Red (31 page)

“
I’ll grab the radio and
report in. See if we have any new orders.”

I settled down again. They might not be a
waste after all.

The woman dug a walkie out of her bag. “Good
morning Base, this is Charlie Team.”

“
Morning Janet.” I
recognized the voice as the dispatcher who ran the search for Rich
and Molly Phillips. Same team then.

“
Sun’s up. We’re gonna make
a bite to eat before we head out. Any news in the
night?”

“
Nothing.”

“
Did anybody get Nate to
sleep at all?” asked Janet.

“
Two hours during the rain.
That was it.”

“
Are we sticking to
yesterday’s grid?”

Before Eileen could reply, another voice
crackled on the line. “Got something.”

Elodie’s father.

“
Found some tire tracks on
an access road that seem to match the ones we found on the Phillips
search.”

“
What’s your location?”
asked Eileen.

Nate relayed the coordinates.

“
Sending a deputy your way
to take a cast.”

An access road to the cabin or somewhere
else?

“
George will stay. Dr.
Everett and I are gonna keep going, see where this
leads.”

Shock kept me frozen in place. Patrick
wasn’t out skulking around the mountain trying to pick up Elodie’s
trail on his own. He was with the goddamned search party. With
Elodie’s
dad
, the person most likely to know what she’d do
out here because he’s the one who trained her. And Nate had no idea
he was practically a walking hostage.

Shit.

I had to get my hands on that radio and a
map.

The radio went to static for a bit. Then the
dispatcher came back on. “Ken, you and Janet proceed according to
yesterday’s trajectory. You’ll be informed if anything changes.”
Eileen signed off.

“
I hope this comes to
better results than the Phillips search. If anything happens to
that girl, Nate’s gonna lose it,” said Ken.

“
He won’t be the only one.
Elodie is one of ours. We’ve gotta bring her home,” said Janet. She
put the radio back in her pack. “We can eat and be packed in
fifteen.”

Fifteen minutes. That wasn’t much time for
me to come up with any kind of diversion. How the hell was I going
to manage to distract both of them
and
the dog? I had
absolutely nothing on me. I wasn’t at top speed. No way could I
just run in and snatch what I needed. What could I do when I was
still injured that would draw them away from camp and leave their
gear behind so I could get to it?

Still injured . . .

As Janet began pulling out provisions and
Ken headed to break down the tent, I edged away from the ridge. My
vocal range wasn’t far with my limited lung capacity. But I figured
I should be able to get just far enough away to call for help. It
might not be loud enough for the people to hear, but the dog would
catch it. And it would be trained to respond to that. If I was
lucky, they’d all come running, and I’d have just enough time to
slip around back to camp to nab the map and radio. It was my only
shot.

It was difficult to keep my wheeze to a
minimum as I moved. I felt a cough welling up in my chest and had
to fight to hold it in. I needed the accompanying blood as
something for the dog to fixate on when I got to my diversion
point.

Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t
breathe.

Seventy-five yards was about as far as I got
before the hacking burst out of me. I doubled over with the force
of it. Blood spattered the ground at my feet. Man, how long was I
gonna keep doing that?

I took a breath, wondering if I imagined
that that was a little easier than it had been.

“
Help!”
Well shit, that
sounded pathetic. Right on target.
“Help me!”

I fell quiet, listening. No sign that they’d
heard me. My next inhale brought on another coughing fit that took
me a couple minutes to recover from before I could manage to call
again, louder this time. “Help!”

That was it. A bark in the distance. The dog
had heard me. I called out once more for good measure then let my
wolf ascend, changing my scent as I started circling my way around
to come at their camp from the other direction.

Please, please work.

“
What is it, boy? Show me,
Ripley.”

Okay, Janet’s on board. What about Ken?

He was still packing up gear when I came
around, rolling up the tent and stuffing it in his pack.

Shit. Now what?

I was contemplating whether I could rush him
when Janet called out, “Ken! Come here!”

