Missing in Blue Mesa

by Cindi Myers

  Metwater dragged Michelle toward the water lapping at the shore. She tried to pull away, kicking at him, but he held her fast and she slipped in the mud. He shoved her hard into the lake, holding her under the surface. If Ethan didn’t act quickly, Metwater was going to drown her. He tried to aim his pistol at Metwater’s back, but the Prophet’s movements made it impossible to focus on the target.

  Michelle had stopped fighting and lay still under the water. Enraged, Ethan grabbed up a piece of driftwood and charged toward Metwater, swinging the stick like a club. He struck Metwater on the side of the head, driving him away from Michelle. Ethan lunged into the water, groping for her hand. He found it and dragged her up, hauling her to shore just as Metwater leaped on him.

  Ethan struggled to his feet and drew his weapon. “No!” Metwater roared and struck his arm hard, jolting the pistol loose. It landed in the lake with a splash and Metwater grabbed Ethan’s shoulders, trying to force him down into the water. The two men grappled, slipping in the mud and gravel.

  “Run!” Ethan screamed at Michelle. She was on the shore on all fours, coughing violently.

  Metwater was on top of Ethan now, one hand around Ethan’s throat, choking him, the other grappling for his gun at his hip. Ethan fought for breath, struggling to remain conscious, to keep fighting long enough for Michelle to get away. Metwater had his own pistol out now, the barrel pressed against Ethan’s forehead. He closed his eyes, waiting for the end.

  Then Metwater’s grasp on him loosened, and the Prophet groaned and staggered to his feet. Ethan struggled to rise also as Metwater turned toward Michelle, who stood a short distance away, the stick of driftwood in her hand. Metwater lunged toward her, and Ethan leaped on his back, his arm around the Prophet’s throat, choking him. “Run!” he shouted at Michelle again, and this time she listened, taking off into the brush alongside the lakeshore.

  Ethan tightened his grip on Metwater, squeezing hard, until the other man stopped fighting. He loosened his hold, intending to put Metwater in cuffs, but before he could reach his utility belt, Metwater turned on him once more. Face contorted by rage, he shoved Ethan away from him.

  Ethan staggered back, struggling to keep his footing. Metwater scooped up his pistol and aimed it at Ethan, who only had time to dive behind a currant bush before the bullet thudded into the dirt to his right. He scrambled backward, seeking better cover, but Metwater relentlessly pursued. With no weapon and little cover, Ethan’s only chance was to outrun the Prophet, and pray that the bullets that rained after him didn’t find their target.

  He ran hard, feet sending up sprays of gravel, zigzagging among the brush and driftwood that crowded this part of the lakeshore. Metwater stopped firing, though Ethan thought he heard the Prophet pounding along the shore after him.

  “Ethan, here!”

  He looked to the side and spotted Michelle standing at the edge of the water, beckoning him. As he drew closer, he saw that she held on to the bow of a battered green kayak. “He can’t get to us if we’re out on the water,” she said, shoving a paddle into his hand and preparing to climb into the boat.

  “There’s a storm coming up,” Ethan said, looking up at the angry clouds barely visible against the blackening sky.

  “There’s nowhere else to go,” she said, already in the boat. “Nowhere to hide, no way to get away from him. I promise you, he won’t give up. At least this way we have a chance.”

  They would have a chance if they could get back to his cruiser, but to do that they would have to negotiate a steep bluff in the dark, with Metwater in pursuit. Still, Ethan didn’t like their chances on the water. He was about to tell Michelle as much when a bullet clipped the rock to his right, sending chips of granite flying. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Metwater closing in.

  “Hurry!” Michelle pleaded.

  He stepped into the boat and pushed off with the paddle. He could feel her paddling also, and together they pulled away from shore. In the gathering dusk, he could make out a point of land to their left, and headed around this, hoping to get out of sight of Metwater as quickly as possible. Once Ethan was sure they were safe, they could beach the kayak and make their way back up to the road and, eventually, to his cruiser and safety.

  Metwater shouted from the shore, his words swallowed up by the rising wind and the slap of waves against the kayak’s fiberglass hull. A dozen more strokes with the paddles and Ethan couldn’t hear him at all—or see the shore, or much of anything else, but dark sky against dark water. The sensation was eerie and disorienting. He kept paddling, afraid if they stopped the wind would blow them back to Metwater, but he stared into the darkness, trying to make out some landmark to steer by.

  “I don’t hear him anymore,” Michelle said.

  “No. But like you said—he doesn’t give up. He’s still out there.”

  As if to prove him right, light glowed from shore—the headlights of the car, twin spots shooting across the water. But the kayak was beyond the reach of the light. “What are we going to do now?” she asked.

  “We have to get farther down the shore,” Ethan said. “If we get around this point of land, we should be able to come into shore again. He’ll probably still be looking for us, but he won’t know where we are.”

  “Then I guess we’d better get paddling.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  They paddled, but the wind was picking up and though Ethan couldn’t see anything in the darkness, it didn’t feel to him as if they were making much progress. Lightning streaked across the sky, revealing the rocky shoreline several hundred yards away—the storm had blown them even farther than he had thought. Thunder crashed, and rain began to lash them, icy needles stinging bare skin.

