not even interrupted by the whisper of a breeze.
“Gus? Where are you?”
His call was answered with a bark. The noise ricocheted off the hills, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Wyatt stopped and focused.
The first bark was followed by another, this one louder and definitely from his right. Wyatt’s pulse spiked, and he followed the sound up a hill. The soft ground crumbled underfoot, and he scrambled on hands and knees to the top of the rise. One hundred yards in the distance stood the old schoolhouse, the farthest point on his land.
Made up of a single room, the century-old stone foundation was still intact. There was a hole in the ceiling where part of the roof had collapsed in the corner. Gus stood on the threshold, whole and healthy. He barked, and his tail was a wagging blur.
Wyatt wiped his hands on the seat of his pants, while his racing heartbeat slowed. “There you are,” he said between breaths as he half jogged to the schoolhouse. “Come here.”
Gus barked again. With a whine, the dog looked over his shoulder.
“What is it, boy?” Wyatt asked.
Gus darted into the dilapidated building. Wyatt approached and stopped short, recognizing the smell of decay. It was like the rot of a slaughterhouse, but stronger.
Swallowing down his deepest sense of revulsion, he stepped slowly into the structure.
Gus stood near a far corner and pawed at the floor. Behind the dog was the unmistakable form of a corpse.
“Easy, boy,” Wyatt said to his dog. With a slap to his thigh, he added, “Come here.”
With one last look at the lump on the floor, Gus moved to his master’s side.
No matter how long he’d been out of the game, the skills Wyatt had developed over years of training rose to the surface. He began to catalogue all the details—some obvious, others more subtle.
The deceased was male and Caucasian. His age appeared to be between 25 and 40—quite a range, but a wild animal had gotten to his face and throat, making a more exact guess impossible. Wyatt looked around for blood splatter on the walls or floor.
There was nothing.
Wyatt moved in for a closer look, kneeling next to the body.
Dressed in a flannel shirt, down-filled coat and lined denim jeans, John Doe wore the same outfit as three quarters of the state of Wyoming. What made him interesting were the accessories—his hiking boots were high-quality and retailed for over 700 dollars per pair. Wyatt knew that fact as he had a pair himself. The treads were worn, and the tops were scarred with scuff marks. John Doe also wore a top-of-the-line smartwatch. The screen was blank.
But there was no visible sign of trauma. No blackened bullet hole to the chest. No knife wound to the side, crusted over with blood. It was almost as if this man had wandered into the abandoned schoolhouse and died.
No, Wyatt thought, correcting his thinking, there was no almost about it.
Cardiac arrest? Perhaps.
Wyatt began to question the scenario before him. Perhaps John Doe—a wealthy tourist, no doubt—had lost his way while hiking in the mountainous terrain. Maybe he’d sought shelter from the frigid temperatures in the old schoolhouse. But in the mountains, it wouldn’t have been enough.
The lack of snow was deceptive. The last few nights the temperature had dropped into the low twenties, maybe even high teens. Either way, it was cold enough for someone to die from exposure. It happened all the time, so much so that it was hardly news anymore.
Then again, there were other things that Wyatt would’ve expected to see and didn’t. He touched the flagstone floor. It was smooth, cold and inexplicably spotless. Wyatt inspected the corpse’s hands. The fingernails were clean and smooth. It meant that John Doe had hardly struggled in the wild to survive.
No footprints.
No injuries.
No clues.
He pulled a wallet from the man’s back pocket and checked for ID. There was an Illinois driver’s license in the name of Axl Baker. Conflicting feelings of trepidation and adrenaline dropped into Wyatt’s gut. It was the same feeling he had at the beginning of every new case. And even though the scene felt familiar, this time it was different. This time, Wyatt would have nothing more to do with the dead guy on the floor.
Because Wyatt Thornton had left the FBI for a good reason. And nothing, not even an unexplained death, could force him back to work.
The radio in Sheriff Carl Haak’s truck crackled a moment before the 911 dispatcher’s voice came through. “You there, Sheriff?” she asked.
Carl looked at the clock on the dashboard. It wasn’t even 7:00 in the morning yet. He lifted the radio’s handset and pressed the talk button. He continued driving as he said, “Go ahead, Rose.”
“A call came in. A body’s been found in the old schoolhouse.”
Carl’s shoulders pinched together with tension and he eased the truck to the side of the road. He only had a couple of weeks left until retirement and looking into another death was not how he wanted to spend his time. Pushing his cowboy hat, emblazoned with a sheriff’s tin star on the band, back on his head, he asked, “A body? Whose?”
“A man by the name of Axl Baker. All the way from Chicago, Illinois.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t know, but the guy who found him didn’t think that it was foul play, if that’s what worries you.”
“What guy?”
“The one who bought the Hampton place a few years back,” said Rose. “Wyatt Thornton.”
The Hampton family hadn’t owned the sprawling piece of land for decades and still Carl knew exactly what property Rose meant. In fact, he passed it every day as he drove to work. “Not foul play? How does Mr. Thornton know?”
“He said there was no sign of injury and that Axl Baker probably died of exposure.”
Rose’s voice was wistful, and Carl knew why. Ever since Wyatt Thornton had moved to the area several years ago, he’d mostly kept to himself. That didn’t mean that his rare appearances in town didn’t cause a commotion—amongst the local women, at least. She continued, “He was so sweet on the phone. As nice as he is handsome. He almost reminds me of a movie star.”
“What would your husband think of you being sweet on Mr. Thornton?”
“Wyatt,” she corrected. “He told me to call him Wyatt, and by the way, Carl, it doesn’t do any harm to look. You know, I’m not dead yet.”
Carl ignored Rose’s comment. Pressing down on the radio’s handset, he asked,
