Page 26 of Clear Path

As he tracked the trajectory of the doe plunging into the brush, his eye snagged on a flash of color behind the shrubs. Curious, he returned his water bottle to the side pocket of his pack and veered off the path to investigate. A shiny, candy apple red trail bike leaned against a tree trunk about thirty feet off the trail.

When he reached the precariously balanced bicycle, he scanned the area for its owner but saw no one. Looking down, he spotted signs of recent activity. The imprint of shoes in the dirt and a pile of broken twigs drew his attention to a barely visible path leading away from the trail. The path curved up a gentle slope. After a moment’s consideration, he followed it.

The narrow path wound uphill through thickening undergrowth. Bodhi pushed aside low-hanging branches and stepped carefully over exposed roots. After about fifty yards, the vegetation thinned, revealing the dark mouth of a cave set into the hillside.

He paused at the entrance, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. His gaze swept over the cave floor and settled on a messenger bag lying on its side near the wall. Contents spilled from the open flap—protein bars, a phone charger, and what looked like camera equipment.

Then he saw it. Blood. A small, glistening pool with spatter radiating outward. His training kicked in automatically as heanalyzed the pattern—the blood had been expelled with force, not from a minor cut or scrape.

He frowned and took a careful step forward, noting a partial shoe print in blood leading out of the cave. Several feet from the messenger bag, a single, blood-splattered cycling shoe lay on its side, its mate nowhere in sight. The shoe’s tread didn’t match the print on the cave’s floor. Next to it, a small rectangle of colorful plastic caught his eye—a driver’s license. He squatted to examine it without touching it.

Aurora Elin Westin. Her photo showed a classically beautiful young woman with striking white-blonde hair, intense blue eyes, and a warm smile.

He drew back in surprise. Rory? The photographer?

He made quick work of searching the rest of the cave but found no signs of Aurora herself or evidence of where she—or anyone who might have been with her—had gone.

Then he squatted beside the blood and snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves from the evidence kit he carried out of habit. He pressed one pointer finger into the puddle. When he drew his gloved finger back, it was covered with wet, barely tacky blood.

The blood—presumably Aurora’s—had been spilled recently. In the past minutes, not hours.

He crashed through the trees, calling her name, making no effort to be stealthy. The more noise he made the better if she was injured and trapped somewhere nearby. But after twenty minutes of thrashing around in the woods, he’d seen no sign of her, and the only response to his calls had been an irritated bird scolding him.

He grabbed the items from the cave and returned to the trail, jogging at a steady clip. Union Hill couldn’t be more than ten or twelve miles ahead. He needed to alert the authorities—the sooner, the better.

18

Union Hill

Diana Mercer tilted her head, using her peripheral vision to track the server weaving through the crowded rooftop deck of Vines & Vibes. The tapas and wine bar’s prime corner table had an unobstructed view across the courtyard to Rory’s apartment, where the impromptu exhibition continued to command the attention of the growing crowd. Diana, unable to appreciate the photographs from this distance, focused on the reactions of the rest of the onlookers.

“Another glass?” The server appeared at her elbow, gesturing toward her empty wine glass.

“One’s my limit.”

She gave her yellow-tinted glasses a soft tap as if reminding herself that she’d be wise to keep her intake moderate, no matter how tasty the reds on offer might be.

Julie Mason, seated to her right, lifted her own glass. “I’ll take another tempranillo.”

“And I’m fine as well,” Evan Jeffries said from Diana’s left. The history professor leaned forward, resting his leather-patched elbows on the table, his eyes fixed on Rory’s photos across the courtyard. “Extraordinary work. The juxtaposition of light and shadow, the raw emotion in the subjects’ faces—it demands a response.”

Julie snorted softly. “You can say that again. Though I question her tactics.”

Diana resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She’d known both Julie and Evan since high school, and some things never changed. Julie was the ambitious girl who escaped to the city, only to return to their tiny town years later as its self-proclaimed savior. Evan was the idealistic do-gooder who went off to college to soak up knowledge like a sponge and returned to his hometown to share it. She wondered idly what that made her.

As Evan huffed, Diana’s musing was quickly supplanted by a silent hope that Julie and Evan wouldn’t start one of their interminable debates. Evan, a democratic socialist and activist, and Julie, the consummate capitalist, were locked in an eternal battle as opponents over the proper direction of Union Hill’s ongoing evolution.

While Evan was still winding up for his lecture, a stranger appeared on the deck. A lanky man with a tangle of dark, shoulder-length curls mounted the stairs and stood, scanning the crowd. He wore dusty hiking clothes and had a backpack settled on his shoulders. He carried a messenger bag in one hand and, incongruously, held a shoe in the other.

“Excuse me,” the man said to nobody in particular in a deep, rich voice that carried across the now-hushed patio. “I’m looking for Diana Mercer.”

As Evan and Julie turned to look at her in surprise, she lifted her hand. “Over here.”

A path opened in the sea of bodies to allow the man to make his way to their table. He edged through the crowd with economical movements and stopped beside Diana’s chair. She sensed, more than saw, tension in his posture.

“Ms. Mercer? I’m Bodhi King.” He eased his pack off his shoulders and set it down beside the table but kept a tight grip on the messenger bag and the shoe. “I’ve just come from the police station.”

What had Ron done now?

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