Page 24 of Save Me

Greg frowned. “The hell it is,” he muttered, jumped out of the SUV and took off running, with Tina right behind him. Greg cut Hunt off in the middle of the parking lot and put his hand in the middle of his chest. “What the hell do you think you’re...?”

Hunt punched him in the face.

Tina gasped, as Greg hit the blacktop on his butt—in shock at the blood spurting from his nose. Then he looked up, past the long legs and broad shoulders into the face of a very angry man with an icy blue glare.

Hunt gave Tina the same look, then toed the bottom of Greg’s shoe.

“You don’t talk to me. You don’t speak my name. Either of you. You don’t ever look at me again. I know what you did to Lainie. I know you’re responsible for the death of our child. I’m going up that mountain to find her, and alive or dead, I’m not coming back without her. I know you put your hands on her. I know she bled on her bedroom floor. But I didn’t know then, what I know now. If she’s dead, I will kill you.”

It was pure reflex that made Greg flinch as Hunt walked past him, and then he crawled to his feet with blood dripping down the front of his shirt.

Tina was horrified and scurried away, leaving her husband to get himself back to their car. She got her laptop from a tote bag in the front seat, and crawled into the back again. She wanted to know where Hunter Gray had been, and what had happened to turn him into such a savage.

STILL REELING FROM the full-circle moment, Hunt ignored the fact that the perimeter was roped off, and ducked under it before heading to the communications van.

“Who’s in charge?” he asked.

“I am,” Ranger Christopher said. “Ranger Scott Christopher. And you are?”

“Former Army Warrant Officer Hunter Gray. I spent ten years in the military flying Apache Longbows. Half of that service was spent in Iraqi war zones. I am highly trained in survival and tracking, and I know the woman who’s missing. If she’s on that mountain, I will find her. May I see the search map? I’d like to know what areas have already been searched, and where you’re going today, and your contact number.”

Scott blinked. “Uh...do you have some identifications to—”

Hunt whipped out his wallet and started pulling out all kinds of licenses and info, including a wallet-size photo of Lainie’s senior year picture, a photo of Hunt and Lainie together, and a photo of Hunt and Preacher on base in Iraq, standing beside their Longbow.

“Miss Mayes’s parents are already on-site and—”

“We’ve spoken,” Hunt said. “Now about that map?”

Scott led Hunt inside the communications van, showed him the map with the grids marked off, then handed him an unmarked map and gave him a contact number.

“Thank you,” Hunt said, entered the number in his SAT phone contacts, left the van, shifted his backpack and started up the trailhead.

The sky was clear, and the breeze on the right side of his face was slight and intermittent as Hunt began the climb. Now he’d seen the areas that had already been searched, and the grid they were searching today.

But he was beginning at the spot where her shoes and gear had been found. That was where she disappeared. He needed to stand where she’d stood.

He was two miles up the trail before he reached it. The rangers had marked it with crime scene tape strung along the area and partway down the slope. He stopped and looked around, eyeing the trail above, and then down the slope, trying to imagine her falling. It didn’t compute.

There were no divots in the vegetation, no signs of her having been grabbing at things trying to gain foothold, no brush was torn up or broken off. And he already knew that the backpack had been found in the lower branches of a tree, not on the ground. So, someone threw it. The other hiker?

There were tracks all over. Rangers. The searchers. And God knew who else had walked through here. He looked farther up the trail and on impulse started jogging. Nearly another mile up, he saw all kinds of debris in the path before him, and a bloody rock lying off to the side. Then he saw a torn piece of brown plaid flannel with a white button attached, large boot prints and smaller sneaker prints. He knelt for a closer look and found three long strands of hair caught in the bark of a broken limb lying on the ground. Auburn hair, like Lainie’s.

“You were fighting him, weren’t you, baby?” Hunt muttered. “So, is this his blood or yours on this rock?”

When Hunt called down to the communications van, Scott answered.

“Ranger Christopher speaking.”

“Scott, this is Hunt Gray. How high have you searched above the place where Lainie’s belongings were found?”

“What do you mean, above?” Scott asked.

“Like farther up the trail from where her shoe was found?”

“Well, we haven’t, because our initial search began where Justin Randall said they’d been attacked by the bear. But we just got word that the police have Randall in custody. His story isn’t checking out. The scratches he has on his face that he claimed were made by the bear were from fingernails.”

“I’m close to a mile higher on the trail from where her gear was found. The ground in and around the trail is all torn up. There’s debris in the path. I saw three long strands of hair caught in the bark of a branch on the ground. The strands are reddish brown, like hers. There are boot prints and sneaker prints, and a remnant of torn fabric with a button still attached. Looks like from a shirt. There’s also a bloody rock on the ground. I think he attacked her here. They fought. She took him out with a rock, disabling him long enough to get away. I don’t know if she really did fall, but the tracks I saw while I was going up look like she was coming down at a fast clip.”

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