Desolation Point (15 page)

He searched the rest of the hut thoroughly but found no sign of his GPS, his keys, or his ID papers. The only thing she had left behind was a bottle of hair dye. She had taken everything else, even his fucking toothbrush.

“Goddammit.”

He stormed out of the hut, kicked the door closed, and looked around. Beth was several yards away, kneeling in the grass, retrieving something she had dropped. She held the radio up sheepishly as he walked over to her.

“I thought I heard you calling me on it,” she said, “but I think it was probably the wind. I just got a bit creeped out.” She looked at the hut and shuddered. “We’re not staying here tonight, are we?”

“No.” He wasn’t planning on staying anywhere near there that night. He was planning to search the clearing until he picked up the girl’s trail and to follow it until the light died completely. He gestured at the radio. “Keep that fucking thing off. Those batteries won’t last forever.”

Beth nodded quickly. “Sorry, Nate.”

He was already walking away from her toward a small, flattened area of undergrowth. It seemed as good a place as any to start looking.

*

The ancient stones seemed to teeter perpetually on the verge of tumbling down the mountainside. It was only the well-established growth of moss and lichen on their surface that gave any suggestion of how long they had rested in their places and for how many thousands of years they would continue to do so.

Sarah followed Alex as she waded into the bracken growing rampantly at the base of the rocks. Once she seemed certain they would be adequately hidden, she lowered her pack from her shoulders.

“I think we’ll be good here for the night.” She lifted Sarah’s pack down, and with both hands on Sarah’s shoulders she guided her to sit on a low rock. “I’m gonna scout around, see if I can find some wood, grab some water from that stream we passed.”

Sarah muttered her agreement and made as if to stand, but Alex easily held her still. “If you need me, yell. I’ll be close by and I won’t be gone long, okay?”

“Okay.” Sarah’s nod was reluctant, but she knew that she had pushed herself as far as she could go. She waited until Alex was out of sight and then lifted her sweater up. “Crap.”

Bright moonlight made the fresh blood glisten on the dressing, and when she touched her fingers to it they came away warm and coated. It was nothing that she hadn’t expected; she had felt something tear as soon as she lurched for Alex’s hand back on the slab of rock. She pulled Alex’s backpack toward her and opened it. She set aside the plastic sheeting and the blankets—things she knew they would need that night—and found their small first aid kit.

The dressing came away easily, the blood already weighing it down and pulling it loose. Holding her flashlight with one hand, she clumsily used a swab to mop up the blood that was leaking from one corner of the wound. Although she couldn’t really see what she was doing, she tore at a packet of butterfly bandages with her teeth and then swore as the strips fell all over the ground.

“I got them.” Alex’s hand covered hers, bringing it back to rest against her abdomen. “Keep some pressure on it, Sarah.”

Sarah blinked, bewildered. She hadn’t heard Alex return, but now she could see the bottles of water and an armful of wood scattered where they had been hurriedly abandoned. Alex knelt in front of Sarah and angled the light to see what the damage was.

“You’ve popped a stitch here.” As the bleeding tapered off, she tilted her head to look up at her. “Did that when you grabbed me, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Weren’t planning on telling me, were you?”

Sarah shook her head. “Wasn’t planning on it, no.”

“Figured you’d just fix it up yourself?”

“Yep.”

“And how’s that working out for you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Not all that well, actually.”

Alex’s teeth flashed white in the moonlight as she grinned, but her voice was soft when she spoke. “Gonna let me help you?”

“Please.”

“Okay, just untuck this a bit more.”

Sarah tugged at the tank top that was half in, half out of her pants and lifted it and her sweater clear.

“That’s better,” Alex said, busy trying to unpeel the butterfly bandages from their backing. “I think two or three of these will be enough to hold it closed.”

“No more embroidery?” Sarah asked, waiting nervously for the answer. She had coped with the suturing back when she was half-stupefied with shock, but she wasn’t sure she could go through it again.

Alex easily caught her meaning. “No, no more embroidery,” she said firmly.

