Desolation Point (20 page)

She leaned forward and vomited until there was nothing left to come up. The bitter taste of bile made her retch again, and she wrapped both arms around her abdomen as if that might somehow ease the pain there. She couldn’t look at the shelter, couldn’t bear to risk a glimpse of anything that might confirm Sarah had been trapped in there as it burned. This wasn’t an accident. She knew Merrick was involved somehow. There was no reason for Sarah to have lit a fire; all Alex could think was that Merrick had found her and hurt her and left her to burn.

Birds sang cheerfully overhead, the rising sun lifting their spirits and making the frosty clearing look beautiful. Alex covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes to block it all out.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d stayed like that. Her legs were cramped beneath her, and she was cold despite the fire and the sunshine. In front of her, the shelter had been reduced to ashes. Crumbling gray shapes stirred and floated upward as the breeze played over the top of the pile. She took hold of a solid-looking stick that lay nearby and climbed to her feet. She swayed, dizzy from a head rush and still feeling nauseous. Little needles of pain pricked her legs as their circulation was restored, and she had to use the stick to prop herself up until the discomfort had worn off. When she was confident she could move, she walked across the clearing.

Heat and smoke rose to greet her as she approached the ruins of the shelter. Her grip around the stick turned her knuckles white. She had searched for bodies before. Back on the force, she had witnessed many of the seemingly countless ways that there were to die, and the terrible indignities that could be suffered by people who had left their houses that morning without the faintest idea that their lives were to be cut short within hours. She had seen what heat or cold or trauma or the passage of time could do to a body, and she had gradually gotten to the point where she was inured to the emotions involved. None of that helped now. None of that prepared her in any way for what she was about to do.

With tears clogging her nose and the taste of bile still foul in her mouth, she pushed the stick into the ashes and began to pull the pile apart. Her arms felt leaden, as if her revulsion at her task had pervaded her muscles. The stick jarred and caught several times, but all it drew out were two metal buckles she recognized from the old backpack and a set of heat-warped cutlery. Although no expert in forensics, she knew the fire could not have been hot enough to destroy all evidence of a body, that she would have found bone fragments had Sarah been inside the shelter. She quickly turned to look across the clearing, as if staring at the ashes any longer might make that fact change. The stick suddenly felt too heavy to hold. She allowed it to slip from her fingers. A faint clack as the wood hit stone made her look down.

“What the hell?”

The sheet of paper had obviously been arranged for someone to find. A circle of stones secured it to the ground and stopped the wind from tearing it away. She snatched the paper up, confusion and hope combining to make her pulse pound in her ears. When she touched her fingertips to the blood on the paper, it was tacky, and she knew without a doubt that it was Sarah’s. The one-word message Merrick had left coated with her blood was not the most subtle of gambits.

“Holy shit,” Alex said, turning a slow three-sixty on the spot. She didn’t think she had ever been happier to learn that someone she loved had been injured and taken hostage. But then no one she loved had ever―She gave a short laugh as her thought process stalled, recognizing for the first time exactly how much Sarah had come to mean to her.

“Just hold on,” she whispered. She had no idea what she was doing. She had no plan, nothing but the clothes on her back, a small knife, a sturdy stick, and plenty of water. Her odds were horrendous, but—she spotted the downtrodden grass that led out to the far side of the clearing—at least she knew which way she was going.

*

The noise from the helicopter was merely a distant drone, but it was enough to make Merrick force Sarah down into a crouch. She couldn’t help but look up, searching the sky more with hope than genuine expectation. Nothing but a solitary bird interrupted the blue, but she drew comfort from the fact that people hadn’t stopped looking for them. Even if she was a lost cause, Alex was still out there and in need of help.

A yard away from her, Merrick slurped noisily from a canteen he had unhooked from his belt. She tried not to watch him, but she couldn’t close her ears, and the sound of the liquid was something akin to torture. She was so thirsty. Her tongue felt thick and swollen against the gag. She didn’t know how far they had walked, but the latter section had been climbing steadily. Without the use of her hands to balance her, she had repeatedly slipped and fallen, and the constant barrage of abuse from Merrick had been even more wearing than the forced march. Despite her attempt to remain impassive, she cringed as he moved toward her.

