Around Eggerts’s neck hung a pocket camera which he kept on him at all times. The department was keen on documentation so long as it stayed within their circle. Top dog Anderson had issued cameras to all personnel in the Huron Mountain area, even those who had no idea what was going on. The orders were to document tracks and kills. However, they had plenty of those by now. What Eggerts really wanted was a picture of the damn thing. Jokes about Bigfoot, aliens, and flying saucers filled the halls of home office. Station Seven near the Huron Grade had even set a dead moose as bait, employing a series of oversized snares. No luck. No surprise.

Whatever was doing this had brains.

Their special hunter wasn’t going to stick its head or foot in some half-assed snare. He had far more respect for it to think such things.

Did it take Officer Bertil? So far, it hadn’t killed people, at least as far as the department knew. But he wouldn’t be surprised. Eggerts gripped the steering wheel hard enough to whiten his knuckles. He watched the woods. Always watching the woods.

It was out here, somewhere in the forest.

He thought about his home at the end of the pavement near the national forest. Five acres of aspen, maple, and balsam fir and a tidy log cabin with high ceilings and picture windows. He loved his life, but wondered if sticking his nose around this project would shorten it. The circumstances made him wish he’d raised a family, had kids running around and a pretty wife. There was no legacy, just his dogs, Emily and Raven. They were good pooches, fine yellow Labs who kept him company through the long Michigan winters. They were the loves of his life when you got down to it. Still, he wanted a family. His phone rang only with the voices of coworkers and drinking buddies.

And boy you can drink, can’t you? he thought.

He and field biologist Glenn Summers participated in what the locals called “The Magnificent Mile.” They’d hop from tavern to tavern, pounding down Bloody Mary’s until they could barely walk. There were no worries of police—not on those roads. Law enforcement was so underfunded the locals got away with many things. There were certain freedoms one had here in the great north.

But what was freedom without people to make choices? Ironville was a dying town—all the young people moving to Minneapolis or Chicago. The young wanted a taste of the big city and suburbs. He didn’t like the crowding. He also didn’t want his town to die.

The truck bounced along the rough road as plastic rattled behind the dashboard. Between ferns, a streak of orange paint marked the possible spot Bertil had seen before trying to contact him. Eggerts stopped the truck and got out.