Footprints

“Tracks?”

“He believed they belonged to the Sasquatch.”

Joey rolled his eyes and Annja resisted the urge to. Instead, she smiled. “All right, that made you launch the expedition. But what happened this morning when you left camp?”

“I was getting a feel for the lay of the land. There’s something incredible about this forest. I’ve been to plenty of places but it’s almost as if this location has some type of spirit watching over it. The trails aren’t beaten down by humans. There’s very little, if any, litter anywhere, and the majesty of the place can be overwhelming.”

Annja glanced at Joey. “I tend to think our friend here helps keep the place looking better than average.”

Joey shrugged. “Part of my duty.”

Jenny smiled. “Well, you’re doing a phenomenal job. But I tend to think there might be another presence here. And the footprint casts that I saw in pictures made me desperately want to come here and find out for myself.”

“And drag along your skeptical friend,” Annja said.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”

Annja nodded. “So you were out hiking this morning…”

“I hadn’t planned to do much. Maybe a few miles on one of the trails. I didn’t take a pack with me. I felt I needed to be out by myself, you know? Away from everyone else. I love my students, obviously, but the chatter can get annoying sometimes. I don’t imagine you’d understand.”

Annja frowned. “Actually, I have a pretty good idea.”

“I was out for a good long time. Again, I just got caught up looking at things. I lost track of time. By late afternoon, I was heading back, but instead of the camp, I found it deserted.”

“We had some nasty visitors while you were gone,” Annja said. “They were very persuasive when they asked us to leave.”

Jenny looked at her. “The students?”

“Safe back in town, thanks to Joey.”

Jenny smiled at Joey. “That’s one more I owe you, huh?”

“Added to the tab, no worries.”

Jenny looked back at Annja. “And you stayed?”

“Sure, I wasn’t going to desert one of my friends. Especially not one who went through so much trouble to get me to come out here in the first place.”

“Thanks. I mean it. And thanks for making sure my students got taken care of. If anything happened to them—”

“Let’s not think about that right now. They’re safe. So are you. That’s what matters.” Annja glanced at Joey. “Would it be too much to ask you to make a fire? Some of that tea you made Jenny sounds really good, too. I could certainly use a cup and I’m sure Jenny would like another, as well.”

Joey smiled. “Consider it done.”

Annja watched him vanish into the woods to find the necessary ingredients. Annja looked back at Jenny. “All right, now what the hell is really going on here?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, you bring me out here to some camp in the middle of nowhere. I get here and instantly I’m faced with three mean dudes with guns. I have to shepherd your students back to town. Then I have a run-in with a wolf. It’s been pouring buckets and you almost die from exposure. I visit some old Native American man who surreptitiously teaches me how to do something called spirit tracking and we manage to find each other.” Annja took a breath. “You’re sure this is all about some set of tracks?”

Jenny took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not much of an answer.”

Joey emerged from the brush and started making the fire pit. “I take it you want this thing kept low profile?”

Annja nodded. “The lower the better.”

Joey nodded and within a few seconds had a small blaze started. Annja watched him fix several sticks together to make some sort of grill. On top of this, he placed a small container of water to boil. Where he’d managed to get the water, Annja had no idea. She wondered what else Joey had hidden away in the small pack he carried.

She glanced back at Jenny who wasn’t looking nearly so happy. “Tell me about this contact of yours,” Annja said.

“David? He’s just a friend I met through an online site for Sasquatch aficionados. We hit it off and started comparing notes. He mentioned he was out here and that he’d come across something he thought I might find interesting.”

“The tracks.”

“Yes.”

“And he showed them to you?”

“Via e-mail. He sent me a digital photo of them.”

Joey sniffed. “Any fool with Photoshop can alter a picture and make it look like something else.”

Jenny sighed. “Maybe I was naive.”

“Have you seen this David guy since you’ve been out here?” Annja asked.

Jenny frowned. “That’s the odd thing. He was supposed to meet up with me in town to discuss the search pattern we were going to run to find the creature.”

“You actually thought you were going to find the Sasquatch?” Joey shook his head. “And they say kids are crazy.”

“Make the tea, Joey,” Annja said. She turned back to Jenny. “You really thought you might catch one?”

Jenny shook her head. “That’s a bad choice of words. By find I meant that we would get some type of evidence on film that the creatures exist. I didn’t mean that we were going to trap one and cart it off for study.”

Joey sniffed again, but this time didn’t say anything.

“What’s the background on David? Is he local? Would Joey know him?”

