CHAPTER 78 Cross
Cross
AN HOUR AFTER ALEX CROSS stranded Brett in his truck, his adrenaline is still pumping.
Now he knows more about what happened to Damon that morning: He was riding his bike near the reserve and got chased and harassed by two rednecks in a pickup.
They stole his bike, phone, and laptop, then ditched his bike in the reserve and tossed his phone and laptop in a creek somewhere.
But where did Damon go from there? Where did he end up? How could he have simply vanished?
Think!
Maybe Damon followed the truck up to the trailhead and went looking for his bike after the two goons left. Maybe he got lost or hurt.
Just because the search teams haven’t found him doesn’t mean he’s not out there.
Alex makes a hard turn on a dark street and heads for someplace even darker.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s driving back up to the trailhead in the Mason Farm Biological Reserve. With every turn in the road, his headlight beams rake across the dense woods and underbrush.
At night, the place looks haunted. It makes no sense to be here. But Alex can’t rest. Not now.
He parks the car. His heart is going a hundred beats a minute. He steps out, pats the gun in his pocket, and shines the flashlight of his cell phone around.
There must be another trail here. Another way down. There has to be.
Twenty minutes later, his heart leaps when his hunch is proved right.
Not far from the trailhead but far enough that you’d miss it, especially with the other two trails so clearly marked, is another path, an older trail obscured by a tangle of dead branches.
When Alex shoves aside the fallen branches, he sees a well-beaten footpath leading down the slope. Narrow, but passable.
He holds his light at hip level and plunges in.
It’s not easy in the dark. He keeps getting hooked on briars and whacked by small branches. He waves his light from side to side, looking for clothing, scraps of paper, any trace of a human being.
Suddenly, the trail pitches down at a steep angle.
Alex feels his feet slipping out from underneath him.
He grabs a branch, but it snaps off in his hand.
A split second later, he’s on his back, rocks jabbing into his spine.
His phone is somewhere in the bushes. Alex is breathing heavy, his chest heaving.
He looks up through the foliage to the sky dotted with stars.
He closes his eyes and cries out, “Damon! Where are you?”
A few seconds later, he hears a voice call from below, weak and distant.
“Hello?”