“If I want to find that deer, I need to look now, before it gets any farther away. So you can tell that officer, if they give you any crap, to hurry and catch up. Hell, they can arrest me if they want, but not until after I find that fawn.”
* * *
Samantha Finley eased her department-issued F-150 truck to a stop underneath a sprawling oak. She’d been the closest officer when the call came in, but it had still taken her nearly an hour. Budget cuts had left the department spread thin and Sam’s assigned area stretched from the coast to the outskirts of Orlando, where she’d been responding to a nuisance alligator report. Only the reptile had turned out to be a partially sunken log, and the reporting homeowner had been so drunk she’d felt tipsy just standing next to him.
Hopefully this wasn’t another false alarm. As the newest and youngest officer working in the region, she had a reputation to build, and getting stuck on another wild-goose chase wasn’t the way to do it. But then again, better a waste of time than a truly orphaned fawn.
Stepping down from the four-wheel-drive truck, she waved at a T-shirt and jeans-clad teen—Jason Cunningham, according to her notes. He looked nervous, but nodded in response. In her experience, boys his age were never very comfortable around law enforcement, especially if the one packing a gun was a woman.
“Hey, Jason, right?” She extended a hand, and after a second’s hesitation he shook it.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I’m Officer Finley. I want to thank you for taking the time to call this in. A lot of people wouldn’t have bothered to get involved.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I was just worried about the baby deer.”
“I bet. You work over at the wildlife center, right?”
“I volunteer there, yeah. I’m hoping for a scholarship and you have to have a certain number of community service hours. I figure it beats picking up trash.”
“I bet. So, can you tell me exactly what you saw?”
She listened carefully, taking down the description of the men and the vehicle. Then she had the girlfriend get out of the car and give her version of events before having Jason walk her to where he’d seen the deer. There were two distinct sets of boot marks, which was consistent with what he’d described. And a long, smooth furrow in the mud where they’d dragged the deer before lifting it up into the truck. Streaks of blood and tufts of tawny fur told the rest of the story. This was the real deal, her first poaching case. She took several photos from different angles, documenting the scene.
“And where was the fawn?”
He pivoted, pointing toward a dense thicket of pines and brush. “It was right there, and then when the truck started it ran back into the woods. I’m really worried about it.”
So was she, but she wasn’t going tell the kid that. “Hopefully it didn’t get far. Either way, thanks for calling it in. I’ll contact you if we need anything else from you.”
For a minute she thought he was going to say something else, but then he just nodded and loped back to his car. A minute later he was gone, leaving her alone in the clearing. There were two vehicles parked by the gas station, but no one had gone in or come out since she’d arrived, and the only sound was the hum of cicadas in the trees overhead.
It was hard to believe that this patch of wilderness was only a few miles from Paradise’s picturesque downtown. But almost half of the island was a dedicated wildlife reserve, a safe haven for an assortment of native wildlife. At least, that was the idea. Today, the reality had been far different. And although logically she couldn’t have prevented this, the weight of responsibility was heavy on her shoulders as she made her way to where the boy had last seen the frightened fawn.
Her boots sank in the soft, waterlogged ground, squishing as she pulled them from the mud. Not exactly the best circumstances for a search attempt. There wasn’t much daylight left, and the damp dusk buzzed with bloodthirsty mosquitoes. She should have stopped to apply a fresh coat of repellent, but time was running out if she wanted to have any chance of tracking the orphaned deer. So she swatted and swore under her breath as she followed the V-shaped tracks of the fawn.
Weaving her way through between the trees, she kept to the higher and dryer ground on the side of the trail to avoid covering the deer tracks with her own footprints. Twenty minutes in, she’d gone in what her GPS said was nearly a full circle, and was edging up to a gravel access road. There the trail stopped, the ground too rough for tracks.
Would the fawn have crossed it, braving the relative open?
Or stuck closer to the trees and run parallel to the road?
Taking a drink from her water bottle, she made her way east, checking the soft shoulder for any tracks. Nothing. Retracing her steps, she then went the other way, but there was no sign of the deer. Later tonight, there would be possum and raccoon tracks, but they were just waking up and the dirt was unmarred, washed clean by the earlier rain. Which meant the deer must have crossed the road. Plucky little thing.
Crossing, she scanned the ground on the far side, spotting the tiny tracks heading into a tangle of kudzu vines and trees. “The Vine That Ate the South” was what they called the invasive plant, growing fast and thick across anything that didn’t move. A bitch to hike through, but the perfect place for a tired and frightened fawn to hide.
She was halfway to the thicket when she spotted the other tracks. Man tracks. Had the poachers returned?
That didn’t make any sense. What would they want with a fawn? Besides, she hadn’t seen any other tracks before now. Of course, someone could have kept to the sides of the trail, as she herself had done. The ground was rougher and dryer there, and if she was honest, she hadn’t been looking for prints. Her attention had been on the deer tracks.
Resting a hand on her sidearm, a Glock 17, she eased forward more cautiously than before. A second-generation wildlife officer, she’d grown up in these woods and knew how to tread quietly. No need to advertise her presence—not until she knew who she was dealing with.
She ducked under the green canopy of leaves, pushing through the outer layer of vines. Ahead, a narrow game path snaked through the press of branches before opening into a clearing a few yards up. Impressions in the ground marked the progress of both deer and man. For a moment, she wondered if the teen who’d called it in could have come back here while waiting for her, but the prints were too large and deep.
A rustle up ahead stopped her in her tracks. It could be the deer she’d been tracking or some other wildlife. Or it could be a poacher. Drawing her weapon, she moved toward the sound.
Dylan had actually been starting to feel pretty confident. The tracks were easy to read, and the clouds had broken up, offering some extra daylight. Everything had been better than he’d hoped, right up until he’d slipped on a pile of wet leaves and gone crashing into the underbrush like a drunken tourist. Now he was face down in the muck with mud oozing into places mud should never, ever go. Pushing up, he got his hands and knees under him, then froze.
There, not ten feet away, was the fawn, curled up under the fronds of a cabbage palm, hidden well. Dylan might have walked right by him and never seen him. As it was, he was nearly eye level with the little guy. Or girl; too hard to tell from here.
