Courage Tree (15 page)

“And I know everyone’s starting to think that she’s dead. That they’re all dead. And maybe it seems crazy, but I have this unbelievably strong feeling that she’s alive. I feel it in here.” She took his hand and held it against her abdomen, just below her rib cage.

“It’s not crazy,” he said. He reached beneath her T-shirt to rest his hand on her bare skin. “If you felt it in your toes, or your ears, or your knees,
then
you might be crazy,” he said. “But as long as you feel it
here
, I’d trust it.”

She laughed softly. “Don’t tease,” she said.

“I’m not teasing, sweetheart.” He kissed her softly on the lips. “I love you.”

His hand moved to her breast, his touch undemanding and gentle, and when he reached lower to slip his fingers beneath her underpants, she opened her legs to him. Never would she have guessed that she’d be making love tonight, but this was lovemaking borne of need rather than desire. It was soothing rather than passionate, with solace, rather than pleasure, as its goal. And afterward, she buried herself in his arms, and stayed nestled tightly in his embrace until morning.

They were both up before the sun. In the kitchen, Lucas made coffee while Janine called the police station, begging for news that didn’t exist. Both of them spun around at the sound of her father barging into the living room, and Janine knew that he had seen Lucas’s car in the driveway.

“What’s going on?” Frank asked, as she quickly hung up the phone. “What is
he
doing here? Are you all right, Janine?”

“I’m fine, Dad. And Lucas is here because he’s a friend.”

Her father didn’t seem to know what to say to that. He looked even more awkward than he usually did, and she felt sorry for him.

“He was here all night?” he asked finally.

“Yes.”

“Janine needed someone with her last night,” Lucas said. He had his coffee cup in his hand, and he rested it on the counter as if expecting to have to defend himself physically at any moment.

“Oh, she did, did she?” her father bellowed. “She could have had Joe here, or her mother or myself.”

Janine took Lucas’s hand in hers. “We’ve been seeing each other for quite a while, Dad. I didn’t want you and Mom to know because—”

“You’ve
what
? I don’t
believe
this,” her father said. “Janine,
have you completely lost your mind?” He pointed a finger at Lucas. “You! Get out of here and get to work.”

“I’m taking today off,” Lucas said.

Her father let out an ugly, snorting laugh that was so out of character for him, it made Janine cringe. “You make it sound as though that’s an unusual occurrence,” he said. “You take off any damn time you feel like it. Why should today be any different?”

“As long as my work gets done, I don’t see the problem,” Lucas said.

“This is the final straw.” Her father’s cheeks were that ruddy color he got on those rare occasions when fury replaced his usual stoic anger. “I’m speaking to the Foundation today and getting you fired.”

“On what grounds, Daddy?” Janine asked. “That he befriended your thirty-five-year-old daughter?”

“That he is irresponsible, at best. At worst…I don’t know what that would be exactly, but I’m sure there’s more to…to this man…than you know, Janine. I’d tell you not to be such a fool, but your mother’s right. You always were and I guess you always will be.”

“Leave my house, Daddy,” she said. “Please just go.”

Her father laughed again. “Your house? You’re staying here out of our good graces, and you know it. This is
my
house, your mother’s and mine, and we don’t want him—” he motioned toward Lucas “—inside it.”

“I’ve had it.” Lucas let go of her hand and took a step toward her father. “First of all, I quit the damn job, okay?” he said. “Does that make you happy? Second of all, Janine needs your love right now, not your criticism, although that seems to be all you and your wife know how to give her. I’m sick of you belittling her. She’s been a great mother to Sophie. She’s done everything in her power to make Sophie’s life as good as it can be, and—”

“Hey!” Her father again pointed one shaky finger at Lucas.
Janine had never seen him so livid. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that. You’re the whole reason Sophie’s in that idiotic study. Telling Janine that herbs can work when nothing else can. You’re preying on her desperation. I want you to stay away from her.”

Janine moved toward her father, grabbing his arm to turn him around and usher him out the kitchen door and through the living room. “I’m a grown woman, Dad,” she said, walking him straight out the front door. She was relieved that he didn’t resist. He was probably so surprised to find her standing up to him, that he didn’t know how to react. “You can’t tell me who I can choose for my friends.”

He turned to face her once he was outside on the stoop. “Get him out of here, Janine,” he ordered. “I mean it. This is my property and I want him off it.”

It was not his property, but she didn’t want to rub his nose in it. “Daddy…I don’t need this right now, okay?” she said. “Lucas is right. I need you to help me now, not harass me. If you can’t do that, then…don’t come over here again.”

She couldn’t bring herself to slam the door in his face, but she closed it gently, biting her lip against the threat of tears, and walked back into the kitchen.

