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get the injured back up this path?
    By the time the three of them reached a flat clearing, they were breathing hard. Maggie felt sweat trickle down her back despite the cold.
    “We’re here to help,” Donny called out so low and gentle Maggie wondered if anyone heard him. “We need to get some light down here, Hank.”
    “I’ve got one of my guys bringing down strobes with a mobile generator.”
    The dispatcher’s details had been scant. She’d received a 911 call from the forest, but the cell reception kept cutting out so she had trouble deciphering the message. A group of teenagers had been attacked. There were injuries. No, they didn’t know who— or what , she had emphasized—had attacked them. She added that the caller sounded stoned and he wouldn’t tell her why they had been in the forest.
    “You’re an EMT, right?” Donny asked Hank.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Agent O’Dell?”
    “No.”
    “But you know the basics?”
    “Very basics. I’m a little rusty.”
    “Let’s do a quick check.”
    Donny tipped his flashlight back at himself.
    “I’m State Patrolman Donny Fergussen. We’re here to help. You’re not in trouble. If you’re hurt, call out. If someone’s hurt next to you, call out for them.”
    Silence. Even the moans went quiet.
    An owl hooted. Branches creaked in the breeze.
    Finally a voice, a girl’s, thin and high-pitched, yelled, “Over here.”
    Another voice, a male from the opposite side of the darkness. “I’m hurt pretty bad.”
    Then another girl’s voice, on the verge of tears. “I think he’s dead. He’s not moving. Oh my God, he’s not breathing.”
    Donny looked to Hank, the only EMT. The ranger simply said, “I’ll take that one.” He shot his flashlight in the direction and followed the beam.
    Donny pointed the opposite way to indicate that he’d take the “hurt pretty bad” male. That left Maggie with only her pen-size Maglite to check the girl. She avoided shining it in their faces, scanning for anyone down and not moving. Two girls huddled together under a tree. Maggie tried to get a take on the area while making her way to them. She walked slowly, acutely aware of not disturbing what could be a crime scene.
    Hank had led them down through the forest but on the other side of this clearing Maggie could see the rolling hills of pasture separated from the forest by a barbed-wire fence. And close by there had to be a river—she could hear water.
    Her penlight picked up something fluttering in the branches, hanging down from a pine tree about ten feet away. She needed to check on the girls first. Maggie swept the light across the path with slow swipes. Every time the beam brushed close, the girls jerked as if the thin razor of light had sliced them.
    “Are you two okay?”
    They stared at her with glassy eyes. One finally nodded. The other girl lifted her arm to Maggie and said, “He bit me.”
    Maggie bent down a couple of feet in front of them so she could get a better look without startling them again. She traced over the girl’s arm with the penlight, making the girl jump back.
    “I won’t hurt you. I just want to see your arm.” Still that blank stare. “I’m Maggie. What’s your name?”
    “Amanda,” the girl with the bite mark said and batted the hair out of her face.
    Both of the girls were in shock but other than the bite mark Maggie couldn’t see any blood. The other girl’s eyes stared, still wide and unblinking, at something above and beyond Maggie’s head. She turned to track what it was. The dark object hanging from the tree swayed back and forth.
    Maggie stood, flicked the penlight up, and pointed as she moved closer. It looked like a dark piece of cloth pierced on the branch. She was almost directly underneath it when she realized it was an owl, hanging upside down.
    A dead owl.
    Startled, Maggie took a quick step aside and tripped over a log. She lost her balance and fell, hitting the ground hard and dropping her light.
    “Agent