Page 28 of Bait and Switch (Subtle Deceptions #2)

He arrived at the access to Gordon’s property and maneuvered the truck onto the road.

Because of the emergency vehicles that had driven in and out after Dwayne’s death, much of the brush and scrub had been beaten back.

Branches did not scrape along the side of the truck as he bumped closer to the dancing light, and in that instant, he thought he saw a figure carrying something large dart behind the red-orange glow.

But it happened too fast for him to be positive.

What he did know for sure was that the shed was engulfed in flames. For now, the stand of trees closest to the tiny structure did not appear to be involved, but if the wind changed, all bets were off.

Next to him, Casey’s phone lit up, illuminating the cab with an eerie glow. Assuming it was Greta, he reached over and tapped the screen to accept the call. He’d just assure her everything was fine and see if she had an ETA for emergency services.

It was not his partner.

“Casey.” Elton’s voice boomed. “Elton here on Gabe’s phone—Gabe’s listening in too.”

Dammit, he didn’t have time to shoot the shit with Elton. Or Karne.

“Sorry, Elton, I was on my way back to your place, but now there’s a situation up here in The Valley.

A fire at Gordon’s shack. But there could be something else, maybe,” he spoke quickly.

“The blaze is too big for a campfire and who the fuck would be burning brush this time of year? Gotta check it out.”

He eased the truck to the side of the road so that it hugged the gravel drive and would be out of the way of the emergency vehicles, which were still miles away. Forty to forty-five minutes by Casey’s estimate, no less than thirty.

A lot could go wrong in half an hour.

“Wait, Casey,” Elton said, “this is important. We figured out who?—”

Again, Casey thought he saw a figure on the other side of what once had been Gordon’s shed, its outline darker than the shadows. Whoever it was definitely had a similar shape to Calvin, but he couldn’t be positive.

“Sorry, Elton, I really can’t talk.” Without waiting for his reply, Casey tucked the phone away into his side pocket.

Leaning over, he grabbed his service weapon out of the glove box and tucked it in his holster, then snagged the flashlight.

If it was Calvin Perkins doing some kind of weird Picnic at Hanging Rock thing—thanks to Mickie for the reference and for making Casey watch some of the oddest movies ever made—he wasn’t stupid enough to approach the man unarmed.

Especially if it had been Calvin who’d attacked Carlos.

Whoever was out there had to have seen him arrive. Casey hadn’t bothered trying to be sneaky, but it was likely they couldn’t hear much over the pop and crackle of the burning wood and if they were under the influence of something, he’d deal with that once he assessed the situation.

Popping the door open, he hopped out and stood next to the truck for a second, adjusting to the cold after the warmth of the cab. If he was right and it was Perkins, instinct told him he didn’t have long.

“Hello! This is Forest Ranger Casey Lundin. I’ve called emergency services!” he shouted as he crossed toward the flickering remains of the shed, deciding to leave the flashlight off for the moment. “What’s going on? Is anyone injured?”

Over the years, he’d had to take a few continuing ed courses, and several had been on how to negotiate, but he’d never had to use them before.

He remembered that it was good to try and start from the position of offering help rather than assuming people were breaking the law, even if you knew they were.

Did it always work? No, but he might as well try.

He waited for a count of ten, but there was no answer to his question.

“I’m approaching the structure. Make yourself known.”

Nothing. But he saw movement again, a bit further away from the fire this time.

“Calvin Perkins, is that you out there?” He was glad to have the weighty flashlight in one hand—he did not want to draw his weapon.

Something was off about this. Instinct was telling him to take care.

Not just the fire, which was obviously as wrong as the possible Calvin sighting, but Casey didn’t know what that something was yet.

He took a few more steps forward. Again, his instincts shrieked NO , but Casey forced his feet to step further away from his truck and toward the small inferno.

“Don’t come any closer,” a distant voice shouted. “One more step and you’re done too.”

Too ? What the hell did that mean?

“Calvin, is that you? It’s Casey, Casey Lundin, you know me. What’s this all about? How can I help you?”

“Get out of here, Lundin.” Calvin’s voice was hoarse, as if he’d been shouting for hours, days maybe. Casey remembered what Carlos had told them, that his attacker had been a screaming wild man. “This is tainted land. This land killed my brother. My brother, man. My brother .”

Casey thought Perkins was trying to still scream, but the words were coming out in a rasp—his vocal cords were totally blown.

“It’s gonna kill you too. It’s killed before and it will kill again. So much killing.”

Rambling was not a good sign, even for Calvin Perkins, who was not the sharpest tool and with whom Casey’d had plenty of run-ins over the years. This behavior did not bode well for talking him down before emergency services arrived.

Casey stopped moving, tucked his flashlight under one arm, and raised his hands slightly, facing his palms outward. If Calvin was paying attention, he’d see that Casey wasn’t carrying a weapon. Not in his hands anyway.

“I’m sorry about what happened to your brother, I really am. Tell me what’s going on here. I can’t help you if I don’t know the facts.”

“Facts,” Calvin spat. “Nobody cares about facts. Nobody cares about anything. It’s all lies. Dwayne and me, we just do what we’re told and have a little fun on the side. But when something goes sideways, we’re nothing. Less than nothing. It’s all burning down, all of it!”

Calvin had moved again, and for a second, Casey could clearly see a partial silhouette of him.

In the firelight, he looked like a beast, barely human, worse than someone who’d been living rough for weeks or even months.

Backlit by the flames, he looked like the wild man Carlos had described.

Then Calvin started moving, jumping around and flailing his arms, and Casey started to worry that he was under the influence of something.

If he’d had something in his hands, Casey couldn’t see it now.

The wooden roof of the shed crackled and popped, then fell inward in slow motion, sending sparks shooting up into the night sky.

