by Linda Gerber
“You sleep. I’ll take this watch.”
“Hon, there’s something I learned very early in this game. Sleep whenever you can because you never know when you’ll have the chance again. You should get some rest. I’ll keep an eye out. I got some sleep earlier.”
“You passed out.”
“I was resting, nonetheless.”
I lay still for a moment, staring into the darkness. “What are we going to do about Ryan?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer at first and I thought she had fallen asleep. “What do you mean?”
“When we go. We can’t leave him here alone. He could die.”
“Well, we can’t carry him down the mountain. That would be impossible.”
“But he’s seriously injured.”
“All the more reason not to move him.”
“There could be wild animals.”
“His people will come for him.”
“And if they don’t?”
I could feel her stiffen beside me. “Aphra, you have to learn to set priorities and stick with them, no matter the distraction. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions.”
My throat felt hot and tight. I swallowed hard. I knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of those tough decisions. Her priority for the past four years had been to search for the Mole’s minion. She had given up her family to do so. What did that make me? A distraction?
“Our priority is getting off this mountain,” she said firmly. “We can’t take him with us.”
“I know.” I lay silent, snuggling close to her. Beneath the mask of ceramic dust and sweat, she smelled just as I remembered, like white flowers in a meadow. Not exotic island flowers, but sturdy, reliable, mainland flowers. I closed my eyes, trying to store the moment for future memory. Once this was all over, who knew if I would ever see my mom again?
CHAPTER 8
I didn’t think it was possible to sleep, but when I opened my eyes, the blackness had turned to gray. I sat up, stiff and cold. My body ached in places I didn’t even know were possible. Mom was already awake, as was Stuart. They stood together by the plane’s open door.
“It’s time,” she said. “We should get moving.”
Seth had been sleeping beside me—a fact I wished I had realized earlier so that I could have enjoyed it. I nudged him. “Seth—”
He bolted upright, fists tight at his sides. His eyes were wild as he tried to focus on me, and for a moment I thought he really might take a swing at me. “What? What?”
I rubbed his arm—warily, keeping an eye on those fists. “It’s morning. We can go now.”
Panic crossed his face. I understood without having to ask; the clock was ticking. “What time is it?”
“About four,” Mom said. “The sun won’t be up for about an hour, but it’s light enough to see.”
He scrambled to his feet and reached back to help me up. I stood. Sort of. It was too tight in the plane to stand up all the way, so I sort of crouched and followed Seth to the open door.
I looked back one last time before jumping out. In the shadows, I couldn’t be sure, but I swear Ryan was watching us leave.
Back home on the island, a rain-forest jungle hugs the back side of the resort. For years, I’d found solitude and solace hiking through the trees. Even so, the forest on the mountain that morning was anything but comforting. It was completely alien to me. Instead of the familiar palm trees and bamboo, I found myself surrounded by thick cedars and tall pines. The understory was so thick that we literally had to fight to get through it.
All around us, shrubs and pines grew so dense that I could barely see ten feet in any direction. Above, the tree cover filtered out the rising sun, and cast everything in shadow. Silence weighted the air. With the ghostly mist swirling around us, it was all too easy to imagine that we had fallen into a haunted wood from which we might never escape.
But we had to. Escape, that is. Seth was running out of time to at least let his dad’s captors know he had the ring. We had to get down the mountain. Only the mountain wasn’t going to make it easy. Beneath our feet, the ground bunched and fell away, both without warning. The brush looked like it was all about the same height, but beneath it, the ground could have a three-foot drop-off that we might not see until we had fallen and twisted an ankle or worse. And the entire time we hiked, I don’t think we came upon a flat surface once. The ground sloped relentlessly downward. I could already feel my toes and heels begin to blister.
Stuart was a mess. He could barely see where he was going without his glasses, for one thing, and with all the blood he’d lost, he wore out easily. Seth practically had to carry him several times just so we could keep moving. So even though I wasn’t feeling too great, I wasn’t about to complain about blisters and sore feet. They were nothing compared to what Stuart had been through.
Mom and I led the way, clearing the path, each of us whacking back branches with lengths of metal we had pulled from the wreckage. It was hard work and the progress was slow. And it gave me blisters on my hands, to add to a growing list of discomforts I wouldn’t complain about.
“We need to find a trail,” Mom told me. “Even a deer trail would do. Someplace where the vegetation is worn down. We’ll never make it out of here like this.”
I agreed, but what could we do until we found such a trail? We kept whacking.
Finally, I had to ask. “How long will it take them?”
“Take who?”
“You said Ryan’s people would come to find the wreck.”
She hacked at a vine with her makeshift machete. “I don’t know.” The strain in her voice worried me. “I would assume they were tracking the flight from the moment we left the dock. They may well have been following us.”
That left me with a new stab of panic. “So they’d know exactly where we went down. They could be here really soon.”
“Yes.”
“We have to move faster.”
“Yes.”
I attacked the brush with a vengeance.
“Nat,” Stuart called weakly. “Could we rest for a moment, please?”
