Chapter 1- First Encounter

If Char of the Real People had not been wounded and fleeing from a raid by the Eastern Enemies, things might have gone differently. If she hadn’t landed in the middle of a technically friendly paintball game on Erik Davis’s farm, life might not have gotten quite as complicated for Rick Blair, for Char, and for a lot of Rick’s friends.

Rick Blair strained to make out details of the green blob that his night vision goggles showed him. It seemed wrong somehow. He wasn’t quite sure why. “Doesn’t quite look like Weasel Boy.”

Bruce Golden shook his head, sending perspiration running down from his prematurely balding head down his forehead and onto the goggles. “Don’t call him that.”

Rick grinned over at his cousin, Erik Davis, the third member of the group. “Why not. He’s the enemy, at least for this round. Besides, it fits.”

Bruce said, “You’re twenty-five years old. You need to get over high school.”

“So does he.”

Rick wiped the perspiration off of his forehead. It had to be after 11 pm but the mid-western July night was still uncomfortably hot and humid. He brushed against a bush and felt something moist and a little sticky on his arm. He looked at his leg through his night-vision goggles, then back at the bush, then finally at the ground. He flipped the goggles up and turned his flashlight on.

“Guys, I think we’ve got a problem.”

***

The dream felt solid. The night breeze felt right. The touch of her bare feet on the ground felt right. The brush of the leaves against her arms and legs felt right. The weight and texture of her wooden spear and her hand-ax felt right.

The forest felt wrong though. Char recognized none of the familiar places of her forest. This forest felt almost empty compared to hers. She could hear or smell the small night creatures of the forest. Mice, bats, and owls rustled or swooped. Deer, fox, and coyotes went about their business, but Char sensed no creatures larger than the three men that followed her.

The men felt wrong too. Three men, armed for war and on her trail-not of her tribe, therefore enemies. Char could see that the dream men carried short, oddly shaped spears. Moonlight bounced off of the spears when the moon peeked out from behind the clouds. She could also see that the men were wrapped in skins from their necks to their feet in spite of the summer’s warmth. Their eyes kept her from letting them get closer though. Eyes on sticks the length and width of her thumb? Eyes that let them follow her even when the moon went behind a cloud?

In spite of Char’s efforts the dream men gained on her when the moon went behind the clouds. They walked boldly, noisily, as if the forest belonged to them so thoroughly that no one and nothing in it could challenge them. The arrogance of the way they walked both angered Char and made her cautious. It implied enormous power.

The old men of her people claimed that to die in a dream meant to die in truth. Char remembered wondering how they could know that. What if she died in this strange, empty dream forest and also died in her body which must still be sleeping beside her son and among her people? She stopped suddenly. When did the dream start? With the attack of the Eastern Enemies, or when the night flickered and those enemies disappeared? Could she be dead or dying from the raid?

Char shook her head and focused on the problems of the dream world. What powers could the dream men possess, and how could those powers threaten her? She stopped again and shut down most of her mind so she could concentrate on that problem. The dream world faded to a faint gray on gray shadow of itself as she did so.

Dangerous how? Magic? Meaningless. What can they do? Great physical strength? No. Could tell from the way they moved. Track by smell? No. Wind wrong, not sniffing for tracks. Track by sound? Not with the noise they make. Track by blood? The wound has almost stopped bleeding. See in the dark? Yes, but not enough. Why no large animals? Hunted out. Even the most powerful of beast? Yes, but that means incredible power. Where from? Charming animals to sleep? No, would have used it on me. Spears. Must be able to throw them incredibly far and hard. No. One spear only for each. Can’t be for throwing long distance or would carry more than one. Rarely miss? Shape wrong. Would not fly right. Fly by magic? Meaningless.

Char shifted her attention back to the forest around her. Her legs and arms felt heavy, and she took two deep breaths. The men were closing fast, but were still far beyond spear range. One of them raised his spear. One of the others shouted something at him and shoved the tip of the spear up. Char thought she saw something small came out of the tip of the spear, moving faster than her eye could track it. Char heard a small sound a little a like a spear being driven hard into the trunk of a tree in the distance, yet somehow suggesting a concentrated power like nothing she had ever encountered.

Fear gave Char’s legs speed, and the moon came out. She moved quickly, gaining some ground on the dream men.

Char kept moving fast until the moon went back behind the clouds. She sensed a fourth enemy in front of her when he moved clumsily and broke a twig. Char moved quickly at right angle to the ambush, hoping that she hadn’t gotten too close to the hidden enemy. The moon went back behind the clouds. When she had to slow down in the nearly total darkness she stopped and let the world fade around her again.

Can throw something, but what? Thunderbolts? No, but something incredibly dangerous. How far can they throw them? They were too far away at first, then close enough. Too far now. Point spear to throw bolt. Why did the man shove the spear up? Want to capture. Why? Torture. If they catch me I’ll sing these dream men a song that will make them fear the real people for generations. What to do? Can move faster in moonlight. Go beyond their vision? Risky. They move faster when no moon. Get closer and kill? Riskier. How do they fight close? Can’t know. Movements clumsy.

