Not that Tyler Allen Ceballo was much of a drinker. He liked the odd beer with the boys after a long, hard day’s work, but he’d never been drunk, let alone hungover. Mind you, the past few days had been pretty tough on him, supervising a logging operation that few people wanted in the first place, and even fewer wanted as the days passed. It was conceivable that the stress had gotten to him and he’d done something stupid. Even so, it wasn’t like the man to just up and leave without telling someone where he was going.

“Have you seen him?” Brian McAteer asked as he met up with Willem in the middle of the site. Most of the men were still asleep, retiring from their guard posts once the sun had come up half an hour ago.

“Not a sign of him,” Willem said. “It’s like he just…well, vanished into thin air.”

McAteer shook his head. “It isn’t like him, that’s for sure.”

At this time in the morning, Ceballo was usually in the office trailer sipping his second cup of coffee and figuring out strategies to win over public support. It had become increasingly difficult and Ceballo had reacted by being even harder on the few men who had stuck with him. According to those who’d been with the company for a few years, Ceballo had never lost one of these battles, and the possibility of losing this one was weighing heavily on his shoulders.

“Where do you think he could be?” Willem asked.

McAteer shrugged and shook his head. “Beats me.”

Willem removed his Vancouver Canucks ball cap and drew a sleeve across his forehead. He’d been up and down the side of the mountain twice this morning and he was hot, sweaty, and tired. He was looking forward to seeing this standoff resolved—one way or another—so he could go home and spend some time with his family.

“Maybe he went for a walk. It looks like it’s going to be a nice day.”

Willem glanced up at the sun, which was minutes from clearing the tops of the trees to the east, and saw a strange shape among the branches. “What the—”

“What is it?”

The trees in this part of the forest were sometimes home to predatory birds that built massive nests in the upper branches. Those nests could sometimes be seen from the ground if the angle was right and the sun was in the correct position. But even birds’ nests couldn’t explain the size of that solid lump that was sitting up in a tree a short distance down the road. If it were a nest, the bird would have to be the size of a large dog.

“Do you see that?” Willem said, pointing at the nest-shaped object up in the trees.

“No,” McAteer said at first. Then, “Yeah, okay, I see it now.”