Jenny shrugged. “I thought he was local. But I guess I don’t really know.”

Annja sighed. “For someone as intelligent as you are, Jenny, you really dropped the ball on this one. How in the world did you ever convince the university to back this expedition?”

Jenny smiled. “I used to date the head of the department of anthropology. He owed me a favor.”

Annja took another breath. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight—you hook up with some guy on the Net. He sends you pictures. You agree to come out and meet with him and manage to convince people to give you money to do so.”

“That’s about it, yes.”

“You realize this sounds exactly like some type of exposé on the dangers the Internet poses to children, don’t you?”

Joey stirred a handful of pine needles into the boiling water. “Tea will be ready soon, everyone.”

Annja frowned. She wished she had some whiskey to go along with that tea. The thought that Jenny would be so reckless, not just with her own safety but with the safety of her students, really bothered her. Annja couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem like something Jenny would do, and yet here she was.

She decided to change the subject. “David never showed up, huh?”

“No.”

“And just what did this guy look like?”

Jenny shrugged. “He was sort of tall. Nice face. Clean shaven. Kind of that scholarly look—you know the one I like.”

Jenny had always had a thing for bookish guys.

“Yeah, I know what you like.” Annja glanced around. It didn’t seem as if this David had any connection to the angry gunmen. None of them fit that description. That was at least something in his favor. Still, Annja wanted to know more about this guy and why he hadn’t shown up when he said he would.

“Did you have any established communication routine at all? Would he know how to get in touch with you?” she asked Jenny.

“He had my cell-phone number.”

“And did he call you at any point?”

Jenny frowned. “No. He didn’t.”

Joey handed Jenny a cup of the tea. “Drink this. It will make you feel better. I added a few extra touches to it.”

Annja accepted tea from him, as well. She could feel the heat emanating from the cup and sniffed it. “Smells good.”

“It is,” Joey said.

“So does this David guy sound familiar to you? You seem like the type who would know anyone in town, and this guy sounds just different enough that he might stand out in your mind.”

Joey shook his head and sipped his own cup of tea. “Sorry, no. I mean, every once in a while, we get some kooks through here who think they’re on the monster trail and all, but it’s happened often enough that we just get bored with them. They camp out for a week or so, don’t see anything and then pack it in. When the Sasquatch doesn’t come out of the brush and sit in their camp, they tend to lose patience and move on.”

Annja nodded. “Looks as if David is a ghost, then. If he even existed at all.”

Jenny sipped her tea. “But I spoke with him.”

“Online,” Annja said. “There’s no guarantee that it wasn’t someone else on the other end feeding you a fake picture of who you thought David was.”

“But why go through that trouble?”

Annja shook her head. “I don’t know. But someone did apparently. Or else, there’s the other option.”

“What’s that?”

“That David has either been kidnapped or killed.”

Jenny gasped. “You’re not serious.”

“Why not? Missing people who don’t turn up when they’re supposed to? Let’s not be foolish here and discount it so fast. Given the other characters I’ve run into since I arrived earlier today, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that something bad happened.”

Jenny shook her head. “I don’t believe it. I think he’s still around. After all, look what happened to me. I vanished and yet you found me.”

“You found your way down the mountain, Jenny,” Annja said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You spoke to me in a dream,” Jenny said. “It was very clear to me.”

Joey raised his eyebrows. “Wow, pretty good for a first timer.”

Annja shushed him. “You heard me?”

Jenny nodded. “When I was in the cave. It was completely dark. Couldn’t see a thing. And yet, in the darkness, you spoke to me as if you were right next to me. I’d been crying softly and then it was like you were there. Pretty amazing.”

Annja took another sip of tea. “You remember anything else about getting to that cave?”

“Not really. I had the distinct sensation of someone lifting me up and running with me in their arms.”

“They’d have to be pretty strong to do that,” Annja said. “Maybe you were just hallucinating or sleepwalking?”

Jenny shook her head. “No way. This was for real.”

“And just who do you think snatched you up like that?”

Jenny took a sip of tea and then looked right at Annja. “Why, big foot, of course.”

10

Joey glanced at Annja and rolled his eyes. Annja herself wasn’t quite sure what to make of Jenny’s statement. She seemed so utterly certain that it was almost hard to argue with her conviction.

“Big foot?”

Jenny glared at her. “I know you think I’m being crazy.”

“I don’t—”

“I do,” Joey said. “Completely bonkers. You need serious help for that condition.”

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