around the closely set tables to the one in the back where she’d been sitting.
She was gone. Jacket, coffee cup, all gone.
Don’t take the kids to the far side of the water.
She’d known. She’d known he was headed to Dungeness Falls today, and she’d known about the kids on the field trip before he had. He pushed back through the shop and headed toward the parking lot once more, nearly upsetting the same Weeble-shaped man he’d almost toppled a few minutes earlier—dude sure didn’t move fast. Once outside, he searched like a madman among the cars sitting in the small parking lot, looking for signs of telltale curls or a too-intense stare as he ignored Sabrina’s shouted questions. But the woman wasn’t there anymore. And he didn’t even know her name.
Smacking his palm against the nearest car hood, Alex blew out a frustrated breath, still scanning the parking lot, even though he now knew it was a hopeless cause. He’d just spotted the footprints her ridiculous clunky boots had made in the thin layer of snow that now coated the ground, and they led to a parking spot that was now empty.
Don’t take the kids to the far side of the water.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Chapter Two
“So even though it’s snowing, you can still see a slight depression in the snow where our mystery woman left tracks,” Alex called out over an excited group of fifth graders. About ten of them hung on his every word, bumping heads every time they bent down to see something he had to show them on the ground. The rest were pretty much touch and go—sometimes he captured their interest, and other times they got distracted by something shiny. But all in all, they were a pretty decent group of kids. He liked fifth grade—they were old enough to have an interesting conversation with, but still young enough to be dazzled by his tracking brilliance. Not that he’d tell Sabrina that—she still thought he was doing her a giant favor.
He started walking backward, beckoning to the group to follow him. “Here you’ll notice our subject started veering off the path.” He gestured toward a smattering of tall grasses, some of which were bent and broken. “Plants don’t crush themselves, so you can see something’s been here. Since the footprints we’re following seem to have disappeared off the path, looking for broken vegetation is the next best thing.”
“Oooh, that’s so cool!” said one gum-chomping girl as she pushed her trendy red glasses up higher on her nose, smiling brightly.
He laughed softly. “Be careful. That’s how I got into this business—I thought tracking was cool. But it’s also exhausting and sometimes cold, wet and nasty.”
“But you get to save lives. That’s awesome,” she responded.
True. And that was the best part, finding lost hikers and bringing them home.
“Are you Native American?” a boy bundled in a puffy purple jacket and a Minnesota Vikings stocking hat interjected. His voice was partially muffled by the yellow-and-purple scarf someone had wrapped around the lower half of his face, dark brown eyes peering over it. It wasn’t that cold, but some parents couldn’t be too careful when it came to their children.
“Yes.” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Alex’s teeth clicked together in an involuntary jaw clench as he waited for the inevitable question.
The boy pulled the scarf off his face, clumsily, as his hands were encased in some hard-core ski mittens. Alex felt the tension leave his shoulders when he noticed that the boy’s skin was slightly tanner than that of the Caucasian children in his class. “I’m Ojibwa, from Minnesota. We’re not trackers. Is your tribe?”
“Thank you. I have a lot of people assume that I’m a tracker because of some mysterious Native American power.” He smiled at the boy, who grinned back in understanding. “I’m Oglala Lakota Sioux, but I grew up off the reservation. And no, the Sioux aren’t trackers, to my knowledge.” He’d been six when his mother had moved off the reservation with her only child, so he didn’t actually know a whole lot about the Lakota except for the few things Anna Gray had told him through the years.
The girl with the glasses raised her hand, so high and straight above her head, her tummy stuck out with the effort.
“Yes?” Alex waved at her so she’d feel free to ask her question.
“Where did you learn to track, then?” Her hand remained in the air, even though he’d already called on her.
“I took a class as a college student from the park rangers here to fulfill a phys ed requirement when I couldn’t get into weight training, and I liked it so much, I designed my own semester abroad to Botswana to study tracking and desert survival with the Kalahari San.” At their puzzled looks, he added, “You might know them as the Bushmen. They’re tribal people in Africa, and their tracking skills are legendary. As luck would have it, the group who took me in were also brilliant teachers. I came back here to do a mountain-tracking apprenticeship, and they hired me.”
After fielding a few questions about his Africa experience and telling them how he learned to always keep his tent zipped in the Kalahari—to keep the hyenas out—Alex headed down the trail once more, showing them how to spot the sign indicating where his coworker’s trail continued.
It wasn’t until he heard water rushing through rocks that he felt the first pangs of uneasiness.
Don’t take the kids to the far side of the water.
But that was where the trail led. Across the water. And a successful field trip meant following the tracks around the entire Dungeness Falls loop, at the end of which one of the park rangers would be waiting with a picnic lunch to tell them about Renegade Ridge’s history and point out some interesting sights.
What had she been warning him about? Should he just ignore her? Was she an overprotective parent who’d decided to be spooky and weird about her fear of having her child near water? Was she insane?
Maybe she was insane. An insane bomber who had rigged the bridge over the falls to explode once they set foot on it.
Ah, hell. Now he was being insane. But he also couldn’t just ignore her. If any of the kids under his watch got hurt because he ignored Ms. Batcrapcrazy’s warning, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. He should have just called the police and had them sort this out, but now it was too late. He was in charge of a group of thirty-odd fifth graders, and he alone had to decide whether they were going to cross the water in about fifteen minutes.
Pulling the radio off his belt, he brought it up to his mouth. “Hey, kids, here’s how we communicate with the ranger station during a search,” he said brightly. Probably too brightly, judging from the confused look one of the chaperones had just shot him. Toning down his Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood smile, he depressed the talk button with his thumb. “Base, this is tracker one-B, over.”
A burst of static, and then came, “Roger that, tracker one-B, how can we help you, over?”
“I need you to patch me over to Sabrina’s cell phone, over.” He hoped that Sabrina, who had set the tracks he and the schoolkids were following, had taken her phone with her on the way to her stepdaughter’s appointment.
“Hey, Al, what’s up?” Sabrina asked, never having been one for radio protocol via cell phone. “Uh, over.”
“Bree, I’m just about to cross Dungeness Falls. Did you see anything strange up here when you were laying these tracks last night, over?” Naturally, none of the kids were distracted at the moment, and all were hanging on his every word. Thirty pairs of eyes widened when he asked about “anything strange,” and then the kids started whispering excitedly among themselves. Great. Now he’d scared them all. Their parents would be overjoyed.
“No, Al. Everything was pretty normal. What in particular are you looking for, over?” she responded.
“Nothing. Never mind.” Without so much as an over, he clicked