The Camp (15 page)

C
hapte
r
S
eventeen

I woke up to Liam squeezing me tightly, his body pressed against me as one of his long legs was shoved in between mine. It felt so amazing to be in his arms, to be held by him all night. I was actually glad we were forced to fit into this tiny tent. I loved feeling the warmth of his breath as it scattered along my hair. I only wished the circumstances were different.

We
had zipped our sleeping bags together to make one again, and it helped against the cold temperatures, but I still didn’t want to get up or out of the tent because it would only signal that we had to start everything over again.

“How are you doing?” he murmured, sliding his legs out from mine.

“I hope someday we get the chance to do this for other reasons.” I sighed.

“Me too.”

He slowly began unzipping the sleeping bags, and I felt the chill as it worked its way down. I rolled my hair tie off my wrist and wrapped my hair into a ponytail, securing it firmly before I stood up.

“We’ll head east today and canvas that area,”
Liam said, digging a sweatshirt out of a backpack.

“Sounds good,” I replied.

I started to roll up the sleeping bags again. I had gotten pretty good at making them compact for carrying and wanted to help in any way I could. The more time I had to allow the latest note to sink in, the worse I felt about everything. After tying the bags up, I went over to my backpack and grabbed a water canteen and sat down on a rock

Liam had dumped several packets of trail mix onto a large leaf and brought it over to
share.

“Happy almost birthday,” he said.

I looked up at him and smiled. I couldn’t believe my birthday was coming up. I always imagined a lot of different ways to bring it in and being stuck in the middle of an island in Alaska certainly wasn’t one of them.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“It’s the least I could do.” He winked at me, and I could tell we were both at the point of exhaustion no matter how hard we tried to hide it.

“This certainly seems like it wil
l be an eighteenth to remember. Here’s hopin’, I live to see it,” I said, clanking my water bottle with his, trying to make a joke.

“Here’s hopin’,” he repeated.

He sat down next to me and slipped his arm around my waist. I leaned my head against his arm and took a deep breath in.

“I think we’re close to her and everyone,” I said. “I think we’ll find them.”

He nodded. “I do too.”

I slowly chewed on some of the almost-birthday granola
, knowing I should eat more, but I wasn’t even remotely hungry.

“Make sure you eat all of that. I’m worried with as much as we’ve
been on the move that your body is getting too fatigued,” he said softly. “We both need our strength.”

“I wish you were telling me that for a different reason,” I grumbled.

He laughed, picking a dried cranberry out of the trail mix and popping it in his mouth, right when we heard a gunshot, followed by another one and another one.

My heart skipped a beat.

That was our signal if something went wrong between our two groups.

“It didn’t sound that far away,” he whispered, grabbing his rifle.

“I wonder what happened,” I said, feeling the dryness creep into my mouth again. “Why would they be so close?”

“Let’s go,” he whispered.

I grabbed my rifle and looked back at our makeshift camp.

“We’ll come back for everything after we
find out went wrong,” he said, and we took off toward the booms.

I ran side by side with Liam, dodging the branches and mounds that
continually surfaced. The brisk wind chapped my cheeks until Liam finally started to slow down.

“He’s supposed to shoot another one off,” Liam said. “If he doesn’t then we’re not going any
farther.”

I shook my head, waiting alongside with Liam. His breathing
shifted anxiously, as silence filled the air versus another boom. He started shaking his head.

“We need to get out of here. Something’s not right. They
should’ve fired another shot.”

My heart started pounding
with the thought that we were on the run again, falling into another trap. Liam’s eyes scanned mine for a response, and I blinked back the tears.

“Let’s take off then,” I said quietly.

He nodded and just as he turned around another shot was fired.

“Thank god,” I murmured, taking off after him.

“They’re only a couple minutes away,” he yelled as we continued on.

We were right next to a rocky cliff whe
n we saw the group. I scanned everyone quickly, searching for anyone who might be missing.

“What happened?” Liam asked.

“We had an accident,” Caleb said, his gaze went over the cliff.

“Oh no,” Liam said, walking closer to the edge.

“Mark went over the cliff. He slipped,” Dave said, shaking his head.

I looked around the few campers who were left
, and all of their expressions were grave and defeated. If it wasn’t someone else chasing us down, it was nature playing a cruel joke.

