33. Dark Timber
Chapter 33
Dark Timber
Reece prayed the cell reception gods would help him out and keep him in a protected service bubble. He hit redial, and Shane picked up on the first ring.
“Shane, what kind of vehicle does Dr. Bunting drive?”
Background noise told him his buddy was on the road, hopefully headed his way. “Got it right here. It’s a dark green Subaru Forester. I’ll text you the license plates. Have you seen anything?”
“Not yet. How about the rest of the team?” They’d fanned out like spokes from a wheel’s hub, but still, they were searching for one small woman in a harsh, vast wilderness that was bracing itself for a winter storm and growing darker as evening raced in. “Can you get that information out to the rest of the team?”
“Already done.” The sheriffs and SAR’s satellite communication gear didn’t have the same limitations as common devices like cell phones. Reece had always appreciated Shane’s partnership, but even more so now. He was damn glad for it.
“Shane, that car Neve and I saw hightailing it out of town the night we spooked the person we thought might be breaking into the clinic? That could have been a Forester. Same size, same boxy shape. And it was dark in color.”
“I had the same thought.”
“Shit! We thought it might have been a kid. What if it was a woman ?”
“We’re on the same wavelength. I followed up with Bunting’s office again.”
“Have they heard from her?”
“Not a peep. But that wasn’t why I contacted them. I had them check some of her pharmaceuticals, starting with the ketamine—for obvious reasons—and they sent me lot numbers.”
Reece’s pitch rose. “And?”
Shane’s sharp intake of air gave Reece his answer. “I’ve only received one batch so far, but a couple of them—”
“Match the ones missing from Neve’s clinic!”
“Yep.”
Reece slammed his palm against the steering wheel. “Christ, I had a—”
“Hunch,” Shane finished for him.
“You think Bunting is behind all of this?”
“Kinda looks that way, though I don’t know what her motive would be. Also have no way to tell if she’s acting alone or if she has help. You be careful, buddy.”
“Always.”
Neve was out there, and Reece had to find her so he could tell her he loved her more than life itself. And he absolutely did love that woman more than life itself. He would sacrifice anything to see her safe.
An unwieldy knot wedged behind his breastbone, making it difficult to breathe. “Come on, sweetheart,” he gritted out. “Show me where you are. Help me find you.”
Beside him, Pearl let out a mournful howl.
Consciousness pulled at Neve, and she woke with a start. The penlight lay in her open hand, reflecting Lark Bunting’s lifeless stare, its feeble beam turning her face more ghoulish somehow. The sight jarred Neve, and her reality came flooding back to her, bringing with it a swirl of confusion and a wave of nausea. How long had she been out?
Couldn’t have been that long.
Dizzying memories tiled together in a haphazard array: Neve whirling in her clinic to face a ninja with a syringe. Grappling with the ninja beside her Tahoe and hearing the clink of something dropping to the gravel. Lark Bunting’s mask riding up her chin as she shoved Neve into the back of her vehicle. Neve grabbing at the mask, pleading, asking her why. Lark’s return snarl. “You tried to ruin me! You’re telling lies about me!”
The images whisked themselves from Neve’s brain as quickly as they had appeared. She tried gripping the light, but her fingers were numb with cold. Her entire body was numb, except her wounded arm. Like a trapped animal gnawing at its own limb, the pain was relentless and pulsed with unbearable fire. More survival tips bobbed in her brain, like not falling asleep in the cold—she’d never wake up again. Maybe the unbearable throbbing in her arm would help her stay conscious.
She glanced back at Lark Bunting, like a car-crash gawker on the freeway unable to tear her gaze away. And then a realization struck her. The vet wore a black quilted winter jacket.
Neve scrambled to her knees and got to work removing the coat, ignoring the spongy feel where blood had soaked in. Between the pain in her useless arm and wrestling with the half-frozen corpse, the process was slow and excruciating. But her blood got pumping and raised her body temperature, and soon beads of perspiration dotted her forehead. By the time she wrangled off the jacket and had it cinched around herself, she was able to trap a decent amount of heat. Her one good arm was in the sleeve while her bad arm remained tucked against her body, zipped inside the coat. Her final acts of defiling the vet’s corpse included turning out every pocket, removing her socks, and plucking the knit cap from her head .
Back at the vehicle, she nearly jumped for joy when she found more treasures—a bottle of water, gloves, and the car’s shiny tailpipe. She could use it as a weapon, though she prayed she wouldn’t need to. The one item she really needed—a cell phone with a GPS beacon—was nowhere in sight. Hell, she’d take the cell phone without the beacon. Or a flare. Or anything that would alert people she was out here. If Lark Bunting had brought along a phone, it could be wedged in the car somewhere or was lying in the woods beyond the crash site where it had been flung.
