by Dinah McCall
Deborah heard him coming but refused to look. It wasn’t until she felt his hand on her face that her eyes flew open. He was so close that she could see her own reflection in his eyes. Distrusting him, she quickly pushed his hand away. “What are you doing?”
“You’re cold.”
She frowned. “And that would be a surprise because…?”
He sighed. “I think there’s still some hot coffee in a thermos in my pack. Would you like some?”
Deborah stifled a shiver. She was dressed for the weather, but the coffee sounded like manna from heaven.
“Yes, I would, and thank you.”
Mike quickly dug through his backpack, found the small thermos and then poured the contents into the lid, which also served as a cup.
“It’s probably not as hot as it should be,” he said, and handed it over.
Deborah’s gloved hands were shaking as she lifted the cup to her lips. She took a quick sip, then closed her eyes and moaned in quiet ecstasy as the warm liquid slid down her throat. Even though she sugared her own coffee at home until it was close to syrup, this tasted great.
“Mmm, wonderful,” she said, and quickly drank the rest before it had a chance to get cold. As soon as the small cup was emptied, she handed it back. “I didn’t save you any,” she said.
“That’s all right,” Mike said. “I had plenty this morning.”
Then he rocked back on his heels. “Are you for real, lady?”
Deborah smiled.
Mike felt like he’d been sucker punched. When she smiled, her face seemed to glow from within.
“Yes, I’m for real,” she said, and then saw James coming out of the trees. She sat up straight and reached for her backpack. “We’d better get—”
The scene before her completely disappeared as she watched a small boy put a whistle to his lips and blow. She heard two sharp blasts and then nothing. She jumped to her feet. Unaware that she had grabbed at the Elmo doll she’d stuffed down her coat, she began turning in a circle, as if trying to orient what she was seeing with their present location.
The moment she jumped up, Mike followed suit. Now all three men were standing around her, confused by her strange behavior.
“What? What is it?” Evan asked, but Deborah didn’t even know they were there.
The vision disappeared as suddenly as it had come. She blinked, then staggered as her world stopped spinning.
“A whistle. He’s blowing a whistle.”
Evan’s face turned as white as the snow. “Oh, God.”
Mike grabbed his son by his arm.
“What is it?” he asked.
Evan stared at Deborah. “God in heaven, no one could have guessed at something so obscure. You are for real, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course I’m for real,” Deborah said. “What does the whistle mean?”
“I gave it to him when he was three so that if we ever got separated when we were buying groceries or out shopping, he could blow it loud and long until I found him.”
Mike was dumbfounded. He still didn’t believe in psychics. This had to be a trick.
James put his arms around Evan. “So let’s go get our boy.”
The men looked at Deborah, but she was behaving strangely. She would take a few steps downhill, then stop and turn back, gazing up the slope. She did this a couple more times before Mike grabbed her arm. “What’s going on?” he asked.
She looked down the mountain, then frowned. “Something’s wrong.”
Now Evan was worried again. “Like what?”
“They’ve been walking in circles,” she muttered.
“Jesus,” Evan whispered.
“They’re going the wrong way,” she breathed.
“What do you mean?” Mike asked.
“With the snow and no way to tell where the sun is in the sky, they must have gotten confused.”
“Confused? What do you mean by confused?”
Deborah pointed. “Up. They’re going up instead of down.”
“No way,” James said. “Anyone can tell uphill from downhill.”
But Deborah wasn’t paying any attention to what they were saying. The moment she’d turned around, she’d felt the pull. For whatever reason, the woman and the little boy were now going up instead of down. And there was more. She hadn’t said anything to the family, but she sensed a change in their physical well-being. Whether it was because they were in danger of freezing to death or in danger from another source remained to be seen. What she did know was that they needed to be found quickly, or it would be too late.
“This way,” she said suddenly, and started moving.
“Hey, wait!” Mike said, but no one was paying him any attention. “Oh, what the hell,” he muttered, and followed the others.
Molly didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but when she woke up, the first things she noticed were the cold and the silence. Her shoulder was hurting, as were her legs and back. The more time that passed since the crash, the worse she felt.
Johnny was curled up in her arms, and she could feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek. The whistle he’d blown earlier was hanging outside his coat. She fingered it, then put it to her mouth. The metal was startlingly frigid against her already cold lips, but she blew it lightly just the same. To her surprise, the little boy didn’t even flinch. She cupped the side of his face and then patted his cheek.
“Hey, Johnny, are you hungry? How about you wake up and we’ll have something to eat?”
He murmured something beneath his breath but didn’t open his eyes.
Molly’s heart skipped a beat. Why didn’t he wake up? He needed to wake up. She shook him lightly but persistently.
“Johnny? Johnny? Can you hear me?”
He nodded, but he still didn’t open his eyes. “Cold,” he said.
“Yes, I am, too,” she said, and pulled him closer against her, then wrapped the blankets tighter around them both. “Is that better?”
