Hit 'N' Run (Under Suspicion #1) (23 page)

“Listen, Chuck,” Mitch began in an even voice. “Much as I am enjoying our conversation, getting what you want is one hundred percent dependent upon the woman actually being alive and well. She and the kid need to come out of this unscathed.” Mitch played the odds that Charles didn’t know the child and grandmother had been moved and were no longer up for grabs.

“Let’s not go too far with the
well
business. That would be a matter of perception at this point,” Charles replied. “After all, my people are hired to do a job; how they get it done is unique to each situation—”

“Just let me talk with her,” Mitch interrupted. “Further conversation is moot until I know the woman is alive.”

Raising his eyebrows at Hank’s expression, he shrugged his shoulders. The game was on now, and it was time to get things going. Hoping the crashing of thunder outside their windows was not overly evident on the other end of the line, Mitch gripped the headrest in front of him, having taken his seat in the back of the SUV cruiser as they proceeded out of town. Their destination was based on the coordinates Hank was able to get from both OnStar support and their surveillance of cell use around the same area that Jordan relayed moments before.

A ripping of tape being pulled off skin sounded across the airwaves, and Mitch could see in his mind the duct tape come away from Lorna’s sensual mouth, leaving an ugly red rash in its wake. There was a pant of indrawn breath before a hoarse whisper said his name in the only voice he ever wanted to hear say his name: “Mitch?”

His hand covered his face as he inhaled a shuddered breath. He knew he only had a second and one chance. He needed to tell her the one thing she needed to hear.

“Kris and Mariam are safe with us, Lorna,” he yelled across the line. “I’m coming for you, baby. I’m coming”

“What the f—” Charles shouted. Mitch knew the profanity was not directed at him and what he said so much as at the accompanying sounds carried across the airwaves. Listening intently, his fingers digging into the headrest, he heard a shuffle and a scraping that sounded like furniture moving.

Leaning forward in the speeding car, he heard the clatter of a phone dropping on floor boards, followed by a loud shattering of glass breaking. Mitch shouted, “Lorna! Lorna!” he barked again as the crash of a door opening and heavy footfalls announced pursuit. Then the line went dead.

“Ohmigod, Lorna!” Mitch shouted into dead air.

Chapter Nineteen

Lorna shot up from the chair, her head connecting with Charlie’s chest, unbalancing him. “What the f—” he wheezed as she straightened, pulling the spindles free from the bindings around her ankles.

Weak and wobbly, she fell to her knees, her palms flattening against the rough floorboards. Looking up as her tormentor recovered his balance, she gained her feet, picked up the remains of the chair, and flung them at the petite man. His high-pitched scream, when his legs connected with the hot pot-bellied wood stove, forced her forward. She didn’t turn to watch whether he fell into the fire. Sprinting the three steps to the bench under the window, she jumped, and her foot, slippery with blood, slipped off the edge, the corner connecting with her shin. Her other foot landed solidly. Covering her arms across her face, she leapt for her life through the window, shattering the glass with the top of her head.

Slivers of glass mixed with the rain as she landed heavily on the edge of a woodpile under the window. Tumbling down the incline, she struggled to her feet. She had mere seconds to make it to the cover of the woods. Her head flailed from side to side, searching for escape. She tripped over logs and fought against the suctioning muck. Where she was exactly in the compound remained a mystery as she had a mere split second to decide what direction to run. Lack of circulation for an extended period of time had her legs giving out beneath her. To keep moving forward, she crawled on hands and knees until she was able to change into a crouched position looking like an athlete ready to take off. Her destination: the waiting cover of the forests.

Shouts sounded behind her as she barreled into the first tree. Her arms wrapped around its girth in welcome salvation. Glancing behind her just the once, letting go of the tree, she continued towards the welcoming bosom of darkness, arms outstretched, fingers splayed, feeling for obstacles in her path in the purple shadows. Lorna moved as fast as she dared, blind to her surroundings, in what she hoped was a straight line away from the camp and back towards the highway.

Heavy vegetation insulated all noise and surrounded her like a womb. Moving deeper into the woods, she could hear nothing behind her. Not shouts, not footfalls—nothing. Breathing deeply through her nose, her heart pounding in her ears, she wiped her streaming eyes as another branch caught her across the cheek. Above her, through the canopy of trees, the sky was black as soot. Heavy clouds obscured any hope of her seeing stars or having a moon to light her way. Hope bubbled.
But if I can’t see, then neither can they.

