Two men carrying a stretcher between them crested the rise and jogged toward me. They shuffled me aside and set to work on Harlow with steady hands and low conversation that comforted me. Each anticipated the other’s need, and they worked in tandem to examine her.

A lean man emerged from the trailhead, trundled down to me, grasped my elbow and hauled me in the direction where he first appeared. His eyes were wide set and green, his skin dark. Magic zipped through me at his touch. Bean sidhe. Unsettling choice for a search-and-rescue squad volunteer. I hoped the presence of a death portent meant he’d drawn the short straw, not that he carried a message.

“I need to speak with Magistrate Vause.” I let him lead me away from the scene marshals were scurrying to secure. A guy with a spotlight tucked under his arm shuffled past. Another carried a flipper I assumed went to his wet suit. A woman walked with her head down as she studied a clipboard, and two more men barked orders into walkie-talkies with a fervor that would have done Graeson proud. “She can vouch for me.”

A grim expression pinched his eyes. “I’ll have someone higher on the food chain dial her up and see what she has to say.”

“Can I wait here while you contact her?” I jerked my chin toward Harlow. “I’d like to keep an eye on my friend.”

A frown marred his preternaturally smooth forehead when his gaze eased past my shoulder.

“What is it?” Heart in my throat, I whipped my head toward the lake. At first glance I didn’t register a problem. A soft-spoken marshal was engaging Roni while a man in jeans snapped pictures of the kelpie’s corpse. A woman decked out in a headlamp documented paw-print impressions as a tall man walked the dock with a phone pressed to his ear. Then my gaze honed in on the twin trenches dug by Harlow’s heels where I had dragged her through the sand. The medics were gone. Harlow was too. “Where did they take her?”

“I don’t—” He scratched behind his ear. “They must have taken another path and circled back to the ambulance.”

I was already shaking my head. The wargs had done heavy recon on the area to prepare us for all eventualities. I was familiar with all possible exits near the dock in case I needed a quick escape route. “There is no second path.” Not for a quarter of a mile in the opposite direction, and no way would two guys with a stretcher decide to forge their own trail when there was a perfectly good path right here. “I’m heading down there.”

“Wait.” A string of foreign swears followed me. “Agent Ellis.”

Shrugging off the bean sidhe’s warnings, I ran for the cluster of activity. I grabbed the first marshal I saw by his collar. “Where’s the mermaid?”