Alaskan Mountain Search
Author
Sarah Varland
Reads
19.7K
Chapters
20
ONE
It was never truly dark at this time of year—mid June—in the land of the midnight sun. But as it edged closer to midnight, Bre Dayton could feel the shift in the air that signaled night, the added chill that hadn’t been present even an hour before. She could also see the slight dimming of the sun’s rays to a tired golden pink that signaled the end of another day.
Another twenty-four hours gone since her seventeen year old niece had disappeared. Thirty-eight hours total now.
“Captain Dayton...” Chief Walker approached, shaking his head as he trailed off.
“We can’t give up.”
“Not giving up, scaling back.”
“We can’t do that either.”
His look of sympathy was worse than if he’d argued with her, talked down to her, or anything else. Bre flinched away from the pity she saw in his eyes. She didn’t want to be the recipient of that pity.
She didn’t want her niece to be missing either. Especially not in the vast wilderness of Echo Pass, where four women had died in the past five years. Rumors abounded around town, though none was strong enough to deter people from frequenting the hiking trails in the area. Only some people believed that there was a serial killer, that the man or woman called “the Echo Pass Hunter” was real.
Bre believed. She’d seen the evidence, the bloodied bodies, the senseless loss of life.
The police department knew it was a serial killer and had called in the FBI after the second woman in the same general age range—eighteen to thirty—had disappeared. The discovery of her body and the similar MO of the killing had confirmed the kind of criminal they were dealing with.
“What if we split up more so we can cover a larger area? There may still be a trail somewhere, some kind of evidence left behind.”
“The FBI will still be on the case.”
Bre appreciated their help but didn’t agree with all their advice or methods. It was the FBI’s advice that had prevented the Wolf River Police Department from sharing more details about the cases with the public, for fear of sensationalizing the deaths in a way that made the killer thirsty for more. Or that caused him—the profilers believed it was likely a man—to change weapons, as the weapon was one of the only leads the police department had to chase. They needed to do whatever it took to keep as many people alive as possible. Bre understood the FBI’s recommendation. But she struggled with the lack of transparency.
Instead, the WRPD had avoided publicly sharing details about the case but had made it clear that the pass wasn’t safe, that increases in criminal activity were to be expected; overall, discouraging people from any kind of recreation in that area of the backcountry.
But Alaskans were a stubborn people.
And now Bre’s niece, Addy, was the latest person whose life may have been lost because the PD couldn’t track down enough evidence to identify this person.
“No one should be walking around here alone. Not with a serial killer loose.”
“A serial killer who might have my niece.” She faced her boss head-on, not even bothering to keep the anguish from her tone. Speaking the words aloud was almost impossible. Addy could not be dead. As Addy’s guardian, she’d promised to keep Addy safe, give her the life Bre and Ben hadn’t had. The ache in her chest intensified enough that she almost wanted to call on a God she hadn’t bothered in years. Hadn’t she learned young enough how much good crying out to Him did, as she’d watched the sirens flash the day police had taken her mom away and hauled her and her older brother to a stranger’s house?
Once again, the chief didn’t speak, but Bre knew what he was thinking. She’d seen the postmortem reports of the women who had died already—at least, the ones they knew about. Most had died within hours of their disappearances. The killer appeared to just materialize, take a victim off the trail, and murder her. The body didn’t tend to be well hidden—buried in a shallow grave that too often was disturbed by bears or other animals—but the pass was so remote and untraveled that it was still sometimes years before a victim was found. Maybe if the public knew how brutally these women had been killed, it would be enough to keep people out of the area, but more than likely not. There wasn’t a predictable timeline between victims; sometimes he waited over a year, sometimes women were murdered within a few months of each other. In the five years since they’d had their first victim, four women had been killed.
Addy might be the fifth.
Addy should have known better than to hike in the pass alone. Bre wasn’t one of those who’d advocated for trying to close the pass completely. Very few people thought that a realistic possibility since it was the center of recreation for the town and encompassed an area over a hundred square miles. But she’d told her niece never go to there alone; a rule she followed for herself as well.
Addy hadn’t listened.
Panic pressed at the front of Bre’s throat down into her chest. She almost couldn’t breathe when she thought about Addy possibly... After all she and her brother had been through, Bre had failed in her last promise to him.
But Bre was desperate. God... She tried, but no words came. Help? She felt a flicker of something inside, almost like a spark. For so long she’d wanted God to step in and help her, wanted a reason to believe.
