Gripping the leash more tightly and struggling to keep the backpack raised, Amanda continued her careful retreat. Her foot slipped, sending rocks and gravel tumbling down in a rush of noise. She crouched, holding her breath as she listened for the bear’s charge. Nothing. She lifted her head to look. The bear hadn’t moved.
Amanda continued to talk in a quiet, level voice as she backed down the slope. Bit by bit she put distance between herself and the bear, until finally she reached the bottom of the ravine. Then she ran full tilt through the woods all the way back to the pond. Kaylee ran beside her, her tail tucked and eyes wide. When they reached the shore, Amanda collapsed on a rock to catch her breath. She waited and watched until she was sure the bear had not followed, and only then did she allow herself a nervous laugh.
“Well, princess, that idea was a bust!” she said. “Here we are back where we started. Any other bright ideas?”
Kaylee was drinking from a trickle of water seeping into the pond. Amanda’s hopes lifted. Streams flowed downhill toward the ocean. If she could find the flow of water leaving this pond, she could follow it, perhaps all the way to the ocean.
For what felt like hours, Amanda slogged around the perimeter of the pond, sometimes ankle deep in reeds and muck, following each trickle of water to its rocky end. Kaylee was bounding through the brush, tracking smells and chasing squirrels. Although Amanda paused often to eat berries, she was feeling light-headed by the time she came across a steady stream. She followed as it meandered through the berry bushes, wormed around boulders, and seeped through bright green moss. Afraid of losing it, she fought through brush and bog, tearing her clothes and flailing at blackflies. Blackflies, she thought with disgust. In September!
Finally she spotted a shimmer of water through a break in the trees ahead. Hallelujah! She quickened her pace, straining to hear the sound of surf and the cry of wheeling gulls. The water was too calm. Too silent. Maybe it was a protected inlet. Maybe the ocean lay just beyond the ridge ahead. Nature was so coy, hiding secret pathways through the faceless, lookalike land.
When she finally reached the edge of the water, she was gasping for breath and wet with sweat and swamp. She simply stood and stared.
Another pond. This one five times the size of the first. It would take hours to circle it in search of the exit stream. Useless, fucking waste of time! She roared her frustration aloud, her curses floating back to her across the rippling surface of the pond. She cupped her hands and shouted Tyler’s name. Nothing. A cluster of ducks quacked their anxious surprise in the tall reeds nearby.
Kaylee was paying them no attention as she roamed with her nose to the ground. “You’re a Duck Toller,” Amanda grumbled. A duck could be dinner for both of them, as could a fish or two from the pond if she could figure out how to catch them.
“Kaylee!” she shouted, waving in the direction of the ducks. “Go get it!”
Kaylee jerked her head up, ears cocked. She had something clamped in her jaws. Had she managed to catch something? Urgently Amanda called her and the dog bounded forward, still clutching the object in her mouth. She leaped nimbly over deadfall and dodged around rocks. As she came closer, Amanda could see the object, about the size of a football, was caked and sodden with black mud.
Kaylee dropped it at her feet triumphantly and stood back, tail wagging. Amanda bent to peer at it. A shoe! She rushed to the water’s edge to wash it off, revealing a black-and-khaki running shoe with a camouflage motif. With the mud washed off, it looked clean and new, as if it hadn’t been in the mud too long. Amanda compared it to her own foot, which was a woman’s size seven. This shoe was about the same size.
The size of a boy, not a man.
Her pulse quickened. Clutching the shoe, she began splashing along the path Kaylee had taken. The dog bounced beside her, clearly pleased with her trophy. Then she raced ahead to stand over a muddy hole.
Amanda studied the mud, which was criss-crossed with paw prints and gouges, but through it all she could clearly make out human footprints — three partial treads with the same deep ridges as the shoe in her hand. Water and rain had not yet washed the treads away.
She raised her head to scan the dark, silent forest. “Tyler!” she shouted over and over. No answer. But the find had galvanized her. She was on the right track! Tyler had been here and was perhaps less than half a kilometre away, scared to reveal himself.
“Tyler, it’s Amanda!” she called. Then she turned to Kaylee, who was looking up at her as if awaiting instructions.
“Good girl!” she exclaimed, stroking the dog’s head and gesturing ahead in the direction the footprints were leading. “Now go find it!”
With a flash of tail, the dog wheeled about and set off, as if she were playing her favourite game. Which she was.
Kaylee tracked more quickly than Amanda could, but from time to time Amanda called her back so that she could study the soil. Tyler — if indeed it was Tyler — had not chosen the least obstructed route along the water’s edge, but had headed into deep cover instead, slogging through the slippery moss and ferns of the dense forest. Rocks and deadfall lay in ambush to twist an ankle or wrench a knee. Amanda could see bits of moss ripped loose by his fleeing feet, and the deep, sinking holes left by his running shoe.
For the first time she felt hope. Hunger and fatigue evaporated. Kaylee understood the task and showed no hesitation or confusion. Although she’d never had any formal training in tracking, Amanda had often played the game of hide and seek with her, and now that silly game, designed to entertain and tire her out, was going to pay off.
Amanda moved as fast as she could through the rugged terrain, clambering over ridges and down ravines, sometimes on all fours to steady herself. At times she stopped to call to Tyler, and in the ensuing silence heard nothing but her own heartbeat thundering in her ears.
Until a faint report cracked the air. Two. Three. Kaylee froze, head up and ears flicking. Amanda had heard enough deer hunts in the Quebec countryside to recognize a rifle shot. Distant and indistinct, but enough to chill her blood. Kaylee was staring off to the right, where a boulder-strewn ridge blocked her view. Amanda called Kaylee to heel, her heart hammering as she crouched down to see what would happen next.
The forest was serene. No shouts, no screams of pain, not even the warning chatter of squirrels and birds. Silence. Convinced it had been a gunshot, she leashed Kaylee again as they inched cautiously forward. The dog had lost her concentration. Sensing her master’s fear and probably spooked by the shot herself, she moved forward aimlessly, her ears flattened and her shoulders hunched. Amanda rubbed her back and pointed to the ground.
“It’s okay, girl. Find it. Go get it, Kaylee.”
Kaylee’s nose was up, sifting the air instead of the scent on the ground. A growl began to bubble in her throat.
“Shh-h!” Amanda clamped her hand over the dog’s muzzle. Kaylee tore free and fought against Amanda’s restraining hand, pulling her forward. Her ears swivelled forward now and her whole body quivered. She moved low to the ground and dragged Amanda through the ferns toward the roots of an upturned tree. Amanda couldn’t see behind it and had no idea what dangers lay beyond. A bear? A coyote?
A killer aiming his rifle directly at her?
Kaylee was frantic with excitement. She tugged Amanda up over the rise, past a tangle of branches and around the huge root ball. Behind it, peeking out from the protection of his shivering arms, was Tyler.
Chapter Seventeen
When Chris walked in the front door of the Mayflower Inn in Roddickton that evening, a short, toad-like man was arguing with the clerk at the desk. He had a frayed canvas travel bag slung over his shoulder, a rumpled leather jacket, and a fedora tilted back on his head. Perspiration ran down from his temples.
“What do you mean, you’re fully booked? It’s almost the middle of September!”
“Moose-hunting