Grabbing the stitch in her side, she stopped, a tree at her back. Listening over her panting and the beating of her rushing pulse was tough. Holding her breath, she concentrated. There it was.
Ohmigod
. She recognized the deep-barreled tones of Stan calling to Gap-tooth. They were close. Peeking around the tree, Lorna could see a shimmery beam of light in the distance. Her pent-up breath whooshed out and then hitched as she tried to draw air back in. Her bruised ribs protested the expansion. Turning, she pushed deeper against the wind and rain into the foliage, intent on her flight, no longer concerned with the direction so long as it was away from her captors.

Rocks replaced the mud under her bare feet, causing her to wince as the soles of her feet felt each and every sharp edge, slowing her pace. Unable to see, she kept her face lowered to her chest to avoid branches. With outstretched arms, she forced her way through the dense foliage.

Pausing when her hands lost contact with the branches, she peered through the gloom.
Is it just space between trees? Or a clearing?
Should I chance it and run until I’m back in the trees?
Continued crashing sounded even louder than before, letting her know she had mere moments to make up her mind.

Holding tight to the stitch under her ribs, bending her knees, and crouching her body, Lorna took off. One moment the bottoms of her tender feet were being assaulted by sharp rock points, the next, there was nothing but empty space beneath them.

***

“Show me the map,” Mitch said, turning on the dim interior light in the back of the speeding police SUV. “I want to see where the OnStar signal showed up and compare that to the cell coverage.”

“How long a drive?” Hank directed his question to the constable driving while he spread the red-inked map across his lap.

The officer, giving the appearance of someone on the tail end of competent, looked at them briefly before checking his speedometer. Eyes focused back on the road, he replied, “’Bout an hour and a half at this speed.”

Sweeping his cap off his head to run his hands through his hair in frustration, Mitch drew out the word “Jesus” under his breath.

Hank clamped a hand on Mitch’s shoulder, adding, “We’re going as fast as we can, man,” his words barely audible. “You know there may be nothing we can do for her.”

Mitch shrugged the hand off his shoulder, reaching for the map. Pointing to a circle with an “x” through it, he concentrated his attention on locating Lorna. It was his fault ultimately that she was involved, and he would get her out of this. “So this is where the air-bag signal from the car was received?”

Hank leaned close, his spiky hair scratching against the ceiling. “According to Jordan, yes.”

“Do we know where the car is now?”

“On my last check, Jordan said the signal was lost. Here,” Hank replied, lowering a sausage-like finger to what looked like about five kilometers from the crash spot off the main highway. “These red dots—here, here, and here—are all the cell and satellite phone coverage picked up from four this afternoon until just before we left the Prince George detachment.”

“Well, it’s not much.” Mitch gripped the edge of the pages, wrinkling the edges.

“No, but there is a ton of forestry guys in these parts as well, and they all have phones, cell or satellite, to check in. It’s part of the safety check.”

“I can imagine.” Mitch spread his fingers across the wilderness stretched over the map. “Look at this area. I wouldn’t want to be hurt and stranded out here.”

“No doubt,” the Northern Detachment Chief, Avery, agreed from the front seat. “But we can concentrate the search area between where we know she was this afternoon for Aqua Oil and where her car crashed.”

There were two dots for the general area of the pipeline shoot, and Mitch agreed they could rule those out. “She would have been heading south.”

“But that’s not to say the people who took her continued in the same direction,” Hank countered, while Avery umm-hummed his agreement.

“How wide do we set our search given we can’t even get a chopper up until this storm abates?” Mitch was looking closely at the map, running his finger from where he imagined they were on the highway north towards where the last signal from Lorna’s car was received. “Wait a minute.”

“What?” Hank leaned close. “What do you see?”

Mitch crumpled the corner of the paper map slightly before straightening out the parchment. “Ohmifuck. That sonofawhore.” His finger moved off the highway indicator on the map in an easterly direction before stopping. He tapped the paper. “I know where she is.”

***

Lorna lay stretched on her back, amazed to still be alive after her slide down what felt like a mountain. Her knee lay bent in a slightly odd angle, but she paid it no attention as she struggled for air. Tilting her head back, she allowed the rain to sluice over her face. Finally able to draw breath, she licked her lips, welcoming the moisture into her dry mouth. Lifting her head to complete an inventory of her prone body, she didn’t think she could face a broken bone at this point.

No sounds of her pursuers.
If they heard me fall, they’ll find me right off.
But keeping still, her breath shallow, she half expected them to slide down beside her. She could hear nothing.

Rising cautiously on her elbows, she eased into a sit, hands reaching for her knees. Nothing felt broken, just bruised. Lifting the limb out of the mud, she straightened her leg before bending it again. Needing the reassurance of a voice in the darkness, she whispered. “No, not broken. Thank God.”

