The Hiding Place (34 page)

“She’s packed us a picnic for the wilds, but this isn’t going to be a picnic,” she told Nick. “We’ll probably have to feed Beamer the luncheon meat that’s here.”

“I hope the rocky ground doesn’t break his cuts open again,” he said, tying the arms of his jacket around his waist. Despite the chilly breeze, they were both sweating. He jammed a flashlight from the truck into his belt and said, “Let’s roll. I want to find them before the sun sets. It’s going to be cold out there tonight, and I don’t have a match for a fire.”

“Wouldn’t that be illegal in a national forest?”

“There will probably be campsites, maybe even people we can ask if they’ve seen him.”

At the place where the tracks went into the forest, Nick scented Beamer with Laird’s sock. “Beamer, find!” he commanded, and the dog, head down, took them right along the path of the trampled vegetation.

“Can we talk, or should we be quiet?” Tara asked, stretching her strides to keep up.

“Laird’s got a good head start, so it’s okay to talk for now. If we get into some soil or mud he’s been through, I may be able to gauge how far ahead he is.”

“We’re dead tracking, trying to move faster than he can.”

Nick nodded. They emerged from a line of trees to another meadow. The flowers, weeds and heather had been blackened by frost, but it made the tracking temporarily easier: Laird had cut a path through the dead and dying vegetation that even Tara could have followed. The plants were almost thigh-high, but Beamer bulldozed his way through them.

They startled several deer, which bounded off. “He could easily hide in here,” she said.

“I hope to hell he tries it, not knowing we have Beamer.”

Bless Beamer, Tara thought, as the sack of supplies she carried bounced at her side. She prayed they’d find Laird soon. Little Jordie was no doubt being jolted as Laird walked or ran. Would the child think it was just some grand game with Daddy, or would he pout or cry? Suck his thumb? Ask for his mommy, who was not his mommy at all?

As the sun sank lower behind them, they went even faster. Tara was out of breath and fighting to ignore a stitch in her side. But that pain was nothing compared to that in her heart.

A tree line loomed ahead again, and she thought she could hear rushing water. It didn’t sound like the roar of a waterfall, but maybe it was just too distant. They came down from a little rise at a good clip, and Nick fell—straight down.

“Oh, Nick!”

“Damn—ankle.”

With his left leg, he’d stepped into a hole to his knee. Tara knelt beside him, then called, “Beamer, sit,” since the dog had stretched out his lead.

“I think it’s broken,” Nick told her through gritted teeth. “Even heard it snap.”

“Nick, no!”

“Ah-argh! Can you help me pull it straight up?”

His tanned face had gone amazingly white. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and upper lip. She got on her knees to put her shoulder under his arm, then, with his help, lifted him. They managed to pull him out.

“Rabbit or marmot hole,” he grunted. “Tibia broken above the ankle. I’m sure of it.”

“What can I do?”

He flopped flat on his back and seized her arm, pulling her down to him. “I can’t go on, can’t go back, at least not on my feet. If I could get a stick, maybe I could drag myself.”

“I can’t leave you, but—”

“Tara, I can’t let you face Laird alone. Try calling for help for me with your cell. Police or rangers can hike in from our car with your general directions, or even a chopper could fly in.”

She nodded, seeing once again Marcie’s flailing body as she fell from the chopper into the mountains. But if she didn’t chase Laird right now, she might lose her son forever. And if he saw police or rangers, even a chopper—one that wasn’t sent by his father—he’d think they were after him. He’d said no cops, or else.

“Nick, could you call them? Describe where you are, or they could track you on a GPS signal from your cell? I’ve got to go on. I know you can take care of yourself, but Jordie can’t.”

“I can’t lose you,” he said through gritted teeth. “The Lohans will obviously do anything to get their screwed-up way. You’ve been an obstacle in their path, but not as much as you are now. You’ve turned into their worst nightmare.”

“I know Beamer can’t take much, but I can track with him. I have to try before Laird gets away. I’ve come so far, with your help, but I have a son. Please, if you love me, let me try.”

“I do love you,” he said with a grimace when he lifted a hand to cup her cheek, “but I can’t let you get hurt.”

