“He’s got to be right here, under our noses,” Kaitlyn said. “Like up in the rooms. I’ll bet he came right in and hid close by.”
Eric drew in his breath. She was right. That was dumb. He should have kept going. But he was tired and needed to rest. And he made noise when he moved. What choice did he have?
“Look what I found in the aide’s pocket,” she said.
“A phone?”
“And look what I found in the address book.”
“Pilson?” Benjamin asked.
“That’s Eric’s last name. And look at this.”
Eric’s heart pounded. He wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but if they’d found his phone that was bad.
“Think he made a call?” Benjamin asked.
“There’s no coverage up here. So no, we dodged a bullet. But now we know, don’t we. They’re working together. Come on.”
At last, they moved along, retreating, he thought, toward the main buildings.
“They must be very angry,” Eric told Meggie when he was sure they were safe, at least for the moment. “Furious. We can’t let them catch us. But what should I do? I wish you could tell me. Or my brother was here. He’s so smart, he’d come up with an idea. And Becca, too. She’d stop Kaitlyn and Benjamin, just you see. Becca has a baby growing in her belly.”
Wes and Becca were somewhere close, weren’t they? That’s right, they told him that when he saw them at Devil’s Cauldron. If only he could remember. He tugged at the roots of his hair in frustration.
“There’s another trail,” he said with a burst of excitement. “It goes past the hot springs down to the lake. That’s how they got up. That’s where we’ll go.”
It took a lot of effort to lift her again. His ankle still hurt, and he’d twisted a muscle in his back when he fell down the grassy slope. But he had to get moving. He was sure that if he kept going around the buildings, staying in the trees and fighting through the underbrush, he would come across the trail up to the hot springs.
“I won’t let you down,” he told her. “You’ll see. I can do it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Meggie’s emotions were as volatile as the water boiling up from the dormant volcano beneath their feet. First terror, then hope, followed by a fresh wave of fear. Diego’s murder. Benjamin starting to suffocate her two different times. The first time Diego had interrupted them, and the second time Benjamin couldn’t go through with it. Once Kaitlyn rushed off to deal with the body, his spine had dissolved like a hunk of ice tossed into the hot springs.
Then Eric came. She’d have rather had his brother and his wife. The woman may have been pregnant, but she’d carried a determined glint in her eyes when she came search for Meggie among the hummingbird feeders. Those two would be a match for Benjamin and Kaitlyn.
But Eric was brave and determined, she had to give him that. He knocked Benjamin to the ground, then carried her off. He could have left her in the hammock and run for his life, but he didn’t. And when he hauled her into the woods, he’d even taken the time to clean her off and check her tenderly for injuries. Benjamin had dismissed him as “some retarded guy.”
You callous, spineless asshole. He’s worth a hundred of you.
If only she could give Eric instructions. Instead of stumbling through the forest, fighting their way through vines and brush and over moss-covered tree trunks rotting on the forest floor, he should have hidden her somewhere and gone for help. Even fled by himself to the cauldrons to look for Wes and Becca.
Carrying her was a huge mistake. It slowed them down. By the time he finally staggered onto the trail with a shout (please stop talking and crying out, she begged him), it had been at least twenty minutes since Kaitlyn and Benjamin came down from the habitat to search for them. Those two would have been busy. Doing what?
They’d rouse Jerry Usher. Kaitlyn was manipulating the facility administrator, and in the current circumstances, she’d apply all manner of pressure to gain his help. Maybe Usher would contact local police, warning them that one of the residents had kidnapped her. When the police, not speaking English, caught them, they’d ignore Eric’s frightened babbles, and turn them back over to Colina Nublosa.
Even more alarming was that bit she’d overheard about Kaitlyn discovering Diego’s cell phone had Eric’s contact information in it. Kaitlyn knew about Eric’s brother and his wife looking for Meggie. And what about the part where Kaitlyn spotted Diego talking to someone at Devil’s Cauldron? It wasn’t a stretch to expect Eric to run back to the hot springs.