Addy did, Bre reminded herself. The teen had been outspoken about it, asked to be taken to church every Sunday, which Bre did whether she’d been up all night working on a case or not, because it was important to her niece. She’d refused Addy’s invitations to go inside with her though. People who’d seen what she had, didn’t go to church. Or that’s what she told herself.
“Bre, are you still listening?”
He hadn’t called her “captain,” something he was typically very careful to do when they were working—just to make it clear to the people under her command, mostly men, that she was just as deserving of respect as anyone was—but she heard the caring in his voice. This man wasn’t just her boss; he was her friend. The man whose wife insisted on fixing her and Addy dinner every Friday night, no matter how much Bre protested that she didn’t have to do that. He was almost as invested in finding her niece as she was.
“Sorry, Chief.” She blew out a breath, looked out across the brilliant green of the pass. The snow had been late melting this year, but it had melted faster than usual and spring and summer had come in a rush of color so vibrant that it almost hurt her eyes.
It certainly hurt her heart. The world around them was so alive and Addy...
“We have to scale back the search. We can’t keep going like this.”
“Then, like I said, put us in smaller groups to search.”
Theirs was already the smallest group, just the two of them and Officer Miller. The others all had four. The chief wasn’t taking risks with the serial killer and, while Bre didn’t blame him, she was desperate.
The chief continued. “All Wolf River PD is stepping back from is the ground search. The FBI will be handling searches of the pass, and I’ll have officers looking into her movements in the days leading up to Addy’s disappearance, trying to see if we can establish any links, leads or suspects. If possible, I’ll have officers out here canvassing the area, but we can’t be all-hands-on-deck anymore. The rest of the town needs policing too.”
Arguing wasn’t going to do her any good, and Bre didn’t necessarily disagree with his decision, except that this was personal. It was her niece, her only living family.
Darkness was pressing in further now, the sky changing from pink to a turquoise blue as shadows fell across the mountains.
She exhaled, squeezing her eyes shut. How many people she cared about would she have to let go of?
If there was one thing life had taught Bre so far, it was that people left. Usually by choice. Addy may not have left on purpose, but she was still gone.
A one-word prayer—please—seemed to escape from her heart. Even though Bre still wasn’t sure she believed anyone was listening, she let it go. She wanted—needed—Addy to be okay.
“I need to do one last pass of the area. Please.” Bre felt desperation building as time passed. According to postmortem evidence, all the other women who had disappeared in the past, the known victims of the Echo Pass Hunter, had died within twenty-hour hours of disappearing. They were past that already with Addy, and every hour, every minute that passed, made her chances of survival smaller.
Bre could not give up yet. Not even for the day.
The chief considered. Nodded. “I’ll come with you. Here’s the map. I’ve marked where we’ve been so far. Tell me where you want to go and we will go. And then you go home and sleep, understood?”
“I’m not tired.”
“It was an order, Captain.”
Reluctant, but beaten, Bre nodded and took the map from him.
“Here,” she said with more confidence than she felt, remembering the time she’d spent out here in the past. Before the serial killer. The Wolf River Police Department had helped with a search-and-rescue mission. One that had ended in heartbreak in more ways than one. “This area is thick with alders—” she motioned to the map “—and then, as you gain elevation, there are several areas where someone could hide.”
Or where someone could hide a body. Bre might not want to say the words aloud, but she knew they were true. So far there was no predictable pattern to the sites where bodies had been discovered.
“Isn’t this near where that missing hiker was buried in the avalanche years ago? You worked that case, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it’s close. She was just up that way, maybe half a mile or a little more. There are some boulders that signal you’re in the debris field from a large avalanche, and then the chute itself is just a little further.”
They’d deemed it too risky to recover the body and eyewitnesses—herself and Griffin Knight, a man she’d spent most of the last six years trying to forget—had seen the hiker be swept away by the snow. Bre tried not to think about it. Even with everything she’d seen in her line of work, she never got used to knowing she’d seen someone die.
It had been six years ago... One year before the Echo Pass Hunter had started stalking his victims. If Megan Waverly hadn’t died in an avalanche, her disappearance probably would have been linked with the serial killer’s spree by now.
Megan had been late to return from a trip across the pass. At the time, traversing from one end to the other, Wilderness Rim to Wolf River, was a popular activity, even for solo hikers. She hadn’t returned on time and they’d searched for days before finally finding her a little off the main trail—with the help of Griffin Knight, a search-and-rescue worker, and his Alaskan huskies.
