She's Got a Way (31 page)

“Yep.”

Luke turned and headed up the trail at an even faster clip, the girls right on his heels, and she realized she needed to catch up or be bear bait. She tightened her straps and took a deep breath, scanning both sides of the trail before she started. Something caught her eye through a tangle of bushes—a path of trampled grass that angled out of sight into the woods.

She looked up the trail, but Luke and the girls were already out of sight. Should she just check it out quickly and then catch up to them? She'd hate to call them back if what she was looking at was just a deer path, because they'd lose valuable time getting to Sam.

“Gabriela?” Luke's voice startled her from the top of the rise.

“I found something,” she called. “Maybe.”

He motioned to the girls, who appeared over the rise, one by one, and they all came back down the hill toward her. When he reached where Gabi was standing, she pointed at the grass.

“I don't know if it's a person path or something else, but it looks like something came through here not long ago, right?”

He squinted, then squatted down and separated blades of grass, but after doing that for a few seconds, he shook his head.

“I don't see any animal tracks, and that ground's soft enough that I'd see prints. It's possible she veered off and came this way.”

“On purpose?”

He looked mystified. “I don't think so. The trail gets harder to see right about here. She definitely could have gotten confused and thought she was headed in the right direction by going this way.” He nodded. “Let's check it out.”

He slapped a reflective arrow on the tall pine right next to them, then motioned for them all to follow him. For the next half hour, they did just that, starting and stopping and changing direction until they'd ended up doing what felt like a complete circle. They were no longer on the trail, so all five of them fanned out, looking for any sign that Sam or the dogs had come through here.

Just as Gabi was about to suggest she'd been wrong about the path through the grass, Luke put up a hand, and they all stopped moving at once.

“Listen.”

Gabi froze in place, desperate to hear whatever he was hearing. They stayed still for an entire minute, but she didn't dare move, as his hand was still in the air, waiting.

Then she heard it.

A yip. A tiny, faraway yip.

Her eyes widened as she looked at the girls, who were suddenly smiling. “Is that them?” she whispered. “Do you recognize the bark?”

Luke tipped his head, but frowned. “I don't know. Could be the search dogs are out by now.”

“Would they be this far out already?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He cupped a hand to his ear. “Valley makes it impossible to tell where the sound's coming from. Bounces off the rock walls like a damn pinball machine.”

The girls waited in silence as he spun slowly on one heel, trying to pinpoint where the yips were originating, and after a few seconds, he finally seemed to decide. He stuck another reflective arrow to a tree, pointing due north, and then called in their coordinates to Oliver.

After they'd done the requisite check-in, he clipped the radio back on his pack, and looked at the girls.

“How's everybody doing?” They all nodded. “We okay to keep going? Because if not, one half of us can rest here for a bit while the others keep going.”

“No way,” Eve said. “Nobody's resting till we find Sam.”

Luke looked at the other two. “You guys agree? You're good?”

“We're good,” Madison said. “Let's roll.”

Ten minutes later, after clambering over a series of rock walls that had demarcated a long-ago property line, they paused to catch their breath and listen for the barking. For a long moment, they heard nothing but the birds, but then, just as Gabi feared they'd headed in the completely wrong direction, they heard another yip. This time, it was louder. Oh, thank God. They
were
getting closer.

The faint bark spurred them all forward, and they moved in silence broken only by their labored breaths as they half walked, half slid down the side of a deep gully and up the other side. When they got to the top and paused to listen again, Gabi looked at her watch. They'd been out here for a long time already, and she couldn't tell if they really were any closer to Sam than they'd been when they started. Was she moving just as fast as they were?

“I don't hear anything,” she whispered to Luke as the girls uncapped their water bottles.

He sighed, staring intently in the direction of where they thought the last yips had come from. Then he spun slowly in place, and she could see his eyes darting left to right, left to right, looking for any evidence that Sam had come through here.

Madison wiped her forehead. “Is it weird that we haven't seen any prints or anything? How do we know we're really on the right track?”

Luke shook his head. “Not weird. She could have walked a path ten feet to the left or right of us, heading the same direction, and we wouldn't necessarily pick up on her trail. That's why search teams fan out the way they do. But we have a target sound, which is better than I expected we'd have. We just need to figure out where the damn thing is coming from.”

He looked around one more time, and Gabi felt her stomach clench as she noticed the tightness in his jaw. He was conveying a confidence he didn't feel—she could tell—so he didn't freak the girls out.

He motioned them forward. “Come on. Let's stay on our heading, and eventually we'll meet up with the team coming in from the west.”

Madison shook her head. “We'll find her first. We have to.”

Half an hour later, they'd traversed another wide gully, scrambling up the far side by holding on to trees and each other. Gabi couldn't imagine Sam managing the climb by herself, especially without leaving evidence. The five of
them
had churned up leaves, pine needles, and rocks on their way up the hill. If they somehow ended up lost, the search team would have no problem figuring out which way
they'd
gone.

Of course, the fact that Luke kept slapping those arrows on trees every fifty feet would probably help, too. She caught up to him as they jogged down a steep grade toward a stream. “What's with the arrows? Are you afraid we might get lost, too?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Just trying to help Sam find
us
if she's decided to start looking.”

“Oh.” Gabi swallowed. “That's a good idea.”

“Shh.” He put a finger to his lips.

“But—”

He put his hand lightly against her mouth. “Listen. Shh.” He pointed a little to the left of where they were heading. “They're barking again.”

Gabi felt her face break into a wide smile as she realized what he was hearing. It was definitely the dogs, and oh God, they were so close now.

The girls stood up straighter, new energy pouring into their exhausted legs, as they heard it, too.

