‘Keep her prisoner,’ Abilene said, now understanding why Finley sounded excited about the idea.
‘Which means she’s probably alive,’ Cora said.
‘You got it.’
‘God, I hope you’re right,’ Vivian said.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘All we’ve gotta do is find her. And nail the bastard that grabbed her.’
‘Bastards,’ Finley corrected her. ‘I think it’s gotta be more than one.’
Cora put a hand on Abilene’s back. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘A lot better. Let’s get going.’
They left the flashlights on the porch stairs and headed for the corner of the lodge. Finley carried the water bottle. Cora carried the tire iron.
Stopping on the slope beside the Wagoneer, Cora suggested they find something to eat. Abilene climbed in. Reaching over the seatback, she opened the cooler. She grabbed a pack of hot dogs and crawled out. Finley had already taken a bag of potato chips from the box that Helen had left on the driveway. The bag was clamped between her knees as she lifted the box onto the roof of the car.
‘Anybody wanta change before we take off?’ Cora asked.
Abilene considered it. A change into dry clothes would feel good. Sneakers would be much better than moccasins for hiking through the woods. They were probably still wet though.
‘Let’s just go,’ Finley said. ‘Whatever we put on is gonna be soaking before long anyway.’
Vivian nodded.
They hurried down the steep driveway. At the rear corner of the lodge, they followed Cora to the small, outside pool.
Helen’s sneakers and the bag of chips were still there. Abilene noticed that the granite, where she and Cora had climbed out dripping, was completely dry.
‘Okay,’ Cora said. ‘We figure they started here. Why don’t we spread out and head across the field?’
‘Just a second,’ Abilene said. ‘There might be some kind of signs.’ The others waited while she walked along the stone slabs, studying the ground cover beyond the edge, looking for trampled weeds, mashed grass. ‘I don’t see anything,’ she said as she came back. ‘But maybe they stayed on the cobblestones.’
‘Well, let’s keep our eyes open. At least we saw where the kid went yesterday.’
They each took a drink from Finley’s bottle. Then they fanned out, stepped off the granite and made their way slowly across the field. Cora, at the right end of the line, circled around the far side of the brick fireplace. Abilene, in the middle, strode along one of the cobblestone walkways.
The sun, high above the trees ahead, glared in her eyes. She wished she had a hat or sunglasses, but she rarely wore them and they were back in the car. So she squinted and kept a hand at her brow to shield her eyes.
Near the far end of the grounds, they converged on the old swimming pool. Its bottom was swampy with stagnant rain water that looked like brown muck, thick with decayed leaves and branches. It smelled rank. It buzzed with mosquitos and flies.
Helen wasn’t down there.
But something was.
Directly beneath the high dive, four small furry legs protruded from the soupy water. The instant Abilene realized what she was seeing, she averted her eyes. She didn’t want a good look at it.
Finley pointed. ‘Hey. A critter. Toes up.’
Vivian covered her mouth and turned away fast.
‘Probably a raccoon,’ Cora said.
‘Should we fish it out and take it along for lunch?’
Cora and Abilene stared at her.
Finley shrugged. ‘Guess not.’
Walking away from the pool, Abilene realized that she’d been holding her breath. She inhaled. The air was fresh and sweet. But the smell of rot and the image of the dead animal seemed to be stuck inside her head. A raccoon? It might’ve been a dog. She wondered if it had jumped into the pool on purpose. Maybe it saw something appetizing down there, leaped in, and found itself trapped. Or it might’ve been careless, gotten too close and fallen off the edge. Maybe someone had killed it, then thrown it in.
Could’ve been Helen down there, she thought.
But it wasn’t.
Finley has to be right: Helen wasn’t killed. For whatever reason, she was taken prisoner. Abducted. Led away.
Why?
As Abilene wondered about it, Cora led them to the border of the forest at about the same place where the kid had rushed in yesterday afternoon. She was glad to get out of the sunlight. But the hot air felt motionless and moist.
