Harvest Moon (2 page)

Two Years Later

Somewhere in the forest, a chainsaw roared to life.
Its teeth cut into the wood of some distant tree, and the sound of it gnawing
through the bark brought Dawn out of her light sleep.

The grumble and roar of the chainsaw was joined by a
chorus of birds as they fled the sound of the monstrous machinery. The noise
was all around her, and she still struggled to accept it as simply the
background music of her life.

She’d been living in Goosemont for six months and
figured she’d be used to the sounds of rural living by now, but she was still
adjusting to her new life in Appalachia. She was always forgetting little
things, like not locking her garbage meant that raccoons would be into it in
the night, or how just because yesterday had been warm and sunny for an early
November day didn’t mean today would be the same.

Foolishly, she thought the warmth would last, and
she’d left the window of her small bedroom open a crack for the fresh air. Now,
the quilt she’d bought at September’s county fair wasn’t enough to keep her
from shivering. The cold was biting and made her flesh pimple, even as she
pulled the blanket up under her chin.

Though it meant leaving the warmth of her quilt, she
forced herself to sit up and turn to close the window over her bed. She had
only worn a light, threadbare t-shirt to bed, and the moment she sat up, she
hissed from the cold, but she knew it was a necessary evil. She turned and
leaned toward the window, but just as her fingers found the glass, another
sound broke through the roar of the chainsaw and forced her to snap her hand
back.

Somewhere in town, a police siren began to wail. The
sound of it was enough to make Dawn retreat into the safety of her blankets and
she hid in the warmth.

“No,” she mumbled to herself. “There’s nothing to
worry about. They’re probably just passing through town.”

Still, she didn’t push herself back out of the bed
until the noise of the sirens died down. It hadn’t faded away, but abruptly
stopped as if the officer had turned off the sirens rather than driven far
enough away that the sound moved out of earshot.

Goosemont only had a couple of cops, but Dawn had done
well to avoid them since she’d arrived last spring. They frequented Jim’s old
bar where she worked as a waitress, but she was careful to skip the small talk
with them and just bring them their greasy food and their cheap beers. There
was no need for more than that. She never knew whose pocket they might be in.

“They aren’t here for you,” she whispered to herself
as she pushed the window shut and finally got out of bed. Even with the window
closed, her bedroom was cold, and she found a pair of old flannel pajama pants
laying on the floor and pulled them on.

The floor of the old cabin she was renting creaked and
groaned under her soft footsteps. Her bedroom door led into her living room,
and that was open to the kitchen. It was small and old, but it was hers, and it
was nicer than most places she’d stayed the last couple of years.

Still, the sirens made her distinctly aware of the
fact that she’d stayed put for a little over half a year. Goosemont was nice,
but West Virginia wasn’t that far from New York City, and even with her precautions,
she was never really going to be safe. Besides, the winter in the mountains
would be harsh. It was probably time to move on, but something was stalling her
feet.

Most of the town had probably been up for hours, and
as Dawn looked at the clock on the old, rusty stove in her small kitchen, she
realized she’d better start getting ready for work. It was already eleven, and
that meant she had just under an hour to get to the bar. She had time, but the
hot water took a while to reach the shower, and she liked being a bit early to
help Jim with the prep work before the bar opened.

With a press of a button, she turned on her thrift
store coffee maker and let it percolate while she went for the shower. It was
five minutes before the hot water reached the faucet, but once it did, it was
heaven. The water in the mountains was fresh and clean and there was nothing
like a long, hot shower to let Dawn relax and prepare herself for another day
serving beer and burgers to hunters, miners, loggers, and hikers.

When she finally felt that her muscles were as relaxed
as they were going to get, Dawn pulled herself out of the hot water and wrapped
a towel around her body. Slinging drinks and food was more of a workout than
she had ever imagined, and she let her fingers trail over the muscle of her
bicep. It was growing just a little more every day, and for a girl who had
always been petite, she couldn’t deny her pride in that.

Over the sink, Dawn began to brush out her
shoulder-length blonde hair. As she brushed, she examined her roots and
frowned.
I’ll need to pick up some dye soon
, she thought as she looked
over the dark hair growing in. She could never let it grow out more than a
little bit before she bought more dye, just in case some realized she was a
natural brunette.

The coming winter meant she could no longer just let
her hair air dry, not without risking catching a cold, and she flipped her head
over to dry it with the weak blow dryer she’d picked up in an outlet store in
Nashville last fall. She knew she’d need to upgrade it soon, but she kept
putting it off in exchange for more urgent purchases.

The last thing she did to get ready was pull out the
small contact case from the top drawer of the tiny counter that sat beside the
door to the bathroom. With a steady hand, she pulled out one contact and placed
it over her eye, then the other. Blinking, she watched her brown eyes turn to a
lively green before she moved back to the kitchen to get her coffee.

Dawn sipped at the strong brew while she grabbed a
bagel out of the fridge and popped it in her toaster. While she waited for it,
she noticed the faint red and blue of the police lights as they danced through
her kitchen window and across her living room.

It’s not for you
, she reminded herself as her
heart began to beat faster.
If it was, they would have knocked by now.

Her own insistence that she was fine, that no one had
found out who Dawn Garrett really was, wasn’t quite enough to calm her down,
but it did keep her from panicking. No, the cops were in town for something
else, and Dawn wasn’t sure she wanted to know what that something else was.

Though she was nervous, she moved to the window that
looked out toward the gravel road right by her house. The lights were stronger
as she pushed the curtains aside, and she leaned against the glass to see if
she could see what was going on.

All she saw were a few people walking by, but none of
them noticed the young woman watching them. Dawn watched them as they walked,
whispering to each other. She had been watching people for years, and she could
read their body language well enough to see that they were curious and maybe
even a little bit scared. Something was going on, but despite her own
curiosity, Dawn didn’t think it was in her best interest to go poking around to
find out what it was.

