But he wasn’t complaining. He figured he’d gotten lucky. He didn’t have to have a roommate, mainly because of the state of repair of his particular bungalow. It was not only the smallest, but was also the oldest on the campus, one of the few buildings that remained from the years when this isolated spot had been a haven for hunting and fishing. Built in the early 1900s, the original lodge had been demolished and the gravel access road had washed away in spring thaws and flooding. But a few small cabins were still standing. Barely.
Trent could deal with a leak in the bathroom ceiling and plumbing that screeched when he twisted on a tap or flushed the toilet. He’d take a dilapidated old cabin if it meant privacy. The newer staff quarters were like town houses, big enough for two with common walls, each unit identical to the next.
No thank you.
Being near the stable was a plus for him. He had always felt more comfortable with animals than most people, to the point he’d been considered a loner by some, a cowboy by others. Not that he gave a rat’s ass.
When he wasn’t teaching sports like basketball and volleyball in the gym, Trent was the go-to guy for wilderness survival and a backup for Bert Flannagan, who was the horse and dog handler. All his years on the rodeo circuit had been on his résumé when he’d applied for this job. His experience had convinced Reverend Lynch that he should spend time with the animals, which, Trent thought, shoving his hands into the pockets of his denim work jacket, was far more preferable than working with his peers.
The kids he liked.
Sure, a lot of them had attitude problems, and some were seriously on the way to becoming criminals, but for the most part, they could be challenged and changed. He couldn’t say the same for some of the teachers and counselors here.
Was Tobias Lynch, the reverend, theologian, head administrator for the school, as pious as he portrayed himself to be? His wife, Cora Sue, spent little time on campus, preferring the mansion on the shores of Lake Washington, just miles from the civilization of Seattle. Trent didn’t blame the woman, but it was an unusual setup for a high-profile guy like Lynch.
And what about Salvatore DeMarco, the math and science teacher, who was as quick with a knife as he was with a smile? Trent had seen DeMarco gut a fish in seconds, snap a rabbit’s neck, and take down a buck with a bow and arrow. DeMarco was an ex-Marine who’d served in Afghanistan. With a master’s in chemistry, he taught science
and math, but also gave lessons in self-defense and survival.
Adele Burdette, headmistress for the girls, was an enigma; Trent hadn’t learned much about her, but she rubbed him the wrong way.
Bert Flannagan was another curiosity. True, Flannagan had a way with the animals, but Trent suspected the man had a cruel streak. In his midfifties with a military haircut and eyes that were often slitted in suspicion, the guy was leather-tough and well-read, more fit than most thirty-year-olds.
Trent had overheard Spurrier and Flannagan talking once, and there was mention of Flannagan once being a mercenary. The truth? A joke? A lie to impress? Trent was betting there was at least a kernel of truth to it; the guy just had that look about him. Trent had never seen him mistreat an animal, though Flannagan reprimanded students all the time. Most recently, Trent had seen him rip into Drew Prescott and Zach Bernsen, two of the TAs, who had tried to pawn off the chore of cooling their mounts to underlings. The boys had deserved the dressing down they received.
As the latest teacher hired—the new kid on the block—Trent wasn’t yet privy to a lot of the inner workings of the school, but he’d done his homework before he applied for the position, and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that some of the counselors and teachers here weren’t on the up-and-up.
Like you?
He felt his mouth twist in self-deprecation. He, too, was a phony, getting this job on a trumped-up résumé. But he didn’t feel bad about the lies on his application, the deception he was perpetrating. It was necessary if he was ever going to find out what the hell had happened to Lauren Conway. The sheriff’s department in this county was
stretched thin. A handful of deputies struggled to cover hundreds of miles of deep forest; rocky, mountainous terrain; and long stretches of curving, dangerous highways. Power outages occurred regularly, hikers or campers got lost, and the snaking roads winding through the rugged Siskiyous presented ample opportunity for accidents.
On top of all that, Blaine O’Donnell, recently elected to the position of sheriff in Rogue County, wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. As far as Trent knew, the guy wasn’t really crooked, just lazy and inept.
So what had happened to Lauren Conway?
Trent wasn’t certain.
