The Girl in the Moss
OTHER TITLES BY LORETH ANNE WHITE
In the Barren Ground
In the Waning Light
A Dark Lure
Angie Pallorino Novels
The Drowned Girls
The Lullaby Girl
Wild Country
Manhunter
Cold Case Affair
Shadow Soldiers
The Heart of a Mercenary
A Sultan’s Ransom
Rules of Engagement
Seducing the Mercenary
The Heart of a Renegade
Sahara Kings
The Sheik’s Command
Sheik’s Revenge
Surgeon Sheik’s Rescue
Guarding the Princess
“Sheik’s Captive,” in Desert Knights with Linda Conrad
Snowy Creek Novels
The Slow Burn of Silence
Romantic Suspense
Melting the Ice
Safe Passage
The Sheik Who Loved Me
Breaking Free
Her 24-Hour Protector
The Missing Colton
The Perfect Outsider
“Saving Christmas,” in the Covert Christmas anthology
“Letters to Ellie,” a novella in SEAL of My Dreams anthology
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2018 by Cheakamus House Publishing
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
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ISBN-13: 9781503901636
ISBN-10: 1503901637
Cover design by Rex Bonomelli
For those who search for the missing.
CONTENTS
A SECRET RUNS THROUGH IT
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
THE WEDDING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A SECRET RUNS THROUGH IT
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
—Genesis 2:9
SEPTEMBER 1994
Twilight lingers at the fifty-first parallel, painting the sky deep indigo as tiny stars begin to prick and shiver like gold dust in the heavens. It’s cold, winter’s frost already crisp upon the breath of the late-September evening. Mist rises wraithlike above the crashing white water of Plunge Falls, and fog hangs densely over the forest, playing peekaboo with the ragged peaks of the surrounding mountains. She moves carefully along the slime-covered rocks at the edge of the deep-green eddies and pools of the Nahamish River.
Stopping for a moment, she watches a cloud of small insects that have begun to dart just above the water’s mercurial surface. Peace is complete, a tangible thing that feels akin to a gentle blanket wrapped about her shoulders. She’s in the moment as she crouches down to her haunches and removes a wallet-size fly box from the front pocket of her fishing vest. She opens the silver box, listening to the thunder of the falls downriver. The wind hushes through the forest up along the ridge at her back. She selects a tiny dry fly that best matches the insects hatching over the water. Gripping the fly between clenched front teeth, she draws the line from her rod with her fist. With practiced movements she knots her fly onto the tippet attached to the leader at the end of her dry line. A silver hook nestles in the feathers, which are designed to fool the trout into thinking the fly is food. A smile curves her mouth.
Rising to her feet, she begins to cast—a great big balletic sequence of loops, her line sending diamond droplets shimmering into the cool air. She feels a punch of satisfaction in her belly as she settles her fly right at the edge of a deep, calm eddy, just where the current begins to riffle along the surface, where she’s seen fish rising for the hatch.
But as her fly begins to drift downriver, she senses something. A sentience. As if she’s being watched. With intent. She stills, but her pulse quickens. Her hearing becomes acute.
Bear?
Wolf?
Cougar?
She can no longer hear the others, she realizes. They’re upriver at a camping area near the boat pullout. She left them gathering around the fire, sipping drinks, waiting for their two male guides to prepare dinner, getting ready to laugh and eat and tell tall tales into the night. But she’d been hungry for a few last casts before full dark on this second-to-last day of their trip. It was a failing of hers—always wanting just one more of everything, not being able to stop. Perhaps it was not a good idea. She swallows, turns her head, looks up at the rocky bank. Nothing moves in the darkening shadows between the trees that grow shoulder to shoulder along the ridge. Yet she can feel it—a presence. Tangible. Watching. Malevolent. Something is hunting her—weighing her as prospective prey. Just as she is hunting the trout. Just as the fish are hunting the insects. Nerves tighten. She squints into the gloam, trying to discern movement in the shadows. A rock dislodges suddenly. It clatters down the bank, disrupting more stones, which rattle and knock their way down to the river and splash into the water. Fear strikes a hatchet into her heart. Her blood thuds against her eardrums. Then she sees it—a form. It shifts forward, becoming distinct from the forest. Human. Red woolen hat.
Relief slices through her chest.
“Hey!” she calls out with a wave.
But the person remains silent while continuing forward, picking a determined route down the bank, heading directly for her, something heavy in hand. A log. Or a metal bar. About the size and heft of a baseball bat. Unease slams back into her chest. She takes an involuntary step backward, closer to the water’s edge. Her wading boots slip on greasy moss despite the studded soles. She wobbles, steadies herself, and laughs nervously.
