Page 12 of Midnight Ride

“That’s for damned sure.” He laughed. “Something we can do for you, Sheriff?”

“Nope. Not really. Just checking campsites and making sure everybody is settled in.”

“Yep. We picked us a great spot here and we’re all good.”

“How many in your party?” asked Billy.

“Four of us. We drove up from Texas for a couple of weeks in the wilderness. Me and my buddies been looking forward to it all year long.”

“Wish you a good hunt,” said Billy. He handed the guy a card. “You meet up with any hunters who don’t seem…on the money to you. Give me a call.”

The guy stared at the card for our office. “Who exactly are you looking for, Sheriff? We can help if we know what to look for. Most days we meet up with other hunters.”

“Twin boys. Dan and Van. Look for them in a larger group—maybe seven guys altogether. Be very helpful to us, son, if you came across them.”

“Will do, Sherriff. I’ll make it a point to watch for a pair of hunters like that.”

Billy shook his hand. “Didn’t catch your name.”

“Cody. Cody Lamonte.”

“Appreciate it, Cody.”

Billy and I tramped back to the squad and rested for a minute before moving on. “Nice guy,” said Billy. “The more people looking for the twins, the luckier we’re gonna get, Harlan.”

“Yeah, I can see how that works.”

Lake Elwell Road.

Me and Ted were leaving our third campsite when we heard shots fired from a fair ways off. “Shit, Ted. Gunfire. Where’s that coming from?”

“To the south of us, Tammy. Might be a hunter shooting at an elk.”

“Let’s drive down the lake road a little farther and see if we can see anything.”

“With so many trees, we might not see a damned thing from the road,” said Ted, “but sure. We’ll go look anyway. If it is something that ain’t related to hunting, we should check it out.”

“Yeah. We got one group of murderers out hunting already, and we can’t be too careful.”

Ted drove our squad around the narrow squiggly lake road and both sides were pretty heavily treed. “We need them to fire another shot to give us a direction, Tam. One more shot and we could zone in.”

I had my head out the window and couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t see anything either. “Damn it, Ted. Whoever is shooting is nowhere near the road.”

“Nope. Not easy to tell where they might be. Want to move on to our next camp?”

I let out a breath. “We might as well.”

Quarry Cutoff.

Travis and Virge were heading into their second campsite in the hundreds of acres of virgin forest accessible by the Quarry Cutoff trail.

Already a quarter of mile from the road, Virgil asked, “How far back do you think they’ll be?”

“No idea,” said Travis, “but their truck is parked right at the road. They probably took a straight path into the bush.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Virge.

“Looks like rain and I want to be in and out of that bush before the storm hits or we’re gonna get fuckin soaked.”

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