She sealed two of the artificial sutures into place and then added a third for good measure. Sarah’s hand jerked a little as the final suture made something in her abdomen twinge, and the flashlight she had been holding for Alex to work by shifted its beam by the slightest fraction. She heard Alex’s sharp intake of breath and knew without looking what had caused it. For the past two days, Alex had been ignoring the scars twisting the skin of Sarah’s abdomen. She had dressed the gunshot wound and taken pains not to touch or allow her gaze to linger anywhere else. Now, kneeling so close that Sarah could feel the warmth of her breath flutter across the damaged flesh, there was no way for her to pretend that she hadn’t seen them.

Acutely aware of Alex’s proximity, Sarah battened down the almost overwhelming urge to cover herself and waited for the inevitable question. It came only after Alex had carefully rearranged Sarah’s sweater to cover her, and it wasn’t the one Sarah had been expecting.

“Did someone hurt you, Sarah?” Sorrow and anger fought for dominance in Alex’s voice. Sarah shook her head fervently, wanting to say something reassuring but unable to speak through the tears that were choking her.

“Oh no, c’mere.” Alex sounded mortified.

Sarah felt Alex reach for her, and for a fleeting second, she stiffened, before her resistance crumbled and she sagged bonelessly into Alex’s arms. The suddenness of her capitulation took them both onto the ground, the flashlight slipping from her fingers to plunge them into a silver-limned darkness. Smothering her cries against Alex’s jacket, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and finally broke beneath the misery that months of loss and loneliness had forced her to bear.

*

“Molly was my half sister. I don’t really remember my dad. He died of cancer when I was five, and Mum married Richard ten years later.” Sarah cradled her mug in both hands and took a tentative sip of her cocoa. There was a series of snaps as Alex broke up kindling to feed into their small fire, and Sarah watched the smoke curl up from the fresh wood. When she began to speak again, her voice was still hoarse from weeping.

“I don’t think they planned to have a child, but Molly was born while I was at university. Mum used to call her their ‘happy little accident.’” She tried to smile but shook her head instead as fresh tears made the fire shimmer in her gaze. “She had just turned seven, and she was such good fun: full of mischief and utterly fearless. Last summer, I was teaching her to swim, and that afternoon my mum had come to the pool to watch her attempt her first length. Mum was driving us home. She’d let Molly sit up front because she’d done so well.” She closed her eyes, felt tears break and run down her cheeks, and tasted salt when she licked her lips. “A drunk driver hit us, flipped our car over. The police said that Molly and my mum died more or less instantly.”

Alex’s warm hand took hold of hers, and Sarah turned toward her, unable to keep the pain of that day from her expression.

“I don’t remember much of the next month.” She made a vague gesture toward her abdomen, and that was enough for Alex to nod her understanding. “But I remember the look on my stepfather’s face on one of the few occasions he came to visit me. He held the funerals while I was still in the ICU, sold our house, left me the money from it, and went to Italy. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.” She set her mug down, no longer able to stomach the sweet smell of the chocolate. “He blamed me,” she said, something inside her loosening with the simple release of saying the words aloud. “If I’d been sitting in the front seat of the car like I usually did, Molly might still be alive.”

She lowered her head, but Alex cupped her chin and raised it again.

“You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?”

“I know that,” Sarah whispered. “Most of the time, I know that.”

Physically and emotionally worn out, she lay back on their makeshift bed of plastic sheeting and musty blankets. The plastic crinkled and dipped as Alex lay down beside her.

“I still dream of that day, over and over,” Sarah said into the darkness.

“I know.”

Something awful in Alex’s tone told Sarah that the response hadn’t been merely a platitude. She shivered, thinking of the scars she had seen on Alex’s back. Alex shifted closer to her, the warmth from their bodies gradually chasing away the cold that was seeping through the plastic. Sarah’s eyes drifted shut, and when she spoke again she wasn’t sure whether she was awake or sleeping.