The blood had done its work then.

Ken bolted after Janet, leaving the packs
behind. I didn’t waste time. As soon as Ken was out of earshot, I
slunk into their camp and began rifling through the bags. The radio
was easy. Right where Janet had left it. I shoved it into a pocket
of my cargo shorts and began rifling for the map.

C’mon, where the hell is it?

I checked all the outer pockets.
Nothing.

“
. . . need to call it
in.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Why were there so many damned pockets?
Elodie hadn’t carried a pack this size on her rescue. Why were
they? I finally found the compass wrapped in a bandana in the top
of Ken’s pack.

“
He’s not alerting to
Elodie, but that blood is human. Somebody’s out here and they’re
hurt,” Janet insisted.

Where was the goddamned map?

I gave up on stealth and tore through the
bag.
There!
A corner of paper sticking out of the sleeping
bag roll. I tugged. Success.

Who the hell puts a map in a sleeping
bag?

I zipped the pack shut and tore out of the
campsite, but not before the dog was close enough to hear. He came
streaking through the trees after me, barking the alarm. I whirled,
dropping to a crouch. The dog skidded to a halt, sniffing, barking,
clearly confused at this mix of scents that matched what he had
found, and yet didn’t. I let my wolf as close to the surface as
possible without actually shifting. The growl rumbled out, low and
menacing. The dog backed up a couple steps but didn’t stop barking.
I could hear the crunch of footsteps as the searchers ran toward
us.

No time for this.

I reared up, venting my frustration in a
bear-like roar that sent the dog skittering back to its people.
Then I turned and fled, mentally repeating the last coordinates
Nate had reported.

~*~

Elodie

It was the scent of old blood that caught my
attention. I was weak and dizzy with fever as I knelt to inspect
the traces of rust caught at the top of a fissure of rock, as if a
hand had grabbed it and been cut. Was it human? I bent to get a
closer sniff. My pack shifted and I overbalanced. For a long
suspended moment I hung there, arms pinwheeling, struggling to
right myself before I toppled over the side and into the
fissure.

It was my pack that kept me from plunging to
the bottom and breaking bones. I wedged between it and one craggy
wall, losing a few layers of skin in the process where my legs
banged against rock and my shirt rode up. But I was still whole.
And stuck.

I kicked my feet, trying to find something
to push off of and climb out, but the space below me widened and I
couldn’t get my knees high enough to gain purchase against the
sloping walls. Within the harness of my pack, I wriggled,
unsnapping straps to see if I could get free of the bag itself. It
would fall, but then I should be able to climb down and get it,
pushing it up ahead of me. The fissure wasn’t so deep that I
couldn’t climb back out again. It took a lot of effort and
exhaling, trying to compress my chest like a mouse, but at length I
got my arms free of the pack and dragged my body up a few
inches.

As predicted, the pack slid down, landing at
the bottom with an echoing thump. I made my way carefully after it
until I sat at the base of the shaft, gasping and exhausted from
something that shouldn’t have taken that much effort. The light
didn’t penetrate too far down here, but I could tell from the
echoes that the space continued on for some distance. By some
miracle, my flashlight had survived the fall. Its beam pierced the
dark, revealing a cave. Nothing so ideal as mine. The floor was
rock strewn and uneven. But it was tall enough for me to stand, and
it would hide me well enough while I went through transition.

When I slipped my pack back on, I glanced up
at the shaft leading to the surface. I wouldn’t be able to climb
that with paws. If I stayed down here and didn’t manage to master
the shift between forms, I’d be trapped. But the alternative was to
stay exposed, a veritable sitting duck for Patrick and his gun.
Leading with the flashlight, I made my way into the cave.

About a dozen feet in, I found the pony tail
holder, pink with a little sparkly butterfly. Molly’s. Had to be.
So close to the entrance. But she was just a little kid. Terrified
of the dark. And her brother had put her down here to hide her from
the monster. How long had she stayed before she’d ventured out and
been found by search teams? I inhaled. Beneath the odor of rock and
damp and something I really didn’t want to think about being bat
droppings, I fancied I smelled her fear. But it was probably just
my imagination. I knelt and picked the hair elastic up and slipped
it in my pocket, a reminder that she had survived her
nightmare.

