Chapter Four

Lainie was lost and didn't know it.

It was nearing the end of her second day on the mountain, and she'd stumbled into enough creeks to get water, but her fever was still rising. She had long since lost sight of hiking trails, and while she thought she was traveling long distances, she was actually walking in circles and passing out. She'd forgotten about Justin Randall.

Her focus was on the bear she was convinced was hunting her, and the higher her fever went, the more vivid her hallucinations became. She kept running and hiding, and falling and praying, and when she'd sleep, Hunt was always in the dream.

The bottoms of her socks were beginning to wear. They kept getting caught in rocks and rough ground, and when she sat down, she saw bloody spots seeping through.

Her feet hurt. Her body ached. And the world kept spinning. She'd pass out and wake up on her back, staring up through a maze of green, leafy spires to the clear, cloudless sky above and cry, and then pray.

"Please, God, after all you've taken from me, don't let this place take my life."

GREGAND TINA MAYES reached the Beaver Brook trailhead early, and went straight to the communications station where the searchers were regathering. They'd taken a hiatus after it got dark last night, and this morning, they were going over the maps to the new search grids.

"Excuse me, who's in charge?" Greg asked.

A man in uniform turned around. "That would be me, Scott Christopher. I'm a ranger with the Denver Park Service."

"I'm Greg Mayes, and this is my wife, Tina. We're Lainie's parents, from Baton Rouge. Do you have any news?"

"Beyond finding some of her gear and shoes yesterday, we do not. If you'll give me your contact information and where you're staying, then I can let you know if we have anything new to report."

Greg quickly wrote it all down on a pad the ranger handed him.

"Thank you both. You can wait beyond the roped-off perimeter," he said, and turned his back.

"That was rude," Tina muttered, as they shuffled back to their rental. "Do they expect us to wait out here in the sun all day?"

Greg gave her a look. "We came uninvited. They're searching for our daughter, not asking you to tea. If this is all you can think about, then why the hell did you want to come?"

Tina flushed beneath the sting of his words. Truth hurt. They went back to the SUV in silence, raised the back hatch and crawled inside, then sat down to wait.

Less than an hour later, a dusty black Jeep with Arizona license plates came flying into lot, wheeled into an empty space beyond the perimeter and parked.

"Someone's in a hurry," Greg mumbled.

Tina watched as a tall, dark-haired man unfolded himself from inside the vehicle. He grabbed a hiking pack from the back of the Jeep, then headed toward the communications van at a run.

"Oh, Lord! That's Hunter Gray," Tina said.

Greg frowned. "The hell it is," he muttered, jumped out of the SUV and took off running, with Tina right behind him. Greg cut Hunt off in the middle of the parking lot and put his hand in the middle of his chest. "What the hell do you think you're...?"

Hunt punched him in the face.

Tina gasped, as Greg hit the blacktop on his butt—in shock at the blood spurting from his nose. Then he looked up, past the long legs and broad shoulders into the face of a very angry man with an icy blue glare.

Hunt gave Tina the same look, then toed the bottom of Greg's shoe.

"You don't talk to me. You don't speak my name. Either of you. You don't ever look at me again. I know what you did to Lainie. I know you're responsible for the death of our child. I'm going up that mountain to find her, and alive or dead, I'm not coming back without her. I know you put your hands on her. I know she bled on her bedroom floor. But I didn't know then, what I know now. If she's dead, I will kill you."

It was pure reflex that made Greg flinch as Hunt walked past him, and then he crawled to his feet with blood dripping down the front of his shirt.

Tina was horrified and scurried away, leaving her husband to get himself back to their car. She got her laptop from a tote bag in the front seat, and crawled into the back again. She wanted to know where Hunter Gray had been, and what had happened to turn him into such a savage.

STILLREELINGFROMthe full-circle moment, Hunt ignored the fact that the perimeter was roped off, and ducked under it before heading to the communications van.

"Who's in charge?" he asked.

"I am," Ranger Christopher said. "Ranger Scott Christopher. And you are?"

"Former Army Warrant Officer Hunter Gray. I spent ten years in the military flying Apache Longbows. Half of that service was spent in Iraqi war zones. I am highly trained in survival and tracking, and I know the woman who's missing. If she's on that mountain, I will find her. May I see the search map? I'd like to know what areas have already been searched, and where you're going today, and your contact number."