Liam moved along the edge, scanning the area below.

My pulse quickened as I watched the tiny
pebbles release over the side from Liam’s boots.

“Stand back,” I told him.

He looked up at me and smiled slightly. “I’ve got this.”

I peered over the edge to see if
I could spot anyone.

“He wouldn’t have survived the fall,” Liam said ominous
ly.

“He was trying to avoid that,” Caleb said, pointing at a gnarly looking contraption.

“It’s a snare,” Liam said, running his finger along the wire. “There are probably more scattered in this area.

I looked at the primitive setup, wondering what would really be caught in it. It
didn’t look big enough for bear, although I don’t really know how big it would need to be for one either.

“When is it going to end? Maybe Mark
was lucky,” Fulton mumbled.

Unfortunately, I
was close to agreeing with Fulton, and that’s not usually how my mind worked.

“Have you found anything?” Liam asked, getting everything under control again.

Caleb shook his head, swinging his rifle over his other shoulder.

“We think the other shack is around where we found Tom. I’m hoping it leads to something soon,” Liam said
. “We’ve gotta get back before anyone finds our stuff.”

I tensed as Dave
swung a machete around some grass. “Probably a good idea.”

“Stay away from the rocks, m
aybe move the group back toward the woods,” Liam suggested. “I’m sorry about Mark. I really am.”

Fulton shot me a severe look and frowned as he walked behind me to join the others.
I felt the glares of the remaining campers piercing into my back. I was definitely the one everyone was blaming and I understood why.

I didn’t look behind me or say anything to anyone as we left. There was nothing left to say. They were in this situation because of me.

Liam gently grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of their line of sight.

“If they fire any more shots, we’re not coming for them,” Liam murmured. “They’re too
unpredictable. I didn’t like how they were looking at you, and I think they’d like to take their frustrations out on someone. And I can guarantee it’s not going to be you.”

“You think it’s that bad?” I asked, already knowing the answer. I
had felt it after all.

We were near the are
a that we had camped the night before when a piercing, shrill scream rang through the air.

“Did
you hear that?” Liam asked.

“I did,” I whispered. “
She’s got to be near. It was her voice. I know it.”

She
let out another eerie cry as loud as the last, and we took off, running quickly through the woods.

This time w
e were close.

C
hapte
r
E
ighteen

The shack was off in the distance, but I could see enough of the trail leading up to it to know that this place was active. Someone was living inside. The building was probably no larger than a small bedroom, but more than adequate for a few people. The dense vegetation made any movement obvious even to the untrained eye.

I looked over at Liam as he scanned the woods surrounding the building. It would be difficult to come up quietly with the amount o
f trees and vegetation, but I wasn’t sure we could wait until we saw the person or persons leave, either. We didn’t have the luxury of time, and I think Liam was thinking about that as well.

“Wanna
try now or wait?” I whispered, feeling my anxiety grow as I thought about Steph’s screams.

He turned to face me and grabbed my hand. “I want to go in there by myself first.
I think I can make it pretty quietly up to the shack.”

“No. I’m not letting you go there alone. Whatever plan we come up with, needs to i
nclude us both,” I said quietly, removing my hand from his with a scowl.

Another shrill scream came from the shack
sending a wave of nausea through me.

“I think he’s going to leave again,” I whispered.

Liam nodded. “We can’t assume there’s only one person holding her hostage.”

“No. You’re right,” I said, as the goose bumps speckled my flesh.

“Let’s slowly begin to make our way over there,” he said, pointing to an area of newer growth that was dense enough to hide us, but would allow us to see the door.

“Got it,” I said, knowing once he began clearing the way, my only goal was to keep quiet and as close to his heels as possible.

With every branch that he held up or out for me, I tried to duck without rubbing against it, allowing him to replace it as if we’d never been there. It was a time consuming process, but I think it was that level of caution that had kept us alive so far.

We made it to the
vegetative fortress and sat down after Liam figured out where we would be able to see clearly. He grabbed my rifle and slowly placed it down in front of me, careful not to disturb any branches. He sat behind me and placed his rifle next to him, pointing to the left. I felt his warm breath against the back of my neck, but couldn’t hear him at all.

