She chewed the nail of her index finger and climbed the stairs. She had not been in Tia’s room uninvited, but she pushed open the door now and went in, hoping to find what? A note? Tia would have left it in the kitchen.
The bedroom was in order. No sign of panic, struggle, flight. She went back downstairs, looking again at the darkening windows. Tia could be at someone’s house, comforting or encouraging someone. She could be with a friend.
But the unlocked door nagged. To leave her shop unsecured, Tia must have been overwhelmed or distracted by something. Or someone. There wouldn’t be signs of struggle if she’d been taken at gunpoint. Her stomach clenched.
Tia had accused her of having a hyperactive worry mode. And it was true. Knowing every time her family members had gone “to work” they might be caught or hurt or thrown in jail had honed her nerves. But she had real cause for concern. Tia unreachable, her shop unsecured.
Piper chewed her cuticle. She’d seen Miles walking by, surprised he hadn’t come into the bakery. Had he gone to Tia’s? Had she made Tia believe he was safe when he wasn’t? She took out her cell and phoned Jonah.
With Jay’s help, Jonah pushed the bureau to the wall. After he had testified at the county court, he and Jay had assembled Sarge’s bed, collected what they could of his belongings. Billie would be delivering him within the hour. When his phone rang, he guessed it would be Lauren, following up on her offer. But it was Piper.
“What’s up?”
“Tia’s missing.”
“What do you mean missing?” He had a flash of her stricken face as he’d left her stunned and wounded.
“I can’t find her anywhere.”
He looked at his watch. “She only closed up a couple hours ago.”
“She disappeared before noon without locking the door. She left the shop unattended and didn’t even secure it. Something’s wrong.”
He silently cursed himself.
“I think Miles went in there.”
Jonah swallowed. “He did, but nothing happened. I talked to her after that.”
“Then she’s okay?”
He pressed his fingers to his temple. “Are you home?”
“Yes.”
“Go down to the mud room.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to look for her walking staff, hydration pack, whatever she usually takes hiking.”
“You think she went hiking in the storm?”
“It wasn’t storming at noon.” Tia knew better than to set out in bad conditions, but when she got upset, she took to the mountains.
Piper said, “The staff is gone. The hydration pack. Her multipocket jacket and her hiking boots.”
He drew a deep breath. She had gone prepared. And she was a competent mountaineer. “Tia’s been hiking these mountains her whole life. She knows them like her own bedroom. Have you looked outside?”
The rain had turned to sleet.
“I’ve tried to reach her. She’s not answering her phone.”
“She goes up there to be alone. And cell reception is spotty.”
“So we, what? Leave her out there?”
He closed his eyes. “I’ll call the officer in charge, put them on alert. If she’s not back in two hours, let me know.”
“What if she’s injured?”
The thought punched through his rationalizations. He knew why she’d gone out there. Tia would be furious if he sent out a team. Unless she needed help. Even then, she wouldn’t want it from him.
A knock came at the door. Jonah swallowed. “Call me in an hour if she’s not back.” The trails up there were clearly marked—if she kept to them. An hour would give her time to get down without causing a scene, and he had other concerns.
Jay admitted Sarge’s daughters. Sarge shuffled in behind them with a rolling walker. It must be eating him up to be so feeble. He looked bleak but no longer desperate.
Jonah had locked the coyote in his bedroom. She made no sound, but he sensed her awareness. He hadn’t mentioned the wild animal to Billie or Stacey, hadn’t put her into the mix when he’d made his offer. He’d have to figure out a way to keep them apart for as long as she deigned to stay, but right now he had another alpha female to placate.
Billie pushed into what would be her father’s room, finding it spacious and airy, the windows taking most of one wall with a view of the creek bounded by evergreen and aspen. The attached bathroom might need some modification if Sarge went into a wheelchair, but he doubted she could fault much else. Stacey fussed over him as he lowered himself onto the padded window seat. Sarge growled.
The sooner the daughters left, the better for everyone. They must have agreed, because in fifteen minutes they had pronounced the arrangement sufficient and made their escape.
Jonah sat on the edge of the bed and eyed Sarge. “This all right for now?”
Sarge nodded.
“Up for steak?”
A smile flickered on Sarge’s mouth. “Up for anything not reduced to mush.”
Jonah nodded. “Three T-bones coming up.”
He headed for the kitchen with Jay on his heels. Sarge was his focus tonight, making this transition as painless as possible. Tia’s wilderness skills and good judgment would get her back—unless she’d been injured. He called the station and put them on alert.
Pelted by rain, Tia raised her head. The scent of mud and piney loam rose up as she assessed her predicament. She had rolled a long way from the trail, and her staff lay farther down the ravine. She didn’t have to guess how much she would need it once she’d dragged herself back to the trail. She rose to her elbows, feeling wrenched neck and back muscles. It could have been worse.
She drank from her water tube, then pulled up her hood to block the icy rain. She pressed her scraped hands to the crumbly ground and sat up. Flashes of lightning darted behind the lumpy oatmeal sky. What daylight was left hardly penetrated. She should have listened to her body, to the pain that had warned her she was weakening. She’d been stupid. And it could cost her.
