The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set Ernest Dempsey (top 10 books of all time txt) 📖

He sighed as he rounded a bend in the trail. The creek appeared on the right, just down a short slope. It babbled constantly—another thing he loved about this spot. At night, the sound of the flowing water mingled with a crackling fire.

It was heaven for a guy stuck a cubicle for most of his career, though he'd moved up to his own office eight years prior.

He only relished the scene for a second as he realized there was no sign of the boys.

A scowl crossed his face, and he decided to try shouting. "Boys? Jamie? Oliver? Where are you?"

His voice faced into the trees amid rays of sunlight that poked through the red, orange, and yellow canopy overhead.

His frown deepened at the lack of response.

Tim kept moving, concern growing with every few steps. After another ten minutes, he figured he'd gone as far as his sons would have, and wondered if they had—perhaps—taken another way back, maybe up over the hill and down the other side.

He stopped on the trail with his hands on his hips, turning 360 degrees as he scanned the silent forest for his sons.

"Oliver?" He yelled again. "Jamie?"

Tim waited, but no answer came. He called out again and again. Still nothing.

He was about to turn around and double back, hoping to bump into them along the way, when he noticed something down by the creek bed.

Tim cut off of the trail and hurried past the sparse undergrowth, stopping short on the sandy, rock-strewn ground next to the babbling stream.

He stared for several breaths at the disturbed earth. Rocks were dug up and moved in random directions. That wasn't what bothered him. The footprints in the soil belonged to his sons. He would have recognized the distinct indentations of their two shoe sizes anywhere.

A distant fear that resided deep in the abyss of every parent's mind began to surface as he gazed at the thing that caught his attention.

Oliver's red daypack sat on the ground next to the water.

Panic flooded Tim's chest. He called out over and over again, yelling their names as loudly as possible, but the answer remained the same as all the other times—a agonizing, hollow silence that brought the nightmare to life and gripped every fiber of his soul.

His boys were gone.

Two

Lexington, Kentucky

"You see that?"

Dak didn't respond to the question right away. He stared at the computer screen, analyzing the data that corresponded with the circle overlaying the map.

"Yeah, Will. I see it."

"Two more this week."

Dak nodded, barely glancing at the cell phone on the hotel desk next to him. Will was on speaker so Dak could focus all of his attention on the monitor.

It hadn't taken Will long to zero in on the pattern evolving in Kentucky. Nine people had gone missing in the Daniel Boone National Forest during the last four months. All but one were young boys under the age of fifteen. The one outlier was a young woman in her twenties, though she was suspected of being involved with a local heroin dealer.

The circle on the map shaded an area Dak had only been to twice. He'd traveled to the Cumberland Gap to meet a girl who was in college near there. The drive had taken nearly four hours, much of which was through beautiful, albeit remote, countryside.

"Seems like the town of Browns Ferry is in the middle of it all," Dak noted, zooming in on the name.

Browns Ferry was a small town of less than two thousand people spread out in the hills of Southeastern Kentucky. Dak clicked on the link and then on the images tab to look at some pictures from the area.

"Sure is pretty," he commented.

"Yeah, it definitely is," Will agreed. "Looks like a nice place to get away from it all and relax, do some camping in the woods."

"Or abduct young boys."

"Yeah," Will said reluctantly. "I've pulled the records, although it took some doing. It's amazing how these small towns are often more difficult to squeeze information from than the bigger cities. They get so uptight about giving anything away."

Dak snorted. "Dad always said that there was way more corruption in the small towns and cities than in the big ones."

"Good old boy mindset, huh?"

"Exactly." Dak continued scanning through the images for another minute and then returned to the search bar, entered Browns Ferry Kentucky, and waited for the results to populate.

Several news articles appeared at the top. The most recent was from three days before.

Two brothers had gone camping with their parents on a family excursion into the Daniel Boone National Forest. According to the report, the boys went off on a hike while their parents cooked lunch. The older boy was fifteen and in good health. That explained why the parents were okay with the two wandering off on their own. Dak recalled playing on his own when he was younger, traipsing all over the neighborhood and the adjoining forests and parks with the other kids. They never had parental supervision, and there was no telling what manner of trouble they could have gotten into.

Times were different then. The world had changed, and in the case of letting kids play outside and run wild, it wasn't for the better. More and more parents turned into helicopters, constantly hovering over their children, watching them every second of the day.

Dak didn't blame them. With human trafficking on the rise all over the planet, and much of it happening in the United States, it was better to be safe than sorry. He wasn't sure he wouldn't keep constant watch on a child if he had one of his own.

Still, out in the forest where this family had been… it seemed pretty random.

"Will, how many people go missing in national forests each year?"

His friend huffed through the speaker. "You have a search engine the same as me, right?"

"Yes," Dak said, elongating the word. "Just thought maybe you'd already checked on it, being the thorough guy that you are."

Will sighed. "Well, you'd be right about