Waverly's eyes widened. “They sound like they're just over that hill.”

“They might be,” Luke answered. “I hope to God they are. But remember—sound does funny things in these woods. Here's what we're going to do: we'll walk a hundred steps, and then we'll stop and listen. We're close, and I don't want to get stupid at this point and walk right by her.”

He pointed in the direction it seemed like the yips were coming from, sending the girls ahead to count their steps, while he hung back with Gabi.

When they were out of hearing range, he turned to her, and this time, his face was registering a completely different emotion that made her chest jump.

“What's wrong?” Her voice shook.

“I don't know”—he blew out a careful breath—“but I think we'd better be prepared. Those dogs don't bark.”

“You're scaring me, Luke.”

“Not trying to. Just trying to prepare you. They wouldn't be barking unless there was something wrong. They're just not barkers.”

“So why are we standing here?” Gabi clutched her stomach. “Oh, God, Luke. What if—”

He shook his head, putting up a hand. “Don't play the
what if
game. There are way too many of them out here. You'll make yourself crazy. But here's the plan—when I think we're close enough to finding her, I'm going to send you and the girls in another direction and I'm going to go check things out.”

“No! You can't send us off. She's
my
kid.”

“Gabi.” He put both hands on her shoulders. “Listen to me. If something bad
has
happened, then you don't want the other girls to come across her first. Believe me.”

“Luke—” Gabi felt tears threaten.

He squeezed her shoulders. “Let's pray for the best, okay? Something big enough to hurt her probably would have done in the dogs first.”

Gabi's eyes widened. “So it's actually a good sign that they're barking.”

“Let's go with that.” He turned around. “Come on.”

Ten minutes later, the barking was getting steadily louder, and all five of them were walking faster, knowing they were catching up to Sam. They had to be. Gabi tried not to think about how quickly they
were
catching up at this point, since it seemed pretty obvious that the girl was no longer moving forward.

They just needed to find out why.

Just then, Luke put a hand up to stop them, and he looked at Gabi long and hard before crouching down to the ground and sweeping pine needles with his fingers. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. That was his signal. He thought he knew where she was.

She was torn between elation and terror.

Luke pointed at the ground. “I think I see a track. And another one. Looks like she might have veered off here.” As he pointed down a hill that opened into a clearing to their right, Gabi found herself looking left, wondering what he'd seen that had triggered him to send them in a different direction. The dogs had gone quiet, and she saw nothing physical that would indicate they were right on top of her.

Then she looked up.

And saw thin vertical stripes on the huge pine next to them, sap still dripping from them.

 

Chapter 30

“Okay, you guys head for that clearing, but freeze when you get to the edge of it. Gabi will be right behind you. I need to go find a tree.”

The girls rolled their eyes at his code for having to pee, but it did the trick. They immediately turned and headed down the hill, leaving Gabi and Luke alone. He quickly unclipped his radio and handed it to Gabi.

“If I don't signal you within fifteen minutes, just press this button to talk, and Oliver will be on the other end.”

“Wh-what should I tell him?”

Luke pulled out a map and pointed to a spot. “Give him these coordinates right here, and he'll send one of the teams your way to get you out of the woods.”

“But what about you?”

“I'll be fine. When the team gets to you, send them up to this spot. I'll leave an obvious trail so they can follow me to her.”

He unholstered a pistol she didn't even know he'd brought, and her hand flew to her mouth.

“Oh, God.”

“Do
not
freak out right now, Gabriela. Freaking out is the worst thing you can do.”

“Okay. I know.” She fought to control her racing pulse. “I'm trying. I'm sorry.”

He turned her shoulders. “I'll whistle when it's okay to come back. Go. Catch up to the girls. And if you get into any trouble, use this.” He handed her an air horn. “And the radio.”

“Okay. All right.” She clipped the radio to her own backpack, and slid the air horn into a loop of fabric. “Go find her.”

As she stumbled down the hill, her vision clouded by a stream of tears, the entire summer flashed through her brain, as well as vivid scenes from the school year. She'd plucked Sam out of a hellish foster home, but what had she thrown her into? A boarding school where the girls treated her like shit, and then a camp where she continued to struggle, and now what? Things were so bad for her that she'd fled in the middle of the night into a strange forest.

That
had been preferable to the life she was living.

Gabi took a catchy breath, realizing that in her zeal to provide an opportunity to Sam and Eve, maybe she'd called it completely wrong. She'd had some idealized, rose-colored vision of how it would go—like a Hallmark movie where the two girls were plucked out of obscurity by a caring, devoted woman, and went on to have beautiful, successful lives because of her efforts.

Bullshit.

Eve and Sam had stuck out like sore thumbs from the day they'd walked onto the Briarwood campus, despite their new school uniforms and materials Gabi had purchased for them so they
wouldn't
look and feel different.

But uniforms couldn't cover up the scars of lives like theirs. New notebooks couldn't mask the fact that they'd never owned a book in their lives. And Ralph Lauren bedding couldn't make up for the fact that they'd both spent most of their lives not even knowing whether their current bed would last through the next month.

Dammit, maybe she'd been totally wrong. Maybe by bringing them to Briarwood, she'd only made things worse for them. The thought was sobering, and terrifying. She'd built her entire career on this drive to bring more opportunities to those who deserved them, and yet her first try was going up in smoke.

Literally.

She wrinkled her nose as she sniffed the air. Wait—she
did
smell smoke. Someone had built a fire. Could it be Sam?

“Smoke!” The girls came running back up the hill, pointing at the spot where they'd left Luke. “It's coming from up there!”

She wiped her eyes quickly so they wouldn't know she'd been crying, then put out a hand to stop them.