Scott blinked. "Uh...do you have some identifications to—"

Hunt whipped out his wallet and started pulling out all kinds of licenses and info, including a wallet-size photo of Lainie's senior year picture, a photo of Hunt and Lainie together, and a photo of Hunt and Preacher on base in Iraq, standing beside their Longbow.

"Miss Mayes's parents are already on-site and—"

"We've spoken," Hunt said. "Now about that map?"

Scott led Hunt inside the communications van, showed him the map with the grids marked off, then handed him an unmarked map and gave him a contact number.

"Thank you," Hunt said, entered the number in his SAT phone contacts, left the van, shifted his backpack and started up the trailhead.

The sky was clear, and the breeze on the right side of his face was slight and intermittent as Hunt began the climb. Now he'd seen the areas that had already been searched, and the grid they were searching today.

But he was beginning at the spot where her shoes and gear had been found. That was where she disappeared. He needed to stand where she'd stood.

He was two miles up the trail before he reached it. The rangers had marked it with crime scene tape strung along the area and partway down the slope. He stopped and looked around, eyeing the trail above, and then down the slope, trying to imagine her falling. It didn't compute.

There were no divots in the vegetation, no signs of her having been grabbing at things trying to gain foothold, no brush was torn up or broken off. And he already knew that the backpack had been found in the lower branches of a tree, not on the ground. So, someone threw it. The other hiker?

There were tracks all over. Rangers. The searchers. And God knew who else had walked through here. He looked farther up the trail and on impulse started jogging. Nearly another mile up, he saw all kinds of debris in the path before him, and a bloody rock lying off to the side. Then he saw a torn piece of brown plaid flannel with a white button attached, large boot prints and smaller sneaker prints. He knelt for a closer look and found three long strands of hair caught in the bark of a broken limb lying on the ground. Auburn hair, like Lainie's.

"You were fighting him, weren't you, baby?" Hunt muttered. "So, is this his blood or yours on this rock?"

When Hunt called down to the communications van, Scott answered.

"Ranger Christopher speaking."

"Scott, this is Hunt Gray. How high have you searched above the place where Lainie's belongings were found?"

"What do you mean, above?" Scott asked.

"Like farther up the trail from where her shoe was found?"

"Well, we haven't, because our initial search began where Justin Randall said they'd been attacked by the bear. But we just got word that the police have Randall in custody. His story isn't checking out. The scratches he has on his face that he claimed were made by the bear were from fingernails."

"I'm close to a mile higher on the trail from where her gear was found. The ground in and around the trail is all torn up. There's debris in the path. I saw three long strands of hair caught in the bark of a branch on the ground. The strands are reddish brown, like hers. There are boot prints and sneaker prints, and a remnant of torn fabric with a button still attached. Looks like from a shirt. There's also a bloody rock on the ground. I think he attacked her here. They fought. She took him out with a rock, disabling him long enough to get away. I don't know if she really did fall, but the tracks I saw while I was going up look like she was coming down at a fast clip."

"Oh, my God. Okay, look, just leave all that as is. I'll get the crime scene crew up there to gather the evidence."

"Will do. I'll continue my searching. If I find anything else, I'll let you know," Hunt said.

"Say, Hunt...what made you think to do that?"

"I don't know. A hunch. Instinct? But I know Lainie. I don't think she fell into that canyon. I'm operating on the fact that she's still alive somewhere until I know different. I'm out."

He put his SAT phone back in his pack, then stood a moment, trying to put himself in Lainie's place and decided to follow the path back down, seeing it from her viewpoint as she was running toward the car park.

When he got back to the point where the first shoe had been found, he stopped, then looked around, then up the trail again, and when he did, this time he realized there was a big dip in the trail. A virtual blind spot.

And then it hit him! What if she knew she couldn't outrun him? What if she faked her own death to escape? But where would she go?

Now his thoughts were spinning, and he was thinking to himself, if she threw her things down the slope, then what? He turned around, looked into the brush and trees on the far side of the trail and started walking.

The ground was littered with pine needles and leaves, and he saw nothing that led him to believe she could have gone this way, but he kept moving, eyes down, looking for footprints, for anything that would tell him she'd been this way.

And then he almost stepped on it. One single footprint, but not a shoe, like a moccasin, or a sock! A few yards farther, he found another and then realized the prints were going up the mountain now, instead of down, and he remembered something he used to tell her all the time.