Yet.
But he had a feeling her disappearance wasn’t the act of a runaway, as the school administration purported. And the sheriff’s department seemed to have written it off with little investigation. Trent couldn’t help but wonder who from the school had lined O’Donnell’s pockets and campaign war chest in the last election.
Lauren Conway’s disappearance was the reason he’d taken the position at Blue Rock, though, of course, the administration didn’t suspect that he had a hidden agenda, that he was working undercover hoping to discover the truth. He had the feeling that someone here knew more than they’d admitted; he was working on finding out what that something was.
And he was making inroads as the staff and student body began to trust him.
He hoped to keep it that way.
So far, in the past few months, he didn’t think he’d raised much suspicion, but that could change on a dime. Especially if Shaylee Stillman decided to open her mouth and make some noise.
As he passed the interlocking corrals near the stable, he
slowed, his gaze scraping the darkened landscape for anything out of the ordinary. Rustic wooden fences, slats gray in the moonlight, bisected fields of glistening snow. Peaceful. Serene. A few thin clouds moving with the breeze.
And then he heard voices.
Arguing.
Near the garage where the tractors and heavy equipment was stored.
Rather than shout his arrival, he eased slowly along the edge of the stable and under the overhang where the horse trailer was parked. From there he looked across an expanse of parking lot to the shed.
“I told you not to panic,” one male voice said in a harsh whisper. “Just stay cool.”
Who was it? He should know.
“But we have to do something! Who knows who could be next?” A female voice. But again the hissing whisper disguised the true tenor of her voice, making it impossible for him to identify her. Should he show himself and demand answers? Or wait?
“Just be patient, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
“How can you promise me? This is getting out of hand. I mean, when I agreed to this, to be a part of it, I thought it would be fun, a thrill. And I believed in him. But now … Oh, God, I don’t know. I just don’t know!”
“Shh! You have to have faith,” the male voice insisted.
Trent decided to sneak closer when he heard a sharp neigh from the other direction, on the far side of the stable.
“Oh, no! Someone’s coming!”
The horse let out a high whinny again, but Trent was already crossing the parking lot to the garage. He heard footsteps running frantically on the other side of the building.
He gave chase, keeping close to the garage and rounding a corner.
No one.
The back of the garage area was undisturbed, the snow piled on its asphalt apron, unmarked, the huge, rolling doors shut tight.
Trent dashed to the far side and once again was faced with an empty expanse of parking lot, though tire tracks and footprints were visible in the snow. Whoever had been meeting here was long gone, and the tracks he found—two sets of bootprints, one smaller than the other—led toward the heart of the campus. He followed them until he hit the shoveled sidewalk, where they disappeared.
Students?
Counselors?
Who?
He looked toward the dorms and saw someone pass under the lights between buildings, a glint of gold showing, as if the person were wearing a yellow cap or had blond hair. From this distance, he couldn’t be certain. Nor could he prove that the person was either of the two he’d heard whispering behind the garage. Even if he could, so what? They were talking. Breaking curfew if they were students, not so if they were TAs or members of the staff.
The horse neighed again, clear and harsh in the night air. Other animals responded. One dog in the kennels started barking and was joined by others, but the noise was muted by the walls of the kennel. As were the answering neighs of the horses.
Knowing that he’d lost his quarry, he backtracked around the garage and crossed to the stable. On his way there, he spied a yearling named Nova for the star burst of white on her forehead. The filly whinnied, shivering in the cold. She was locked out of the building.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath. He opened the door and found a lead, then snapped it onto the filly’s halter. “Come on, girl,” he said softly, clucking his tongue and leading her inside the stable. Warm air that smelled of horses, saddle soap, and urine greeted him. Horses shuffled in their stalls, hooves swishing in the straw, an occasional nicker reaching his ears.
“You caused a stir, Nova,” he told the sorrel filly, who tossed her head and nervously danced. “Hey, come on. You’re okay. Here ya go.”
Other horses stretched their heads over the rails of their boxes, and he rubbed the gray’s nose before he settled the sorrel into her stall. After filling her manger with a ration of grain and hay, he brushed her shivering coat until it gleamed red under the stable lights. That seemed to have calmed her. “Better?” he asked kindly, though inside he was burning, pissed as hell that someone had left the filly outside when the temperature was well below freezing.
