What Lies Below
Author
Carol Ericson
Reads
19.1K
Chapters
19
His search for a buried secret…May have stirred up trouble. Heath Bradford never expressed his attraction to loner Willow Sands back in high school. Now that he's returned to Dead Falls, supposedly to broker a land deal, Willow views him as the enemy. Fiercely protective of the island's ecosystem, she's an obstacle to his development project. But Heath's true purpose for returning is to solve a mystery that's haunted him for years. Then Willow's neighbor is killed, and she becomes the target of a series of attacks. And protecting the woman he still yearns for becomes his only purpose.
Chapter One
Apollo sensed the intruder before she did. Willow Sands’s dog cocked his ears forward. His nostrils twitched, and he let out a soft whine.
When a twig cracked, Willow sat forward in her camp chair and placed her hand on top of Apollo’s broad head. “What is it, boy? Is that a coyote out there?”
Apollo’s whine morphed into a growl in the back of his throat, and his fur stood on end. Coyotes didn’t usually make Apollo nervous. Her Rottweiler might be old, but the coyotes in the area showed him respect, never encroaching on his territory.
Willow shoved her feet into her Birkenstocks and pushed up from her camp chair. Apollo’s tail stirred up little eddies of dirt as he thumped it on the ground. “So, you’re happy I’m investigating instead of you?”
Shuffling toward the tree line that ringed her property, Willow whistled through her teeth, the sound piercing the silent night. “Scram! And don’t leave any rabbit carcasses around my cabin. Doesn’t impress me.”
Apollo had followed her lead and stood next to her, his body stiff, his fur tickling her leg.
She flicked his ear. “Don’t go chasing after anything out there. I don’t want to have to rescue you.”
Typically, when Apollo sensed an animal in the woods, he’d bark to warn it off, as his hunting skills weren’t what they used to be. When he sensed a human, he acted like this. On high alert but no barking, as if waiting for the person to make the first move.
Willow didn’t like waiting for others to make the first move. She did better on offense than defense. Peering into the darkness, she shouted, “I don’t want my dog chasing you, but I wouldn’t mind some rabbit stew. Don’t make me go for my rifle.”
She was totally bluffing—not about the rifle; she had one and knew how to use it, but she’d never kill a rabbit or any other type of animal. Humans were the trespassers in the forest, not the rabbits or deer or coyotes or any of the other fauna that roamed the island.
Willow huffed out a breath after realizing she’d been holding it. Her release seemed to set the forest in motion, as a flock of birds winged it skyward and a chorus of crickets and frogs competed for dominance with their song. Beneath the cacophony, Willow detected branches rustling and some earthbound creature retreating along the carpet of dense, rotting organic material.
Apollo shook himself and circled back to his spot next to her chair. He collapsed, exhausted from doing his duty, his head shoved beneath the seat. If her dog no longer detected an interloper near their cabin in the woods, she could relax, too.
She scanned the forest one more time and then joined Apollo, plopping down in her chair. “We showed him, didn’t we, boy?”
Apollo snorted, halfway to a snore, and Willow tried to roll the knots out of her shoulders.
When her heart stopped galloping, she wedged her feet against the rocks ringing her campfire and flipped open the notebook in her lap. She scribbled a few more notes in the margins of the table she’d worked on today while surveying the summer flora and fauna of Dead Falls Island, where she returned every June after her classes at the university ended. She’d grown up on the island in this very cabin, taking care of her father after her mom had left them.
She couldn’t blame her mom for taking off. Mom had grown weary of Dad’s drinking and mental instability—both of which worsened in the wake of Mom’s departure. But Willow did blame her mother for leaving her behind.
Of course, Willow had always been closer to her father than her mother. If Mom had offered her a seat on the ferry that had carried her away from the island, Willow probably would’ve declined it anyway. Someone had to watch out for Dad.
That task had fallen to her until just after her eighteenth birthday, when she’d been debating whether or not she’d be able to attend the University of Washington, leaving Dad behind to fend for himself. Perhaps sensing her dilemma, Dad had made her decision easy by drinking himself to death that winter.
As she’d reached the legal age of adulthood, social services couldn’t do anything about her decision to remain in this cabin to finish high school and then attend UW for what turned out to be a full ride.
Now she’d never give up this cabin, her land or the island—not to build something bigger and shinier and certainly not to those greedy developers who wanted to bring tourism to this side of the island, along with the Samish people’s plans for a casino.
As she smacked her notebook shut, she startled Apollo, who jerked his head up. “Sorry to disturb your hundredth nap for the day.”
When her dog lumbered to his feet and let out a loud bark, she realized she wasn’t the one who’d awakened him. She dropped her notebook on her chair and jumped to her feet. Why had her cabin all of a sudden become the hot gathering place for all the critters in the forest?
Apollo put his nose to the ground, and she followed him to the tree line. He stopped, tilted his head back and barked again. This was more like his animal-alert stance.
“Keep barking, boy. If you get lucky, you won’t have to give chase.” As she scanned the tree line, a pair of gleaming orbs appeared among the bushes.
An animal edged into the clearing, and Apollo jumped into action, racing toward the creature. Willow tried to call him back, but when she saw Luna, Toby Keel’s mutt, she stopped yelling at Apollo.
Willow crouched and whistled softly. “Come here, girl. Does Toby know you’re out and about?”
The white dog of indeterminate lineage loped toward Willow. Luna’s ears folded, and her tongue hung out of her mouth. She’d been a shy dog ever since Toby, Willow’s nearest neighbor, rescued her from the bay. They both theorized that some holiday boaters must’ve tossed her overboard, so Toby made up for that abandonment by spoiling Luna every day. She rarely left his side.
