Page 38 of Atone in Darkness
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Eli knelt at the creek’s edge and scooped up a handful of cool water to splash on his face. It felt good after hiking his ass up and down steep slopes trying to pick up the trail they’d been following since yesterday afternoon. None of them had wanted to stop even long enough to eat a makeshift meal, their worry for the missing Paladin a slave driver that kept them pushing on. Eventually,exhaustion combined with a pitch-black night had forced them to stop for a few hours.
The sun had finally put in an appearance and the team was on the move again. At first they’d had little trouble following the man and woman who had avoided the slaughter back at that camp, but the trail had become muddied by someone else in the interim. There was no telling who might be out there in the woods,but they sure as hell weren’t part of Lonzo’s strike team, which only added to the growing sense of urgency.
Tyson came slip-sliding down the hillside to join Eli at the water’s edge. “See anything?”
“Yeah. They were here.”
He pointed toward a cluster of trees a short distance upstream. “Someone answered nature’s call over that way. There’s a woman’s footprint, so it has to be the pair we’retracking. I’m guessing they slept under that overhang, although it looks like someone tried to hide the evidence.”
Tyson stepped on some large rocks in the stream to hopscotch to the other side and squatted to study the ground. “They’re not the only ones who’ve been through here, though. I count at least four other sets of footprints. It looks like this bunch split up. Half went upstream, whilethe others headed downstream.”
When he crossed back over, he made his way toward the trees Eli had pointed out earlier. Meanwhile, Eli went the other way, looking for any sign that the woman had left in that direction. He’d gone about fifty yards when he spotted a single heel print in the soft sand at the edge of the creek. The next one was higher up on the slope.
It was time to call in theothers. He returned to the spot where he’d left Tyson, only to find the man fiddling with a pile of river rocks next to a downed log. What the heck was he doing?
The marine looked up at Eli’s approach. “I want your take on this before I show it to Lonzo and Jarvis.”
Eli snickered. “If you want my opinion, it looks like a bunch of rocks to me.”
Tyson gave him a disgusted look and tossed himone of the rocks. “Someone scratched a circle on it, most likely with a knife blade.”
Eli studied the ragged mark on the stone’s surface. “It looks fresh.”
“That’s what I think, too.” He picked up another of the rocks. “They all have letters etched into the surface.”
“Where did you find them?”
“Right here by the log. I was waiting for you to come back when I spotted the first one. When I pickedit up, I saw the rest. There are seven altogether, each with a different letter on it.”
He started arranging the rocks in a line. “If I had to guess, someone was trying to leave a message. Probably left them lined up all neat and tidy on the log where they’d be seen, but whoever came through later knocked them off.”
“What does it spell?”
Tyson finished arranging the rocks and stepped back tolet Eli get a clear look at the two words that had both of them grinning:CHASE OK
Even though neither of them had ever met the man personally, they both knew what it meant to find one of the lost. The realization that they might yet be able to bring the missing Paladin home safely had Eli’s pulse kicking it up a notch. If the message was legit, it was the first good news they’d had. “Son ofa bitch, it is him.”
Then he pulled out his phone and called in the troops.
•••
CHASE YANKED ONhis borrowed sweats and picked up his rifle. “Stay inside and stay down until I figure out who’s out there.”
Marisol nodded and retreated to the living room right behind him. While he went from window to window to seeif there was any other movement in the surrounding woods, she headed straightfor the kitchen, where she picked up the chef’s knife on the counter. The quality of the blade wasn’t anything to brag about, but he couldn’t blame her for wanting to have a weapon close at hand if the enemy had discovered their hiding spot.
“I’m going outside to circle around through the woods and come up behind whoever is out there.” He paused to hold up the radio he’d stolen back in the compound.“Keep yours on. And like I said, stay in and stay down until I signal that it’s safe.”
“Wouldn’t you be safer in here, too?”
He shook his head. “In here, we’re both sitting ducks. I only spotted one guy out there. If he’s one of your employer’s goons, I want to take him out before he can call in our location. Maybe he hasn’t gotten close enough to know for sure we’re in here.”
She winced athis blunt statement of his intentions, but the situation was what it was. Right now, he was more worried about Marisol’s safety than he was her delicate sensibilities.
“And if he’s not one of them?”
“We’ll figure that out once we know what his story is.”