“You spooked me,” she says as the person reaches her. “I was just wrapping up here, and—”
The blow comes fast. So fast. She spins away, trying to duck out of the weapon’s reach, but her quick twisting motion sends her boots out from under her. Her rod shoots into the
air. She lands with a hard smash on rocks and tumbles instantly into the river, entering with a splash.
The shock of cold water explodes through her body. It steals her breath. Icy water rushes into her chest-high stocking-foot waders; seeps into her studded wading boots; saturates her vest, her woolen shirt, her thermal underwear—the weight of it all dragging her down. She flails at the surface with her hands, trying to keep her head above water, struggling to grab at slippery rocks as the current moves her downstream. But her fingers fail to find purchase.
She gains momentum as the river sucks her toward its heart, where its currents muscle deep and strong toward the thundering boom of Plunge Falls, where mist boils thick above the tumbling water. She tries to kick, to swim, to angle back toward shore. But the Nahamish has other plans. It clutches at her with newfound glee, with impossible strength, tossing her about like a toy, drawing her down and into its churning bowels. Just as her lungs begin to burst, the current shoots her teasingly to the surface.
“Help!” she screams and gulps as her head pops out. She thrusts her hand up high out of the foam, pleading.
“Help!” She goes under again, swallowing water, gagging. Again, the river gives her false hope and shows her the surface. For a moment she manages to keep her chin above water. She can see the person on the bank growing smaller, face white under the red hat, dark holes where there are eyes. Behind the figure an army of black spruce marches along the ridge, sharp tips like warrior spears piercing the fog.
Why? It’s all she can think. It makes no sense.
The Nahamish tugs her back under, smashes her into a subsurface boulder. Pain explodes through her left shoulder. She knows it will take seconds before hypothermia completely steals her brain function, before she loses all motor coordination, all ability to fight, to swim. Wildly, clumsily, she struggles against the current. She must halt her ride downriver before she reaches the falls. But her hands have frozen into cramped claws. Her waders and boots drag her down as if a monster is pulling her by the legs from below, down, down, down into its lair, into a watery grave.
Lungs burning, she is roiled and bashed against more rocks. She no longer knows which way is up or down, which way to fight for air. As she starts to pass out, the river once more tosses her to the foaming surface and swirls her into a small bay. Her head rises, and she gasps maniacally for air. Water enters her mouth. She chokes as she is sucked under again. But she grabs for a fallen log wedged into the bank. This time her claw-hands find purchase.
Hold. Hold, dammit . . . Hold.
Her heart pounds against her ribs. She digs her nails into soaked bark as branches trap her like a thing caught in a strainer. She can feel the spindly branches breaking, her grip slipping in the rotten log detritus. The river yanks insistently at her waterlogged waders.
Should’ve worn a life vest. Would it have even helped?
She manages to draw a breath, then another. Absurdly, she notices the indigo sky—the brighter points of two evening stars that hover like emergency flares. Planets, really. Jupiter? Venus? No idea. But they give her a sense of the universe, of her tiny place in it. A sense of hope.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight . . . It was nights like this—sitting at a campfire with her dad, who taught her to fly-fish when she was a little girl—that were the beginning of a journey that had led her to this point, to this river where she is now going to die. Life is like a river. Life is absurd. The only constant is the water of change.
She takes another breath, then manages to move her hands along the log. She gains a better grip, pulls herself toward the bank.
Time is strange how it slows, stretches. She had a similar experience once before during a head-on collision on a snowy highway. Under extreme life-and-death stress, one really does have occasion to observe things in slow, protracted motion that in real time occur in a smashing blink of an eye. Claw upon frozen claw, she inches closer to the bank. She gropes for the sticks of leafless scrub growing along the river’s edge. The bank is very steep here. For a while she lies panting, half in and half out of the water, the side of her face resting in slimy green moss and black loam. It smells like compost, like mushrooms. Like a garden pond with koi.
A sound reaches into her consciousness—a raven. Cawing. It must be close, right above her somewhere in the trees on the bank. Otherwise she wouldn’t hear it above the boom of Plunge Falls. The raven is a scavenger. It’s smart. It knows she is dying. It will go for her eyes first, the soft parts of her body. Her mind begins to go dark.
No. No!
I must keep my brain alive. It’s all I’ve got now. My mind. Use it. To command my body to live.
She lies there panting in the slippery mulch of soil and moss and dead leaves, struggling to comprehend her situation, the sequence of events that sent her into the river. Her brain fades to black again. It’s almost a relief now. She welcomes it. But a stray little spark in the blackness does not die. It flares slightly. Flickers. Then bursts to hot life as fear strikes a jumper cable to her heart.
You.
I think of You. My fear is suddenly for You, who I once thought didn’t matter.
Her eyes flare open wide. Her pulse races. Adrenaline pounds through her blood.
