Page 34 of Manhunt in the Narrows
And it was too late to turn back now.
Those gunshots hadn’t been for nothing. His partner could be out here hurt or worse. The Hitchhiker Killer would have a hard time controlling two hostages, no matter the circumstances. And he knew Sayles. She would take the first opportunity to escape, but that meant leaving an innocent in the killer’s hands, which wouldn’t even cross her mind. Even with the threat of death barreling down on her, she’d do whatever it took to protectsomeone else. It was one of the things he loved about her most, and hell, he wouldn’t change it.
He loved her.
All the retorts she threw in his face, her rashness and impulsivity, the way she fought to keep her mouth closed when a thought was on her mind. The ranger advertised every emotion of her face and gave him a front-row seat to the whirlwind of danger flashing in her eyes when he’d gotten too close to a line she’d drawn between them. He loved how she unconsciously sought him out in the middle of the night and that his body melted against her when nothing but exhaustion and sleeping pills had done the trick in the past. He just…loved her.
All the bad dates, all the loneliness, the obsession with his work—he’d go through it all again if it meant he could keep Sayles in his life. He’d even hike the Narrows again if it gifted him with a glimpse of her in her element. Because here, in this park, she’d freed herself, and he couldn’t help but be drawn in. To want that for himself. Without him even realizing it, she’d filled the hollow spaces in his chest, highlighting just how empty he’d been without her.
“Where would you go, Ranger Green?” Elias sucked in a deep breath, scanning the barren landscape. He wasn’t familiar with these mountains. Well, hell, he wasn’t familiar with any portion of this park, but Sayles was. If she had a chance to get away, she would take it, and she would take the second hostage with her. And hide. He’d noted enough half caves and outcroppings in the rock walls of the canyon to know these mountains most likely had similar structure. Okay. She would head for a hiding spot. Wait the killer out until they could escape unnoticed or until help arrived. But they would’ve had to have moved fast. The Hitchhiker Killer had a gun, after all. He would’ve gone after them, desperate to keep what he thought he was owed.
Which begged the question, why take a random camper hostage alongside Sayles? Why increase the risk of one or both of them turning on him? Unless the killer had been looking for that specific camper. Sayles thought he might’ve been searching for someone the killer deemed important. Not something. Someone he knew. What if he’d been engaged in his own hunt? All the murders on the highway, the death of the hiker at the base of the Narrows—it hadn’t been random at all. It’d led the Hitchhiker Killer to Zion’s backcountry, to that tent and his latest victim.
Surveying the nearest mountain, Elias tried to discern any caves or outcroppings in the rock face, but it was far too dark for his pathetic vision to pick up. He’d have to get closer, risk heading in the wrong direction for the slightest chance of learning Sayles’s location. But psychology and the body’s automatic fight-or-flight response dictated humans as a whole sought immediate safety when threatened, which meant Sayles had most likely run to the mountain southeast of his position. Once she’d added some distance between her and the killer, she’d try to make her way back to civilization.
Jogging the few hundred yards to the base of the mountain, he sounded like an asthmatic pug. His atoms had started vibrating at dangerously high intensity, threatening to crack him open from the inside out. But he’d push through. Not because of some outdated need for justice but for Sayles. For their future. Because there would be one. He’d make sure of it.
Something solid and out of place took shape on the ground ahead, and Elias slowed his pace. Every sense on alert. The lump wasn’t moving. Didn’t hold any life. Not a person. A pack. Toeing the material, he flipped it face up. And froze.
Sayles’s pack. She’d been here. But worse, a national park ranger had abandoned a mass of supplies she’d guarded more carefully than a dragon and its hoard. She wouldn’t have given it up for anything, which meant it’d either been taken fromher by the killer or she’d surrendered it to give herself a better chance at survival. Either way, she needed him now. Tipping the pack upside down, he crouched, emptying the contents into the dirt. He hit the power button for the flashlight and slipped the end between his teeth to get a better accounting of what was left. Bingo. The first aid kit. He didn’t bother with cleaning the wound in his side this time around, drying the edges with one of her shirts and slapping a new section of gauze to hold him together. He could hear Sayles’s criticism in the back of his head now. How she’d argue he was doing more harm than good in leaving the hole to fester. How he’d regret it and probably turn into a brain-craving zombie, but for now, it would be enough to get him to her.
