Chapter 7
CHAPTER
After two hours spent tracking through just the first few miles of hill country, Kendra realized promising wasn’t definitely the right word for the area.
It was rough and craggy; she’d had to fight through the vines clinging to the huge boulders, and she’d fallen several times in the ruts around the banks of heather. No sign of animal or human habitation.
Cambry had followed her up to the first hill then given up in disgust and gone back down to the helicopter.
She might have been discouraged enough to have given up and tried the creek site instead—except that as Cambry was leaving, she caught a glimpse of a deep break in the cliff wall that might be a cave.
It was half hidden by a huge boulder, but it stopped her in her tracks.
Caves. Lynch had always been fascinated by caves.
She wasn’t gullible enough to believe this was some kind of sign, but he might have been curious to explore that area if he’d caught sight of that cave.
It wouldn’t hurt to check it out . . .
It didn’t hurt, but it turned out to be extremely difficult to work her way around four equally huge boulders to reach the front of the gaping cave opening. But she finally made it with only a few minor scrapes and bruises on her arms.
She drew a deep breath as she squeezed past the last barrier boulder and almost fell on the ground in front of the cave opening.
Then she sat up and looked around. The dark opening facing her was definitely a cave, but it was a very shallow one.
Probably not worth all the effort she had made to come here.
She reached into her pocket for her phone and lit the flashlight.
She shone the beam into the darkness of the cave.
Yes, very shallow. No sign of habitation.
It probably was a waste of time just as—
“Shit!”
Footprints!
Not in the cave. On the earth near where she was sitting. The dirt was still faintly damp and the impression was unmistakable. The print of a large man wearing walking shoes. Probably size eleven or twelve. Lynch wore a size eleven.
She was starting to shake. Was it Lynch who had been here?
She had to be sure. She got to her knees and crawled into the cave, shining the beam all around the surfaces.
Clean. She crawled out again. The footprint was definitely clear here.
It was deep; perhaps he’d been bearing all his weight on one foot to climb out from behind the other boulders as she had done.
Why? Had he been a prisoner? But whoever had captured him must have not known how easy it would be for him to escape.
It would have been child’s play for Lynch after his varied career.
Stop guessing. Just be glad he was probably well and free. Now she had to find out what had happened after he’d left that footprint. And where he’d gone after he’d climbed over that boulder leaving the cave. She’d only searched a small fraction of these hills so far; he must have left some clue.
She hoped. Oh, Lord, how she was hoping.
She’d searched that cave already and found nothing. She crawled back and made another search.
No, still nothing.
She crushed down the disappointment. She couldn’t give up.
She hadn’t searched the stretch of land before the entrance of the cave where she’d located the footprint.
He might have left something for her to find there since he’d been so careful to leave that cave in an almost sterile state.
So she’d search the entire area before she gave up on the cave.
Behind every single rock. Inside every nook and cranny . . .
And that’s what she did. But she still almost missed the small, muddy leather-wrapped package lodged behind a loose stone near the lower boulders that bordered the cave.
The package had obviously been mud-smeared to blend with the boulders, but when she wiped the area clean it revealed a sleek six-by-eight-inch package.
Inside was a rock with indentations that obviously had nothing to do with the surrounding boulders.
Carvings? Or numbers? She couldn’t decide.
But what did it have to do with Lynch? She got down from the boulder and leaned against the cave wall as she tried to carefully loosen the muddy container to better examine the contents.
She finally was able to peel all the mud off the package, but it only revealed another soft leather sleeve that contained an object that felt hard to the touch.
Steel-hard.
“What the hell, Lynch?” she murmured. “What have you been up to?”
Well, with any luck, she was going to find out. She began to carefully peel the leather sleeve from around the object.
But something was definitely wrong.
Only a few minutes later she realized it wasn’t a sleeve she was unfolding.
It was a glove.
She gazed down in shock at the five extended fingers that were now being revealed.