Cora stepped around a clump of bushes and halted. ‘A trail,’ she muttered.
‘All right!’ Finley said.
The footpath was barely visible, a narrow strip of matted leaves and undergrowth winding away from them. It didn’t look as if it had been heavily used. It might’ve been made by a lone person trampling over the same area every once in a while. A couple of times a day. Maybe only a few times each week.
‘This must be the path the kid takes,’ Cora said.
‘I’d bet on it,’ Finley said.
Abilene wondered why they hadn’t found a similar track leading across the field from here to the lodge. Maybe once clear of the forest, however, the kid altered his route often enough to avoid making a trail.
Single file, Cora going first, they began to follow the path.
Helen might’ve walked over this same ground just a couple of hours ago, Abilene thought. It was probably the way Finley suggested: more than just the kid taking her away. He and some friends. One guy just couldn’t have handled someone as big as Helen. Not the kid, anyway. He’d been fairly small and thin. So he must’ve had help. Even if there’d been several attackers, however, it didn’t seem likely that they would’ve carried Helen away. They took her, but didn’t hurt her. Didn’t hurt her so much, at least, that she wouldn’t be able to walk under her own power.
Could’ve been just one guy, Abilene thought. If he had a gun. Threatened to shoot her if she didn’t cooperate.
‘I hope he doesn’t have a gun,’ she said.
Finley glanced back at her. ‘That’d sure be the pits, huh?’
‘Gun or not,’ Cora said, ‘we’re gonna have to take him by surprise. Sneak up on him. So maybe we’d better keep quiet for a while.’
‘They’ve got an awfully big head-start,’ Finley pointed out.
‘Yeah,’ Cora said. ‘And they might’ve stopped anywhere. For all we know, they’re ten feet away from us right now.’
‘Do you think we should try calling out?’ Vivian asked.
Cora and Finley, in unison, said, ‘No.’
After that, they stopped talking. Abilene, at the rear, listened for sounds of voices or movement in the woods around her. She peered through breaks in the trees. For a while, she held onto hopes of spotting Helen off in the shadows. Then she began to hope that she wouldn’t. If Helen were out here, she might be on the ground. Sprawled motionless. Left behind. Discarded like trash.
Afraid to keep looking, Abilene turned her eyes to those in front of her.
Cora’s head kept swiveling. Her short hair, the color of dry hay on top, was dark around her ears and neck where it clung to her skin in wet points and Curls. Her tank top was sodden. Her tanned shoulders looked greasy with sweat. The seat of her red shorts looked molded to her buttocks.
By comparison, Vivian appeared almost cool in her white knit shirt and shorts. But the back of her shirt was pasted to her skin. It took on the contours of her shoulder blades and rib cage. Abilene could see the straps of her bra through the thin fabric.
Finley, just in front of Abilene, wore her baggy shirt with its tails hanging out. It looked dark as rawhide down to her hips. There, where the shirt overlapped her shorts, it was still dry and its usual tan color.
We’ll be lucky if we don’t all collapse, Abilene thought.
Though her head seemed clear, she felt hot and filthy and miserable.
She wished she’d worn socks. She didn’t like the slimy
feel of her moccasins against the bottoms of her feet.
Her denim skirt was damp and thick and heavy, but at least it was very short and air came up from below. Her panties, bra and blouse were wet and clinging. After a while, she asked the others to wait. She clamped the cool, wet pack of hot dogs between her thighs, peeled off her blouse and removed her bra. It felt good to be free of the hot, confining straps and cups. She folded the bra, tucked it under the waistband of her skirt, then struggled back into her blouse. As she fastened a couple of its buttons, Finley set down the water bottle and bag of chips. She pulled the pack of hot dogs from between Abilene’s legs.
‘Let’s go ahead and eat these suckers,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Just a short break,’ Cora said.