Idiot!
The dogs were going crazy now, their soft woofs having escalated to serious barking.
“No!” a man said firmly, and the noise stopped instantly.
Flannagan.
Several horses raised their heads and looked expectantly at the door.
It opened a second later, and Bert Flannagan, his face set in a scowl, a rifle gripped in his right hand, strode in. “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing that requires a gun, Bert.”
“You never know.”
“What were you gonna do? Shoot someone, probably a student, in the stables, and maybe hit a horse or two? Scare the rest of them so that they kicked out of their boxes and injured themselves? Put the damned thing away.”
Flannagan hesitated, glaring at Trent as if he wanted to
shoot him on the spot, but he set the rifle, butt on the floor, near the door. “Okay, so I asked before, what the hell’s goin’ on?”
“You tell me. I found Nova outside.”
“Outside?”
Trent explained how he’d found the filly in the field while heading to his cabin. He left out the part about the voices he’d heard for now, until he got a bead on Flannagan. But as he told the older man about the filly, Flannagan’s face grew hard. His nostrils flared, his mouth stretched tight over his teeth.
“That’s the problem with leaving kids in charge,” he said through lips that barely moved. “They have no sense of responsibility, no sense of purpose.”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be teaching them?”
“Impossible with the mambie-pambies that we get—rich kids whose mommies and daddies don’t want them to suffer the consequences of their actions. Just ship ‘em out, pay a buttload of money, and have someone else teach ‘em how to grow up.” He eyed the filly and shook his head, his short silvery hair in deep contrast to his tanned face. “I’ll tell ya what. If the parents would let those damned kids face up for what they did, let ‘em go cool their jets in jail for a while, it would save them all a whole lot of money and you and me a whole lotta time.”
“And you wouldn’t have a job.”
Flannagan threw him a dark look. “There are better jobs, believe me. I didn’t put in twenty years with the marines to end up here, wiping the noses of these kids. For the love of God, who leaves a horse out in the middle of the winter?” He walked into the filly’s stall and ran knowing hands over her muscles. She flicked her ears but otherwise didn’t object.
“Who was in charge tonight?” Trent asked.
“That’s the hell of it.” He rubbed the horse’s forehead and she snuffled loudly. “Bernsen and Rolfe were in command, but they had kids from your pod, that girl who’s always with her damned guitar.” He snapped his fingers and the filly snorted.
“JoAnne Harris.”
“She’s the one. Along with the Asian girl with spiky hair—Yang—and Bell. And I don’t care if it’s PC or not, but Bell doesn’t know a damned thing when it comes to horses.”
“I don’t think it’s because she’s black.”
“‘Course not. It’s cuz she grew up in the middle of godforsaken Detroit! How many horses you think they got in the Motor City?”
“Wasn’t Missy Albright supposed to be part of this group?”
Flannagan nodded. “Always thought she was all right, aside from that annoying voice. Hell, she’s smart, that one, good with animals.”
And a blonde. As was the person he thought he saw dash between the dorms. What had the woman said?
We could be next.
She sounded frightened and had been told not to “panic” by her companion, but Trent didn’t know what “next” meant. It could have been anything from disappearing like Lauren Conway to failing a class. He hadn’t heard enough of the conversation to come to the right conclusion.
Besides, Missy was not the only blonde at Blue Rock. Off the top of his head, he came up with half a dozen, and that was just the students. The school nurse and the cook could be added to the group.
Even if he could identify the two people he heard outside the garage, so what?
“I’ll deal with Bernsen in the morning. He was the TA who should have been in charge.”
Another blonde. “Let me talk to him,” Trent said. “Most of the students he was overseeing were in my group.”
Flannagan was already walking to the door of the stable. “Fine with me. Just make sure he understands the severity of leaving a horse outside.” He grabbed his rifle at the door, then looked over his shoulder with some final, sage words of advice. “And don’t take any lame-ass excuses that he delegated the work. Doesn’t mean jack shit. He was in charge; it’s his ass on the line.”