After a short debate with herself, Neve went against Reece’s advice and began walking around the scene, expanding the perimeter as she went, which led her away from the ravine wall and deeper into the woods. Yes, she was supposed to stay with the car, but if it was stuck at the bottom of a gully, hidden by a heavy canopy, how would anyone ever see it? She would become one of those sad footnotes in the summer when some unfortunate hiker stumbled across the scene and her decaying body.
She shored up her resolve. She would do everything in her power to not wind up a one-liner in the local paper.
Reece edged off the highway at the mile marker Shane had given him. His cell service was gone, but last time he checked in with the deputy, Bunting’s phone was still pinging from the same tower, which narrowed its general location down to a five-to-ten-mile radius. Shane had sent Reece the coordinates, and they were now programmed into Reece’s Garmin GPS. Instead of searching for a needle in a haystack, he would conduct a hasty search—looking for that needle in a hay bale.
On the west side of the road lay a ravine wall that dropped a good twelve feet. Flanking its far side, the gully gave way to Colorado’s dark timber, a tangle of towering evergreens, dark as a storm rolling over the Rockies. The locals called the place Lost Horse Gulch, and it stretched for miles, getting steeper as it went. He prayed the phone wasn’t lying at the bottom of it.
Overhead, the night sky glowered, an angry ceiling of clouds ready to unleash its snow load. He stuffed down his dampening hopes, strapped on his pack and headlamp, and snapped on his handheld spotlight before releasing Pearl from the cab.
“Hunt ’em up,” he told the dog—which was stupid because she was no hunting dog trained to look for pheasants, but hey, talking to her calmed his nerves. She was his searching companion now, and he was grateful for her company.
He began by methodically sweeping the road from side to side with the bright beam, looking for any sign a car had recently left the blacktop. Pearl trotted next to him, her head on a swivel. Checking his GPS as he walked along the side of the road, his mind locked into the familiarity of the task.
“We’re coming for you, Neve.”
I just hope like hell you’re still alive.
Whatever Lark Bunting had injected into Neve’s neck was taking its toll. Adrenaline had ebbed a while ago, and she sank against the rough bark of a pine, utterly spent. Her plan to hike out, if she could even call it a plan, was proving futile, and a frisson of panic threaded through her. Exactly where was she hiking to ? What if her route only took her deeper into the rugged wilderness where humans didn’t roam? What if she’d made a huge mistake by striking out? The chill December air had settled in her body, and her limbs were heavy, seeming to weigh her down with each stumbling step. She could no longer feel her feet or her fingers, her lips or her nose. Her legs couldn’t carry her much farther, and the pain in her arm further drained her meager energy reserves.
She took a sip of water and rested her weary bones. “You only get one minute,” she warned herself. “Then you need to get up and move.” She began counting to sixty, lost track, and started over again.
Pearl took off at a gallop down the road, with Reece in pursuit the entire way, cursing as he went.
“Damn it, dog! Come back here.” This was exactly what Reece had feared when he’d brought her along. Nothing like finding your wife and having to break the news you’d lost her dog.
He quickened his pace, but the damn pit bull lengthened the distance between them anyway. Who knew a meatloaf with stubby legs could move that quickly? Should he run after her or fall back, focus on his search, and pray the knucklehead survived on her own? The answer was a no-brainer, and he didn’t like it.
Despite the floodlight’s lumens, Pearl transformed into a pale blob way out of ahead of him, and he pulled back. His entire focus had to stay on finding Neve. He was mid-spin, heading back to cover the ground he’d missed by running over it to catch Pearl, when an eerie sort of baying echoed off the trees. He changed direction and sped up his steps. Pearl, seated on her haunches, came into sharper view. A mournful wail rose from deep in her chest. He called to her, and she hopped up and began turning in frantic circles, whimpering and whining.
When he reached her, he patted her head. “Good girl. I’m sorry for what I was just thinking about you. Now sit.” Instead of sitting, though, she made a move to launch herself off the road and into the gully. Reece yanked her collar back just in time.
“Jesus, that’s a twelve-foot drop! Sit!” he commanded. Her body quivered, so he straddled her to keep her in place while he clipped on a leash. Then he checked his coordinates. “Still within range,” he muttered.
He stared down at the pit bull. “You’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you, girl?” She answered with a growly “Woof!”
“Okay. Let’s do this. We’re a team.” He illuminated the edge of the gully where asphalt met vegetation. A crease in the mat of dead needles and leaves caught his attention. Could have been a tire track or nothing at all. Then he pointed the light into the ravine. Dark timber ate light like a black hole, and he took his time shining it on every square inch between the trees.
