Page 72 of Final Escape
Breathing hard, a hand clutched at her throat, she started for her SUV at a run. But as she climbed behind the wheel, she heard it again, and this time knew it was no mistake. The words, now repeated in a weak litany, chilled her to the bone.
“H-help me. Please...y-you’ve got to save Noah.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Carrie drove the Tahoecloser to the cabin and turned on her headlights, then backed up and repositioned the vehicle a few feet over, aiming at the weak cries for help.
She grabbed a flashlight, made sure her phone was still in her pocket, and warily looked through the open door. “Linda?”
“Over...here.” The voice was weaker now. Raspy.
Taking another careful look around the clearing, Carrie hurried toward Linda’s voice.
She lay crumpled against the foundation of the cabin, half-hidden in a tangle of brush, her clothing crimson with blood, her face and throat clotted with it. The dirt around her was stained dark.
Carrie took a sharp breath as she knelt at Linda’s side and punched 911 into her cell phone.
“N-no,” Linda wheezed, choking on the fluid in her throat and trying to catch her breath. “Don’t. H-he’ll come back.”
“Who will come back? Who, Linda?”
“He...he’s got Noah. Go—find him.” The woman’s eyes rolled back and she slumped against the wall, her breathing barely audible.
Carrie finished her hasty 911 call, giving the directions and Linda’s name as she hurried to her truck for the simple first-aid kit she kept in the glove box. She jerked on her only pair of vinyl gloves, then raced back to Linda’s side and tried to examine her wounds.
A cut trailed from below her ear to the base of her neck. Others—defensive wounds, probably—were crosshatched on her hands and arms, and there appeared to be stab wounds on her lower belly.
And everywhere Carrie looked, there was blood.
Opening the first-aid kit, she stared at the puny assortment of small adhesive bandages, two-by-two gauze squares and a roll of clingy stretch bandaging.
She grabbed the gauze squares and pressed them into place along the neck wound, using strips of adhesive tape to hold them in place. She added more and more layers of gauze while applying pressure with her palm until the bleeding slowed, then stopped seeping through the gauze.
She searched for the other wounds, wrapping the worst as best she could.
Linda stirred, opened her eyes halfway. “Noah...please go...”
