Page 30

RYAN

“Crazy week, huh?” Linda says as she pours herself a cup of coffee.

I nod without looking up from the creamer I’m stirring into my cup. My molars grind together as I fight off the urge to tell her to mind her fucking business.

I know Linda means well; she’s just curious. Everyone around here is curious. And everyone is asking the same damn questions.

The news that Marlow and I are dating, on the other hand, didn’t really seem to be news to anyone at all. I guess we were fooling ourselves to think that it wasn’t already public knowledge around the station.

The one saving grace is the fact that people seem to be leaving Marlow alone now for the most part when it comes to Kayla.

Maybe because they know that Marlow was Kayla’s boss, so she won’t be able to divulge any juicy details.

Maybe because they’re afraid it’s a sore subject for her.

Or maybe because Marlow is the queen of setting boundaries that others wouldn’t ever dare to cross.

She probably shot them all down before they could even get the words out of their mouths.

Sometimes I forget how hard I worked to earn Marlow’s trust and break down her walls. But the truth is that her walls are still there; I’m just on the other side of them now. And Marlow would eat anyone alive who even thought about trying to encroach on what we’ve built together.

And that is sexy as hell.

I stop by her office on my way out of the breakroom. She’s typing away with all her attention on her computer screen, but her little smile tells me that she knows I’m here.

“I’m heading out to the field for the rest of the day. You want to do happy hour tonight with the crew?”

“Sure,” Marlow says.

“Alright, I’ll meet you back here around five o’clock then.”

Marlow nods and I pause in the doorway. For the last week, all of our parting words have been ‘I love you,’ but that hardly seems appropriate here at work.

I can picture the collective eye-rolling of everyone in the adjacent offices.

Instead, I nod and tap my hand against the doorframe twice on my way out.

As I make my way through the lobby and out to my work truck, I notice Emmett sitting at the front desk. He looks bored, as usual. With Kayla gone, he doesn’t get a lot of visitors at the front desk. Most of us avoid it like the plague. I know Emmett would too if he had any other options.

“Hey,” I say as I walk over to the desk.

Emmett perks up a little as he greets me. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“Good, man. I’m headed out to Eagle Ridge to check out an abandoned vehicle. Do you want to ride along?”

“Really?” he asks, even though he’s already out of his chair with one hand on his jacket.

“Yeah, someone else can cover the front for a while,” I say as I reach over for the phone and dial Marlow’s extension.

She quickly agrees to send Jeremy up to watch the front desk for the rest of the day.

Emmett and I sneak out before Jeremy has a chance to trap us with one of his long-winded stories.

Emmett got off to a rocky start here at the ranger station.

He was a summer intern – one of the few that actually seemed interested in the job.

I stuck him up at the front desk because we lost our admin around that time and Emmett seemed like the most capable intern when it came to interacting with the general public.

Immediately, his interest levels plummeted.

He did a fine enough job at taking calls and handing out maps, but any excitement he had over the internship evaporated into thin air. He hated being stuck at a desk all day.

When it came time for the summer interns to leave, Emmett asked if there was any chance he could stay on staff part-time.

It shocked me, considering how unhappy he seemed there, but we still needed someone to cover the front desk and funds were tight.

So, we let him stay. And he seemed more miserable than ever.

Eventually, I sat him down for a real talk about the situation.

It turned out that the kid was just going through some shit.

He’d been dating the same girl since their sophomore year of high school, but the relationship fell apart as soon as he moved out to Gatlinburg for the summer.

Around the same time, his parents announced that they were getting a divorce now that his youngest sister was finally graduating and moving out of the house.

And to top it all off, working for the Forest Service was nothing like he imagined it would be.

“I thought I would get to be outdoors a lot,” I remember him saying.

“I’ve never been good at anything involving a desk.

I sucked at school. I’m bad at sitting still.

I thought the Forest Service would be the right type of work for me – probably the only type of work that I could ever be good at – but now I’m not sure. ”

I told him to wait it out. A lot of us go through this in the beginning.

You have to take what you can get to get your foot in the door.

From there, opportunities will start to open up.

You just need to wait for the right one.

I started on the rec crew, building fences and cleaning outhouses with Hunter.

After that, I was basically forced into the Volunteer Coordinator position (unofficially, since that position didn’t exist at the time in our district).

I hated being stuck in the office, just like Emmett does.

But I waited it out and now I’m finally in my dream job here at the Forest Service.

Emmett’s time is coming, but he just needs to stick it out a little longer.

Eventually some extra funding will come through for a few more rec crew positions, and Emmett will be first on the list. Until then, I’ll do what I can to keep him in the game by getting him away from the front desk as much as possible.

I’m not sure law enforcement is the right fit for him, but it can’t hurt to take him along on some of these easy calls.

“It’s weird that someone drove all the way out here,” Emmett says as we get closer to our destination. He has to shout over the sound of air rushing through the open windows of the truck and the crunch of dirt under our tires.