I glanced nervously over my shoulder. I wasn’t at all sure we should stop. Not yet. We had been fighting our way through the brush for what seemed like hours, but had we covered enough ground to be safe?
But Mom agreed with Stuart. “Yes. Of course. Let’s find a spot where we can sit.”
We hiked a little farther before Seth spotted a fat log curving up from the mist. Stuart sank onto it with a sigh and leaned back against a tree. He closed his eyes. It was too shadowy to really get a look at his coloring, but the way he rasped in each breath, he sounded awful. I wasn’t sure how long Stuart would be able to last, wandering around in the forest.
Mom sat next to him. She didn’t say anything, just sat there. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was about his chances for survival.
Seth motioned to me and we walked a short distance away, sitting together on a lichen-splotched boulder. “I can’t carry him very much farther,” he said in a low voice.
“I know. Mom and I can—”
“We should scout ahead and see if we can find a trail or a river or something that will make the hiking easier.”
We walked slowly, counting paces and bending branches so that we could find our way back. It wasn’t as complicated as it sounds, either, since there was really only one logical direction we could go. We followed the sloping ground downward.
After a while I began to notice more light shining through the tree branches. The trees themselves looked smaller, and spaced farther apart. The smells changed, too. Instead of just mold and damp pine, I caught a whiff of something else, fresh and clean, mingled with . . . I wrinkled my nose. Old fish.
“Do you hear it?” Seth said.
I stood still and listened. Sure enough, from somewhere not too far away came the distinct rush of water. A river.
We had to scout three different routes, but finally, we found our way to the riverbank. After th
e eerie darkness of the forest, the river was almost mystical, the way the predawn glow caught the water. It also felt like it was a few degrees cooler by the water.
I shivered.
Seth wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. For the first time since the crash, I felt warm. I rested my head against his chest and let my eyes follow the rush of the river to the valley below. Against a backdrop of jagged, snowcapped peaks, dark, narrow pines rose from the mist, contrasted with splotches of golden yarrow. Under different circumstances, the scenery alone would have taken my breath away. But we weren’t on some sightseeing trip. We were there because someone wanted Seth’s dad’s ring. Wanted it bad enough to kill for it. And, in Ryan’s case, perhaps to die for it.
I drew the ring from my pocket and placed it in Seth’s hand. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
He worked his jaw. “It has to be.”
I tightened my arms around his waist. For the sake of Seth’s dad, I knew we had to find a way to get the ring through to him. But I also knew that as soon as we did, Seth and I would have to say good-bye.
“We should get back,” I whispered, even though part of me wanted to stay there forever.
Stuart didn’t look much better when we returned to where he was resting. His face was pale except for two bright pink spots, high on his cheeks. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. I wasn’t sure how much farther he would be able to go.
“We found a river,” I said. “We can follow it.”
“Near?” Mom asked.
“Not far. How’s Stuart?”
“I’m fine,” Stuart said. As if to prove it, he pushed himself up from the log, although he grunted from the effort. He squinted up at the angle of the sun in the small patches of sky we could see through the trees. “It’s getting late. We should get moving.”
It took twice as long to reach the river with my mom and Stuart as it had when just Seth and I were hiking. By the time we reached the edge of the forest, the sun had swung high in the sky and the last of the mist had burned away.
“We thought maybe we should follow the river,” Seth said. “It will be easier to walk out here. Less undergrowth to crawl over.” Which was true, but it was also rockier. We’d be climbing more than walking and I wasn’t sure how much of that Stuart would be able to take.
Mom had another concern. “We’d also be more visible.”
“If we hear a plane or anything, we can run into the trees,” Seth assured her. It seemed to make the most sense.
The route proved to be easier, but Stuart still tired quickly. Before long, he had to stop and rest again.
I pulled Mom aside. “How much further do you think we have to go? Stuart lost a lot of blood last night. His ribs must be killing him. And I’m afraid his hand is going to get infected.” The gauze that I had wrapped it with was black with dried blood and dirt. We probably should have taken it off altogether, but he was being very protective of his hand. He didn’t want anyone to touch it. Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to look at those fingers again, so I really hadn’t tried to pursue the issue.
“We’ve got to keep his strength up,” Mom said. “Wild huckleberries grow in this area. Thimbleberries, too. Maybe we should take a moment to gather some lunch.”
The berries grew on long, tangled brambles that left our hands scratched and raw from picking them. Stuart was too weak to be of much help, so Mom and Seth and I gathered what we could and then sat on the rocks with him to eat them.
When we were done—which didn’t take long—Seth picked up a small stone and threw it toward the river. “Do you suppose they found him yet?”
“Ryan?” Stuart daintily dabbed the corner of his lips with a grubby finger. “I don’t know. I’d think we would have heard the helicopter.”
I looked up. “How do you know they’d bring a helicopter?”
“Think about it. They’re not going to land a plane up here. We don’t know where the nearest roads may be. A helicopter would be the quickest way to the accident site.”
“Then why wouldn’t they have come last night? If they didn’t have to hike in, why would they wait?”
