Page 25 of Save Me

“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.

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