Blood Trail

shot?"

    "Yeah."

    Head shots, at night, on moving targets. Whoever he was, he was good. "Which way was the body facing?"

    "Like this." Peter shoved Cloud's body around until it was aligned to the northwest. She endured the mauling but didn't look thrilled.

    Silver's tracks had been coming from the south and the shot had spun her in an arc identical to Ebon's.

    The Conservation Area woods ran east of the small south field.

    "I think we can safely assume it's the same guy and he shot from the cover of the trees," Vicki muttered, wishing for a city street and a clear line of sight. Trees shifted and moved about the way buildings never did and, from where Vicki stood, the woods looked like a solid wall of green and brown, with no way of knowing what they hid. A dribble of moisture rolled out of her hair and down the back of her neck. Someone could be watching now, raising the rifle, taking aim. ... You 're getting ridiculous. The killings have happened at night. But she couldn't stop a little voice from adding. So far.

    Her back to the trees and an itching she couldn't control between her shoulder blades, she stood. "Come on."

    "Where?" Peter rose effortlessly. Vicki tried not to be annoyed.

    "We're going to have a look for the bullet that killed your aunt."

    "Why?" He fell into step beside her as Cloud bounded on ahead.

    "We're eliminating the possibility of two killers. So far, the pattern of both deaths are identical with only one exception."

    "The silver bullet?"

    "That's right. If the deaths match on all points, the odds are good there's a single person responsible."

    "So if that's the case, how do you find them?"

    "You follow the pattern back."

    Peter frowned. "I don't think I understand what you mean."

    "Common sense, Peter. That's all." She scrambled over another fence. "Everything connects to everything else. I just figure out how."

    "After Aunt Sylvia died, the pack went hunting for her killer but we couldn't find any scents in the wood that didn't belong."

    "What do you mean, didn't belong?"

    "Well, there's a lot of scents in there. We were looking for a strange one." He squirmed a little under Vicki's frown and continued in a less condescending tone. "Anyway, after Uncle Jason was shot, Uncle Stuart wouldn't let anyone go into the woods except Colin."

    Good way to lose Colin, Vicki thought, amazed as she often was at the stupid things otherwise intelligent people could do, but all she said aloud was, "And what did Colin discover?"

    "Well, not Barry's scent, and I think that was mostly what he was looking for."

    Cloud was making tight circles, nose to the ground, in roughly the center of the field.

    "Is that where it happened?"

    "Uhhuh."

    Teeth clenched, Vicki waited for the howl. It didn't come. When she asked Peter why, he shrugged and said, "It happened weeks ago."

    "Don't you miss her?"

    "Of course we do, but ..." He shrugged again, unable to explain. Everyone but Aunt Nadine had finished howling for Silver.

    Cloud had found the bullet by the time they reached her and had dug it clear with more enthusiasm than efficiency. Her muzzle and paws had acquired a brown patina and the rest of her pelt was peppered with dirt.

    "Good nose!" Vicki exclaimed, bending to pick up the slug. And a good thing there wasn't anything else to learn from the scene, she added silently, surveying the excavation. A quick wipe on her shorts and she held the prize up in the sunlight. It certainly wasn't lead.

    Peter squinted at the metal. "So it's just one guy?"

    Vicki nodded, dropping the bullet into her bag. "Odds are good." One marksman. Who killed at night with a single shot to the head. One executioner.

    "And you can find him now?"

    "I can start looking."

    "We should've found the dirtbag," Peter growled, savagely ripped up a handful of grass. "I mean, we're hunters!"

    "Hunting for people is a specialized sort of a skill," Vicki pointed out levelly. The last thing she wanted to do was inspire heroics. "You have to train for it, just like everything else. Now, then," she squinted at the woods then looked back at the two young wer, "I want the both of you to return to the house. I'm going to go in there and have a look around."

    "Uh, Ms. Nelson, you don't have much experience in woods, do you?" Rose asked tentatively.

    "No. Not especially," Vicki admitted, "but ... Rose, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

    "It's just that, you're from the city and. ..."

    "That's not what I meant!" She