He shrugged. “Maybe that tracking device wasn’t working,” he said blandly. “They may not have been able to see the wreckage until it was light.”
“Who do you think he works for?” Seth asked. “The CIA?”
I glanced at Mom. If Ryan was CIA, wouldn’t she know it? Besides, Watts was CIA and Ryan had helped us get away from him. But Mom didn’t let on that she knew anything.
“He’s one of them,” Stuart said bitterly, and I could only assume he was talking about the Mole and his minions. I know it wasn’t really a big reveal—it was the only other alternative—but seeing the look of panic that crossed Seth’s face, I wished that Stuart had learned, like my mom, to keep his thoughts to himself.
CHAPTER 9
We heard the helicopter for the first time when the sun hung directly overhead. I almost didn’t hear the thwap-thwap-thwap of the rotors at all because it was lost in the noise of my mom and me chopping through the brush. Plus the sound was so familiar—I’d heard it almost daily on the island—that it almost didn’t register until it was too late.
It was Seth who picked it up first. He froze in his tracks and grabbed my arm. “Wait. What was that?”
“What?”
“That sound?”
I heard it then. “Mom. Listen!”
She stopped her blade midswing and gave me a quizzical look. But then she heard it; I could see the understanding dawn on her face. “Helicopter,” she said. “Get down!”
We crouched in the brush and waited for the sound to go away.
We continued our hike in a state of heightened alert. Every noise, every shadow, sent us scurrying back into the tangled underbrush and the trees. But as the afternoon wore on, we began to be less vigilant. Plus, by then we were exhausted. The route we were trying to follow was very nearly impassable. With the exception of the short, fitful rest in the plane, we hadn’t slept. And berries can provide only so much energy.
I was becoming clumsy in my fatigue, tripping over my own feet, not to mention the vegetation. My mind was a jumble; I didn’t seem to be able to clear my head, but I couldn’t quite pin down one thought and stick with it, either.
I was aware enough to be worried about Stuart, though. If I was a mess, Stuart—with his blood loss and bruised ribs—was even worse. He kept muttering things that didn’t make sense—although I admit I was beyond trying to figure him out—and was starting to become irritable with Seth when all Seth was doing was trying to help him keep up.
We had all become draggy and unaware when the sound returned.
We’d come to the edge of a steep drop when we heard it, distant at first, but definitely drawing closer. In a cluster, we stumbled into the woods, tripping over vines, getting snagged on the brambles, fighting in vain to make our tired bodies move faster. Once again, we hid in the brush at the base of a huge tree, but this time, we saw the beast.
It was like a scene from an action movie. We huddled in the bushes, barely daring to breathe, when suddenly a black helicopter rose from beyond the hill, the wash of its rotors reaching all the way back to where we crouched, stirring the foliage around us.
The tinted cockpit glass seemed to stare at us like huge, rounded bug’s eyes. I’m not sure how long it hovered there—it felt like a long time, but was probably only seconds—before it banked sharply and flew away.
Believe me, that eerie encounter was enough to wake us up. My own awareness returned with a vengeance until I thought I would jump out of my skin at every sound.
“They saw us,” Seth said. “We have to get out of here.”
“We have no way of knowing what they saw,” Mom countered, but I could tell by the way she tensed up that she knew he was right.
“They’ll be expecting us to follow the river,” Stuart put in. “We need to move deeper into the forest.”
“But we
can’t move in the forest,” Seth said. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
I left them to argue and hurried back over to the top of the hill. I thought I had seen something and I wanted to be sure.
Mom followed me. “What is it?”
“Down there,” I said, pointing. I wasn’t sure she saw it at first, but then her eyebrows rose. From a clearing at the bottom of the hill, a couple of thin plumes of smoke rose, curling in the air.
“Campers,” she said.
“Campers,” I agreed. “They could be our ticket out of here.”
To ease Stuart’s mind, we took the hard way down, through the woods. I tried to help him as much as possible so Seth wouldn’t end up having to carry him again. Still, Seth did most of the heavy lifting, and by the time we reached the bottom of the hill, he was shaking with fatigue.
“You should rest,” Mom told him. “You, too, Stuart. Aphra and I will scout ahead.”
Seth didn’t even argue, and that worried me.
“We’ll be right back,” I assured him.
We hiked back toward the river.
“You have a plan, I take it?” Mom asked.
“A plan?”
“Right. Talk me through your thought process.”
I blinked at her. Since when did she want to hear what I thought? “Okay . . . the way I figure it is that these campers had to get in somehow. They either hiked, drove, or rafted. I don’t think they would have hiked, so that leaves driving or rafting, so—”
“Why don’t you think they hiked?”
I stopped and looked at her. Was she serious? “Well, because we have been hiking all day, without schlepping along camping equipment, and it has not been enjoyable. I can’t imagine anyone choosing to put themselves through that.”
“Maybe they know the trails.”
“All right. Fine. Let’s say hiking is a possibility, too. Still, there could be a truck . . .”
“And if there is? What would we do, ask for the keys?”