And she realized that fine leather glove was protecting a hand that had been disconnected at the wrist!
She almost dropped the blasted thing in revulsion before she caught herself.
No, Lynch would never have been party to sending her this little horror package to find. Lynch’s hand? That was an even more terrible thought. She forced herself to look more closely.
Then she gave a gasp of relief as she trained the beam of the light on her phone at the hand.
Because it wasn’t a human hand. She had seen replicated body parts before in laboratories and morgues, and this appeared to be an extremely complicated and expertly crafted hand and digits. Thank heavens!
She melted back against the wall of the cave panting with relief, trying to regain her composure. Okay. Not Lynch and not a torture scene. She was back to the hand having something to do with the case Lynch was working on that was so top secret that he had trusted no one except perhaps her.
So what to do now?
Proceed as she had been: Keep Lynch’s secrets until she found him, then get him to tell her what was happening.
This hand she was holding must have some significance, but if Lynch hadn’t thought it safe to tell Cambry or anyone else about it, she couldn’t, either.
She would definitely search this entire site, but Cambry couldn’t know what she’d found or that Lynch had ever been near this cave.
She’d come back later on her own for the search.
She had an instant of panic as she realized she’d probably spent too much time here now already.
Cambry might be on his way here to check on her!
She sat upright, swiftly redid the wrappings around the gloved hand, and slipped it into her backpack. Then she was on her feet and climbing over the boulders and away from the area toward the pine forest where she’d been before.
“It’s about time.” Cambry was on his way up the slope, scowling. “I told you that you wouldn’t find anything. I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were right.” She tried to sound disgruntled. “But I had to see for myself. I couldn’t give up until I was certain.” She passed him on the path. “At least I was able to check that one off.”
“You should have listened to me.” He turned back and followed her down toward the pine forest. “Can we go back to civilization now that you’ve wasted all this time?”
“No.” She looked back over her shoulder at him. “I still want to go down to that creek site and see if I can find anything there that Lynch might have left. Do you want to go with me?”
“I’ll pass.” He made a face. “But hurry and get it over with so that we can get back to the airport and talk about Lynch’s safe house.”
“It will take as long as it takes.” She was already branching off to take the path down to the creek. “You haven’t been all that helpful toward me on this hunt so far. I might decide I need to take a little extra time . . .”
She heard an impatient curse behind her, but she was already moving among the cypress trees near the creek.
All right, now she’d make a perfunctory search of this area, but she wasn’t expecting any results.
She had an idea that she’d already found what Lynch had wanted her to find and tucked it in her backpack.
If there was anything else, it would probably still be somewhere in the site she’d just left.
But just in case Cambry had second thoughts, she had to make him think that this search in the creek area was important to her.
So she’d have to spend a comparable period of time here to take his attention away from the length of time he’d already noticed her spending at the site where she’d found that bizarre mechanical hand that had given her such hope.
She took another glance over her shoulder and saw Cambry already again settling himself on the ground beside the helicopter with his thermos of coffee.
Dammit, she’d like to just cut this short and get back figuring out how this new info fit into the picture.
Patience. She knew she had to strike a balance.
Okay. Start to search. Spend the time and effort here to assure Cambry that this entire hunt had so far been a total failure for her. She bypassed the waterfall and began to wade through the creek, making a show of carefully examining the banks on either side of the Leyland cypress trees . . .
TWO HOURS LATER
CYPRESS CREEK
“Dammit, you’ve been down there in the forest for over two hours,” Cambry shouted from the top of the hill to where she was wading near the waterfall.
“It’s almost sundown. It’s getting so dim you probably can’t even see.
Don’t you ever give up? Why don’t you admit that you were wrong and you’re not finding anything?
And I told you that I’d never actually seen Lynch anywhere near these particular areas. ”
“I needed to see for myself,” she called out. “I thought you were going to stay with the helicopter and drink your coffee.”