The dream world came back into focus. Char almost stumbled over a root as the weakness from the second focus flowed through her. The moon stayed stubbornly behind the clouds, and Char had to pick her way carefully through the forest. Abruptly she heard swiftly running water. It seemed to be coming from three sides of her. She looked back. The dream men spread out. Char moved forward and confirmed her fears. She found herself in the bend of river wide enough that she couldn’t see across it in the darkness.

***

Rick stopped. “Guys, we’ve got somebody else out here and they’re bleeding. It’s time to put paintball on hold. I say we call Weasel Boy-I mean Ken back in, and figure out what’s happening. We need to have somebody standing by with a cell phone in case we’ve stumbled onto something we can’t handle.”

Bruce shook his head. “First, we gave Ken all of our cell phones so we couldn’t use them to coordinate against him.”

“Which was a mistake.”

Bruce continued. “And second, you’re over-reacting. Who else would be out in this God-forsaken neck of the woods on Fourth-of-July weekend?”

Erik said, “This God-forsaken neck of the woods happens to be my farm.”

Bruce aimed his paintball gun at the figure in front of them. “Probably too far, but maybe I’ll get lucky and end this now.”

Erik knocked the barrel up just before the paintball gun went off. “Never shoot unless you know for sure what you’re shooting at-even in paintball.”

Rick asked, “So, are we going to call it off?”

“Why should we?”

“Because it’s just a game and we’ve got somebody running around hurt. I think it’s a woman.”

Bruce started walking again. “So we catch up to whoever’s out there and sort things out. If it is Ken, we pelt him with paint balls. If it’s someone else, we ask them what they are doing on Erik’s farm.”

Rick looked at Bruce’s back as he walked away from them, then at Erik. “Your call, cousin.”

Erik ran his hand back over his short blonde hair. “Kind of wish I’d brought something heavier than a paintball gun.”

“Surprised you didn’t. Am I going off the tracks on this?”

Erik shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. Whoever it is doesn’t move like Ken normally does. Actually it doesn’t move like anybody I’ve seen. That was blood that you found. You hang out on a farm long and you learn to be cautious about people you don’t know.”

“But we’re going to chase them down anyway.”

“Yeah.”

They moved on and caught up with Bruce. He stopped. “Heat’s getting to me. I’m out of breath. Need to get rid of about 30 pounds. It’s that football player diet. I sit in front of the TV and keep eating like I’m working out three hours a night.”

Rick said, “It’ll catch up with Weasel Boy-okay, Ken-when he gets this semi-pro football stuff out of his system and gets a real job.”

Rick tried to remember what was ahead of them. This part of the Davis farm was covered with second-growth timber, uncultivated because the land got flooded too often. A wild little river cut across one corner of the farm. It changed course almost every year, leaving the area dotted with sloughs and ponds.

Ken, or whoever was moving along ahead of them, abruptly changed course. Rick looked over at Erik. “They’re heading straight into the river bend.”

“Spread out a little and we have him.” Erik paused. “Or her-or it.”

Rick moved to the right, not far enough to be out of sight of the others but far enough to keep whoever was moving ahead of them from doubling back and getting out of the river bend. As he approached the river, small frogs hopped frantically to get out of his way. A couple of mosquitoes bit him on his back at spots he must have missed with his mosquito spray. Mud accumulated on his boots and made them heavy.

Rick advanced carefully. He lost track of the person moving ahead of him a couple of times, in spite of the night vision goggles. He reached the edge of a little treeless area about twenty yards wide that ran along this part of the river. The night goggles showed him the green outline of a person wading into the river not far from him.

Rick moved cautiously into the open and yelled, “Real bad idea. That river has a lot of holes and a lot of current. Good place to drown.”

The figure kept moving out into the river-waist deep now. Rick flipped his night goggles up, held his flashlight at arm’s length and turned it on. Erik and Bruce moved up behind him and turned their lights on too. The person in the river raised an arm to shield eyes against the light but Rick could see bright red hair, long in the back and shaved on the side. The figure was wearing only a life-sized, very realistic, tattoo of a wolf above the waist.

Rick said, “Told you it was a woman.”

The woman in the river raised a sharpened wooden stick threateningly and said something incomprehensible. She moved further away from the bank, slipped, and almost dropped the stick as she regained her balance.

Rick moved his flashlight so that only the periphery of the beam was on the woman. “Get your lights out of her eyes.”

The woman continued to move further into the river. Only her head and shoulders remained above water now, and she struggled against the current. Rick yelled, “We aren’t going to hurt you. You can come back if you want to.”

Erik said, “Put the paintball guns down. They’re probably scaring her.”

That seemed to help a little. The woman paused and looked back at them, took another couple of steps, then paused again. Rick said, “It’s okay. We’re just playing paintball.”

The woman moved a tentative step toward them. Rick suddenly felt the stinging impact of a paintball on his back. He heard the compressed air snapping sounds almost simultaneously. He turned and saw Ken List running toward them, firing off paintballs as quickly as the gun would fire them.

