by Jen Blood
The last time we’d kissed had been in his kitchen last spring. That night, I could feel him fighting it, never really giving in. That night, it had been over before it began.
This time, he didn’t try to fight. One kiss and my blood caught fire. He tugged at my bottom lip with his teeth and I opened to him, his tongue pressing past my lips. His hand spanned the small of my back, pulling me closer until there was nothing left between us. I moved against him. Twisted my fingers in his hair. He pushed me back against the wall, and I remembered what it had always been like between us, that loss of reason when he wrapped his body around mine and his mouth found all the right spots and nothing mattered but touch and taste, sky blue eyes and the way my name sounded on his lips.
Eventually, however, reality set in.
“I think we’re out of hot water,” I said from between chattering teeth. We’d both miraculously managed to keep our underpants on, but my bra had washed away in the storm. Diggs was shivering too, his lips blue.
“I think you’re right.” He kissed me again. “We should probably…” He nodded toward the other room.
“Probably,” I agreed. I didn’t move. He kissed the tip of my nose, his hands moving over my body in an almost absent-minded way, like he didn’t even know he was doing it. “Did you want me to carry you? Because I got shanked earlier… I’m not in the best shape of my life here.”
“I think I’m okay.”
He stepped out first. While he didn’t say it was because he wasn’t sure what might happen when we got out, I knew that’s what I’d been thinking. Nothing hideous was waiting for us, though: no Will Rainier wielding a ten-inch blade, no mutant honeybees. Diggs toweled himself off quickly, but he took more care drying me—starting with my feet and working his way up, never quite meeting my eye. We’d both gotten quiet again.
There were thin cotton pajamas in the dresser that were just our sizes. We put them on without speaking. Diggs re-splinted my wrist; I washed out the gashes in his legs, noting that they both looked better after the shower. And still, we didn’t talk. We held hands a lot, but we didn’t kiss again. At just past ten o’clock, we turned off the lights and got into bed. Diggs curled his body around mine, holding me close.
“Sleep, Solomon,” he whispered in my ear.
I could feel myself drifting, even though I didn’t want to. I held onto the arm wrapped around my middle. “Don’t let go tonight, okay?” I whispered back. “Not until you have to.”
“I won’t,” he agreed. He tightened his arms around me. “I’ll never let go, Sol.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Juarez
Juarez was headed back to the station after his conversation with Dr. Laurent when he passed Erin’s mother on the highway, headed in the opposite direction. He turned around when she was well down the road, keeping two or three cars behind as he followed her south on Route 1. He wasn’t that surprised when she turned onto the dirt road leading to the Sauciers.
Instead of parking behind the last crime scene van still on site and walking in from there, however, she drove past. Juarez knew the road dead ended before long, so he parked and got out. He changed into sneakers, then loped after her in his shirt sleeves and dirty slacks, wondering all the while how he’d ended up here: in an ill-fitting suit, doing paperwork and appeasing bureaucrats rather than trying to find the woman he may or may not be dating, who—he was fairly certain—was actually in love with another man.
Within minutes, Kat stopped her car, leashed Einstein, and set out on a trail Juarez suspected few even knew about. He stayed far back. He already knew where she was going, or at least who she was going to; he just didn’t want to spook her before she got there.
During one of their late-night phone calls over the past few months, Erin told him once about a fight she’d had with her mother as a teenager: She cracked the phone on my forehead. Left me concussed and took off with some sailor for three days… It wasn’t a big deal, really. Mothers and daughters, right?
He didn’t know about that. Having no memory of his own parents, he supposed he could have lived through the very same kind of scenario himself as a child. Somehow, he didn’t think that was true, though… He wouldn’t have been quite so horrified if that had been standard protocol in his own life, would he?
