SHADOW PACK (Michael Biörn Book 1) Read online

  SHADOW PACK

  Marc Daniel

  Text copyright © 2013 Marc Daniel

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1492759379

  To Louise, Victor and Valentine.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing this book was a long and not entirely pain-free process, and a number of outstanding individuals need to be acknowledged for the help they provided along the way.

  My first thanks are due to Darwin and Katherine who were brave enough to soldier through the initial draft of the novel. Without your helpful suggestions and comments the story would have looked a lot different, and not in a good way.

  I am equally grateful to Amy and Susan for their insightful perspectives on the characters. Your remarks helped me see my cast through a different lens and contributed to their development into more personable individuals.

  I will be forever indebted to Michelle for the time she spent painstakingly hunting down typos and the like throughout the manuscript. Without your eagle eyes many errors would have gone unnoticed all the way to publication.

  Sarah, at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, provided the professional editing touch the manuscript required and for which my readers will no doubt be grateful.

  A very special thank you is owed to Jasmin. As if reading the whole manuscript three times prior to publication was not good enough, she graciously put up with countless hours of silence in the house only interrupted by the sound of my typing. Thank you for your support throughout the whole process, Jasmin. Michael would have never become who he is today without you.

  Cover Design: Nemanja Vlajkovic

  Table of contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Chapter 155

  Chapter 156

  Chapter 157

  Chapter 158

  Chapter 159

  Chapter 160

  Chapter 161

  Chapter 162

  Chapter 163

  Chapter 164

  Chapter 165

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  The first ring of the phone brought him wide awake. Michael Biörn lifted his three hundred pounds of muscle, sinew and bone from the comfortable armchair in which he had been dozing off by the fireplace and dragged his 6’4’’ frame to the kitchen. The cabin wasn’t big enough to require more than one phone and since the jack was already in the kitchen at the time the cabin had been assigned to him, he hadn’t bothered moving it to a different room. He had never been a fan of electrical work and the kitchen was as good of a place as any for a phone.

  The stars shining in the clear September night sky of Yellowstone National Park didn’t provide much light in the room, but he didn’t need much light to find the phone.

  Michael lived in the middle of the park, in an isolated cabin near Canyon Village. Most park employees lived by the North entrance, but Michael sought more isolation. Seclusion was in his nature, the nature of his beast. He would have loved to just get rid of this damn phone, but the park services needed a way to get in touch with him other than knocking on his door. Since radios tended to be unreliable in mountainous regions, Michael had finally agreed to have a phone at home. He had stood his ground, however, when a few years later his boss had tried to hand him a cell phone. Today, he was one of probably three American adults who did not have one.

  As he grabbed the receiver, Michael lifted his hazel eyes towards the small cuckoo clock hanging above the cabin front door. Nine o’cl
ock, not a good sign. Nobody ever called him this late with good news.

  “Hello?”

  “Good evening, Michael,” answered the voice of Bill Thomason, his boss. As expected, the man sounded troubled. After the usual apologies for calling late and bothering his employee at home, Bill finally came to the point of his call. “We have a couple of hikers missing. A boy and a girl.”

  “How long?” Michael enquired while his fingers attempted to tame the unruly waves of his brown hair.

  “Two days. They came to backpack for Labor Day weekend, but they were supposed to head home on Monday. The mother of the girl called us. She was worried something had happened to them.”

  “How old?”

  “Early twenties, college kids.”

  “Has the mom called the highway patrol? Maybe they crashed on their way home.”

  “She called everyone under the sun. We were the last ones she thought of contacting.”

  “Maybe they took a detour and are having a good time in Vegas… college kids will do that!” argued Michael, knowing all along that he would still need to get his butt out of the house and go looking for those kids.

  “It’s possible, but she’s convinced otherwise. At any rate, we need to check it out,” replied Thomason.

  “Fine,” conceded Michael. “Where are we going?”

  “Pebble Creek campground. Meet me there in an hour.”

  Chapter 2

  The Alpha was getting worried. Jack, the wolf he had sent for the assignment, had not reported back to him for debriefing, and that couldn’t be a good omen. He flipped once more through the 153 channels available to choose from, but only to confirm there truly was nothing worth watching this late in the night.

  Like all Alphas, he was a man of action, something that came with the territory. You didn’t become Alpha by being quiet or accommodating, but by fighting your way to the top of the pack. Lately, however, he had been forced to rely on others to do the heavy lifting, and this passivity was making him increasingly restless.

  Maybe he could take care of the next project himself… that would relax him a little.

  His phone finally chimed, indicating the arrival of a text message. He looked at the screen and felt relieved. It was from Jack:

  Job done, but ran into problems.

  Need to talk ASAP regarding damage control.

  The Alpha thought for a second before replying:

  Meet me at the arboretum in 2 hours. Be presentable!

  The arboretum was within Memorial Park, and he knew from experience that this part of Houston would be practically deserted this late in the night.

  Chapter 3

  Michael Biörn saw Bill Thomason’s truck parked in the Pebble Creek trailhead parking lot and rolled to a stop next to it. With the exception of a beat-up Ford Fiesta parked on the other side of Bill’s truck, the lot was empty.

  The two men came out of their trucks at the same time, each holding a backpack. Bill was in his mid-fifties and had only ten years on Michael, but his gray hair and slumped posture made him look older. His short cropped beard was barely longer than the other man’s day-old stubble, but Michael’s hair tended to grow significantly faster than average.

  “Is that their car?” enquired Michael, his breath visible in the already cool September air.

  “Yep! That’s the license plate listed on their backcountry permit. They were supposed to go up Pebble Creek Trail and spend the first night at campsite 3P3. Then they were to head down Slough Creek, spend the second night at 2S1 and continue down Slough Creek Trail back to civilization the next day.”

