The Precipice Read Online Free PDF

into pouring rain above the tree line. All it takes is enough cold water to depress your body temperature ten degrees. There are so many ways a person can die in the woods.
    Including murder.
    Most of the thru-hikers I’d met on the AT had been great people, but I had a friend who worked as a ranger in Baxter State Park, at the trail’s terminus, and he had told me about the increasing amount of drug use he was seeing in his campground. Pot and booze had been the traditional intoxicants of choice among the White Blazers (named for the color of the markers along the path). Hallucinogens, too, of course—the Appalachian Trail had long attracted hippies and the younger people who emulated them. But in recent years, crystal meth had started appearing in Maine, brought up in backpacks from the South, where it was epidemic in the hollows of the Great Smoky Mountains. “I’ve seen methamphetamine turn a normal guy into a werewolf,” my ranger friend had told me one night over a crackling campfire: a horror story for twenty-first-century America.
    Add to that the local creeps who lived within spitting distance of the trail—the poachers, predators, smack addicts, recluses, robbers, and Doomsday preppers—and it was a wonder there weren’t more homicides.
    But it wasn’t my responsibility to compile a list of suspects for a crime that might not even have taken place. My only job was to gather information for Lieutenant DeFord and report back. With luck, Samantha and Missy had already stepped out of the woods, unharmed and embarrassed by all the fuss.
    Then I remembered Stacey’s warning. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” she’d said.
    I stuffed my Nalgene bottle into the rucksack, readjusted the headlamp on the brim of my dripping cap, and set off in pursuit of Nissen. The legendary trail runner was also earning a place in my personal rogues’ gallery.
    *   *   *
    I’d parked my patrol truck behind a stand of shrub willows at the edge of a clearing. Like any good warden, I prided myself on knowing how to hide a vehicle from prying eyes—an essential skill when your job involves sneaking up on poachers—but Nissen had had no trouble finding the truck again in the gloom. The wiry little man was sitting on the hood, swinging his legs like a bored kid in church. He’d finally put on a shirt: a blue-and-gold baseball jersey with the University of West Virginia mascot on the front. His alma mater, I assumed.
    “Thanks for waiting,” I said.
    “You’re welcome,” he replied without a hint of sarcasm.
    The temperature had begun to climb again now that the storm had passed through, and the mosquitoes were out enjoying the evening. I slapped at my neck but missed the insect feeding on me, then swatted at my arm and missed the next. The bugs seemed not to want to bite Nissen, despite the invitation of all that exposed skin.
    I reached into my pocket for my cell phone.
    “You won’t get a signal here.” Nissen slid off the truck. “There won’t be anything until we get over to the lodge.”
    I needed to report what I’d found atop Chairback to Lieutenant DeFord. And I still hoped to connect with the team that had gone up Whitecap Mountain. I wanted to hear what they’d discovered at the next lean-to. After a minute of searching, the NO SERVICE message appeared again on the illuminated screen. I put the phone away and beeped open the truck.
    Nissen climbed into the passenger seat and let in a squadron of mosquitoes before he closed the door. I tried every channel on the police radio, but all I heard was static. The heat coming off our wet bodies caused the windows to fog up instantly, and I had to run the blower to clear them. There was nothing to do but wait until the defogger did its job on the windshield.
    “So what’s the deal with this new lodge?” I asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I have the sense you don’t approve of it.”
    Nissen had a disquieting habit of conversing without making eye contact.