Gone: An Emma Caldridge Novella: Part Two of Three

by Jamie Freveletti

  She followed the path through a narrow slot just wide enough for one. Rock formations hemmed her in on either side. Her steps made a rhythmic crunching sound that she wished she could control, but there were too many small stones to avoid it. The noise seemed magnified in the still air.

  She was five hundred yards above and away from the stone wall perimeter when the back door of the house burst open. Two men dressed in jeans and cowboy boots held a bound and hooded figure who struggled in their grasp. The figure wore a long shapeless dark brown robe, like a monk’s robe, and stumbled every couple of steps when the hem got in the way.

  Too small for Ryan, Emma thought. Perhaps a young boy or girl? The very idea sickened her.

  The men dragged their victim across the lawn toward the stables.

  Emma began sprinting. By the time she’d covered three hundred yards the men had reached the stables and continued past them, toward the garage or storage structure at the far end. She stopped, planted her feet, raised her gun and sighted a spot to the side of the three. Knowing she wasn’t a good enough marksman to take out one without hitting the victim, she inhaled and prepared to shoot.

  Before she could, she heard the sound of a rifle racking behind her and froze.

  “You shoot them and I’ll shoot you.” The man’s voice was low and gravelly, from either age or cigarettes.

  “That could be a child they’re dragging,” she said. “Whatever is going on down there, it’s not good. Even if you’re one of them, you have to understand that it’s illegal.”

  She heard the now familiar sound of shoes crunching on stone heading toward her. Her neck tingled with the primeval knowledge that danger was at her back; mixed with that was a sense of urgency, because the men in the area below were almost to the garage. Her opportunity to stop them would soon be gone.

  The man behind her came level with her right shoulder, and the muzzle of his shotgun was twenty inches from her ear. She kept her gun aimed and took a sidelong look at him. He was in his late forties, with graying hair tied in a single braid, a heavily lined face, and skin that was tanned and weather-beaten. His eyes were a bright blue and shone with determination.

  “I ain’t one of them,” he said. “That’s my horse you got tied up there.”

  Emma exhaled in relief. “Cowboy Leon? Brink rented Lily to me. I’ll tell you the rest later, but first I’ve got to stop those men in Shaw’s yard.”

  “Don’t do it,” Leon said.

  The men below were ten feet from the garage door. Emma returned her full attention to the yard.

  “I’m telling you, don’t,” Leon said again. Emma shook her head without looking at him.

  “If those two get that child into the garage it will be ten times harder to spring him,” she said.

  She’d never lowered her arm, and now focused on the pistol’s front sight. Cowboy Leon used the barrel of his shotgun to nudge her arm off target. Emma glared at him, took a step to the left and aimed again.

  “You interfere again,” she said, “and I’m going to hold you personally responsible for what happens. Are you just going to stand by and watch?”

  The men were steps from the garage door, and the hostage was kicking and twisting in a frenzy.

  “I can’t help and you can’t either,” Leon said. “Shaw’s got fifty followers on that compound ready to hunt you down, and that storage shed to the right of the garage is loaded with guns, ammo, and enough dynamite to blow up this butte and the one a mile away.”

  Emma fired.

  The shot echoed and bounced across the side of the mountain. The man on the hostage’s left jumped backward and yelled something unintelligible. Emma heard the bullet puncture the aluminum-sided garage wall. Both men let go of their victim and sprinted around the garage’s far end. The hostage knelt, bent from the waist and shook his head until the hood loosened and fell off. A yard of light brown hair cascaded down. Emma could just make out the back of a slender neck that was obviously female. The girl sat back on her heels. The dark and distance made it difficult to tell her age, but she appeared to be in her early teens.

  “Great,” Leon said. “Now we’d better get the hell out of here, because if they catch us we’ll be field-dressed and strung up to dry.”

  Emma fired again. This time she aimed at the corner of the garage.

  “Are you crazy, girl? They’re going to come for you,” Leon’s voice held outright panic.