He tried to imagine the woman he was following now flying into that kind of a rage. She walked with a pronounced limp over the uneven terrain, clinging tightly to Einstein’s leash. The dog slowed frequently to look up at her, never going too far ahead. Kat made her careful way down the riverbank, until she reached a spot where she was almost completely hidden from view. Juarez crept forward, hiding low in the underbrush.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Within five minutes, he saw a rustling in the trees to Kat’s right. Einstein whined unhappily, pacing on his leash. Juarez sank down lower. Adam Solomon emerged from the trees.
Einstein barked twice, but Kat silenced him quickly. Juarez watched with great interest as Erin’s parents squared off by the river. He had to strain to hear them over the water.
“Do you know where she is?” Kat demanded immediately. There was something different about the way she held herself here—a vulnerability he hadn’t seen before. Adam shook his head.
“I’ve been looking. They’re on the run somewhere… I don’t know whether he’s gotten to them yet.”
“You need to do more than just look,” she hissed. “More than just wander around in the woods, waiting for him to do this all over again. You know Rainier is out there, too?”
He shook his head, but he didn’t speak. Kat went to him. She touched his face, guiding his gaze to hers in a gesture so intimate that Juarez almost felt he should turn away.
“Your sister wasn’t your fault, Adam. Everything that came after… You couldn’t have changed it. But this…” Her voice failed her. Adam took her hand, and Kat slid easily into his arms; more easily than Juarez would have imagined for a woman as prickly as her. Adam held her tightly.
They spoke too quietly to be heard for several seconds. Then, Kat pulled away. She looked at him seriously.
“You have to call them. Or I will. They’ve protected him all this time, but this… You can worry about the greater good, what the repercussions will be if they decide to teach you a lesson again. That’s your prerogative. My silence is on one condition and one condition only—it always has been: Keep Erin safe. I don’t care whether this was their fault or not; they have the power to stop it.”
“Katie—” Adam began.
She shook her head. “No,” she said fiercely. “I’m telling you: either they stop this, or I’ll talk. I’ll tell the world—I don’t care how much power they have. Who they hurt. You call and tell them that. If Erin doesn’t make it out of this because their bastard son has gone off the rails again…”
Adam nodded quickly, squeezing Kat’s hands in his own. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll call. I’ll tell them.” He pulled her back into his arms. Juarez actually did turn away when they embraced this time, his eyes on the ground when Adam kissed her. She was crying when they parted.
“You have to go,” she said softly. “It’s not safe. Call them, though. Tell them what I said—our agreement was always my silence for Erin’s safety. That still stands.”
Adam brushed a tear from her cheek and kissed her one more time. “Take care, Katie,” he said. “I’ll write again soon.”
Juarez palmed his Glock. If he was going to make a move, he needed to do it now. He stood, but remained concealed in the brush. The wind shifted; Einstein whined. The dog gazed into the woods, directly at Juarez. Kat pushed Adam’s chest gently.
“Go,” she urged. “Before someone catches you.”
He started to walk away. Juarez pointed the Glock and stepped out of the trees. “I need you to stop for me, Adam.”
Adam did as he said, hands raised as he came to a halt. He glanced back toward the trees. Kat stepped in front of him. “Keep going,” sh
e told him. She looked at Juarez. “He won’t stop you, will you, Jack?”
“I need to talk to you,” Juarez said. “I know you’re not the same person who’s been posing as Jeff Lincoln all these years, killing those girls. The fingerprints in the databank don’t belong to you; they belong to him. I can help you prove that.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Adam said. “Forget it… Whether I’m guilty or innocent has never been the issue. All that matters is getting Erin back safely.”
“But I can’t do that if I can’t unravel these final pieces,” Juarez insisted. “The boy who stayed with you that summer: Eliot. Do you know where he is now? What happened to him after Eagle Lake?”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. He was lying—and not well. “He could be anywhere.”
Einstein growled at Juarez, his eyes fixed on the gun in the agent’s hand. Juarez didn’t care for the way the dog was staring. While his attention was momentarily diverted from Adam, Kat crouched and touched the leash clip on Einstein’s collar. The dog continued to growl.