“Here.”

He pulled the gag roughly from her mouth and held the canteen to her lips. She coughed as she tried to gulp too quickly, half the water ending up down her chin, and long before she had had enough, he took it away and finished the remainder himself. She pulled her knees up and wiped her chin on the pants she had stolen from him. After a few moments, there was a rustle of plastic, followed by the sound of contented chewing. She licked her dry lips, her mouth watering as the smell of sweetened oats reached her. When her stomach rumbled, she muffled the sound behind her legs, trying not to draw his attention, but he seemed quite happy eating and in no hurry to gag her again.

“Who is he, then?” Merrick chewed as he spoke, pieces of trail bar falling onto his jacket. She looked at him in disgust. She didn’t answer until he repeated the question and reinforced it by waving his gun in her direction.

“Nobody,” she said, her voice scratchy with lack of use. “He’s nobody. He was just lost like me.” She swallowed hard, willing him not to sense the lie.

“Likely to fuck off and leave you, is he?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. Her hands were shaking; she was relieved that they were out of Merrick’s sight. “We were just trying to get out of here. He has a family back in Boston.”

“Won’t come running after you, then?” His tone told her he didn’t believe her.

“No, probably not.” She was trying to make her answers convincing, but her voice cracked and she leaned her aching forehead on her knees. Alex would come running, and fighting, and probably wielding a sharpened stick, and she would more than likely get herself killed in the process. Tears began to soak into the fabric of Sarah’s pants. “How did you find us?” she whispered, trying to change the subject before she gave everything away.

“Heard you screaming in the night like a fucking banshee,” Merrick said, screwing up his wrapper and throwing it into the bracken. “First thing you ever did to make my life easier.” When he grinned at her she could see chocolate coating his teeth, but the grin faded within seconds. “Okay, I reckon that’s enough show-and-tell.” He refastened the gag so tightly she almost choked on it. Then he took out a folded knife. Her eyes widened as he flicked the blade straight. “Quieter than a bullet,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear. He pressed the cold metal against her neck. “Don’t even fucking breathe while I do this.”

Staring straight ahead, Sarah was already holding her breath. She watched water drip lazily from a leaf, sunlight catching the droplets and casting rainbows through them, as she felt him untie her hands. She ran out of air and had to take a breath, the blade nicking her throat as she inhaled. She heard him chuckle. He had left the rope wrapped around her right wrist and now brought it forward to retie her hands in front of her. He kept hold of the rope that remained.

“Might make you less of a clumsy bitch,” he told her. He lowered the blade and wiped it clean on her jacket. She glared at him and he slapped her so hard that he knocked her onto her knees. “Or not,” he said with a shrug and set off walking. The rope pulled taut, grinding into her wrists and dragging her forward. She used the momentum to stand. Then, with no other options open to her, she followed him further into the forest.

*

Leaning on her stick, Alex took a minute to catch her breath. The stick creaked beneath her weight, but it didn’t break, and she patted it in gratitude. Its lower half was gray and battered from her frantic search through the ashes, but she had held on to it like a talisman ever since leaving the clearing.

A flutter of movement and a flash of artificial color in the undergrowth caught her eye. Using her stick, she maneuvered a plastic wrapper from the bracken. She recognized the trail bar brand as one of her own selection, while the condition of the wrapper showed that it had been discarded recently. She tucked it into her pocket, not wanting to leave Merrick’s garbage lying around. The wrapper was the first tangible piece of evidence she had found to confirm that she was on the right trail, but even so, his route had been easy to follow. Too easy. It was making her extremely nervous. Merrick seemed to have made no attempt to cover his tracks; two sets of footprints—a large pair of heavy boots and a smaller pair behind them—had frequently been left in the half-frozen mud. Now, as she paid more attention to where she stood, she could see the flattened areas of grass where he and Sarah had obviously rested. She had no idea where he was leading her or what kind of end game he was planning. She knew she was moving faster than they were; she had been all but jogging along the trail, and as she set off again, she forced herself to slow down. For the next fifty yards or so she could clearly see where Merrick had walked. Hoping against hope that she wasn’t about to fuck everything up, she began to cut a wide arc above that path. She had no intention of playing the role of lamb to the slaughter, and there was no way in hell she was going to make this easy for him.

