Part 2

Previously, in City of the Lost…

To protect Diana from her vengeful ex, Casey strikes a deal with Rockton’s enigmatic and short-tempered sheriff, Eric Dalton. Together, Casey and Diana successfully disappear to the remote town.

When she gets there, Casey learns that Rockton may need her just as much as she needs it—a man’s been murdered, and she’s the new detective in town.

Before she’s even had time to take a tour of the place, Isabel, the owner of a local bar, whisks her away to break up a fight. Mid-brawl, Eric arrives and arrests Jerry Hastings, a man suspected of making Rydex, the powerful new drug sweeping the isolated community.

Casey soon learns that not everyone in Rockton is there for a good reason. Harry Powys—the murder victim—had once performed illegal organ transplants, often killing his patients. Powys had actually paid off council members so he could hide from the consequences in Rockton. To make it more confusing, an autopsy reveals that Powys may have been killed—and dismembered—by hostile cannibals.

But Casey has no time to process these troubling developments. Hastings has also gone missing, and Casey, Eric, and the deputy, Will Anders, embark on a manhunt in the surrounding forest. When Casey finds a skull and two bloodied legs nailed to a tree, she knows one thing for sure: A killer is loose in Rockton.

One

I only get a few hours’ sleep after our manhunt, and I’m awake by the time the sun’s up. I make breakfast before I head out. It’s simple fare: toast and a hard-boiled egg. Well, actually, the toast is just bread with peanut butter after I burned two slices trying to brown them on the wood stove. I planned to have a fried egg, but that seemed to be pushing my luck. Figuring out the French press coffee maker had been tough enough, so I just used the leftover water for boiling my egg.

Fortunately, between what Anders has said and what Dalton explained on the drive, my poor camp-cook skills wouldn’t be a serious drawback in Rockton. There are three restaurants plus a place that does takeout only. That’s not so much a matter of convenience as conservation of resources—you’ll waste less buying a precooked meal for one than cooking for one. The chefs are also more flexible and more skilled at making the substitutions necessary under these conditions.

Anders says the restaurant food is reasonably priced. Just don’t expect the menu to be vast. Or to find the same thing on it from one day to the next. Again, it’s a matter of availability and conservation. Right now, blueberries are just ending their local season, so I have a box on my counter, but in another week the only way I’ll be able to get them is in jam, which the local cooks are madly bottling as the picking expeditions clear all nearby patches.

I finish my breakfast, and I’m at the office before nine. I figure Dalton will put some time in before he picks me up at ten, and I’m like the little girl who chases after her big brothers to prove she can do anything they can. I spent my youth refusing to live up to the standards set by my parents and my sister, and ironically, I spend my adult life chasing my colleagues. At least here I have a chance, so I pursue my goals with a childhood of repressed ambition fuelling my fire.

I’m making coffee when Dalton walks in just past nine. I get a “Fuck” for my efforts.

“I was awake,” I say, “and I figured you’d stop by here and get some work done before you picked me up.”

“When’d you arrive?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

He grunts at that, and maybe he just doesn’t want me overdoing it … or maybe I’m not the only one with a competitive streak. Either way, he carries his coffee out onto the back deck. I pour the rest of the pot into a thermos—there’s no hot plate here to keep it warm. Then I take my mug and follow.

“Can I talk to you?” I ask as he settles into his chair.

“What’s stopping you?”

“When you come out here, you seem to want quiet.”

He shrugs. “You can talk. If I don’t want to listen, I’ll tell you to go away.”

My lips twitch. “Some people might take offence at that.”

“Then let’s hope you aren’t one of them, or you’re going to spend most of your time here being offended.”

I give him a full smile for that, and he tilts his head, as if trying to figure out exactly what prompted it.

“If you’re going to talk, talk,” he says. “Once this mug’s empty, we hit the trails. It’ll be a full day of searching.”

I walk to the railing. I don’t sit in front of him—I have a feeling that’d be a little too close for both of us. But I perch on the corner of the railing, and he looks over, assessing again. I feel as if he processes data like a computer, detecting and analyzing every nuance. She’s smiling. She’s sitting on the railing instead of the deck. Is that good?

It is. It means I’m relaxing and settling in. Yet there’s a wary look in Dalton’s eyes, as if he accepts nothing at face value, always searching for deeper meaning, potentially negative.

“I took a quick look through the case files this morning—” I begin.

“I thought you just got in.”

“At ten to nine. I started the water and then flipped through the files to check on something. I was looking at the cases of other attacks. Specifically, how close they were to the town and the level of violence involved. The other bodies were found several kilometres in. Powys was barely one, and the level of violence was a huge escalation.”