“Stop it. You’ll scare her,” Rick yelled. He turned back toward the river just in time to see the woman lose her balance and go under. Her head surfaced briefly, then went under again. Rick took the night vision goggles the rest of the way off, and started taking off his shirt. One of woman’s hands broke the water briefly several yards downstream from where she had first gone under. The hand grasped frantically at air, then disappeared.

Ken ran up. “Who’s that? What’s going on?”

“Woman. Waded into the river when we came up. Looks like she’s drowning.”

Ken waded into the river. He paused, then turned and tossed his paintball gun and night vision goggles onto the bank. Rick and Erik waded in after him, several yards behind. Rick stepped into a deep hole in the river bottom and had to start swimming. His clothes and heavy boots made it difficult. He got his head above water, wiped the water out of his eyes, and tried to orient himself. A circle of light from Bruce’s flashlight pointed him in the direction where the woman had last surfaced.

Rick swam over to the spot that the flashlight beam focused on as fast as he could. The weight of his clothes and boots seemed to be increasing by the second. Erik reached the light a little before Rick did, then went under. He surfaced a second later, swimming hard to stay above water. Erik grabbed a quick breath then said, “There’s a nasty undertow, and a deep hole here.”

Ken’s head broke the surface several yards downstream. “Been diving. No luck.”

Rick treaded water and looked around. Fortunately, the moon was back out. He saw a hint of motion out of the corner of his eye, focused on it, and thought he saw the woman’s head break the surface of the water briefly about ten yards downstream before going back under. “Over there, I think.”

Ken was several yards closer to the woman than Rick, and he got to her first. The woman was still at least partly conscious and she latched onto his head, pulling him under. Rick reached the two of them, and grabbed the woman from behind. He felt the impact through her as Ken hit her hard to break her grip. The woman went limp, but Rick felt the impact of another blow. “That’s enough. She’s out.” He barely got those words out before another punch sent the woman’s head back against his forehead hard enough that he was briefly disoriented. “Would you stop already? She’s out.”

Erik swam up and the three of them managed to tow the woman ashore. They stumbled up onto the bank and lay there for a second or two, totally exhausted. Bruce ran up. “Is she okay?”

Rick glared at Ken. “You didn’t have to hit her the last two times. She was out after the first one. You can really hurt someone hitting them when they’re unconscious like that-maybe even kill them.”

“Yeah well she didn’t have you by the throat. I hit her until I felt her let go.”

Rick shook his head. “We’ll worry about that later. Erik, you know CPR. Do what you have to do. Ken, you’ve got the cell phones. Call emergency services. We’ll rig up some kind of stretcher and meet them as close to the farmhouse as we can get by the time they get here. Bruce, find some poles six or seven feet long. Keep your eyes open. She was running from something before she even saw us.”

Ken shook his head. “Cell phones went into the river with me. They aren’t waterproof. We’re on our own until we get back to the farmhouse.”

Erik looked up from where he was bent over the woman. “And I don’t have a land line there.”

Rick walked over to where Erik was bending over the woman. “How is she?”

Erik looked up. “She has a deep cut on her arm. That’s probably where the blood you saw came from. I’ve got the bleeding stopped, for the most part. She’s breathing, but she’s really out. How hard did he hit her?”

“Way too hard. I’m getting a bruise the size of an egg on my forehead from where her head bounced off of mine the last time he hit her.”

Ken walked up. “You can keep that opinion to yourself. You would have done the same thing if she had grabbed you by the throat.”

Rick stood up and looked him in the eye. “I doubt it. And I certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed it.”

Bruce walked up with two long poles. “What do you want to do with these?”

Rick took a deep breath, and then said, “Figure out some way to use our shirts to turn them into a stretcher and hope the shirts hold together long enough to get her back to the farmhouse. It felt like she weighed a ton when we dragged her out.”

Ken picked up a flashlight and walked over to the mystery woman. He felt her pulse, then forced open an eyelid. He stood up and stared out over the river. Rick looked over at him. “Are you going to help?”

“Why? So I can go to jail on manslaughter when she dies or get sued by her parents and end up with their hands in my pocket the rest of my life when she ends up brain damaged? I didn’t hit her that hard, but between the water she took in and whatever else happened to her tonight she isn’t looking good at all. She’s not just unconscious. She’s hurt bad.”

“So let’s get her to a doctor.”

“And if she dies, and she probably will, I get voluntary manslaughter. You get involuntary manslaughter for chasing her into the river. I say we put her back into the river. She floats down it a ways. If someone finds the body she hit her head and drowned. Nothing to do with us.”

“You’re nuts. That would be murder.” Rick looked at Bruce. “I told you he was a weasel.”

“No. I’ve just been through the court system a time or two. I know how the world works. If we don’t dump her we might as well all kiss the rest of our twenty-something years goodbye. I’m not willing to do that for some hopped up little bimbo that we found running around half-naked in someone else’s woods.”

