The Hiding Place (35 page)

Hidden in the trees, Tara fed him half of the lunch meat and let him drink from the stream while she downed the small can of juice and several pieces of sourdough bread. She praised Beamer and rubbed his ears as Nick had taught her.

Darkness descended like a door being slammed shut. Beamer leaned into her, and she was grateful for his warmth. On this side of Crooked Creek, if that was its name, the surroundings looked different, somehow otherworldly. Lichen hung from the trees, resembling white hair blowing in the black breeze. Hemlocks predominated here, with drooping fingers reaching down from spiky limbs. Some sort of fog or mist was setting in, which made the moon and clouds look shapeless. The burble of the stream sounded like chains being dragged across the ground.

Stop it, she told herself. Stop the fear now, before it devours you. She’d tell Claire about this place when she got back, tell her it was like the haunted woods in some of her favorite fairy tales, and those always ended happily ever after.

She prayed for safety and guidance, prayed for Jordie and for Nick. Raking up dried leaves around her for some warmth, she huddled against Beamer with her back to a big, solid tree. She was suddenly exhausted. Just a little rest…Surely, with Jordie, Laird would need that, too, let her boy sleep. The child was no baby; carrying him so fast and so far must have made Laird’s muscles ache.

She hugged Beamer again. Her arms ached to hold her son. To hold Nick. Yes, they would rest here, at least for a few hours, so Beamer’s foot could scab over. She didn’t want to come up on Laird if he was waiting for them in the dark. If he’d seen that she had the dog, she didn’t want to be misled by a false trail or a trap he had set.

Nick. How was Nick? Maybe, with the opening in the hills for this creek bed, she could call him. Tara took out her phone and punched in the number of Nick’s cell. The little window of light seemed incredibly bright.
Roaming,
it said.
Roaming.
Then,
No service in this area.

Tara choked back a sob. She had never felt more scared or helpless, or alone, even with Beamer. But she wasn’t turning back. Come Laird or high water, she was going after her son.

S
omething woke Tara. She jolted alert, every muscle taut. Beside her, Beamer lifted his head, ghostly white in the predawn. Morning! She’d slept till morning! What if Laird had put miles between them? What if he’d called his father to send a chopper, and Jordie was gone from her forever?

She saw what had awakened her. Two beavers gnawed noisily at trees on the other side of the stream. She had to get going. Surely Beamer could pick up Laird’s trail on this side of the water.

Keeping a good eye on the beavers, Beamer ate more of the deli meat while Tara relieved herself behind a tree, then Beamer followed suit on the same tree, his leg lifted high. So, she thought, it had come to that, down to basics. Beamer was not Nick’s partner now but hers. How she’d come to love this dog. And Nick had loved her enough to give—maybe to sacrifice—his beloved old pal for this grueling search.

It seemed every muscle in her body ached; her head pounded with pain. Though she didn’t feel like doing anything but throwing herself flat on the damp ground to scream and cry, she took a piece of bread to eat as they went along and scented Beamer with Laird’s sock again. “Find, Beamer. Find.”

It took almost five minutes but he found the scent farther upstream, on higher ground, where she didn’t think Laird would go. Maybe, as Nick had said, Laird had a place to use his cell among these hills and mountains, a cleared location where his call could be picked up, so he and Jordie could be rescued.

She pushed herself harder to stay with the eager dog. He seemed to sense how crucial this was, as if he knew a child’s future—please, dear Lord, not his life, too—could depend on this trail. Maybe Laird was tiring, too, she thought. Jen didn’t think he’d taken food, though who knew what he’d had in the Humvee. But the vehicle had been so neat inside; he’d never been one to clutter up his vehicles with anything.

When she could actually discern a man’s tracks, she felt better. Assuming the tracks were Laird’s, she tried to read the pressure points as Nick had taught her. Laird was moving fast, his strides wide. Yet he was dragging his feet, too, no more clean prints. These imprints didn’t look dried at all, so they must be recent. But they started to waver before her eyes as if phantom feet were pressing into the soil and moving the mud even now. Was this what Nick had called ground surge, or was she just hungry and exhausted, almost dizzy?

