Sacrificing Sloan (Sloan Series Book 3) (10 page)

The lesser of two evils, as it were.

My body wasn’t very happy with me at the moment, and truth be told, I wasn’t very happy with it, either. I mean, it was the one that hurt, after all. I was just trying to get us to safety. But with every slip, every twist of my ankle, every bit of uphill walking we had to do, my body wanted me to give up.

All I wanted to do in the world was sit down on the next rock, if just for a second. Just a small measly second where I could rest, relax, breathe. My body screamed at me that if I just sat down for a minute or two, that I’d be fine. Everything would be better, and I would be able to keep going.

My brain, being the smart organ, let me know that if I sat down, I’d never get back up because I wouldn’t want to. I was so tired. I hurt so badly that if I sat down, I was afraid I wouldn’t get back up.

I knew I would have to rest sooner or later, though because night was coming soon, and there was no way we could be out there walking in that. We needed a place to stay, even if I wanted to keep going.

I wish we had left the cabin sooner, then we might have even reached the main road before nightfall. Now… all I wanted was a cave or a rock with an indentation, or I’d settle for even a fallen tree, if there was a way to get dry under it.

“See anything?” Boyd’s breath came fast and hard. He was tired. I was too, but he hadn’t mentioned stopping. Maybe he feared the same thing, only it had to be worse for him. I knew he couldn’t see, but who knew what other sorts of internal issues he had. He could have broken ribs, too. He flinched every time a limb broke around us or something crashed to the forest floor.

I couldn’t help it. I felt bad for him, even if this was totally his fault.

“Not yet. I’m looking for somewhere to stay for tonight.”

“That late already?”

“Yeah. Sun, what there is of it, will be down in no time. Not like it helped much anyway.”

“Oh, believe me… seeing any light would help.”

He stopped, and I slid, nearly taking us both down. I grabbed a tree trunk to keep that from happening and screamed as pain knifed my knee. “Why did you stop?!” I screamed and lowered myself to the ground, not caring that two seconds before I talked myself out of sitting anywhere. I was done… done.

I just needed a rest.

My knee needed to stop trying to kill me!

“I thought I heard something.”

“You thought. You heard. Something.” The words came out slowly, and I hope he understood, menacingly. I’d kill him. No one would fault me for it.

“Yeah. Listen. Don’t you hear it?”

Obviously, he had either no idea of my current situation, or he didn’t care. I figured on the latter, and it made me want to kill him more.

But, instead of doing something I might regret later, I closed my eyes, got really still, and listened. I heard the creek roaring down the trail from us. I heard wind breaking tree branches and toppling others. And I heard something… it sounded like a… maybe a dog howling. Maybe something in pain, but I couldn’t be sure. And it was farther away than we were. Farther up the trail.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Don’t know. I just heard it.”

“Sounds like an animal to me.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“A hurt animal, maybe?”

“Could be…” He tilted his ear toward the sound and was very quiet. What in the world did he think it was? It sure wasn’t the sounds of the highway. If it was an animal, it would be bad. If it was a hurt animal, that would be worse.

“Are you sitting down?” Boyd asked, like he couldn’t believe I’d do such a thing.

“Well, you sort of stopped, and I sort of kept going and my knee sort of hated me.”

“Well, we sort of need to keep moving, so get up.” He lowered his hand to mine, and I felt like smacking it away.

But I knew I couldn’t because I needed him, as much as I did not want to admit it. I needed him as much as he needed me.

Such a simple relationship we had…

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sloan

4:01 PM

I
T TOOK LONGER THAN
I
THOUGHT
it would, to find the dirt road Mrs. Lawrence told us about. I passed it once because it was so well hidden by the grown up ditch on either side of it. So I had to go down the road about another two miles before I found a church to turn around at and came back to the road. It would have been nice if I could have just taken my car down the road and to the cabin.

God—and Mother Nature—had other ideas. There was no way humanly possible for my car to make it down that road. It was pure mud. My tires would get stuck in no time.

“Okay. Now what?” I asked as I pulled the car off of the road and put it into park.

