Okay. She had to get to her car. The Cherokee was parked off the road, hidden by trees, a good mile from where she’d seen the attempted murder. Over this rough terrain, and at night, she couldn’t have walked far from that place where the child … well. She couldn’t think of him right now. Either he was okay or he wasn’t. Now she needed to make sure she was okay.
So to find her car, all she had to do was to go down.
Yes, there was a chance Dash had found the car. Or maybe he was waiting for her along the road.
But she was miles into the mountains. She couldn’t walk back to civilization. She needed a vehicle if she was going to go to the cops and report this murder—or, hopefully, attempted murder.
She scattered her nest, dumping most of the branches in the creek. No use leaving evidence she’d been here.
She would follow the creek down to the basin, stick to the trees, use whatever concealment she could find. When she found the car, she would scout around before she approached it, look for signs that another person had been there. Or was there. And if she was satisfied she was alone, she would get in and drive like hell back to Ketchum and the police station.
No, wait. First she would eat the sandwich and anything else she could find. Then drive like hell.
“Good plan,” she said aloud, and started down the creek bed. Then she answered herself, “Of course it’s a good plan. You have no choice.”
Great. Twenty-four hours in the mountains and she was already turning into one of those hermits who held conversations with herself. “It’s okay,” she said. “A couple more hours and you’ll be talking to the police.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Taylor’s estimate of how long the trip would take was about three hours short. The creek plunged over precipices that she could not follow and had to detour around. She kept coming back to the water, though, knowing it was headed toward the high end of Wildrose Valley. And she was dependent on that source of water. She was starving, yes, but by God, she was hydrated.
Eventually, during one detour, she lost the creek completely. Then she simply headed down, through underbrush, over rocks, around trees. When she realized she was on a trail, she almost cried for joy. Because a trail would lead her to the basin floor.
And it did. The trail still wound through the trees, but it flattened out. The walking was easier. She knew the road was here between the two fingers of the mountains. All she had to do was find it, and she could find her car.
She glanced toward the sun. Sunset was early here, the rays cut off by the peaks. She needed to hurry. And she needed to hide.
She skulked through the trees until she found the road.
She hugged herself. Now she knew where she was.
The relief she felt seemed out of proportion, and made her realize how frightened she had been of a lingering, hopeless death of starvation and cold.
Her car was south. Keeping the road in sight, she moved through the pines as quickly and as quietly as she could.
Pretend you’re alone here, her father said, the first woman on the continent, strong, sure, moving like the panther that you track. You see everything. You know everything. Everything fears you.
She whimpered. No, Daddy. I’m afraid.
No, you aren’t. You use caution.
She nodded. Caution.
She was hearing her father’s voice in her head.
Yep. Another day and she’d be stark-staring crazy.
It was twilight when she found the Cherokee, parked right where it had been, off the road and concealed in the trees.
She ducked behind a tree trunk, then peeked at it.
She wanted to run to the SUV, embrace its fenders, kiss its mirrors, open its doors, find her backpack and that wonderful, fabulous, tasty sandwich, the baggie of crushed granola.
Her stomach growled, urging her onward.
She resisted. She had to be wise.
But it was getting darker by the second, too dark to scout thoroughly for signs of a visitor. So she picked up a pebble, leaped out from behind the tree, and threw it as far as she could, over the Cherokee’s roof to the trees on the other side, to make a noise and see if she could flush out any onlookers.
Then she ducked back behind the tree.
The pebble bounced through the tree branches and landed with a tiny thud.
She waited.
No movement. No reaction.
Dash wasn’t here. He was not here.
She could hear her sandwich calling her name …
Don’t be foolish, Taylor. Another rock, bigger this time.
She hoped, when she got some food into her, her father would stop talking to her, because this was spooky. But she sighed and did as he told her, picking up a bigger rock and flinging it haphazardly toward the brush at the front of the car.
Trouble was, she didn’t have the oomph to get it that far, and she watched in horror as the heavy stone sailed through the air toward the hood. She couldn’t watch. She ducked behind the tree. She had the brief thought, That’s going to cost my insurance. She squinted her eyes shut and waited for the impact.
The car exploded.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The blast wrapped around the tree and blew Taylor onto her face in the dirt. She covered her head. Flaming debris fell around her. Her ears were ringing; dimly she heard the roar of a beast behind her.
No. Not a beast. Fire. A huge fire. She felt the heat and blistering stings as burning pine needles fell off the tree onto her bare skin.
Get. Away. Forest fire. Get out of the trees!
She crawled, then got up and ran. No zigging. No zagging. She wasn’t thinking about the possibility of gunmen.
She had to escape from the fire.
As she ran, she shook her head, combed her hands through her hair. She dislodged a flaming twig and more needles. She stepped on something that crunched. Her cell phone.
She kept going. If someone was shooting, she didn’t know. She couldn’t hear. Oh, God, she couldn’t hear. Her skin was on fire. And she was running back into the mountains, seeking sanctuary where there was none.
She never looked back.
