She nearly tiptoed toward the exposed earth, afraid of what she might find buried there.
It was the edge of a piece of cloth. Janine lowered herself to her knees and brushed the earth away from it, then let out a gasp as she recognized Sophie’s flowered underpants. She pulled them from the earth. They were soiled; Sophie had been sick. She dug farther, her hands quickly growing raw from the vines and brush and soil as she searched for more of Sophie’s clothes, more clues.
Finally, she sat back on her heels in frustration, looking down at her filthy hands.
Okay, why would Sophie’s underpants be here? She tried to clear her head, to think straight. Would Sophie have buried them herself? Could someone have kidnapped her, after all, harmed her, killed her, and buried her clothes helter-skelter through the forest?
Whatever the answer to this puzzle, she needed to get the searchers out here again. She turned on her cell phone, but there was no signal this deep in the woods. She tried to remember the location of that peak from which she’d called Lucas, but she knew it was far behind her, and she was no longer sure of the direction.
She got to her feet and began moving around the forest, trying her phone in different areas. With every step, the forest seemed to grow duskier, and she knew she had to leave now or face a night alone in the woods. But she was so close to Sophie. She could feel it. As close as she’d been in eleven days. She would not leave her now.
Still trying her phone every few minutes, she continued to search, losing herself in the darkness and not caring, until it was too dark to move with any sureness or safety. Then she lowered herself to the ground, ready to share the night in the forest with her daughter.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
It was the early edge of dawn when Zoe awakened. She couldn’t have said why, but she slipped her arms beneath her pillow as she rolled over on the sleeping pallette, and she felt something cool against her fingertips. The strange sensation made her jump. What was that?
Sitting up, she lifted the pillow. She was not sure what the object was at first; the light was so dim in the room. But then she looked more closely to see that it was a seed pod from the courage tree.
So, that’s where Sophie had been the afternoon before. Zoe’s heart ached with the realization that Sophie thought she could give her courage. The little girl did not know how difficult a task that was.
What was it Sophie had told her a few days earlier? That her mother would be able to figure out a way to save both her and Marti? At least, Zoe thought, Sophie’s mother would probably try.
Picking the bloom up in her hands, she looked over at the child. Sophie’s face was still badly swollen, and her raspy, labored breathing was the only sound in the room. On the third pallette, Marti was sound asleep, her hand falling over the side of the bed to the floor, her fingers locked around the handle of her gun.
Zoe put the seed pod down on top of her pillow and quietly slipped on her shoes. Then she walked carefully over to Sophie’s bed, leaning over the little girl.
“Sophie,” she whispered.
Sophie started, and Zoe held a finger to her lips. “Get up quietly, honey,” she said. “We’re getting out of here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Today was the day.
Janine awakened, stiff from sleeping upright against a birch tree, with that thought in her mind. She stretched carefully, rolling her head around on her neck to work out the stiffness. The forest was misty, filled with the musky morning scent of earth and trees, and sunlight was just beginning to sift through the canopy.
Today she would find Sophie, one way or another. It would be over.
She got to her feet and took a long swallow from her water bottle. After relieving herself in the brush, she tried her cell phone again, but there was still no signal. She needed to talk to the sheriff. She needed to talk to Lucas.
Clicking on her GPS, she tried to pinpoint her location on the map. She was five miles from the road, deep in the heart of the forest. There was a creek nearby, she saw by the map. If she were building a cabin, she would want it to be near water, she thought, and she set out in that direction.
After only a few dozen yards, her feet began to ache and burn, and she stopped walking to give them a rest. She could only imagine how much Sophie’s feet had hurt from walking through the woods, especially given the fact that she’d had only one shoe, and that thought started her moving again.
She was near the creek, according to the information on the GPS, when she heard a crackling, crashing sound from the woods to her left.
Let it be a deer and not a bear, she thought, standing still.
It was neither. Janine saw flashes of color through the trees, but it was a moment before the flashes grew together to form a person. A woman? Yes, it was a woman, dressed in tan shorts, a red top. And she was carrying something on her back. A child. A red-haired child!
“Sophie!” Janine started toward them, moving as swiftly as was possible through the thick undergrowth.
The woman kept walking, her step quick but labored under her burden.
“Sophie!” Janine called again, and the woman turned to glance at her, although she never stopped walking. Janine could see Sophie’s head resting against the stranger’s back. One of her feet was bandaged, and it bounced against the woman’s thigh as she walked.
“What are you doing with her?” Janine yelled as she neared them.
The woman seemed to pick up her pace, and Janine scrambled after her.
“Wait!” she cried, and the woman finally came to a stop.
Janine caught up to them, and Sophie lifted her head from the woman’s back. She was very ill, her color a sickly yellow, her face puffy with fluid.
“Oh, baby,” Janine said.
“Mom.” Sophie reached one swollen arm toward her. There seemed to be no fear in her at being carried by the woman. Or else, she was far beyond caring.
Janine held her daughter’s puffy face between her hands. “Oh, Sophe,” she said. “Oh, Sophe.”