Lucas wrapped his arms around her when she came into the room.

“I’m sorry that was so messy,” he said.

“He still has it in his mind that you’re up to something evil,” she said, drawing away from him. “Please don’t quit your job over this.”

“I think it’s a done deal.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, and she couldn’t help but admire the steadiness in his hand after the scene with her father. Her own hands were shaking.

“Besides.” Lucas took a sip of the coffee and smiled at her. “I already have a new job.”

“You do?” she asked, surprised. “What?”

“I’m going to help you find Sophie.”

Z
oe used a long fork to transfer the cooked squirrel from the spit onto one of the cheap plastic plates she’d picked up at a Kmart in Ohio. She sat down on a large flat rock near the fire pit, rested the plate on her lap, and began carving the meat from the squirrel’s thigh. A strange breakfast, she thought, but she was beginning to like the freedom of eating whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it. She was beginning to like her freedom, period.

She was just about to raise a bit of meat to her mouth when she heard a sound behind her. The unmistakable rustling of leaves. Could it be Marti? Could she have arrived in West Virginia already? But then she heard voices and knew that more than one person was making their way into her clearing.

Quickly, she set the plate down on the rock and took two steps toward the shanty, where her rifle leaned against the porch. Turning to face the sound, she saw two young people emerge from the woods, bulky packs on their backs. A boy and a girl. Teenagers or early twenties, she thought, as she raised the rifle in front of her face, aiming it directly at them.

They froze when they saw her, both of them automatically lifting their arms over their heads.

“Don’t shoot,” the boy said.

“Git offa my land!” Zoe shouted, in what she imagined to be an accent appropriate to the backwoods of West Virginia. She kept the rifle in place against her shoulder. It made a great cover for a face that, even with hacked-off hair and no makeup, would still be all too recognizable.

“Okay,” the boy said. “We’re going. But…we lost the trail somehow.”

“Can you tell us how to get back to the trail?” the girl asked.

Trail? Zoe hadn’t known there were any trails within miles of her shanty. She’d had to create her own when she hiked in. “Git that way.” She moved the rifle toward the east. She didn’t know where the trial was, but the road was in that direction. It was miles away, but if they kept walking straight, they’d at least get themselves out of the woods.

“Thanks!” the boy said, far too enthusiastically for the amount of help she’d given them, and he and his companion turned and nearly ran back into the woods.

Shaken by the encounter, Zoe carried her plate into the shanty and sat on the sofa, her gaze fastened to the woods outside her window as she ate the squirrel. Those two kids were the first human beings she’d seen since settling into the shanty. She’d thought she and Marti would be safe here from any intrusion. Thank God she’d had the rifle close by to hide her face and her hillbilly act ready to employ.

Oh, Lord, what if Marti encountered hikers as she made her way out here? She hadn’t thought of that. If she was being honest with herself, she knew that crossing paths with a couple of hikers might be the least of Marti’s problems. Now that Marti’s arrival was getting close, Zoe couldn’t stop thinking about everything that could go wrong. There was a chance Marti would get caught during the escape and never make it
to West Virginia at all, although the warden was being well paid to make sure that didn’t happen. Still, Marti was no seasoned criminal. She did not know how to run from the law, and once the warden was no longer with her and she was on her own in the woods…well, who knew what could happen then.

As she rinsed the plate off under the pump in the yard, though, Zoe’s mind turned from Marti to those two lost teenagers again, and she was filled with guilt. They had mothers, too. Worried mothers, no doubt. And here she’d sent them back into the woods without so much as a compass or a glance at a map to help them orient themselves. She considered disguising herself and going after them, making sure they found their way, but she didn’t dare. She’d be playing games with her plan if she did that, playing games with Marti’s freedom. And that was one thing she would never do.

J
anine’s hands trembled as she held the map, and Lucas wondered about the advisability of her flying the helicopter. He was sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for takeoff, and he didn’t know if her tremor was because of anxiety over flying a helicopter after so many years or the result of low blood sugar. He’d been unable to persuade her to eat anything that morning after their run-in with her father.

The door on Janine’s side of the helicopter was open, and she was talking with one of Omega-Flight’s pilots who was standing on the tarmac. She handed the man the map for a moment, and he handed it back with some instructions Lucas could not hear.

Omega-Flight had given Janine the choice of a number of helicopters. To Lucas’s disappointment, she had passed over the cleaner, more luxurious helicopters in favor of one that looked as though it had been built from a giant Erector set. He thought she was taking the worst of the lot because they were offering it to her for free, and she didn’t want to take advantage of her old employer. But it turned out that was not her reasoning at all.

“It has a bubble cabin,” Janine said, when he asked her why she’d made that selection. “We’ll be able to see below us much better. And it’s more maneuverable.”

