Page 8 of Don't Back Down

Cameron was already out of bed and getting dressed.

“Did Biggers say anything to you?” Cameron asked.

Rachel hiccupped on a sob. “It was weird. When he first saw me, he was shocked. Like he hadn’t expected to see me, and then we fought. He knocked me out. Louis came home from work and found me on the floor and the baby gone. Find my baby, Cameron. You and Ghost. Please find my baby. Louis put the little shirt Lili wore yesterday in our mailbox for you. You’ll need it for Ghost.”

A quiet rage washed through Cameron so fast he had to take a breath before he could speak.

Danny Biggers put a hand to Rachel again? And took the baby? God! Lili. Up the mountain. In the dark. With a man who’d already sold his soul to the devil.

“Are you okay? Did he hurt you bad?”

“I’ll be okay. Just find my baby.”

“We’ll find them, Rachel. Ghost and I won’t stop until we do.”

He hung up, buckled on his holster and handgun, shoved his sat phone inside the inner pocket of his black jacket, and then grabbed a backpack from the floor of his closet. It had a first aid kit, extra batteries for the LED lantern, and hiking gear. It was his habit—a holdover from his military days—to always be ready.

Then he looked down at the white dog standing at his feet.

“Ghost. With me.”

Moments later, they were in his Jeep and headed up the mountain. Two miles up, he stopped at Rachel’s mailbox to get his niece’s shirt, and then they were gone. He kept driving until he saw the open doors of an abandoned vehicle and a number of other cars parked nearby.

The searchers were already ahead of him.

He got out of his Jeep with Ghost at his heels, buckled on the backpack, then held the little girl’s shirt beneath his dog’s nose.

“Seek, Ghost! Seek!”

The German shepherd caught the scent, then went nose to ground outside the abandoned car before taking off into the forest with Cameron running behind him without caution, desperate to keep up.

The woods were silent. The air was cold. Cameron couldn’t let himself think about Lili out here with Danny Biggers. He’d raped Rachel and gone to prison for it. How the hell did he get out? Why come all the way back here just to kidnap Rachel’s daughter years later?

But there were no answers. Only questions, and none of it mattered right now but finding Lili. Cameron just kept moving upward, running as fast as he could through the brush to keep Ghost in sight.

He heard the hounds long before he saw the LED-powered lanterns the searchers were carrying. The hounds were in the woods, but he could tell by the occasional bay that they had yet to strike a trail.

He could see Ghost a few yards ahead of him, moving at a lope through the trees, and then all of a sudden Ghost whined and took off running.

“Jesus,” Cameron whispered, and kicked into high speed, desperate to keep the dog in sight.

They were behind the searchers, then running through them. There was no time to talk. To explain. He just kept running. He couldn’t afford to lose sight of Ghost.

***

Lights were bobbing through the trees on Pope Mountain like drunken fireflies in the dark as the searchers moved upward.

Men’s voices.

Hounds on the hunt.

Two-way radios keyed up and then silenced.

Breath clouded, dissipating as quickly as it had formed, while the men who’d exhaled outran it.

All of a sudden there was the sound of someone coming up behind them—of dry leaves crunching and breaking twigs, and then something white moved between them and disappeared into the forest in front of them. A ghost on the mountain?

Before they could react, the black shadow of a man shot through the line of searchers and disappeared into the night.

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