“She’s sick,” the woman said. “We have to get her out of here.”
Janine reached for Sophie. “Let me have her,” she demanded. “I’m her mother.”
“I’ve got a good hold on her for now,” the woman said. “We’ll take turns. It’s a long way out of here, and I’m not really sure which way to go.”
Janine had no idea who this woman was or how she came to have Sophie on her back, but she was not an enemy, of that she felt certain. Perhaps she was a searcher who’d remained behind, out here on her own.
“I have a GPS,” Janine said, “but I also have a cell phone. Let me call for—”
“We have to get out of here now.” The woman looked over her shoulder, and Janine knew that something more than Sophie’s illness was spurring her on.
“This way,” Janine said, pointing. Still holding tight to the soft-sided cooler, she dropped her backpack on the ground to free herself to run, as the woman took off ahead of her. She was not a young woman, yet she seemed hugely strong and agile, and it took Janine a few seconds to catch up to her again.
She had so many questions, yet it was not the time to ask them. They no longer seemed important, anyway. She just took her lead from the woman and raced along next to her, checking the GPS from time to time, her vision blurred from her tears. Sophie was alive!
Branches snapped against her face, and she feared that either she or the woman would twist an ankle on a tree root or fallen branch if they kept up this pace.
“Can we stop for a minute?” she asked after a while. “I want to try my phone to see if I can get a signal.”
The woman looked behind them again. “All right,” she said, coming to a stop, breathing hard. “Let me put Sophie down for a minute.”
Janine helped her lower Sophie to the ground. She had never felt her daughter’s body in this condition, with her skin so taut and discolored over the puffiness.
“Can you sit up, honey?” she asked her.
/> Sophie barely seemed to hear her, but she offered Janine a smile all the same.
The woman sat down next to Sophie, still breathing hard. Her shirt clung to her back with sweat, and she watched while Janine tried the phone.
“Still no signal,” Janine said, staring at the display. “Look. Let me find some higher ground.” She thought again of the hilltop she’d reached the day before, but was still unsure how to get there. “You can stay here with Sophie, and I—”
“No.” The woman grabbed her arm. “I think we’re in some danger here.”
“From what?” Janine asked. “From who?”
“We just are. We need to keep moving. Can you carry Sophie for a while?”
“All right.”
The woman helped her lift Sophie into her arms, and for just a moment, Janine couldn’t take a step forward. Instead, she buried her head against the hot, damp skin of her daughter’s neck to breathe in the earthy scent of her hair and scalp.
“Come on.” The woman tugged at her arm, and they set off again.
They had gone another half mile when she knew she wouldn’t be able to carry Sophie one more step.
“We have to stop here,” she said, lowering Sophie to the ground again. She checked the GPS. “Please. Stay with her,” she said. “Let me find the highest point around here and see if I can call out from there.”
The woman did not even look at her. She dropped to the ground next to Sophie, putting one arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “Okay,” she said. “Hurry back, though. Please.”
Checking the GPS, Janine walked ahead a bit and to the north, where she began climbing up a hill, slipping on rocks and grabbing the branches of trees to keep her balance. She tried the cell phone every few yards, finally catching a signal when she neared the crest of the hill. Pulling a scrap of paper from her shorts pocket, she dialed the number for the sheriff’s office.
She barely had the breath to speak into the phone. “This is Janine Donohue,” she said. “I’ve found my daughter. We’re in the woods, and we need to get her out of here right away. She needs immediate medical attention. She can’t walk, and she’ll need a helicopter.”
The sheriff was silent for a moment. Maybe he still thought she was crazy. “Do you know where you are?” he asked.
She gave him the coordinates for the area where she’d left Sophie and the woman.
“We’ll get right out there,” the sheriff assured her.
She hung up the phone without saying goodbye, already making her way back down the rise. She needed to be with her daughter.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Zoe leaned back against a fallen tree, watching Sophie’s mother as she sat cross-legged on the forest floor, holding her ill—perhaps her dying—child in her arms.
“What’s your name?” Zoe asked her.
Sophie’s mother raised her cheek from where it had been resting against her daughter’s head.
“Janine,” she said. She looked into the woods, in the direction of the road, still two or three miles away from them. “Please let them come soon,” she prayed aloud.
It had been nearly a half hour since Janine had returned from making her call. She’d told Zoe that help was on the way, and then the two women had settled into a silence made necessary by Janine’s fervent attention to her daughter.
Zoe had not been able to stop herself from listening for the crackle of leaves that would indicate that Marti had followed—and found—them. But aside from the hum of insects and birdsong, Sophie’s labored breathing had been the only sound in the forest.
“Where did you find her?” Janine asked now. “Are you one of the searchers?”
Zoe was not certain how to answer. “I was living out here in a shanty,” she said. “Sophie showed up there a few days ago.”
“Didn’t you know she was lost?” Janine asked. “Why didn’t you call the sheriff’s office?”
