Lone Wolf Read Free

know, do an identification.”
    “Okay,” I said. At the speed I was going, I’d probably be up there in a little more than an hour and fifteen minutes.
    “I’ll come up, too,” Sarah said, and I knew she meant it.
    “Why don’t I get up there, find out what’s actually happened,” I said, “and then I’ll let you know.” Because I am not normally someone to look on the bright side, or wait for all the facts before panicking, I was already making a mental list of people to call. My sister. The funeral director. The lawyer. The real estate agent. Sarah would be good at helping with that sort of stuff.
    “What about Cindy?” Sarah asked.
    I said I would call my sister when I knew everything.
    “If I find out anything more, I’ll call you,” Sarah said.
    The landscape changed so gradually as I headed north that I almost didn’t notice it happening, but when I was about half an hour away from Braynor I noticed, even in my preoccupied state, that the hills had grown more steep, the forests of pines more dense, signs of civilization less prevalent, and the road frequently walled on both sides with jagged rock where the highway had been blasted through a rise in the terrain. Every few miles the scenery would open up as the highway skirted the edge of a lake, and taking my eyes off the wheel for a moment, I could see small boats in the distance, some moving at speed, others sitting with middle-aged men hunched over their fishing poles.
    I saw a sign reading “Braynor 5” and began looking for the lane into my father’s camp. I knew he was about three miles south of town, and before long I spotted the crudely painted sign up ahead, yellow letters painted onto a brown background, reading “Denny’s Cabins: Fishing, bait, boats. Next right.”
    I slowed, saw the opening in the trees where the lane wound down from the highway, and turned in. It didn’t amount to much more than two ruts with a strip of grass growing in the middle, and I could hear the blades brushing along the bottom of the car as I navigated my way in. The grass on either side of the ruts was matted down, where drivers had pulled over when encountering a car coming from the other direction.
    Not far down, the lane branched into two. You took the left to go to the farmhouse Dad had opted not to use, but I couldn’t have driven that way had I wanted to, because only a few yards ahead the lane was blocked by a wide wooden gate that was flanked on both sides by a neck-high chain-link fence.
    The gate featured a collection of signs, some made from wood and sloppily printed, others commercially available metal signs, dimpled as though shot with BB pellets. They read “Keep Out!” and “Private!!” and “Beware of Dogs!” That last one had originally said “Beware of Dog!” but someone had painted a snakelike “s” at the end to make it plural. As if all those weren’t enough, there was another that said “No Trespassing!” and a homemade one reading “Tresppasers Will Be SHOT!”
    I caught a glimpse of the two-story farmhouse and the large barn beyond it as I passed, taking the lane to the right and down over a hill, where the woods opened up and the five small cabins, lined up like little white Monopoly houses, presented themselves.
    As did the police car, the ambulance, and a couple of other vehicles parked at random on the lane and on the lawn behind the cabins. The dome lights on the police car and ambulance rotated quietly.
    As I pulled ahead, I saw several people gathered on the other side of the ambulance, a couple of them having a smoke, like they were all waiting for something. I parked, got out, my legs feeling a little rubbery not just from what I feared I was about to learn, but from the drive.
    They turned and looked at me. Two were dressed in paramedic garb, there was a young dark-haired woman clutching a notepad I figured was the freelancer Tracy, a gray-haired man in a dark suit, tie, and wire-rimmed glasses who had to be