Page 6 of Silent Bones (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #7)

T he aluminum hull of the small patrol boat scraped into the rocky shallows.

Noah stepped out, grabbing the dock post as the vessel rocked behind him.

A thin veil of mist clung low over the lake, curling like smoke between the tree trunks lining the shore.

From here, the campsite was little more than a clearing framed in pine and silence.

He followed a narrow footpath up from the dock, the soles of his boots crunching across old pine needles.

The air smelled of wet moss, mud, and the sour tang of a burned-out fire.

Savannah had asked him to see the site firsthand before the bodies were moved.

She’d said the photos didn’t do it justice.

She wasn’t wrong.

The yellow perimeter tape fluttered gently across the brush ahead.

Beyond it, the clearing unfolded in fragments: a shredded tent caved in like a collapsed lung, gear scattered across the dirt, blackened remains of a firepit at the center.

Stillness hung over everything, broken only by the occasional murmur from techs cataloging evidence.

Callie Thorne leaned against a tree, sipping from a travel mug. She gave Noah a tired nod. “Welcome to the circus.”

McKenzie was crouched near the firepit, flipping a twig between his fingers. “Just in time for the matinee.”

Jake Richmond stood near the treeline, jotting notes into a small green notepad, pausing now and then to scan the underbrush. The three of them looked like they’d been there for hours, wrung-out but still alert.

Noah ducked under the tape.

“You’ll see the photos don’t do it justice,” Callie murmured, echoing Savannah. She glanced toward the tent. “You have to see it to believe it.”

He moved slowly through the site, taking it in piece by piece. Two bodies were still visible inside the largest tent, their shapes contorted, sleeping bags shredded, blood spatter everywhere. The nylon walls bore long, jagged slashes.

Another body lay sprawled beside the cold firepit, arms splayed unnaturally, dried blood pooled in the dirt around his ribs.

The fourth floated several feet out in the lake, face-down, caught in the tangles of underwater weeds. A breeze came off the water, stirring the long hair trailing behind her like river grass.

Noah squatted near the edge of the tent, scanning for drag marks or blood trails. The splatter patterns didn’t align with a frenzied attack. If it had been an animal, it would’ve been wild, chaotic. This felt deliberate.

He crossed to the firepit and crouched beside McKenzie.

“Initial thoughts?” Noah asked.

McKenzie scratched his chin with the twig. “Looks like hell,” he said. “But hell usually makes more sense.”

Noah’s eyes shifted toward the trees. “Any tracks?”

“Too many,” Jake said from behind them. “Ground’s already a mess. Hikers, campers, gawkers, half the forest has attempted to come through here since it happened.”

“Armchair detectives,” McKenzie muttered. “We had two with thermal cameras and matching shirts approach from the water. Dumb-ass campers hiking in after seeing police boats on the water, treating it like a roadside attraction.”

Noah stood and approached one of the trees near the tent. Jagged gashes ran up the trunk, wide and deep.

“A bear is what is being asserted,” Jake offered.

Noah ran his fingers over the bark. The spacing was too uniform. Clean. Tool-like? Certainly not random enough for an animal. About seven feet up, just high enough to suggest something massive or someone faking something massive.

He caught a flash of black clinging to the bark and plucked it gently with tweezers from his pocket. A coarse tuft of fur. He bagged it.

“We’ll get that to the lab,” he muttered, more to himself than the others.

Callie stepped up beside him and nodded toward the treeline. “There’s something else. Bent branches, twisted brush. You’ll want to see it.”

He followed her a few yards beyond the taped boundary. The air shifted, cooler in the shade. She pointed to a series of snapped twigs and depressed undergrowth forming a faint path leading deeper into the woods.

“An animal trail?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Maybe. But it’s cleaner than most. Consistent. Like someone walked it multiple times.”

Noah stepped onto the trail, studying the way moss had been kicked up and branches broken at shoulder height. It didn’t look natural, not the way deer trails formed in meandering arcs.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Have you followed it?”

“For a short distance.”

“Let’s keep going.”

Callie nodded. “I’ll be right behind.”

Together, they moved deeper into the underbrush, following the trail as it snaked west away from the camp, the blood, and the lake.

But not away from the truth.

The woods grew tighter the farther they followed the broken trail.

Callie moved behind Noah in silence, one hand resting near her belt as her eyes scanned the branches.

The faint path twisted through shallow rises and muddy gullies, marked by fresh scuffs and crushed moss.

It wasn’t a game trail, it was too erratic, too abrupt in its turns.

Then something glinted.

Noah slowed, crouched. Near a web of roots, caught between dirt and bark, was a small clear bag. Almost invisible unless the sun hit it just right. He leaned in, careful not to disturb the surrounding area.

A crystal residue clung to the inside corners.

“Callie,” he said without looking up, “you carry a field kit?”

She stepped beside him, eyebrows tightening. “Always.” She unclipped the green nylon pouch from her pack and handed him a NIK Test G kit.

Noah snapped the ampoules one by one, shaking the mixture until the reagent inside bloomed into a cloudy amber.

“Looks like meth,” he muttered. “Though nowadays it could be a dozen things. Tox’ll confirm.”

He sealed the bag and dropped it into an evidence envelope, labeling it with a GPS coordinate he called aloud for his recorder.

Callie crossed her arms. “Drugs might explain this. One bad dose, maybe a freakout. Things spiral.”

Noah shook his head. “Spiral looks different. Spiral doesn’t slash tents like a message. This feels controlled. Like it was meant to be seen.”

McKenzie’s voice chimed in from behind them as he came up the rear. “Or meant to mislead.”