And here they were, trudging up the hill, Eric like a pack animal, hauling her along. The rain had stopped, but the trail remained a mess of mud and puddles and exposed roots. He slipped and stumbled, almost dropping her several times. The barest moonlight illuminated the trail and it was a trick to keep moving in the right direction. He never complained.
After a few minutes he shifted her from his arms to drape her over his shoulder like she was a child. Her head bounced up and down and she could see back down the trail. Water dripped from her hair and she blinked to clear her eyes.
They came around a bend and the woods momentarily cleared on the steep hillside to show a dark expanse below and behind them, all the way down to the clearing of Colina Nublosa. Lamps dotted the property, casting it in a soft, diffused light, fuzzy through the humid air. They’d made it farther than Meggie had thought possible. Surely Eric would run out of steam long before he reached the top. But no, here they were, almost up and over the shoulder of the mountain. A hint of sulfur lingered over the smell of wet forest. They must be close. They were going to make it.
And then she spotted a blue light sweeping back and forth below them, somewhere between their position and the care center. A second light flicked on, this one brighter, with a stronger beam. It turned off again and the people coming up after them continued by the small penlight. It too blinked out a moment later, obscured behind trees.
Eric! They’re coming.
But he continued to move doggedly up the hill, never stopping to look behind. He hummed a song, which came out in scattered bits between his grunts of exertion. It was the theme song from an old sitcom.
Turn around. Please.
He shifted her again and her right arm, which had been dangling by her side, now got tossed over his shoulder. Meggie’s hand came to rest on his bare back. He’d never put his shirt on again after wiping her face, but had tucked the wet, muddy thing into the elastic band of his pajama bottoms.
Meggie tapped her finger. Three times, then her arm swung free again. The pursuit drew closer. Any moment their enemies would round one of the bends below them and they’d be caught.
Eric reached the next bend and leaned into it, grunting. Her hand fell across his back again. She tapped and tapped.
“Hey, you can move.” Eric stopped and shifted her around to look her in the eyes. “Are you getting better? Are you getting out of your prison?”
She blinked furiously.
“Oh, that’s impossible. Because the witch hurt you. I remember.”
He stared at her with a look of deep concentration as she tried to blink him a message. It amounted to nothing more than a shout that something was wrong. But he wasn’t getting it. His arms were trembling and he looked like he wanted to put her down.
No, not yet. Look behind you.
“What is it? Do you need something? Are you thirsty? I’m kind of thirsty. Wesley drinks soda, but I don’t like the bubbles.”
Wesley came out sounding like Wussy, but she’d heard him say it before and had eventually parsed it out. Eric’s beloved brother, never far from his mind.
Eric, please. I’m begging you. Look downhill.
Something dawned on his face. His head whipped around and his eyes widened. “Very bad. Very very bad.”
Go. Run.
She was lucky he didn’t understand her. Instead, he resorted to the one tactic that had served him well so far. He found the closest spot to hi
de and took it. In this case, it was a rounded hump of rock off the right shoulder, covered with moss and ferns, and even a small tree trying to grip the rock by burrowing its roots into the fissures. He carried her off the trail and got them mostly around the boulder moments before Benjamin and Kaitlyn came up behind them. Meggie slumped with her back against the rock and her head drooping to one side, and she could see the trail clearly as her two enemies rounded the bend.
Kaitlyn and Benjamin were moving silently, mostly in the dark, with the single penlight pointing down at the ground. They were trying to catch Eric unawares. If he hadn’t been in the switchbacks, but in the flatter, thicker forest, he might not have spotted them. As it was, they’d only just gotten off the trail in time.
“I’ve lost the prints,” Benjamin whispered. He held the penlight.
Kaitlyn put a finger to her mouth and pointed to the ground. Benjamin nodded.
With all the rain and mud, it must have been simple to follow their trail most of the way. And the fresh prints, not yet washed away by the rain, could only be Eric’s. And deep too, no doubt, given that he was carrying a heavy burden. But out of sheer luck, Eric and Meggie had been passing over a stretch of bare stone, washed free of dirt and worn by hikers over the years.