A different kind of stars and not ones that Casey was overly fond of.

The one good thing about this weird-ass situation was that it had started to snow.

At first, he’d assumed the flakes landing on his clothing were ashes, but it seemed that nature had a different plan.

Unfortunately, the wind also started to pick up. Even with the precipitation, it wouldn’t take too much for the scraggly cedars growing just feet from what was left of the shed to catch and go up like poorly made candles.

“Calvin.” Casey tried to reach him with words again, even though he figured it was a lost cause. He scrambled to come up with another tactic. “You started the fire? Why?”

With what he hoped looked like casual ease, Casey started moving to his right, around the outside of the fire, away from the still burning pile of lumber. He figured he maybe could catch Perkins by surprise and disable him.

“Dwayne died there. It’s one of those things.” Calvin stood still while he thought about his answer. “A pyre. I’m releasing his spirit, it’s trapped in there.”

Briefly, Casey shut his eyes. Seriously? Calvin Perkins was going to make Casey feel sorry for him? After all these years of despising the man and his dead brother almost more than anyone else on Heartstone?

“Gotcha.” His laugh was maniacal, and the sound had Casey’s eyes snapping open and his stomach clenching.

“Dwayne would’ve hated that fucking woo-woo bullshit.

I’m burning this whole place down because it’s haunted.

It needs to go. I’m done with this. Then I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll take care of it all, there’ll be nothing left. ”

“Er, Calvin, seems to me you’re going a bit too far.

This isn’t your property—” He wasn’t going to get into a who-the-land-belonged-to conversation since Casey had strong pro-Indigenous opinions about land rights.

“This is Gordon’s place, and I think he’s going to be sad that you’ve burned it down. ”

“Gordon? You mean that namby-pamby man-boy? Everybody is all poor Gordon . What about me? What about Dwayne?!”

Ah, there it was, the world-revolves-around-me argument. Calvin had probably managed to convince himself that Dwayne’s death was Gordon’s fault—not Deter Nolan’s.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

Slowly, Casey continued to ease around the blaze, not wanting to alert Perkins, although the guy didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. Was he alone? Where was his massive truck? Casey peered into the dark, his flashlight in his hand once again.

The fire snapped violently, sending more sparks upward, and again Calvin was briefly visible—if anything, he looked worse than Casey’s initial impression, his clothing ripped and shredded, barely holding together.

And whatever Calvin had been carrying now sat on the ground not far enough from the flames, just an odd lumpy shape. Shit . What was it?

“I wouldn’t come any closer if I was you, Ranger .” The last word was said with a familiar Perkins-style sneer.

The snowfall began to thicken, and visibility was diminishing. Fat flakes swirled in the dark and wind—except in the radius of the fire. From far away, Casey thought he heard the call of a siren, but he couldn’t be sure.

“They’re here,” Calvin whispered in a singsong voice, “and they’re going to get you next. You really shouldn’t be here, Lundin.”

Well, that wasn’t creepy at all, Calvin sounded like he’d been taking lessons from Jack Nicholson.

“Who are you talking about?” It was a good thing Mickie had made Casey watch quirky horror-adjacent shows as a kid.

Salem’s Lot and the Chuckie remake had left an indelible impression on young Casey. He pulled out his Glock.

Behind him was a crunching sound, and it wasn’t the fire consuming fuel.

A twig? A footstep? Shit. Casey started to spin around, but it was too late.

Something hard slammed against the side of his head.

Dropping the flashlight, he stumbled forward, trying to pick his feet up so he didn’t lurch closer to the flames.

“What the fuck!?”

Blinking away tears of pain, Casey swung his gun hand around, weapon out, as he spun to fend off the attack.

But his assailant lunged again, kicking this time, and the booted foot smacked hard against Casey’s wrist. His service weapon flew out of his grip into the dark, and Casey stumbled backward, trying to get a better look at the person in the flickering light.

Whoever it was appeared to be average size and was bundled up in cold winter gear, a baclava covering most of their face. All he could distinguish were unremarkable eyebrows that were just a dark slash above the fabric.

Casey was at a distinct disadvantage, reeling from the blow to the head, his weapon and flashlight out of reach. He was glad that at least he’d had the hood of his jacket pulled up over his toque. It had provided a small amount of protection, but he didn’t know if he was bleeding or not.

“Stand down,” he shouted, automatically raising his arms to protect himself. “I’m an officer of the law!”

His back was to Perkins now, and any second he expected Calvin to start raining blows on him. Casey had to assume these two were working together. The knock to his head was making him feel slightly nauseous, which was not good.

When is a head injury good, Casey?

The attacker remained silent and didn’t back away. Instead, they moved into Casey’s space, and with one shoulder dipped forward, they charged him. They were moving fast, and he’d already been caught off guard once and was now slightly dizzy.

He wobbled and lost his balance, landing on the frozen ground, a pained grunt escaping him. Casey’s already tender skull banged against an exposed rock, or maybe just frozen earth, and he saw stars.

He struggled to stand up, but his head was throbbing. Instead, he grappled for the attacker’s pant leg but couldn’t get a good hold on the fabric because his fingers were too cold.

Greta was going to kill him.

They roughly pushed him onto his front and held him down with a foot on his back while they fastened something—zip ties, maybe—around his wrists so he was effectively immobilized.

All without a word.

What the fuck? Again, he heard the wail of a siren—closer now, but still not close enough. Whatever was going down, the responders weren’t going to arrive in time to help him. Worse, Calvin had gone eerily silent too. Where was he? Had he fled the scene, or was he in cahoots with whoever this was?

A heavy-booted foot slammed into his ribs not once but twice. Crying out, Casey tried to curl up, to protect himself, but it was no good.

Everything hurt, and he shut his eyes for just a second.