“I don’t think he likes you pointing that thing,” Kat said. “There’s no telling what he might do if he got loose somehow. Dogs are funny that way. Who knows what might set them off.”
Adam was easing back into the trees. Juarez kept his gun up despite the fact that the dog was looking at him like a steak after a seven-day fast.
“Keep him back,” he said to Kat.
“What are you gonna do? Shoot Erin’s dog?” She looked at Adam again, more confident now. “Go on. I’ve got this. You know he didn’t do anything, anyway,” she insisted to Juarez. “If you really thought bringing him in would do anything but hurt things, you would have been out here hunting for him yourself all this time.”
She took a step toward Juarez, Einstein by her side. The fur along the dog’s spine stood on end. “Seriously, Jack,” she said reasonably. “You’ve got enough going against you, trying to make any progress at all when Diggs is still in the picture. But I promise: you shoot Erin’s dog, and you’re as good as dead.”
Adam was already nearly out of sight. Juarez side-stepped Kat and the dog and started after him. Kat unclipped Einstein’s leash. The moment he was free, the dog took off after Juarez. He tackled the agent, knocking him to the ground. Adam disappeared. Kat walked over casually and stood over Juarez while Erin’s dog slobbered all over him.
He was beginning to rethink having anything to do with Erin Solomon at all.
Juarez took Kat back to the police station, following in his own car behind her Prius. She purposely drove fifteen miles under the speed limit the entire way, occasionally slamming on the brakes for no apparent reason. When they reached the station, she bypassed an almost completely empty parking lot to take the space reserved for the sheriff.
It was six-thirty on Monday evening when they walked into the station. It was virtually empty. Juarez had already seen news vans invading Black Falls, but thankfully they seemed otherwise occupied at the moment. He made himself yet another cup of bad coffee, offering one to Kat at the same time. He held the door for her and Einstein—who seemed to hold no grudge after their encounter in the woods—and followed her into the sheriff’s empty office.
Kat walked around to the sheriff’s desk and took his chair immediately, setting her coffee very deliberately on a stack of his papers. ‘Maddening’ came to mind.
“So, what can I help you with now, Agent Juarez?” she asked.
“I’d like to know what you and your ex-husband were discussing out at the river.”
“Ah. That’s a tough one… The problem there is that I just don’t remember,” she said, her eyes wide. “If you remember, I had a brain injury last spring. My memory’s just gone to shit since then. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“You told him to call someone,” he persisted. “To take care of things—to protect Erin. Who was he calling?”
“And I say again: ‘I don’t remember.’ Now really, Agent Juarez, I’m tired. I’m going to take the dog and go lie down at the hotel. And as for you… Wouldn’t it be better if you were out there actually, oh I don’t know, looking for my daughter? Instead of trying to stop me from doing the only things that will ultimately bring her home again?” She stood. “Thanks for the coffee, though.”
She walked out.
Juarez didn’t even try to stop her.
◊◊◊◊◊
Sheriff Cyr called when Juarez was back at the hotel, changing out of his by-now essentially ruined work clothes. His news, at least, was welcome. Sort of.
Diggs’ Jeep had been found.
Juarez arrived at the site at eight o’clock that night. The Jeep was in a ravine off a dirt logging road. Someone had camouflaged it with branches and brush. It was upside down. There was blood on the dashboard. Blood on the steering wheel. The windshield was cracked. There was no sign of Diggs or Erin.
After Juarez had spoken with the sheriff and gone to take a look at the surrounding area himself, Jamie Flint met him on the path with her dogs. Her face and clothes were filthy, several angry-looking welts rising on her face and arms.
“Damned horseflies,” she said when she caught him looking. “It’s been a long day out here.”
“And no progress?” he asked.
“We just found a couple of backpacks about ten minutes ago—one inside one of the caves, a smaller one outside.”