  As Emma rose, she watched the girl in the yard stagger to her feet. She took two running steps toward the wall, only to trip on the gown.

  “I’m going down there, can you cover me?” Emma asked.

  “Hell no. I’m getting out of here,” Leon said. He was pacing back and forth in agitation. Emma watched as the girl in the yard ran to the stone wall at the perimeter in an attempt to flee. Emma couldn’t see how she would scale it with her hands tied behind her back. She’d need help.

  “You that afraid of them?”

  Leon leaned his face into hers. Emma smelled the scent of tobacco and watched him inhale and exhale in quick breaths.

  “Listen to me. They’re fanatics, not above killing and crazy to the bone. They think they own the county, and so far they do, because they rape and kill and traffic humans and the governor does nothing.”

  One of the two men peered from the corner of the garage. Emma took a quick step, aimed and fired again. Bits of something, presumably aluminum, flew off the garage’s edge, and the man jerked his head back. Next to her Leon groaned.

  “I’m going down there,” Emma said. “She’ll never scale the wall alone. You can cover me or not, it’s up to you.”

  The porch lights came on and four men sprinted out of the house toward the stables. They all held rifles, and each one aimed in a different direction as they tried to determine where her shots were originating.

  Emma took off running, heard Leon say, “Oh hell,” and then came the satisfying crack of his rifle. Dirt flew up in front of the first of the four new men.

  He’s a better shot than I am, she thought.

  The men scrambled backwards in a fast and comical reaction to the shotgun. Two split and ran back toward the house, while the other two increased their pace. When they reached the pool cabana, they dove into it.

  During the last fifty feet to the stone wall, Emma lost her line of sight into the yard. She kept in a direction that she thought would bring her to the opposite side of where the girl was headed. Reaching the wall, she was immediately faced with a dilemma: there was no way to scale it.

  Leaning her back against it, she called upward, yelling to the sky, “Girl, are you there? I’m the one holding them off. Can you hear me?”

  “I can’t climb. I’m tied up. Please help me.” The girl’s voice was high, filled with fear, and so childlike that it tore at Emma’s heart. She mentally readjusted her estimate of the girl’s age down to twelve, perhaps eleven.

  “Keep going to the back wall. I’m going to run parallel to you on this side—”

  Emma’s instructions were interrupted by another two sharp reports from Leon.

  She ran down the wall, keeping her hand on it, searching for a hole or divot, anything she could use to gain a foothold and climb. She found it twenty feet later. A large crater dented the wall, beginning about a yard up from the ground.

  “Stop! I’m coming over. Stay there,” Emma called over the wall.

  “Okay, but hurry!” the girl said. “There are more.”

  Emma rammed the gun back in the holster, placed her foot into the crater, pushed the tips of her fingers into the grout line between the stones and uncoiled her legs. After years of ultra running, her legs were the strongest part of her body. She slid straight up, keeping close to the wall, and managed to grab at the slender pole attached to the base of a camera mount bolted into the wall.

  Leon fired three more rounds, and this time the men in the yard fired back, almost in unison. Emma winced at the noise and smelled the scent of gunpowder. She hear
d the girl on the other side sobbing. Skittering her foot along the wall, she looked for another place to gain some purchase so she could rise over the top. She jammed the rubber edge of the running shoe into another grout line and this time relied on her arms to haul herself higher. When her head came even with the wall’s edge, she switched hands, using her left to grab at the camera’s slender pole and removing the pistol with her right.

  Now comes the hard part, she thought. Once she cleared the wall she’d be a target. The last thing she needed was to act like a jack-in-the-box and get her head blown off in the process, but she could imagine no other way around it. She needed to get over the wall if she was going to help the girl.

  “Go,” she said out loud, pushed with her legs, rose to the top of the wall and flopped onto her stomach on its flat surface. She found herself parallel to the front edge of the garage and breathed a sigh of relief. The stables cut into her sight line to the men in the yard, and the garage kept her from the two who hid on the other side. The girl pressed against the wall below her. Emma swung a leg over, then another, and leaped down onto the grass.

