“What was the something?” Robbie asked.
“What were ye doing running the lake at night?” Greylen asked at the same time.
Jack answered Greylen, as he still hadn’t decided how much to tell them about the creature. “The trail we were following came out on the lake ten miles north of where we wanted to be, so we decided to connect up with the ITS trail another six or seven miles south of here. We weren’t speeding, and we were following the club trail.”
“Until something ran out in front of you,” Greylen said, climbing off his sled. He walked over to Jack. “So what was it that caused my daughter to leave the trail, Stone?”
Jack took a guzzle of the melted slush and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. If Megan wanted to keep secrets, then she could lie to her father. “I’m not sure, exactly.” He pointed toward shore. “It was headed that way, last I saw it. I was more worried about Megan than it.”
Robbie got off his sled and walked toward the ledge. Greylen followed. Jacked dug another piece of beef jerky out of the package and stuffed it in his mouth, wondering how Megan expected to keep the creature a secret, considering it had left tracks a blind man could follow. He trudged after the two men, washing down the jerky with another gulp of lake water.
“Megan said we have a week to get your sled out before you get fined,” Jack said. “It’s only in about ten feet of water.”
Robbie stopped beside the tracks Jack had made dragging her out. He looked at the frozen rope still lying on the ice, then toward shore, and then at the tracks on the ledge leading into the water. “You pulled her out, but then you went in yourself. Why?”
Yup, the guy definitely knew how to read signs. “For her survival equipment. I knew everything was in a dry sack, and I had hoped to find a radio.”
Megan’s father wasn’t paying attention to their conversation; he was staring at the black ice covering the hole where his daughter’s sled was. He suddenly bent down and picked up her ice-caked helmet, the broken shield falling onto the snowpack with a muted thud. Greylen stared at it in silence for several seconds, then lifted his gaze to Jack. “I would thank ye, Chief, for saving my daughter’s life.”
Jack nodded. “You’re welcome,” he softly returned, his shoulders relaxing for the first time in ten minutes. He started walking to shore. “I was just about to break camp when you arrived. Any chance of my hitching a ride back with you?”
“Your sled isn’t running?” Robbie asked.
Jack shook his head. “I think something burned up in it when I hit the slush. I’ll have to hire Paul Dempsey at Pine Creek PowerSports to tow it home for me.”
“Then how come you didn’t get in the plane with Matt?” Greylen asked.
“I don’t fly unless I’m at the controls. Did you meet Kenzie Gregor on your way up the lake?”
“I thought he was with Matt,” Robbie said.
“He stayed and helped me get my sled out, then decided to walk home. I have the impression he doesn’t much care for anything with an engine, especially if it goes faster than a horse,” he said, heading for shore again.
While packing up camp, Jack watched through the trees as the two men made their way over to the tracks the creature had made, studying them in silence. MacBain looked toward the mountain, then in Jack’s direction, before finally turning to speak to Greylen.
Oh, yeah. MacBain definitely knew about the creature, though it seemed Greylen was only now learning about it. Jack wished someone would tell him what in hell a mythological creature was doing roaming around Pine Creek, Maine, in the twenty-first century. And why none of the men in the three families seemed surprised by that fact?
He snorted as he bent down to pick up the sleeping bag. Because they had two drùidhs on board, that’s why—one of which was Greylen’s youngest daughter. Jack wondered when Megan intended to let him in on that particular little secret.
And she was worried about him being a shaman? Her own sister could probably turn the world inside out at the crook of her finger!
Jack went utterly still. Holy hell. Was the dragon some old boyfriend who had broken a MacKeage girl’s heart?
Chapter Nineteen
J ack threw down his pen and rubbed his face with a frustrated sigh. He glanced at his watch, saw it was nearly midnight, and decided to give himself twenty more minutes before he set out on his rounds.
The snowmobile trip from hell—and a bit of heaven, too—had ended thirty-six hours ago, when Robbie and Greylen had finally dropped Jack off at his house. Megan had been nowhere in sight, but he hadn’t expected her to be. Most likely her parents would be keeping her within arm’s reach for a while, once Greylen told Grace how close they’d come to losing their daughter.
Megan and Camry had to stay at Gù Brath for a couple of days anyway, until Megan’s busted pipes were repaired. It seems both Pine Creek and Frog Cove had experienced a bit of a crime wave while Jack had been away. It would probably take Simon a week of Sundays to recover, and another week to finish writing all the reports. That’s why Jack had given him today and tomorrow off and was pulling double duty tonight. He wondered if he could get the selectmen to ante up for another patrolman.
He eyed the four yellow pads laid out on his desk, on which he’d been adding copious notes. The first pad, LITTLE BASTARDS, had certainly grown; the irony being that he’d been the target of their latest prank. He shook his head with a chuckle. He had to give them credit; they were getting damn creative.
They’d had the nerve, and apparently the tools, time, and stamina, to trick out his police cruiser with enough accessories to make a hot-rodder jealous. His brand-new SUV now sported a brush guard, air horns mounted on the roof, oversize mud flaps with chrome reclining lady emblems, a bug shield that had CHIEF written in bold letters across it, and a sun visor and rear roof spoiler. None of the additions were store-bought new, which meant either a local salvage yard or several personal vehicles had also been victimized. Jack was leaning toward the salvage yard, as no private citizens had reported anything missing yet.
And that was just the visible stuff. When he’d started his cruiser to come to work this morning, he’d nearly been deafened by the tuned exhaust pipes they’d installed. Heads had turned when he’d idled through town, and his ears were still ringing.
The hoodlums must have frozen their little brass balls, as they’d done the work right in Jack’s driveway on a night the temperature had dropped to minus two degrees. They sure seemed determined to thumb their noses at him, didn’t they?
He had six days left before he—or Kenzie Gregor—closed the book on the break-ins, so Jack figured he should able to finally burn his LITTLE BASTARDS pad by then, too. He’d made a few phone calls and quietly done some checking around this afternoon, and was pretty sure who the culprits were.
The solution he’d come up with involved his beautiful new sled, but he simply didn’t have the heart to see those kids taken from their single mother and placed in a foster home or detention hall. They were intelligent—at least the older boy was—and Jack wanted to redirect their creativity before the juvenile courts bled it out of them.
Now all he had to do was to talk Paul Dempsey into coming on board when he went to see him tomorrow morning.
So LITTLE BASTARDS was being dealt with, and hopefully THE BREAK-INS pad could also be burned at the end of the week—unless he had to hunt down the beast himself.
Which left MEGAN’s pad and the one titled MARK COLLINS.
And that’s where things started getting complicated. The reason Megan was having to get her pipes repaired was that someone had broken into her house the night they’d been stranded up the lake. Camry had been at Gù Brath with her worried mother, thank God, while Greylen had been out searching. With no one else living out on Frog Point in the winter, the burglar had had the entire place to himself.