Desolation Point (10 page)

Still chewing the granola bar she had dispatched in two bites, Alex refolded her map and set off again with a renewed sense of urgency. From the information Sarah had managed to provide, Marilyn and Walt had been able to plot her likely route and give Alex a good idea of her current whereabouts. It was by no means an exact science, but it was certainly better than nothing, and the old trail Alex was following headed in the right direction. In a guarded tone, Marilyn had warned her that Sarah was injured, but Alex was loath to start worrying about the implications of that just yet.
Don’t go borrowing trouble
was one of Walt’s favorite sayings, and she had decided that was sage advice, given her situation.

Her trail was descending at a steep gradient, and she had to step carefully to stop herself from slipping. Loose stones rolled beneath her boots, making the path treacherous, so she moved to its edge to try to walk on the grass and moss that had taken root there. She followed the zigzagging route for an hour, her knees and lower back aching with the stress of tempering her speed. Small streams sluiced across her path at regular intervals, impromptu waterfalls cascading down the mountainside to further increase the volume of the river she could hear pounding its way through the valley.

Her caution now had little to do with losing her footing. Instead of remaining on the trail all the way down, she began to break a route of her own, keeping the path in sight but weaving through the trees above it until she was low enough to catch glimpses of the gray foaming rapids that split the forest in two. Descending farther still, she could see that the river was completely inaccessible, huge rocks tumbled by avalanches creating an unbreachable barrier, and yet she knew that at some point Sarah had found a clearing. This made her plan an incredibly simple one: find the same clearing, walk for another twenty minutes, and then look for a tree felled by lightning. It sounded so easy in theory, but in practice it would probably be akin to finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Despite her misgivings, however, the clearing proved surprisingly easy to spot. An obvious natural opening had been formed by the path of an old avalanche, and grasses and ferns had taken full advantage over the years to create a small lea. She had seen nothing like it so far, and peering downstream into the mist rising from the water, she could see no other similar clearings, masses of rocks quickly dominating the landscape again. Confident of being in the right place, she was setting off to start her search for the stricken tree when a flash of movement ahead of her made her drop quickly into a crouch. Any hopes she had had that it was Sarah were immediately dashed when a second figure joined the first. Keeping low, Alex crept toward a thicket of new-growth firs and watched as the man and the woman conferred and then slowly turned full circle to scan the area.

Alex froze as the man looked across to her hiding place. His face was pinched and pale, but anger and frustration blazed in his eyes, and his attention did not linger for long.

“She’s not here, Nate.” The high whine of the woman’s voice carried her words easily to Alex.

“I fucking know that.”

The man—who Alex now knew was Nathan Merrick—was already walking onward, not bothering to wait for the woman to catch up with him. He was going in the exact direction Alex had been heading. At a loss as to what else she could do, she timed a minute on her watch and then set off behind them.

*

Beads of water dripped from the moss with the regularity of a ticking clock. With her hands cupped beneath it, Sarah waited patiently for her palms to fill and then gulped the water down. No matter how many times she did this, her thirst still raged, but she didn’t dare move to the stream she could hear trickling close by like a particularly cruel form of torment. She leaned her head back down on the duffel bag and pulled her knees close to her chest. Something low on her abdomen gave her a sharp stab of pain, and warm wetness began to soak into the sweater she had wrapped around her wound. With a moan, she twisted to sit up again, pressing the sweater against herself and trying not to cry out. Her feet scuffed in the gravel as she struggled to find a comfortable position, and she was about to try lying on her other side when she heard the crunch and snap of a twig and then the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching. She shrank back into the shadows as far as she possibly could, clenched her fist, and waited.

It happened almost before she knew anything about it. There was a rustle of cloth above her, a slithering of mud and small stones, and a hand that clamped across her mouth. An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her close while a second hand gripped her wrist. She struggled briefly, straining to wrench free.

“Shh.” Little more than a rush of breath against her cheek. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

A woman’s voice, young, and sounding as scared as Sarah felt. She shuddered once, fatigue and relief draining all the fight from her. The hand covering her mouth was cautiously lowered, and she relaxed her own hold on the shard of rock she had readied as a weapon.