Rick shook his head and continued trying to improvise a stretcher. “Even if we were the kind of people who would do that it would be totally stupid. She had to come from somewhere. What if this was some kind of college initiation and she has a couple of dozen friends waiting down the road to pick her up later tonight? Erik, was she carrying any identification?”

“No. She’s wearing a skirt made out of some kind of animal hide-deerskin I think. She has a little pouch around her waist with what looks like it might have been paint in it. That’s it.”

“Sounds like some kind of survival exercise-which means that people know she’s here.” Rick knotted a shirtsleeve around one of the poles and tested the knot. “That should do it. Let’s get her to a doctor.”

Ken shook his head. “Didn’t you even hear what I said?”

Erik looked up. “Yeah, we heard you. You know, when this is over I don’t ever want to see you on my farm again.”

Chapter 2 - Char Sizes Things Up

Char risked opening one of her eyes a slit. She hoped that she hadn’t stirred or given some sign of regaining consciousness. She could see three of her enemies and none of them showed any sign of the alertness that would have come if she had moved. They all moved quickly around her, removing wet skins and putting on dry ones. She tried to figure out if her hands or feet were tied. They didn’t seem to be. That bit of overconfidence should cost her enemies.

Char studied her enemies through her almost closed eyes. All three of the ones she could see would have towered over the tallest men of the Real People. One was especially tall and bulky, but grotesquely fat by the standards of the Real People. His brown hair appeared to be thinning in front, as if from some kind of disease. His eyes were a shocking blue color. The other two were slightly more ordinary looking, though one of them had yellow hair and stood at least a foot taller than Char, and the other one wasn’t much shorter, though his eyes and hair were a more normal brown.

Char had carefully avoided trying to understand the rest of her surroundings. Now she tried to make sense of what she could see and feel around her. She could tell that she was in some kind of hut, though the walls seemed much too smooth and continuous. She could feel something impossibly soft and smooth beneath her. A miniature sun glowed not more than a tall man’s height above her. Out of the corner she could see an impossibly realistic painting of a man and a woman. In spite of its detail, Char could tell that the painting somehow failed to capture the essence of the man and the woman.

This part of the dream world felt even more baffling and dangerous than the nearly empty forest. Char pushed the pain in her head and in her arm out of her mind and tried to figure out this strange, too smooth hut and the things in it. She started to shut down parts of her mind so she could focus on the problem, but abruptly pulled back. She heard footsteps from a part of the room she couldn’t see from her position.

The fourth enemy came within Char’s view. He carried an odd-looking club with an ordinary looking handle attached to a perfectly round, heavy looking object with a front as transparent as the clearest water and a wide as Char’s hand. The enemy held the club no more than a hand width away from Char’s face, and suddenly it lit up with the light of tens and tens of suns. It took all of Char’s willpower not to move or close her eyes in the face of the incredible thing, but she did it.

***

Ken hefted the big flashlight, and then put it down on the bed beside the mystery woman. “That thing’s like a car headlight that you can hold in your hand. I guess I was wrong. If a million candlepower flashlight won’t make her twitch she isn’t awake.”

Rick looked around the cluttered upstairs bedroom of the Davis farmhouse. “Wound in her arm’s bleeding again. If she had been awake you would have just blinded her.”

“Not permanently.” Ken picked up the light again, looked at the front and said, “It’s got one of those glow-in-dark rings so you can find it in the dark.”

Erik said, “Yeah, and it’s for emergencies. Leave it alone.”

Ken shrugged and tossed the light back on the bed.

Rick looked over at Erik. “You don’t by any chance have an Internet hookup do you?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think it’s connected. I’ve got an old laptop I can plug in to see.”

“That old one I gave you? What do you use that for?”

“I’m using it to learn Spanish.”

Rick nodded. “Oh yeah. You’re still trying to get that Spanish teacher to go out with you-the one that you think is out of your league.”

“That’s not why I’m learning Spanish.”

Rick shrugged. “Laptop’s probably worth a shot. I’ll drive to your neighbor’s house and get them to call for help. Ken, I expect her to be here when I get back.”

“I won’t do anything if she’s alive, but if she dies before anyone gets here she goes in the river. I’m not doing time for manslaughter.”

“And I’m not going to lie for you.”

Rick walked out to the hall. Erik followed him. Rick asked, “Got a camera out here?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Why?”

“See if you can get a picture of our mystery woman without Weasel Boy noticing. I don’t want him to get away with murder if she dies.”

Erik nodded. “It won’t be easy, but I may have a way. Drive. We’ll be okay here.”

Rick went out to his car, and drove down the Davis farm’s long gravel driveway. He combed his hair as he drove so he wouldn’t frighten the neighbors. The drive to the next farm seemed to take forever. To make matters worse, he didn’t see the driveway up to it soon enough and drove past it. He glanced in the rearview mirror. He didn’t see anyone coming, so he stopped the car, then backed up to the driveway entrance. “Yes, I know that’s illegal, and dangerous, but I don’t have time. And now I’m talking to myself.”