He couldn’t control a groan as he got to his feet. Elias braced himself against the mountain’s wall, holding his side to keep the new gauze in place. Dirt shifted beneath his boots, and that damn blister between his thighs burned. His vision played tricks on him as stars began peppering the velvet night sky. There one second and gone the next. Or maybe he’d finally started losing his mind. Hard to tell when stranded out in the middle of desert, his drinking water had run out and he’d been surviving off adrenaline fumes for two days straight. “Keep it together, man.”
The pep talk didn’t hit as hard as he’d intended, but he pushed upward, legs protesting the slightest shift in his balance. Hard-to-see claws caught on his jeans and tore at his exposed arms. Stinging pain ripped at the side of his thigh. Damn cactus. The mountainside had gone from vivid red rock stained with water damage to nothing but a black landscape determined to tear him apart. The moon had yet to make an appearance in the east while the sun had already given up the ghost. He was in the dark. Thoroughly and completely surrounded by nothing but the unknown.
Except he knew Sayles was there. Waiting for him. Pulling him in, and he wouldn’t fail her. Not as he’d failed the last innocent life entrusted to him. Trees rustled on either side of him, as if disturbed by something he couldn’t see. The ground flattened out under his feet, and his lungs eased up on trying to kill him. Elias nearly fell to his knees as gravity lessened its mission to pull him back down the mountain.
The black hole staring back at him wasn’t large by any means. At least nothing compared to the massive echoing caverns he’d explored as a kid. No. This cave hadn’t wanted to be discovered, hidden back away from prying eyes, and he couldn’t help but shiver at all the possibilities waiting inside. This. This was where Sayles would’ve taken cover if she’d managed to escape the Hitchhiker Killer. To buy herself enough time before going for help. Or fighting back.
No signs of life or death. Just a stillness that crept into Elias’s bones and waited for him to make the next move. He scanned the stretch of black emptiness behind him, light outlines of mountains and deep valleys bleeding into his vision. Then stepped over the threshold of the cave.
The ceiling dipped down, scratching against his scalp. At over six feet, he had to watch his head. The walls themselves pressed in on him from every angle but led him deeper into the belly of the mountain. His footsteps and skids echoed around him, announcing his presence to anyone inside. Silence—deadly and expansive—took up residence in his head. He arced the flashlight beam toward his feet, careful of every step, with his free hand sliding against rough stone wall caked in dust. “Not creepy at all.”
But he’d endure a thousand caves just like this if it meant finding Sayles at the end. He didn’t know how they would make it work with him assigned out of Vegas and over state lines, but whatever happened in this park wouldn’t be the end of them.Not as long as he had any say about it. He’d been an idiot to think he could come out here and fix his career—to pretend that working cases harder would make him happy, that it could fix the fact that he hadn’t caught his father’s killers—when all he really needed was a heavy dose of prickly national park ranger to set him straight. She hadn’t meant to do it. He knew that. Neither of them had meant for any of this, but that didn’t mean they got to turn their backs on it, either. Walk away as though they hadn’t been altered on a cellular level just by being in the same proximity as each other. No. Elias had already lost too much. He wasn’t going to lose Sayles, too.
She’d hate that he’d called her prickly, and he couldn’t wait to test out his theory.
Elias navigated farther into the mountain. Then heard a voice. No. A whimper.
His rib cage suctioned tighter around his organs. He picked up the pace, pressing his back into the curve of wall ahead. Just beyond a pool of flashlight highlighting his park ranger. She’d taken a defensive stance in front of another woman he didn’t recognize. He didn’t have a weapon. He had nothing on his side but years of fieldwork and training burning to be let free at the sight of those women at the hands of a cold-blooded killer. And he’d make every move count. Elias slipped around the corner, closing the distance between him and the Hitchhiker Killer as quietly as possible.
“There’s nowhere you can run that I won’t find you.” Raising his arm, the killer brandished the gun. Taking aim directly at Sayles’s chest. “And you’ve both tested my patience beyond my usual limits.”
Sayles shifted her weight between both feet, keeping the killer’s attention locked on her and away from the sobbing woman clinging at her back.
The killer took a single step forward. “We always knew it would end like this, Ranger Green. Thank you for your help in locating my wife. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Elias clenched the flashlight under his knuckles. “I think it’s safe to say she quits.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
She was either going to have a heart attack or faint.
Sayles couldn’t decide.
That voice. She knew that voice. The gravelly undertones urged her to breathe while delivering warning straight to her gut. Elias. He was alive, but she couldn’t discern his condition as the federal agent who’d single-handedly upturned her life lunged.
Mae’s fingernails dug into her arms a split second before the impact.
