Brenda was sobbing. “I’m so sorry. We wouldn’t be intruding on your space, but we don’t know what happened to Hunt.” Then she glared at Greg. “He disappeared without a word after his scholarship was rescinded. It’s been what...eleven years? We had heard nothing until three nights ago when he called to ask us if we’d known Lainie was pregnant. I didn’t know what to say, and I guess our silence was the answer. He hung up, and after we found out about Lainie, I guessed here is where he would come.”
Tina glanced at Greg, but he was staring at the ground, so she kept up the conversation. “Hunt doesn’t look like he used to. He was a big kid, but now, very much a grown man. And hard...the look in his eyes was frightening. After he went up the mountain, I went online to see if googling his name brought up any answers, but got nothing. Whatever he was involved in, it changed him.”
“Probably has a prison record,” Greg mumbled.
Chuck’s fingers curled into fists. “Well, that’s how stupid you are. That would have been part of public records if you were in a mind to look there. And you’re one to talk. He didn’t kill his baby. You did that.”
Greg started cursing, and Tina dragged him back to where they’d been sitting, while Chuck and Brenda went back to their car. All they could do was sit and wait for Hunt to appear.
PER RANGER CHRISTOPHER’S REQUEST, a crime scene crew from the Denver police had gone up the trail yesterday following Hunt Gray’s report. They retrieved hair strands, fabric that matched the flannel shirt they already had in evidence, the bloody rock and took pictures of both sets of footprints. That additional evidence had already been sent to their lab, and if it backed up their suspicions, Justin Randall’s story had just blown up in his face.
Ranger Scott had a new search grid for the rescue teams, but hope was fading. It was looking more like they’d be moving from rescue to recovery. He kept hoping he’d hear more from Hunter Gray, but after his initial call, the man had gone quiet.
BY NOON, Hunt was finding threads from the socks in her footprints, and sometimes blood on the leaves. He was sick, just thinking of how many times her feet must have been pierced. Her steps were closer together now, and sometimes dragging. He’d quit counting the number of times he’d seen where she fell, and how many times she’d turned around and backtracked after getting up. Following her path was like following a drunk afoot who was trying to find the way home.
And then Hunt crossed a deer trail and lost her. The animals had obliterated all signs of her passing. It was like she disappeared in mid-step. The last time he’d felt this kind of panic was that rainy night in New Orleans, waiting for a phone call that never came.
He did a 360-degree turn, looking for something, anything that would tell him where she’d gone, but there was nothing. He took a deep breath and then shouted. “Lainie! Lainie! Can you hear me?”
He paused, listening. The woods had gone silent. Birds quit calling. Even the breeze had laid.
He shouted again, louder. Longer. “Laaiinnieee!”
Nothing. He started walking in an ever-widening circle for over an hour before he found himself above a creek, and moved down the slope to the water’s edge. There were plenty of footprints there, too, but none of them were human.
Heartsick and frustrated, he was about to climb back up when he saw something white caught between the rocks in the middle of the rushing stream. He dropped his backpack on the bank and waded into the water in long, hasty strides all the way to the rocks. Even before he picked it up, he knew what he was looking at. A single white hiking sock, with the sole ripped to shreds. His heart sank as he looked upstream.
“Ah, God...where are you, baby?”
He called her name again, then wrung the water out of the sock and headed back to shore to get his pack. Now he had a trail again. It was vague, but it was something, and he began walking upstream.
He was still in search mode when he realized the light was beginning to fade. He started running, as if he was trying to outrun the dark, and was about a quarter of mile up the creek when he came full stop, staring at the handprints and crawl marks right in front of him. There were tracks where she’d crawled into the water, and others coming out.
If she was crawling, she couldn’t be far!
Shadows were growing longer as he leaped up the creek bank and began following the trail, but he was no longer looking down, he was searching the tree line. She had to be here somewhere.
“Lainie! Lainie! Can you hear me?” he shouted, but the forest had gone silent. He was moving faster now, following the drag marks all the way to a huge pile of dead brush. Stopped by the barrier, he leaned in and then he saw her, curled up on her side, so still and pale he feared the worst.
“Please, God, no,” he cried, and began tearing into the brush and limbs, clearing a path to get to her, then dropped to his knees beside her to search for a pulse.
CHAPTER FIVE
The pulse was there! A sign of a heartbeat was all he needed. It was a little rapid, but strong and steady beneath his fingers. It was the answer to his prayer. God had kept her alive for him.
“Thank you, Lord. I’ve got her.”
She had the remnants of one sock on her right foot, and her left foot was bare, revealing the wounds. They were red, inflamed, and in a couple of places, oozing pus. But it was the head wound, the horrific bruising from the attack, and the level of fever in her body that frightened him most.
He slipped a hand beneath her neck. She was his Lainie...but different. A woman now, not the girl she’d been. And she was hurt—so hurt.
“Lainie, darlin’, it’s me, Hunt. Can you hear me?”
She groaned, then sighed as she rolled over and slowly opened her eyes, and stared straight into a piercing blue gaze.
“The raptor found me,” she mumbled. “You’re here again, Hunt. Are we dead?”
The skin crawled on the back of his neck. Had she been seeing him in her hallucinations?