*

Despite Merrick’s threats, the last time Sarah had fallen it had taken her several minutes to get back up. She couldn’t maintain his pace, no matter how hard he pulled on the rope, and eventually, he seemed to reach the conclusion that keeping his hostage conscious was in his best interests. At the next stream they came to, he stopped and looked pointedly toward the water.

“Don’t make yourself puke,” he said.

He dropped the rope but made no further effort to help her, and she watched him warily as she wrestled the gag from her mouth. Then she knelt beside the fastest part of the stream and for a long moment simply let the water cascade over her hands and wrists. It hurt at first, the cold and friction making the abraded skin beneath the ropes burn and sting, but a pleasant numbness followed shortly afterward, and she closed her eyes in relief. She cupped her hands as best she could and took careful sips of water. When nothing adverse happened, the liquid seeming to settle her stomach, she drank more deeply and then left her hands to dangle in the stream. Two quiet taps at her side made her look down. Merrick had tossed two glucose tablets into the mud for her. She didn’t bother to wipe them clean but just crunched into the first one and then allowed herself to savor the second.

By the time he took up the rope again and forced her to start walking, her thoughts were clearer. He had left the gag hanging around her neck as if to goad her into crying out for help. She was moderately insulted that he would even bother with such a cheap trick. Every so often now, he stopped in his tracks and tilted his head to the side, listening for any sounds that might indicate they were being followed. On one of these occasions, she heard a scuffle as if someone or something had slipped. The sound came from only slightly behind them, and Merrick smiled at the same time Sarah shuddered.

“Don’t think he’s run off back to Boston,” he said and then leered at her. “You fuckin’ him? Is that it?”

Although revolted by his tone, she didn’t shy away from him but held his gaze, and when she spoke her voice was as hard as steel.

“Fuck. Off.”

His look of surprise that she had dared to speak to him in such a way was worth the punch that split her lip and made her nose bleed. She had seen the blow coming and braced herself in time, managing to stay on her feet and raise her hands to ward off most of its force. He reared back, his fist still clenched, her blood staining his knuckles, and she watched him struggle to contain the urge to beat her until she was no longer able to answer him back.

“Not here,” he said, more to himself than to Sarah. His breath on her face was harsh and sour as he gagged her again.

She waited until he turned his back on her before she wiped the blood from her nose. The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop, so she opened her mouth as wide as possible to allow herself to breathe. The trick worked and she smiled, slightly bemused by her own resilience. There was no question that she was scared, but her greatest fear was for Alex, and she knew that when the time came she would fight tooth and nail to try to keep Alex safe. A hard tug on her wrists made her grind her teeth into the cotton of the bandana. She battened down the temptation to pull back on the rope, to try to knock him off balance and just take her chances. She suspected he would shoot her before she was close enough even to try to throw a punch.

The next time she tripped, she made sure it was right beside a sharp-edged stone, and that the stone was already in her jacket pocket by the time Merrick strode over to her. She lowered her eyes as if cowed and he gave no indication he had seen what she had done. Blood from her nose dripped steadily down her jacket, occasional droplets splattering on the path like a gruesome breadcrumb trail. Although she couldn’t stop Alex from following them, she had no intention of letting her take Merrick on alone.

*

Alex slammed her stick into the shifting dirt and tried to do likewise with the toes of her boots. It was enough to stop her from slipping, but she sighed as she watched stones tumble down the slope. This was the exact type of hike they had been trying to avoid the previous day and with good reason; it was dangerous, hard work, and painfully slowgoing. She was also well aware by now that Merrick had doubled back on several occasions to lead her in a tortuous route. If he was doing so to try to wear her down and tire her out, his tactic was having the desired effect.