CHAPTER NINE
On day four after the car explosion … or was it day four after Dash had shot at her?—Taylor found herself on the ridge overlooking her old house. Her old house that wasn’t there anymore.
When her mother made her father sell his family’s land and the house on it, and divide the proceeds with her, it had been an act of unimaginable cruelty to Pete Summers. He had lived his whole life on the ranch, working the cattle, mending the fences, fixing the broken-down machinery, growing alfalfa. In one fell swoop, everything he knew, everything he lived for was gone, blotted from his life as if it had never been. He’d moved to Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, worked as a ranch hand, dwindled into a shadow of the father she had loved so much until at last, when she was seventeen, he’d died in a freak snowstorm.
Her mother hadn’t told Taylor right away. Taylor had been graduating from high school; Mother said she hadn’t wanted to spoil the occasion with bad news. So Pete Summers had gone into his grave alone and unmourned.
Taylor had never forgiven her mother for that. Not that her mother noticed, what with the new career and the new husband.
Now, as Taylor sat on a rock with the setting sun in her eyes, she gazed at the land that should have been her heritage, and thought how fitting it was she faced her death in the same spot where she had first drawn breath.
Her old home had been a drafty old farmhouse, built in the early twentieth century and added on to, hodgepodge, as the original Summers family grew. Yet Taylor remembered it well: the wide, wraparound porch where she would sit in the summer and dream, the big kitchen with the old cast-iron gas stove with one side that burned wood where she would huddle on cold winter days, the attic with its sloped ceiling, her bed with the squeaky springs, the bathroom with the worn claw-footed tub.
This new house … it wasn’t the same. The usurpers
had built to give it an old-fashioned look, put a porch on it and wood siding. But it was clearly a vacation home, an indulgence for people who had more money than sense. There was a hot tub, for shit’s sake. The windows were too wide, designed to open the house to the panoramic views of unspoiled meadow and mountain. Oh, and the windows had blinds, not curtains. Clearly, the house wasn’t loved, for no one wandered in and out, slamming the screen door behind her.
Taylor sniffled.
No children climbed the big black walnut tree in the side yard, or swung from a swing under the wide branches of the Douglas fir. How could a house feel life if it was always empty, waiting eagerly for—
Wait. It was empty. The house was empty.
No one was there.
For over an hour, Taylor had sat here, moped here, and seen not one sign of life.
The house was empty.
She slid off the rock. She could go down, look in the windows, see what they’d done with the place. She could … she could try the doors and windows and see if any of them were open.
She took a few steps down the hill.
She wouldn’t go in. Not really. It wasn’t her house anymore. It wasn’t her kitchen … although inside was food she could eat. Food.
Even if the family was not here, there would be some kind of foodstuffs.
Wouldn’t there?
Her tears dried. She firmed her wobbling chin.
Maybe some canned soup.
She skidded down the steep slope toward the yard.
Canned soup: chicken noodle or cream of tomato. And crackers. Graham crackers with peanut butter.
Her stomach growled, had been growling for hours, for days.
Going into that house made sense. Starving to death out here didn’t make sense. Freezing to death didn’t make sense. Hallucinating that she saw her father meant nothing except that she was dehydrated, hungry, and more desperate than she had ever been in her whole life.
She could not go down to Ketchum to report the murder, or attempted murder, of the boy. She couldn’t walk that far, not in the shape she was in, and she didn’t dare take to the road to hitchhike; Dash and his friend might be looking for her. Besides, she was from the D.C. area. She knew very well that sometimes cops were on the take.
A sudden thought pulled her to a halt. What if she didn’t have to go down to Ketchum to talk to the cops at all? What if … what if the homeowners had a computer in there? And an Internet connection? She could report the crime from here. To the FBI, to people she knew were trustworthy, someone who would know what had happened to the little boy, who could tell her if he was safe.
She hoped he was. She prayed he was.
Then someone would come for her and this nightmare would be over.
Yes! This made sense. Get in, get on the Internet and report the crime.
What if the doors and windows aren’t open?
She heard her father’s voice in her head, but she kept walking, sliding down the old, steep trail she remembered so well. Going home.
She hesitated when she got to the yard.
By the calendar, it was still summer, even if the temperatures at night got down to freezing. What if the family were here, but they were on a day trip? What would she do if she was sitting at their table eating soup and they walked in?
Then she’d tell them the truth, beg them to give her a ride to Ketchum … and hope to hell none of them was the guy named Jimmy who had commissioned Dash to murder that child.
What if they had a burglar alarm? The police would come, sooner or later.
Driven by hunger and wretchedness, she stumbled as she climbed the steps. She almost kissed the stairway with her face; she caught herself.
She had to slow down. She was starving. Her coordination was shot. She needed to get into her own home and eat. She could almost smell soup simmering on the stove. She tried the front door. It was locked. She frowned—and remembered.
This wasn’t her house anymore.
She made her way around the porch, trying all the windows. Locked.
The back door. Locked.
She looked out at the yard. Branches from that last thunderstorm were scattered across the grass.