The avalanche had happened before they could make it to her. They’d known it was her, even from the faraway visual, based on what she’d been wearing. The bright orange jacket she’d worn had been enough to visually confirm identity. Questions still nagged at Bre. Why had the hiker been so far from the trail when she was found? She’d been reported as a missing person. If she’d truly being missing, shouldn’t they have located her on one of the main trails, trying to find her way back to civilization? Something about it didn’t seem quite right to Bre, but without a body, no more investigating could be done, and the avalanche had ruined any hope of recovery.
“Let’s go, then,” the chief said.
Bre picked up her pace and they moved deeper into the heart of the pass, the quiet of the night around them almost tangible. Bre shivered as she scanned the terrain in front of them and beside them. A chill chased down her neck. From the chill that night had brought? Or from her sense of growing unease? Was someone watching? Was he watching?
She could be in a killer’s crosshairs right now.
Bre shivered again and this time she knew it wasn’t from the weather but from what she knew about the cases. The public was aware there was a serial killer, even if the police department wouldn’t say the words. The cops had been working this case quietly for years, together with the FBI, but the public still didn’t know exact details. They didn’t know why the department referred to him as a hunter. It wasn’t for his methodical stalking of his prey, or his distressingly detailed knowledge of this wilderness area. It wasn’t for his skill with a gun.
Because the Echo Pass Hunter didn’t use a gun. He used a compound bow and hunting arrows. He killed for sport.
And he showed no signs of stopping.
People still hiked Echo Pass because no one ever really thought they’d be next. The path from one end to the other was twenty-six miles. Police had discouraged the pass’s use, but Alaskans were a tenacious bunch, and there was no way to enforce any kind of closure, there were too many access points. Besides, with the lack of information, some people probably assumed that the people found dead had perished of natural causes. The Alaskan wilderness cost lives all the time.
The police department had put up trail cameras, but no suspicious activity had been found on them during the last check. Bre knew they’d be checked again now, if they hadn’t been already. She’d been too involved in the ground search to know what was going on back at the police department.
The wilderness felt untouched here, unexplored, though they were hiking toward a place Bre had been before. It was the site where one of her dearest friendships had come to an abrupt end after Griffin Knight’s willful disappearance from her life. Griffin had been her brother’s best friend. A little older than Bre herself, she’d spent what seemed like half her life being fascinated by the man and more than a little attracted to him.
It wasn’t just his messy dark brown hair, and the way it seemed to curl at the back and around his ears no matter how much he tried to straighten it. Nor was it his green eyes that had seemed to be laughing at something the entire time they’d been growing up. It was his entire presence that attracted her to him. Griffin wore confidence easily, in that quiet way that made her feel like she could relax when she was with him. He knew who he was and owned it. Bre never would have realized how attractive a quality that was until Griffin.
She’d also spent what seemed like half her life running from her feelings. After all, attraction led to relationships, which led, from all indications in her childhood and formative years, to heartache.
But once, six years ago, she’d let herself believe for a little while that falling for Griffin wouldn’t leave her alone and heartbroken. They’d been so close to something real while working the search-and-rescue case together. And then the victim had died. Griffin had pulled back, moved to the outskirts of town, and exited her life.
Maybe she could have handled it better if she’d at least kept his friendship. It had meant too much to her to lose.
Bre tried and failed to shove thoughts of Griffin from her mind. His abandonment had disappointed her in ways she couldn’t name, ways that made her uncomfortable. She shouldn’t have been so affected when he’d left. She’d known better than to let herself depend on someone like that.
Still scanning the area, she noticed no signs of a killer, a victim, or a struggle. Disappointment and relief warred within her. Bre had wanted to look here, just one more place to check, before leaving the pass. On the other hand, not finding a body or signs of one meant that she could hang on to the fragile thread of hope that Addy could still be alive.
“I think we’d better head back.” Chief Walker’s voice broke into her thoughts. She wanted to argue, she needed to find Addy, but the deeper they got into the pass, the more her unease was intensifying. If she walked into some kind of trap, she couldn’t do her neice any good. They had to be smart. Her stomach churned and her throat was tight. She only managed to nod.
Darkness blurred the trees, the brush, the mountain edges and the sky. Everything was brushed with twilight and shadows. Bre could feel danger but not see it. She had a flashlight, though it was light enough to see without it, just not light enough to distinguish details. But if she used a flashlight anyone paying attention would know exactly where they were.
If their watcher was the Echo Pass Hunter, it would be as good as painting a target on their backs.
Something in the distance caught her eye.
“Wait.” She found her voice, pointed up ahead. “There. That’s where the avalanche used to be.”
“It melted?” The chief’s voice was alert.
“It looks like it. If so, and Megan’s body can be recovered, her family could have some closure.” Bre tried not to think of Addy as she said it.
