Sacrificing Sloan (Sloan Series Book 3) (13 page)

I didn’t want it to mean nothing.

So, I sucked it up and started back up the trail on my belly, the same way I had before I slid down. My knuckles scraped against the rocks, and my fingernails bent to the quick, but I couldn’t take the time to whimper and complain about it.

From the corner of my eye, I saw something. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but it definitely had my interest. It was a little bit north of my rock home and looked like a white mound of dirt from the distance.

Of course, I knew that was weird because, you know, there were no white mounds of dirt around here. Still… I knew something was wrong with it, and I had to go investigate.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too far off the trail.

I slid off the trail and into the thick grass. Sticks and twigs pulled against my pants and shirts, skinned any piece of bare skin they could find. And my leg, I’d given up thinking about the pain. What good did it do? It was going to hurt, no matter what, anyway.

I made it to a tree and leaned my back against it. I’d been moving a good thirty minutes and needed a break. Maybe this thing I was going toward was nothing, and I’d just wasted my energy…

Still…

The white thing moved.

It sat up, and I could, for the first time, make out what it was.

It was a man on his knees.

It was Boyd.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Sloan

6:30 AM

W
E COULDN’T GET
M
ACKENZIE WARMED UP.

I fought everything within me to ask her questions or yell at her for being so stupid, but first I had to get her warm.

It was May, but it sure didn’t feel it.

The rain beat against the windows, but not as hard as it had yesterday. Thank goodness for small favors.

It was the water that scared me more. It kept rising, and I knew if we stayed there much longer, we couldn’t get out. Who knew how far the water would come up, even taking the cabin off of the foundation, and turning it into a house boat…

There wasn’t much time.

Ray sat with Mackenzie and rubbed her arm to try to warm her up. I’d never seen a person as pale as Mackenzie was. She looked like death warmed over and was burning up with a fever.

“The flu?” I asked Ray when I finally got everything settled.

Mackenzie leaned her head on Ray’s shoulder and shivered in his arms. “Probably. Wasn’t she coughing at my house?”

“Yeah, but can it hit that fast?”

“I guess if you are out in a rainstorm when you shouldn’t be… how did she even know where we were?”

And then I felt like the worst person in the world.

“The note.” Mackenzie said weakly, as she tried to raise her head up.

“The what?” Ray placed his fingers under her chin and tilted her head to look at her. “What did you say, sweetie?”

“Note at your house.” Mackenzie’s head lulled back on Ray’s shoulder and her hair fell in her face.

I wanted to crawl in a hole.

When Ray looked up at me, he had a look in his eyes that I’d never seen before—not by him. His brows were knitted together, and he looked as if he wanted to come over there and yell at me. With Mackenzie lying on him, he couldn’t, but I doubted it would keep him from yelling at me for long. “You left her a note?”

“She needed….”

“You left her… a note!” I flinched when he screamed at me because it wasn’t Ray. It was one thing to hear Boyd or Aaron scream, but when it was Ray, I felt about
this
tall. Which wasn’t much.

“I felt bad, and I wanted her to know that we were looking for Aaron, and to not worry. I never told her where we were going. I guess she assumed.”

“I guess she went to the falls and followed that trail like we were going to.” It was like a light bulb went off over his head. “The falls… the phone call! That’s why the call cut out. Because of the horrible phone reception by the falls.”

My heart sank, and I wanted to be sick. “She wanted to know where we were….” I knew it was the truth, just like Mackenzie had told me herself. I’d let her down. “I did this…”

I guess Ray had had enough. After everything… he’d just had enough. “You did everything, Sloan. All of this… we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

“What?” I backed up like he’d hit me in the stomach, even though he was right. It was all my fault. All of it.

“When I asked you to help me keep Mackenzie safe, you promised me you would. In what world is she safe?”

“I didn’t know she would follow…”

“You didn’t have to know! You never should have left that note. Never! Now look at her. How are we supposed to look for my brother, when we need to get her out of here? She’s sick, and she needs a hospital.”

Tears stung my eyes, and I grabbed the counter to keep myself from falling over. I wanted to fall apart. It would be so easy, but I couldn’t. My friend needed me. Ray needed me. Aaron needed me.

