Primal Obsession (11 page)

“Yeah, let’s eat.” Frank held up his plate.

Hands in her back pockets, Annie stood by the crackling campfire. Her expression suggested that she’d expected this outburst of dissension. Carl’s temper had apparently been building while Sam and the others were on the shore.

Their saboteur had managed to ratchet up the tension so they were at each other’s throats. Nora, being the peacemaker as she must be in her school, had jumped to Ray’s defense. But the tension was affecting them all. How much longer before another temper reached a boiling point?

Frank started out angry enough to destroy them all like the robots he blew apart on his now-dead electronic game. The kid had issues with his old man. Who didn’t? But he’d hauled himself out of his constant funk. Most of the time he pulled his weight. Cheerfully.

Ray the computer geek had barely set a sneaker outdoors before the expedition. Why would he want to destroy the expedition that he said would give his life reality? Maybe he left the coolers uncovered. Maybe he didn’t.

If it was accidental, it didn’t matter. No raccoons upset that heavy, insulated box. No raccoons tipped it just so on its back. Someone upset it on purpose. Someone who also guillotined a chipmunk.

What the hell could
Sam
do about it without laying it all out and confronting the group? Maybe ending the whole expedition? The last thing he wanted to do was to declare his guiding a failure.

He’d have to decide by the time they reached Ted Wolfe’s cabin.

THIRTEEN

Augusta

Between the state police and local jurisdictions, dozens of cops were working on the Hunter case. On Friday morning, Justin gazed around the command post. Most detectives had gone out on interviews, but a few sat writing reports or poring over files. Detective Bess Peters was making notes with a phone at her ear. She’d worked with him on the case night and day since it broke. Wanted a resolution as much as he did.

Frustration gnawed at him. The search of companies with business trips to the crime areas was a process slow as Maine State House legislation. Having a profile had made no difference yet. He was counting on VICAP finding similar crimes in another state, but even that dragged more than rush-hour around the rotary. At least they’d received no new missing-person reports. They had to get this character before he snatched another one.

Peters put down the telephone and strode to where he sat at the conference table. Her eyes were bright with excitement. “We might have a breakthrough. So far we got three companies who send personnel to the abduction sites. And—”

“What do you mean? You didn’t ask about the drop sites?”

“We were getting nowhere asking about the whole list. I wondered if he abducts them, then stashes them someplace until he has a weekend or time off. So his hunting ground might not be related to his work. I removed those and went back to the same companies.” She grinned and tapped an index finger on the folder. “Bingo. Three companies matched up. The managers still have to check the sites with dates in their records.”

“Good work, Detective Peters.” He stood and delivered a military salute.

She returned it. “I’m outta here to go talk to the managers, sneak a peek at personnel files if they’ll let me.” She glanced at her notebook as she adjusted her belt holster. “One in Waterville, one in Lewiston, and one in Portland. It’s gonna be a hell of a long day.” She hooked her waist pack from the chair and headed out.

Justin rolled his shoulders. Something had to pay off soon. Maybe these employer interviews were it.

Special Agent Tavani ambled over from the computer printer and slapped a printout in front of him. “I didn’t want to be right about this, but VICAP came up with a match on the Hunter’s MO.”

Justin scanned the five pages. “Virginia?”

“You know those killings along the Appalachian Trail several years ago?”

“I thought the cops solved those.”

“All but five of them. Over a four-year period, there were five female hikers murdered. Their naked bodies were later found in the woods not far from the Trail.”

Justin tapped an index finger on the report as he read. “Some were covered with leaves, and their bodies mutilated and sodomized after death.” The rush of adrenaline buzzed in his ears as another piece of this hellish puzzle clicked into place. He could almost smell the stench of death ground into the forest floor. “The Hunter.”

Tavani nodded, his features grim. “I think our guy started in Virginia. When things got too hot, he moved north.”

“To the end of the Appalachian Trail. To Maine.”