Finley peeled open the plastic wrapper. She slipped out a wiener, poked it into her mouth, and held the package while the others helped themselves. ‘Gourmet breakfast,’ she said, her words garbled, the end of the frank bobbing and wiggling.,
Abilene took a bite of the hot dog she’d taken. It was warm, moist, mushy. It tasted okay, but she suddenly felt sick as she remembered dinner last night. The sizzling dogs had tasted wonderful, then. Helen had wanted the last one. They hadn’t allowed her to eat it. They’d passed it around, instead, ‘helping’ Helen with her diet.
Abilene’s throat went tight.
God, she wished they’d let her have it. It might’ve been the last hot dog she would ever get a chance to eat.
She’s all right. She’s gotta be all right.
Abilene had a very hard time swallowing, but she managed to finish her hot dog, washing it down with a lot of water. Finley offered her another.
‘No thanks.’
‘Go ahead. Two each, then we can toss the package.’
‘Maybe we should save a couple for Helen.’
Finley looked as if she felt a sudden pain. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and nodded. Cora, about to bite into her second hot dog, slipped it back into the wrapper in Finley’s hand.
Nobody ate a second one.
Finley shook some juice out of the pack, then folded it carefully and slipped it into a deep pocket of her shorts.
They all drank some more water, then resumed their trek through the woods.
Soon, they came to a split in the trail. One path veered off to the right and the other continued straight ahead.
‘Now what?’ Vivian asked.
‘Flip a coin?’ Finley suggested.
‘We can come back to this if we don’t find anything,’ Cora said.
They stuck to the original path and soon came to a lake. An old, weathered dock reached out from its shore. Off the end of the dock was a diving platform that floated at such an angle that one corner dipped into the water. Apparently, one of the drums buoying it up had sprung a leak.
Abilene supposed this must be the lake Helen had told them about. Somewhere near its shores, the hunters had killed that girl.
The lake was bigger than she’d pictured it. Maybe a quarter of a mile wide and twice that long. She saw no boats on its surface. No other docks. No dwellings along its shores. No people. In spite of its blue, glinting surface and the lush beauty of the forest surrounding it, the lake seemed forbidding. An alien, ominous place.
Abilene rubbed her arms and the nape of her neck. Her hot skin, slick with sweat, was pebbled with goosebumps.
‘Sure looks deserted,’ Vivian whispered, as if afraid to raise her voice in the stillness.
‘Doesn’t anybody live around here?’ Finley said.
‘Creepy,’ Vivian muttered.
‘It’s like the whole lake’s been abandoned,’ Abilene said, still rubbing the achy skin on the back of her neck.
‘There might be houses we just can’t see from here,’ Cora said. ‘Hidden off in the trees. I’d bet on it’
Leaving the shelter of the forest’s edge, they made their way down to the foot of the dock.
Just to the left, Abilene saw what looked like the remains of a beach. The small area sloped down gently to the shore. It had probably been cleared by workers from the lodge, sand carted in to create a nice little beach for the guests. Now, weeds and bushes grew there and the sand was littered with driftwood.
At the far side of the beach area was an overturned canoe. The wooden hull was bashed in as if someone had stomped through it with a boot. The canoe’s green paint was flaking. Painted in white near its bow, faded but still legible, were upside-down letters that read Totem Pole Lodge and a large number 3.
Abilene walked over to the canoe, dropped down to all fours and peered underneath it. Nothing but weeds and sand. Getting to her feet, she said, ‘Just wanted to make sure.’ She brushed sand off her hands and knees.
‘I think we should circle the lake,’ Cora said.
‘That’ll take hours,’ Vivian protested.
‘You got an appointment or something?’ Finley said.
‘Maybe whoever took Helen lives along the shore,’ Cora explained. ‘Somebody must. This lake can’t be as deserted as it looks.’
‘The kid we saw has to live somewhere,’ Abilene said. ‘And the trail led here.’
‘One did, anyway,’ Finley said.
‘You think he’d take her home?’ Vivian said.
‘Who knows?’ Cora said. ‘He took her someplace, didn’t he?’