Ray leaned up in his seat and surveyed the situation. I did the same. No way to drive down. That was certain. We would have to walk. “That’s five miles down to the cabin.” I told him.

“Then I guess we’d better get going.” Ray put his hand on the door handle, and I had to stop him.

“Wait. It’s already after four. We won’t have time to walk all the way down there,, much less in the dark.”

“Good thing I brought these.” He produced two flashlights I didn’t know he had out of the duffle bag. And here I thought he hadn’t come prepared.

“I don’t know how good they’ll do, out in this rain.”

Ray sat up in his seat and looked at me very harshly. “We came out all this way, Sloan. All this way. And now you want to, what, go home?”

“No…”

“My brother is out there. He needs me, and I need to get to him. Do you understand that?”

As if he needed to ask me.

It hurt. I’m not going to lie. That he would think so little of me. “I came out here, didn’t I? I want to get him, but I want to be prepared too.”

“Little late for that.” Without another word, he tossed one of the flashlights in my direction and opened his door. I guess he was giving me an option.
Either come with me or stay.

As if I had a choice.

I did have one thing I had to do first. I put my keys in my pocket, so no one could steal my car, and picked up my phone. I dialed Detective Morgan’s number to tell her where we were looking. Detective Morgan was the one on the police force I trusted. She had become somewhat of a friend to me in the whole Boyd fiasco. If there was one person I trusted now, it was her.

She’d yell at me. I didn’t care. I had to tell someone. It went straight to voice mail, which was sort of strange, since when Mackenzie called, it cut off, and she was much closer to the tower in town than we were. Still, I didn’t have time to think about it. I told her what was going on and hung up my phone. I secured it in the inside of my jacket in a zipping sandwich bag I had kept some chips in a few days ago—thank goodness for being a slob. Hopefully, it would keep it dry.

I decided I wasn’t far enough off of the road. Not very far from my car was a blind curve. And while I hadn’t seen a car yet, my luck, one would come around the corner and whack my car. Then I’d be in a mess—and not to mention the driver of the other car.

I couldn’t chance it. Ray would have to wait.

I started the car again, and pulled farther off of the road, which meant farther into the mud. When I figured I’d made it far enough, my tires started spinning.

I put the car in reverse.

Spinning.

I put it in drive.

Spinning.

“No….no… don’t do this to me.”

Reverse again.

Nothing.

I was stuck in the mud!

This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything we’d been through, and now to have my car stuck! There had to be a way for Aaron to push it out, if he had to because if not… that would be bad.

I turned off the ignition, opened the door and yelled for Ray. He was too far away to hear me. I watched as the tip of his head disappeared behind a steep hill, and I knew I had to catch up soon. I’d have to worry about my car later.

I fumbled with the keys, as I put them in my coat pocket, and got out of the car. I locked my doors and started after Ray.

The rain nearly took my breath away as it pelted me harder and harder. I slipped on the mud at first, until I got my balance, then I had to yell at Ray to hold up. With our flashlights lit, we headed down the old dirt road toward our one and only lead.

I hoped it wasn’t some wild goose chase.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Aaron

Dusk

“
W
E SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT A FLASHLIGHT.”

The epiphany hit me at the wrong time. Why I hadn’t had it before we left the cabin, I have no idea, but I didn’t. If we had a flashlight, we could have walked all night, theoretically. But we didn’t. So we couldn’t.

I’d write that down on the checklist of life: when one goes into the woods, take a flashlight.

“Yeah… it would have been smart… for you. Wouldn’t matter much to me.”

I still clung to Boyd’s shoulders, but neither of us were moving very fast. My legs ached. Not just from being broken, but my muscles screamed at me to just stop. The mud made it a thousand times harder to walk, and the rain sure didn’t help.

“Do you see any place to take shelter?” Boyd asked, clearly as exhausted as me. But he kept putting one foot in front of the other. Kept being my human crutch, and I kept being his eyes.

“Yeah… I think I do. It’s not too far. Looks like an indention in the rocks.”

