One
Before the incidents started, Alex’s father used to take him out into the woods on adventures. That’s what he called them, but Alex soon discovered that his father’s idea of adventure was sitting on a log or laying in the brush all day, staring through a pair of binoculars at birds. Still, his father, Frances, wasn’t nice to Alex very often, so whenever he took him out into the woods, Alex made sure to pay attention. He made sure to act interested and to do everything that his father said as soon as he said it and exactly the way he said to do it. After one adventure during which Alex had worked very hard to be very good, he was rewarded with his own pair of binoculars. They weren’t as big or as nice as the ones his father carried, but Alex enjoyed mimicking his movements, staring through them at hawks and falcons and owls. Those were the birds his father was most interested in. Raptors, he called them.
“They’re birds of prey,” his father told him. “Hunters. They have amazing eyesight. They can spot their target from way up high in the sky. They wait for just the right moment, and then they strike! They’re very intelligent birds.”
Alex wasn’t sure what made them intelligent, but he knew that intelligence was important to his father. It was a word he used a lot. He didn’t like people who weren’t intelligent, and Alex lived in fear of being deemed not intelligent by his father. That was why he carried around a notebook and pencil just like his father did. At six, he had just learned to read and write, so he couldn’t write lots of words in his notebook like his father did, but he drew pictures of the birds they watched.
One day they were out in the woods, standing beside a clearing, and his father spotted a large raptor in the sky. It was so high up, Alex couldn’t tell what kind of bird it was, but his dad assured him it was a hawk. “Watch this, son,” he told him.
He reached into a satchel he’d brought with him from their house and brought out a snake. Alex recoiled, falling backward over a branch on the ground. His head knocked against a nearby tree. “Ow,” he cried.
His father stood several feet away, frozen, with the wriggling snake in his hand, and glared at his son. “Get. Up!” he snarled.
Alex scrambled to his feet. He reached behind his head and felt something damp. His fingers came away bloodied. He dared not point this out to his father, who was waiting for him to get back into position, his face getting more and more red with fury with each second that passed.
“Sorry Dad,” Alex muttered, stepping up beside his father again. He looked out into the clearing, then up at the sky even though the movement sent a white-hot streak of pain down his neck. The hawk flew closer to the treetops.
“Watch,” his father said. He tossed the snake into the middle of the clearing. Immediately, it began writhing and wriggling away in the opposite direction. Suddenly the hawk was there, only a few feet away, its thick talons pointed downward like spears, its gloriously large wings spread wide. It snatched the squirming snake from the grass and flew effortlessly back into the sky.
Alex’s father watched with wonder as the bird receded from view.
Alex felt a warm stickiness slide down the back of his neck. “Dad,” he said quietly. “I think I need a bandage.”
He touched the back of his head again and this time, when he brought it forward to show his father, his entire palm was covered in blood. His father looked down at him, his look of awe transforming into one of disgust. For a long moment, he stared down at Alex, his lip curled in a sneer. Then he shook his head, huffed, and walked away. Momentarily dumbfounded, Alex watched him go. He had already covered quite a bit of ground when he turned and spat the words back at his son, but Alex heard them as clearly as if he’d shouted them into his ear.
“Stupid boy.”
Two
A cold, wet nose nudged Josie’s arm. Then came the mournful whine. When she didn’t respond to her Boston Terrier’s efforts to get her out of bed, he jumped up onto the covers and began to sniff her ears and the nape of her neck. “Trout,” she groaned, rolling over to face him. A pair of soulful brown eyes stared back.
He huffed at her and sat down, his smooshy black and white face a study in seriousness, his ears perfect steeples. Without even moving his mouth, he emitted another small whine. She rubbed beneath his chin.
“What time is it, buddy?” she asked sleepily, although she didn’t even have to look at her bedside clock to know that her alarm was due to go off in ten minutes—at least, on a work day it would be, but today she was off. In the six months since she and her live-in boyfriend, Noah Fraley, had rescued Trout, they’d developed something of a routine. The dog woke them just before their alarm went off, Josie would let him out, feed him, and then the three of them would go for a brief jog before the humans got ready and went off to work. Even on days off, Trout was persistent about keeping to their routine.
Josie and Noah both worked for the city of Denton’s police department—she as a detective and he as a lieutenant. Denton was nestled in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, spanning approximately twenty-five square miles. In the central area of the city where the retail establishments, police headquarters, post office, and Denton University were located, the streets and buildings were grouped closely together in a predictable grid pattern except for the sprawling city park. The rest of the city was spread out over rural wooded areas, accessible by ribbons of single-lane winding roads. Although Denton was a small city, it was no stranger to crime, and the police department stayed busy.
Josie rolled over and nudged Noah’s shoulder. “Time to get up,” she told him, getting only a grunt in response.
“Come on,” she added.
“Put the coffee on, would you?” Noah mumbled.
Josie threw her legs over the side of the bed. Excitedly, Trout jumped down, his rear end wiggling as he ran toward the bedroom door. Josie turned her alarm clock off and padded out into the hallway and downstairs. Twenty minutes later, Trout was fed, both Josie and Noah had consumed one quick cup of coffee, and then dressed in their running clothes. Josie knelt on the foyer floor, trying to coax Trout’s trembling body into his harness while Noah went upstairs to get his phone.
“We do this every morning, buddy,” Josie murmured as she tried to snap the harness across Trout’s back. “You know you have to keep still while I get this on.”
Trout couldn’t contain his excitement. He jumped up to lick her face, and the harness fell half off him. Josie laughed which made him hop around, his little rear end wriggling until he bumped the foyer table. The table was small. It didn’t take much to knock it out of place. Trout knocked into it again, and it slid a few inches across the floor. Two sets of keys and a pair of sunglasses clattered to the floor.
“Shit,” Josie said, snatching up the sunglasses before Trout accidentally stepped on them, relief flooding through her.
Noah jogged down the steps. Seeing Josie with the sunglasses in her hand, he said, “Your sister still hasn’t come back for those? She’s probably got another pair by now.”
Josie placed them back on the table, along with their keys, and tried once more to wrestle Trout into his harness. “Noah, we’re talking about Trinity here. Do you have any idea how much those sunglasses cost? Do you even know what brand those are?”