Or maybe, none of them did.

Maybe they would all be better off without me.

But I could decide that later. For now, we needed to get Mackenzie out and to the hospital. I didn’t think she’d make it very long in that damp cabin.

The only question was… how.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Aaron

Daylight

“
B
OYD?”
O
F ALL THE THINGS
I
expected to see, I can’t say Boyd Lawrence was one of them. In my mind, I figured he was long gone. I didn’t think he’d ever come back. And there he was, on his knees in the middle of the forest.

There was something about him. Something that was entirely wrong.

“Boyd.” I said again, trying to decide if I wanted to crawl over to him or not. It took a lot of energy to move anywhere, and I didn’t exactly want to waste it on Boyd.

“I heard a noise.” He said in a very far off voice, like someone in a trance, only I didn’t think he was in a trance. I’d never seen anything like it, and I just wanted to crawl back to the trail and up to the road—if there even was a road up there. I figured with my luck, there wouldn’t be.

“I didn’t know where you were. I figured you’d taken off.” Might as well keep him talking. Maybe I’d get something out of him because, truth be told, it would be easier for me to get back to the road with help. Boyd was that help.

“I heard a noise.” He answered again in that really eerie sounding tone he had going for him.

It sent shivers up my spine. “Did you find what was making it?”

Boyd said nothing.

“Boyd!” I yelled, trying to snap him out of whatever he had going on with him. I knew he was crazy, but this was beyond anything I had expected from him. He had his hand on his knees, and his head bowed like he was looking at something. Only he couldn’t see, and there wasn’t anything to look at, except trees and mud puddles even if he could.

Boyd didn’t even acknowledge me, so with a huge sigh, I steeled my nerves and rolled on my belly to fight the bushes and sticks and tall grass, until I got to Boyd and smacked some sense into him.

Was there such a thing as forest madness?

It took what seemed like forever, but I finally got over to him and started to smack his knee, when my eyes caught a glimpse of something. At first, I wasn’t sure what it was, just a jumble of clothes from the looks of it, and my mind couldn’t exactly figure out why clothes would be so far out here.

Then I saw the leg.

And the arm.

And the face.

“I heard a noise.” Boyd whispered. His voice caught in his throat.

It was probably a good thing he couldn’t see. I forced myself up to sitting, so I could examine the body further.

Sure enough…

“Is it him?” Boyd asked. He had started rocking back and forth, and his voice shook.

“Boyd…” How could I tell him?

“Is it him?” He said more forcefully. “I heard a noise. You were snoring, and I couldn’t wake you up. It said my name, so I crawled out in the rain to check it out. I took my time and followed the sound until it stopped. I yelled for it. I yelled for you. Nobody said anything, and I thought I was alone. But I kept going because I didn’t know how else to go. It wasn’t like I could find the cave again. Next thing I knew, my hand touched something really sticky. Not like the water. Thicker. I felt around and found an arm and a body, so I know it’s a person, Aaron…” his words came faster. His breathing sped up, and his body rocked faster. “I know it is a person, Aaron. I felt his face, but… I can’t tell… I can’t… Is it my dad?”

I didn’t answer right away.

“Aaron!” He yelled and wiped the tears that rolled down his cheek. “It is. Isn’t it? I found my dad.”

Instead of hitting him in the knee like I had planned on, I placed my hand on his shoulder to try to offer some comfort. “Yeah, man. Yeah. It’s your dad.”

He didn’t slap my hand away. He blinked, and more tears rolled down his cheeks and mixed with the rain, before they fell to the ground. “He was yelling for us.”

That was the sound I’d heard! He’d been yelling for help, and I didn’t understand it! “You don’t know that for sure.” It was to make us both feel better. I didn’t know Mr. Lawrence that well, but he’d been nice to me and I sure didn’t want anything to happen to him.

“Don’t lie to me.” Boyd wiped away the tears and ran his fingers through his hair. “I know it was him. I know it’s my fault he’s dead. Why is he off the trail, huh? Are we even close to it?”