“Every time I have the dream, I’m in the front seat…”

Alex held her numb fingers out to the fire and tried not to pay attention to the throbbing in her right temple and the nagging ache that a cold, damp night and extensive bruising had left in her knees. Beside her, stirring a pot of simmering oatmeal, Sarah looked about as rough as Alex felt. Her face was pale and dirt-streaked in the early morning light, with dark shadows beneath eyes that were puffy from crying and too little sleep. She had been subdued since waking, though Alex suspected that had more to do with her dread of the day to come than anything that had been said the night before. The continuous stress of being hunted and the physical stress of the hiking were slowly but surely wearing them both down.

A quick appraisal of their supplies had made them halve their breakfast rations, but even so, at their current pace, they were likely to run out of food before reaching Ross Lake. Despite the headache, Alex forced herself to eat the small portion of oatmeal that Sarah handed to her. A bottle of water was passed over next followed by two Tylenol pressed into her hand without comment.

“No, I don’t need them. I’m fine,” Alex said, holding the pills out to Sarah.

“If you were ‘fine’ you wouldn’t be hobbling around and you wouldn’t look like you were about to throw your breakfast back up.” Sarah sighed. “Just take the damn pills. Please.”

Alex withdrew her hand and stared at the pills resting on her palm. “How many do we have left?”

“Enough,” Sarah answered, concern making her voice sharp. She shook her head apologetically. “Enough for you to take those.”

Without another word, Alex unscrewed the water bottle and washed the pills down.

“We’ll get more water on the way past the stream,” Sarah said, already starting to break the camp and pack their gear. “The sky’s clearing. Rescue parties will be out looking for us. They might even be able to get a helicopter up.” She stopped midway through folding a blanket and dropped to a crouch at Alex’s side as if to emphasize the importance of what she was saying. “We just have to keep going.”

Sunlight was beginning to filter through the highest reaches of the forest canopy. Alex shaded her eyes to look up at her. She looked back, unblinking, and Alex couldn’t help but smile at the sheer determination on her face.

“Got a real fucking headache,” Alex admitted quietly.

“I know,” Sarah said. “I’m guessing your knees are playing up as well.”

“If that means aching like sons of bitches, then yes, they’re playing up.”

“The Tylenol should help, now that you’ve actually bloody taken it.”

Alex chuckled. “I was trying to be brave.”

“You
are
brave,” Sarah said, her tone sincere. Then she grinned. “How about you let me play the butch today, huh?”

Alex nudged her with a shoulder. “Gonna carry the heavy bag?”

Sarah’s own laughter abruptly faded. “Oh hell, I don’t think I’m ready to go quite that far.”

*

The trail leading away from the small clearing had been all the easier to spot for being the only possible option. Merrick had found the route the previous night, and then slept soundly in the certainty that not only was he on the right track, but he was also managing to gain ground. The early morning mist was already thinning and rising as he cooked breakfast, but he wasn’t worried that they had slept late. When Beth returned from the stream, he smiled and she blushed prettily. She pulled her hair into a loose braid before sitting by his side and giving him a kiss on his cheek.

“Smells good.” She nodded toward the pot of oatmeal.

“Maple syrup makes all the difference,” he said with a wink. It was easier to humor her than tell her it was nothing but cheap, processed crap.

They didn’t have a future together. He was under no illusions in that regard. It had been four years since she handed him a discreetly designed flyer at a gun show. Always eager to make contacts, he had gone to one of the rallies listed on the leaflet, stood in a crowd of sweating, seething white supremacists, and listened to the ferocious rhetoric of the unassuming-looking man on the stage. It had not taken long to decide that that man would be a very useful contact indeed. As the crowd roared their approval and bayed for the blood of anyone who didn’t abide by their particularly limited world view, Merrick had spotted Beth standing close to the stage. He had wandered over, flirting aimlessly with her at first. Then she had proudly named the man on the stage as her uncle, and Merrick had realized that she was his way in.

It had taken several months of dinner dates, church services, and standing reverently at Nicholas Deakin’s hate rallies before Beth finally introduced Merrick to the rest of her family. He and Deakin had been kindred spirits, not necessarily in their politics but in their desire to get a job done as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. Deakin and the other trusted groups he put Merrick in touch with had offered contracts worth thousands of dollars, and Merrick had closed on every one of the deals he had made…