Free In the Woods by Merry Jones

fracking, collecting water and soil samples?
    Hank felt her looking at him and turned to her. ‘You okay?’ His face was blank. Feigning innocence.
    She squinted, letting him know she was onto him.
    â€˜What?’ He tilted his head.
    Daniels continued. ‘Yeah, when that rig blew, it was like hell bursting up through God’s green earth. A geyser of gas and fracking wastewater blasted out of the ground, and it kept spewing sky high for sixteen hours straight. The stink was everywhere. You could taste it. It got in your skin. And the hunting lodge – phwoom. Gone. Place was, I don’t know, fifty or a hundred years old. Lots of locals belonged to it – they formed a new organization, named it the Hunt Club to remember the lodge and what happened to it. But all that’s left of the original place is the foundation, just bare bones of the lodge. Nothing’s there but old septic tanks.’
    For a moment even Angela was silent. But only for a moment.
    â€˜So that’s why the locals don’t like the gas company,’ she announced. She folded her hands. ‘But that’s not exactly a feud.’
    â€˜Oh, it is. The local folks in the Hunt Club are determined to get rid of the frackers, pipeline, gas company, government and every other outsider – including hunters and hikers like you. As a government employee, I watch my backside, but I’ve made peace with most of them. They’re not bad people. Still, there’s a number of them who want to take up arms and go guerrilla. They’ve got an arsenal and a trained militia. A compound where they can survive for months under siege if they have to.’
    Harper stiffened. She looked into the trees, half-expecting to see armed men in camouflage.
    â€˜Now, I’m not saying they plan to start an all-out war,’ Daniels went on. ‘They’re angry, not stupid. Instead, they mess with the gas company’s equipment. They let the air out of their tires. Vandalize the pipeline walkers’ campsites. Try to scare them. But so far, it’s been mischief. Not murder.’
    â€˜Until today,’ Angela said. ‘Today was murder.’
    â€˜We don’t know that yet,’ Daniels said. ‘Could have been anything. An accident.’
    â€˜I feel it. I just know it. What have they done to my Phil?’
    Daniels didn’t answer.
    â€˜You knew about this fracking stuff?’ Harper whispered to Hank.
    He shrugged. ‘Which part?’
    She scowled.
    â€˜What’s wrong?’
    Did he really not know? Did he think she wouldn’t figure out that he’d pretended to want to hike and camp and be alone with her when really he’d devised this trip so that he could study the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing? What he’d presented as romantic time together, away from work and responsibility, was instead some preliminary geologic field study. And he wanted to know what was wrong? Damn. Harper stretched her aching leg. She thought of Chloe and ached even more. What the hell was she doing here?
    Not that she belonged anywhere else.
    Hank took her hand. ‘Come on, Harper. Don’t be like that.’
    Really? Had he read her mind? Her nostrils puffed. ‘Like what?’
    â€˜Can we talk about what’s bothering you later?’ He leaned over to kiss her cheek.
    â€˜Fine.’ She sat rigid, even as his whiskers brushed her cheek, raising goose bumps.
    Daniels stuffed his water bottle into his backpack. ‘So. How about we go back to the exact point where Phil was last seen and start again from there.’ He stood. ‘We’ll break into teams of two.’
    Harper got to her feet, ignoring the complaints of her leg.
    Hank put an arm around her waist.
    â€˜I don’t understand.’ Angela stayed at the ranger’s heels. ‘Where could he have gone? I left him right at the edge of the field.’
    Phil wasn’t in the field.