“Trail is about twenty feet to our left.”

“I don’t get it. I don’t… look at him, Aaron. Can you see what happened?”

I looked, but I couldn’t exactly tell. He was covered in mud. He might have had a broken leg, but I couldn’t see clearly. Heart attack maybe? I had been worried about it in the cabin before he even left. What did it matter, though, really? He was dead. We’d find out how eventually, well, if we got ourselves out of the woods first and didn’t end up like him. “How did he die, Aaron? Was he mauled by something? Eaten? Did he slip and fall? What?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see anything. Maybe he had a heart attack. This was a steep climb, and it’s not the ideal conditions to be in.”

I looked down and saw Boyd’s hand holding his father’s. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t watch it. It made Boyd seem more human, and I couldn’t think of him like that. I didn’t want to. He was a means to an end, and that was it.

Still…

My chest hurt so bad watching as he rubbed his fingers over Mr. Lawrence’s bloody and mud-covered knuckles. I felt something for Boyd I never expected to ever feel—compassion.

“Boyd…” I said with as much compassion as I could. This was difficult for him, and I knew that. I didn’t want to be a jerk about it. Being a jerk would do me no good. “We need to go.”

I debated telling him about the tracks on the trail, but decided against it. If I were Boyd, I sure wouldn’t want to be caught. People looking for us would get him caught. Besides, those tracks were probably the last things on his mind. They were all I could think about.

“I can’t leave him.” He kept rocking. Kept rubbing his fingers on his daddy’s knuckles.

I bit my lip and leaned back against a rock. How could I talk Boyd into leaving? There was no way we could carry Mr. Lawrence out. He was, for lack of a much better and much more politically correct word, dead weight. We had a hard enough time taking care of each other. So I had to tread lightly. I had to talk him into leaving him… or I had to sit and wait for whoever had gone down the trail to come back up.

I didn’t know if it made it up… I don’t know if it did any good… but watching Boyd and his father… thinking about Ray… worrying about Sloan… I did something I never thought I’d do. I prayed.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sloan

7:08 AM

“
W
E CAN’T STAY HERE.”
I
SAID
, ever so helpfully. The creek was growing swifter the longer we stayed, and I worried that we wouldn’t be able to get out, if we waited any longer.

Mackenzie needed help.

We needed to find Aaron, and by the looks of Mr. Lawrence’s truck, Mr. Lawrence.

Ray helped Mackenzie lay her head on the table, and he scooted out from behind the table. First place he went was the trashcan next to the stove. He scattered a few pieces of paper at first, and then he hesitated. “What?” I asked and leaned over closer. He might not be very happy with me at the moment, but he wouldn’t compromise finding his brother over it.

He reached his hand in deeper, and in a second I figured out what he hesitated over.

A bloody rag.

“Someone was here with Mr. Lawrence.”

“Unless it was Mr. Lawrence that got hurt.”

Ray threw the rag back into the trash and stood, wiping his hands on his pants. In the scheme of things, that blood was probably the least nasty thing he’d touched today. He walked around the room examining things.

The longer he looked, the more antsy I became. The water roaring outside and the rain that just would not stop made me feel like a caged animal. The walls closed in on me, and I wanted to just get out of there! I wished he would just pick Mackenzie up over his shoulder and take her out, so we could at least get out of there. So we could be useful. This was just as bad as sitting at home or sitting in the hospital, except there we were in worse shape.

“Ah! Look,” Ray pointed to something on a bench seat next to the window, and so I went over to check it out. Sure enough…

“Blood.” It didn’t look incredibly old either. It was dried, but not faded.

“Someone was here.”

“Someone bleeding.”

Ray nodded. “In the Lawrence cabin.”

“So it could have either been Boyd, Mr. Lawrence or…”

“Aaron.” Ray finished for me. His eyes grew wide, and now he looked like the caged animal.

“Why did they leave, then? And where did they go?”

“Maybe they left because of the water. I know I’m not looking forward to crossing it again. And where they went, they had to have gone up the same trail we did.”

“Or the one Mackenzie followed.” I added. If Mackenzie got there, then they might have too.”