These people, whoever they were, should take better care of their trees, because one of those branches had probably broken one of their windows.
She went into the yard, grabbed the longest one, and tried to lift it.
Pain shot through her wrist.
She dropped it.
She tried to drag it.
She couldn’t. She was too weak, and it hurt too much.
But the smaller branches, the ones she could drag, would never break the window. She put down the big branch and tried to think. Think.
Going to the woodpile beside the fire pit, she picked up a short, slender log. She climbed onto the porch, eyed the tree, then the windows, picked a likely one, and used the log like a battering ram.
The window shattered.
She froze. She waited. But no screech of an alarm pierced the air.
It was the only house around. Why would they have an alarm?
But maybe a silent alarm at the police station in Ketchum?
Yet Ketchum was fifty miles away on a winding gravel road. It would take the cops hours to get here.
She inserted her arm through the hole in the glass—double-paned, how her skinny, always-cold dad would have loved that!—and unlatched the lock. Using her shirttail, she pushed up with both hands.
The window opened easily.
Now she did cry, a hard sob of disbelief that one thing, one thing had finally gone right. She brushed glass off the inside of the frame and climbed in.
She was in the kitchen. It wasn’t as large as she had imagined it would be. In fact, the appliances were rather shabby, as if the family had built this place twenty years ago and never remodeled. But it was tidy, decorative plates hung on a metal plate rack, and rustic—and trendy—metal canisters lined the counter.
So a woman had done the decorating.
Taylor started opening cupboards. She found dishes, mixing bowls, spices, coffee, small appliances … “Come on, come on,” she said. “Where’s the soup?” She opened the closet door.
Not a closet. A pantry. Of course. Filled with so many cans. So many kinds.
She wanted them all.
But lingering good sense made her reach for the chicken broth. She took it to the counter and with trembling fingers popped the easy-open lid. She didn’t even peel it off. She just lifted it to her lips and swallowed.
It tasted so good she whimpered.
She put it down, got a glass, ran the water from the faucet, filled the glass and drank. It tasted vaguely of pipes, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t get giardia from this water. She went back to the chicken broth and had another slurp.
She got a can of chicken noodle soup, popped the top, put it in a pot, and placed it on a burner. She turned it on full flame, went back to the pantry and found a bottled tea. She opened it and took a drink. Sugar and caffeine took a fast track into her bloodstream. They opened her mind and eased the headache she didn’t even realize she had.
Outside, the sun was descending. Temperatures were falling.
The house was warm. Newer than her childhood home, but not so fancy as she had expected. For the first time in days, the taut fear that had kept her terrified, fleeing, always looking behind her … faded. Not completely. But enough that she was able to put her soup in a bowl, sit down at the table with a spoon in her hand, and eat like a civilized person.
She put her bowl in the sink. My God, she’d tracked dirt and broken glass all over the floor. She unlaced her hiking boots and removed them. She retrieved the broom and dustpan from the pantry and swept up.
She found the half bath off the kitchen and used it. Actually peed in a real toilet. And flushed it.
She pulled the honeycomb blinds down over the broken window—they cut the cold breeze.
She wandered into the living r
oom and sank down on the couch. Nice room. It looked like the family had saved the knotty pine paneling from Taylor’s old house to use on the walls. The paneling gave the space a warm, golden feel. Homey. Like her home. Like … she leaned her head back on the pillows, then laid down and pulled the afghan over herself.
Just for a moment …
CHAPTER TEN
Taylor woke up as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon.
She sat up with a jerk. How had she fallen asleep like that? After so many hours and days of no sleep, fearful sleep, freezing cold sleep, how had she …
Well. She had answered her own question.
She had slept the night through. She had been without sleep for so long she had broken into a family’s house, slurped their soup, and fallen asleep on their couch as if she didn’t have a worry in the world. Which she guessed she didn’t, since the cops had never shown up to haul her ass away.
So what was another can of soup? She was starving.
She headed back into the kitchen, found the bathroom again, peed in the real toilet—again—and flushed it.
Man, that never got old.
Back in the pantry, she found a can of clam chowder and a can of Spam.
She loathed Spam. But right now, it sounded like the best breakfast ever.
Today, her hands weren’t shaking so much. She made quick work of cutting the Spam and putting it in a pan to fry. She found a loaf of bread in the freezer and popped two slices in the toaster. She used the electric can opener and opened a can of peaches. And she made coffee. She sat down and ate breakfast: the whole can of Spam, the whole can of peaches, three slices of bread, a healthy helping of preserves, and a bowl of clam chowder. When she was done, she meticulously put the kitchen back into order. If anyone came in the back door now, they would notice nothing out of place except the spattering of glass shards on the tile floor close to the window.
She unlocked the door and headed outside.
With food in her stomach and a good night’s sleep behind her, the air felt brisk rather than brutal, and the limb that had defeated her last night was manageable. She pulled it up onto the porch and positioned it so it looked as if it had broken off in the wind and smashed the window.