She forced herself to lift her eyes from the trail for any sign of him ahead. Beamer went even faster, and so she did. Dead tracking. The very term scared her now.

They came to another stream, cold and clear, rushing down from the Cascades or their foothills. She had no bearings now, no real idea where she could be. As Nick had surmised, numerous streams slashed through the area. But where was the waterfall Jordan had mentioned to Veronica, near his and Laird’s hunting place, the place they’d had their dead prey taken out by air?

She glanced again into the rushing water. This stream was full of cutthroat trout, silvery brown, racing below the surface as if they had somewhere important to go. The cold current was so fierce that they had to work hard to stay in place. She wasn’t sure if that kind of trout made a yearly run back to their birthing place. Birthing place. She’d borne her son at the clinic in the cold of winter. She almost remembered some of it, the pain and panic, if not the joy. And that crying, crying she’d heard: her son in the other room, taking his first breaths, then being taken away from her.

Beamer halted and cocked his head. She wondered if he heard something she did not. He sniffed in a circle where there seemed to be a path through deep woods, heavy with drooping hemlocks and thick with frosted ferns, now gone deathly brown. Yes, Claire would think this, too, was a haunted forest in one of her fairy tales, where some witch was waiting. Tara prayed that Laird had not gone in that direction. But that was the way Beamer turned, so she strode after him.

Nick’s pain was so bad that they gave him what they called an amnesiac sedative before they set his leg. He was in the Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington, Washington; he’d caught that much. He’d managed to talk to the park rangers before they’d carted him out on a stretcher, jolting him into the pain of oblivion. They’d told him in the ambulance that he had a fever and was talking as if he’d been in the desert and two guys had been killed. They’d asked if he was a soldier and had post-traumatic stress disorder, but he couldn’t recall what answer he’d given them. He evidently had given them Veronica’s name and where to find her.

The moment Veronica arrived at the hospital, she’d told them everything, then said to him, “Tara’s fighting back, Nick. I told them that the only hint I could give them was some waterfall.”

They said they’d keep him overnight, then evidently had strapped him down, because he kept insisting he had to get up to save Tara. He slogged through forests and streams in nightmares where she stayed just out of sight, out of reach. When he opened his eyes, Veronica sat there, staring at him. She popped out of her chair by his bed and put a hand on his shoulder.

“I hope I can call you Nick,” she said at first. “I believe, once we get Tara back, we will be friends, a family of sorts.”

This feisty family matriarch was Jordan Lohan’s wife? She had helped him and Tara, so he could trust her.

“Thanks for being here,” he managed. His tongue felt too full for his mouth. What in hell had they given him? His thoughts all ran together.

“It’s quite a bad break,” she told him. “I decided to fight Laird and Jordan for all of us. The good Lord knows I haven’t done enough of that. Do you recall that I told the hospital to inform the park rangers all about Laird taking the baby and Tara going after him? And, you know,” she added with a sparkle in her eyes, “I believe I forgot to tell them Laird was the boy’s father. I just didn’t want to complicate things until he was caught.”

He tried to lift a hand to take hers in thanks, but he was still tied down.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I absolutely hate that. They did it to Tara and me at the clinic, you know. Are you sure you are not going to insist you have to save soldiers and their dogs in the desert the way you’ve been talking?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think I’ve come to terms with that now. I’m looking forward, not back, with Tara, if we can just find her.”

“So you will stay put in this bed?” When he nodded, she added, “Then I’ll undo these Velcro ties.”

“Veronica,” he said as she freed his arms, “what’s Laird capable of, if she corners him and he has Jordie there?”

She frowned and shook her head. “All the Lohan men are so crazed for heirs, but even more protective of family reputation and wealth. I don’t know, Nick. I have always admired Tara for standing up to them, but if she does it now—I just don’t know.”

Nick lay helpless in the bed, holding Veronica’s hand, thinking he’d give anything if Tara could just come back to him with her son in her arms.

When they came out into an alpine meadow, Tara saw they were high enough to have moved from patches of mist to random pieces of clouds resting on the rocky outcrops here. The air seemed thinner. Was it raining somewhere in the distance? She thought she heard an approaching storm.