Janine closed the door now and looked at him. “Ready?” she asked, and he nodded.

The bird was noisier than he’d expected, but as they lifted into the air, he understood why she had chosen this particular, glass-enclosed helicopter: the entire world was visible to them as they rose above the buildings along the Dulles Toll Road. Despite the seriousness of the situation at hand, Lucas could not help a rush of joyful adrenaline at finding himself suspended in the sky.

“Have you ever been up in one of these before?” Janine asked. She was speaking loudly to be heard above the sound of the blades.

“Once,” he replied. “But I don’t remember it. I was unconscious.”
Damn
, why did he say that? Should have kept his mouth closed. Now he would have to lie to her again. It chipped away at his integrity, lying to a person he loved, and he loved Janine. Loving her had not been part of his plan, but he’d been drawn to her devotion to Sophie, to her sensitivity, and to the strength she didn’t even know she possessed. He was closer to her than to anyone else, yet he was lying to her at every turn.

“What do you mean, you were unconscious?” she asked.

“It was a long time ago. I was on a cruise with my wife and I got sick.”

“Seasick?”

“Oh, I don’t even remember,” he said. “It was a combination of things, I guess. I passed out and woke up in a hospital bed. I wouldn’t have known I’d been flown there if someone hadn’t told me.”

“So, you’re really a helicopter virgin,” Janine said.

“Yes. And given the reason we’re up here, I wish I could just stay one.”

“I wish you could, too,” she said grimly, then handed him the map. “Okay, here’s my plan for when we get over West Virginia,” she said. “Alison liked to take shortcuts. There was no way Joe and I could cover every possible route in the car yesterday. So I’ll just fly over the main route to the camp, then we can branch out from there and cover as many alternate routes and possible wrong turns as we can see.”

They were passing over a residential area and Lucas looked down at the lush cover of the trees. It was difficult to see houses beneath the foliage, much less a car. “What are you hoping we can see from up here?” he asked. He’d meant the question to sound compassionate, but having to shout it over the sound of the helicopter sapped it of its gentleness. To be honest, he didn’t see the point to this excursion, but he understood Janine’s need to do
something
, and he was more than willing to do it with her. He loved that she was not the type to sit and wait while fate took its course. Neither was he.

Janine tensed her lips. “I don’t know, exactly. The blue Honda stranded on the side of the road, maybe. A little redheaded girl walking along a deserted lane. I just don’t know.” She glanced at him. “I have to try, though, Lucas.”

“I understand,” he said.

Once they began following Route 66, the buildings and homes gave way to rolling meadows and heavily wooded hills. The flight was smooth, the view above the trees spectacular, and Janine seemed to grow more comfortable with the helicopter with each passing minute. Sometimes he had to remind himself that she had flown in the Gulf War. When she allowed herself to be so easily manipulated by Joe and her parents, it was hard to remember that she’d once possessed a cocky, rebellious side. He’d never dared to say this to her, but he thought it was fitting that she lived in Ayr Creek’s original slave quarters. She was owned by the people in the mansion, just as those slaves had been. The difference was, the slaves had no
choice in the matter. Janine did. Janine’s guilt was her real master.

“There’s the Shenandoah,” Janine said, after they’d been flying about half an hour. Lucas looked down to see the river below them. It was broad and calm at this point, and a couple of cows stood knee-deep in the water near the bank. He wondered if being above that river reminded Janine of the ill-advised canoe trip she’d taken when she was eighteen. He reached over to squeeze the back of her neck, just in case her mind was on that other child she had lost.

After a short time, Janine cut away from 66 and began following Route 55. In a few minutes, they were above the deep woods of the George Washington National Forest.

“Do you see where I marked the camp on the map?” she asked him.

He did, and he helped guide her in that direction. Soon, a lake appeared below the helicopter.

“There’s the camp.” Janine pointed to the other side of the lake, and they flew above the water, low enough to ripple the surface with the wind from the blades. A few dozen girls were swimming and playing in a roped-off portion of the lake, and Janine actually smiled as she let the helicopter hover above them. The girls looked up at them, round faces tipped to the sky, and waved.

“So,” Janine said, as they flew over land again, “let’s just make some circles out from the camp. Sort of a spiral, at least for a mile in every direction.”

They flew low over the trees, following the path of a narrow road, and Lucas’s head quickly began to ache from the effort of trying to see beneath the dense green cover.

“Let’s try this road,” he suggested, when they had completed their spiral. He held the map toward her, pointing to one of the smaller roads leading away from the camp.

“That’s one of the roads Joe and I drove yesterday,” Janine
said. “We didn’t see anything, but we might as well try it again from this vantage point.”