He was on the verge of moving on, sure the dog had alerted on some critter, when his eye snagged on something out of place. He swept the beam over it, then changed the angle to catch a different view. There! The faint glimmer of silver. Had the sky been clear and the moon high, it might have been a reflection off of the forest floor, but the thick clouds were obscuring the light from the moon and stars. His pulse rocketed, and he reminded himself it could have been anything. Creeping closer to the edge, he aimed the beam at the same spot. Another glint appeared on the outer edge of the pool of light, and he directed the light that way. Squinting, he nearly let out a whoop.
“I think that’s part of a car, Pearl.” Her mouth broadened in a dog smile. “Yeah, you’re a smart girl. We need to find out if it’s the one we’re looking for.” He began a series of calculations.
In the end, he decided to lower himself down the ravine wall with a simple rope rappel. Quick, easy, and the technique didn’t require a harness. He anchored his line on a sturdy ponderosa pine, Neve’s teasing words about him being a mountain goat “rappelling all over the place” dancing in his brain. It wasn’t really rappelling—he was simply walking down the face of the ravine wall. First he donned thick leather gloves and lowered his pack. Next, he looped the rope around his hip, through his legs, and over his shoulder. Now came the tricky part: cradling Pearl against his body in a sling. He had debated locking her in his truck, but he was working against the clock. Besides, he never would have discovered this scene if not for her. What—or who—else might she lead him to? Yeah, he was not leaving her behind.
Finally, he left a signal marker, so Shane or any other SAR member could locate the point where he’d gone over the edge, and lowered himself and the dog, the friction of the rope around his body slowing their descent. Less than a minute later, they were at the bottom of the gully.
Drifting in and out, Neve counted and recounted, her body relaxing with every number. Something sharp poked her ear, and she shot up to her feet, remembering her injured arm too late. A yelp escaped her. When she bent down to feel what had pricked her, she discovered a tiny branch with a sprinkling of pine needles sticking out from the trunk she’d chosen as her armchair.
“That was a warning,” she told herself. “Move.” She picked up her feet and stomped them on the ground, trying to get feeling back into them so she could continue her march through the black-barked sentinels looming all around her. With Reece’s warning about leaving the scene floating through her brain, her foreboding grew. But what choice did she have? Waiting for rescue equaled death, and with every fiber in her being, she longed to live.
Reece crouched down beside the body of a woman he presumed was Dr. Lark Bunting. A slurry of emotions tightened in his chest. Horror at the discovery, relief at not having found Neve in the same condition, and amplified worry at finding no trace of Neve, period.
He took in the vet’s hiking boots on the ground and her sockless feet. Maybe, just maybe, Neve had been in good enough shape that she’d removed them. And if she had, then maybe, just maybe, she’d also taken crucial pieces of winter garb to help her survive the cold.
Pearl’s nose worked overtime around a raised tree root. She trotted to the car and spent time at one of the windows, then let her nose lead her to Reece. The dog raised her square head and stared into the shadowy wall of woods as if looking for something there but not daring to venture in that direction.
Fuck! If Neve had wandered off into the dark timber, there was no telling if he’d ever find her. Dark timber swallowed everything—and everyone. He rose to his feet and yelled her name, over and over.
A shout came back at him, but it wasn’t Neve’s voice. It was a man’s from above. “Reece Hunnicutt, is that you down there?”
“Shane!” Reece hollered. “Yeah, I found Dr. Bunting’s car … and Dr. Bunting’s body. ”
“Any sign of Neve?”
“No, not yet.”
“I’m coming down. A few of the boys are already headed this way, so we’ll be able to fan out and find her.”
It only took a minute before Shane stood beside him and looked down at the corpse. He made the sign of the cross.
Reece pointed at the towering woods beyond the debris field. “Pearl keeps looking toward the dark timber, and I’m worried that Neve went in that direction, maybe hoping to find a road. But if she’s hurt, confused …” He didn’t need to finish the thought for his SAR buddy.
Pearl lowered her head and chuffed.
“What is it?” Shane asked.
Reece held up his hand. “Shh! Hear that?”
Voices! Neve heard men shouting! The sound was muffled, though. Was it another hallucination? She was still among the tall, tangled pines, trying to negotiate the unfamiliar rises and falls and crevices of the treacherous ground as she headed back toward the crash site. She had decided to turn around and go back, but piles of deadfall wider than she was tall blocked her way, forcing her to go far off her path, and she was less sure of her direction now than when she’d first started.
If she really had heard voices, she needed to let them know she was here. She leaned all her weight against a tree, took a sip of water to cool her throat, and filled her lungs with air. Closing her eyes, mustering all her strength, she yelled out a strangled, “I’m here!” but the forest seemed to absorb her cry. She collapsed to her knees. Metal clanked before she hit the ground.