“Where he learned to be more discreet. He figured out easier ways to abduct his victims, then transport them to the woods for his fun and games.” Tavani pulled up a chair. “I expect his first murder was opportunistic. He may have been stalking animals in the woods near the trail or playing at stalking the hikers.”

“Acting out his fantasy?” When Tavani nodded, Justin continued, “Maybe a lone female hiker spotted this guy lurking in the woods and screamed bloody murder.”

“So he killed her to shut her up. And dragged her off the trail.”

His mouth wry in thought, Justin grabbed his car keys and stood. “Time I got started on my interviews. College kids on a nine-month-old sighting.” He shook his head in doubt.

At the doorway, he turned back to Tavani, who had opened the profile folder. “Fit, tanned, between thirty-five and forty-five, might be known as a hunter or outdoorsman. And now we have more to add to the profile. A Virginia accent?”

“A definite possibility.”

***

Northern Maine woods

After battling through their first rapids, Annie was wheezing.

The three red canoes arrowed swiftly down a smoother, deeper part of the Eagle River. “Okay, team. That was first base,” Sam called.

Everyone laughed. Everyone but her.
First base
meant there were three more to conquer.

“That’s it, Annie. Second base is coming up. Get ready to plant that paddle,” he said from his steering position in the stern. “We’ll aim for vees ahead. Watch for them!”

She turned halfway to look at him. His expression was that of a small boy on a roller-coaster ride. His grin spread as wide as the stream, and his hibiscus-flowered shirt, unbuttoned and flapping in the breeze, he looked good enough to scoop up with a spoon. He slipped back into his life jacket, fumbled in a pocket, then scarfed down a Double-Stuff Oreo.

She grinned in spite of her nerves. Maybe his nonchalance meant the approaching rapids were as mild as the ones she’d just lived through. He said maybe better than Class II, but not as high as Class III. Whatever that meant.

She’d donned her Speedo and a T-shirt. Most in the group usually wore swimwear beneath sun-shielding shirts, ready for a swim at any moment. Sam swore the canoes were too loaded to tip over, but if white water happened to dump them, she was prepared. Clothing-wise.

Mentally, it was a tossup. She felt much more at home with her keyboard or ferreting out a story, not whipping through rapids with protesting shoulders. Though admittedly, her body was adjusting to the demands of canoeing. She’d learned to power her paddle with her upper body, not her arms.

This portion of the Eagle River narrowed to about five canoe lengths. Sam said it was waist deep and shallower where the fast-moving water swirled around the rocks. He’d canoed this river many times, but every time was different depending on the level of the water.

Riverbanks rose abruptly on both sides—low mud cliffs held together by a snarl of roots and grasses. The cloying odors of clay and mud mingled with pine scent. Thick stands of trees and underbrush curtained the view beyond the river. Here and there, countless thirsty animals had worn trails down to the water.

The muted rumble of water increased in decibels as the rushing stream brought them to the next obstacle course. The riverbanks blurred past them.

As Sam yelled directions to the other two canoes, she reviewed the morning’s lessons. She could hear his voice barking out the directions. “Avoid the funnels. Aim for the vees.”

Water formed funnel shapes as it streamed around and over the rocks. Vee shapes marked the deeper troughs between outcroppings. Safer routes for small craft. They practiced steering, paddling in the current to keep the canoes straight.

It surprised her what a good teacher Sam was. She entrusted him with her life. She wouldn’t trust him or any other jock again with her heart, but he would guide them safely through these rapids.

Then there were the paddle strokes—the power paddle, the radical paddle, and what in the blue-eyed world was the other one? In spite of Sam’s patient demonstrating and their practices, she’d blanked that one.

To their left, the others struggled toward their own passages, mother and son in mid-stream, Ray and Carl near the far shore.

As she switched her paddle to the opposite side, she chanced a quick glance at them.

Frank and his mom reached the rapids first. Frank steered the canoe by pulling back in a
J
move.

Ah, a
J
, the third paddle stroke.