‘Somebody did,’ Finley said. ‘Probably.’
‘So why not back to his cabin or shack or wherever the hell it is he came from?’ Cora asked. ‘And what are our alternatives, anyway? Wander around in the woods all day? Go back to the lodge and hope for the best?’
‘If we could just get some help…’ Vivian muttered.
‘By the time we could get help,’ Cora said, ‘it might be way too late for Helen.’
‘I think we’re her only chance,’ Abilene said.
‘We’ll find her,’ Finley said. ‘And if she isn’t a hundred per cent fine, God help the bastards that did it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
In case someone might be watching, they walked away from the lake and entered the woods. They didn’t go far, however, before turning north. Through breaks in the trees, they kept track of the lake and stayed roughly parallel to its shoreline.
Here, there was no path. They tromped through undergrowth, ducked under low branches, circled around brambles and deadfalls and boulders that sometimes blocked their way, climbed down and up the sides of shallow slopes.
Near the north end of the lake, they were stopped by an inlet. It was twenty or thirty feet across at the mouth, but from there the glassy water reached westward at least a hundred yards before it vanished under a field of reeds and lily pads.
‘Great,’ Vivian muttered. ‘Now what?’
‘Simple,’ Cora said. ‘We either cross here or go around.’
‘Going around would be a bitch,’ Finley said. ‘Let’s take a dip.’
‘Might be nice,’ Abilene said.
They made their way to the right, walking along the top of a fallen trunk, then hopping down and climbing out on a low clump of rocks where the inlet joined the lake. Abilene sat on a boulder and struggled to catch her breath.
Cora, hands on hips, stood at the edge of the outcropping and peered down. ‘Doesn’t look very deep,’ she said, and jumped.
Her splash showered Finley and Vivian.
‘Hey, feels good,’ Finley said.
Abilene got to her feet.
‘Deeper than it looked,’ Cora said. The water covered her to the neck. She dipped her head in, apparently just to get it wet, then swept a hand over her matted hair and began gliding toward the other side.
Halfway across, the water level began to lower. It uncovered her shoulders, descended her back. When it reached her waist, she turned around. ‘A piece of cake,’ she said. ‘And it’s nice and cool.’ Instead of continuing to the other side, she squatted and dunked her head again.
Finley leaped in, waving the plastic bottle and bag of chips ov
erhead.
Vivian looked down at her white Reeboks. She crouched, untied the lace of her right shoe, hesitated, apparently changed her mind about removing her shoes, then retied the lace and stepped off the rock.
Abilene, afraid she might lose her moccasins in the water, took them off. Clutching them tightly in one hand, she jumped. The water swarmed up her body. She gasped at the unexpected chill of it. Her bare feet met slippery rocks on the bottom. They slid out from under her, but she grabbed a breath of air before her head plunged into the cold.
Once submerged, she was in no hurry to rise.
The water felt incredibly wonderful. She imagined steam rising off her skin.
But there was no time to waste, so she swam forward underwater, surfaced just behind Vivian, and saw that Cora was already climbing out.
As Finley and Vivian boosted themselves onto the rocks, she dropped into the coldness one more time. Then she scurried up the outcropping. She shook water out of her moccasins, slipped into them, and followed the others back into the shadows of the forest.
The water on her skin and clothes was like a cool shield against the heat. Making her way through the woods beyond the northern end of the lake, she felt refreshed and strong, and even found herself strangely optimistic about Helen.
Maybe they’d blown her disappearance out of all proportion. Maybe there was a simple, innocent explanation. She’d just gone wandering off. Thought she’d do some exploring. Come back later and pick up her shoes. Maybe she’d stretched out in the shade somewhere and fallen asleep. It was possible. She might’ve been too nervous - or hungry - to get much sleep last night. But in the light of day, and after eating half a bag of tortilla chips, drowsiness could’ve overcome her.
She might be wandering around the lodge right now, looking for them, worried sick, thinking they were the ones who’d disappeared.
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