I park in the small lot on the north side of Chatham Valley State Park and tie my hair up in a messy bun, before collapsing against my steering wheel. I have no idea why Leon asked me to meet him out here at the buttcrack of dawn, but I really hope he doesn't have another report from someone who bathes in patchouli ranting about "Indian Princesses."
I can barely keep my eyes open as it is. I wonder if I'm ever going to have a satisfying night's sleep again. It's been thirteen days since my boss's deceased mother last appeared, and I never thought I'd find her absence to be disconcerting.
Is the connection broken?
Are we taking a break?
Maybe she's no longer concerned, but I strangely miss her cryptic messages and their reassurance that someone out there--even if she happens to be dead--is paying attention. This is not where I expected life to bring me.
Leon taps on my window and I blindly reach for the door handle, shoving him back with the opening door. Once standing, I cross my arms and slam the door with my hip. "It's too early for the bigfoot thing, Lee."
"We're not exactly here about that." Without another word of explanation, he tugs on my elbow as he passes and leads me toward the first trail.
The soil here is rocky and hard under my boots. A layer of dirt and leaves cover the trail, with only a few stray twigs or leaves poking from the soil. This segment of the path is wider, cutting through the thinner brush and bare trees along the outskirts of the park. Up ahead it breaks off, with one path winding toward the lake, the other up into the rolling hills.
"Monday Mystery Hikes with Lee. Let's not make this a regular program."
Leon drapes his arm over my shoulders. "You know you missed this."
"Not at this hour. Why didn't you drag Cole out of bed, too?" Yeah right. Cole doesn't do the Bigfoot thing. Although, I think in part, that's because she realizes it's something Leon and I enjoy doing together--most of the time. She'd also prefer to avoid the mud and mosquitoes, which fortunately aren't very common in March.
"Ah yes, then I would have had you complaining about being out of bed and her complaining about... well, everything else."
The last time Leon and I came out here, the police had requested the investigation after repeated reports of a woman screaming in the woods. Several officers went in to investigate, following the sounds for over an hour before nearly being overrun by a herd of dear running from the noise. Once they agreed the noise was in no way human, and definitely not an animal recognized in the area, we were brought in.
Leon and I spent a week hiking through the forest, documenting footprints and large structures built with limbs--some more than thirty feet long and so heavy that even Leon couldn't budge them.
Bigfoot is out here somewhere, and I want a good look. And maybe a good picture, but it's just as important to make sure the creature remains in secret. This is one creature that sparks curiosity more than anything. Nothing indicates a threat, so we make our notes and leave him be.
We used to keep a close eye on the place, coming every couple of weeks to check it out and see what changed. Cole and I kept it up for a while after Leon took his leave of absence, but it wasn't the same. This has been his stomping ground and area of expertise for decades. Bigfoot led him to Aicil.
"Is she... you know... doing okay?"
Ever since the blow up with her fiance's family, she's been staying with Leon. I can't blame her. Everything went to hell in a handbasket over the last few weeks. I also feel guilty, since the entity that set fire to her bedroom the night her fiance's brother disappeared was probably after me. I've never really been there for her emotionally--or anyone else for that matter. I don't deal with emotional shit. I'm trying to change that, but it's a slow process.
"She's as well as can be expected, I guess. She spoke with Dan last night and as far as I know, neither left the conversation with a broken nose. Although if he'd have laid a hand on her--"
"He would have had quite a team after him."
"We're a motley crew, but we protect our own."
"So, why are we here? Just to reminisce about my finer moments as your young training partner?"
"You mean when it took you less than five minutes to go off on that woman?"
"I let her ramble for more than five minutes, but that's one of my hot buttons."
"Kaylyn, sunrise is one of your hot buttons. Alarm clocks. Bad grammar. People who pull out pens or highlighters in an archive--"
"I get the picture."
"But I admit, I was a little in awe of your heated rebuttal, and I couldn't say it at the time, but I wanted to say the same thing."
"But you couldn't because sometimes you have to suck it up and be helpful because even if they're spouting BS, there might be more to it."
Leon stops in his tracks, raising his eyebrows. "What has Jonah been putting in your coffee?"
"Can we spend one morning not talking about Jonah?" It's not like we won't see him in a couple of hours, and I've been fielding questions right and left about him since the incident at the Teague.
Why'd he have to come here and make everything complicated? Saving my life and all that insanity.
"Oh, another hot button for the list."