“Laird only said don’t call the cops to come after him. They can rescue you. If you ask me to leave Beamer here, I will, and go on alone. I love you, too, Nick. We’ve had only twelve days together, but that’s enough time for me to have found the love of my life. Still, I have to do this, or I’ll never forgive myself—or you, for not letting me go.”

He pulled her harder against his chest; she thought he meant to hold her there. But he thrust her away so she sat back on her heels.

“All right,” he said. “I understand that and don’t want you living with regrets. You know the commands, you’ve tracked with Beamer and read pressure points. But don’t let that bastard do you in. Come back with your son, and we’ll move heaven and earth to be together, to raise him—Lohan lawyers, lies, whatever we have to take on. But remember, the Lohans are lethal.”

“I’ve learned that the hard way. Forgive me for leaving. I know you love Beamer.”

“As I said, sweetheart, I love you, too. Get going. And if it seems you’re getting close to him, look ahead, slow up, approach him round about, read the signs. Here, take the flashlight. It won’t be light long, and don’t make yourself a target by shining it after dark.”

She kissed him hard. Tears pooled in his eyes. She was terrified, but she had to go on.

She stuck the flashlight in the waistband of her slacks, then carefully coaxed Nick’s cell phone out of his jacket pocket and put it in his hand. She left him the crackers and one can of juice from Veronica’s sack, then wrapped Beamer’s lead around her wrist. She turned away before she lost all courage.

“Beamer, find!” she called to the dog, and they were off again. Finders keepers, she told herself, blinking away tears. She had never loved Nick more than when he let her go, but she did not look back.

When the rustling of Tara and Beamer’s moving through the dried plants died away, Nick lay still, trying to bargain with his physical and emotional pain to make the call. He had to get help before dark. He didn’t want to spend a night out here incapacitated, unable to protect himself if a bear or mountain lion came calling. His stomach twisted at that thought, because that meant Tara and her child could face deadly danger, too.

But if he did phone now, the police or rangers would ask questions. They’d go after Tara and Laird, and that might push Laird over the edge. Who knew what the cornered and desperate man would do with Lohan fortune and future on the line? Kill Tara to shut her up for good? Harm his own son? Maybe he should just endure this night, then call for help in the morning, give Tara time to do what she’d asked, what she was risking her life to do.

He recalled that he’d told her once that trackers must be “fence walkers,” rational, not emotional. On her own, in charge of Beamer, could she keep her wits about her? From deep within, he felt his own buried demons clawing to get out, his emotions taking over. He sniffed hard and fought to keep control.

He put his cell phone back in his jacket pocket, trying not to move his leg because that shot red-hot jolts of pain through him. That hole, just a few feet from here, had ruined everything. Staring up at the darkening sky, he remembered the day his novice dog trainers had stepped into the hole that hid the trip wire for a bomb. The IED didn’t go off—a dud, or somehow diffused. He’d started feeling lucky then, feeling invincible for all of them, but that very afternoon the horror happened.

Nick shuddered as his thoughts ran rampant. Why had he let Tony and Clark go on when they made a wrong turn? Because the bomb hadn’t detonated, did he think they were home free? Home free—how he’d like to be safe at home with Tara and Claire, a family, like Tony and Clark would never have because he screwed up and they got blown to bits. Had he made another mistake in letting Tara go on without him? Even though she had Beamer…what if he lost them both? It would be his fault again, again…

He started to sob in great, wrenching heaves, causing agony through his leg. He had not cried at all, not when he’d lost his men and blamed himself, not when he’d seen Tara grieving for the lost child that had turned out to be a lie.

“Take care of her, Beamer,” he whispered, as if the dog could hear on the reach of the wind, “’Cause I can’t now.”

Tara almost screamed at a sudden roar. Oh—a covey of ruffled grouse burst into flight from the field. Damn! Nick had told her to watch for signs. Maybe she could tell Laird’s location by such things as startled animals on the run or in flight. All that locate work she’d done from the safety of her desk, all the times she’d stayed home and searched only online, all that was behind her now. She had to find and face her own child-snatcher in person.

They were almost to the trees edging the huge heather meadow where Nick lay. She felt torn in two, not to be with him, to have left him. But Nick injured was surely safer than Jordie, even when the child was hale and hearty. And the boy was now in the arms of a desperate man. She believed Jen when she said that Laird wouldn’t hurt the boy, yet hadn’t he already hurt him by taking him from his real mother? By letting someone with a drinking problem take care of him? By carrying him into a huge forest where anything could happen?