Overhead, vultures soared on the thermals. Was something dead nearby? Were they stalking her or the dog? Beamer had been tiring, panting harder, but he pushed himself and her on and on. For his sake and Nick’s, too, she should stop, let Beamer rest. Other than a long drink at the last stream, he’d had no sustenance, but she wasn’t sure if he’d eat bread. She should try to bandage his feet again, because he was leaving his own reddish trail on rocks they crossed.

“Beamer, sit,” she said. The moment she stopped walking, she realized how cold it was. If they stayed out in the open, sweating like this, they’d both get sick. They had to go on, at least to shelter.

She’d tried her phone two more times since the meadow, and wanted to again. Nothing had worked so far.
Roaming,
the message had read. Roaming, just like her and Beamer. Why would Laird have come so far with her baby? Had he come all this way to give his father time to fly to the area and rescue him, get him a false identity or call in a chopper, like the one that had rescued Marcie before her death?

And then she thought she heard the falls. A muted roar, not distant thunder. Yes, that must be where Laird had been going all along. Veronica had said something about hiding under the falls. Would he do that with little Jordie? Wait for the exact time to reconnoiter with his father or a chopper?

Despite her exhaustion, she started to run, almost side by side with Beamer. If Laird gave her the chance to go with them, she wouldn’t dare, or they might throw her from the chopper as they had Marcie. But she could not bear to see Laird fly away with her boy. With their money, all three generations of Lohan males would disappear, the way they must have spirited away her clinic doctor.

Between a cleft in the hill they were climbing, the view opened up to an alpine tarn with a tall waterfall thundering into it. The roar was instantly louder; the slant of land and rocks must have muted it before. “Beamer, sit,” she said, and hunkered down beside the dog. Below her, at least a football field away, she could see a man and a child at the water’s edge. It looked as if they were both throwing stones into the ice-blue lake.

Dear God, she prayed, don’t let them be rescued and taken out of here before I can get down there. But should she leave Beamer here or take him with her? He was exhausted, bleeding, her hero. No, she needed Beamer. Maybe he could distract Laird or amuse Jordie. Nick would want her to keep Beamer with her.

“Beamer, heel,” she said, and started down the slant of grassy hill, hoping that Laird was looking only at the lake or sky. But if and when she got close to him, what then? What would she say and do? She wished she had a gun—yes, she who hated guns. With the blood roaring in her ears loud enough to rival the waterfall, she descended into what Laird must think was his own personal valley.

She was only about twenty yards from them when he looked around and shaded his eyes. Feeling like a fool, she waved, rather gaily, she thought, as if they were the fondest of lovers and she’d merely been off hunting flowers for a few minutes. Laird picked Jordie up and headed for the falls.

She was terrified at first he would do something dreadful, but she saw them disappear between two rocks. Veronica’s memory must be correct; you could walk behind the falls. She ran toward the spot she’d seen them go. Water crashed down from at least four stories high to the rock-strewn pool below.

But when she approached the place they’d disappeared, she hesitated, looking up. Beamer tried to pull her on as if he were still tracking. “Heel,” she said, and craned her neck to be sure there were no rocks overhead that could come crashing down on them. She did not believe Laird was directly to blame for her nearly being flattened at Red Rocks, but she wasn’t taking chances.

She almost laughed aloud at that thought. Wasn’t taking chances? What about all she’d done since her new doctor asked her two weeks ago when she’d had a baby? And she had not come all this way to let Jordie—her Danny—slip away now.

Still holding Beamer’s lead, she started around the back of the falls. The sound of the water reverberated off the rocks; the noise was deafening. The pathway deep into the rock was as slippery as glass. That damned Laird could fall, with Jordie in his arms!

Pressing her back to the slick rock behind her, doused at first by a blinding curtain of mist, she sidestepped under the falls. She’d thought she’d need her flashlight under here, but an eerie, bluish, rippling light lit a cavern the falls must have carved out centuries ago. Puddles, some shallow, some ankle-deep, studded the uneven path above other rock ledges and a lower pool. Some puddles were lined with slimy-looking algae. Beamer came behind, the bravest dog she’d ever seen, but then, Nick had trained him.
Nick.
If only she could have a life with him, with Claire, with Jordie and Beamer, too!