by Edwin Dasso
Lacey took a hesitant step toward the house. The thick mud beneath the grass sucked at her boots, making each step ten times harder than it had to be, as if the earth itself was trying to stop her from moving any closer. Using the flashlight, she scanned the listing porch. The door was closed. Windows broken. The deck groaned under her weight. The rusty doorknob turned.
The abandoned house smelled musty—a combination of mold and dust. The walls were covered in graffiti. Charred bits of wood were scattered across the floor, along with empty beer cans, a sleeping bag, and what looked to be rat droppings. Lacey examined the remains to see if they were fresh.
With the toe of her boot, she shifted a couple of cans, leaving snail trails in the dense layer of dust. Whoever had left behind the debris had done so years ago. On her way out of the living room, Lacey passed a broken window. Blackberry bushes reached through the open pane and brushed the floor as if they were scrambling for purchase, trying to claw their way inside.
She rounded the corner and entered a room that used to be a kitchen. The battered white cupboards had grayed with age and several of their doors were missing. The countertops were cracked and broken. The appliances were gone. More rat droppings were scattered like dry pellets across the scarred linoleum. She ran the beam of her flashlight along an inner wall, until she found an open door.
Floorboards squawked under Lacey’s feet as she approached. She paused at the top of the doorway, casting her beam into the darkened maw. It was pitch black. She could see nothing down there. The earthy scent wafting up from the cellar smelled like a crypt. God. Just the thought of all the creepy-crawly things that lived down there gave her the willies.
The urge to leave was on her again, so intense, she almost shook. Refusing to give into her fears, Lacey descended the basement stairs.
Few houses built today came equipped with basements. With all the rain the Pacific Northwest got in a year, great pains had to be taken to ensure that subterranean spaces were impervious to floods. Modern-day builders considered basements too much effort. The housing market tended to agree as real-estate prices soared.
But back in her grandparents’ day, when grocery stores weren’t as plentiful and nobody ate plastic food, root cellars were more common. Her grandmother spent the fall canning fruits and vegetables for the winter. As a kid, the root cellar had terrified Lacey. She’d usually manage to bribe Amber into going in her place.
The narrow stairs creaked. The dirt floor was wet, already filling from the rain. Cobwebs whispered across Lacey’s face, sending chills racing down her spine. She tried not to think about the spiders, the rats, the bats that quite likely resided in this hellhole.
“Police,” Lacey called. “Identify yourself.”
No response came.
She traced the walls with the beam of her flashlight, looking for any signs of human life. There was something. A glimmer in the dark. Adrenaline surged through Lacey’s veins as she approached. Bobbing along in an inch of water, she saw a plastic bottle tipped on its side. Empty.
Lacey crouched beside it. Unlike the beer cans she’d found upstairs, it hadn’t been here that long. The label was still bright blue. There was no dirt inside. A renewed sense of hope filled Lacey and she swung the flashlight’s beam slowly across the floor, searching every inch, every nook and cranny for something more until she reached the corner. She noticed the broken pipe.
The pipe ran along the wall. It began at the root cellar’s dirt floor and traveled straight up through the ceiling and into the kitchen above. Decades of corrosion had transformed the pipe from its original color to a deep rusty brown. Five feet from the ground, it had broken off. Deep ruts, filling with water which could have been heel marks, were driven into the earth near the wall. Lacey hunkered down, examining the narrow grooves.
Refocusing her beam on the pipe, she ran the flashlight up the length of it. Six inches below the break, she froze. Strands as fine as filaments were caught in the rusty joint. Carefully, Lacey straddled the heel marks and approached for a closer look. Hair. Several curly red hairs were caught in the pipe’s joint.
Eden.
Hall had tied Eden to the pipe. But where had she gone? Had she escaped? Had he… Had he killed her?
A sick feeling filled Lacey’s gut as she contemplated the options. Eden wasn’t here. She wasn’t in the house. So where…
A loud thump sounded upstairs. Leaving the basement behind, Lacey rushed up to the ground floor. The wind had blown the back door open. Smudged footprints, too small to be Hall’s led to the door. She exited the house.
The rain, as hard as ice pellets, struck Lacey as she descended the stairs. Wind heaved through the trees. Lacey followed the footprints left in the mud toward the woods less than twenty yards away. Though the prints were starting to fill with water, they were still fairly well defined. Recent.
Studying the prints in the beam of her flashlight, Lacey noticed a few things. First, the prints were spaced farther apart than a typical walking stride. Second, the indentation made by the heels appeared to be deeper than the rest of the print, scored with skid marks near the back.
She was running. But why run into the woods rather than toward the road?
It made sense if… If she’d escaped and was being chased.
Lacey swung the beam of her flashlight in a wide arc around the prints looking for more evidence. She didn’t find what she was expecting. A second set of prints, his footprints following hers. But she did notice something else in the wet earth nearby.
Paw prints. A wolf.
Everything she’d learned about tracking she’d learned from Caleb. Even before joining the military, he’d been part of a search and rescue team. It was actually how they’d met.
