Chapter 21
WOLFE
When I opened my eyes, it was dusk, and my head throbbed sluggishly. Rain had soaked everything. My jacket, my pants, my boots. Something hard dug into my back, and there was a heavy weight on my chest.
I tried to sit up and felt wrenching pain in my shoulder as my arm refused to cooperate.
I sucked in a breath as everything that had happened came crashing back, and panic made my pulse race.
Don’t panic. Breathe and focus. Assess. Strategize.
Trace’s words were a lifeline from another time.
My arms were trapped behind me, but the right one had a little give. I forced my stiff, cold fingers to move.
Rough, damp tree bark. Smooth braided nylon knots familiar to me after years of rock climbing.
I wiggled my hips experimentally and felt a tree root attempt to impale me from behind. The weight on my chest moved with me, and I realized it was my daypack.
“What the fuck?” My voice sounded slurred and wrong, like my tongue was taking up too much space in my head.
I was tied to the base of a tree like some kind of damsel in an old-timey movie.
Jake had tied me to a tree, which meant now I was his prisoner. He’d escalated from drugging me to holding me hostage. What would he do next?
I tried to stop panicking and listen, concentrating on my breathing. Nothing. No sounds and no trace of him. I was alone.
Thank fuck.
Correction: I was alone, drenched, drugged, frozen, and tied to a fucking tree by a deranged asshole I’d trusted who could return at any moment.
Was Jake pissed that I’d passed out? Had he gone to get the recording equipment, or was he somewhere else? Would he come back twice as angry and ready to hurt me further?
No fucking way.
I blew out a breath and focused on the problem.
I clenched and unclenched my fingers a few times for maximum circulation, then felt around the rope again.
My shoulders screamed from the movement, and I cursed my backpack straps for hindering my reach.
Eventually, I figured out the knotted area of the rope behind me.
Jake didn’t know me, so he didn’t realize I’d grown up with a self-defense instructor who’d shared survival techniques like bedtime stories, just in case some crazed Jude Marian fan tried to kidnap one of us. He’d probably assumed I’d be too paralyzed by my own fear to escape.
I laughed a little hysterically. A fair enough assumption, honestly. After all, I’d gone through nearly thirty years afraid.
Was it just yesterday that Trace had asked what was the worst thing that could happen if Wolfe Marian tried for a music career? All the things I’d listed for him had loomed so large and terrifying then. The comparisons. The weight of everyone else’s opinions and emotions. My own fears.
Funny how this situation hadn’t made the list.
Now that I was experiencing it, all the other stuff paled in comparison.
I loved Trace. And I knew he… well, that he cared about me, at the very least. He wanted a real relationship with me. The future I wanted was finally within reach if I just had the courage to reach out and grab it.
Assuming I survived this fucking ordeal first.
My frozen fingers trembled as I worked at the knot, letting my fingers solve the puzzle.
One hand came free from the rope, swinging down and unleashing excruciating pins and needles in my shoulder joint.
I bit back a whimper of pain, took a deep breath, and concentrated on freeing my other wrist. The fact that my hands and the rope were soaking wet didn’t help.
The nylon seemed to tighten and chafe with every movement.
Finally, my other wrist dropped out of the rope, and I sat there stupidly holding my wrist in my hand until the feeling came back in that arm. Then I forced myself to stand up, trying hard not to hear the squelch in my boots from my sodden socks.
I was experienced enough to know this would spell terrible blisters by the time I made it back to the trailhead, but Jake could come back at any moment, which meant I didn’t have time to wait around for my socks to dry.
It took me a moment to orient myself before heading off.
I couldn’t bring myself to drink from my water bottle since I didn’t trust that Jake hadn’t drugged it, too.
Besides, the pack was protecting the only dry spot on my body—my chest—and I didn’t want to take the chance of giving up that retained heat by opening my jacket and rooting around in my pack.
I moved down the trail as quietly and swiftly as I could, listening for any sounds of approach.
The trail narrowed quickly as I moved past the trees, and cold rain shafted through the branches to lay glistening wet streaks across the ground.
