Glacial Fear (eBook)

A Rowan Campbell Thriller

Holly Petersen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
260 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-8906-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Federal Agent, Rowan Campbell is assigned to investigate a mysterious death in Glacier National Park and she must uncover who is responsible. Is it someone from the cast of a reality show filming in the Park, or the alleged cryptid the contestants are pursuing.

Holly Petersen grew up in Kansas. Some of her fondest years were spent on her grandparent's farm outside the tiny town of Towanda. She is a National Parks Geek and loves to travel. Holly is married with two children and her family shares her love of the outdoors and nature. They frequently spend time at a family cabin in Colorado, where they occasionally experience their own paranormal activity in the woods. When Holly isn't writing, she co-owns a Digital Marketing company with her husband in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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Rowan Campbell, a Federal Agent for the National Parks has a specialty - investigating paranormal and unexplainable cases. Agent Campbell is thrust into her most baffling investigation yet when a dismembered body is found at a rural campsite in Glacier National Park, sparking fears of both foul play and possibly a dangerous predator. Complicating matters, a reality show is filming a competition centered around capturing evidence of Bigfoot. Do the reality show contestants have anything to do with the mysterious death or is it the result of a more serious, primal creature lurking in the woods? When Rowan's own life is threatened, she is forced to go deeper into the woods than she ever has before in search of answers and her very own survival.

Textauszug

Chapter Two

Special Agent Rowan Campbell pulled into her park-issued housing driveway just outside the tiny town of Polebridge, Montana. Polebridge was remote and not much was there, save an official Glacier National Park entrance, a few park-owned houses, and a small village of full-time upper Glacier residents. Reaching for her mammoth-size travel mug, hoping there was one final lukewarm sip left to take, she was met with disappointment and chewed on the idea of starting a fresh pot when she got inside.

As a federal agent for the Investigative Services Branch, or the ISB, as everyone internally knew them, each day was unpredictable. Pre-dawn this morning, Rowan had been called into neighboring Flathead National Forest to aid in collecting evidence in a poaching ring investigation. With only thirty ISB agents covering eighty-five million acres of parkland, she could be called anywhere, at any time. She had already been awake when she got the call, but nothing new there.

Entering the small cabin, Rowan’s nose was accosted by the dank and musty smell of the dilapidated park quarters. Some things never changed, but the juxtaposition compared to the pristine park air was always a slap in the face. Most park housing was old and run down. Regular cleaning and innumerable plug-in air fresheners throughout the home just could not stand up to the persistent temperate rainforest climate, found on the west side of the park. “Time to invest in a dehumidifier,” Rowan muttered to herself.

Rowan’s roommate Dana wasn’t home. She pulled several shifts each week at the saloon in Polebridge to bring in some extra cash and socialize. Ranger life could be lonely, especially if you were an extrovert. Rowan was not, so the loneliness didn’t bother her much. She glanced at the clock on her small fireplace mantle, registering just after eight. Unbuckling the firearm harness from her shoulders, Rowan relaxed and shifted into civilian mode. Being off duty was important to her. Relishing the silence of her home briefly, before a meow sounded around the corner from the kitchen, she saw Dana’s big tabby tomcat, Pickle, strut around the corner to greet her. He was Rowan’s favorite part of rooming with Dana. Her schedule was insane, and she wasn’t able, in good conscience, to have a pet of her own. Pickle was an excellent companion. Scooping him up, she cradled him, and he looked at her adoringly. “Hey, there buddy. How was your day?”

Pickle whined out a meow. A pretend protest at the babying he was receiving. Rowan knew better. She kissed his cheek, catching a fishy note. Dana must have fed him. She sat Pickle down and headed toward the kitchen to see what she might scrounge up for dinner. Though tired, she needed to eat and kicked herself for not grabbing groceries on her last day off. Things were looking a little lean.

“A-hah, Pickle! Boxed mac and cheese it is!” Pickle was uninterested, focused only on bathing his tail. Zoning out, she watched him bathe and began waiting for a rolling boil in the pot she’d prepped. An absent smile came across her face as thoughts of previous pets popped into her mind, which led to missing her dad back home. Her only parent. Keeping busy was fine, until it wasn’t. Eventually, a case wrapped, or an investigation was heartbreaking, and those were the times she longed to be around someone who knew her, someone she could let her guard down with and share emotions, victories, and letdowns.

Pickle rubbed along Rowan’s shins, snapping her back to reality and drawing attention to the boil churning violently in the pot. “Dude, I think you just saved me from a mess.” Pickle and Rowan simultaneously looked toward the door at the sound of keys jingling.

“Ding-dong, darlings,” called out a sing-song voice from the front room.

“Hey, lady! How was your day?” Rowan asked, smiling as her roommate rounded the corner and fumbled some groceries onto the serviceable kitchen table. Heavenly scents wafted to her nose and Rowan’s stomach growled.