A large black dog, probably a Rottweiler/Lab mix, came and stood in the driveway barking as Rick approached the house. Rick inched the car forward, careful to avoid hitting the dog. Several exterior lights came on as he got closer to the house, probably automatically triggered by his car’s motion. He didn’t see any lights on inside the house yet. That changed as he got closer. He saw a couple of lights come on and then quickly go back off inside the house, then a porch light came on. A man’s voice came from the house. “What do you need?”

Rick cautiously rolled down the car window. The dog growled but didn’t come closer. “I need you to call the sheriff’s office and tell them to get an ambulance and some deputies out to the Davis farm. We’ve got somebody hurt over there.”

***

Back at the farmhouse, Erik looked at the mystery woman. “No change except she’s drooling and her arm’s bleeding again. We need to get that stopped.”

Ken shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re setting yourself up for. Court system’s going to chew you up and spit you out. I know.”

Erik said, “Trying to save someone’s life isn’t quite the same as drug possession, or beating your wife.”

“Yeah, I got into drugs back in high school. That was a long time ago, and I paid the price. I would have been a pro running back now if I hadn’t screwed up. Never beat my wife, not that it’s any of your business. Saying that was just her way of getting my son.”

Erik shrugged. “Bruce, I’m going to tear a couple of old T-shirts into strips and boil them so they’re sterile, and then try to stop the bleeding. Watch her and yell if anything changes.”

He went down to the kitchen and started heating a pan of water as he tore up the T-shirts. A movement at the window startled him for a second, before he recognized the old gray tomcat that hung around the farm. The cat stretched and then settled in on the sill just outside the window. Its fur indented the window screen and a few hairs poked through. Erik went over and opened the window. A nice breeze came in through the screen. Erik looked at his watch and then said to the cat, “What are you doing lazing around at a little after midnight? This is prime mouse-catching time.”

The cat yawned. Erik grinned. “Yeah, I know you’re worthless, but I like you anyway. I need a dog out here though. I could have a dozen tattooed half-naked nutcases on my front porch and you wouldn’t say boo.”

The cat yawned again, then abruptly perked up its ears and jumped down into the darkness. Erik looked out the window but didn’t see anything unusual. He looked at the front door. Closed and locked. “Is everything okay up there?”

Nobody answered. Erik opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out a butcher knife. He went to the foot of the stairs. “Is everything okay up there?”

The silence stretched out, then Erik heard a floorboard creak. The light at the head of the stairs flared, then shattered and went dark. The light from the upstairs bedroom was already out, so the upstairs was entirely dark. “Bruce, Ken, what’s going on?”

The farmhouse went silent for several seconds, and then Erik heard a slight rustling sound in the upstairs hallway. He reached for his flashlight, then realized that he had tossed it on the river bank when he went in to save the mystery woman and had forgotten to pick it up. He tried to remember if he had another flashlight downstairs. Probably not, and the ones upstairs in the guest bedroom wouldn’t help.

Erik started up the stairs, uncomfortably aware of how much noise his boots made on the steps. He paused three-quarters of the way up the stairs and looked around as best he could in the darkness. That also gave his eyes time to adjust to the darkness. “Bruce! Ken! What’s going on?”

He heard a thud from the bedroom, and a slight vibration as something heavy hit the floor. The light from one of the big “car headlight” flashlights hit him in the face, blinding him. He heard the compressed air ‘pffft’ of a paintball gun, and the paintball hit him in the chest. “Oww.”

The light focused on his chest for a second, then went off and he heard the quick padding of footsteps in the hall as he blinked and tried to get his night vision back. He caught a glimpse of the big flashlight swinging toward his head. He got his knife hand up fast enough to block it, but the knife flew out of his hand from the impact and landed with its handle on his boot.

Erik saw the glowing oval of the big flashlight, and punched to the left of it. Surprisingly, he actually hit his assailant. He couldn’t tell where the punch landed, but he heard a gasp and the big flashlight clattered onto the stairs. He felt a hand brush against his shin, then he realized that he couldn’t feel the knife handle against his boot anymore. He took a quick step backwards and felt a rush of air as something, probably the knife, swung past his head. He took another step and his foot landed on the big flashlight. He lost his balance and fell backwards down the stairs. He managed to tuck his head in, but the fall still knocked the wind out of him.

The big flashlight bumped its way partway down the stairs. Erik grabbed it and flashed it up the stairs. He caught a glimpse of someone in a long coat running past the head of the stairs, carrying something that looked almost as big as they were. He tried to catch his breath and then looked around for a weapon. The pan of boiling water was the best thing he could come with, so he picked it up and started back toward the stairs with it. He heard someone fumbling with the lock on the balcony door upstairs and apparently getting increasingly frustrated with it. Finally he heard the door open and close.

Erik went to the window and saw somebody jump down from the balcony. Whoever it was ran through the yard without breaking stride and disappeared behind a shed just as Erik was getting the back door open. Erik started to go out, then paused and looked down at the pan of water, now no longer boiling. He shook his head, then closed the door and locked it. He also closed and locked the window in the kitchen.

“Got to be something here I can use as a weapon.” Erik raised his voice. “Bruce! Ken! Are you up there?”

