“Here,” Jones said, tapping Hawkins on the shoulder.
Hawkins turned to find a small pair of binoculars in Jones’s hands.
“Like to watch for whales in my free time,” Jones explained.
The binoculars weren’t very powerful, but they worked well enough to reveal the details on the beach. The footprints were more like toeprints. Whoever had made them was both barefoot, and running. They emerged from water, turned a hard run, cutting a line parallel to the water, and then into the jungle. “Someone was in the water,” he said. “Whoever it was exited the lagoon in a hurry, then moved along the beach.”
“I knew it was Kam,” Joliet said and then snatched the binoculars from Hawkins’s hands. She searched the beach for herself and lowered the binoculars. “You should have let me go.”
Hawkins’s patience began to wear thin. “Whoever was in the water—”
“Kam,” she said.
“
“And
Hawkins could see Joliet was responding out of frustration. She liked Kam a lot and was clearly concerned. He was, too. But her knee-jerk reaction would put herself in danger and, if she went tromping through the jungle in hot pursuit, was likely to wipe out any trail left behind. “Yes, Avril. It’s what I do.”
That sunk in slowly. Joliet’s tense shoulders relaxed. “Sorry.”
Hawkins thought about his time as a park ranger. He’d loved the job. The outdoors. The scenery. The pay was shit, but the life; it was good. Most of the time. But sometimes people got lost. Or attacked. And when that happened it was Hawkins’s job to find them. He had an almost unnatural ability to find missing people, though he knew it was simply a result of having the best teacher.
Hawkins grew up in Durango, Colorado, right on the border of the Southern Ute Indian Reservation: 1,058 square miles of protected land, if you ignored the Sky Ute Casino and Resort. Hawkins’s love of nature brought him to the reservation to hike and explore and, after meeting them on a trail, he became friends with Jimmy GoodTracks and his father, Howie, who took the boys hunting whenever possible. Hawkins’s mother had died in childbirth and his father, who never forgave him for it, was a drunk. So Hawkins spent as much time with the GoodTracks as he could.
Tragedy struck a year into their friendship when Jimmy was hit and killed by a truck, whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Not long after Jimmy’s death, Hawkins’s father up and left. For good. Sharing a mutual grief, Hawkins and Howie GoodTracks adopted each other. While the adoption wasn’t legal, he had no living grandparent or relatives who cared, so no one came calling. They became the father and son both had lost.
The GoodTracks name came about on account of Howie’s ancestors being expert trackers. Tribe legend said that they could find a man lost in the mountains blindfolded, tracking by scent and sound alone. Howie spent the next six years teaching Hawkins everything he knew. By the time Hawkins went to college, he could follow a trail that was invisible for most people.
“Your name is fitting,” GoodTracks had said after Hawkins followed a three-week-old trail that had been windswept and rained on to find a feather hidden beneath a stone—a final test. “You see like a hawk.”
Hawkins had never been more proud. When he finished college with a degree in conservation and a minor in English, he decided to carry on the GoodTracks legacy by becoming a park ranger specializing in rescue and recovery. And no one was better.
But the beautiful landscape of Yellowstone was sometimes a very dangerous place to be. The scars on Hawkins’s chest were a stark reminder of what could happen when people lower their guard. He’d become so good at his job—a legend in the business of finding people—that it went to his head. Blinded by overconfidence, he’d stood his ground, hunting knife in hand, against a grizzly bear intent on ransacking a campsite. The campers had fled, but rather than join them, Hawkins had stayed. The result was etched on his chest… and dead at his feet. He would have likely died himself if one of the campers hadn’t returned and dragged him out of the woods.
Howie had visited him in the hospital. “You’ve lost respect for the power of nature,” he had said. “Step back and find
Trusting Howie above all else, Hawkins had taken his mentor’s advice and pursued his second passion: writing. But his thoughts and dreams remained in the forest, which he still visited but hadn’t worked in for the past five years. And he wasn’t sure he ever would again. But now, someone—likely Kam—had fled into the jungle and was likely lost.
Joliet turned to him and said, “Don’t you mean, ‘did’? Past tense. You’re a writer now. You don’t find people lost in the woods anymore.”
Hawkins looked out at the distant shoreline and the barefoot tracks lining the beach. “Today, I do.”
9.
Mark Hawkins’s father had been a strict man. Not the modern “time out” kind of strict. Closer to the “boy, don’t make me take off my belt and give you a whuppin” kind. His father’s belt’s sheen had been worn off, mostly on Hawkins’s backside. But he’d grown accustomed to the anger, and the violence, and even the angriest man, woman, or animal couldn’t make him flinch.
So when a furious Captain Drake went on a verbal rampage upon hearing the news that Cahill’s body had been snatched away, that Kam was missing and likely lost on the island, and that his ship was still dead in the water for no reason anyone could fathom, he vented his uncommon rage with a string of curses punctuated by throwing a mug across the wheelhouse.
The sharp crash of shattering porcelain against the hard metal wall snapped the man from his flare-up. He put his hands behind his head and turned away from the crew, taking a deep breath as he looked out at the island.
Hawkins waited for the man to speak. Joliet, Bray, Jones, and Jim Clifton, the younger of the two Tweedles, stood silent, waiting for the captain to regain his composure.
Despite being the second-largest man on the ship, outsized only by his brother, Clifton looked ready to bolt. His face glowed red. His bald forehead and jowls were slick was sweat. The big man did not like confrontation. Hawkins felt bad for the man. His job was to cook, a task he and his brother were quite good at, so he wasn’t accustomed to being on the receiving end of the captain’s anger. Hawkins was about to tell the man he could leave when Drake turned to face them again.
“Let me make sure I understood everything,” the captain said. “A shark took Cahill’s body.”
“My daughter didn’t think it was a shark,” Jones said.
Drake nodded. “Noted. But I think we can all agree a shark is the only thing that makes sense.”
Hawkins, Joliet, and Bray all nodded. Jones didn’t look so sure, but eventually consented. The younger Clifton just stared, looking petrified. Drake noticed and softened his tone. “Jim, how are things in the galley?”
“Everything works. Power is on so all the food is good. We can cook. Just need to finish cleaning up the, ahh, the mess.”
Drake offered the man a smile and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “First good news I heard all day. Why don’t you head back down and help Ray finish cleaning. Then see about lunch.”
“I’ll need mine to go,” Hawkins said.
“Mine, too,” Joliet added.
Bray raised his hand. “Make that three.”
“Okay,” Jim said before hurrying belowdecks.
When the nervous chef was gone, Drake’s scowl returned and he turned to Hawkins. “May I remind you that I’m the captain of this ship and no one—” He glanced at Joliet. “I mean no one, makes a decision about what happens aboard the
“Yes, sir,” Hawkins said, knowing that a show of respect would help calm the man.
“Fine,” Joliet said.