  “Give me your hands and I’ll untie you,” Emma said. The girl turned her back, and she worked at the heavy rope, undoing the knots. Leon released a volley of shots and the response was closer this time.

  “They’re at the stables,” the girl said.

  Emma finished untying her. “Get that robe off and let’s move,” she said.

  The girl ripped the robe over her head. Underneath it she wore a sheer white cotton nightgown that ended above her knees. She had the thin, knobby-kneed legs of a little girl.

  “There’s a big crack in the wall at the back of the garage,” the girl said. “It’s too small to squeeze through but we can climb over.”

  Emma waved her gun in that direction. “I’ll follow,” she said. “But stop at the corner of the garage and let me go ahead to clear the way.”

  The girl ran toward the wall while Emma jogged backwards, keeping her gun up. Leon hadn’t shot in a while, and she was concerned that he’d run out of bullets. She had twelve more in her pistol. She’d conserve them if she could.

  At the corner of the garage Emma moved ahead of the girl, but saw nothing that would indicate that the two on the opposite side of the structure were doubling back around. She shoved the gun back in the holster and made a cradle with her palms, lacing her fingers together.

  “Step in. When you get over, run to the trail that goes through the Needle Tunnel.”

  The girl put her bare foot in Emma’s hands and Emma catapulted her upward. The girl grabbed at the edge of the wall and scrambled over with the agility of someone who’d done it before. Emma heard a noise to her right and saw the tip of a gun as one of the original two men inched his way out. She yanked her own weapon out of the holster and fired. The gun tip disappeared from sight. It was past time to run away.

  Emma shoved her toe into the wall, grabbed at the grout, and pushed upward. This attempt wasn’t as smooth as the last. Her weight shifted and she began to tip backwards. She hopped onto the grass and tried again, slid upward and heard her gun scrape against the cold stone. Putting her hands on the top of the wall, then her forearms, then her chest, she finally swung a leg over. She lay flat for a second before rolling off on the other side.

  She was free.

  The ground began a soft incline and she ran at an angle upward. The rocky, hard terrain lacked trees, or perhaps Shaw removed any that would have blocked his view of anyone approaching the compound, but either way Emma felt exposed and vulnerable. The nearest coverage was a tower of rocks hundreds of yards away. She ran toward it, the gun in her hand, swerving often to keep from being an easy, static target. Her heart began its usual fast beat rhythm common to the start of a run, but she knew it would smooth out quickly. It was as if her heart reacted in a flurry of excitement and then figured out that nothing new was happening and so settled down to work. She kept moving, the only sounds her breathing and the crunch of stones. This time, though, she was happy to hear nothing else.

  She made the rock tower, dodged behind it and kept moving upward. The path where she’d left Leon was far to her left, and she adjusted to make a slow bend in that direction. The continued lack of sound behind her gave her hope that she would have some time to regroup before Shaw’s men started hunting her. She stepped onto the path over a hundred yards higher than she’d left it and saw Leon sitting on a buckskin Quarter Horse. He held Lily’s reins in his left hand and the girl rode behind him with her arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

  “Get on and let’s get out of here,” Leon said. “Thanks for bringing Lily here,” Emma said.

  Leon grunted. Emma swung into the saddle and turned Lily’s head higher up the hill.

  “Where you going?” Leon said. “It’s the wrong direction. My place is downhill.”

  Emma shook her head. “I’m not looking to implicate you in my search,” she said. “Once I find Ryan, I’m gone. You have to live here.”

  Leon jerked a thumb toward the girl on his horse.

  “This is Carrie. She’s Brink’s sister. He doesn’t know that she was taken.”

  Ann’s note, Emma thought.

  “He may have been tipped off this morning,” she said, and told Leon about the note. “So all the more reason not to head that way. First place they’ll check. My cabin is about two miles up, and if they take a car they’ll have to off-road it to reach it. That’s assuming they even know it exists. I doubt they’ve heard about it at all. It’s owned by a friend of mine who does extreme skiing.”