Through another dense stand of spruce with wind sighing through their branches, she heard a bubbling stream again. If only it could be the one feeding the waterfall Veronica had mentioned, but she heard no telltale booming sound. She pulled Beamer back on a shorter lead. Thank God, the scent must still be strong because the dog never wavered.

Tara felt even more hopeful when they came across a marked trail and turned down it. The going was so much easier here, and she might meet hikers or hunters. On another train of thought, her jacket and slacks were tan, which might help to camouflage her from Laird’s eyes, but she’d heard of hunters mistaking people for deer or elk. Was it hunting season here, like at home?

She saw and heard no one on the trail. It soon led to a wooden boardwalk over a soggy piece of ground. A sign read Crooked Creek Trail. She almost cried in relief to see any hint of civilization. Maybe Laird was taking Jordie to a campsite with shelter for the night; maybe she could catch up with him, reason with him, use all her skills of dealing with distraught parents to convince him to give Jordie to her. Then he could escape and she’d send no one after him, tell no one what the Lohans had done.

But she knew she’d already said too much. She’d accused him and Jordan of complicity in two murders, as well as stealing her child.

“Beamer, sit,” she whispered, and, panting, the dog obeyed. Up ahead she saw a small, slant-roof shelter built above the narrow, rocky floodplain of a stream. The water was white with small rapids as it bounced over boulders. All around, shadows were long, but the stream’s foam stood out in the dying rays of sun, reflected from the tops of the trees.

She caught up to Beamer. Remembering Nick’s hurried advice to her as she set out, she took the dog off the trail and approached the site through the trees. It looked deserted, but someone could be in the small shelter house above the stream bed. It reminded her of the day she’d followed Marcie and mistakenly thought she might be in the hunter’s cabin.

Should she send Beamer in alone? If he tracked Laird to the shelter, did that mean he and Jordie were inside? Or would that just show he had been inside but had come back out?

Feeling like a fool, wishing desperately Nick was with her, she took Beamer back onto the trail, unhooked his lead from his collar and scented him again with Laird’s sock, which she had stuffed into the sack. “Beamer, find.”

Feeling bereft and alone as the dog went on without her, she hid behind a tree to watch. The Lab went directly to the shelter and into it, then came out and darted along this side of the stream, turned back, then searched along the stream again.

“Beamer, heel!” she cried, and ran toward him. The dog came immediately. She peeked into the empty shelter. No signs anyone had been there.
Read the signs,
Nick had said, but what signs? Darkness was closing in. Beamer must have lost Laird’s scent. Maybe he’d crossed the stream here. She’d heard of escaped prisoners who walked in water when the hounds were tracking them, then came out somewhere else up ahead. Before night fell, she had to get them across that water and pray Beamer could pick up the scent on the other side.

But could Laird be watching, even in the thickening dusk? She’d seen a half-moon last night, but would that be enough, even with her flashlight beam?
Don’t make yourself a target by shining it after dark,
Nick had warned. If she plunged into the woods ahead, it could be very dark. Laird could be behind any tree. Maybe she should spend the night in the shelter. But that could be a setup; he could close her in, trap her there, tie her up or worse.

“Beamer, heel,” she repeated, putting him back on the lead wrapped around her wrist. No, she wasn’t stopping in a place that seemed to offer shelter. She had to get across the stream, trusting Beamer not to fall in and drag her with him. The water didn’t look deep, but a slip could mean being battered against the rocks and being soaked out here for a long, cold night.

Tara stepped out onto the first boulder of what appeared to be the best stepping-stone path over the rushing stream. She leaped to another rock, one not underwater but slippery with wet moss. Praying Beamer would not fall in, she took another rock, then another, with Nick’s wonderful dog leaping behind her.

She sprang onto the other bank, crunching small stones. Beamer jumped beside her, and she knelt to hug him. He was wet from his belly down. At least one paw was bleeding where he must have opened a cut again. She wet a strip torn from her blouse and took him up under a tree near the stream, then cleaned and wrapped his paws.