He felt a surge of hope. “So you must be close.”
She frowned. He’d seen that look on people’s faces before—the day they found Lucia. Pity. “The dogs ran up and down that area, but there was no sign of them. We tracked them to the river… My guess is they traveled that way.”
“So it would be harder to follow them,” he said.
“That’s my guess, yes.” She hesitated. “I’ve gotta retire the dogs for the night, but we’ll be back at first light tomorrow.”
Her four dogs were just as dirty as she was. They lay down on the ground panting quietly while she and Juarez talked. One of them—the one who looked like a pit bull—sat close to him, resting his big block head on Juarez’s shoe. They were hauling the Jeep out of the ravine now; it was totaled. He zeroed in on the windshield and saw more blood there—on the driver’s side. Probably Diggs, while Erin hit the dashboard. And now God only knew where she might be.
He thought suddenly of Lucia… Lucia with the dark hair and the olive skin, with that smile that melted everything. Broken and bloody on the side of an unknown road in a country he hadn’t even wanted her to visit.
“Agent Juarez?” Jamie said.
He realized she’d been trying to get his attention. He shook his head, trying to clear it of memories that he was convinced would never fade.
“I just asked if there’s anything else we can do? Me and my crew were gonna grab some grub in town. You could join us if you’d like.”
“I thought I’d just stay here. Maybe follow—”
She touched his arm. When she looked at him, her blue eyes burned with an intensity he found difficult to look away from. “You should get away from it for a couple of hours, okay?” she said quietly. “Trust me on that. We’ll find them come morning. When’s the last time you ate?”
He had to think before he could answer. “I had a sandwich at lunch, I think.”
The teenage boy Juarez had noticed earlier came over and said something to the dogs—a single word Juarez couldn’t make out. All four got up.
“Bear, why don’t you get these guys settled in,” Jamie said to the boy. “Ride back in with Cheryl. I’ll catch a ride with Agent Juarez.”
He didn’t bother to argue. It seemed all he did these days was lose arguments with willful women.
Chapter Twenty-Four
An alarm went off at four-thirty the next morning, but Diggs and I had already been up for an hour, trying to prepare for whatever we were in for in the coming day. We’d raided the fridge and re-checked injuries and changed into the clothes provided: river pants for both of us,
new boots, lots of layers. Neither of us had our backpacks anymore, which meant whatever we took with us had to either fit in our pockets or be strapped to strategically selected body parts some way or other.
We were both sitting on the bed when the alarm went off, going over our plans for getting through this whole nightmare. As soon as the bell sounded, my insides tightened into a sailor’s knot—the kind nearly impossible to untie without expert assistance. Diggs’ hands fisted around our down-filled comforter. The full night’s sleep had done us both good, as had the food, but now all I could think about was being forced back into the forest. Rainier had gone easy on me yesterday, but I couldn’t imagine that trend would last long.
“The goal should be to get as far as we can as fast as we can,” Diggs said. We’d already talked about this exhaustively, but I nodded all the same. “Even if we get separated. Head to the river, and just keep moving. We can’t help each other without reinforcements.”
That was the part of the plan that bothered me—leaving Diggs. In theory, it sounded perfectly logical: Separately, we stood a better chance of at least one of us going in the right direction and finding someone out there who could help us. In practice, however, that meant striking out on my own, without a clue of how Diggs was faring; whether he’d even made it out alive. I thought of the bodies found in Canada, and everything those girls had been through. Diggs and I had both been putting on a brave face through most of the night, but that was faltering now that our final hour together was speeding past.
We’d made a half-assed plan to take Rainier on when he came for us that morning, but I think we both knew that would fail. Diggs held my hand, staring at it while he ran his index finger over my knuckles and veins, the lines on my palm. I kept thinking that we should say something important: tell each other everything we hadn’t said. I couldn’t figure out how to do that, though—where to begin, even. I stayed quiet.