Save me, p.8
Save Me, page 8
Her focus was on the bear she was convinced was hunting her, and the higher her fever went, the more vivid her hallucinations became. She kept running and hiding, and falling and praying, and when she’d sleep, Hunt was always in the dream.
The bottoms of her socks were beginning to wear. They kept getting caught in rocks and rough ground, and when she sat down, she saw bloody spots seeping through.
Her feet hurt. Her body ached. And the world kept spinning. She’d pass out and wake up on her back, staring up through a maze of green, leafy spires to the clear, cloudless sky above and cry, and then pray.
“Please, God, after all you’ve taken from me, don’t let this place take my life.”
* * *
GREG AND TINA MAYES reached the Beaver Brook trailhead early, and went straight to the communications station where the searchers were regathering. They’d taken a hiatus after it got dark last night, and this morning, they were going over the maps to the new search grids.
“Excuse me, who’s in charge?” Greg asked.
A man in uniform turned around. “That would be me, Scott Christopher. I’m a ranger with the Denver Park Service.”
“I’m Greg Mayes, and this is my wife, Tina. We’re Lainie’s parents, from Baton Rouge. Do you have any news?”
“Beyond finding some of her gear and shoes yesterday, we do not. If you’ll give me your contact information and where you’re staying, then I can let you know if we have anything new to report.”
Greg quickly wrote it all down on a pad the ranger handed him.
“Thank you both. You can wait beyond the roped-off perimeter,” he said, and turned his back.
“That was rude,” Tina muttered, as they shuffled back to their rental. “Do they expect us to wait out here in the sun all day?”
Greg gave her a look. “We came uninvited. They’re searching for our daughter, not asking you to tea. If this is all you can think about, then why the hell did you want to come?”
Tina flushed beneath the sting of his words. Truth hurt. They went back to the SUV in silence, raised the back hatch and crawled inside, then sat down to wait.
Less than an hour later, a dusty black Jeep with Arizona license plates came flying into lot, wheeled into an empty space beyond the perimeter and parked.
“Someone’s in a hurry,” Greg mumbled.
Tina watched as a tall, dark-haired man unfolded himself from inside the vehicle. He grabbed a hiking pack from the back of the Jeep, then headed toward the communications van at a run.
“Oh, Lord! That’s Hunter Gray,” Tina said.
Greg frowned. “The hell it is,” he muttered, jumped out of the SUV and took off running, with Tina right behind him. Greg cut Hunt off in the middle of the parking lot and put his hand in the middle of his chest. “What the hell do you think you’re...?”
Hunt punched him in the face.
Tina gasped, as Greg hit the blacktop on his butt—in shock at the blood spurting from his nose. Then he looked up, past the long legs and broad shoulders into the face of a very angry man with an icy blue glare.
Hunt gave Tina the same look, then toed the bottom of Greg’s shoe.
“You don’t talk to me. You don’t speak my name. Either of you. You don’t ever look at me again. I know what you did to Lainie. I know you’re responsible for the death of our child. I’m going up that mountain to find her, and alive or dead, I’m not coming back without her. I know you put your hands on her. I know she bled on her bedroom floor. But I didn’t know then, what I know now. If she’s dead, I will kill you.”
It was pure reflex that made Greg flinch as Hunt walked past him, and then he crawled to his feet with blood dripping down the front of his shirt.
Tina was horrified and scurried away, leaving her husband to get himself back to their car. She got her laptop from a tote bag in the front seat, and crawled into the back again. She wanted to know where Hunter Gray had been, and what had happened to turn him into such a savage.
* * *
STILL REELING FROM the full-circle moment, Hunt ignored the fact that the perimeter was roped off, and ducked under it before heading to the communications van.
“Who’s in charge?” he asked.
“I am,” Ranger Christopher said. “Ranger Scott Christopher. And you are?”
“Former Army Warrant Officer Hunter Gray. I spent ten years in the military flying Apache Longbows. Half of that service was spent in Iraqi war zones. I am highly trained in survival and tracking, and I know the woman who’s missing. If she’s on that mountain, I will find her. May I see the search map? I’d like to know what areas have already been searched, and where you’re going today, and your contact number.”
Scott blinked. “Uh...do you have some identifications to—”
Hunt whipped out his wallet and started pulling out all kinds of licenses and info, including a wallet-size photo of Lainie’s senior year picture, a photo of Hunt and Lainie together, and a photo of Hunt and Preacher on base in Iraq, standing beside their Longbow.
“Miss Mayes’s parents are already on-site and—”
“We’ve spoken,” Hunt said. “Now about that map?”
Scott led Hunt inside the communications van, showed him the map with the grids marked off, then handed him an unmarked map and gave him a contact number.
“Thank you,” Hunt said, entered the number in his SAT phone contacts, left the van, shifted his backpack and started up the trailhead.
The sky was clear, and the breeze on the right side of his face was slight and intermittent as Hunt began the climb. Now he’d seen the areas that had already been searched, and the grid they were searching today.
