by M K Dymock
Then she thought of Jim and the man who’d so easily lied to her and tracked her. She wanted to scream at the empty void before her. How had she not seen him for what he was? Why had he killed her mother? Had they had an affair? Was it about money?
None of that mattered, she realized. All that mattered was staying between the girl behind her and the killer ahead.
Where was Sol?
Jim could no longer afford to let her live. He’d probably only allowed her the last few weeks in hopes she would lead him to her father. Which she had, she thought bitterly.
She pressed the stiff buttons on the GPS unit. Where are you? She pressed Send and stared at it, willing a response to come. A heavy silence filled the dank air.
“Hylia,” the voice squeaked from the back. “What are we going to do?”
“You’re going to stay safe.” Not exactly what Zelda had asked but all she could offer.
The GPS buzzed in her hand and she dropped it. It rattled against the stone as she fumbled to see the message.
I have Sol. Want to trade?
62
Hylia had a clear path down the canyon. Her father had seen to that. She could grab Zelda, climb out of this hole, and be to the meadow in twenty minutes. She could take them anywhere and leave the chaos of this world behind. Zelda would see a world she had no idea existed.
She could hand the GPS off to the deputies waiting at the base and let them handle what she couldn’t. That’s what Sol would tell her to do. He would hate to have to be rescued.
It took two tries to cobble together a simple message.
What do you want?
Her harsh breathing filled the musky air of the mine. If she lived, she would never set foot in one again.
I’m willing to trade Sol and your niece for you.
Hylia laughed, a harsh guttural laugh, but still a laugh. He didn’t know she had Zelda. He must’ve assumed her father had hidden away the girl, and he was bluffing until he could find her.
You won’t let Sol go. He’ll identify you.
Hylia could afford to call one bluff.
A jpg came through, which she couldn’t open on the text only GPS. She pulled out the phone Sol had given her and opened the app connected by Bluetooth. She clicked on a video only a few seconds long. Relief and terror flowed through her in equal amounts as she viewed Sol’s unconscious, yet still breathing, body.
He won’t; he never saw my face, and the girl is too young.
And Hylia would be dead. She didn’t need to read the rest of his plan. Everyone would blame her father for her demise.
He held all the cards—except the most important one. “When do we leave?” Zelda came over and sat next to her.
One last message came through. You have twenty minutes.
“Soon.”
Twenty minutes could carry her to the bottom of the canyon or back to Sol. It did not allow enough time to get help and get back.
She could run; it was what she did best.
Instead Hylia looked down into Zelda’s eyes, into Link’s eyes, and made the only decision she could. “Zelda, have you ever hiked alone without Grandpa?”
The roll of her eyes belied the future teenager she would grow up to be. “Yeah.”
Hylia saw opportunity in the pricked pride. “Are you sure? I don’t know if you can go alone.” She forced disdain into her voice.
“I can do it,” said the offended girl.
“Alright, but only if you think you can.” Hylia tried to sound reluctant as she outlined the directions down the canyon and to the open meadow. She knew better than anyone that a girl out to prove something was far more formidable than one being merely obedient. “Can you get down without help?”
“Yeah,” she said, forcing the word into two syllables.
“Good, because at the bottom are my two friends who are waiting for us.
Zelda’s shorn hair shook before Hylia could finish. “No, I can’t let them see me. They’ll hurt me.”
“No, they’re the ones who have kept me safe all these years. They protected me, and they’ll protect you.” She knelt down and cupped the girl’s face just as her father had. “I promise you.”
“Okay.”
“Promise me you’ll stay to the creek and find them.”
“Okay,” she mumbled again, looking away.
“Promise me.” Hylia heard her own mother’s voice echo in her own.
Zelda looked up. “I promise.”
Together they walked to the entrance, where Hylia stopped to scan the canyon below. David had chosen their escape well. Plenty of foliage concealed the path to the stream and out of the canyon. A little less than a mile and Zelda would be free. A new pain shot through Hylia as she watched the tiny but confident girl slip into the bushes.
With one last glimpse of the waif she’d longed to find for four years, she turned back to the cave. The tunnels would get her up the canyon without being seen—her final card to play.
63
Jim would be expecting Hylia to come up the canyon following the stream. Would he kill her on sight? Probably. He’d killed her father from a long distance and would easily do the same to her. But would he kill Sol—a law enforcement official? Somehow that seemed like a huge leap over her father.
She had to draw him away from Sol, but how?
Simple—if Sol was unconscious, Jim couldn’t very well carry him around the mountain. And he couldn’t trust that Hylia would turn herself over if he didn’t have Zelda. He would have to leave Sol to search for the girl. She fired off a text.
I need a picture of Sol and the girl before I agree to anything.
While she waited for a response, she took inventory of what she had going for her. She still carried her father’s rifle. She’d forgotten to load it after he shot it. Stupid mistake. The sling had several shells shoved in slots, and she counted out four.
That was all the rifle held, and she was going up against a semi-automatic carried by a former soldier. This should go well. She patted down her pockets and felt the knife she always carried. She was literally taking a knife to a gunfight.
What else did she have going for her?