Rolling to her side, she rose up to her knees. She twisted her head from side to side, having no idea where she was in proximity to the shack. Visibility was as bad at her present location as it had been up top.
Sometimes it’s probably better not to know
. She shook her hair off her face. Standing and testing her weight on each leg, she looked from side to side.
Which way?

The rumble of water vibrated through the pitter-patter of rain on leaves.
Rapids? A river
. Which river, she had no idea, but rivers typically led somewhere and better to follow something than to wander aimlessly through the forest, falling down embankments and perhaps drifting right back into the arms of her captors.

With caution, she set off slowly in the direction of the river, stopping to rest what seemed like every few feet to gather more strength to continue on. She counted each step to motivate her movement forward away from ensuing danger. Reaching the river’s edge at last, Lorna realized she could not tarry long.
This is not the great idea I thought it was
. The roar of the rapids would drown out all other noise and leave her vulnerable to Stan and his sidekick, Gap-tooth. Picking a direction, she walked briefly in the swirling water to hide her trail as she increased her pace as much as she dared along the river’s bank.

Sweating, she reached a hand up to wipe her brow. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the air heavy and humid. Drawing the moist air deep into her lungs, she could make out landmarks. A large boulder shaped like a turtle with a smaller formation on top and three at the bottom. Turning her gaze skyward, she noticed a few stars penetrated the cloud cover. How long before the dawn? Four or five hours? Maybe.
I can’t continue in the light of day, they’ll see me for sure.

But she couldn’t continue in her current state either. Pacing, she began to hunt out a hiding spot. Lorna edged back from the verge of the water to the tree line as locating a resting spot where she could hide became priority number one. Finding concealment took little effort—other than tripping over rotten deadfall. The log lay over a deeper depression in the ground. Not bothering to get up from where she had fallen, she rolled into the depression to lie, panting, rubbing her hands along her filthy pants.

After a while, listening intently, Lorna pulled her phone out from under her arm, where it had been nestled within her bra. Covering her face with her hand and leaning close to the ground, she switched it on. The bright face seemed to make the entire forest radiate in an incandescent light. She covered the glow quickly with her other hand, taking a quick note of her surroundings through the glow between her fingers.
Here may work
, she determined. Resting was no longer a simple want but a necessity as she didn’t know if she would be able to stand again.

No signal. Not wanting the light from the phone glowing in the dark, she clicked off the screen of her phone and tucked it back into its hiding spot. She hugged her arms around her middle, striving to deepen her shallowed breath. Tuning her ears to listen for pursuers above the roar of the rushing river close by, she shivered. No crackling of tree branches, no huffing of breath, nothing to indicate that her chasers had any idea of where she was at the moment. Squirming as deep as she could into the depression, she was as close to the underside of the fallen log as she could get. Pulling her knees up, she rolled into a ball, wrapping her arms around her folded legs, her chin resting on her knees. One ear lay pillowed by a layer of wet, dead leaves, while the other brushed the rough under bark. At long last, she allowed her eyes to close and take stock of her situation.

Doesn’t look good.
I’m in the middle of nowhere
.
No cell signal.
But
nothing’s broken. Scratches and bruises are minimal. I’ve been here before, and I will survive this. My baby is safe. Mitch told me my baby is safe
.

How did he know to get Kris and Mariam to safety?
Her thoughts focused on Mitch.
He understood the one thing I needed to hear. How?
She concentrated on deep, slow breathing, focusing her mind. If he can do that, he can find me. She filled her body with oxygen, conscious she needed to relax her mind to strategize her next move.
I’m in the middle of nowhere. He said he was coming for me. How will he find me? I need to get a signal. I need to get a call out to him.

For the first time in her life, Lorna knew she could count on someone else to be there for her. Mitch would come. She believed in him.

Listening for telltale signs, Lorna rolled slightly to peer out from her hiding spot. If she could get back up to higher ground, would she be able to catch the signal from the tower Goth Girl was able to use?
Maybe. It only takes one bar to send a text.

An owl hooted in the distance, causing Lorna to almost jump out of her skin. An answering hoot resounded close by, which seemed to announce the “all clear” to the other creatures of the forest who had bedded down for the storm. Tucking back into her spot, scurrying noises greeted her from all directions. Wondering if she would even be able to discern human noise from the current racket, she curled more tightly into a ball to make herself as small as possible. When what she could only assume was a small doe thumped sure-footed on the decaying log directly above her, she finally relaxed. If the animals didn’t know she was there, she must be well hidden. Unable to resist, her eyes fluttered closed as she drifted off into dreamless oblivion.