“I have no phone,” Zoe said. “And I didn’t know how much of an emergency this was. How sick she was.” She hated herself for making excuses. If Sophie died, she would have no one to blame but herself.
Janine lowered her cheek to Sophie’s head again and closed her eyes. She rocked her daughter slowly, holding one of her small, bloated hands in her own, and Zoe fell back into a guilty silence.
Two men and one woman, all dressed in EMT uniforms, arrived after another half hour had passed. None of them looked at Zoe with any unusual interest, and she guessed she had made a more successful transition from actress to mountain woman than she had thought.
They’d brought a stretcher with them, and they strapped Sophie onto it, her tiny body asleep, her breathing still uneven and rasping.
“I have medication she needs with me,” Janine said, pulling the strap of a small case from her shoulder. “Can one of you start an IV?”
“Can’t do it here,” the woman said. “Let’s get her to the chopper. They can run an IV there.”
They raced through the forest as quickly as they were able, the stretcher making the going rougher and slower than it would have otherwise been. Finally, they reached a road, but it was high above them, and it took the effort of everyone to push and pull the stretcher and Sophie up the short cliff.
The road was filled with vehicles—sheriff’s cars, a fire truck and an ambulance—and people in a variety of uniforms rushed toward the stretcher as it rose above the cliff. It was disorienting, seeing all those people, all that activity, after spending a couple of months alone in the woods, and Zoe hung back at the edge of the cliff.
“We’ll just carry her to the chopper,” one of the rescuers said, waving away the medic from the ambulance.
Zoe turned to see a helicopter sitting at the edge of the dirt road, precariously balanced on an outcropping of land that looked like it might be used as a place to turn around or as a scenic overlook. She felt frozen in place. Where should she go? Should she turn herself in to the sheriff right now? But before she could decide, Janine surprised her by grabbing her arm, and Zoe willingly ran with her toward the helicopter.
“Are you a paramedic?” Janine asked the young woman who helped them climb inside the helicopter.
The woman nodded. She’d pulled a stethoscope from around her neck and was listening to Sophie’s chest. “She has kidney failure, right?” she asked.
Janine nodded. “Yes, and I have medication with me that needs to be administered to her intravenously.” She opened the soft-sided case and pulled out a plastic bag filled with liquid.
“What is it?” the paramedic asked.
“It’s called P.R.E.-5,” Janine said. “She’s taking it as part of a study.” She reached into the bottom of the case and drew out a page from a prescription pad, handing it to the paramedic, who scanned it quickly.
“Okay,” the young woman said. “Let’s get her hooked up.”
Zoe watched as they found a vein in Sophie’s puffy arm and inserted the IV.
Once the infusion was running and the helicopter was in the air, she looked across the stretcher at Janine.
“Will this work quickly?” she asked.
Janine shook her head. “Right now, she needs dialysis. I’m just hoping this can give her a chance.”
“It’s Herbalina, right?” Zoe asked.
Janine looked surprised. “How did you know? Did Sophie tell you about it?”
Zoe nodded.
Janine smiled at her, then cocked her head to the side, and Zoe knew that the younger woman was seeing her—truly seeing her—for the first time. Janine’s eyes widened.
“My God, you’re Zoe,” she said.
Zoe leaned across the stretcher to touch Janine’s wrist. “Right now,” she said, “I’m just a mom like you, trying the only way I know how to save my daughter.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Sophie was going to sleep through the dialysis, that much was clear. Janine sat at her bedside in the hospital in Martinsburg, West Virginia, praying that she would survive the myriad problems he
r failed kidneys had brought upon her. She was hooked up to a respirator and attached to monitors of all sorts. The attending physician said it was a miracle that she was alive at all, and he became an instant believer in the power of Herbalina.
She gave him Dr. Schaefer’s number so that they could discuss the treatment for Sophie’s condition. And once she was certain that Sophie was getting the best care possible, she went into the lounge outside the intensive care unit to call Joe.
There was no answer at his home phone, and no answer on his cell phone, either. If he had the cell turned off, she knew he was probably in the middle of a tennis game with Paula, and it both amazed and irked her that he could play tennis with Sophie still missing. But then, he thought Sophie was dead and that there was nothing more he could do. She left a message for him, then called information for Paula’s number. But, of course, there was no answer at Paula’s house, either. Paula had left her cell phone number in her answering machine message, though, and Janine jotted it down.
Then she called Lucas at Fairfax Hospital.
“He’s in surgery,” the nurse who answered the phone told her.
“Surgery!” Janine said, alarmed. “What for?”
“They found a transplant for him,” the nurse said. “He’s getting a kidney.”
“Oh, my God, how wonderful!” Janine said. She asked several more questions, trying to determine how long Lucas had been in surgery, when he was expected to be in the recovery room, but the nurse could offer her few answers.
She tried Joe’s number again, and when there was no answer, she dialed the number for Paula’s cell phone. She was surprised at how quickly Paula answered the call.
“Paula, this is Janine,” she said. “Is Joe with you?”
Paula hesitated. “No,” she said. “Where are you?”