“Hey, Sarah.”

The whisper was only just audible. Sarah turned her head slightly but could still only sense rather than see the woman’s smile.

“My name’s Alex. It’s good to finally meet you.”

It had all been due to dumb luck in the end. Both Alex and Merrick had heard the rattle of stones as Sarah moved, but from her position twenty yards behind him, only Alex had seen the flash of black and yellow on the sole of Sarah’s boot. Unable to pinpoint the source of the noise, Merrick had eventually walked on to continue his search. Alex had waited for him to move out of sight and then waited a few minutes more before she dared to approach Sarah’s hiding place. Now, pressed next to her in a water-worn hollow at the base of a rock, Alex listened to Sarah’s labored breathing and tried to figure out what to do next.

“Are they still out there?”

They were the first words Alex had heard Sarah speak, and she found herself smiling in surprise at the British accent.

“No, I think they’ve gone. How you doing?”

Sarah laughed quietly, as if unsure exactly how to answer, but her hand flew to her side and the laugh turned into a moan of discomfort. “Oh shit, I’ve had better days.”

Her hand was freezing cold when Alex squeezed it. Trying not to show her concern, she edged around until they were sitting side by side.

“Sarah, how badly are you hurt?”

When Sarah tipped her head to look at Alex, the hazel-green of her eyes was the only color that remained in her face. “I don’t know,” she admitted a little sheepishly. “I thought if I could still run then it couldn’t be so bad, but I can’t get it to stop bleeding for long.”

“So we need to find somewhere we can patch you up, then.” Alex realized that she did have a plan after all; she just wasn’t sure exactly what Sarah would think of it.

*

“You want to go back up?” Sarah sounded exhausted by the very idea, and Alex shook her head quickly.

“Not all the way up. We just try to keep following the river and then go up to here. See…” She traced her finger along a blue line on her map and stopped at a small black square. “I’m not sure what this is. It may be an old lookout post or logger’s hut.” She could sense Sarah watching her as she refolded the map, and she swallowed hard, hating what she had to say. “We can’t keep going down, not yet. Not while Merrick is looking for you. Most of the access roads are blocked, no one can get in to help us, and you look like you’re gonna fall over as soon as you stand. We need somewhere we can hole up for a while. I don’t…” She opened her hands, unaccustomed to feeling at such a loss. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Sarah took a measured look at the cramped space they had been sharing for the past hour and then held her hand out to Alex. With a grin, Alex carefully helped her to her feet, wrapping an arm around her when she wavered.

“Do me a favor?” Sarah said, once she seemed confident of staying upright.

“Sure. What?”

“Carry that for me?” She toed a bag that Alex hadn’t even noticed. “I can manage your pack, but that’s really bloody awkward.”

The bag was a small duffel bag, difficult to carry for any length of time and not the type of pack an experienced hiker would be using. Slightly confused, Alex passed her pack over, wincing in sympathy as Sarah shouldered it. She swung the other bag onto her own shoulder.

“This yours?”

Sarah shook her head. “No. I sort of nicked it.”

“Nicked?” Alex couldn’t place Sarah’s regional accent, but it certainly wasn’t one typically found in British costume dramas.

“Sorry, I
stole
it. When I, after they―” She shivered and wouldn’t meet Alex’s eyes.

“It’s okay, you don’t need to…I know what he did.”

For a second, Sarah looked utterly lost, but then she straightened her back and nodded at Alex. “We should go.”

For almost four hours, they walked in silence. The wind whipped away anything they did try to say, and the effort that the trek was demanding and the fear of being discovered stopped them from attempting to shout over it. There was no path, just the line of the river and landmarks they had both memorized before setting off. They had been walking for little over an hour when Alex realized that Sarah had stopped taking notice of their route, as if only sheer force of will was making her put one foot in front of the other. Alex stayed close by her side, not close enough that Sarah would notice but close enough to catch her if she fell.

