Page 77 of Preying Game

They returned to the car, quickly stripped off their rain gear and tossed it in the trunk. Now they were wearing jeans and tee shirts suitable for the current weather conditions.

Alice leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

“You don’t feel well?”

“I feel weighted down,” she replied.

“Can you be a little clearer?”

“Like it’s hard to lift my arms and legs. And hard to breathe,” she admitted.

oOo

Fear sizzled through Jonah. He thanked God that Alice hadn’t vanished in a flash. But he knew time was starting to crowd her out of existence because Hayward was now dead. How long did she have?

The only certainty was that they’d better hurry.

She closed her eyes and lolled against the seat while they headed for Western Maryland.

As he drove, it was tempting to speed—like an escaped soul fleeing from hell. But he ordered himself not to press the accelerator to the floor. He was thankful that this part of Pennsylvania was close to the place where Alice had been abducted, and he breathed a sigh of relief when she opened her eyes and started looking out the window.

“Almost there,” she said, pointing to a gravel road. “That’s the turnoff to the camp.”

He’d visited the place the week before and knew the camp was out of business. When they reached the location, he saw only the dilapidated buildings that had lasted into the current century.

He also knew where Hayward had staged the fake accident because the rock slide was still there. It was a gigantic pile of boulders that would have been impossible to move without heavy equipment.

He kept driving, until the road became too narrow to navigate. From the look of fatigue on Alice’s face, he hoped she could make it to the right spot.

“I used to come up this way a lot,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I loved the peace and quiet. I didn’t know a killer was paying attention to my habits.”

“Yeah. Back in the early sixties nobody expected to go out for a hike and get snatched. You stay here. I’ll go investigate.” Fear had him jogging up the trail through trees with almost bare branches. He had gone perhaps two hundred yards when he saw the spot where a cliff had collapsed.

And to his relief, nobody was around.

“Thank God,” he breathed as he turned and jogged back.

Alice was sitting with her eyes closed, but they drifted open when she heard him.

“I found it. Nobody’s here.”

She pushed herself up. “We’d better hurry.”

“Yeah,” he answered. Theoretically they had all the time in the world—but not for Alice.

From the trunk, he collected supplies he hadn’t needed at the campground. After shouldering a backpack, he put his arm around Alice, helping her walk up the trail.

He could hear her labored breathing and feel her faltering steps.

Please, God, he silently prayed. Let me get her there in time.

I heard that.

He laughed, then said aloud, “It’s gonna be okay. I’m just nervous.”

After that, he tried to keep his thoughts on the task ahead, but there was no way he could keep panic from drifting into the edges of his mind.

When he heard her gasp, alarm grabbed him again. But she was only reacting to the enormous pile of rocks.

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