He nodded again.
It occurred to her that maybe they should get up and move around, but she didn’t follow through. She thought about looking out to see if it was still snowing, but she didn’t move for fear of disturbing him. She didn’t think of hypothermia, didn’t realize that their makeshift shelter might turn into a crypt.
“Blow the whistle,” Johnny said softly.
“Yes, all right,” Molly said, and gave it a short blast. What the hell. Maybe the rescuers would hear and beat the killer to them.
The sound seemed muffled beneath the limbs and the snow, so she blew it once more, then let it drop.
“You have to blow,” Johnny murmured. “It’s so Daddy can find me if I’m lost.”
Molly’s heart twisted. They were more than lost. If only a whistle could fix the mess they were in.
“Molly?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Are we still lost?”
She blinked back tears. “Yes.”
“If you blow the whistle, Daddy will find us.”
Molly didn’t know how to answer. What could she say? She certainly couldn’t tell him that the likelihood of that happening was slim. She patted the top of his head, then pulled the hood of his jacket a little closer around his face.
“We’ll rest for just a little bit longer, then we’re going to have to start moving again, okay?”
“’Kay,” he said softly.
She scooted him closer, then closed her eyes and started to pray. There were so many things she’d wanted to do with her life, but the possibility of dying on this mountain was becoming a reality she had to face. So she said her prayers for herself and for Johnny; then she put the whistle in her mouth and blew.
“In a few minutes we’re going to get up and start moving again,” she warned.
But Johnny didn’t answer, and before long she’d forgotten her own vow and fallen asleep.
Darren Wilson was shivering with every step he took. He wanted to just sit down and quit. Either he would be fo
und or he would freeze to death. One way or another, it would be over—and he wanted it over. If he died, he wouldn’t have to answer to Alphonso Riberra, the man to whom he owed more than a quarter of a million dollars. He wouldn’t have to worry about Riberra killing his family, and he wouldn’t have to worry that the lost woman and kid would give him up.
He stepped on a large stick hidden beneath the snow, then jumped when the sound echoed like a gunshot. He glanced down. The tracks he’d been following were all but gone.
“Christ Almighty…don’t let it all end this way,” he begged, and then wondered why God would listen to a man who’d done what he’d done.
As he stood there, he thought he heard a sound. He frowned. It sounded like a referee’s whistle, which made no sense. But he heard the sound again—coming from somewhere above where he was standing. Whatever he’d heard was not an animal. All he had to do was make a choice to press on, or lie down and die. As much as he wanted the horror of all this to go away, he was afraid to die. People who did what he’d done didn’t go to heaven, and while he wasn’t completely convinced there was such a thing as hell, he wasn’t in a state of mind to take the chance.
He started walking uphill, toward where he thought the sound had come from.
It had just been made official. Three people who’d been on the plane were missing from the crash site. Whether their bodies had fallen out while the plane was still in the air and landed some distance away from the site or they’d survived only to wander away in the woods, no one knew. The only truth the authorities had so far was that they were gone.
The FAA, representatives from the airline, and local and state authorities had assembled, blocked off search areas and dispersed search parties sometime just after noon.
Anthony Devereaux knew the O’Ryans had been gone since early that morning, but he’d heard nothing back. He’d gotten info from some of the searchers that the farther up the mountain they went, the heavier the snowfall. He didn’t know how to explain the missing passengers, but he knew if there was a snowball’s chance in hell of their being found, the O’Ryan men would find their boy. He just hoped to God that when they found him, they found him alive.
However, they were not part of his actual search party, so whatever they were doing was out of his domain.
“Hey, Devereaux…where do you want them to set up?”
Tony looked up. A deputy sheriff was standing in front of a large contingent of people from Carlisle. They’d come with food for the searchers, as well as cots and blankets for beds. He waved to indicate he’d heard the question, then headed their way.
Hours later, he was still on site, keeping track of the searchers by handheld radios, relaying information back and forth, and marking off sections on a map once a given area had been covered. By late evening, a five-mile radius from the site had been thoroughly searched; then they were forced to stop because of the oncoming darkness.
Some of the search groups stopped right where they were and set up camp, ready to resume at first light. Others hadn’t come as prepared and were forced to return to the on-site headquarters.
Tony still hadn’t heard from the O’Ryans, although some of the searchers that had come in claimed to have seen their tracks. One report Tony had gotten was puzzling to him. The searchers claimed the O’Ryans had changed direction and were now traveling up the mountain, instead of down, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. They were big boys who’d gone out on their own. They would have to take care of themselves.
Even though Darren didn’t hear the whistle again, he still ran, dragging his bum leg at an awkward angle until the tracks he’d been following were gone. Then he went a little farther until he ran into the low-hanging limbs of a pine tree and hit himself square across the face. His nose, which he already figured was broken, began to bleed again.