The road was very narrow. It looked as though it was rarely used, the paving sloppy and edged with wide bands of gravel. It snaked through the woods for a mile or so before beginning a descent from the mountain. It was easier to see the road then, as it was cut into the side of the mountain and not as obscured by trees. A sheer cliff rose above the road on one side; the land on the other side fell away to deep forest. Suddenly Lucas’s gaze was drawn to something in that forest, something dark.

“Janine,” he said. “Can you circle around there?” He pointed ahead of them and to the right, where the earth dropped away from the road. There was no guardrail. “I just want to get a closer look.”

She turned the helicopter in the direction he pointed.

“A little to the left,” he said. “Then stop for a minute so I can—”

He looked through the glass bubble on the lower right side of the helicopter, and his own body began to shake. Below them, carving a space for itself among the young scraggly trees on the steep slope, was an overturned car. He doubted Janine could see it from where she sat.

“Jan.” He worked at keeping his voice even and wrapped his hand lightly around her wrist. “There’s a car down here. It’s turned over. It must have gone off the—”

“Where?” Janine maneuvered the helicopter to try to see what he was looking at, and Lucas wished he knew how to fly this thing so that he could get her away from the area. He didn’t want her to see.

“I think we should just make a note of where we are,” he said, “and go back to—”

“Oh, my God, my God!” Her hand flew to her mouth, and he knew she had given herself a good view of the overturned car. “Is it a Honda?” she asked.

“I can’t tell from up here.”

“Maybe I can land on the road.”

“No,” he said firmly. “First of all, that’s too dangerous. Cars wouldn’t be able to see you as they come around the bend.”

“There are no cars on this road!” she shot back.

“And second, that cliff is too steep. Even if we could land here, we’d need help to get down there. We should find some other place to—”

“I need to know if it’s Alison’s car,” Janine said. She dropped the hovering helicopter lower, and he gripped the bottom of his seat to brace himself. They were entirely too close to the treetops.

There had been a fire. The saplings and leaves around the car were black, as was the car itself. He could not see the sides of the car, only the underbody. It was the shape and size of a Honda, though, and Lucas knew he was looking at the remains of a horrific accident.

Janine again pressed her hand to her mouth. “This is it, isn’t it?” she asked.

“It may be,” Lucas said.

“We have to land, Lucas! What if Sophie’s still alive in there?”

Lucas’s eyes burned as he studied the car. No one could have survived this crash, he thought. Alison must have been driving a bit too fast for the narrow, winding road, or she might simply have hit a patch of loose gravel. Her car had flown off the road at the curve and landed here upside down, maybe crushing everyone inside, killing them instantly, before bursting into flames. He said a silent prayer that was what had happened, that Sophie and the other two would not have suffered.

“Give me the radio,” he said. “I’ll call the police and let them know what we’ve found. They can be out here in an hour.”

“We might not have an hour!”

“Janine, look at me.” He grabbed her wrist hard this time,
and she turned toward him. She was weeping freely, and the panic in her eyes, the tremor in her lower lip, broke his heart. He blocked all thought of Sophie being in that demolished car from his mind, or he knew that neither of them would be able to function rationally.

“Now, listen to me,” he said. “You have to stay in control of this helicopter. That’s your first priority right now, okay? You won’t do Sophie any good if you…get in an accident, too. I’ll call the police. Sergeant Loomis is it?”

She nodded.

“Then we’ll find a safe place for you to land, and we’ll come back here and meet the police.”

Janine was staring down at the car again, and he turned her face away from the window with his hand.

“How will we get back here?” she asked.

“We’ll find a way,” he promised. Right now, he just wanted to be back on terra firma.

“Call first,” she said. “Call right now.”

“All right.” He dialed the number for the Fairfax County police, and it was mere seconds before he had Sergeant Loomis on the line. “This is Lucas Trowell,” he said. “Janine Donohue and I are in a helicopter above—” he checked the map “—above a little, unmarked road about a mile and a half west of the Scout camp. There’s an overturned vehicle below us. It looks like it went off the road and flipped over. It’s going to be hard to get to.”

In his deep, calming voice, Loomis said he would alert the sheriff in that area. Janine could find a place to land and then someone from the sheriff’s office could pick them up to bring them back to the scene of the overturned car.

It was a few more minutes before they received the call from the local sheriff. He directed them to a church parking lot a couple of miles away, where Janine managed to set the helicopter down smoothly. She’d stopped crying, and her trembling had ceased.

She was trying to be strong, Lucas thought, and a stranger might think she was succeeding. He knew better, though. Behind that calm facade, Janine was falling apart. The next few hours would be agonizing for her, and he wished there was some way to spare her from the heartache. He knew that heartache and how it could claw at a person until it ripped them to shreds.

He knew it all too well.