Endless Fear (29 page)

The tree trembled. April gasped. Renewed terror shot through her. She grabbed tighter still to the thick limb. It felt as though the fir’s roots were slipping from the soil. Panicked, she executed another foothold search, this one concentrated to her left side.

More pebbles avalanched. She listened, disheartened as they clattered down the wall. However, instead of disappearing in the surf, she could have sworn she heard them clunk against solid rock.

With her throat constricting, April cautiously shifted her body, craned over her left shoulder and scanned the scene below. The waning light cast shadows across the whole area, but she could see enough to set her pulse skipping with hope. Less than fifteen feet down, slightly left, there was a wide flat ledge, the very step she’d been looking at when she’d been shoved from the cliff. If she could swing—

A loud crack interrupted the thought as the section of tree April was clinging to broke.

Chapter Seventeen

Panic seized Spencer. He spun on his heel and raced for the foyer wishing his mind would stop conjuring horrific images of April. Injured. Helpless. Perhaps dying. His blood flowed as cold as a mountain river.

Thane caught up with him at the front door and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Spencer jerked free of his twin’s grasp, frowning at him as though he were an idiot to ask such a stupid question. “To find April.”

“
Without a jacket or a flashlight? Use your head! Turtle Rock is a mile from the house. It’s freezing outside and what moonlight there is won’t allow you to see beyond your big toe. How much good do you think you’ll do April if you go off half cocked?”

The last thing Spencer wanted to deal with at this moment was logic. But Thane made sense. “My jacket’s upstairs. Where’s that big flashlight of yours?”

“
I’ll get it. But I’m coming with you.”

Spencer charged up the stairs. Thane dogged his heels, instructing, “Change shoes, too. And grab a blanket.”

These last words sent icicles stabbing through his brain. April would be cold when they found her, from shock, from hypothermia, from… No!
April, please be all right
, he prayed, running down the hall to his room.

He was headed back to the foyer in less than three minutes, precious minutes he realized, that could make the difference between April’s life or her death. The excited rumble of rapid activity throughout the upper floor barely penetrated his worried mind. Hastening down the steps, Spencer crammed a fleecy blanket inside his suede jacket and worked the snaps closed.

“
Here’s the flashlight,” Thane said from behind him. Spencer stopped long enough to grasp the object by its neck.

In the foyer, August sat on the bench seat of the hall tree, lacing his work boots. He glanced at the twins as they approached. “I’ve instructed the household, guests included, to change clothes and assemble in the kitchen.” He finished tying the last knot and stood. “Karl’s gone to the workshop for… Oh, here he is.”

Karl came through the front door carrying an armload of various shaped and sized flashlights. “I didn’t take time to check them.” He sounded slightly breathless.

“
I’ll do that.” August selected two of the newer looking flashlights, determined they were working properly and handed one to Thane. The other he stuffed into Karl’s coat pocket, then relieved him of the remaining bunch. “I’ll organize the others, but we won’t be as quick as you three. Go straight to Turtle Rock,” he advised, hustling to the kitchen.

As Karl opened the front door, something struck Spencer in the back of the thighs and wrapped itself around him like a lasso. He lurched to a stop. “July?”

Keeping her arms locked about his legs, she gazed up at him with tear-blurred eyes. Her face was as pale as milk, and she wore her coat and boots. “I know the way to Turtle Rock. I want to go, too.”

Disengaging her arms, Spencer knelt to embrace her. “Not this time, twerp.”

“
I don’t want April to be hurt.” Her voice wavered with tears.

Spencer felt his heart contract with renewed fear. “She’s not hurt, sweetheart. She’s probably just gotten lost in the dark.” God let that be the truth. Kissing the top of her head, he rose and turned toward the open doorway. He could see Thane waiting on the stoop.

As he reached the door, July grabbed his pant leg. “I still want to go.” Her little jaw lifted at a stubborn angle that heartbreakingly reminded him of April.

“
July, you’re not goin’ anywhere. Now let loose of your brother this instant.” Cynthia descended the staircase to her daughter and clamped her hands on the child’s shoulders. “Sugah, you have to stay inside with Aunt March and Vanessa’s grandmother.”

“
I’ll let you know the minute we find her, twerp. I promise.” Spencer tossed his mother an appreciative look and left. Pulling the door closed behind him, he effectively shut out the sound of his sister’s sobs, but not the anguish they caused him.

“
She’ll be all right as soon as we find April,” Thane said.

Spencer knew his twin was trying to ease his pain and he was grateful for any crumb of hope. “You’re right! Let’s go find her.” He fell into step with Thane, playing his flashlight beam across the ground. “Where’s Karl?”

“
He took the trail through the woods. I said we’d follow the cliff path.”

“
Good thinking. It’s quicker.”

“
Not necessarily. In this weather it’ll be as slick as slime, but we have two flashlights compared to his one.”

Spencer didn’t give a rip who had what advantage or what kind of precautions Thane thought should be taken. He proceeded at a careless clip, shouting April’s name every few feet. His ears were sensitized to every sound, every wave hitting the shore, every night animal startled by their approach, every crunch of gravelly soil beneath their feet. But nothing even remotely resembling April’s beloved voice answered his frantic calls.

“
I don’t understand this, bro.” Thane sounded as confused as Spencer felt. “There are no dangerous wild animals on this island, no poisonous snakes or insects—what the hell could have happened to her?”

“
I don’t know.” He swallowed past the tennis ball-sized lump clogging his throat.