There was still no answer. Erik rummaged around in a toolbox until he found a pipe wrench. The heavy wrench felt reassuring in his hands. He turned on the big flashlight and went back up the stairs with it in one hand and the wrench in the other. The balcony door still stood open. He made sure there was no one on the balcony, then closed the door. He started to lock it, and then hesitated, not sure he wanted to cut off a potential line of retreat.

Erik walked cautiously to the upstairs bedroom and flashed the light in. The beam revealed an empty bed, with Bruce slumped beside it, head resting on the bed. There was no sign of Ken or the mystery woman. Erik checked behind the door, then went over to Bruce. He got a good look at the other side of Bruce’s head, and quickly felt for a pulse. “Come on! Give me a pulse.”

He didn’t feel one at the neck. He tried the wrists, and then straightened up. “Didn’t think so.”

Erik looked around the room. He thought he missed some magazines. The paintball guns and all four pairs of the night vision goggles were missing, along with the blanket from the bed and several items of clothing. He noticed that the old laptop was no longer on the desk.

“So you saw what I did with the computer, did you Weasel Boy? And I’d be willing to bet that there’ll be a shovel missing from my shed, and a shallow grave somewhere on the farm-not that it’ll do you any good.”

Erik looked at his watch and was a little surprised when he realized that only twenty minutes had gone by since he had noticed the cat’s reaction. He heard a knock on the back door and walked back downstairs. “Rick. Did you get the sheriff?”

“On her way, along with an ambulance.”

“Didn’t hear your car come up.”

Rick shrugged. “Just pulled up.”

Erik nodded. “We’ve got a problem. I’m pretty sure Bruce is dead. No pulse, and the side of his head’s-well, not good. The woman’s gone. So is Ken.”

“What happened?”

“I was downstairs. I assume that Ken figured he’d knock Bruce out and dump the body. Probably just hit him too hard,” Erik said. “I didn’t hear anything though, and all I saw was a shadow. Could have been anybody.”

“Well, actually it could have been one of two people, and one them was pretty close to dead,” Rick said. “That leaves-well speak of the devil.”

Ken walked down the stairs toward them. Erik picked up his wrench. Rick quietly positioned himself so that Ken couldn’t face both of them at once. Erik said, “You didn’t have time to get to the river and back, so you must have borrowed a shovel. They’ll find her anyway.”

Ken looked at the two of them, and then sat down on the stairs. “Believe what you want. I’m not saying word one until I talk to a lawyer, and if you’re smart you’ll do the same thing.”

Erik started to say something, then paused and listened. “Sounds like the sheriff’s here.”

Chapter three:

Sheriff Francine Hart yawned. She studied the young man sitting across the desk from her in the improvised interview room she had set up in the basement of the farmhouse. His driver’s license put Erik Davis at twenty-six years old. He looked quite a bit older, and somehow weather-beaten, though Francine didn’t see any gray in his blonde hair nor fat on his wiry 6-foot tall frame. He looked tired and shaken.

The sheriff looked at her notes. “So the four of you were playing paintball-kind of a twenty-something version of hide-and-seek with night goggles and paintball guns. The four of you do that very often?”

“Not much anymore. I’ve been too busy since mom and dad died. Actually this is the first time Ken has been up here.”

The sheriff looked at her notes again. “I was wondering about that. You and your cousin-Rick Blair is it?”

“Yes.”

“You two and the deceased have an apartment together in town, but I’m not sure where this Ken List fits in.”

“It was Bruce’s idea to bring him up here. Rick and Ken knew each other in high school and didn’t particularly like each other. Bruce knew them both and I guess he figured they’d get to be friends if they got to know each other.”

The sheriff nodded. “How badly did they not like each other?”

Erik said, “Not seriously-just high school stuff. Ken was the star running back and Rick didn’t give him the worship he thought he deserved.”

“Nothing more recent?”

“Nothing serious. Ken’s dating the girl Rick would like to be dating, but Rick’s pretty laid back about things like that.”

“What’s the girl’s name?”

“Dawn Regan. She illustrates children’s books.”

The sheriff looked at her notes and yawned again. Ten years ago she would probably have still been up at one o’clock in the morning. Now she had trouble staying fully awake for what could be one of the biggest cases in her career. “That’s the difference between twenty-seven and-well thirty-something.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Just thinking out loud. Why didn’t you go after the person you saw jump down from the balcony and run behind your shed?”

“He had a knife. All I had at the time was a pan of scalding water. You can’t run with something like that.”

The sheriff nodded. “Not a great idea. You said ‘he had a knife.’ Did you see this person well enough to identify them?”

“No.”

“Well enough to know it was a man?”

“Not really.”

“Why not? Why couldn’t you see well enough to identify him or her?”

“He-they flashed one of those big car-headlight flashlights in my eyes.”

”And then shot you with a paintball.” The sheriff looked at Erik’s shirt. “Looks like they hit you right at where your heart would have been. Any idea why they did that?”

“No.”