But he was beginning at the spot where her shoes and gear had been found. That was where she disappeared. He needed to stand where she’d stood.
He was two miles up the trail before he reached it. The rangers had marked it with crime scene tape strung along the area and partway down the slope. He stopped and looked around, eyeing the trail above, and then down the slope, trying to imagine her falling. It didn’t compute.
There were no divots in the vegetation, no signs of her having been grabbing at things trying to gain foothold, no brush was torn up or broken off. And he already knew that the backpack had been found in the lower branches of a tree, not on the ground. So, someone threw it. The other hiker?
There were tracks all over. Rangers. The searchers. And God knew who else had walked through here. He looked farther up the trail and on impulse started jogging. Nearly another mile up, he saw all kinds of debris in the path before him, and a bloody rock lying off to the side. Then he saw a torn piece of brown plaid flannel with a white button attached, large boot prints and smaller sneaker prints. He knelt for a closer look and found three long strands of hair caught in the bark of a broken limb lying on the ground. Auburn hair, like Lainie’s.
“You were fighting him, weren’t you, baby?” Hunt muttered. “So, is this his blood or yours on this rock?”
When Hunt called down to the communications van, Scott answered.
“Ranger Christopher speaking.”
“Scott, this is Hunt Gray. How high have you searched above the place where Lainie’s belongings were found?”
“What do you mean, above?” Scott asked.
“Like farther up the trail from where her shoe was found?”
“Well, we haven’t, because our initial search began where Justin Randall said they’d been attacked by the bear. But we just got word that the police have Randall in custody. His story isn’t checking out. The scratches he has on his face that he claimed were made by the bear were from fingernails.”
“I’m close to a mile higher on the trail from where her gear was found. The ground in and around the trail is all torn up. There’s debris in the path. I saw three long strands of hair caught in the bark of a branch on the ground. The strands are reddish brown, like hers. There are boot prints and sneaker prints, and a remnant of torn fabric with a button still attached. Looks like from a shirt. There’s also a bloody rock on the ground. I think he attacked her here. They fought. She took him out with a rock, disabling him long enough to get away. I don’t know if she really did fall, but the tracks I saw while I was going up look like she was coming down at a fast clip.”
“Oh, my God. Okay, look, just leave all that as is. I’ll get the crime scene crew up there to gather the evidence.”
“Will do. I’ll continue my searching. If I find anything else, I’ll let you know,” Hunt said.
“Say, Hunt...what made you think to do that?”
“I don’t know. A hunch. Instinct? But I know Lainie. I don’t think she fell into that canyon. I’m operating on the fact that she’s still alive somewhere until I know different. I’m out.”
He put his SAT phone back in his pack, then stood a moment, trying to put himself in Lainie’s place and decided to follow the path back down, seeing it from her viewpoint as she was running toward the car park.
When he got back to the point where the first shoe had been found, he stopped, then looked around, then up the trail again, and when he did, this time he realized there was a big dip in the trail. A virtual blind spot.
And then it hit him! What if she knew she couldn’t outrun him? What if she faked her own death to escape? But where would she go?
Now his thoughts were spinning, and he was thinking to himself, if she threw her things down the slope, then what? He turned around, looked into the brush and trees on the far side of the trail and started walking.
The ground was littered with pine needles and leaves, and he saw nothing that led him to believe she could have gone this way, but he kept moving, eyes down, looking for footprints, for anything that would tell him she’d been this way.
And then he almost stepped on it. One single footprint, but not a shoe, like a moccasin, or a sock! A few yards farther, he found another and then realized the prints were going up the mountain now, instead of down, and he remembered something he used to tell her all the time.
When faced with a hard decision, do the unexpected.
“Way to go, baby,” Hunt said, and started moving up, following the footprints she was leaving behind. He followed her trail with some ease, and as he approached a large outcrop he could tell from the length of her stride that she was running. And then he saw where she slipped, and the imprint of her body, and blood on a rock, and then the faint imprint of bear tracks, and groaned.
It took a few minutes for him to find the same little footprints leading away from the site. So, she was alive and moving after the fall. The bear tracks were older than her tracks. He needed to believe it was coincidence that they’d crossed, not that she was being followed.
By now, the sun had passed the apex and was moving down toward the treetops. It would be dark in just a few more hours, and he hastened his pace. As long as he could see tracks, he wasn’t stopping.
But when he realized he was passing the same dead log a second time, his heart sank. She was walking in circles. Was she hurt and confused from a head injury when she fell? Was she ill? Hallucinating? Or was she just lost and in a panic? He couldn’t tell.
Just before dusk, he spotted a large pile of dry brush up against some rocks, studied it for a moment, then walked toward it. That wasn’t just random deadfall. The brush had been gathered. After a closer look, he saw handprints in the dirt, and drag marks where she’d crawled beneath a ledge and used the brush as a deterrent against snakes. He admired her foresight, and decided to make a dry camp in the same spot. It was going to be cold, but there was no camping up here. No fires allowed.