“We can look—quickly. Then we go back and bring more people tomorrow. I don’t like it out here. Something feels off.”
She trusted his instincts, even if she’d worried her own were misfiring and too on edge to be reliable.
“Just a quick look,” she promised and hurried up the trail behind him.
They stopped short of the avalanche chute and Bre thought she could make out a body, which looked as though it had been largely preserved by its burial in the snow. It had moved closer to the end of the chute, the riverbed-like dent in the land that had been carved by repeated avalanches, which held tons of heavy snow, than it had been when the avalanche had happened, which made sense. They’d barely been able to see details before.
“Is that...?” The chief’s voice trailed off as he reached for his binoculars and held them up.
Wordlessly, he handed them to Bre.
She put them to her eyes and adjusted.
Her attention wasn’t on Megan, however. It was on what was sticking out of her.
“Is that an arrow?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
As though her speaking it had brought danger into existence, Bre heard the swoosh of something to her left, looked down and saw a similar arrow planted in the ground. Two, three feet away from her.
“Run!” the chief barked.
Bre sprinted down the trail, back to the shelter of the alders, and dove into the thick cover of the branches, her mind scrambling to make sense of what she’d seen. The arrow had told her what she’d needed to know. Megan had not been the victim of an avalanche. She’d been the first victim of the Echo Pass Hunter. The killer hadn’t marked his prey six years ago but he was doing it now.
And now he was shooting at her.
Griffin Knight had resisted getting involved in any kind of SAR effort for more than half a decade, so he didn’t know why he’d shown up at the staging area for the search for the missing hiker in Echo Pass.
He hadn’t known till he got there who was missing. Addy Dayton. The name had been a punch to the gut. Ben’s kid sister.
His best friend had died in a car crash four years before. Drunk driver. He’d gone to the funeral but stayed in the back, far away from Ben’s sister, Bre.
Bre Dayton, the single biggest regret of his life... And the reason he was hiking up a mountainside in the middle-of-the-night darkness. He’d stayed out of her way at the search. She probably didn’t even know he was there, since he wasn’t officially involved. Wolf River Police Department hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t offered. But he’d spent the last six hours canvassing the area anyway with Ember, his best search dog.
They’d found nothing. He hated that feeling of disappointment but worked to stay positive for the dog’s sake. The animals picked up on more human emotions than people sometimes assumed and the last thing he needed was for Ember to get discouraged because of something outside of her control. If there was no trail to find, she couldn’t help that.
He’d been heading to his car when a radio nearby had crackled. He’d recognized the voice that said “shots fired” and asked for assistance. Just like he’d recognized the location.
How could one place in such a beautiful mountain pass be the site of so many life moments that haunted him?
Griffin quickened his steps, desperation building inside him. He shouldn’t be doing this. He wasn’t an official searcher and was certainly not law enforcement. He’d stuck around the staging area just long enough to know that officers were headed up to help, and then he’d started up behind them.
Bre could be hurt. He couldn’t leave her alone if she needed help.
The scene was eerie when he reached it. The avalanche chute in the distance where everything had gone wrong years ago. Closer, officers grouped in a clump of alders. He hurried toward them even as his mind took him back.
It wasn’t your fault, Griffin. He could still hear Bre’s voice, just like he had in his head for weeks after the avalanche. Her voice was hot chocolate and a warm fire. It was more than he’d dreamed of and everything he hadn’t deserved.
She hadn’t believed the search-and-rescue mission gone wrong was his responsibility, but Griffin had known better. They had remotely triggered the avalanche, unintentionally caused a disturbance that had resulted in the unstable snow releasing and rushing down the mountain, and he’d been in command. So, yes, it had been his fault. He’d gone there to save someone and cost the missing woman, Megan, her life instead. Worse, she hadn’t been just any woman; they had dated, and the implications from the press had been clear afterward. There’d been grumblings from those who’d thought he should have been investigated for murder; not Megan’s family or anyone close to Griffin himself, just random murmurings of people in town.
Whether Bre had been aware of that before his prior connection with Megan had emerged in the papers or not, he’d never known, but it had been part of the reason for his withdrawal from society. Megan had remained a friend after their amiable breakup—which had happened because she’d said he clearly had feelings for someone else.
Bre.
Yeah, maybe he had been in love with her but not realized it. Since when he was about fifteen. But that didn’t mean anything could ever happen between them. Bre had had too many hurts in her past and Griffin hadn’t wanted to be one more of them. He had determined long ago to never contribute to her pain, even if that meant never risking a relationship with her.
