by Angela Foxxe
“That’s the Senora I love,” Ty said. “I was starting to think that you were letting this nonsense get you down.”
“I was, but being out here and with you, I feel like I can do something to change all that. If I can find out what they’re hiding, maybe I can blow it all open.”
“Heads are going to roll,” he offered, a little too giddy at the thought of taking down crooked FBI Agents.
“They are, but the truth is more important than whatever they’re hiding. It’s all connected; the trafficking ring in Glen Rose, the kidnapping of the WereDragon changelings. All of it.”
“And what about this case?”
“I don’t think it’s connected. There seems to be a surge in young housewives going missing in the more affluent areas. But I don’t think it’s human trafficking. I think men like Matt Baker are paying to make their wives disappear, and Jessica escaping blew the lid off that.”
“Are you sure they’re not connected, though?”
“Why?”
“They sure did yank you off this case pretty quickly. How often do agents get sent on vacation before the case is solved? You hadn’t even presented Mrs. Baker with a lineup. That seems like odd timing for a vacation, doesn’t it?”
“Agent Patterson said I’d done all that needed done and there is a natural lull in cases while evidence is gathered. It’s not that strange to have the junior agents run through the grunt work.”
“When coupled with everything else, I think it’s suspicious. And why would Agent Patterson have you question a victim if she was going to take you off the case and send you on vacation? Why not have someone else do it?”
“Agent Patterson wasn’t in the office when Jessica was found. A local officer found her on the side of the road, and when he recognized her, he brought her straight to us. I was in the office, and since I’m the agent that interviews victims, I went in and interviewed her.”
“Is that not how it’s normally done?”
“No. A victim like Jessica would be taken to the hospital, and we would meet her there. I don’t know why the cop who picked her up brought her to us instead except that her case got a lot more press than the others.”
“Why?”
“She was well-liked in the community, and when things weren’t happening, one of her neighbors did a newscast on her case. We were trying to keep it hush-hush since Jessica’s case wasn’t an isolated event, and we were trying to get to the bottom of it before the press got ahold of it. Too bad one of her neighbors happened to be an investigative reporter.”
“That’s bad luck,” Ty said. “Or good luck, depending on how you look at it.”
“Bad for Matt Baker, but I guess it was good for Jessica. She’s the only one that got away.”
“Were you on the case before it hit the news?”
“No. I wasn’t on the case at all. She just happened to show up when I was the only female agent to speak with her. After what she went through, there was no way we were going to get a good sketch out of her with just the sketch artist and another male agent in there. I was in the right place at the right time.”
“Or the wrong place,” Ty said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something about this entire thing seems so off to me. It’s worth looking into. Maybe Jessica will have some answers when we find her.”
“You’re so confident,” she said, looking up at the trail beside the waterfall and stopping. “Wow. That’s a steep trail.”
“It is. I’m going to have you go up first. That way, if you fall, you fall into me.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Senora said wryly.
“Safety first,” he said.
“Fine. But I hope we’re able to see what you think we’ll see from up here. We need to find her trail soon. The longer she’s out here, the more likely we won’t find her alive.”
“Be patient. Tracking is a skill that takes some work. I have to rule out the area I showed you so we don’t waste time looking for her when she’s somewhere else. I have my suspicions about where she went, but I can’t be sure.”
“And how is this going to help?”
“People leave signs behind them when they travel through the forest where there are no human trails. If she’s using a deer trail, which I think she is, she’ll disturb trees and bushes along the trail that a deer or another animal wouldn’t. I’ll be able to scan the trails for signs of recent human activity and then go from there.”
“Alright,” she said, going in front of him and starting up the trail. “I hope you’re right.”
“Me too,” Ty said. “Because the only other option is trying to run a search and rescue grid pattern with just the two of us, and it would take days to find her that way.”
“What are we going to do if we don’t find her by nightfall?”
“If we can’t find her by nightfall, then I’ll have no choice but to search for her on four feet. It will be faster that way, but much too risky during the day. But we run the risk of her seeing us coming and hiding. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about that, but Jessica seems to be a little more resourceful than your average trophy wife.”
“I think you’re right,” Senora said, still scanning the areas around them as she made her way up the path slowly. “I hope that Jessica’s tenacity doesn’t end up making it impossible for us to find her. I’d hate to lose her because she played hide-and-seek better than we do.”
“Me too,” Ty said, right behind her on the steep trail. “Me too.”
CHAPTER NINE
One foot in front of the other. Jessica kept moving despite her exhaustion. She’d been walking since the sun rose early that morning, and with each step, she was more certain that she was lost. But it didn’t matter. If she didn’t even know where she was, that meant that Matt wouldn’t find her either. All she had to do was stay out of sight until she could find a town or the highway, and then she would get to a phone and call Agent Edwards from the FBI.