Reece wasn’t sure what he’d heard—a reedy noise that could have been a wounded rabbit screeching for its life—but the dull clank that followed amped up his senses. He patted his thigh. “Come on, Pearl. Let’s find her.” He tugged on the dog’s leash, and she took a few cautious steps before falling in beside him.
“I’m going in,” he announced.
“You got your beacon on, right?” Shane called after him.
Reece turned and shot him a look.
“Right. Of course you do.” One side of Shane’s mouth hitched up. “You might want to take this too.” He tossed him a standard-issue two-way radio used by the sheriff’s department.
Reece easily caught the device and slipped it inside his coat pocket. “Thanks, man. Usual frequency?”
“Yep.”
Reece turned his back on his friend and picked a route through the trees.
The floodlight’s illumination dimmed as he moved into the dark timber, its beam seeming to disperse in the darkness. He picked his way over boulders and tree roots, skirting ankle-twisting holes and other hidden traps beneath slippery detritus. Each time he shouted Neve’s name, the air seemed to gobble up his voice. Still, he yelled out, stopped, and listened for a return call. The going was agonizingly slow, and Pearl had either lost the scent or had run out of energy as she jogged beside him, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.
He paused to give himself and her a drink and heard another soft clink—still muffled, but he was sure it was a little louder this time.
He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Neve!” The plink of metal was faint but unmistakable now. There was a cadence to it, and he followed the noise. Sound traveled in deceiving ways in Colorado’s dark timber, so he stopped and listened each time he yelled her name, letting him adjust the direction he and Pearl traveled. Time seemed to move backward, leaving too many minutes for his imagination to run amok. Visions from past missions surfaced, and he locked them out, refusing to picture what he might find when he reached the source of the noise.
Pearl’s ears pricked up, and soon she was tugging at the leash. “Hang on, girl. I’m not cutting you loose in this stuff so you can disappear.” But as Pearl’s pace picked up, so did Reece’s excitement .
Then the sound stopped. He pushed up a slope, fighting through branches as he went. When he reached the top, he aimed the floodlight in every direction, sweeping slowly. A dull gleam moved, catching him off guard. It rose up in dark shadows as if an apparition wielded it, then came down and struck a hunk of granite.
Clank! Struck again, with a weaker stroke this time. Clink!
“Neve!” The clanking died. “Hang on! I’m coming to you.”
Was Neve on the other end of the silvery object making the metallic noise? Pearl’s whining told him she was, but he dared not let his emotions overrun him. He ate up the distance as quickly as the terrain would allow.
The sweetest melody he’d ever heard floated up to him—a barely audible gasp, followed by his name, uttered from Neve’s lips. “Reece.”
He dropped to his knees at the exact moment Pearl lunged for Neve, her tongue windmilling. Neve sucked in a breath as though bracing herself. In a heartbeat, he managed to corral the elated dog before she jumped on Neve, and he tied her off. “Sorry, meatloaf. I promise you can get your licks in later, after I make sure your mom’s okay.”
Pearl whined behind him while he hovered over Neve, not daring to touch her. He mustered his calmest voice—which in no way reflected his ping-ponging emotions. “Tell me where you’re hurt, babe.”
She was slumped against a huge tree trunk, dressed all in black, a knit cap covering her blond hair. Had she been unconscious, he might have walked right past her. If not for the pipe—God, she was smart! Except she’d wandered off … Nope, he’d worry about that later.
She looked up at him. “I thought you called your rescues ‘sweetheart.’”
He couldn’t hold back a grin. “I’ll call you anything you want, as long as you tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m woozy, definitely lost, I probably have frostbite, and my arm’s broken. Otherwise, I’m in awesome shape. Ready to take you on in a game of hockey, ace.” One side of her mouth curled up in a feeble attempt at a smile.
“Funny girl. Is your face hurt?”
“No.”
“Your head?”
She brushed the back of her hand against her forehead. “A headache, probably from being knocked out. ”
“Then I’ll be gentle.” Leaning down, he cradled her face and kissed her softly, pouring every ounce of gratitude and relief into it. When he drew back, tears leaked down his face into his beard. He brushed them away.
Her eyes were closed, and she hummed, “That was nice.”
“And there’s plenty of time for a lot more of that later. What do you say we get you out of here?”
“I’m not sure I can walk.”
“Leave that up to me, okay? I got you.” Always.
She lifted an eyelid. “Is there going to be a lot of jostling involved?”
“Nah. It’ll be like a magic carpet ride. And if you’re a good girl and do what I tell you, I might even take you rappelling all over the place .”
“Ooh, I love it when you talk mountain goat.”
“And I love you —even when you don’t talk mountain goat.” He didn’t miss how her eyes snapped open and went wide. He winked at her and hailed Shane on the two-way.