When faced with a hard decision, do the unexpected.

"Way to go, baby," Hunt said, and started moving up, following the footprints she was leaving behind. He followed her trail with some ease, and as he approached a large outcrop he could tell from the length of her stride that she was running. And then he saw where she slipped, and the imprint of her body, and blood on a rock, and then the faint imprint of bear tracks, and groaned.

It took a few minutes for him to find the same little footprints leading away from the site. So, she was alive and moving after the fall. The bear tracks were older than her tracks. He needed to believe it was coincidence that they'd crossed, not that she was being followed.

By now, the sun had passed the apex and was moving down toward the treetops. It would be dark in just a few more hours, and he hastened his pace. As long as he could see tracks, he wasn't stopping.

But when he realized he was passing the same dead log a second time, his heart sank. She was walking in circles. Was she hurt and confused from a head injury when she fell? Was she ill? Hallucinating? Or was she just lost and in a panic? He couldn't tell.

Just before dusk, he spotted a large pile of dry brush up against some rocks, studied it for a moment, then walked toward it. That wasn't just random deadfall. The brush had been gathered. After a closer look, he saw handprints in the dirt, and drag marks where she'd crawled beneath a ledge and used the brush as a deterrent against snakes. He admired her foresight, and decided to make a dry camp in the same spot. It was going to be cold, but there was no camping up here. No fires allowed.

He got an LED lantern from his backpack and checked out the area for snakes, then used the deadfall she'd gathered and began pulling it into a circle around him for the same purpose. As he was working, something snapped in the woods behind him. He pulled the 9 mm pistol from his shoulder holster and swept the area with the lantern, suddenly spotlighting a deer in the brush. The animal froze. Hunt immediately turned off the light and heard the deer bounding away in the dark.

He couldn't help but think how helpless Lainie was—injured and alone in the dark, without food, shelter, or any kind of weapon. He wanted to keep searching, but in the dark, it would be a waste of time, so he turned his lantern back on, pulled a blanket from his pack, then some water and jerky. He sat down with his back against the rocks, wrapped the blanket around him, left the lantern on long enough to eat and drink, then turned it off.

He sat in silence while his eyes adjusted to the shadows moving within the moonlight filtering down through the trees, then looked up between the leaves and saw a single, shining star. He hadn't prayed to God in years, but tonight he was asking for a miracle.

"Please, God, I feel her. Just keep her alive until I find her. I'll take it from there."

ITWASHER on the mountain.

Lainie was curled up in a ball beneath a cluster of deadfalls, created by the hand of Mother Nature, and maybe a little from the hand of God. Over time, branches that had frozen and broken off during past winter storms had formed a kind of shelter for the smaller creatures of the forest.

When she'd first found the spot, she'd crawled into the area on her hands and knees to make a space for herself, and then began breaking off leafy branches from the surrounding underbrush to use for cover over her body before crawling back inside with it.

Now she was lying on her side with the leafy branches over her body, her hands tucked beneath her cheek as the only cushion between her and the cold ground. Her fever was still high, but the cold felt good against her face. She was exhausted, but afraid to close her eyes.

Her body still ached from the brutal attack she'd suffered, but it was her feet that had finally slowed her down. Her frantic need to run had ended. The bottoms of her socks were torn and threadbare; her feet were shredded. The cuts that began healing during the night would only break open every morning when she stood on them, but she'd endured it until she couldn't bear it anymore, and so she'd stopped.

She heard a coyote yip, and another answer, and reached for the chunk of a limb she'd been carrying for a weapon. She didn't have much strength left to swing it, but she had no other options.

The faint scent of skunk drifted past, and then faded. The sound of running water was nearby. She'd walked as far as she could go. The water was close enough to crawl to when she was thirsty, but here she would lie until she was found, or this was where she would die.

She cried a little at the thought. She'd never given up believing they would find each other again, and if she died here, Hunt would be her last thought. She would spend her last breath on his name.

She thought of the ashes of their little baby and cried again. There was an order in her will to be buried with them. The thought of that made her approaching demise less tragic. She'd held the baby in her belly, but she'd never held him in her arms. Dying would remedy that. It would no longer be about leaving this world. It would be about joining her Little Bear in his.

She closed her eyes and drifted off, and suddenly Hunt was before her. When he held out his hand, she took it, and let him lead her into the land of dreams.

