Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

Childers, had blown the attorney away right before she was supposed to meet him. Donita and Levi had driven up just as the brunette woman had walked out toward the shrine. They’d waited, heard the faint pops of suppressed rifle fire. The cops had kept all the details to themselves, but Donita knew the US attorney and a woman were dead, murdered by shots that had been meant for her.

She’d wanted to run, to go as far and as fast as they could, but Levi said it was too risky. They’d just come after her. He was a good man, but a horrible liar. She doubted he could pull off the story about her accidental drowning. Best case scenario, the cops would think he murdered her.

In the end, it seemed better to hide than to run. So she trusted Levi to become a better liar overnight.

And here she was.

She’d looked behind every support pillar twice, checked the clear water to make sure there wasn’t something lurking there. Found the small alcove that the miners had used for a privy a hundred years ago. Then, she’d set up her cot in the back of the Great Hall, near where it necked down to the beetle head, on a spot with the fewest chunks of fallen rock.

She tried to read, lit a candle for emotional comfort – and to make sure she still had plenty of oxygen – but her mind began to play tricks on her. Her grandmother had told her too many stories of demons and witches and wily shape-shifting land otters and frogs who kidnapped young girls and took them to their underwater homes. The first time Levi had taken her to a mine he’d told her about Tommy knockers, little green goblins who lived deep in recesses of the mountain, sometimes evil, sometimes nice. Sitting there on her cot, a tiny dot in a massive man-made cave, it was hard to believe anyone who lived in this oppressive darkness could be anything but evil.

She sat on the edge of her cot, clutching her knees to her chest, sobbing, quietly, because she didn’t want to disturb the mountain any more than it wanted to disturb her.

She might eventually lose her mind in this self-imposed solitary confinement, but consoled herself that her cell was big and not some cramped hole where she had to crawl around on her hands and knees. The entrance was well hidden. As long as they didn’t know she was down here, she was safe.

If Ephraim Dollarhyde ever figured out where she was hiding, he wouldn’t have to waste time and energy rappelling down to look for her. All he had to do was drop the rope and leave her stranded until she starved to death – or blow the entrance and shut her up for good.

Chapter 42

Cutter called USFS LEO Bobby Tarrant as soon as he left Tom Horning’s driveway. The hatchery where Fawsey had worked was in Berners Bay. Almost forty miles north by boat from Auke Bay Marina, it was only seven miles from the northern end of the Glacier Highway, the road that led out of Juneau. Cutter hoped to have someone with a Forest Service boat meet him with a skiff at the terminus instead of wasting the time to drive all the way into Juneau.

Rather than call and argue with Special Agent Beason while he waited for Tarrant to work out the logistics, Cutter contacted Lola and asked her to pass along what he planned to do. UNODIR – Unless Otherwise Directed – he planned to go straight to the abandoned hatchery and see if he could pick up Levi Fawsey’s tracks. UNODIR meant he was informing FBI task force command, but due to exigency, moving forward without permission. There was no time to sit around and debate this. Much better to err on the side of doing something.

Tarrant came through. A white pickup pulling an aluminum skiff rattled through the trees at the Echo Cove boat launch twenty minutes after Cutter and Maycomb got there. USFS Ranger Karen Sakamoto didn’t park, but made a wide U-turn and expertly backed the fifteen-foot Smoker Craft down the ramp in one shot, stopping just short of the water.

“Sorry I couldn’t get you anything larger,” Sakamoto said, a hint of an East Coast accent in her voice. She went around to the back of the skiff, inserted the drain plug in the transom, and detached the metal motor brace that kept the 30-horse outboard from bouncing on the trailer. “This one’s hell-for-stout though, and the little Honda should do well over twenty knots with both of you. You know how to drive a boat?”

“I do.” Cutter threw his gear over the side. “I appreciate you getting here so fast. Do I need to sign a Forest Service receipt or anything?”

“Nope,” the ranger said. “This is my personal Smoker Craft. Bobby said you were in a hurry. I already had her hooked up to go fishing later.” She jumped back in her pickup and put the boat in the water. Maycomb held the bowline from the side of the ramp while the boat floated off the trailer.

Cutter thanked Sakamoto and left immediately, taking the little skiff north along the low, tree-covered hills of Echo Bay. He lost cell service five minutes later, making any further orders from Charles Beason moot. The satellite phone would allow Cutter to communicate, but he’d keep that turned off until he needed it.

Lola was likely already at Tom Horning’s with Van Dyke, picking up more lights, helmets, and rope. Not the sort of partner to let Cutter twist in the wind, she would follow, whether Beason approved it or not. And anyway, the chief would back whatever they did when she knew there was a life in danger.

A brisk sea breeze held the rain at bay for the time being, but low clouds still boiled over the mountains. Cutter sat at the back of the skiff, hand on