees and pointed toward an area of bare ground. Cork saw what interested her. He knelt, grimacing at the pain that shot through his leg, and he carefully studied the prints.
“The cougar,” he said.
“The night Stokely wounded it?”
Cork shook his head. “That was a couple of days ago. I’d say these tracks are more recent, within the last twenty-four hours.” He reached out and Dina helped him up. He looked from the tracks toward the cabin, barely visible through the foliage. “This close to a barking dog and a man who’s already put a bullet in it, that animal has to be crazy or desperately hungry.”
“Was it after the dog, maybe?”
“Even if you were hungry, would you think that dog was an easy meal? Maybe it was after garbage.”
“I don’t see a garbage can out here,” she said.
Cork eyed the line of the tracks, which seemed to head toward an opening in the woods a short distance away. He limped in that direction with Dina at his side. They stepped into another clearing, nearly circular and much smaller than the one that held Stokely’s buildings. This one was only forty or fifty feet in diameter. It was filled with tall grass and wildflowers gone yellow with the season. The ground was uneven, and the ground cover was unevenly rich, surprisingly thick and lush in places. On the far side, loose soil lay thrown about in scattered splashes, the result of an animal’s furious digging. Cork saw a shallow trough scraped in the earth. He crossed the clearing with Dina, and they stood over the hole.
“Oh God,” Dina said. “Is that what I think it is?”
Black with rot, ragged from the feeding of the cougar, it was nonetheless clearly a human leg, bare and attached to a body still mostly buried.
Cork turned away, sickened as he understood the reason for the uneven earth and lush undergrowth in that terrible hidden place.