She put her hands in the pockets on her sweatpants, pulling out the last two granola bars that she’d swiped from the basket in the room where she’d waited for Matt. If only she’d known then what she knew now. She would have never gotten into the car with him, and she would have known that the entire kidnapping was his doing. But instead, she’d gotten into the car like a lovesick fool, expecting her crumbling marriage to miraculously be better just because Matt would be grateful that she’d come back alive. Well, he should have been grateful, but he wasn’t. She’d ruined everything he’d planned, and there was a chance that she would blow everything and expose them all. Jessica had listened to Matt’s ranting as he drove, but she couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
Who was the Circle? And what was she ruining? What could she possibly expose by surviving?
But she’d held it together because she thought he was taking her home to see Evie. She had let him continue ranting and only realized that he was doing more than just talking when he drove past their exit and pulled off the highway into a deserted lot. What happened next had been horrifying, but when the shovel had caught her on the side of the head, she’d been so shocked that she’d fallen down quickly and immediately knew that her best bet was to pretend to be unconscious.
She listened to him work at the ground for an eternity, but the shovel kept hitting the hard chunks of concrete from a gas station that had been demolished almost a decade before. There was nowhere for him to dig where they were, and the energy he’d wasted trying had cleared his head. Burying her there was an asinine plan anyway. He wasn’t thinking straight, and she would have been found almost immediately, dead or alive. The only suspect would have been him, and he needed a better plan.
So, he’d scooped her up and dumped her into the back of the SUV, and she’d let her body go limp and landed however she landed. She considered getting out then while he was trying to get into the front or locking the doors and trying to summon help by holding down
the horn or even attempting to drive away. The keys were in the ignition. But with her reflexes deadened by the hard blow, he was already in the driver’s seat by the time she’d considered that option.
Instead, she’d lain there while he mumbled, and she knew before he even got onto Skyline Drive what his plans were. Too bad for him, she had plans of her own.
Her plan had worked, and Matt had given up so easily that Jessica was worried that he was going to find another way to come after her. Still, she ran, running so fast in the dark that she managed to rip one of her flip flops off right away, and she let the other one go with the next stride. The ground was soft and uneven, but in the dark, that had managed to translate into smoother sailing. She couldn’t see much, but she could feel it.
The SUV she’d once been so excited to drive raced up the fire road, spinning tires when it hit the pavement. A terrifying image of Matt turning the wheel and driving the SUV straight down the embankment and through the sapling and brush until he crushed her beneath it flashed through her mind, but she was much too far from the road for that to even be possible. She was safe from him, and she didn’t think Matt would be coming back. At least, not alone.
She unwrapped one of the granola bars and broke off only half a bar. She didn’t know how long it would take her to find a safe place with a phone, and she didn’t want to starve. She heard water in the distance and knew there was some running somewhere close by. Following the sound, she took small, careful bites while she scanned the woods around her for wildlife and people.
The water turned out to be a small waterfall that trickled down a small outcropping of boulders. The stream of water pouring down was no wider than what came out of her kitchen faucet, but when she cupped her hands beneath it and inhaled, it smelled fresh and was clear and cold in her hands.
Jessica drank greedily until she could drink no more, then she used her hands to wash her face, neck and hair where the wound on her head was. It had stopped bleeding sometime overnight, but she’d cleaned it each time she’d found water, hoping that it wouldn’t get infected and that she wouldn’t reek of blood and attract predators. She hadn’t seen any yet, but she knew they were out there, and that had her terrified. It would do her no good to escape Matt if she found herself face-to-face with a hungry bear.
She shivered, looking around nervously. She had been in one spot far too long. It was time for her to move on. She took one last drink even though the water and the granola bar had filled her stomach. There was no telling when she would find water again, and she couldn’t risk dehydration.
The forest was quiet as she walked, with only an occasional bird tweeting merrily here and there. She’d expected to see more wildlife in this area, but with fall in full swing and winter fast approaching, most of the wildlife had slowed down or was busy preparing itself for winter.
She was watching one such bird fly around, gathering bits of fur and feathers from low hanging branches, when it stopped, held perfectly still for an instant, then took off. Jessica had seen the direction the bird looked in and the startled expression on its face, and she knew immediately what that meant. There was something in the woods, and it wasn’t far behind her.
Heart racing, she was careful to watch where she stepped and avoid dead leaves as she ducked quickly off the grassy deer trail she’d been following and found a hiding space between two boulders surrounded by a stand of saplings. It wasn’t the best place to hide, but it would give her enough cover if the intruder was human. The breeze was at her back as she scurried away, so she hoped there would be enough space between herself and the trail to keep a wild animal from smelling her. She was downwind, but after hiking for hours with no shower and a large gash on her head, she had no idea how far downwind she had to be to protect herself.
And what if bears could track you like a bloodhound?
She shuddered at the thought, but she held her ground. Crouched down in the crevice that was rounded like a tunnel, she was trapped. If she went out the back, there was nothing but more trail. The space between the boulders was large enough for her to crouch and run, which meant a mountain lion or a man could follow her through and out the other way. Her only option was to stay quiet and hope that whatever it was didn’t see her through the thick leaves.