He got an LED lantern from his backpack and checked out the area for snakes, then used the deadfall she’d gathered and began pulling it into a circle around him for the same purpose. As he was working, something snapped in the woods behind him. He pulled the 9 mm pistol from his shoulder holster and swept the area with the lantern, suddenly spotlighting a deer in the brush. The animal froze. Hunt immediately turned off the light and heard the deer bounding away in the dark.
He couldn’t help but think how helpless Lainie was—injured and alone in the dark, without food, shelter, or any kind of weapon. He wanted to keep searching, but in the dark, it would be a waste of time, so he turned his lantern back on, pulled a blanket from his pack, then some water and jerky. He sat down with his back against the rocks, wrapped the blanket around him, left the lantern on long enough to eat and drink, then turned it off.
He sat in silence while his eyes adjusted to the shadows moving within the moonlight filtering down through the trees, then looked up between the leaves and saw a single, shining star. He hadn’t prayed to God in years, but tonight he was asking for a miracle.
“Please, God, I feel her. Just keep her alive until I find her. I’ll take it from there.”
* * *
IT WAS HER on the mountain.
Lainie was curled up in a ball beneath a cluster of deadfalls, created by the hand of Mother Nature, and maybe a little from the hand of God. Over time, branches that had frozen and broken off during past winter storms had formed a kind of shelter for the smaller creatures of the forest.
When she’d first found the spot, she’d crawled into the area on her hands and knees to make a space for herself, and then began breaking off leafy branches from the surrounding underbrush to use for cover over her body before crawling back inside with it.
Now she was lying on her side with the leafy branches over her body, her hands tucked beneath her cheek as the only cushion between her and the cold ground. Her fever was still high, but the cold felt good against her face. She was exhausted, but afraid to close her eyes.
Her body still ached from the brutal attack she’d suffered, but it was her feet that had finally slowed her down. Her frantic need to run had ended. The bottoms of her socks were torn and threadbare; her feet were shredded. The cuts that began healing during the night would only break open every morning when she stood on them, but she’d endured it until she couldn’t bear it anymore, and so she’d stopped.
She heard a coyote yip, and another answer, and reached for the chunk of a limb she’d been carrying for a weapon. She didn’t have much strength left to swing it, but she had no other options.
The faint scent of skunk drifted past, and then faded. The sound of running water was nearby. She’d walked as far as she could go. The water was close enough to crawl to when she was thirsty, but here she would lie until she was found, or this was where she would die.
She cried a little at the thought. She’d never given up believing they would find each other again, and if she died here, Hunt would be her last thought. She would spend her last breath on his name.
She thought of the ashes of their little baby and cried again. There was an order in her will to be buried with them. The thought of that made her approaching demise less tragic. She’d held the baby in her belly, but she’d never held him in her arms. Dying would remedy that. It would no longer be about leaving this world. It would be about joining her Little Bear in his.
She closed her eyes and drifted off, and suddenly Hunt was before her. When he held out his hand, she took it, and let him lead her into the land of dreams.
* * *
IT WAS HUNT’S second night on the mountain and he hadn’t slept more than an hour or two. He’d already packed up his camp and was just waiting for enough light to track by.
He was eating a protein bar when a porcupine ambled by. His presence startled a gray fox heading back to its burrow for the day. The night birds had gone to roost, and the birds who came with sunrise were already flitting from limb to limb, then dropping to the ground for bugs and grubs. Life abounded, and all he could do was hope Lainie was still part of it.
His wait came to an end in the blink of an eye. The forest went from shadows to daylight, like God walked into the room and turned on a light. He shouldered his pack and started walking in the direction of the last tracks he’d seen—his head down, sweeping the area before him with a clear-eyed intensity. He couldn’t afford to miss a clue. Her life depended on it.
* * *
LAINIE HAD FALLEN asleep in the night and woke in daylight, burning with fever. Her lips were cracked, and her mouth and throat were so dry she didn’t have spit to swallow. She knew enough about the human body that she was severely dehydrated, and if she didn’t keep drinking water, her organs would begin shutting down.
She could hear the water in the nearby creek, and getting to it today was her only goal. But when she raised up on her elbow to push the branches aside, the pain that shot up the back of her neck and head was so sharp and sudden that, for a moment, she thought she’d been shot.
“That hurt,” she muttered, as she pushed past the pain and started crawling.
But the twenty yards from her shelter to the water might as well have been miles. By the time she got there, her arms were trembling. She went belly down at the water’s edge and drank until she could hold no more, and then she ducked her face into the flowing stream over and over, trying to cool the fever, until she finally gave up and crawled the rest of the way into the creek.
The water was barely knee deep, but she floated on her belly to a partially submerged rock. Using it for an anchor, she wrapped her arms around the projection above the water and held on, letting the cold mountain water be the ice bath she needed.
She was still hanging on to the rock when a possum waddled out of the underbrush and went down to the water to get a drink. The irony of her fighting to stay alive, side by side with a little possum simply quenching its thirst, was a most perfect analogy of life. After it moved back into the underbrush, Lainie began the painful journey of getting herself out of the creek.