ITWAS HUNT'Ssecond night on the mountain and he hadn't slept more than an hour or two. He'd already packed up his camp and was just waiting for enough light to track by.

He was eating a protein bar when a porcupine ambled by. His presence startled a gray fox heading back to its burrow for the day. The night birds had gone to roost, and the birds who came with sunrise were already flitting from limb to limb, then dropping to the ground for bugs and grubs. Life abounded, and all he could do was hope Lainie was still part of it.

His wait came to an end in the blink of an eye. The forest went from shadows to daylight, like God walked into the room and turned on a light. He shouldered his pack and started walking in the direction of the last tracks he'd seen—his head down, sweeping the area before him with a clear-eyed intensity. He couldn't afford to miss a clue. Her life depended on it.

LAINIEHADFALLENasleep in the night and woke in daylight, burning with fever. Her lips were cracked, and her mouth and throat were so dry she didn't have spit to swallow. She knew enough about the human body that she was severely dehydrated, and if she didn't keep drinking water, her organs would begin shutting down.

She could hear the water in the nearby creek, and getting to it today was her only goal. But when she raised up on her elbow to push the branches aside, the pain that shot up the back of her neck and head was so sharp and sudden that, for a moment, she thought she'd been shot.

"That hurt," she muttered, as she pushed past the pain and started crawling.

But the twenty yards from her shelter to the water might as well have been miles. By the time she got there, her arms were trembling. She went belly down at the water's edge and drank until she could hold no more, and then she ducked her face into the flowing stream over and over, trying to cool the fever, until she finally gave up and crawled the rest of the way into the creek.

The water was barely knee deep, but she floated on her belly to a partially submerged rock. Using it for an anchor, she wrapped her arms around the projection above the water and held on, letting the cold mountain water be the ice bath she needed.

She was still hanging on to the rock when a possum waddled out of the underbrush and went down to the water to get a drink. The irony of her fighting to stay alive, side by side with a little possum simply quenching its thirst, was a most perfect analogy of life. After it moved back into the underbrush, Lainie began the painful journey of getting herself out of the creek.

By the time she reached the bank and began to crawl up the slope and back to her shelter, she was exhausted. She pulled the branches back around herself, and as she did, realized she'd lost a sock in the creek, then accepted that it no longer mattered. Exhausted beyond words, she rolled over into a ball and closed her eyes. The last thing she remembered was feeling her clothes beginning to dry, and thinking how hungry she was.

GREGAND TINA MAYES were back at the search site again, only this time they'd come prepared. They had folding chairs and a cooler full of drinks and snacks, and were sitting in the shade of a nearby tree.

After they'd gone back to their hotel last night, neither of them had mentioned the obvious, but they both assumed that their daughter was dead. As they sat at the search site this morning, they were actually discussing where Lainie would be laid to rest when an older model Buick drove up.

The moment Greg saw the car, he cursed.

"What in hell makes Chuck Gray think he has business here?" he said.

Tina glanced up and shrugged. "Probably for the same reason we are. Their son. Somehow, they know Hunt's here. You will be civil. They have as much right to be here as we do. You do not get into a shouting match. Do you understand me?"

Greg gave her a look. He knew better than to challenge her with that tone of voice.

"Whatever," Greg said.

CHUCKAND brENDA GRAY were holding hands as they started across the parking lot when Brenda saw Lainie's parents.

"Greg and Tina are here," she said.

Chuck stopped, stared at them a few moments and then started walking toward them, but it was the women who spoke first.

Brenda nodded at the couple. "Have you been here long?"

"A few days," Tina said.

Brenda hesitated. Her voice was shaky as she spoke. "Do you know if Hunt is here?"

"We saw him," Tina said, then glanced at Greg. His nose was still red and swollen, and he had a fat lip.

"Did he do that?" Chuck asked.

"His version of ‘hello,'" Greg snapped.

Brenda ignored him and refocused on Tina. "Did you talk to him? Did he tell you where he's been?"

"He spoke. We listened. It appears he didn't know anything about the past until recently. He is beyond enraged. He's gone up the mountain to look for Lainie. Said he wouldn't be back without her, and if she was dead, he was going to kill Greg when he got back."

Brenda gasped and reached for Chuck's hand. "I told you we should have told him." Tears rolled, and then she wiped them away. "Is there any news about Lainie today? We've heard nothing since we left home."