She tried to stand and gasped. Pain screamed up her ankle to the already bruised calf. She dropped her chin to her chest as the waves passed, then gingerly fingered the flesh puffing up around her ankle bones. Probably a twist or sprain.
Clenching her teeth, she eased down the rocky ravine slick with chipped bark and rust-colored pine needles. She gripped the staff. Dragging it, she crawled up the ravine, her fingers freezing as the rain turned to sleet. Late summer, early autumn, could look like winter at higher elevations—and felt like it already. It began to hail, relentless pellets stinging her. At least no psychopath would be out in this.
The thought should have comforted but didn’t. She had hiked alone as long as she could remember. Now someone was torturing animals and leaving them along trails to die. Did that person find them injured and take them at their weakest? She startled and jerked her head to the right. A squirrel scrambled up a fir trunk.
She continued crawling up the slope, rocks and sticks digging into her knees. Breathing hard, she reached the trail and, clutching the staff, got to her feet. She cried out when a bull elk bounded through the trees a short way up the mountain.
What was wrong with her? The chance of a killer being right there right now on a deserted trail in the storm was far less than the danger of injury and hypothermia. This cold front could drop into the twenties or below. She pulled gloves from her pack and tugged them over her stinging hands.
In another pocket of her pack, she activated her phone, but as she’d figured, it found no signal. She pulled the hood over her soaking hair and cinched it around her face. Wincing each time she put weight on her twisted ankle, she worked her way down the rocky trail.
Down was always more precarious. Wet and icy made it treacherous. Injured, it might be nearly impossible. But she had to try. Piper would worry, and Piper didn’t just worry. She called people, called Jonah.
Tia shivered. If she went fast enough—no, she had to be careful. She planted the
stick and eased over a sharp rock, reached a level stretch and pulled herself along like a Venetian gondolier.
The hail covered the ground like snow. She tried to recall what phase of moon she’d have, but with the clouds, it didn’t make much difference. She prayed. Why was that always a last resort? She ran a prayer line, for heaven’s sake.
All things are possible with God. He shall provide all my needs. Ask and it will be given. Out of the depths I cry out, and the Lord hears my prayer.
Lord, help me now. She swiped the moisture from her face and kept on, praying most fervently that she’d be down before Jonah could mobilize. She did not want to see him. Not in this condition. Not in any condition.
Wiping his mouth, Jonah answered the phone.
“She’s not here.”
He and Jay and Sarge had just sat down to steak and mashed potatoes. He rose and moved to the window, feeling the chill of the storm. Hail had pattered against the roof, bouncing and piling upon the ground.
“Chief?” Piper demanded.
He drew back from his reflection. “I’ll send a team out.”
The line was silent a full beat. “Did you miss the part where I said it’s Tia? And she could be hurt?”
“I didn’t miss it.”
“And you’re not going to find her?”
“I’m handling it.”
“What if the psycho is out there?”
The only one crazy enough to be out was Tia. “Piper. I’ll take it from here.”
She gave a long sigh and hung up. He placed the call. “Hey, Moser. Can you take McCarthy and whoever’s on call from the sheriff’s office and check out the trails above Sprague Street? Got a call someone might be lost up there, maybe caught in the storm.”
“Who are we looking for?”
“Tia Manning.”
“Come again?”
“You heard me.”
Moser’s pause lasted a beat too long. “And you’re sending me?”
“You on duty?”
“Well …”
“Are you in charge?”
“Yeah, Jonah, I’m in charge.”
“Then take care of it.” He hit end.
Both pairs of eyes rose to him when he returned to the table.
“You can go,” Sarge said gruffly. “I don’t need baby-sitting.”
Jonah clenched his jaw. “Moser’s got it.”
Jay’s bicolored stare probed. Jonah rose and went to his room, where the predator in his closet watched no less pointedly.
Seventeen
A part of you has grown in me. And so you see, it’s you and me together forever and never apart, maybe in distance, but never in heart.
—AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Piper’s stomach knotted with anxiety. Every time her mother had put on a certain dress, or her dad had worn a calculating expression, or they’d spent a long evening with Uncle Joe, she had known it meant a new scam. Even when they didn’t try to include her, she felt part of it.
She’d been so scared for them, scared her dad would get injured, her mom would be taken to jail, scared police would come to the door and take her away to live with strangers. Her hand would go to her mouth. First she chewed the cuticles, then the nails themselves. She had beaten it for a while, but now she tasted the blood from her pinkie where she’d nipped too deeply down into the skin.
Staring into the night, she shuddered. Please let Tia be held up by the storm and not in the clutches of a sick raccoon killer. Just because she hadn’t been taken from her store at gunpoint didn’t mean she wasn’t in the clutches of a psycho. Piper pressed her hands to her face. She had to do something. She’d be useless in a search. Then what? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what Tia would do.
Pray.
Oh, boy. Not the person for that job.
Tia had told her praying unleashed power, but what happened if she did it wrong? It might be wrong to pray at all if she didn’t believe in God. She bit her nail. She didn’t so much not believe as not know how or what to believe.
