Avalanche Of Trouble

“Can you think of any reason someone would have killed them?” Gage asked. “Something in their pasts, maybe?”

“No.” She shook her head, fresh tears flowing in spite of her efforts to hold them back. “They were quiet, ordinary people.” She blotted the tears with her fingers and angled toward him. “Maybe they stumbled on drug activity—a meth lab or something like that—and were murdered because of it.”

“It’s possible,” Gage said. “And we’ll look into it. But most of the meth labs have moved to Mexico these days.” He slowed as they approached a bank of lights—headlights, work lights, even flashlights bobbed about in the woods on either side of the road.

“This is where they were killed?” Maya asked, staring at the confusion of lights and people—and lots and lots of trees and rocks and dirt. This was the place Angela had gushed about as being so beautiful?

“Yes.” Gage shut off the engine. “Stay with me,” he said. “If you go wandering off around here, you could end up falling down an abandoned mine shaft or stepping off a cliff.”

“Those things could have happened to Casey,” she said, climbing out of the SUV and following him down the side of the road.

“Hey, Gage.”

“Hi, Gage.”

“Thought you’d packed it in for the night?”

Various people greeted the deputy as they passed. An older man with a crooked nose and bushy eyebrows approached. “Deputy Walker, what are you doing about the press?” he asked.

“I’m not really concerned about the press right now, Larry,” Gage said. He turned to Maya. “Maya Renfro, this is Eagle Mountain’s mayor, Larry Rowe.”

“Ms. Renfro.” The mayor nodded solemnly. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” He turned to Gage. “Now, about the press. Something like this could reflect very badly on the town if it isn’t handled properly.”

“Not now, mayor.” Gage pushed past him, only to be waylaid a few yards farther on by a petite woman with a large red hound on a leash. “Did you get anything?” Gage asked her.

“I’m sorry, no.” The woman stopped and leaned down to pat the dog. “Daisy picked up the scent from the shirt you gave me, but after about a hundred yards, she lost it. I marked the path for you. And we can try again tomorrow if you like. Right now, Daisy is just tired and frustrated.”

Daisy stared up at them with mournful brown eyes, then let out a low moan and scratched at one floppy ear with her hind foot.

“Thanks for trying, Lorna,” Gage said. He patted Daisy. “Give her a biscuit from me.”

Maya spotted Greg and Angela’s SUV and faltered. The vehicle was surrounded by a cordon of yellow-and-black tape, and more tape marked a path from the vehicle into the woods. “Is that your sister and her husband’s car?” Gage asked.

“Yes.”

He took her arm. “Come on. I’m going to take you into their camp, ask you to identify some things. Their bodies have already been taken away. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes.” They were just things. She wouldn’t think about them in relation to death.

“Step where I step,” Gage said. “Don’t get off the path or touch anything.” He led the way through a section of tape.

“That’s their tent,” she said as they approached the blue dome tent. “They bought it a couple of years ago, to replace an old one our parents gave them.”

“All right.” Gage led her to the tent and pulled back the flap. “Take a look inside and tell me if you see anything unusual—anything that doesn’t belong to your sister, her husband or Casey.”

He swept the beam of the flashlight over the contents of the tent—sleeping bags, backpack, clothing, Angela’s purse. Maya covered her mouth with her hand when she spotted the purse and shook her head, swallowing hard against the sob that threatened to escape.

Gage dropped the tent flap and straightened, playing the beam of the light around and behind the tent. Pink tape fluttered from a slender metal stake behind the tent. “This is where Lorna and her dog picked up the scent,” he said, guiding Maya over to the stake. “Don’t walk in the path, but walk beside it. Call your niece. If she’s near enough, she might recognize your voice and come to you.”

Maya stared at him, still numb. “Calling her isn’t going to help,” she said. “We have to look for her.”

“Call her. She might hear you. Identify yourself and if she’s hiding, she might come out.”

Maya shook her head, the tears flowing freely now. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I could call all night and it wouldn’t make any difference. Casey wouldn’t hear me. She’s deaf.”

Chapter Three (#u0142938a-4ece-51c9-bc9b-d2cb412a5857)

Gage stared at Maya. “Your niece is deaf and you’re just now telling me?” he asked.

“I’m sorry! I was in shock. And it’s not like I think of Casey as my deaf niece. She’s just my niece. Being deaf is part of her, the way having brown hair is part of her.”

“This is a little more significant than her hair color.”

“I said I’m sorry.” She stared into the surrounding darkness, looking, he was sure, for the little girl. Gage stared, too, his stomach knotting as the difficulty of their task sank in. Simply getting within earshot of Casey Hood wasn’t going to be enough. They were going to have to get her in their sights, and then somehow persuade her that they were friendly and wanted to help her. All of that required light, which meant waiting until tomorrow to continue the search.

He touched Maya’s shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She stared at him, eyes wide, red rimmed from crying. She didn’t look quite as young as she had when she had first walked into his office. The blue-tipped hair and dangling earrings had him thinking she was a teenager then. He saw the maturity in her eyes now, and the desperate struggle to keep hope alive. “We can’t just leave her out there all night—alone,” she said.

“We’re going to have someone here all night,” he said. “I’ll have them build a fire and keep it going. Maybe Casey will see it.”

“I should be the one waiting,” she said.

“No. You should go back to your hotel room and try to get some sleep.” She started to argue, but he cut her off. “We’re going to need you in the morning. Once it’s light out here and we can see, we’re going to need you close in case someone spots Casey. She’ll recognize you and want to come to you.”

She looked out into the darkness again. “Do you really think she’s all right?”

“We haven’t found evidence to the contrary,” he said. “No signs of struggle, no other signs of blood at the scene. I think she got away from the killers.” Whoever shot Angela and Greg Hood might have taken the child with them, but that didn’t make sense to him. The parents’ deaths had been cold and efficient—for whatever reason, someone had wanted them eliminated. Why then burden yourself with a five-year-old child? “I think Casey saw what was happening, became frightened and ran away. Tomorrow, we’re going to find her.” He touched her shoulder again. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

“I don’t have a hotel room. I mean, I didn’t call and make a reservation. I didn’t even think of it.”

“Then we’ll find you one. Come on.”

She made one last glance into the darkness beyond the camp, then followed Gage to his SUV. “I’m going to speak to the sheriff,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He found Travis with a group of search and rescue volunteers who were packing up to head back to town. “I got some more information about the little girl we’re looking for,” Gage told them. “Seems she’s deaf. So shouting her name isn’t going to do any good. We’ll need to make eye contact.”

“I know a little American Sign Language,” one of the SAR volunteers, a middle-aged woman, said.

“That might come in handy,” Gage said. “Can you come back to help with the search tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here.”

They said good-night. Travis waited until he and Gage were alone before he spoke. “Does the sister have any idea what the Hoods were doing up here that got them killed?” he asked.

Gage glanced back toward his SUV. He could see the shadowed figure of Maya as she sat in the passenger seat. “Greg Hood was an engineer who had developed some new equipment he thought could make these old mines profitable. He purchased these old claims to create a kind of demonstration project. He and his wife and the kid were camping up here, checking out their new acquisition.”

“Any enemies, threats, anything like that?” Travis asked.