You matter now. Now that I see death. What do they say about people who survive against all odds when others would surely perish? About that man who sawed off his own arm to free himself from the rock jaws that trapped him; the young woman who descended a snowy mountain after a plane crash wearing a miniskirt and no panties; the female teen who survived feverish, insect-ridden months in the Amazon jungle after falling like a whirling seedpod from the sky while strapped into the passenger seat of a commercial airplane; the man who drifted for months on a raft in the ocean? They all returned to civilization with one common refrain. They say they lived, survived, did it for someone. A loved one. The thought of that loved one infused them with a superhuman strength to fight death, because they had to go home. To that loved one. I must go home for You. I must live for You. This changes everything. Everything. I can’t let You down. I’m all You have.
Slowly she reaches for a clump of roots, drags herself up the bank an inch. She gathers breath, strains to grab a higher clump, pulls. Pain screams into her body. She relishes it. She’s still alive. She fights death knowing that one slip, one lost grip, will shoot her back down the slick bank into the water. And over the falls.
She’s almost at the crest of the bank. She stops, gathering breath, marshaling reserves, retching. Fog creeps over her, thick with moisture and gathering darkness. She senses something again. She’s not alone. A strange combination of hope and dread sinks through her. Slowly, very slowly, terrified of what she might find, she looks up. Her heart stalls.
A black shape among the trees. Standing deadly still. Silent. Watching from the gloam. Observing her struggle.
Or is she hallucinating? Wind stirs boughs, branches twist, and the shape moves. Coming closer? Or is it just shadows in the wind?
Painfully, slowly, she releases a fist-hold on grass, making precarious her position on the slick bank. She raises her free hand, stretching her arm out toward the shape.
“Help,” she whispers.
No movement.
“Please. Help . . . me.” She lifts her hand higher, giving gravity more power. No response.
Confusion chases through her. Then it hits. Like a bolt from the blue. And as she realizes what is going on, why this is happening, all hope is sucked out of her body. It robs her last vestiges of strength. Her outreached hand has tipped the balance, and she begins to slip. She gathers speed suddenly, gravity thrilled to have her back, tumbling and sliding her in her waterlogged waders and boots all the way back down to the river. She lands with a splosh. The current grabs at her with delight as the human figure continues to study her in silence from the trees above. A final thought cuts through her mind as she goes under.
It’s impossible to suffer without making someone pay fo
r it.
But who will pay if I drown?
How will You get justice? How will anyone know?
Because the dead cannot tell.
CHAPTER 1
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS LATER
Sixty-five-year-old Budge Hargreaves spotted the mushrooms the moment he entered the grove—golden funnels pushing up through a carpet of pine needles and twigs, crumbs of black loam still fresh upon their lips like bits of chocolate cake yet to be wiped off.
Excitement crackled through him. Finally, he’d lucked onto a good spot. He could harvest these beauties before the light faded completely. He clambered over a moss-covered log thick as his torso, wincing as his arthritic knee gave an audible click.
Rain dripped from the bill of his cap as he crouched down among the ferns. Using his knife, he gently prized a large chanterelle free from the soil. He wiped off the wet pine needles, sniffed the fungus—fruity, like apricots. A little peppery. Unlike the toxic false chanterelle, this was the real deal.
Carefully, he placed his find into the airy bag he wore slung across his blaze-orange vest. His dog, Tucker, a wirehaired pointer, sported a blaze-orange vest, too. And a bell hung on his collar. They were into the dying days of October—killing season in these parts. Budge had no intention of either him or Tuck being mistaken for deer in this dark section of the Nahamish woods. Just last fall a couple of hunters had put a slug into the heart of a black Lab a few miles east. They’d claimed they’d thought the dog was a black bear.
Fuckers. No bear hunting allowed in these parts, ever. And all they had was permits for deer, so why in the hell was they using shotgun slug for deer? He glanced up suddenly as it struck him. He hadn’t heard Tuck’s bell in a while. His dog liked to go on ahead, nose around a bit on his own, but usually he wasn’t out of sight or earshot for long.
Budge whistled—three short blasts, one long—Tuck’s special call. But no hound came crashing through the forest. No chinkle of Tuck’s bear bell sounded. Tension clumped in Budge’s chest. He whistled again, then listened carefully to the noise of the rain forest.
Water drummed steadily onto the sleeves of his Gore-Tex jacket. It leaked down the back of his neck. All about him droplets quivered and plopped down from the canopy and fell from the plate-size leaves of the primordial-looking devil’s club that grew over a meter tall around him. The smell was of wet soil, fecund. He caught a distant snatch of voices carrying up from the river, which widened into a delta maybe two hundred meters down a thickly forested slope from where Budge squatted. Must be the fly-fishers he’d seen drifting the currents in jet boats earlier.