What she needed was someone who knew their stuff, who went to church. Jonah Westfall went to church. He would know how to pray, but if she called him again, he’d arrest her. She needed a trained prayer to tell her how, or better yet to do it for her. That was it. She would call Tia’s church ladies.
She rushed for the kitchen, found the slim directory with a picture of the church on the front. She’d start with someone she knew … Mary Carson. Breathlessly she explained, “Remember I told you Tia left her shop? Well, she’s lost on the mountain in the storm.”
“Oh no.”
Thunder rumbled across the sky.
“I need someone to pray. Someone who can. Who knows how.”
“You want me to pray with you?”
“No. I mean, I think Tia would want it, but I don’t know how. I convinced the police chief to send a search team, and I wanted to do something too, but all I could think of was pray.”
“I tell you what. I don’t drive in bad weather, so let me call Carolyn. Are you home?”
“Yes.”
“Unless you hear back, we’ll be there directly.”
Piper hoped the tremor in her voice was the palsy. One hopeless worrier was enough. “Thank you.” She wasn’t sure what she was doing, only that Tia would want it.
Fifteen minutes later, the two women arrived. Mary said, “This is Carolyn Wells, my dear. We would be honored to pray with you for Tia’s safety and rescue.”
Shivering hard, Tia rounded a hairpin turn and saw lights, three strong beams far enough down the mountain that it would still be a long pull to reach them. She drew a haggard breath. She did not look forward to Jonah’s scolding, but she would accept their help. Fatigue had become a force.
She slowed her pace. It did no good to rush, now that a team had already come to find her—at least she hoped it was a rescue team and not the animal torture club. She shuddered. Her teeth had been chattering so hard she’d have to check them for chips, but a fresh chill shook her.
She had intended to call out when they drew close enough, but now she wasn’t sure. She gripped the staff, biting her lip against the pain in her palms, her knees, her elbows, and most of all her left leg. It felt like a dog had sunk its teeth into her ankle and took a new hold with every step.
She hadn’t realized until the cold soaked into her knees that she had sunk to the ground like a penitent. Pulling herself back up seemed tantamount to climbing Mount Everest. But Jonah would not find her on her knees. Digging deep, she climbed the staff and regained her feet as the light beams caught her.
“Tia Manning?” The voice calling was Adam Moser’s.
“Yes,” she called back. “I’m all right.”
She waited for Jonah to stalk up, glaring, but he wasn’t among them. She hoped that didn’t mean another team was out in the storm searching.
“Are you injured?”
“Not badly. My ankle slowed me down.”
A sheriff’s deputy wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. She almost collapsed under its insubstantial weight.
Another officer she didn’t know said, “Put your arm around my shoulder. We’ll get you down.” He was short and sturdy as a pony. With Adam Moser on the other side, she hardly had to work at all. Relief rushed in, so potent she shook with it. She’d been closer to collapse than she’d realized.
“I’ll run you to Emergency,” Adam said when they’d reached the trailhead.
“Can you please just take me home?”
“You should be checked out.”
“I’m fine really. There’s no one else searching, is there?”
“No ma’am.” He unlocked the patrol car.
She slid out of the rain and closed her eyes as Jonah’s officer walked around and climbed in with the phone to his ear. “Yeah, Chief, Moser here. We located Miss Manning. Minor injuries, exposure. She’s declined the hospital, so I’m running her by the fire station, let them look her over.”
She starte
d to object, but Jonah would hear. Besides, the officer hadn’t asked; he’d decided.
Moser listened for a beat. “All right then.” He signed off.
Tia looked out the slush-soaked window, relieved and devastated. She hadn’t wanted to face Jonah, hadn’t wanted him to think this a stunt for his attention like the things she’d done as a girl, taking dares and challenging him. She had dreaded him finding her, scolding her, but this new dread seeped in like an infection. Jonah had known she might be in trouble and turned it over to someone else. He’d finally let go.
Jonah pocketed his phone. Tia was found, safe and stubborn. He’d made the right call. He relaxed his muscles, working the tension from his neck. Having seen Sarge to bed, he let Enola out once more before she settled in for the night. Her wary eyes and scabby side reminded him how short the time had been since she’d dragged herself into his yard.
He had to agree this might not be her first sojourn in the human world. Maybe she’d been bred intentionally like the wolf hybrids. Leaving the outside door open, he went back to the closet and looked at the little, lumpy pups. He didn’t want to swipe them, didn’t know why Liz had insisted he bring them over tonight. Being there when the eyes opened might matter, but that was at least a week off.
With a sigh, he lifted and sexed each one. Two females, one male. He turned the last in his hands and studied the face. They looked more like rodents than dogs. No way to tell, yet, if she’d been mated by a coyote or a domestic dog. How could he even think of turning two of them over to a woman who thought she could pattern them like ducklings? She wanted to mother them into pets, but it just—
Jay tapped the door. “The vet’s here.”
Right now?
She came into the room, her coat and hair slushy, her face determined. “You promised me puppies.”
He still cradled one in his hands. “I think it’s too soon, Liz.”
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