Lacey had gone camping with Amber and a few other friends. She’d wandered away from camp on her own when she’d gotten turned around. The first few hours, she tried retracing her steps, confident she’d make it back. Afternoon had faded to evening. By nightfall, she was totally panicked. Cold and hungry, she spent the night in the woods. Mid-morning the next day, Caleb, along with a couple of other volunteers from the search and rescue team happened upon her trail. She’d never been so happy to see anyone in her whole life.
The first few years they were together, they spent a fair bit of time in the woods. Caleb was a good teacher. He’d taught her how to read the signs left behind by humans and animals, which was how she knew those tracks weren’t made by a dog. Wolves were hunters. Their paw prints were closer together, more efficient than a dog’s. These tracks were narrow, almost on top of each other. Dogs tended to produce prints where their toes and nails pointed outward. Their toes were splayed. Their nails were thicker and blunter than a wolf’s, while these nail marks were small and sharp.
Lacey followed the footprints into the trees where the sound of the wind was drowned out by the roar of the river below. The brush on the forest floor made it more difficult to follow the trail, but there were signs. Trampled ferns. A tear in the terrain, where it looked like someone had fallen. Lacey stepped over a moss-covered log and paused.
The river was louder now. She was approaching the edge of the cliff. Rain teemed through the branches of the evergreens, soaking Lacey to the bone. Sweeping the area with her flashlight, she caught the jagged edge of a broken branch.
Lacey’s stomach dropped as she neared the edge of the steep ravine. Shit. She imagined Eden running. Panicked, Eden might not have noticed the sound of the river. She could have fallen off the edge without realizing it was there. She would have reached for the trees, desperate for something to stop her fall.
It was dark, so dark it took a long time to find what she was looking for. Lacey inched closer to the broken tree branches. She leaned out, over her toes, directing the flashlight’s beam down the steep pitch of the hillside.
Twenty feet down, Lacey saw something. White. Like bone.
“Eden,” she called. “Is anyone down there?”
The sound of the
river drowned out her voice. Lacey peered through the rain, trying to make out what she was seeing. Maybe it was Eden, but it was too dark to know.
Shuddering from the cold and the adrenaline racing through her, Lacey reached into her pocket and grabbed her phone. She needed backup. A search and rescue crew. Scrolling through her contacts, Lacey pressed her thumb on the chief’s number. The display flashed, the phone searching for a signal.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
No bars. She was in the middle of hell’s half acre. Of course there was no signal out here.
Distracted, Lacey turned back toward the house. Her feet tangled in the brush. Thrown off balance, her arms shot out. The phone flew from her grasp. So did the flashlight. Lacey pitched backward and landed hard on her side. The rain-soaked earth at the edge of the cliff gave way.
Lacey felt herself plunge sickeningly down. She reached toward the cliff, grasping for anything that might break her fall. An eruption of pain burst through her side as a rock glanced off Lacey’s ribs. She kept going. The speed of the descent disoriented her. Branches tore at her jacket as she rocketed past. The clump of brush clinging to the side of the hill slowed her fall. The shelf couldn’t be much farther.
She heard Caleb’s voice.
Stay loose. Land on your feet.
A second later, impact struck. Her knees crumpled as she slammed into the rock. A flaming corkscrew of pain spiraled up Lacey’s leg. A bright flash of light exploded behind Lacey’s eyes, then the world went black.
33
Lacey awoke. Her ears were ringing. She swallowed the salty tang of blood. The sharp edges of jutting stones dug into her back and hip. It was cold. Damp. Lacey tried to move. Jagged shards of pain lit up her side, as if she’d fallen onto a bed of broken glass.
She gasped, pulling a gulp of air into her burning lungs. The rain had stopped. The clouds had parted. Silver light from a full moon cut through the darkness. Slowly, as the pain receded, she took in her surroundings.
She had fallen twenty feet or so from the treelined ridge and landed on a rock ledge suspended above the river. Lacey rolled from her back onto her side. A blinding flash of pain shot up her leg and stole the breath from her lungs. Oh, shit. Her lower leg shrieked like it was on fire. Something was broken. Maybe a few somethings. Her leg, and maybe some ribs.
Once she was able to breathe again, she gingerly moved her other leg, taking stock of her injuries and finding nothing obvious. Relieved, she turned her head to the side. A few feet away, she saw another figure, facing the cliff.
The woman was small, petite with a long, matted tangle of hair. From the photograph taken at the Roberts’ house, she recognized the color of the woman’s dress. Seafoam green. Eden. She’d found Eden. At last.
But far from rejoicing at the find, Lacey let out a groan. What good was she to either of them. Too hurt to climb, and even if she could, she’d probably kill herself if she tried to scale the rock wall to the ridge.
What was she going to do, without a phone, without a way to signal anyone where they were? Lacey berated herself for coming out here alone without a plan. She should have called the chief; she should have told Amber where she was going. Instead, she’d ventured off on her own, like an idiot and now, they were both going to pay for her mistake. That was if Eden was still alive.