He screamed out in pain, grabbing his face with both hands as he fell backward into the snow. Blood was pouring out of his nose and staining the front of his coat. He scooped up a large handful of snow and pressed it on the bridge of his nose, hoping to stop the bleeding. When the snow melted, he did it again, then again and again, until the blood was gone.
“God damn it all to hell,” he muttered as he began cleaning off his face and gloves with more snow.
He couldn’t breathe out of his nose, and his lower lip, which he’d already busted, was swelling on the other side, as well. He was so hungry he felt faint, and he knew that if he didn’t eat soon, he would pass out.
He made himself get up, then began walking aimlessly. He had to keep moving or die. As he was walking, he saw the corner of something bright red poking out of the snow a few feet downhill from his location. He stopped, stared at it for a moment, then guessed it was probably another snack-food wrapper that the woman and kid had discarded. He knew that confirming his theory would at least assure him that they’d passed this way, so he headed toward the spot of color.
He slipped as he began moving downward and grabbed hold of a small sapling to keep from falling farther. When he got to the bit of red color, he discovered to his disbelief that it wasn’t discarded paper after all. It was a whole energy bar that had obviously fallen out of their pack. He was almost in tears when he tore into it. He sat down with his back against a tree, taking momentary shelter from the snow, and took his first bite. Tears came to his eyes as he chewed. Nuts, oatmeal and raisins had never tasted so good.
He chewed on one side of his mouth three times, then on the other side three times, before swallowing. It didn’t bother him that his obsessive-compulsive disorder had kicked in again, although he’d been in therapy for it for years.
But there was a small problem he hadn’t been aware of until he’d started to eat. Some of his back teeth felt loose. Chewing on the left side of his mouth was excruciatingly painful. Even though he could have chewed on the other side with far less misery, his OCD wouldn’t let him do it. The pain forced him to slow down his eating to the point that when he’d finished one third of the bar, he was crying.
He washed his mouth out with snow he let melt on his tongue, repeating the practice three times until he could no longer feel anything stuck to his teeth. However, clean teeth weren’t going to fix what was wrong with him.
He gambled excessively because he needed to repeat every bet three times before he felt he could move on to the next. He also tipped three times too much, and chewed everything he put in his mouth three times on each side before swallowing. When he drank, he always ordered three drinks, even when he didn’t want them, and he drank them. To do otherwise would bring the world down around his ears.
In fact, that very thought had been stewing in his head for some hours now. He’d killed Finn. He needed to repeat the act two more times before it would be all right. All he had to do was find the woman and the kid, then even up the score. When he finally got up from where he’d been sitting and began to search again, he didn’t remember that he’d been going uphill and not down. Instead, he fixed his gaze on a large evergreen about three hundred yards downhill. It had limbs hanging low to the ground, which would give shelter to whoever or whatever crawled beneath.
Renewed by the piece of energy bar he’d eaten, he began mentally preparing himself to rout whatever kind of animal might be sheltering beneath the pine, then began to walk, anxious to get there before dark.
When Deborah ran out of daylight, she pulled a flashlight out of her backpack and kept on moving. She was so focused on looking down for tracks or signs that she didn’t see the limb in front of her before it smacked her in the face.
The blow was so unexpected that it knocked her flat on her back. Her flashlight went flying as she grabbed her face with both hands.
“Oh…that hurt,” she mumbled as tears quickened.
Mike had been right behind her. He saw the limb almost at the same time she went down, and there was nothing he could do to save her. He heard the thump as she hit it and tried to grab her as she was falling, but he reacted too late.
The moment she went down, he was on his knees beside her.
“Deborah? Deborah? Are you all right?”
She struggled to a sitting position, then covered her face again. Her eyes were watering, her cheeks stinging from being slapped by the pine needles. If she’d been an inch taller, it would have most likely broken her nose. As it was, she felt a small knot forming on her forehead, just above the level of her eyebrows.
“What happened?” Evan asked as he, too, dropped to his knees.
“Some psychic,” Deborah muttered. “I should have seen that coming.”
It was the fact that she’d just cracked a joke in the midst of her pain that made Mike look at her in a different way.
“Can you stand?” he asked.
“The branch hit my head, not my knees. Of course I can stand,” she muttered.
Mike chuckled. It was so damned dark in the woods that he could barely see his hand in front of his face, but he felt her impatience and sarcasm just the same. “Dad…get her flashlight, will you?”
James fumbled in the snow for the light as Evan and Mike helped her up. James handed the light to Mike, who promptly aimed it in her face. To Mike’s surprise, Deborah didn’t look away, and he found himself locked into her gaze. At that point he was the one who began losing focus. If she hadn’t blinked, he might never have come back from where he’d been going.
“You’re not bleeding,” Evan commented.
“Then I shall be thankful for small favors,” Deborah said. She took the flashlight from Mike, readjusted her backpack and this time ducked as she went beneath the limb.