It didn’t seem like it would be hard to accidentally tase herself, either, but Sadie didn’t want to further annoy her partner, so she took the device and turned it in her hand. “I can’t believe you have a Taser,” she said under her breath as she put it in the front pocket of her capris, which now bulged most unattractively.
“I don’t have a Taser anymore—you do. I’ve got Penelope.” She patted her purse again and began walking toward the private driveway again.
“You named your gun Penelope,” Sadie said, hurrying to catch up.
“What—you don’t like it?” Caro said, giving Sadie a teasing smile.
Sadie shook her head and began scoping both sides of the road even though she didn’t know what she was looking for. “This road hasn’t been graded in a while,” Sadie pointed out, changing the subject away from Caro’s weaponry. The road leading to Sadie’s brother’s cabin was graded at least three times a year, which made her wonder when this road had last been attended to.
“Maybe the Edgers don’t use it very often,” Caro said.
“Maybe it’s one more way to keep people away.”
They walked almost half a mile before the trees parted to reveal a simple A-frame cabin set behind a roundabout driveway carved out of the natural brush and grasses that were green with summertime. A door was set in the center of the building, with a window on each side and another window near the top. A type of lean-to was built onto one side and covered with aluminum siding. There was nothing outside of the cabin but a hammock tied between two of the many trees surrounding the small clearing. The area looked completely deserted.
Sadie pulled Caro behind the tree line. “Let’s approach from the side,” she said. “We don’t want to make ourselves vulnerable.” Now that Caro had opened the subject of guns, Sadie wondered if Dr. Hendricks might have one. She put her hand over the Taser in her pocket, feeling better about having it than she had earlier.
“I’ll go left. You go right,” Caro said.
Sadie didn’t love the idea of splitting up, but they could cover more ground than they would if they stayed together, so she nodded. “We’ll meet at the cabin—don’t hide so well that I can’t see you.”
“Agreed.” Caro moved left while Sadie moved right, carefully scanning the area ahead of her as she did so. Other than the rustle of leaves in the aspens around them and the sound of birds, she didn’t hear anything. Sadie reached the cabin first and approached the front door carefully, watching the curtain-drawn windows and listening to the crunch of pea gravel beneath her feet.
The first of the front steps creaked eerily beneath her foot, causing her to pause before remembering she wasn’t trying to sneak up on anyone. The second step creaked as well, but she didn’t pause that time. She crossed the small porch and looked at the spider webs in the corner that testified to the fact that this door wasn’t used much. Still, she took a breath before she raised her hand and knocked three times. The sound echoed within the cabin, and though she anticipated the vibration of footsteps, there didn’t seem to be any movement inside.
She knocked again and waited, but the seemingly empty cabin swallowed her attempts to rouse an occupant. Sadie turned and headed back down the steps to where Caro was waiting. “Keep a look out here, okay? I’m going to check the back.”
Caro gave a thumbs-up sign while Sadie moved toward the lean-to portion of the building. There had to be a back door.
She rounded the corner and felt a creeping vulnerability about being out of Caro’s line of sight. There was a door in the lean-to section of the cabin. Sadie lifted her hand to knock, but because her other knock hadn’t been answered, she felt it was probably a waste of time. She tried the doorknob, but it didn’t turn beneath her hand. Locks no longer kept Sadie out of most places, but no sooner had she felt the arrogance of her lock-picking skill than she also remembered that she’d left her lock picks in Colorado. Perhaps she’d thought that if she left them home, she wouldn’t encounter a reason to need them on this “girls’ weekend” she’d planned with Caro, which was supposed to be full of theater performances, shopping, awesome food, and some good Samaritan work. Ha!
She walked around the back of the cabin and discovered a huge deck, twenty feet by twenty feet, covered with flattened piles of autumn leaves that hadn’t been cleaned up since fall and then had likely been snowed on. She climbed the few steps and came to a stop when she heard something that was out of place. It was not the sound of birds or wind in the trees like she’d heard before. Rather, what caught her attention was the lack of sound. When had it become so quiet?
A twig snapped, and she turned around quickly, scanning the trees for what had made the noise. “Hello?” she called and then listened quietly for an answer, either in words or in movement.
As a few more seconds passed, she heard nothing. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement. She turned enough to see what at first glance looked like trees and brush. An instant later, she realized she was seeing camouflage pants and her gaze traveled upward until she saw a pair of blue eyes peering at her from behind a cluster of brush that almost hid him completely. Him. Wednesday Man.
“Dr. Hendricks?” she asked, her voice shaky with fear that she couldn’t choke down. What if it weren’t Dr. Hendricks? What if it were some crazy mountain man? Where was Caro?
The figure in the trees suddenly disappeared, crashing through the brush as he beat a quick retreat from the cabin. Despite the questions and the fear, it took Sadie .3 seconds to take pursuit.
Chapter 24
Sadie ran down the three steps and headlong into the trees those pants had disappeared into mere moments earlier. There was no way she could catch him, and she guessed he knew that, but she gave it her very best effort.