  “That’s over twenty miles,” remarked Michael. “You’re planning on searching all that tonight?”

  “I have a group heading up from the Slough Creek trailhead with satellite radios; they’ll let us know if they find them before we do.”

  In addition to the standard issued weapon, a Sig P239, 9 mm, each ranger carried an aerosol can of bear spray holstered on his belt. Bill was also carrying a rifle on his back, which could come in handy in case their worst fear came to be realized.

  There were two types of park rangers. The friendly ones, found in visitor centers, were paid to answer tourists’ questions and take them on backcountry hikes. The law-enforcement ones, on the other hand, made sure the aforementioned tourists behaved themselves while in the park, and only had to be friendly towards them if they felt like it. Both Michael and Bill belonged to the second category.

  For the type of rescue mission Bill and Michael were about to undertake, a backcountry ranger would usually have been part of the group. Backcountry rangers typically knew the backwoods of Yellowstone better than their law-enforcing counterparts, but Michael was an exception to that rule. He had spent more time alone in the backcountry of Yellowstone than anyone else alive, and everyone working in the park knew it.

  Hiking the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park meant being about as remote from civilization as one could possibly be while still within the lower forty-eight states. Cell phones didn’t work for the most part, and, depending on where your hike took you, you could be as far as a day’s march away from the closest road.

  All backcountry campsites in Yellowstone were isolated and far enough away from the trail that they were essentially invisible to hikers not knowing their locations. Michael knew exactly where he was going, though, and Bill followed in his footsteps.

  It took them a little over three hours to reach the vicinity of the primitive campsite where the young couple was supposed to have spent the first night, but Michael had known long before reaching the site that something had gone terribly wrong. He had picked up the smell of blood when they were still half a mile away. Blood and something else, a scent he had recognized only too well: grizzly bear. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned the smell to Bill; it would have raised questions Michael didn’t want to answer. Both men were advancing with headlamps on their foreheads, although only one of them truly needed it. Michael could see about as well at night as he did in the daylight, but he had to maintain appearances.

  They took the side path that parted from the main trail and led to the campsite. Michael stopped as soon as the path opened onto the forest clearing where the site was located and gestured for Bill to be quiet and turn off his headlamp.

  It was the night of the new moon, and only the stars illuminated the macabre scene. A couple hundred feet in front of them were the remnants of a two-person tent, which had been flattened and shredded to pieces. The barely recognizable shape of a dismembered human body was lying a few feet from the tent.

  Bill would have probably walked straight to the body if Michael hadn’t held him back by the sleeve, while pointing at the dark shape crouched on the ground under the trees lining the clearing.

  “You think that’s the bear?” asked Bill in the lowest voice he could manage.

  But Michael didn’t have to guess; he knew. The smell was coming straight from the dark shape.

  “I do,” he replied simply.

  With extreme caution, Bill deposited his backpack on the ground and, using the rifle’s night scope, took aim at the dark shape. He quickly confirmed what Michael already knew.

  “It’s a grizz. I’d say around four hundred pounds… looks like it’s sleeping.”

  Even though he resented it more than anyone could ever imagine, Michael knew what had to be done. A bear that had killed a human could not be allowed to live. But he sure wasn’t going to be the one shooting it!

  Suddenly, the wind turned and the grizzly picked up their scent. It awakened and rose. Bill fired twice in rapid succession, placing two bullets in the animal’s heart.

  As they reached the hiker’s mutilated body, Michael picked up a scent he had not noticed at first. The odor had been masked by the stench emanating from the days-old corpse, but it was undeniably there. A more subtle fragrance… fear. Relying on his nose for the general direction, he started searching the thick evergreen canopy that spread all around the campgroun
d and quickly identified the origin of the odor. Perched in a nearby tree, about fifteen feet from the ground, was a white human shape. A female from what his nose could tell.

  Chapter 4

  Detective David Starks and Lieutenant Steve Harrington were digging into their breakfast burritos at the local Taco Cabana when the call came in through the radio. After swearing profusely at the bad timing, the two cops asked for a couple of doggy bags and were on their way.

  When they arrived at the address given by the dispatcher, a coroner’s van was parked in the driveway and a couple of officers in uniform were making sure none of the curious neighbors ventured inside the house. In addition to the two or three Houston PD cruisers parked in front of the house, numerous Harris County Sheriff Department vehicles blocked all access to the street.

  “Why is the Sheriff Department involved in this?” Harrington asked the officer guarding the front door.

  “The victim was Chief Deputy Mark Sullivan, from the Harris County Sheriff Department.”

  Harrington’s eyes met David Starks’ and he knew his old partner was thinking the same thing he was—another cop!

  Harrington looked tired at this moment, although it was difficult to tell for certain whether fatigue or concern was more responsible for the lines on his closely shaven face. Naturally, the somewhat slumped shoulders and slightly protuberant stomach weren’t the artifacts of a man in his prime, but the lieutenant was nearing fifty, and was past his prime. Standing beside Starks didn’t help his case either. Starks, in his early thirties and weighing a hair over 200 pounds on a 6’2’’ frame, looked more like a model than a cop. Although his golden complexion, deep blue eyes and semi-short blond hair played their part, his charisma alone sufficed to explain his popularity among women.

  “Let’s go have a look,” he said as he walked through the door and passed a score of police officers, sheriff deputies and coroner’s staff all busy doing something.

  The scene in the living room, however, was not what they had expected. Over the past year, several high-ranking police officers had been murdered, most of them execution-style, but this one looked different.

  For one thing, the amount of blood soaking the living room carpet was astonishing. How could so much blood have come from a single body? The riddle was partially answered when the detectives realized that some of the blood belonged to the dead Rottweilers whose bodies had been shredded and the pieces scattered across the room.