Scavenger by David Morrell

Karen Bailey left the quotation for him or how reading the novel it came from (if it indeed came from The Hound of the Baskervilles ) would help him find Amanda. He fought to think, to focus on what the quotation was supposed to tell him.
    Maybe it’s about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , he thought desperately.
    Then why was everything else on the page, including the author’s name and the title of the book, removed? Why single out the quotation? What was special about it?
    The moor.
    Balenger reached for the computer keyboard. With shaking hands, he accessed Google and typed DARTMOOR. Several items appeared.
    DARTMOOR NATIONAL PARK
DISCOVERING DARTMOOR
WALKING DARTMOOR
DARTMOOR RESCUE GROUP
    Balenger learned that Dartmoor National Park covered 250 square miles of low rocky hills that were described variously as bleak, forbidding, and primeval. Mist frequently covered the mostly uninhabited area. The frequent moisture collected in boggy mires, which explained the need for a Dartmoor rescue group.
    Am I supposed to conclude that somebody took Amanda to Dartmoor, England? he thought. Why? What would be the point? This isn’t getting me anywhere.
    Why did Karen Bailey arrange for me to receive the piece of paper?
    A thought made Balenger straighten. She could have mailed it to me, but she added a complication. I wouldn’t have known about the passage if I hadn’t gone to the theater. She told the man who pretended to be the professor to give me the paper only if I showed up.
    His temples throbbing, Balenger stared at the other Google references to Dartmoor. He now realized that he needed to look harder. He couldn’t assume anything was irrelevant.
    DARTMOOR FALCONRY
DARTMOOR FOLK FESTIVAL
DARTMOOR LETTERBOXING
    Preoccupied, he was about to skip to the next item when the subtext of the LETTERBOXING item caught his attention.
     
    History of a hide-and-hunt game begun in 1854 on Dartmoor when a ...
     
    The description jabbed Balenger’s memory. He suddenly remembered the time-capsule lecture, during which the fake professor had said that communities who lost time capsules were engaged in a hide-and-hunt scavenger game.
    In a rush, Balenger clicked on the item. The text that appeared, with photographs of low hills studded with granite outcroppings, set his brain on fire.
    Letterboxing is a hide-and-hunt game invented in 1854 when a Dartmoor guide, James Perrott, decided to challenge hikers to investigate a difficult-to-reach area of the moor known as Cranmere Pool. To make the hikers prove that they had indeed found their way to the remote site, Perrott placed a jar beneath a cairn of rocks on the bank of the pool. Any hiker who managed to reach the jar was instructed to place a message in it. Sometimes, a self-addressed postcard was left inside. A hiker who found it would replace the card with his or her own and then mail the card to its owner.
    Over the years, this activity—similar to a treasure hunt—proved so popular that jars were added at other locations on the moor. Later, the jars were changed to metal and then plastic containers, which became known as letterboxes because of the messages left in them. More than a century and a half after James Perrott placed his jar beneath that pile of rocks, there are an estimated 10,000 letterboxes throughout Dartmoor’s imposing terrain.
    The containers are carefully hidden. Clues guide players to the general location. Sometimes, the clues are numbers for map coordinates. Other times, they are puzzles and riddles, the answers to which guide the player.
    Because of a 1998 article in Smithsonian Magazine, the popularity of this hide-and-hunt game suddenly spread around the world. In America alone, every state has hidden letterboxes. Not every box is found, of course. Sometimes, on Dartmoor, game players are rewarded by the eerie discovery of a long-lost container that conceals a message left by someone many years earlier.
    Balenger stared at the screen for a long time. The reference