“Dr. Hendricks!” she called out, dodging tree branches and jumping over a clump of brush after several yards of pursuit. He hadn’t run up a path, just into the bushes, and it was slow going trying to navigate the natural hazards of the route he’d chosen. It was also uphill, which helped nothing.
“My. Name. Is. Sadie. Hoff. Miller,” she said, gasping for air after running several yards. She wasn’t in bad shape, but she wasn’t conditioned for anything like this. “I. Just. Want. To. Talk. To. You.”
She continued several more yards up the incline before coming to a stop, her chest heaving, at a small clearing that leveled off a little bit. She tried to control her breathing enough to listen for movement. He could have taken off in any direction. Or he could have stopped and was watching her this very minute from another cluster of brush—there was plenty of it to hide behind. A rustling to her left caused her to stare in that direction, and a chill ran across her shoulders. This man had gone to great lengths to hide for the last two months—how determined was he to remain in hiding? How vulnerable had she made herself by running after him into the forest?
Sadie looked back the way she’d come. She couldn’t even see the cabin from where she stood, though she knew it wasn’t far. If not for the incline of the hill, she wouldn’t know how to get back to it, and she suddenly felt as though that was exactly what she should do—get back to the cabin and go to the motel, where she and Caro would regroup, talk to Officer Nielson, and make a new plan. Had Caro heard her calling after Dr. Hendricks? What would she do if she came looking for Sadie and couldn’t find her?
Sadie heard the shifting of branches, and she jumped around to face the slope of the hill—exactly where she needed to go to return to the cabin. Her heart rate sped up, but she took a deep breath and told herself not to freak out. Take the situation in stride and let things unfold, she thought. There was no indication in anything she had learned about Dr. Hendricks that he was prone to violence. Then again, she knew how desperate people could become and felt her muscles tensing as though preparing for an attack.
“I’m not alone,” she said, turning quickly and looking all around her but seeing only trees and brush. She was still breathing hard, but she wasn’t gasping anymor
e. It made it easier to listen when her ragged breaths weren’t drowning out all other sounds. “And I’m not here to hurt you.” It seemed ridiculous to even say that. She, not he, was the vulnerable one right now, but she took comfort again in knowing she had the Taser. There was something about being out in the open like this—it was reminiscent of another incident that nearly cost her her life—that made her very grateful that Caro had insisted she take the weapon. And Caro wasn’t far away. Double coverage—triple if you counted her self-defense skills. “I just want to talk, Dr. Hendricks. That’s all.”
She turned again, listening for more movement that would indicate where he could be. At what point did she go back to the cabin? At what point would Caro come looking for her? She still didn’t hear any birds but only the eerie silence that compounded her growing fear.
She tried to moisten her dry mouth and then took a breath. “I know you called Lori yesterday morning before the memorial. Did you tell her not to go to the luncheon?”
No response.
He could be a mile away by now, which would mean she was talking to no one. She paused a few more seconds, then faced down the hill and took a single step toward the cabin.
“Lori told you?”
His voice startled her, and her mouth instantly became dry again. He was here! Dr. Hendricks was right here. Deep breath. “She canceled a meeting we’d planned on, and I didn’t believe her reasons. I managed to get a hold of her phone and found the motel’s number—she doesn’t know I know.” She was suddenly grateful that Lori hadn’t answered her calls yesterday.
“Who else knows I’m here?”
“No one who wants to get you in trouble.”
“Do the police know?”
“No,” Sadie said, also grateful she hadn’t said anything to Officer Nielson this morning so that she could give an honest answer.
His voice was coming from down the hill, between her and the cabin, but she still couldn’t see him. He had to be close by, but she couldn’t tell exactly where his voice was coming from.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Sadie Hoffmiller. I’m a private investigator.”
“Who are you working for? Who’s trying to find me?”
“Everyone’s been trying to find you.”
“How did you find out I was here?”
That was too long a story to tell, but Sadie decided to tell part of it, hoping to build a trusting relationship with him. “A friend found a photo that proved you hadn’t been at the Chuckwalla Trailhead the Sunday before your car was found there. I traced the phone call you made to Lori to the motel and then asked around town.”
He was quiet for a few more seconds. “Why are you looking for me?”
The question brought to mind Sadie’s investment in all of this, something that was becoming increasingly complex for Sadie to identify. She focused on why finding him was important to everyone, not just her. “You have two children who love you, Dr. Hendricks. And hundreds of patients who credit you with delivering their children or saving their lives. You must have a very good reason for leaving a life that seemed to be going so well.”
He didn’t respond right away, and she waited, counting slowly in her head. She’d reached twenty-three before he spoke again. “Not everything is as it seems,” he said. Sadie thought about the suspicions she had about his wife and Dr. Waters. She thought about the boutique’s appearance of being a charitable organization.
“I know that,” Sadie said. “I would like to help you.”
“How can you help me?”
Sadie considered that the question. “Until I know why you left, I can’t answer that, but I can promise you my support regardless of what type of help I can provide.”
He was quiet again.
For nearly a minute, Sadie waited for him to speak. “Dr. Hendricks? Are you still there?”
Nothing.