Once they made it through the vee they’d aimed for, Frank let out a whoop and pumped a fist.

Aim for the vees.

Annie tightened her cap and sunglasses strap. She gripped the hard plastic paddle.
Just let me get through this day in one piece, and I’ll never again badmouth Mother Nature.

As Sam had directed, she dug the paddle blade into the churning river.
Keep the top arm straight. Power with the body. Stroke, stroke, stroke.
She mouthed the mantra in rhythm with the pulse pounding in her ears. “There! Ahead. At eleven o’clock. A vee.”

From behind her, he said, “I see it, princess. Heading for it. Keep powering that paddle. We’ll make it.”

An eddy caught the canoe. Shoved it too far to the left. The canoe careered broadside in the current. A boulder loomed ahead. Disaster beckoned.

Her heartbeat clattered. She pulled her paddle in toward the canoe. The boulder prowled closer—a troll hungry for boats.

“Harder! Don’t let the current turn us sideways!”

She pulled harder to the right. The canoe turned. Aimed with the current.

“Awesome radical move! Now dig in as hard as you can.”

Triumph leapt in her throat, but there was no time to celebrate. They had to make it through the vee.

Stroke. Stroke.

Harder. Faster.

Her arms and shoulders screamed. Rocks whisked past them. The water boiled around them. The canoe leaped ahead.

Half-hidden clusters of jagged rocks guarded the entrance to the vee. The opening looked too tight, the rocks too close.

She heard a scraping sound like chalk on a blackboard. Saw the rocks kiss the canoe’s side. She clenched her jaw and kept stroking.

“She can take it. Go, Annie, go,” Sam yelled.

She stroked. The canoe pulled ahead. Red paint glistened on the brazen rocks. The bottom of the vee appeared through the rippling water. The stones below looked poised to leap up and gouge the fiberglass skin.

Annie dug in.

“We made it!” She panted as if she’d just done ten miles on a treadmill.

“No break yet, princess,” Sam shouted over the roar of water. “There’s another one. Looks like a waterfall.”

A freaking waterfall?

A groan formed in her throat, but she didn’t have the breath to release it. She rolled her shoulders and prepared. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was teasing her.

It
was
a waterfall.

“A baby waterfall,” Sam called gleefully. “Little more than a foot. Maybe two.”

“
Two feet?
It looks more like an Olympic ski jump.” She jabbed at the churning froth, white as snow.

Paddling hard enough to whip cream propelled them forward. They zipped through a narrow vee to the watery slope’s edge.

The canoe tilted like skis poised to fly down the mountain. Her paddle was high and dry.

He sent them over and into the boiling water below with a soaker of a splash. “Yee-hah!”

Immediately the river widened and slowed with deeper water, offering them a respite. A pair of loons, their harlequin coats gleaming in the sun, coasted ahead of the canoes invading their paradise. One dived out of sight in search of a meal.

“Relax, team,” Sam called to the other two canoes. “We can have lunch and take it easy. Nothing for about a mile.”

A whole mile. Heaven.
Annie rested her paddle on the gunwales and panted. Her racing heart slowed. Water surrounded her, but her throat felt as dry as newsprint. She guzzled from her water bottle.

The other two canoes, having taken the easier route through the rapids, edged toward the far riverbank and rafted together against a tangle of branches.

“Sam!” She spun on him. “Why didn’t
we
take that route? Why the waterfall?”

His grin was unrepentant and too sexy. “So you’d throw yourself in my arms?”

“Not likely.” She gave an indignant huff. “Mother Nature’s hard enough on me without your help.”

He beached the canoe on a flat rock and jumped out. “Stretch those muscles. You’ll feel better.” He stroked on his back and blew a water spout.

She didn’t need coaxing. She tore off her life jacket and shirt, then flopped into the stream. She swam around the canoe before returning to hang on.

Where was Sam? She searched the water. Nothing.

“
Yow!
”

She kicked and thrashed at whatever had her foot.