Kaitlyn held the larger flashlight, presently turned off, in one hand. The other drew something black from a jacket pocket. It glinted when Benjamin’s penlight passed over it.
A gun.
Meggie tried to turn her eyes to see Eric’s face, but he remained out of sight. He stayed frozen. She silently begged him to stay that way. If he moved at all, he might catch their attention. As it was, if Benjamin turned his light a few inches, it would expose them and show that they were not lumpy protrusions of the boulder.
After several tense moments, Kaitlyn and Benjamin continued up the trail.
“They’re ahead of us,” Eric said a moment later. “We can’t keep going. And then they’ll get to the hot springs and see we’re not there. What will they do then?”
They’d come back searching again. With no muddy prints to follow, it would surely occur to Kaitlyn that Eric had taken Meggie off the trail. They’d backtrack to this point. And find them.
Eric took her hand and turned her so the moonlight was on their faces. He looked into her eyes. “What do I do? You’re smart, you can think of something.”
Meggie didn’t want to start blinking. That would only confuse him as he tried to decipher her signals.
He looked so earnest, staring into her eyes. Vulnerable, yet determined. She wished she could move and speak, if only this once, so she could put her hand on his cheek and thank him. Even if Kaitlyn caught them, this moment of kindness, this helping hand freely offered, meant so much. Seven years since someone cared. Seven long years of crushing loneliness.
Thank you, Eric. Thank you for trying.
“I’m sorry, Meggie. I did my best. I tried to be like the knight in Wesley’s story and carry you out of the witch’s dungeon.” He shook his head. “Everything falls out of my head. It won’t stick there. And now I can’t think. Please don’t be angry.”
He gave her such an anguished look that her heart broke for him. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Don’t cry, pretty lady. I’m sorry.”
She tapped her finger on his palm. It was the only way she could touch him and let him know it was all right.
He looked down and something flickered in his eyes. “When Uncle Davis’s computer broke,” he said, “Wes and Becca had him blink his answers. He can only blink one eye. You have two. Could you send me a message if I ask you a question?”
Yes! Give me instructions.
He stared at her, confused, then brightened again. “Wait. I remember how they did it. Blink your eyes once for yes and twice for no.”
She blinked once.
“Yes, like that. Yes! You understand.” He was so excited that he looked like he was going to kiss her. He stopped just in time and pulled back with a horrified expression.
When he got over that, he scrunched his face in another look of intense concentration. “Do I go to the hot springs or should I go back to Foggy Hill? And should I take you with me or try to find help?”
She stared back in frustration. Begging him to try harder. Her finger tapped frantically.
“Yes or no?”
She blinked twice. No.
“No? Which one? Oh! One question at a time. Should I go to the hot springs?”
She hesitated, weighing her decision. She should send him back to the care center. Then, hopefully Eric would ask if he should take her or leave her, and she could tell him to go on without her, to run down and get help. They’d never make it together. And yes, there were risks that way, but better than stumbling into Kaitlyn with her gun and her little minion.
A shot split the air from the trail ahead. A woman screamed. Kaitlyn? Had Benjamin finally snapped? Good Lord, what was going on up there?
Eric whipped his head toward the gunshot, alarm spreading on his face. “What was that? A gun? What should I do? Should I go up there?”
It was a hunch. Meggie blinked once. Yes. Go.
But Eric wasn’t looking at her. His head cocked and the alarm turned to horror. Meggie heard it then, a woman’s cry. And a man’s angry shouts.
Eric sprang to his feet. “It’s Becca! And Wesley!”
Another gunshot.
Eric sprinted off and left Meggie with her back propped against the rock. Watching him disappear around the corner as he ran toward the hot springs.
He’d forgotten all about her, bless him. In his alarm at the gunshot and the shouted voices and realizing that somehow Kaitlyn must have come across his brother and his sister-in-law, every other thought seemed to have vanished from his mind except to help them.