“Dr. Hendricks, your parents and children think you’re dead. Certainly there’s a better—”
“My death would have been easier for everyone,” he cut in.
Sadie heard him move before she saw him, but a moment later she blinked at the man standing just ten feet away from her. He’d been crouching behind a shrub she didn’t think was big enough to hide him, but it obviously was. In keeping with the description from Robert and Goth Girl, he wore camo pants and a black T-shirt that hung loosely on his skinny frame. His hair was shaggy, but not too long. His grey-streaked beard covered the entire lower half of his face and his neck. If Sadie had the photograph of Dr. Hendricks from the memorial service and held it beside this man, she’d be hard pressed to make an ID. He held her gaze. Silence hung between them, and Sadie wondered what was going through his head at that moment.
He let out a heavy breath. “I knew I should have killed myself when I had the chance.”
Chapter 25
The two of them looked at each other across the clearing for several seconds until Sadie realized that any time she let slip away would equate to information she did not get.
“Were you suicidal when you left? Was that your intent?”
He looked at the ground and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his pants. They were a few sizes too big. “Ironically, when I left I thought I was on the hub of getting my life back, but then it fell apart and I ...” He looked up and regarded her with suspicion. “Who sent you to find me? Who hired you?”
The sound of a voice calling Sadie’s name farther down the hill caused them to look toward the cabin. “Who’s that?” Dr. Hendricks said as his hands came out of his pockets. He was suddenly as tense as a cheetah and ready to run.
“My friend,” Sadie said, feeling bad about the panic Caro must be feeling right now. How long had Sadie been gone? Five minutes? “I told you I wasn’t alone.”
“Sadie?” the voice called.
Dr. Hendricks moved toward the trees on the left side of the clearing.
“Wait,” Sadie said, putting her hand out. “I’ll keep her there.”
Dr. Hendricks looked down the mountain at the source of the voice, then back at Sadie. “I disappeared once. I can disappear again.”
She could tell he meant it. “Don’t do that,” Sadie said, walking toward Caro’s voice. She put her hands to the sides of her mouth and yelled. “I’m coming down in just a minute, Caro—everything’s fine.”
“Sadie?” came a reply. It sounded closer. “Are you okay? What’s happened?”
“Wait for me right there,” Sadie yelled. “I’m coming. Sorry. Don’t come up.”
Caro was quiet for a moment, and Sadie hoped that meant she sensed Sadie’s earnestness. “Okay!”
Sadie was relieved to have Caro’s cooperation. She turned to look at Dr. Hendricks. He had moved even farther into the trees during Sadie’s exchange with Caro. He looked ready to bolt at any moment.
“Please talk to me, Dr. Hendricks. Help me understand what’s happened so I can help you.” He looked toward Caro’s voice, obviously nervous about her being there.
“I’ll send her away,” Sadie said.
“If she knows I’m here, she’ll go to the police.”
“She won’t,” Sadie said. “I promise. You can trust her. She doesn’t even have to know I found you.” Sadie noted that he wasn’t interested in working with the police. She would need to present herself as neutral. “Dr. Hendricks,” Sadie said, “surely you realize that if I can find you, the police can, too. Please let me help you use the limited time you have left.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because you know what the right thing is to do, and your cover is blown. You’re on borrowed time.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and let out a breath. “I don’t know what to do,” he said quietly.
Sadie’s mind was in hyper-drive thinking of possible solutions. “Let me come back in half an hour. Alone. I’ll ... I’ll bring you something to eat—you didn’t work yesterday so you must be hungry.”
He looked
up at her, and she could see that the mention of food had changed his level of suspicion. “Alone?” he asked.
“I promise.”
“I’ll know if you lie to me, and I’ll disappear.”
“That’s the last thing I want,” Sadie said, but she knew she’d find a way to bring Caro with her all the same. And she would still have the Taser.
“No cops.”
“Of course not,” Sadie said, deciding in that moment that she wouldn’t tell Officer Nielson about finding Dr. Hendricks until after she’d talked with him. “All I want to do is help you, Dr. Hendricks.”
He didn’t answer, and she feared he was planning another escape. “Please, Dr. Hendricks. You obviously had reasons to leave, and I know that a man of your education and commitment to his children would not have made this choice lightly. Please help me understand, and then maybe I can help you, too.”
“Why would you help me?” His eyes darted toward where Caro was waiting at the base of the hill. He looked back at Sadie. “You haven’t even told me who hired you.”
“No one hired me. I’m involved in this because I have encountered people who care about you a great deal, and they want answers.”
“They know I’m here?”
Sadie hesitated. “No one knows you’re here but me.” Sadie looked back down the hill. At some point, Caro would come looking for her again. If Sadie had been the one who was waiting, she’d have already been on her way up the hill. “Please let me come back alone and talk to you.”
“Did Anita hire you?”
His comment seemed to indicate that Anita was somehow responsible for whatever circumstances had driven him to leave his life behind. “I promise you that Anita has nothing to do with my being here, and no one hired me.”
“Sadie?” Caro called again. “Are you okay?” Her voice was closer than it had been before.
Rocky Road Page 18