Page 22 of Save Me

“Hunt! What’s wrong?”

“Someone I love is lost in the mountains west of Denver. They’re searching for her now, and I have to go. I won’t be back until I find her.”

His eyes widened. “The woman hiker who went missing?”

Hunt nodded. “I’m sorry, but she means everything to me. I have to—”

“Do you need a ride? I can fly you there in the morning,” Pete said.

“I can’t wait that long. I’m driving up tonight. Thanks, boss,” and then he was gone.

As he was driving home, he kept thinking of how close in proximity he’d been to her. He’d been here for months and all the while she was within driving distance. Now, he felt sick that he hadn’t searched for her sooner. He couldn’t bear the thought of it being too late.

As soon as he got home, he began to focus on what to do first. He needed to pack survival gear, including his SAT phone. He needed to know where she’d been hiking, and where the search site was located, so he did a little online research to see what he could find out. Army life had taught him to never go into a fight unprepared. If she was still alive, he had to accept that he couldn’t just go storming into her life as if he still had a right to be there, but he’d made her a promise. If she ever got lost, he would save her. Even if she belonged to someone else now, he still owed her that vow.

BUT HUNT WASN’T the only one in a state of shock about Lainie’s fate. Her parents had already heard the same report earlier in the day. They’d had no idea where she was or what she’d been doing since she disappeared, and learning this now was horrifying. Their biggest regret was fearing they were going to be too late to ever speak to her again.

“What do we do?” Greg asked.

Tina was in tears. “We go there. We abandoned her once at her request, but she’s not around to ask permission, and I need to know if my daughter is alive or dead.”

They caught the last flight out of New Orleans, with a plane change in Dallas. They wouldn’t arrive in Denver until after 2:00 a.m., but they didn’t care. They just wanted to be on-site.

It was nearing four in the morning by the time they reached the hotel where they’d booked a room. It was too late to sleep, so they showered, changed clothes and went down for an early breakfast before asking the concierge about renting a car.

UNAWARE THAT GREG and Tina Mayes were en route to Denver, Hunt was showering and packing, getting ready to make the drive. It was nearly an eleven-hour trip from Flagstaff to Denver, so he’d be driving all night, but there were things he needed to know. It was just past sundown when he sat down at his laptop and typed her name in the search bar.

Within moments dozens and dozens of links popped up. Surprised by the number of them, he began with the ones in the year she went missing. And to his horror, every paper in New Orleans had the answer to what had happened and where she’d been. He was reading about the parental kidnapping, and how Millie had finally helped her escape, and as the story continued, learned that she’d been chased down by her own father.

And then he saw the words “five months pregnant...lost the baby...” and froze. His ears were ringing, and the pain in his chest was so severe that he thought he was dying.

“Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I know?”

Without hesitation, he picked up his phone and made a call. He didn’t know if the number was still good, or if they were even alive, but he had a question only they could answer. The call began to ring, and then an answer. For the first time in eleven years, he was hearing his mother’s voice.

“Hello?”

“Mom, it’s me!”

Brenda started screaming, “Chuck! Chuck! It’s Hunter! He’s on the phone.” And then he heard his father shouting at him, and realized she put the old landline on speaker.

“Hunt! Where are you? Why haven’t you—”

“All those years ago, did you know Lainie was pregnant?”

He heard a gasp, then he heard his mother crying, and his father cursing. He hung up and walked outside.

The lights of Flagstaff lined the horizon to his right. A coyote yipped from somewhere nearby. He looked up. Heaven was littered with stars twinkling within the inky blackness of space. He’d spent more of his adult life in the air than he had on the ground, and always felt lighter and weightless there. But tonight, he’d fallen to earth, and the pain was so great he wasn’t sure he could get up. He curled fingers into fists as the stars blurred before him, then the pain came out in a roar, and he kept screaming into the night until the pain bled away.

When he could think without wanting to throw up, he stormed back into the house in long, angry strides, coming out minutes later with his arms full of gear. He threw it all into the back of his Jeep, threw a jacket in the front seat, then went back to lock up and turn out the lights before heading north.

BACK IN NEW ORLEANS, his parents were in an uproar, fighting over who was to blame, and why he’d even asked that question now, after all these years. What happened? What had changed?

It wasn’t until they turned on the television for the local evening news that they got their answer. There was a photo of Lainie Mayes behind the news anchor as he delivered the story.

“One of New Orleans’ own has gone missing on a hike in the mountains outside the city of Denver. Twenty-nine-year-old Lainie Mayes, now a resident of Denver, is the object of a massive search. They’ve been combing the mountains for...”

“Oh, my God. Chuck! Hunt must have seen this report, too. I don’t know where he’s been, but it’s obviously not with her. He’s done some digging. But how would he know about...”

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