“Yeah, it’s going to be a pain in the ass if we have to get someone to tow this car out of here,” I agree.

We’re pretty far off the trail. We lost the small Forest Service road a couple of miles back. Whoever drove all the way out here seriously did not want to be found.

This sort of thing happens from time to time.

Usually, the abandoned vehicles are a little closer to the main drag, but it’s not unheard of to find one all the way out here either.

Sometimes it’s somebody trying to get off the grid for a while, and sometimes it’s someone who just sucks at using a map.

“Who called it in?” Emmett asks.

“Some AT hikers who took a cut-through to get to the waterfall.”

“You think the owner is still out here?”

I shrug. “Probably not. Usually, the owner either gets lost and can’t find their way back to the vehicle after they go looking for water or something, or they’re looking to ditch the car for one reason or another. A lot of the time, it turns out the car’s stolen.”

We’re both quiet again for a while. Truthfully, I had an ulterior motive for bringing him along today. Ever since the Kayla debacle, it’s felt a little weird between the two of us. I know they were friends – maybe even more – and he’s undoubtedly heard about the pictures by now.

It's an awkward thing to bring up. I’ve spent the entire week dodging the topic, and now I’m not sure how to bring it up.

“So, uh, everything okay with you lately?” I finally manage to ask.

Emmett shrugs out a simple, “Yeah.”

“It’s been a weird week,” I say after a beat. I’ve been cringing over these words all week, but it’s the best I can come up with.

“Yeah, the whole thing with Kayla?” he says tightly. “Do you want – I mean, if you want to talk about it, we can – “

“Me? No, I thought maybe you would be upset about it, man.”

Emmett laughs. “No, not at all. I mean, the way it all went down was pretty messed up, but I’m not too sad to see her go.”

“Really? I thought maybe you two had something going on. She was always up in the lobby flirting with you.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she was just trying to make you jealous,” he says.

“That sucks, man.”

“It’s okay,” he shrugs. “Kayla isn’t my type anyway. I like the sweet, nice girl types…you know, the ones who seem like they were born to be a schoolteacher.”

I laugh because I know exactly what he means. And one person in particular comes to mind.

“Hey, so this might be weird, but I have a friend who you might hit it off with. If you’re interested in meeting her, she’s usually at the bar on Fridays. I could just casually introduce the two of you if you want.”

Emmett ponders this for a second and then nods. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

And that’s the end of it.

A small dark red sedan comes into view in the middle of a clearing ahead of us. There’s no one in sight. All four windows are rolled down.

We park a short way behind it and hop out of the truck. Emmett follows my lead, approaching the vehicle with caution. Even in the worst-case scenario, I’ve never had an issue with these types of calls, so I’m not worried even if I err on the side of caution.

Then the smell hits us. An overwhelming stench of death.

We both pause. Emmett throws his arm over his nose and mouth, while I tent my collar and breathe into my shirt.

I’m not a stranger to this smell. I’ve come across plenty of dead animals in my travels through the forest. Everything from a squirrel to an elk, but this is different.

I motion for Emmett to hang back behind me, and he seems more than willing to comply. My hand is on my gun, already unsnapping the holster.

“Hello?” I call out to the vehicle. “Anybody there?”

No answer.

“This is the US Forest Service. We’re here to do a wellness check,” I say over my quiet footsteps.

No answer again.

The first thing that I can see through the open window is a pair of dirty blue jeans, tented at the bend of the knee. Next, the bottom hem of a gray shirt comes into view. And then…so much blood.

I snap my holster back into place and rush to the window. It’s a man, maybe a little older than me, with a bullet wound to his head.

Turning on my heel, I move to keep Emmett back, but I can tell that he’s already seen nearly as much as I have. He’s white as a ghost, but a little green around the edges. He cups a hand over his mouth and darts off in the opposite direction. I hear him heaving a few seconds later.

Honestly, I can’t blame him. This isn’t the first body I’ve come across out here, but it’s been a long time.

Hunter and I had the misfortune of finding one in a remote area where we were supposed to put up some fencing.

That one was badly decomposed. When we called it in, I remember saying that we found ‘human remains’ in the area, which seemed fitting. But those words don’t fit now.

I force myself to look inside one more time, just for a couple of seconds, so that I have all the information I need to call it in. Taking a deep breath and holding it in my chest, I glance over the windowsill. There’s a handgun on the floor, just under his stiff fingers.

Emmett is sticking to the edge of the clearing as I turn around and head for the truck. I nod for him to join me there, and he takes the least direct route, sticking to the tree line and widely avoiding the vehicle.

I call it into dispatch as a probable suicide. Then I tell Emmett that he can stay in the truck if he wants. He half-heartedly offers to help but I tell him that there’s nothing for us to do until backup gets here. It’s mostly true.

It’s also true that I’m just as freaked out as he is, but a hell of a lot better at hiding it.