  Without waiting for a response, Emma turned Lily uphill and kicked her into a fast trot. The path wound up, and she kept the horse moving ahead. The moon that was anathema to her earlier was now her friend, because it illuminated the trail enough to allow Lily to spot the biggest of the rocks strewn around. Still, the horse tripped and stumbled. Emma kept pressing her faster despite the risks, only slowing when she entered the narrow stone tunnel. She wound the rest of the way upward, and an hour later emerged through the arch to finally get a view of the cabin and hauled on Lily’s reins.

  The front door hung open. Leon came up even with her, and she motioned for him to remain quiet.

  “You see that?” she said.

  Leon nodded and removed his shotgun from the scabbard.

  “You should know I’m out of ammo. My spares are back at my campsite.” Leon whispered this depressing news to Emma.

  “How far?” she said.

  “Five miles wrong direction.”

  The cabin interior remained dark, but Emma had the impression of a hint of movement. Someone was in there. Either she had surprised him as he was leaving the cabin or he’d just stepped inside when she appeared.

  “Someone’s in there, can you see the movement?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t see anything,” Leon said.

  “I did,” the girl said. “They’re inside to the right.” It was the first time Carrie had spoken during the entire ride.

  “Helps to have young eyes,” Leon said.

  “Carrie, how many did you see?” Emma asked.

  “One.”

  “Me too. I hope we’re right.”

  “It’s the mountain man,” Carrie said. Her voice held a mixture of fear and excitement.

  “Leon, you know who that might be?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “You think it’s a Shaw follower? I don’t care to meet crazy so soon after leaving it,” Emma said.

  “Not likely. Tarnell’s been trying to catch him for weeks. If it was an acolyte, I expect they’d leave him alone.”

  “Well, it’s doing us no good sitting here and speculating. I’m hungry, tired, and I need to plan. I’m going to flush him out.” Emma dismounted and handed Leon her reins.

  “Don’t startle him too much. You’ll get yourself shot.”

  “From what Brink told me,” she said, “he’s not been violent.” She checked her gun.
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  “First time for everything,” Leon said.

  “And on that encouraging note, I’m off,” Emma said. Leon’s soft exhalation might have been a laugh, and Emma herself smiled despite the seriousness of the situation.

  She inched toward the far side of the cabin, doing her best to avoid making noise. While the porch ran the length of the front, a railing restricted access to it, with the exception of a wide area before the gaping door. Emma stepped up to the deck and scissored one and then the other leg over it.

  She’d deliberately approached the side with the hanging door so she could use it as cover. A few more steps got her to the door panel, and she peered around it to stare into the living room. It was empty. She inched her way around the door, lowered herself and scuttled to the other side. She could see nothing moving from that angle either. Taking a deep breath and staying hunched over, she quickly moved to the back of the couch and lowered into a crouch.

  A sound of a scratch, barely noticeable and then gone, told Emma that the intruder was against the breakfast counter. She carefully moved to the end table at the side of the couch and reached up to flick the switch on the lamp.

  Peeking over the back of the couch, she saw the intruder facing her. It was a young woman, with intense, serious eyes and long dark brown hair. She wore green cargo pants, a safari-colored fishing vest with several pockets, and stood in a shooter’s stance, gripping a sleek new rifle that was aimed at her.

  “You don’t shoot and I won’t either,” Emma said as she rose with her own gun trained on the young woman. They both stood there for a moment, the only sound in the room that of harsh breathing. Emma was pretty sure that she was the one who sounded frightened, but could only hope that she had scared the woman as well.

  “Who are you?” the woman said.

  “Emma Caldridge. I’m not from around here. I just rented the cabin from my friend. Who are you?”

  “Samantha Yoder. I didn’t mean any harm. I’m just hungry.”

  “Prove it,” Emma said. “Lower the weapon.”