When she heard voices, she almost called out. It sounded like search and rescue. Maybe they were looking for her. But before she could find her voice, the men were closer, and she could finally hear their conversation. She clapped her hands over her mouth, silencing her fear and hoping that they couldn’t hear her heart beating out of her chest.
“Do you see anything?” a man’s voice called out.
“No, Jake. I just see more of the same. Tracking her on this grass is almost impossible. If she went this way, she’s not leaving any shoe prints. Any word on what type of shoe she was wearing?”
“No idea. Her husband didn’t give us much to go on, but she’s here somewhere. I can feel it.”
“You can feel it?” another man teased.
Their voices were low, but they carried on the wind, and so far, she counted three distinct voices spread out. They were on her trail; they just didn’t realize it.
“Why did we come this way again?” a fourth voice asked.
“Do you have to question everything, Tristan?” the third man sneered angrily. “If you want to lead the group, why don’t you become a better tracker?”
“Enough, Hank,” the man named Jake said as he stepped into view.
Jessica’s throat caught, and she wanted to scream, but she managed to remain silent. The leader was close to her. No more than one hundred feet upwind of her, he was wearing black fatigues and combat boots. Even if they hadn’t already mentioned Matt, she wouldn’t have trusted this man. He looked like the men who had taken her in the van after the older woman had lured her close. They’d been dressed identically, and they’d all been large, muscled men who looked like they belonged in the military, not abducting women while they were out for a jog.
The second and third men came into sight, spread out in the low brush behind Jake. They were still arguing, and she knew at once that these two men were Hank and Tristan. They were huge, and both looked angry.
Jessica shrank further into the dark crevice, thankful that the black sweatpants and sweatshirt that Senora had given her to wear were the same dark black as the shadows that concealed her. Had her clothes been any other color, she would’ve been easily spotted. As it was, she was much too close for comfort, but the men seemed more focused on their spat than they were on their job.
They were still arguing, and Jessica knew that their leader was losing his patience with their nonsense. His shoulders were set, and he was scanning the woods ahead of him with a narrower focus than he had been before. He was even with her hiding place now, but he was so distracted by the bickering that he didn’t even scan that far to his left as he kept walking.
“I told you two to knock it off,” Jake said through gritted teeth. “You’ve managed to get along most of the day; let’s keep it professional.”
“Is it professional to attack everything I say?” Tristan muttered, turning slightly and glaring at Hank.
Jessica could feel the tension rising, and the urge to run was growing with each passing second. Were these men armed? Would they start shooting at any second? Why had they sent four men to find one woman? It seemed like overkill, which meant that someone really wanted to find her.
Her heart sank when more men appeared from the brush and from behind trees. There were six that she could see. Six men had been sent into the woods to retrieve her.
She was screwed.
“Everything you say is a whining question,” Hank shot back, shrugging when Jake gave him a look that would stop an angry bull in its tracks. “Maybe you would have a chance to be a leader if you were a better follower. Someone has to lead, and some have to follow. You would know that if you had any leadership potential in you. Maybe that’s why J passed you over for tha
t promotion.”
Tristan turned, his face flashing with anger.
“That’s not what happened.”
“You can tell yourself that, but the truth is you’ve been passed over before.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Men,” Jake warned through gritted teeth.
His anger was growing, and from where she sat, it looked like he was growing. The bickering faded into the background as Jessica focused on Jake, watching him and trying to figure out what was going on.
Hank took another jab at Tristan, and this time, Tristan lost his cool and rushed at Hank. His long legs ate up the ground between them, but before Tristan could reach Hank, there was a roar and the sound of ripping fabric. Jessica turned her attention back to Jake just in time to see his fatigues fall away in a heap of torn fabric and a large, black bear spring forward and place himself between the two men. This time, Jessica couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her lips, but the bear just a hundred feet away was roaring still, angrily swiping at Tristan, and there was no way anyone heard her. The massive paw connected with the side of the man, and Tristan flew through the air and hit a tree, grunting hard and landing on his feet despite being thrown nearly twenty feet by the massive bear. The bear turned his attention to Hank, sharp teeth bared in an angry snarl. He looked terrifying, and it was all Jessica could do to stay silent and keep from wetting herself. Hank already had both his hands up in surrender, though he didn’t look the least bit scared. What was more baffling was that neither man seemed the least bit shocked that their leader had turned into a bear.
Jessica, on the other hand, was rendered speechless by the entire thing.
The bear stopped, then looked at Tristan and waited for Tristan to admit defeat. He roared once more, voicing his displeasure and standing on his hind legs to display his size. Jessica’s mouth was open, and she couldn’t believe her eyes. Maybe she was delirious. Or maybe there was something in the water she’d just had. There was no way this was all real.