He’d broken his unspoken rule—never to let Bre know how he felt—one time. When they were working the search after Megan had gone missing, they’d spent more time together than Griffin could steel himself against. When it had become apparent that his feelings toward her might be reciprocated...
They’d come so close to a real relationship. Instead, all they’d had was one kiss, and then the biggest heartbreak Griffin had ever known.
If she’d felt anything like he had, he’d hurt her worse than he could have imagined, and he hated himself for it. But he couldn’t let Bre’s future be derailed and, with the rumors swirling around him, he’d worried it would be. How could she move up in the ranks at the police department if the man she was in a relationship with was under suspicion? Besides, he’d felt like a failure, not at all like a man who deserved someone like Bre.
Scientists had confirmed the avalanche had been remotely activated, though they’d been unable to pinpoint exactly where the trigger had taken place, Griffin knew it must have been them. Who else could have been up in the pass at the time? He hadn’t seen anyone else but still felt the weight of blame on his shoulders. The avalanche had been an accident. But he should have known better than to take that at face value without examining whether their steps had remotely launched the onslaught. He should have approached from another direction or waited until the snowpack had been more stable. He could have saved Megan.
Instead, his recklessness had cost her life.
And cost himself his bond with Bre.
He moved closer to the cops in front of him, unable to make out details in the twilight dark but able to see silhouettes clearly. One of the officers must have heard him approach and looked up. The chief.
“Griffin.” The older man looked at him in surprise, moved away from the group of officers.
“Is she okay?” He didn’t see any point in pretending Bre wasn’t exactly why he was here.
The chief’s face was sober, the lines around his eyes heightened by his frown. “She’s banged up from diving into the alders. She’s not shot, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Griffin felt his shoulders sink, relief flooding through him.
“But...” He tensed again.
“She’s not okay, Griffin. She’s lost her niece, more than likely, and now the killer is shooting at her. She needs to get out of danger. Work in the office for a bit and let some of my other men and the FBI handle this search, they’ve sent a handful of agents from the Anchorage field office who are swarming around my department now in their suits.”
“She’s not going to give up on Addy.”
The chief exhaled. “Not likely. And I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t either. Truth be told, I’m planning to be one of the ones out here canvassing as much as I can. Won’t be as often as I’d like, but I’m not giving up, no matter what she thinks.”
Griffin nodded, glanced toward Bre again, though he couldn’t see her clearly.
“I’ll get out of your way,” he found himself saying.
“Maybe it’s better if you don’t.”
Heart pounding, Griffin waited. “What do you mean?”
“She could use a friend right now.”
They’d stopped being friends when he’d walked away without a goodbye. By the time he’d realized he should have found some way to stay in touch, some way to not become another person who’d left her, it had been too late. The damage had been done.
But maybe...
He could try?
“Just for a couple hours. Hang out with her while she decompresses. That’s all I’m asking. Please.”
He wasn’t asking Griffin to join the search, which was good, because he didn’t think he could. He was still skilled in working with dogs, the fact that he was able to run a successful online K-9 training business from his cabin in the woods proved that, but Griffin didn’t think he had what it took to be the one out there engaged in another high-profile search with the police.
He blew out a breath. “I’m not sure she’ll want to be around me.” The honesty hurt, but it was true.
“I just don’t want her to be alone. And I need to be here to process this scene. He hasn’t done this before, and this kind of evidence could help. Besides, I drove her here, and I’d like to her to have a ride home from someone I trust. I don’t like how personal this is getting for her.”
Griffin nodded. “I’ll take her home. If she’s willing to go with me.”
The crowd of officers was stepping back now and Griffin watched as one of them helped Bre up. She looked exhausted, but still beautiful. Her dark blonde hair was in a tangle around her shoulders, the curls dusty from taking shelter on the ground earlier. Her petite frame was even smaller than he remembered. She’d always been an entire head shorter than he was, it seemed, but she looked just as strong as ever, her shoulders set back. Nothing about Bre knew how to give up or give in. He’d always admired that about her. She stood now, dusted off the front of her hiking pants. He stayed back, not sure how to approach, and watched.
The chief moved to Bre’s side. “You’re sure you’re okay? I’d feel better if you got checked out.”
“I got scratched by some branches and rocks, not shot, Chief. I’m fine.”
“At least let me arrange a ride home for you.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“Not when he’s given us another scene to process by shooting at you.”
Her face was illuminated by the glow of several officers’ headlamps. He watched her consider it then finally nod. “Okay. Find me a ride and I’ll go home.”
The chief looked up at him.
Griffin swallowed hard, stepped forward, meeting her dark brown eyes, “Hey, Bre. It’s been a while.”