They turned as he stepped through the brush, wiping sweat from his brow with his forearm. “I’ll bet my pension those tufts of hair aren’t bear.”

Noah looked at the trail ahead, where it curved back toward the lake. “Someone wants us chasing ghosts.”

McKenzie’s radio crackled.

He thumbed the side. “Go ahead.”

A voice came through, one of the uniformed rangers stationed back at the main shore. “You requested the location of Campsite 65. Registered to a Logan Forrester.”

Noah’s eyes narrowed. “Right. How far is that from here?”

The ranger muttered something over the radio.

“We’ve been there. It’s less than half a klick through the woods,” McKenzie replied.

Noah was already moving.

Ten minutes later, they pushed through a break in the trees and entered a narrow clearing overlooking the lake. A tan backpacking tent stood under a crooked pine, flap open like a gaping mouth. No sign of struggle. No torn seams, no blood.

The gear was intact: a flashlight lay beside the sleeping bag, still powered on and half-drained. A trail mix bag sat open on a log, with ants threading their way through the melted chocolate. A phone battery pack blinked red from inside a gear pouch.

But the boots were the thing that caught Noah’s attention.

Size twelve hiking boots, caked in dry mud, sat side-by-side near the tent opening like someone had taken them off before going to bed. Not like someone who fled.

“No blood, no noise complaints,” McKenzie said behind him. “He signed in. But never signed out.”

Noah bent, opening the tent gently. Inside, it was orderly. A pillow, a compact sleeping mat, a journal. Logan hadn’t just vanished. He’d left , and left like someone planning to return. But there was a boat still docked. Callie peered into it.

“All the gear is still here. Perhaps the camper went hiking.”

“Possibly,” Noah said.

McKenzie stood from a crouched position. “Or he left in a hurry and didn’t take his boots.”

Callie exhaled sharply. “Or he didn’t leave.”

Right then a sound cracked through the trees behind them, metal striking branch, followed by the sudden whine of an engine. Noah spun as an ATV came into view, already twenty feet ahead, tires spitting earth as it careened through the woods away from them.

“Hey!” he shouted, surging forward. “Police. Stop!”

He tore after it, branches lashing at his arms, thorny vines snapping across his jacket. The engine roared louder, then the ATV dipped and disappeared, swallowed by the woods.

McKenzie bellowed into his radio. Callie appeared in a run from the side trail, breathing hard.

“Who the hell was that?” Callie gasped.

Noah stood, chest heaving, hands on his knees. “Someone watching. Someone real comfortable with the terrain.” He straightened, his voice flat. “Get Fish and Game in the air. I want eyes on this place, now.”

A half hour later, the faint whine of a drone buzzed above the treetops like a mosquito with a mission.

Noah stood with Callie and Jake beneath a stand of birch just beyond the crime scene.

The sun had burned off most of the mist, revealing a swath of bright sky above the canopy.

A DEC tech held the tablet steady in his gloved hands, the live feed from the drone gliding across the screen.

It was faster than getting a chopper in the air.

Tire tracks cut a thread through the brush, fresh, looping back from the direction of Logan Forrester’s site.

“There,” Jake said, pointing.

The camera panned and tilted as it descended along a steep embankment. In a hollow near the shoreline, mostly obscured by ferns and a downed pine, sat the ATV. The drone circled and zoomed in.

A man emerged from the brush carrying a pack over one shoulder.

He knelt, pulled a length of camouflage tarp over the ATV, then stepped back to study his work.

A few branches were snapped and dragged across the covering in a poor man’s version of concealment.

Then he turned and made his way toward a shallow inlet, where a small motorized boat bobbed in the reeds.

The camera followed him.

He wore a stained canvas jacket and a sun-bleached ball cap. He had a wiry frame. Weather-beaten skin. Patchy beard, and a face that was thin but alert.

The drone hovered as the man climbed into the boat, yanked the motor cord, and glided into the tangled channels that snaked between the islands.

The tech froze the frame and zoomed in. The man looked over his shoulder once, then the boat vanished behind a wall of trees beyond the distance the drone could go.

Noah’s lips parted, a dry breath escaping. “That’s Mack Hawkins.”

Callie turned to him. “The hermit guy? The one from the old fire road?”

“Yeah. Ex-military, lives off-grid. People say he’s part ghost. Could’ve built a damn bomb shelter with a can opener and duct tape.”

Jake frowned. “You think he fled on purpose?”

Noah didn’t answer right away. He studied the still frame again, the eyes half-shadowed under the bill of the cap. “He didn’t panic. That was practiced. Controlled.” He turned to Callie. “Find me a last known address. I want to talk to him before he disappears for good.”

Noah returned alone to the clearing just before noon.

The crime scene was quieter now. The forensic team had packed up, the bodies long gone, leaving only yellow tape fluttering like tattered flags and the faint chemical tang of disinfectant.

Ash still clung to the firepit. The slashed tent sagged where the poles had been removed. Drag marks in the dirt were already fading under the breeze and foot traffic, but Noah saw them still. Felt them, really.

He crouched at the edge of the fire ring, fingertips brushing the ground. He looked to the trees where claw marks marred the bark, each one too precise. Then to the plastic evidence bag still in his pocket. His eyes followed the line of the trail Callie had pointed out earlier.

Then farther.

To the patch of forest where the ATV had screamed to life. Where Mack Hawkins had vanished.

A bead of sweat slipped down Noah’s temple. He didn’t wipe it.

“This wasn’t just some drug-fueled campfire party gone wrong,” he muttered.

His voice barely rose above the breeze.