I had just let my eyes dip to a berry that was dangling in front of me when I saw the front door open
out of the corner out of my eye. My breathing stopped and so did Liam’s. The person looked to be male, but it was impossible to know for sure because whoever it was wore a black ski mask, a baggy black shirt and jeans.

The person closed the door and stood in front of the shack, looking in both directions and then straight out in f
ront. He bent over toward the ground as if doing some sort of weird stretching like I’d seen in yoga, and then he straightened back up. He didn’t look to be armed, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a weapon or two strapped somewhere.

He
began jogging in place for a few seconds, finally taking off down the trail that led away from the shack, which meant he’d probably jog right by where we were sitting.

He
got into a rhythm of the run and I watched, unable to breath, as the jogger ran by us without giving a look in our direction.

Maybe the bears would get him,
and make it easy for us.

We gave it about five more minutes and didn’t hear the sound of shoes against the ground before we slowly stood up and snuck over to the shack. The building had been recently pieced together, probably
from remnants of the other structures that had been sprinkled around the area. The pieces of wood that acted like siding had many gaps in between, and I tilted my head to try to look inside as Liam opened the door.

The
shack looked exactly as I had expected it to with bare walls and floors. Steph was tied to a chair, unconscious and slumped over, in the center of the room. Liam ran to her, checking for a pulse and nodded at me. “She’s still alive.”

I immediately began searching for the satellite phone. It had to be here. There was a
makeshift table to my right, littered with papers, maps, and photos. There was a cot to the left and then two large Rubbermaid storage containers where food was probably kept.

I ran to the
table first, lifting and shuffling everything around, trying to find the mammoth phone that didn’t seem like it would be easily hidden. Coming up empty-handed, I ran to the first container and threw off the lid, finding nothing but packaged food. I dug through it quickly, realizing it wasn’t there either.

Li
am was cutting off the ropes from Steph’s wrists and ankles, and her body fell forward.  He quickly grabbed her before she hit the wooden floor and picked her up.

“Put her on the cot,” I said, searching through the next container
, finding more food and a few things that made my heart ache. There were shreds of clothing that were braided together. I recognized the fabrics from what the victims had been wearing. Whoever was doing this was really sick.

“No phone
in this one, either,” I hissed. “I know it’s here.”

We were so close and yet so much depended on that phone.

I glanced at Steph and then at the cot she was on.

“Lift
her up again. I’ll check under the covers and the cot,” I said.

He scooped her body into his arms
, and I ran my hands beneath the sheets and blankets, cringing at the thought that my skin was touching anything of this monster’s.

“Nothing on top of the cot,” I whispered, lifting the cot up. “Damn it.”

There was nothing under the cot either. Liam placed Steph back on the cot, and I kept searching every inch of the place when my eyes landed on a plank in the floor that looked disturbed. A flutter of excitement ran thought my belly, and I ran toward it. I pried the piece of wood from the floor with my fingers and saw lots of interesting things that didn’t include the phone.

“What do you see?” Liam asked.

“Check it out,” I said, pointing at a box of syringes and a small, plastic box that contained rows of vials.

Oh
, my Word!

My fingers ran over the tops of the vials as I realized we were one step closer to finding out how the person had been doing it. I wrapped my fingers around the
small box and handed it to Liam, and I grabbed the cardboard box of syringes and quickly placed the plank back where I got it.

“No phone still,” I said
, unable to hide my disappointment.

“We’ll find it. Just keep finding the hiding places and we’ll be
do fine,” Liam said, patting my shoulder.

“He’s been drugging everyone,” I whispered, shaking my head.

“That’s how he was able to do it so quickly and quietly.”

My pulse began quickening at the thought of one of the syringes being poked into my flesh if he got back before we were gone
. Shaking it off, I continued to scan the floor for more loose boards.

“We
’ve gotta get out of here, phone or not,” I muttered, resigned to the fact that it might not work out how I’d hoped. “The guy might be back soon.”

“Agreed.”

Liam was studying one of the bottles of liquid.

“Thinking what I’m thinking?”
I asked.

He nodded, grabbing a syringe
. He stuck the needle’s point into the rubber stopper and slowly pulled on the plunger rod, filling up the syringe with the clear liquid. He repeated the process several more times, and placed the caps on the syringes. I grabbed two and stuck them in the back pocket of my jeans just in case.