“You’ve been working on this farm and as a mechanic since your parents died…” The sheriff looked at her notes. “Two years ago. You look like you’re a pretty strong guy. Anything physical that would make it impossible for you to kill somebody by hitting them over the head with a big flashlight?”

Erik said, “I didn’t. I don’t have anything physically wrong with me, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Ever see the woman that was here before?”

“No.”

“Any idea how she got out here or what she was doing on your farm?”

Erik shrugged. “I’m figuring some kind of ‘live off the land’ survivalist nutcase but that’s just a guess.”

“Was she Indian?”

“I don’t think so. If anything she looked like she might have had a little Australian Aborigine in her, but her skin was whiter than mine.”

The sheriff looked at her notes again. “Hair dyed red. Shaved up the sides. Hair thick and long at the top. Bigger-than-life tattoo of a wolf on her upper body. Wouldn’t be too out of place in Chicago but people would notice her out here in the sticks. Anything else?”

“Yeah. She moved wrong.”

“Your cousin said that too. He couldn’t explain it though.”

“Neither can I. She didn’t walk right and she didn’t run right either.”

“Was she hurt?”

“Didn’t seem to be. Moved fast.”

The sheriff shrugged. “Did Bruce have anybody special female-wise?”

“This week?” Erik asked. “Bruce had this little problem. He would get into relationships and then he’d get scared and want to get out, but he hated conflict, so he’d just not be available. Eventually the girl would get the message.”

“Sounds like a jewel of a guy. Any of these girls mad enough to kill him?”

“Not that I know of.”

The sheriff motioned for a deputy who had been witnessing the interview to come over. She stepped out of Erik’s earshot and said, “Get someone in here to witness and take over. You need to get names and contact info on next of kin and whoever else needs to be notified. Get a detailed list of what he thinks is missing, then take him down to the river and diagram what he says happened. Be careful with my crime scene. When you get done with him, take Rick Blair down separately and diagram what he says happened. Oh, and get names and addresses of any girlfriends the deceased dumped in the last year.”

“Aren’t many women strong enough to do what they did to him.”

“You’d be surprised at what a woman who’s been dumped can do.”

“The murder weapon was that big flashlight?”

“Yeah.”

“And all of this happened without Erik Davis hearing a sound downstairs.”

Sheriff Hart said, “Yeah, although the cat apparently heard something. Strange huh?”

“Yeah. Am I doing an interview or an interrogation?”

“Don’t know yet. I hope he’s a friendly. His parents were good people. I gave him the ‘anything you say can be used’ bit, just in case. Is the coroner done upstairs?”

“Yeah. I saw him coming down. He’s probably looking for you.”

She clapped the deputy on the back and wandered upstairs to the main floor. She saw the coroner start out the door as she got to the head of the stairs. “Aren’t going to leave without saying goodbye, are you?”

“I thought you were tied up with the questioning. Report’s done. I left a copy for you.”

“I like hearing things straight from the horse’s mouth. Let’s go up and walk through what happened.”

The coroner looked at his watch, then shrugged and walked upstairs to the bedroom with her. He pointed to a bookcase by the door. “The deceased was standing over here. He was facing his assailant. He partially blocked at least one of hits, almost certainly the first one. He took it on his left arm, but the momentum carried it into his head. Second hit was probably to the Adam’s apple with the flat of a hand. Caused quite a bit of damage. It might have even killed him eventually by itself. Third hit caught him in the side of his head and probably killed him instantly.”

The sheriff looked at the bookcase. “Let’s see if I can follow that little bit of Sherlocking. Body had two wounds on the head from getting hit with the light. One was a lot more damaging than the other. There was a wound from the light on his arm. Blood on the bookcase says it happened over here. Right so far?”

“Yep.”

“How did he get over by the bed?”

“Assailant picked him up and put him down. Couldn’t have drug him. No drag marks and not enough blood.”

“Why do that?”

“There’s a rug there. Less chance of a thump.”

“Bruce would have weighed a good 230 pounds, maybe 250. Fireman’s carry?”

“Nope. Not enough blood. Assailant picked him up and shifted him. You’re looking for a very strong man.”

“Or woman.”

“Or a woman Olympic-class weight-lifter.”

The sheriff grinned. “Sexist. A semi-pro football player would probably have to be a pretty strong guy, wouldn’t he? Anything else?”

“Time of death was around midnight-give or take enough time to make it pretty much useless in ruling people in or out in this case. Rest is in the report.”

The sheriff walked the coroner out, and then went down to the main area of the basement. She grinned when she saw Deputy Al Brantley coming out of one of the side rooms. The tall skinny deputy walked up to her, carefully nonchalant and asked. “Been back in the side rooms?”

“About four years ago when Erik’s parents called and told me that the farmhouse they bought had a couple of rooms in the basement with electric outlets about a foot apart and doors that faded into the color scheme. Yeah, the previous owners had a little basement hydroponics operation. They got careless with distributing the drugs and that’s why the house was for sale.”

The deputy showed no outward sign of deflation. Pity, the sheriff thought. Out loud she asked, “Ken List still not talking?”