Snapping her fingers, Willow said in a low voice, “C’mon, Luna. Did you get lost chasing something in the woods?”
As Luna made her way toward Willow, Apollo sniffed the other dog. At least he’d stopped barking. Had Luna been skulking around the cabin before, too afraid to make herself known?
When Luna reached Willow, she nuzzled her outstretched hand and whimpered. Willow stroked her back. “What is it, girl?” Willow’s hand skimmed across Luna’s wet, sticky fur. She peered at her palm, stained with a dark substance. “What did you get into?” Hooking her fingers around Luna’s collar, Willow pulled the dog toward the glowing light of the fire. She inspected the dog’s fur and sucked in a breath. “Are you injured?”
Blood streaks marred Luna’s fluffy coat. Willow ran her hands down Luna’s legs, and she felt the pads of her front paws. Luna stood patiently while Willow used the flashlight from her phone to inspect the rest of her body. She couldn’t find any injuries on the dog, but when Luna panted, the drool that hung from her jaws had a red tinge.
“Did you unleash on a rabbit?” Willow swallowed hard. Luna did not possess the hunting gene. She might give chase but wouldn’t know what to do with a wild animal if she actually caught it. “Did you come across something dead in the woods?”
Not that Luna could answer her, but the better questions would be why had she left Toby’s cabin and where was Toby? Willow wiped her hand on one of the rocks ringing her campfire, and then cupped that same hand around her mouth and shouted, “Toby? Toby, you out there? I have Luna.”
Luna whined again as Apollo cocked his head, listening for an answer to Willow’s call. No sound came from the forest, so Willow flipped over her phone and checked for a signal. Getting cell phone service on this side of the island was a dicey proposition, and Toby had his phone turned off most of the time, anyway.
Standing up, Willow held her phone in the air, but that last-ditch effort didn’t fly out here. Wasn’t that why she and Toby liked this location?
She shoved the phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “Looks like we’re going to have to take a little evening stroll.”
Willow headed into her cabin to grab a proper flashlight and yank a flannel shirt from a hook by the front door. She needed the long sleeves more as a buffer against the branches and spiky leaves in the forest than protection against the elements. June had ushered in a warm spell on the island, even at night. She tied the laces of her hiking boots and locked up.
Once outside, she flicked on the flashlight and stuffed her arms into the flannel, which she left unbuttoned over her T-shirt. She patted her thigh. “C’mon, guys. Let’s take Luna home.”
And find out why Toby hasn’t come after his dog.
Toby Keel, a member of the Samish Indian Nation, had bought his property from her father for a song. Dad’s family had been big landowners on Dead Falls Island. Slowly, the Sands family holdings had been parceled out and sold up. By the time her father inherited the family assets, the acreage on this side of the island comprised the last of the Sands land.
Paul Sands had no inclination to sell or develop his parcel of dirt. If Toby hadn’t been Samish, her father never would’ve parted with the land. He always figured the Samish had more rights to the land than he did.
Shattered from his deployment during the Gulf War, Willow’s father wanted only to be left alone, and he’d found his perfect paradise at the edge of the forest on Dead Falls Island. He and Toby were two of a kind.
Willow’s hiking boots crunched through the mulch on the forest floor as she trod the well-worn path between the two properties. Much like her father, Toby wanted to be left alone, so she obliged during the summer months when she took up residence at the cabin. But Toby’s dog had arrived at her place smudged with blood. That necessitated an impromptu visit.
As they drew closer to the clearing for Toby’s home, Luna picked up her pace and Apollo followed.
“Wait up, you two.” In her haste to follow the dogs, Willow tripped over a rotting log, saving herself by wedging her hand against the nearest tree. The rough bark scraped her palm, and she rubbed the sting against the thigh of her jeans.
She slowed her pace as the dogs disappeared ahead of her. She didn’t need a broken ankle out here. Aiming the flashlight at the ground, she picked her way over the tangled roots that marked the end of the path to Toby’s cabin. He’d allowed the forest to encroach on his land even more than her father had, so the edge of Toby’s cabin sat close to the tree line.
Willow’s steps faltered as the dogs started barking furiously. Luna sent up a spine-tingling howl that hearkened back to her wolf ancestry, and Willow pressed a hand to her chest, where more than just physical exertion had her heart thumping against her rib cage. Something had clearly disturbed Luna, and Willow dragged her feet the final fifteen yards to Toby’s clearing, dread pounding a beat against her eardrums.
When she parted the branches and peered at Toby’s cabin, the flickering flames of his campfire cast a burnished glow on the dogs’ fur as they circled the ground. She crept into the clearing. “Toby?”
Luna threw her head back and howled again. Willow felt like doing the same, but she proceeded to the other side of the fire where the dogs paced.
As she drew closer, Apollo turned and trotted toward her, allowing her to see Toby’s body crumpled on the ground.
Gasping, she circled the fire and crouched beside him. She gripped his shoulder, shaking him. “Toby? Toby?”
Luna nudged Toby’s head and came away with blood on her snout. That was when Willow noticed the cut on the side of Toby’s head, and the sharp rock that lay inches from his scalp.
She pressed her fingers against his throat but couldn’t feel a pulse. Had he tripped and fallen in a drunken stupor? Had a heart attack? A stroke?
As she fumbled for her phone, a low growl rumbled from Apollo’s throat. Willow glanced up to see a dark figure coming from the other side of Toby’s cabin, and she screamed loudly enough to rival Luna’s howl.