Hylia could move soundlessly through the mountains; cougars had nothing on her. Jim would never find her unless she wanted to be found. But she couldn’t outrun this fight, which meant she had to bring the fight right up to him. At a far distance, she had no chance, but maybe if she could come close enough.
If she had a chance, she had to leave now. She did the one thing that felt antithetical to her very being. She stepped to the edge of the cave and the high afternoon sun and left the mine and its protective hiding place. Nothing moved in the dark green of the vegetation or the gray rocks of the ridges. She stayed to the side of the cliff, moving slowly with her back against the wall. The GPS unit buzzed in her hand.
There’s a rusted-out piece of mining equipment a hundred feet below the ridgeline at the top of the canyon. Once I see you sitting on it, I’ll release them.
So, you can shoot me and then them? No.
None of this negotiation mattered. Neither one of them had any intention of keeping any of their promises. They just needed to think the other had accepted the conditions.
I can shoot them now.
Hylia had been wrong. There were no conditions to be negotiated. She found a crack in the canyon and scrambled to the top. Sol was supposed to have been on the ridge, making his way up when Jim had intercepted him. She needed to find his trail, and she needed to find it in less than fifteen minutes.
64
Hylia kept close to the ground, not only to find tracks, but to also avoid being shot. Sol wouldn’t have bothered to hide his trail, but he was a man who moved through the woods as a ghost. No normal person should be able to follow him—yet Jim had. Any hope that she might have the upper hand in the wilderness faltered.
About a quarter mile up, a thick bed of needles littered the ground. She knew him well enough to know he’d take a
path where he wouldn’t leave a print. His lack of print led her to her first mark. The jagged ridge didn’t allow an even tread. His foot had slid down a rock and scattered the needles.
The GPS buzzed. Jim hadn’t taken her silence as acquiesce, but as a negotiation tactic.
Sol will be at the equipment as a gesture of good will.
She moved more quickly. She didn’t need Sol’s trail; she needed Jim’s. The closer she got to the end of the canyon, the steeper and rougher the terrain grew.
She spotted a crow circling in the canyon around the area where her father still lay. Bile rose in her throat as she considered his body would be scavenged by birds and coyotes by nightfall. It wouldn’t be long until he’d disappear from the world—only for real this time.
The bird took off and soared along the ridge, up and down, until it landed not far from her. Her gait quickened. Maybe the bird had found what she hadn’t. She kept her eye on the spot where it had landed.
It alit into the sky as she crested the hill before it. She ran to the spot, but there was no trail, no Sol, no nothing.
She kicked the dirt and a few rocks before ducking to the ground. Jim could be waiting for her to pop up. She scanned the ground twice before she finally found something helpful. The tan dirt covering the rocks had been scooted around with a foot, leaving tread marks. With her foot, she pushed the dirt back around. A layer underneath the top stuck together forming beads of mud. She picked up one and squeezed it between her fingers. Blood.
She slapped her hand against her pants without thinking and desperately wiped at the spot. He was hurt. You already knew that. The panic still bubbled up. He could be dead already, and as for Zelda . . . Had her niece made it out, or had Hylia sent her into the wilderness alone while she tried to save a dead man?
She squatted down and stuck her head between her legs, gasping for air and hope.
Keep moving. That had been her father’s answer for everything. Always keep moving. If she had a trail, she had a chance.
65
The trail led Hylia closer to the planned rendezvous point and Sol. Jim’s tracks were getting easier to follow on account of him dragging an injured man up the canyon.
Those tracks would do her no good if Jim hadn’t left Sol to find Zelda. She needed Jim’s trail alone.
The narrow canyon opened up into a high bowl surrounded on three sides by peaks still covered in snow. Hylia halted at the edge of the tree line. Green grass grew at least a foot tall on a low hill surrounding the bowl, blocking her view. The footprints had gone around the hill, leaving the grass straight and undisturbed.
Even if Jim had left Sol to search, he wouldn’t have gone far. He couldn’t chance her getting to Sol while he was away. He would be watching this area, waiting for her to surface.
She left the protection of the trees and knelt in the tall grass with the rifle slung on her back. Each step required a careful choice about where to place her hands and knees to keep from signaling her location to a murderer.
Pausing every few steps to listen, she made her way painstakingly up the hill. Only the afternoon breeze and the crows’ caws filled the air. She crested the hill, still on her belly, and the bowl opened before her. Down in the bottom, about thirty yards away, she spotted a few rusted pieces of mining equipment. Hauled up here a hundred years ago, they’d been abandoned along with the dry mines.
She lifted her binoculars up and swallowed a gasp. Sol sat in the tall wildflowers propped against a metal barrel. A quick glance around the surrounding field didn’t reveal Jim.
Blood covered Sol’s forehead. She strained forward as if she could close the gap and nudge him awake. Please, move, please. There hadn’t been time to save her mom. She would not run this time.
Sol’s lifted his arm up and brushed his face. Her head, which had been propped up by her elbows, slumped to the ground in relief. She still had time.