“Not a word. He has a nice big goose-egg of a bump on the right side of his head. I made sure that was in one of the room pictures we took. I noticed that Rick Blair has a pretty nice lump on his forehead too. Are you buying this story about the girl with the tattoos?”

The sheriff shrugged. “If there was a girl here we’ll find evidence of it. Supposedly she bled on the sheets, so that’ll prove it one-way or the other if nothing else does.”

“Are you buying them just finding her wandering around in the woods?”

“Don’t have enough evidence to say.”

“Give you five to one that she came out here with them if she existed at all. Probably things got too rough for her and she tried to leave.”

“That doesn’t explain how Bruce died.”

“Others may have been afraid he would talk. Or maybe it was all this Ken List’s idea to get rid of the girl’s body and Bruce wouldn’t go along with it. Then again the other two are cousins and they may be protecting each other. Could have even been a ‘most dangerous game’ scenario.”

The sheriff laughed. “Not in my county. You’ve been watching too much TV.”

Deputy Brantley said, “Well, one thing I can tell you is that someone’s built a nice little crime scene for us to find down by the river.”

“You’ve been down there?”

“Yep. Don’t worry. I was careful. There are bare footprints out there leading into the river, and they’re pretty well faked, but they are fakes. Foot proportions are a little off. Feet didn’t land quite right. Stride’s a little too long for a short woman. Some other things don’t fit either.”

“You need to stop traipsing around in my crime scene. We do this systematically.”

Deputy Brantley shrugged. “I know enough not to destroy evidence.”

He turned, and started to walk away. The sheriff asked, “Have the guys in town searched the apartment there yet?”

“Bruce’s part of it. They found some hot e-mails on his computer, but they may have just been Spam come-ons. Nothing threatening.”

“Odd about the faked footprints. That would make Rick and Erik both liars. Neither of them are strong enough to be our murderer though, unless they did it together.”

Deputy Brantley shook his head. “If you need your suspect to be strong, don’t rule out Rick Blair. Just between you and me, one of the town guys peeked into his room. He’s got quite a set of weights, including 80 pound dumbbells.”

“That doesn’t sound like too much.”

“Yeah, until you figure that you lift dumbbells with one hand.”

“That’s surprising. I’ll keep it in mind. Hang tight a second or two. I’ll be back.”

The sheriff turned, and wandered out into the front yard. She touched base with the deputy in charge of searching the nearby roads and driveways for any out-of-place cars. She also sent a deputy to contact nearby farmhouses and alert the neighbors to be on the lookout for the mystery woman. She looked at her watch. She wasn’t surprised to see that it was after three in the morning. She saw lightning in the distance and delegated someone to gather tarps to cover the important parts of the crime scene if necessary. She shook her head and said to nobody in particular, “It’s going to be a long day.”

Sheriff Hart went back over to Deputy Brantley. “Grab some tarps. Let’s take a look at this phony crime scene of yours before the rain wipes it out.”

They walked down toward the river. Deputy Brantley pointed, “That’s where they supposedly crossed paths. All four of the guys were moving around down here tonight. Pattern’s consistent with Ken List hiding and the other three hunting for him.”

“And the woman?”

“Well, there’s a trail. It just isn’t real.”

“Show me. Just don’t get too close until I get pictures and sketch it out.”

Deputy Brantley walked over and pointed. “Best tracks I could find.”

Sheriff Hart worked took pictures from several angles, and then sketched the scene, working in from the periphery. She pointed at a set of tracks that came within a couple of feet of the trail. “Yours, I assume.”

“Had to get there somehow.”

Sheriff Hart asked, “Trace it all the way down to the river?”

“Yep.”

“And it looks like whoever made the trail went into the river?”

“Oh yeah.”

Sheriff Hart stood up and looked down Deputy Brantley’s trail. “Find where somebody shot a bunch of paintballs down there?”

“Yep.”

“So you’ve tramped all over my crime scene?” Sheriff Hart asked.

“Found the key evidence. Did my job.”

Sheriff Hart shrugged. “Not much we can do about it now. Did you follow the trail back from here?”

“Not yet.”

“And not ever. I’ll follow it back. Get down to the river and cover up as much of the scene as you can in case the rain hits.”

Sheriff Hart worked her way back along the trail away from the river. She lost it a couple of times, but found it again both times. She found dried blood a couple of times and collected it. She finally followed the trail back to mud-hole around twenty-five yards in diameter. She worked in from the outskirts, first circling and looking for any point where someone might have entered or left. She found one other point where the grass appeared to have been disturbed on a trail either to or away from the edge of the mud-hole. She found what appeared to be the print of a large bare foot in the mud near the edge of the mud-hole.

She finally worked her way into the mud-hole, following the trail. It was easy to follow in the mud, but the trail ended abruptly in almost the exact center of the mud-hole. Sheriff Hart systematically photographed, measured, and charted the scene. She re-examined the footprints, looking for any hint of overlaps that might indicate that someone had walked backwards into the mud and then walked back out. Finally she stood up and looked around. She shook her head. “I hate mysteries.”