*

“Okay, easy, easy. Sit here for a second. I just need to commit a misdemeanor.” Alex steered Sarah to sit on an old log, then dropped her bag and hunted around for something she could use to smash the padlock on the door of the decrepit-looking hut. “Why the fuck would anyone lock this?” she muttered, selecting a decent-sized rock and eyeing the best angle of attack. With a hard swing, she smashed the rock against the metal and then stared open-mouthed when the lock disintegrated immediately and the door swung open.

“Oh.” Hearing something that sounded suspiciously like a stifled giggle, she turned to find Sarah bending double with laughter. Alex smiled. “Think I overdid that?”

“Possibly, just a little.”

“C’mon.” She tucked her hand beneath Sarah’s arm. “Let’s get you inside.”

Despite the dull light enveloping the valley, it took a minute for their eyes to adjust to the near-total darkness in the hut. Constructed entirely from wood, its single room was windowless and smelled strongly of mildew and animal musk.

“It’s bijou,” Sarah said lightly.

“It has a certain charm,” Alex agreed. She panned her flashlight around the tiny building. A large crate and a wooden chair were the sole furnishings, but against one wall stood a small log-burning stove with a pile of kindling stacked up beside it. “Oh, now, that’s more like it.”

As Sarah sat wearily in the chair, Alex wedged an old ax beneath the wooden crossbeams of the hut door to hold it closed and then turned back to the stove. Newspapers mixed in with the kindling bore dates from the 1980s. Her initial optimism fading, she struck one of her waterproofed matches. Despite the dampness evident in the hut, the small piece of paper she lit burned brightly and smoke curled up toward the chimney. She held her breath, hoping against hope that after thirty years it was still functional. The smoke disappeared within seconds and she rocked back on her heels with a quiet whoop of joy. She selected the driest pieces from the woodpile and soon had a fire crackling in the belly of the stove. Amber light flickered across the filthy floor, revealing a covering of straw and moldy carpet. On one of the walls, hung on a single nail, was a photograph of a stern-looking young woman, its edges smudged by greasy fingerprints as if it had been taken down and put back up many times over.

“She looks like she was loved.” Sarah had followed Alex’s gaze to the photograph.

“Yes, she does,” Alex said softly, but the pang of remorse she felt at trespassing in a stranger’s home was swiftly tempered by the practicalities of their own circumstances.

The hinged lid of the crate was stiff with lack of use, and it creaked noisily as she opened it. Inside, she found three dusty blankets, a pair of overalls, a length of rope, and a set of tin cooking utensils.

“What if they see the smoke?”

Her hand poised to unzip the duffel bag, Alex hesitated and turned to look at Sarah. She was watching the fire as if mesmerized, but didn’t seem to want to take advantage of its heat until she was certain that it wouldn’t be snatched away from her.

“The mist should be enough to hide it. Here, stand up for a second.” Alex pulled Sarah’s chair right up to the stove and then nodded at her to sit back down. “They don’t know which direction we headed in, and with the weather this bad it’ll be dark in a few hours. I think it’s worth taking the chance.”

“Oh, okay. That’s good,” Sarah mumbled, her head nodding as she fought a losing battle to stay awake. Alex carefully leaned her forward and took her sodden jacket off. The sweater underneath was equally soaked and Alex could see dark stains on the one wrapped around her abdomen, but she seemed to be comfortable enough for the moment.

Leaving her to doze, Alex turned her attention back to the duffel bag. It had been packed with military precision: packets of dried food stacked above two complete changes of clothing, a flashlight with spare batteries, a generous supply of cigarettes, and a wash kit that included a bottle of hair dye. A Ziploc bag contained a passport, driver’s license, and Social Security card. The photograph on the papers belonged to Nathan Merrick, but all three bore a new name. At the bottom of the bag were a rudimentary first aid kit, a leather pouch, and a filthy oilskin. She unsnapped the fastener on the pouch and let out a whistle as a thick wad of hundred dollar bills fell out first. She set the cash aside and drew out what remained. It was not a handgun as she had hoped, but a handheld GPS device.