The cave extended further back than I
expected, winding and twisting away into more tunnels. A spelunker
I was not. I went in only so far as it took to find a semi-flat
space with room for the sleeping bag. The pack fell from my
shoulders with a crash that reverberated down the cave. I cringed,
waiting for a flurry of startled bats. Small blessings, there were
none.

I dug out the small, battery powered lantern
and set up my makeshift camp in its pitiful fluorescent glow.
Mindful of Sawyer’s constant badgering to make me eat, I pulled out
some jerky and protein bars, even though I had no appetite. I ate
the first bar standing up, more in defiance of my fever weakened
state than anything else. Restless, I moved just outside the edge
of light from the entrance to the cave and listened hard while I
ate my jerky and sipped a bottle of water. No signs of pursuit,
just the sounds of the mountain around me.

The part of me that had been running on high
alert since last night uncoiled a little, forcing me to admit I was
utterly exhausted. I went back to my little camp, tossing the other
energy bar back into my bag, and collapsed onto the sleeping bag.
Sawyer’s scent puffed up around me, at once comforting and
nauseating. My throat closed up on a knot of tears. The dull ache
of loss flared to life, a vicious, rabid thing. I fought it because
I needed to fight something or go mad. But fever and exhaustion
took me, and I slid into an uneasy sleep.

Elodie, wake up.

I shivered at the sound of my father’s
voice. He sounded angry. He never used to get angry before the
letter.

Ellie, please wake up.

Nope, I wasn’t going to be lulled by the
please or the pleading tone. I hunkered down, curling tighter into
the sleeping bag, face pressed to the cotton, breathing in a scent
that made me sad.

C’mon baby, you have to wake up. We have to
go.

Why did he sound so panicked? It was just a
letter. Just a sign that Mom was crazy. Why should I have to change
my whole life because she was crazy?

“
Elodie!” This time he
shook me.

The motion made my brain bounce around
inside my skull, leaving me dizzy. Could you be dizzy in sleep? I
growled in reply.

The hand on my shoulder didn’t loosen.

“
C’mon, we’re
going.”

My world jerked and shifted, and the pain in
my head threatened to drive me back under. But that was bad. There
was some reason I shouldn’t give in. So instead I fought to peel my
eyes open.

I was met with a wall of gray with splotches
of black. The splotches resolved themselves into a sort of shield
that read
Fire Rescue.
I blinked and let my head fall back.
An arm stopped it from falling right off my shoulders, for which I
was grateful. Peering up at the blur on top of the t-shirt, my eyes
turned it into a face, dimly lit in the darkness of my
surroundings.

“
Dad?” Was that raw croak
my voice?

“
I’m here, baby. We’re
gonna get you home.”

There was a part of me that wanted to be
angry he’d come after me. But I was so glad to see a familiar face,
and I felt so damn awful.

“
I don’t feel good,
Dad.”

“
I’m gonna take care of
you,” he said.

Then he brought me into the light and I was
blinded. I curled into him, squeezing my eyes shut against the
glare.

“
Send down the rope. She’s
too weak to climb.”

Something thumped down beside us. Dad
shifted me in his arms and I felt a makeshift harness being wrapped
around my chest.

“
There’s something . . . ”
God I was tired. And so, so cold. “Something I need to tell
you.”

“
It can wait, honey. It’s
all gonna be okay.”

The absolute
wrongness
of that
statement resonated through me with enough conviction that I tried
opening my eyes again. I was at the base of the fissure, with a
rope wrapped underneath my arms. Which made me realize we weren’t
alone. He’d probably called out Search and Rescue. Why did that
idea terrify me?

“
She’s secure. Pull on up.
Easy does it,” Dad called.