Her GPS hadn’t buzzed since the last message. With one hand to her lips, she called out her bird call—similar enough to a crow’s to be mistaken for one but with enough distinction that a trained ear could tell the difference.
Sol’s eyes opened, and he blinked in her direction. He shook his head slightly and mouthed “no” or “go,” not that it changed the message. She called again. He lifted his left hand off the ground a few inches and pointed to the opposite side of the bowl, where a glacier formed the start of the stream. She nodded in understanding, though Sol couldn’t see her. Jim had left in that direction but where was he now?
Did he watch from the shadows like her or was he trying to find Zelda to cement his position of power over her? Sol made no attempt to crawl toward her, meaning he suspected Jim was watching and waiting.
Hylia could watch and wait with the best of them—actually better than them. She pulled the rifle’s sling off her shoulder and grasped it in her right hand with her left still clutching the binoculars.
She didn’t wait long for Jim to make his move. The GPS vibrated in her pocket.
Time is up.
66
Sol blinked against the bright sun and the blood that filled his eye. The other eye had swollen shut and refused to heed any command to open. A gap in his memory existed between losing sight of Hylia and coming to in the grass with his arms tied behind him with his own zip ties.
He’d waken up with his face pressed against the dirt and staring at the hiking boots of the man who’d come all the way from Seattle to help Hylia—or so they’d thought. Sol had kept his eyes closed and feigned unconsciousness until the man left his side. He opened them as Jim Healy walked away to track his movements for as long as he could. The slamming pain in his head kept unconsciousness close to the surface and Sol slipped in and out of it.
Only Hylia’s call had brought him fully out, and, by that time, the lawyer had disappeared, leaving him cuffed to a piece of rust.
He cursed himself for not trusting his instincts about the man sooner.
Sol scanned the area without moving his head, unsure of where she lay hidden but not wanting to draw attention to her or to himself.
The mystery of who killed Charlotte Hayes appeared to be solved. The lawyer, Jim, would have to kill him and Hylia to keep it unsolved. He pulled against the ties, but the machinery allowed no give.
Jim had taken off to his left, probably to hide and wait for Hylia to show her face. He would be waiting a very long time. Sol prayed she’d stay hidden. No amount of searching would reveal her when she didn’t want to be found.
He swore under his breath. That’s why he’d been chained up out in the open—Jim was hoping to draw her out. Like hell he’d sit there waiting like cheese in a trap. He pushed his back up against the machinery, tried to wedge his back against it, and heaved. The thing didn’t budge an inch.
With his heels digging into the mud, he pushed again—still nothing.
A reflection glinted off the hill across the small meadow—Hylia. Get down, get back, he wanted to scream across the open area to her. The flash disappeared. Sol wished he could knock himself out—anything to be taken out of the equation. He would not be the reason she died.
In absolute desperation, he did the only thing he could. “Hey, lawyer man,” he yelled into the no longer peaceful vista. “You want to tell me why you killed an innocent woman?”
Silence, void even of the birds, answered him back. “You know my GPS has a tracker, don’t you? I don’t check in and they send out the search parties for me.”
No footstep interrupted the stillness. “All right then. If you’ve left me to die, I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“I’m up here,” Sol yelled into the void, echoing across the high peaks.
A bullet lodged into the metal next to him before he even registered the sound whirling by him. Sol smiled.
67
Hylia’s head whipped around to the source of the gunshot. It came from a thin stand of aspen a few hundred feet away and a little below her. She swung the rifle around and pointe
d it, waiting for Jim to emerge.
A few branches moved, but she was too far away to attribute that to Jim or the wind. She sat up and swung her legs around, using her knees to prop the rifle into a steady position. He would have to come out sooner or later.
She brought the binoculars up, cursing her father for not having a scope on the gun. The binoculars brought Jim’s grove directly in front of her. An arm, or possibly a tree branch, lifted out of a bush. Come on, she willed him. She was not that great of a shot. Her family had never wanted to draw attention to themselves with target practice.
She scanned the space between the grove of trees and Sol and immediately spotted her mistake. There was enough coverage with the trees and several large boulders from the ridges above to enable Jim to make his way without exposing himself.
He could sneak up, kill Sol, and slip back into the brush without her ever getting off a shot. Sol continued to yell.
Hylia slipped off her shoes, grateful for the thick hiking socks she wore. A lifetime of being invisible and soundless would finally pay off. She ducked down into the grass and picked the path where soil grew thicker than the rock. Every breath brought risk, and she forced herself to move agonizingly slow.
Her toes curled into the soil. Thorns dug into her foot as she stepped into a thistle. She swallowed any reaction and kept moving forward. A bullet rang out and pinged off something metal. Silence took over for an interminable minute until Sol’s voice rang out. “I’m still here. How bad of shot are you?”
She begged him to shut up as if she could communicate the thought to his mind. Whether her message got through she didn’t know, but he continued his tirade.
She pushed forward, and another shot rang out over her head, sending her flat to her stomach. Had Jim spotted her or had he fired randomly as a warning? She waited with her face pressed into the soft soil. She’d been crawling alongside the hill about halfway up it. With the rifle tucked to her side, she rolled down until a small sagebrush crushed under her.