“Sounds good to me. Lead the way.”

It was another ten yards at least until we reached the rocks, and then when we did, we had to walk through the thicket of leaves, grass, and general forest growth. Finally, we made it, and I wanted to cry with happiness.

The indention was bigger than I thought it would be and not a cave, which I was very happy about. I didn’t want to share a cave with anything. Especially something big and growly.

This indention was nice. A hidey hole as it were. It was far enough back that both Boyd and I could get out of the rain and be sheltered by the rather large rock above us. And it was tall enough where we could sit upright. I helped him sit and told him exactly how the rock looked. Then I slid to the ground and stuck my feet out straight in front of me.

And it was bliss.

The rain kept on coming, but it didn’t hit me. Didn’t even hit my feet. Didn’t hit anything, but the rock above my head.

If I thanked God for anything, I’d thank him for this rock. As it was, I was grateful to find it. “Think we’ll be safe here?” Boyd asked. He didn’t look as happy as I did. He was pale actually. Very. Very pale.

“Safer than we were out there.” I answered. I thought about asking if he felt alright, but that would let on that I cared, which I didn’t. I was just curious. What else did we have to talk about?

“Wonder how far we are from the road?” I asked to keep some sort of conversation going. The light was nearly completely gone now. The clouds blocked the moon and the stars, so there was no light. None.

It was incredibly eerie.

Thankfully, I believed I was too tired to let it bother me. I would sleep like a baby, and it wouldn’t matter that Boyd Lawrence was beside me. I didn’t think he’d kill me. He couldn’t. He needed out of there, just like I did.

“Don’t know how far we walked.” Boyd answered. He leaned his head against the rock and closed his eyes. No, he didn’t look good at all. “I hope it isn’t far, and we can find the road first thing in the morning.”

“And then a car comes right off and takes us to the hospital.”

To that, he said nothing.

I listened for his breathing. He was fast asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Sloan

6:43 PM

T
HE SUN WAS GONE NOW.
N
OT
that there was much light from it anyway, but it’s funny how much I missed it,once it went completely away. The woods were eerie, incredibly eerie at night. Even the flashlights that Ray had been so smart to bring weren’t giving me any comfort. The deeper we went into the woods, the more I wanted to be home.

But I wanted to be home with Aaron. I wanted to be wrapped in his arms, protected, warm, safe.

I think what hurt the most was knowing that Aaron was out there, somewhere. I prayed to God he was in the cabin Boyd’s mother told us about because if he wasn’t, if he was having to be out in those elements… I didn’t want to think about it.

“How far do you think we’ve gone?”

“Not far enough, obviously.” Ray wasn’t in the best mood again. I understood it, but I missed him taking care of me. I don’t think he was mad at me for picking Aaron over him. He seemed to genuinely like Mackenzie, even though it had been his idea to leave her behind.

I started to say something, nothing really important, just something to keep the time from dragging, when the mud gave way from under me and my feet slipped. I tried to grab for a tree, but I missed. My body turned, and my belly hit right on the ground, pushing my cell phone into my chest and the wind out of me.

But that wasn’t all.

No, that would have been too easy for me.

Because the ground was muddy, I kept right on sliding. Down and down and down, a good ten feet, until the road leveled off and I came to rest— finally, blessedly.

I just wished I could breathe.

Ray was there in two seconds. He kneeled on his knees next to me and helped me to sit up. “Are you hurt?” There was the Ray I knew and loved, the kind and compassionate one. I flashed my light in his direction because I kept a death grip on it as I fell, and I could see his face—his eyes, he was scared to death.

“I don’t think so.” I answered, and tried my best to stand.

Except for my chest, which hurt so badly, I didn’t feel any worse for wear. I was muddy from head to toe, but what was the difference in mud and rain? I was already soaked. Already miserable. This just added to it in a “who cares” way.

“Here, let me help you.” He took my hand in his, and I stood like a little baby horse after its birth. My legs wobbled, and I didn’t exactly trust myself.

“This road is slick.” I stated the obvious, and he sort of snickered.