  “It doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere!” Michelle shouted above the roar of the storm.

  “Keep paddling!” he shouted. ‘We’ve got to get to shore.” Waves slapped against the fiberglass hull, buffeting them, making the boat more and more difficult to control. Rain continued to pound down, cold water puddling around his feet in the open boat.

  The boat turned sideways and waves threatened to swamp them. Water streaming into his eyes, Ethan fought to turn the boat into the gale. The boat rose, bow out of the water altogether, and then they were falling, tossed up and over, falling through the darkness into the icy, churning water.

  Michelle fought her way to the surface, sputtering and thrashing as yet another cold wave engulfed her. “Ethan!” she shouted, water streaming down her face and into her eyes. She struggled to stay afloat, looking wildly around her.

  “Over here!”

  She spun around and saw Ethan waving to her from where he clung to the kayak, which was upright once more. She swam to him and joined him in clinging to the boat. Neither spoke for a long moment as the waves tossed them about. Chill seeped into her, and her teeth began to chatter. “We should get back in the boat,” she said.

  “It’s too full of water.”

  She dipped her hand down into the boat and realized he was right—the body of the kayak was almost filled with water. She wanted to scream in frustration. After everything she had been through, she wasn’t going to die of exposure here in the middle of a lake. “What are we going to do?” she asked as lightning flashed. For a fraction of a second, she caught sight of Ethan’s face, pale but determined, across from her.

  “Can you get on my side of the boat and kick?” he shouted above the storm. “I thought I saw land up ahead.”

  Carefully, she maneuvered around the boat, terrified that if she let go the waves would sweep her away. After agonizing minutes she positioned herself next to him. “Kick hard!” he shouted, and she put her head down and kicked.

  They had been at it long enough for her legs to begin aching. Her fingers were cramped from clinging to the kayak. She was about to tell Ethan it was hopeless when her foot struck something. Then her other foot
touched bottom. Ethan was already standing and reaching for her. They clung to each other, staggering out of the water, pushing the waterlogged kayak in front of them.

  When they were all the way out of the water, Michelle sank to her knees, struggling to breathe, trying to ignore the shivers that rocked her. Ethan tugged at her arm. “Come on,” he said. “We have to find shelter and a way to keep warm.”

  She didn’t see how they were going to find any of that in the darkness, but just then he switched on a flashlight. The beam sent a thin disk of light across the landscape, showing driftwood and scrub brush and the kind of debris that often washed up at lakes—fishing lures and water bottles and beer cans. “I guess this thing really is waterproof,” Ethan said as he helped her to her feet. He played the beam over the area around them, then pointed inland. “Let’s get into those trees. Maybe we can make some kind of shelter.”

  Make it out of what? she wanted to ask, but since the alternative was standing here in a downpour by herself, she followed him.

  A few yards inland they found more trash—some boards and what looked like an old tarp. Ethan spread out the boards over the wet ground, then shook out the tarp and draped it over them. She told herself not to think what might be on that tarp. It was raining so hard the worst of the grime would have been washed off, right?

  Ethan wrapped one arm around her and pulled her close. “When the rain lets up a little, I’ll try to start a fire,” he said.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You were a Boy Scout.”

  “An Eagle Scout,” he said.

  “Of course.” She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “I don’t care what you were—you saved me. Metwater was going to kill me. And then I thought he was going to kill you.” Her voice broke on the last words. The thought that he could have died while trying to rescue her shook her.

  “I wasn’t going to let him kill you.” He rubbed her shoulder. “Hunter is waiting to see you.”

  She was so numb it took a moment for his words to sink in. She stared at him, even though she could only see the dim outline of his face in the darkness. “Do you really have him? Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine. We took him to the hospital as a precaution, but he’s fine.”

  “Where? What happened? Who?”

  He chuckled. “Hold on and I’ll tell you the whole story. It was just like you suspected—Metwater was behind it all.” She listened, stunned, as he told about the Smith brothers and the little motel where they attempted to hold Hunter hostage. He described the rescue in the briefest terms, but even so it sounded incredibly brave and daring to her. “I can’t believe you found him.” She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “I can’t ever thank you enough.”

  “You don’t have to thank me.” He snuggled her close again. “I’m glad we were able to find him.”

  “And now here we are, stuck who knows where.”

  “In the morning we’ll be able to figure out where we are and go for help,” he said. “Hunter is safe until then.”

  “Except that Daniel Metwater is still out there,” she said. “When he finds out you have the Smith brothers, and I’ve escaped, he’ll be furious.”

  “He won’t get past the hospital staff and the deputies who are guarding Hunter,” Ethan said. “And we’ve alerted all the local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for him. He won’t be able to go far.”

  “He has a lot of money and a lot of friends,” she said. “He can do a lot more than you think he can.”

  “How did he get hold of you?” Ethan asked. “What happened?”

  “He came to the house. He said he followed me from Ranger Headquarters the day before. I guess he had been watching, waiting to catch me alone. Anyway, he was furious. He hit me and I guess I passed out. When I woke up in the car, he started talking about drowning—about what it did to a body, and how he had to identify his brother based on a tattoo.” She shuddered, remembering the horror of his words. “I was terrified I was going to die.”