The light was nearly gone now, and the deepening shadows were disorienting, making me second-guess every step I took.
I couldn’t believe this had actually happened. Kidnapped at the ripe old age of thirty, not because my attacker wanted to ransom me to my famous father but because he wanted to ransom me to… myself. Because he wanted to trade on my fame. My parents would appreciate the irony.
Actually, no, they wouldn’t. They’d lose their minds. So would Trace.
They’d murder Jake. And then happily spend the rest of their lives in jail.
After they had a collective heart attack from learning that I was Fletcher Coe.
Fuck, imagine if this was how they found out? After five and a half years of hiding, of burying that half of myself behind thick, reinforced walls, would it really be Jake who brought everything crashing down?
He claimed he wanted a break for Shay. Financial security. And I didn’t doubt it was true. But I was pretty sure this was about resentment, too. Humiliation.
About needing someone to blame for years of disappointment.
My boot caught on an exposed root, and I stumbled, catching myself against the nearest tree trunk.
I blew out a breath and stood back up, silently thanking the tree for the quick save.
After a few more minutes down the trail, a rustling noise moved through the trees in front of me. I stepped backward instinctively—
And the edge of my boot landed on a jagged rock hidden beneath the dirt and leafy debris of the trail.
My ankle rolled violently.
Pain tore up my leg so fast and sharp it stole the breath from my lungs. I crashed hard on my hip against the base of a tree, and the flash of a deer’s white tail disappeared through the trees as the world tilted beneath a wave of nausea.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
I tried to stand and immediately regretted it as agony shot through my ankle hard enough to make my vision blur.
Definitely not okay. A strained laugh escaped me before I could stop it, even though my eyes smarted with tears. “Idiot.”
I thought of just how serious my situation was. Injured and alone on a dark trail slick with mud, not knowing if or when Jake would return.
It took me a minute to come to terms with my new reality. If I was going to get out of there before the sun completely set and the remaining light blacked out every hazard on the trail, I was going to have to crawl.
So that’s what I started doing.
Any other time, I might have been embarrassed that Trace’s name repeated in my head like some pathetic mantra. Now, alone in the mud with a busted ankle and the rain coming sideways through the trees, I stopped being embarrassed about it.
As I slogged through the mud on my hands and knees, I thought Trace’s name as loud as I could, like his presence could warm me from the inside out. Like he’d somehow feel it from wherever he was and come find me.
There was no one better at finding lost things than Trace Bishop. Lost hikers, lost causes, lost men who should have known better—he had a gift for it. I’d never once doubted that he’d find me.
And maybe I should have been embarrassed by needing him as badly as I did. Maybe I should have worried that it would make me seem weak or childish. But I couldn’t quite make myself feel it.
Trace hadn’t treated me that way. Especially not since he found me again. At every opportunity, he’d shown that he trusted and believed in me. When my fear threw up roadblocks, he knocked them down, reminding me of my talent and competence.
The image of his face kept me going. His eyes. His smile. His patience and care. That same dependable steadiness I’d seen at eleven, and sixteen, and then again nineteen, when I’d left Thornton.
He’d been the only one to pull me back from my own demons at Fisherman’s Wharf. His soft, unshakeable support had made me want to hurl myself into sea-lion-infested waters rather than disappoint him.
I felt that same way now.
I wanted him to know that he could depend on me, too. That he could trust me. That I was willing to fight to be with him, even if it meant crawling miles on muddy knees.
Even if it meant facing down Jake and whatever plan he had in store.
After a while, I began to doubt myself when I was even colder, even muddier, and with throbbing hands and knees, in addition to the head and ankle.
I wondered if maybe I wouldn’t get out of there before Jake returned.
There’d been several trails leading from the single trailhead.
Even if Trace managed to find out where we’d gone, it would take him hours to narrow down which trail I was on.
And what would happen if Jake came back when Trace was here? My brain spun with horrible possibilities until my body decided to take a break with or without my consent.
I crawled off the side of the trail and into the trees, hoping to at least stay hidden while I talked myself into getting back on the trail and continuing.
And that’s when I heard the sound of heavy boots approaching.