“
Is she getting sick again?”

The question had been asked softly, but it sounded like a gunshot to Spencer. Denial sprang to his mind, his heart, his lips. “No!”

He shouted April’s name again and picked up speed, but he couldn’t outrun Thane’s question or the feeling that his brother had hit the nail on the head. Fear settled in his belly like a frozen brick as the night air closed in on him, damp and gelid and eerily motionless except for a few misty patches, swaying through the woods like eight-foot spectrals.

They were halfway to Turtle Rock before Spencer realized what the dense mists represented. “Oh, God, it’s getting foggy.”

“
Yeah,” Thane answered brusquely. There was no need to dwell on the significance of this. They both knew what it meant. They had to find April soon or be forced to give up the search until morning. Spencer swore, shouted her name, and whipped his flashlight beam across the landscape with the composure of a madman. Recklessly, he raced on, feeling the thickening mists swirl around his head and neck like a slowly tightened noose.

At long last, he spotted another light bouncing through the darkness ahead. Karl. “Have you found her?” he shouted, praying the answer would be yes.

“
No!” came the reply.

Running, Spencer reached Turtle Rock, skidded to a stop, and planted a hand on the hump of the huge bolder to keep his balance on the slick ground. His hope was turning as black as the night.

“
Watch where you’re stepping, man!” Karl crabbed. “There’s sprints in the sand here—at least there were until you skated across them—that looked about the size of April’s feet.”

“
Damn!” Spencer wanted to look, but feared if he stepped back he might further destroy what little evidence existed. He forced himself to stand firm. “Thane check out the prints,” he pleaded with a ragged voice. Leaning into his palms which were flattened against the rock, he braced his weight on his locked arms and strove to catch his breath.

Directing his beam around Spencer’s shoes, Thane knelt and examined what was left of the prints. “All these prove are that she was here. The ground was so damned dry this afternoon there’s no way to tell which way she went when she left.”

“
Shouldn’t we assume she’d go back to the house?” Spencer had finally caught his breath and was trying to think with what logic he could muster. “After all, she knew Vanessa’s family was coming for dinner.”

Karl frowned and picked up the thought. “Yeah, she couldn’t have left the island. Her rental car’s still parked in the garage, and she wasn’t on board the ferry when I went back to Friday Harbor for the O’Brien’s.”

“
Maybe she took the ferry after you came back.” Thane looked as though he hated to even suggest such a possibility. “Have you checked?”

“
Forget it, man. That’s why I was late to the cocktail party. I was securing the ferry for the night. The keys are locked in the shed, and the spare set and the key to the shed are in my pocket.”

“
Hell!” Spencer growled, but the curse did nothing to release his tension. “Standing here speculating is futile. We’re losing visibility by the second.”

He shoved away from the rock and started to make for the woods.

Thane hooked his hand around Spencer’s elbow and yanked him to a halt. “Oh, no you don’t. You aren’t going off by yourself in this fog.”

“
The hell I’m not.” He jerked his arm, hard, but Thane held on tight. Spencer glared at his twin. “Let go of me.”

“
No.” Thane spoke with a quiet finality. “Dammit, you aren’t the only one worried about April. Dashing haphazardly through this pea soup isn’t going to find her.”

Spencer looked from his brother’s face to Karl’s and knew he wasn’t being fair. Not to them, not to April. Every pore in his body craved haste, but if he didn’t curb the impulses he would be more of a hindrance than a help in finding her.

Raking his hands through his damp hair, he sighed. “What do you have in mind?”

“
There was no sign of her along the cliff. Retracing that would only waste time. We need to cover the wooded section between here and the house. Searching in a line, keeping within a flashlight’s beam of one another is the best chance we’ve got of coming across her now.”

Agreeing, the three men struck a synchronized pace and began trekking between fir and madrona, alternately calling her name.

Branches slapped Spencer’s cheeks and crunched beneath his shoes. He stepped in chuck holes and stumbled over logs, but he barely noticed as his gaze scoured the forest floor for a trace of April. Her face swam before his mind’s eye and with every step, a painful band threaded tauter across his chest.

By degrees the fog grew thicker. At several points the three men were forced to lessen the distance separating them, each time narrowing their individual fields of search until eventually they were only a few feet apart.

Spencer guessed they’d gone about half a mile when he heard a voice calling. His head shot up. He eyed the swirling mist in front of him, finally detecting a dim light, then several more, all moving toward them.

“
It’s August and the others,” Karl informed them unnecessarily.

Spencer hollered, “August, have you found April?”

“
No.” The fog seemed to muffle the word, but not its import. Suddenly Spencer couldn’t breathe. The panic he’d struggled so fiercely to control ripped from its restraints and charged his bloodstream. He tore through the underbrush screaming, “April! Where are you? Answer me!”

Right away, Thane was there, grappling with him. Spencer bellowed with rage and threw him off. He managed to run three more feet before Karl tackled him. He pitched through empty air and landed with a painful thud on rough, wet ground. The wind poofed from his lungs, but the blanket inside his jacket buffered the impact to his rib cage. Spencer closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath, tried to shut out the annoying ringing in his ears. Slowly, as he lay sprawled like a ferret in a game trap, his senses returned.

When he opened his eyes he found Thane squatting beside him. The concern on his brother’s face cut a swath of remorse through him. He offered a feeble, “Sorry.”

“
Are you all right?”

“
I will be as soon as Karl lets me up,” he grunted.