  “Why was he angry with you?”

  “He said I knew too much and could get him in trouble. I tried to tell him I was only interested in proving that his brother had murdered Cass, but he said David hadn’t murdered her—that he hadn’t done any of the bad things people thought he had. He said that was one thing David and Cass had in common. It didn’t make sense, really.”

  “What do you know that could get him in trouble?” Ethan asked.

  “I can’t think of anything. All I have are those news articles I printed off the internet. Everything in them is public knowledge.”

  “If David Metwater isn’t guilty of the crimes people think he committed, maybe it’s because Daniel Metwater did them,” Ethan said.

  “But that can’t be right,” she said. “Daniel was always the good brother. He ran the family business. He bailed David out of jail. He sat on charitable boards. The articles in the scrapbook were full of stuff like that. He couldn’t have faked all of that.”

  “He’s managed to fake an identity as a peace-loving prophet who is only interested in spiritual matters,” Ethan said.

  “When I first came to live with him and his followers, I thought that was true,” she said. “I never believed that he could predict the future, or that he had all the answers, the way Asteria and some of the others believe, but when he talked about how his brother’s death had led him to seek answers in a simpler life, I thought he was telling the truth. And I saw how he had made a difference in people’s lives. There are members of the Family who are former drug addicts or cons, and they turned their lives around because of Daniel Metwater. I thought if he did that much good, how could he be bad? I guess I was as naive as everyone else.”

  “You weren’t naive,” Ethan said. “He’s an expert at deceiving others, which tells me it’s a talent he’s been honing for a long time. When he’s back in custody, I think it will be worth digging deeper into his past activities.”

  “If you can find him,” she said.

  “We’ll find him,” Ethan said. “He’s arrogant and thinks he’s above the law—that will work in our favor.” He lifted the tarp a little. “The rain has stopped. I’ll see about starting that fire now.”

  He left and she felt bereft—colder both physically and emotionally. When they were back in the real world—when Hunter was safely with her again and it was time for her to move on to whatever the next phase of her life might be—how would she find the strength to say goodbye to this man who had come to mean so much to her?

  Ethan had been kind to her—maybe he even had some feelings for her. But he had a full life already—he had an important job and friends and family—all the things she had never had. She didn’t even know how she would fit into that kind of world.

  * * *

  ETHAN MANAGED TO find enough dry wood and tinder to get a good blaze going. He settled next to Michelle in front of it, and extended his hands to warm them. “That should help dry us off and thaw us out,” he said.

  “I’m impressed.” She held her own hands out to the flames. “You really were a good Eagle Scout.”

  “Don’t be too impressed.” He pulled a lighter from his pocket. “I had this.”

  “Ethan Reynolds, don’t tell me you’re a secret smoker.”

  “Nope.” He pocketed the lighter once more. “It’s part of the emergency kit we all carry—first-aid kit, whistle, pocketknife, et cetera.” He patted a pouch on his belt. “First time I’ve ever had to use it, though.”

  “You’re still a good Eagle Scout,” she said. “Isn’t their motto ‘be prepared’?”

  “If I was that good, I’d have some emergency food stashed somewhere,” he said. As if in agreement, his stomach growled.

  “Food would be nice, but we won’t starve before morning,” she said.

  “You’re right.” He patted
her shoulder. “Why don’t we lie down and try to get some rest?”

  “I’m too keyed up to sleep,” she said. “I’ve been worried about Hunter for so long—knowing he’s safe I feel so much lighter—nothing else that has happened to me matters now that I know my baby is safe and I’m going to see him again.”

  “I’ll admit I’m keyed up, too.” He studied the inky sky—clouds still covered the stars. “As soon as it’s daylight we need to get out of here, and we need to start searching for Metwater and bring him in.”

  “I don’t want to think about Metwater anymore tonight,” she said. “I don’t even want to think about tomorrow.” She slipped her arms around his waist and cuddled against him. “Now that I’m dry and getting warmer, I think we should take advantage of this time alone.”

  He caressed her shoulder, enjoying the feel of her soft curves against him. “Oh, yeah? What did you have in mind?”

  “This.” She pulled his face to his and kissed him, the crush of her warm mouth to his banishing the last chill from his body. He gathered her to him, lying back and pulling her down with him so that her soft breasts pressed against his chest, her body heavy against his arousal. She opened her mouth to deepen the kiss and he plunged his tongue into her, tasting warm sweetness. Forget food, this was what he needed right now—to taste and devour her, to quench the hunger that had been building in him ever since he spent that first night in her bed. He didn’t believe he would ever get tired of making love to Michelle.

  He caressed her bottom, then slid his hands up her back and around to cup her breasts. She arched against him and growled out a sound of pleasure. Fighting his own impatience, he pulled off her shirt, then made quick work of her bra. His lips closed around one taut nipple and her low moan pierced him, desire hot and urgent.

  He shifted to focus on her other breast, but she slid down, out of his reach, and looked down into his eyes, firelight playing across the side of her face. “Officer, we need to get you out of this uniform,” she said.