Page 79 of Rock Bottom

I hadn’t even realized I was bleeding until Bowie pointed it out, but that would explain the dizziness. Slowly, begrudgingly, I let Bowie help me sit in the clearing and swiped a hand over the side of my face, which was covered in blood.

The next hour was a blur of worry and planning. Despite my protests, Bowie insisted we go back to the house. Several fire trucks had arrived to put out the fire, followed closely by emergency medical services. The EMTs swarmed around me, ushering me to the back of an ambulance. They wanted to cart me off to the hospital, but that was the last thing I wanted.

“That head injury needs stitches,” one EMT warned while the other flashed his light in front of my eyes for the fifth time.

“Then stitch me up and let me be.” I shoved the flashlight aside with a wince. “Otherwise, get out of my bloody face with that.”

“I’ll take it from here, gentlemen.”

The EMTs stepped aside to reveal Wattson standing there with his kit. “Who the hell are you?”

“Doctor Connor McCormick.” Wattson adjusted his glasses and shouldered his way past. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to see to my patient.”

The EMTs grumbled, but moved out of the way.

Wattson laid his case out on the bumper of the ambulance and opened it up. “Boone and Leo are already going over the CCTV footage. Ragnar brought the dogs but, unfortunately, between the fire and the gallons of water they’re drowning it in, there won’t be anything left that smells like Dante that we can use to track him.”

I lifted the shoe I’d been holding onto all this time and held it out to him. “This should work. It was—is—Dante’s. I also found his phone, but I don’t know how to unlock it.”

“Maybe Leo can get into it.”

I hissed as he swiped an alcohol wipe across my forehead. “No. The last time we gave Leo a phone to hack, it took him almost twelve hours. We don’t have that kind of time here.”

“Last time, you didn’t have me.” Xavier Laskin stepped out from around the side of the ambulance, his hands tucked in the front pocket of his black hoodie.

I fought the urge to shudder at the mere sight of him. He and Leo were close—maybe more than close—but something about the Laskins had always given me the creeps, Xavier especially. People tended to underestimate him because he was young, quiet, and good looking, but I always felt like there was a spider on the back of my neck when he was around. I didn’t know what it was about the kid, but something about him made it seem like he was only pretending to be human, and he was very, very good at it.

He held out his hand. “Give me the phone.”

I slipped my hand into my pocket, wrapping my fingers around the smooth edges of the device. “I don’t even know if there’s anything useful on it.”

“And you have no way to find out without my help,” Xavier insisted. “It’s just a paperweight in your hands. Give it to me where it can be useful.”

I glanced over at Wattson, who nodded once. Handing Dante’s phone over to Xavier felt like I was giving him a part of Dante. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have a choice. I might know my way around an interrogation and battlefield tactics, but when it came to technology, I was useless.

Xavier took the phone and walked away without another word. Everything in me wanted to follow him, but it would be pointless. I wouldn’t be of any help. The best thing I could do for Dante was let Wattson stitch my wounds closed so I’d be ready to go with the search team. I tried to focus on that instead as Wattson spread the numbing gel around the wound so he could clean it.

He was busy stitching the cut on my forehead closed when Boone and Ragnar appeared with the dogs on their leashes. I started to get up to greet them, but Wattson gave me a shove.

“Sit back down, you numbskull,” he growled. “You tear these open before I’m done, you’ll have to finish the job yourself.”

“What did you find?” I asked, ignoring Wattson’s griping.

Boone handed Trixie’s leash off to Ragnar and held up a machete. “Well, you’re lucky he got you with the blunt side when he hit you. Helped that the damn thing’s dull as hell, probably from taking out all the tires. Oscar’s no Rambo, that’s for sure. From the footage, it looks like Dante went along with him voluntarily, so at least the kid is smart enough to cooperate. We’ve got our friends in the local P.D. scouring his last known location. We finally got a hit back on the partial plate you grabbed the night he tried to take Dante at the bar. Turns out the idiot registered his car at the Sunsetter Motel outside Haydenville.”

“He hasn’t gone back there,” I said, shaking my head. “That little sedan couldn’t have made the tracks I found. He’s in something else.”

“There’s an ATV rental place a couple miles up the road,” Wattson suggested. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he used his ID there.”

“That doesn’t help us find Dante,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “They’re in the woods somewhere, Boone.”

Boone sighed and lifted his ball cap to scratch his head, eying the trees. “Are you sure? There’s two hundred and fifty thousand acres of federal land out there, Church, and Oscar doesn’t seem like the woodsy type.”

“Then he’s got a cabin, a campsite, or a trailer or something out there. The tracks led off into the woods, going northeast.”

“Or they went southeast toward the road,” Boone said and bent down to pat the dog’s head. “Either way, my girls will pick up his scent and we’ll track him down.”

Ragnar looked out toward the woods. “Good thing I brought the horse trailer down. You’ll be better off tracking on horseback in the dark so long as you’re careful.”

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