Meggie was glad. She was terrified to be left behind in the dark, waiting for someone or something to find her, and knowing that no matter what happened she couldn’t defend herself. But more than that, she was afraid for Eric. She needed them not to kill him like they had killed Diego. If her enemies came back for her, to torture her one last time before they snuffed her out forever, knowing that they had murdered her protector would be more than she could bear.
Her eyes followed up the trail in the direction he had disappeared and she cast all her hopes, all her strength in his direction.
Be safe, my knight.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Wes and Becca had been waiting for almost an hour. The rain had stopped briefly, but now picked up again. The canopy channeled away some of the water, but then it would collect on a broad leaf far overhead, suddenly giving way in a cascade that dumped on someone’s head. Becca huddled within her poncho, and Wes tried to do the same with his garbage sack, but it was a poor substitute for the real thing.
Where the devil was Diego Palomar? He hadn’t equivocated in his email; he’d been insistent he’d film Meggie after dinner, then hike up here and leave the phone. Something must have happened. Had he spotted Kaitlyn lurking on the grounds and called it off?
Just when Wes was ready to declare it a bust, Becca grabbed his arm and squeezed. A light blinked across the clearing from the trail that led over the hill to Colina Nublosa. It had a bluish tint, and was small, like a penlight, rather than a full-size flashlight.
No wonder it took Diego so long, if that’s all he had to find his way up. It did little to cut the sheets of rain pouring over the open hillside around the hot pots and basins. The light blinked off, then came on again closer.
Wes started to rise, but something made him stop. It might have been nothing more than paranoia, or the long wait in the cold rain, with the smell of sulfur swirling around them. What was therapeutic in the daylight seemed sinister in the dark, like the vapors of hell.
He took hold of Becca’s arm. “Wait. Make sure it’s him.”
The light bobbed along the hillside in their direction. When it drew closer, Wes froze. Two figures, not one. Diego and Eric? Or Kait
lyn and Benjamin Potterman? Voices spoke, and his fears were realized.
“Damn it,” a woman said. “Where the hell is he?”
“He must have gone back for help.”
“Carried her all the way down the hill? I don’t think so. And we would have seen prints. Not to mention he’d have passed us on his way down.” She sounded disgusted. “God, I swear sometimes you should be committed yourself.”
“Stop riding me.”
Becca squeezed Wes’s hand, so tightly the nails dug into his palm. This was them. Kaitlyn and Benjamin. Had to be. So what did that mean? They were chasing Diego, who had hiked up here carrying Meggie? What would possess him to do that?
Kaitlyn came behind the cauldron, her silhouette erect against the sky. Her companion followed, braced against the rain. She ran the blue penlight along the trees. Wes wore a black garbage sack and kept his legs tucked under his body. Becca was behind him in an olive-green poncho. The light passed right over their position.
There were only two people. The man sounded weak, cowardly. The hard, ruthless edge in the woman’s voice gave Wes pause, but he still wanted to spring to his feet and confront them. He was sure Becca would feel the same way. But they were in a foreign country, Becca was pregnant, and what if things turned physical? Even assuming Wes managed to overpower Kaitlyn, they still had no proof.
“Then where are they?” Benjamin asked. He turned on a more powerful light, but he swept it down the hillside instead of searching the woods. The pair were only about ten feet away now. “Did they go down toward the lake? They’d be trapped against the shoreline.”
“That’s a long way down. He’s tired—he has to be exhausted—there’s no way he’d make it to the lake.”
“He’s not so good at planning ahead. Maybe he tried. He might be stuck on the trail. Could be fifty feet from here, for all we know.”
“That’s better—now you’re thinking.” Kaitlyn was quiet for a moment. “Maybe he did that exact thing. Probably we lost his prints and he came right past here. But he might have jumped off the trail behind us and hid. If he did that, he might return home. And then we’re in trouble. We’ll have to deal with Usher, we’ll have even more of a mess to clean up. We’ve got to turn around just in case. If that doesn’t work, we’ll search toward the lake.”
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