Page 15 of Silent Bones

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 obscuredby 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.