“Dandy. Yours? Wait. What are you planning on eating there?” She gestured snootily at the mac and cheese box that trailed the telltale signs of processed powdered cheese and utilitarian sustenance.

“Rude. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’m failing miserably at keeping up with my nutrition and chores. What can I say? I have no excuse, except my demanding job. I’m sure my habits are going to catch up to my thighs someday.” Rowan pursed her lips in a resigned look to her roomie.

“You are way too hard on yourself, girl. Your gorgeous red hair, body, and let’s not forget your adorable freckles, already stop guys in their tracks when they see you. Don’t even pretend you haven’t noticed. You just need to slow down long enough to let something happen. That, and stop intimidating them when they find out what you do.” She winked at Rowan, teasingly.

“You really think my job intimidates people?”

“Uh, ya. Can you hear the heavy sarcasm I just did there?” Dana twirled her finger in the air and pointed at Rowan, smirking.

Rowan hadn’t thought about it before. It’s true. She had no time for romantic entanglements, but never thought of her career as any sort of social barrier with the opposite sex. She’d have to process that revelation more later. “I guess I never really thought about it before.”

“It’s true. Believe me. There are so many guys out there, who just don’t know what to do with your kind of package.”

“I mean, I’m not all macho or anything. Am I?”

“No, no, no. It’s not that! You’re attractive, intelligent, know you’re away around the great outdoors – the dream scenario for so many guys out there! They don’t even know what to do with you. You’re a unicorn. Unicorns are a fantasy.”

“Hey, I’ve got plenty of issues. You, of all people know that. You live with me.”

“Honey. None of your issues are deal breakers. Trust me. Seriously, though. If a guy can’t get over himself, then he doesn’t deserve you anyway. You need someone who’s secure in his own person and appreciates what you do for a living. The dude basically needs to be another you, but your complement. In other words, another unicorn.” Dana said this with a chuckle and rolled her eyes. “Look at me! It took till my thirties, but I’m totally embracing my curves and have no interest in impressing anyone, anymore. Now, I’m unpacking quite a spread here. We’ve got pulled pork, green beans, and cornbread, so you better get your beautiful arse over here and eat up!”

“Have I ever told you that you are the best roommate I’ve ever had? I wasn’t trying to fish. I think I spend so much time out in the middle of nowhere, that I sometimes lose sight of the more personal machinations of life.”

“I think so, and yes, you have told me I’m your favorite roommate. Pretty sure it’s because of Pickle, though.” Dana gave her a teasing side-eye wink as she unpacked biodegradable to-go boxes from one of her reusable grocery bags.

“I do love Pickle, but I’ve had a few roomies in my time and you by far are the most considerate and tidy.” Rowan’s mind drifted to previous roommates and cringed at the memories of endless smelly sink-filled dishes, sour loads of laundry, and late-night, noisy guests.

“I’ll take that.”

“You should. Thanks for sharing your dinner with me and giving me a pep talk.” Rowan drained the macaroni noodles, dumped in the powdered cheese, stirred up the concoction, and then promptly transferred it into a leftover dish, depositing it into the fridge. She grabbed two paper plates, and forks and brought them to the table. “Anything nutty out there today?”

Dana’s eyes grew wide and sparkled with a telling look. She was ready to spill. “You better believe it! Get this. We had some flashers down at Saint Mary Lake. They were a bunch of drunk baby boomer men on a boat for a ‘boys’ weekend’ who decided it would be cute to moon other passing boats. Some unhappy calls came in.” Dana scooped out the food onto their plates, as she described with animation and hilarity the events from her day. Dana could make any story funny. Her crow’s feet crinkled around her eyes as she animated each little detail. At thirty-five, Dana was a veteran of the Parks but had spent most of her career in Glacier and knew it like the back of her hand.

“Oh, boy! Sounds like a treat. Let the summer season begin. Kind of early for that crap, though. I mean there should be a good twenty days or more before Going-to-the- Sun Road is even open, right?” Rowan was starving and decided she’d speak while shoveling the aromatic food into her mouth.

“My thoughts, exactly! The latest timeline is the twenty-eighth of June. Forty-five-degree highs aren’t exactly enough, even with daily sucker holes to get that snow melted enough for the plows to make any headway. We’ll see, I guess.”

Sucker holes were the local term for those rare instances during the spring when the sun would shine a lazy eye, peeking through the overcast skies to melt some snow here and there. Dana using the term attested to how long she had been living in the area.

“How about you, Rowan? I heard you leave a good hour before I was even up?”

Before answering, Rowan thought back to the fact that she had been up for hours before the call even came in. Plagued with insomnia since her mother died, she tried to avoid her Xanax prescription, becoming addicted to caffeine instead. “Yeah, they needed me...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.2.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-8906-9 / 9798350989069