He grabbed the remaining glass bottles and smashed them
against the floor near the containers and slid them over the shattered glass. He opened the plastic container and tossed the boxes inside, closing it quickly.

“
What do you think he did with them after the shot and they woke up?” he asked.

“If they wo
ke up,” I murmured.

“True,” Liam said, examining the vials.

A groggy moan surfaced from the cot, and we ran over to Steph. She curled herself into a fetal position, keeping her eyes closed.

“Steph,” Liam said softly. “I’m here and so is Emma. We came to get you.
You’re gonna be okay.”

Her
eyes opened slowly, tracking everything around the room but not looking at us.

“He’s coming back,” she whispered, her lips trembling. “He’s coming back. He always does.”

“Have you seen the phone?” Liam asked, shoving his arms under her to scoop her up.

She gave him a blank look and then looked at me. Her eyes widening with terror.

“It’s you he’s coming for,” she whispered. “It’s a trap. Your eighteenth birthday.”

I looked at Liam as he held her close to his chest.
What was she talking about?

“We don’t have time to worry about the phone,” I said, running to the door.

“We’ve gotta get out of here now,” Liam muttered.

“An inheritance. He’s coming for us all,” she uttered once more.

I peered through the gaps around the door and didn’t see anyone. I opened the door, craning my neck slowly, not seeing any evidence of the person we’d seen earlier.

“Let’s go,” I whispered.

Steph began quietly sobbing against Liam’s chest as we stepped outside. Her shirt already had strips missing and my heart sunk. What did he do to her? What was he going to do to her?

“Shh,” Liam comforted Steph
. “We’re going to be okay.”

We took no more than two steps out of the house when
a guy ran directly toward Liam with an exposed syringe. I screamed a warning to Liam, as I lunged at the guy who I recognized from earlier, dressed in all black.

The anger
and adrenaline that pounded through me allowed me to push him against the wall with one quick movement, his head thudding against the siding. He was stunned enough to allow an opening and the one chance I needed. His hand holding the syringe began to wave around frantically as he attempted to lodge the point into me, but I reached around and grabbed one of my own syringes out of my back pocket.

“I’m right behind you,” Liam yelled.

I bit the cap off in one quick gesture and jabbed the point into the exposed portion of the kidnapper’s neck, releasing the poison as I pushed on the plunger. Liam jabbed one of his syringes in the other side of the guy’s neck for extra security and pushed down slowly as the guy’s body began to relax.

My pulse was racing
, and I looked behind me at Steph who was sitting on the ground, staring at the tall grass and nothing more. Everything went into slow motion as I removed my fingers from the syringe that was still sticking out of the guy’s neck.

“We’re gonna be okay,” I whispered, watching the
syringe the guy tried to stab me with, fall out of his hand. “Right?”

I looked at Liam and back at Steph. “I’m so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Liam whispered, shaking his head.

“If I’d never come here
, none of this would’ve happened,” I whispered, trying to hold back my tears as I saw Steph still staring off in the distance at nothing in particular.

I reached over to the black,
knit ski mask and lifted it off his head revealing the identity of the murderer. I already knew who it was, but I wanted to see him for myself. It was my stepfather.

My body began quivering
and Liam grabbed me before I collapsed. As he held me tightly, I looked next to the body of my stepfather and saw a piece of plastic sticking out from underneath him.

“I think I see the phone,” I mumbled, my throat and lips completely dry and impossible to wet.

“What, baby?” he whispered.

“The ph
one. I think he had it with him or has it, I mean,” I said, gently pushing away from Liam.

I
approached Kroy and reached for the shiny, piece of plastic and sure enough, it was the corner of the phone. His body fell on its side as I yanked on the phone getting it to release from his belt.

I held the phone with my hands trembling, unable to even function. I looked at Liam
, and his kind brown eyes swept over me as he gently pulled the satellite phone from my hands.

“I’ll make the call,”
he said, smiling at me.

I looked at him and nodded. I didn’t think I’d be able to find my voice. I looked behind Liam at Steph who was now looking at us and I ran over to her, kneeling in front of her.

She grabbed my hands and pulled them to her lap as the first of many shared tears began.