Tina shrugged. "Not about Lainie, but they arrested the hiker. They think his story was faked. They think she wasn't hiking with him, and that he faked the bear attack to cover up what he'd done to her. They're still searching, but I don't think they believe she's alive."

Brenda was sobbing. "I'm so sorry. We wouldn't be intruding on your space, but we don't know what happened to Hunt." Then she glared at Greg. "He disappeared without a word after his scholarship was rescinded. It's been what...eleven years? We had heard nothing until three nights ago when he called to ask us if we'd known Lainie was pregnant. I didn't know what to say, and I guess our silence was the answer. He hung up, and after we found out about Lainie, I guessed here is where he would come."

Tina glanced at Greg, but he was staring at the ground, so she kept up the conversation. "Hunt doesn't look like he used to. He was a big kid, but now, very much a grown man. And hard...the look in his eyes was frightening. After he went up the mountain, I went online to see if googling his name brought up any answers, but got nothing. Whatever he was involved in, it changed him."

"Probably has a prison record," Greg mumbled.

Chuck's fingers curled into fists. "Well, that's how stupid you are. That would have been part of public records if you were in a mind to look there. And you're one to talk. He didn't kill his baby. You did that."

Greg started cursing, and Tina dragged him back to where they'd been sitting, while Chuck and Brenda went back to their car. All they could do was sit and wait for Hunt to appear.

PER RANGER CHRISTOPHER'SREQUEST, a crime scene crew from the Denver police had gone up the trail yesterday following Hunt Gray's report. They retrieved hair strands, fabric that matched the flannel shirt they already had in evidence, the bloody rock and took pictures of both sets of footprints. That additional evidence had already been sent to their lab, and if it backed up their suspicions, Justin Randall's story had just blown up in his face.

Ranger Scott had a new search grid for the rescue teams, but hope was fading. It was looking more like they'd be moving from rescue to recovery. He kept hoping he'd hear more from Hunter Gray, but after his initial call, the man had gone quiet.

BYNOON, Hunt was finding threads from the socks in her footprints, and sometimes blood on the leaves. He was sick, just thinking of how many times her feet must have been pierced. Her steps were closer together now, and sometimes dragging. He'd quit counting the number of times he'd seen where she fell, and how many times she'd turned around and backtracked after getting up. Following her path was like following a drunk afoot who was trying to find the way home.

And then Hunt crossed a deer trail and lost her. The animals had obliterated all signs of her passing. It was like she disappeared in mid-step. The last time he'd felt this kind of panic was that rainy night in New Orleans, waiting for a phone call that never came.

He did a 360-degree turn, looking for something, anything that would tell him where she'd gone, but there was nothing. He took a deep breath and then shouted. "Lainie! Lainie! Can you hear me?"

He paused, listening. The woods had gone silent. Birds quit calling. Even the breeze had laid.

He shouted again, louder. Longer. "Laaiinnieee!"

Nothing. He started walking in an ever-widening circle for over an hour before he found himself above a creek, and moved down the slope to the water's edge. There were plenty of footprints there, too, but none of them were human.

Heartsick and frustrated, he was about to climb back up when he saw something white caught between the rocks in the middle of the rushing stream. He dropped his backpack on the bank and waded into the water in long, hasty strides all the way to the rocks. Even before he picked it up, he knew what he was looking at. A single white hiking sock, with the sole ripped to shreds. His heart sank as he looked upstream.

"Ah, God...where are you, baby?"

He called her name again, then wrung the water out of the sock and headed back to shore to get his pack. Now he had a trail again. It was vague, but it was something, and he began walking upstream.

He was still in search mode when he realized the light was beginning to fade. He started running, as if he was trying to outrun the dark, and was about a quarter of mile up the creek when he came full stop, staring at the handprints and crawl marks right in front of him. There were tracks where she'd crawled into the water, and others coming out.

If she was crawling, she couldn't be far!

Shadows were growing longer as he leaped up the creek bank and began following the trail, but he was no longer looking down, he was searching the tree line. She had to be here somewhere.

"Lainie! Lainie! Can you hear me?" he shouted, but the forest had gone silent. He was moving faster now, following the drag marks all the way to a huge pile of dead brush. Stopped by the barrier, he leaned in and then he saw her, curled up on her side, so still and pale he feared the worst.

"Please, God, no," he cried, and began tearing into the brush and limbs, clearing a path to get to her, then dropped to his knees beside her to search for a pulse.