She forced herself away from the window and went back
to getting ready. Though she hoped that the ruckus had nothing to do with the
bar, she knew she would be walking toward whatever was going on to get to work.
She had no desire to come so close to a group of cops, but she had no other
choice unless she wanted to be very late.

With her coffee finished and her bagel eaten, Dawn
moved back to her bedroom and traded the towel for a faded pair of jeans and a
simple black t-shirt. She pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail and
double-checked herself in the mirror one more time before she left. There was
no room for her to be anything but Dawn, and that meant never leaving the house
unprepared.

From the back of the couch, she grabbed a red and blue
flannel jacket that a hunter had left at the bar a month ago and pulled it over
her shoulders. It was heavy and warm and helped her blend in better with the
rest of the crowd in Goosemont. On her feet, she put on an old pair of cowboy
boots, and then finally stepped outside into the cold November air.

Most of the crowd had made their way to where the
commotion was before Dawn had forced herself out of the house. They were a few
houses down yet, but she saw Jim’s bar was still standing in the distance, and
she began walking toward the crowd that spilled onto the rough gravel street
that cut through the center of town.

“Can you see anything?” she heard a woman say to
someone as she got closer.

“Nah,” a man answered her as he fought to try to stand
taller and see over everyone. “The cops have it blocked off.”

“You don’t want to see it,” someone told them as they
pushed their way back from the crowd. “It’s a mess, a goddamn mess.”

That made Dawn stop in her tracks. She was expecting a
burglary or maybe a car wreck, but the man who was fighting his way away from
the scene made her question that. His voice was low, hollow even, and his face
was ashen. Something had shaken him up badly, and now people were fighting to
see what it was.

“Well, what is it?” the woman asked him, her morbid
excitement growing as she bounced on her heels, still trying to get a look of
the crime scene.

“Another hiker,” the man who had witnessed the scene
told her. “Or one of the ones they haven’t found yet, I don’t know. Totally
ripped apart. Like, shredded.”

“Wait,” the other man said, “shredded?”

“Yeah,” the witness said, nodding while Dawn kept her
eyes forward and made sure no one noticed her eavesdropping. “It’s got to be an
animal, and a big one at that.”

“So close to town?” the woman said, her excitement now
touched with fear. “But that’s not possible.”

“Why not?” the other man argued. “The town is
surrounded by woods, and I see ‘coons all the time. What’s to stop something
bigger getting to town?”

Dawn shuddered at that. Goosemont, so far, had been
pretty safe. There wasn’t much in the way of cell phone service, only a couple
people had computers on ancient dial-up access, and the worst crimes were a few
petty thefts. It was all part of why she had stuck around so long, but now she had
to worry about a bear or another wild animal or something? The thought made her
shiver.

“You think that’s what got those missing hikers?”
someone else asked. Other people were joining the conversation now.

“Maybe,” someone agreed. “It would be the fourth one
in only a few weeks.”

Four?
Dawn thought to herself. A hiker going
missing on the Appalachian Trail was nothing new, but four in the same area
over a short timespan? Even Dawn knew that there was something out of the
ordinary about that.

Part of her wanted to stay and see what else she could
glean from the conversation, but she knew it was time to get moving. The crowd
was still thick, and she could probably pass through unnoticed on her way to
Jim’s bar if she left right then.

With most of the crowd facing the blocked-off alley,
she wove around the back of them and exited only a block from the bar. Half the
town seemed to be fighting to see what was going on, yet no one even looked at
Dawn.

As she moved out of the crowd, she noticed the town’s
few cops leaning on the one of the cruisers while they talked to three men
dressed in dark suits.

FBI,
she realized as she kept walking. She
wanted to run then, to get out of sight as quickly as possible, but she knew
that would only draw their attention. The very last thing she needed was an FBI
agent looking into who Dawn Garrett was. Even an agent who played by the books
would turn her in. She’d seen her own missing persons picture before, and
didn’t need someone realizing that the blonde waitress was really a New York
City girl who’d run away from home at eighteen.

The only problem was that she needed to walk right by
them to get to work. The cruiser was parked to the side of the road, but what
must have been the FBI agents’ vehicles were blocking off the street, and Dawn
would need to sneak through the gap between them to get the rest of the way to
the bar.

As she walked by them, she watched and listened as the
three agents talked with the cops. They kept their voices low, but she watched
them out of her peripheral as she went by. Taking note of them was more than
just simple curiosity. She wanted to remember them, to see if any of them
followed her or stuck around town long after they figured out what was going on.
Then she would know to run.

While most of the small band of law enforcement
officials were locked in conversation, one agent caught her eye more than the
others. He was just a little bit taller than they were, with dirty blond hair
and a five o’clock shadow. Sure, he was attractive, but that wasn’t all that
Dawn noticed.

The other two agents, while not wearing Prada or
Gucci, were at least wearing suits that were tailored to fit them. The third
agent, the younger one, was wearing a suit that was obviously cut for someone
else, someone just a little taller than him; the cuffs of his pants fell just a
little too low and were scuffed and ripped at the heels. His shoes didn’t shine
like the others’, and Dawn noticed that his had thicker treads.

He was out of place from the others, and the fact that
the older two agents had their backs turned to him and didn’t acknowledge him
made Dawn realize that they obviously hadn’t come to Goosemont together.

He’s probably just a rookie,
her mind told her.
He might not be able to afford anything better
.

Still, that didn’t seem like the right answer. He was
too confident to be a rookie, too seasoned. He couldn’t yet be thirty, but even
in profile she could see his dominance, and she realized he was watching her in
the same way as she was watching him.