Lacey clenched her teeth, bracing for the pain. Inch by agonizing inch, she dragged herself along the shelf toward Eden. White-hot pain blazed along her side and Lacey cried out. Tears soaked her face, but Lacey refused to give up. She kept moving, through the sheets of pain and bouts of nausea until she reached Eden.
She lay on her back, panting, sweat coating her body as she gulped in the cold air. Lacey reached toward Eden. Her icy fingers fumbled along the woman’s neck, searching for a pulse.
It was there, faint and thready, but she was still alive. They both were. For now.
Lacey curved her body along the back of Eden’s spine. She threw her arm over the woman, protecting her, hoping that the heat from her body might slow down the risk of exposure. Shelter wasn’t an option. It was all she could do.
That, and hope that in the morning, someone might come looking, but who?
It was her weekend off, and the chief had told her not to come in. Caleb was in Texas. It would be mid-morning, or later, by the time Amber called. When Lacey didn’t answer, Amber would load the kids into the mini-van and drive over to the house. And when she didn’t find Lacey’s car, she would start to worry.
She just needed to hold on until then. Amber would signal the alarm but…
But that could be eight hours from now. And who knows what other damage she had caused by moving. She could be bleeding internally. Between the cold, and the shock of her injuries, she didn’t know if she could hang on that long.
Fresh tears stung Lacey’s eyes as the fear took hold.
Flynn. Harper. What would they do if she died here? Somehow, she could almost bear the thought of losing them if they stayed with Amber but… But Caleb would move them to Fort Hood, away from everything they knew and everyone they loved. At least they’d still have him.
Tears slid down Lacey’s cheeks. A deep throbbing pain, that had little to do with her broken bones, settled into Lacey’s chest.
The kids would be okay. They would be together, and that was all that mattered.
She and Caleb may have lost their way, but he was a good man, a good father. He would take care of them.
Caleb. She remembered how he’d looked the day he’d found her in the forest. Young. Handsome. Smiling.
“Are you lost?” he’d asked her.
She’d been so relieved to see another face that she’d burst into tears. He’d held her then, comforting her, the way she imagined him doing now.
She had been lost. Then she’d met him and everything in her life had suddenly seemed so clear.
She wished there was more time. She’d tell him how much she missed him, that their family was more important to her than anything. He wasn’t the only one who had lost sight of what was important. She had too.
They had both made choices. Wrong choices. They had both lost their way. If she had the chance to do it all over again, she’d do it differently.
She’d find her way back to Caleb. She would choose love.
34
Lights flashed. Disembodied snippets of sound flew by. Time was like a tether in the wind, difficult to grab onto. Hours, minutes, days slipped from her grasp and lost all meaning. And was this all there was? Floating in a cloud of fog where nothing seemed to matter.
Rising toward the surface, she heard far away voices calling.
“Open your eyes, baby.”
“Lacey?”
But Lacey couldn’t reach them. Couldn’t speak. Even the pain at the periphery of her consciousness was more academic than a tangible presence in her mind.
“Lacey.”
The effort it took to part her eyelids felt almost super-human. Lacey focused on that deep familiar voice and grabbed hold, pulling herself up out of the gauzy mist and into the present. A halo of light surrounded the blurry face that hovered over her, and she wondered if this was what heaven was like.
“Lacey,” he said again.
She blinked hard, her vision, still blurry around the edges, had cleared enough to see his face.
“Chief,” she said, her voice barely more than a croak.
Relief surfaced in his bloodshot eyes. A rare smile touched his face.
“I don’t mind telling you that you had us all pretty scared.”
“Where…?”
She trailed off, her sluggish mind racing to catch up. The answer was obvious. She was in the hospital with no recognition of how she had ended up here. Reaching back through the haze of her memory, she grasped for the last clear picture she retained.
Eating dinner with Amber. That damned house. The basement.
“It was raining and…” The memory receded back into the ether, maddeningly beyond reach.
“And the hillside gave way,” the chief said. His smile disappeared. His heavy features rearranged themselves into a grave expression. “You fell a good thirty feet. If it weren’t for that shelf above the water…”
Lips pursed. He shook his head.
“How did you find me?”
“Apparently, that watch of yours registered a rapid drop in altitude and sent a warning to your husband. When he couldn’t reach you, he called me, and we went looking.”
The watch? That damned ugly as sin watch that Caleb had given her, the one she’d so resented, had saved her life. The irony of it was enough to make her smile.
“What about Eden? Did she make it?”
“She’s still in serious condition, but she’s expected to survive. Her family is with her now. If it weren’t for you, she’d be dead. That was some damned fine police work, Lacey. Next time, call for backup.”
Tears filled Lacey’s eyes, and she let out a breath. More fully awake, she realized she couldn’t move her leg. She was hooked up to an IV and had more tubes running in and out of her than an octopus had tentacles. As if sensing her distress, the chief nodded.
“You did quite a number on yourself. Broken ribs. Broken leg. You’re made of tough stuff though. The doctors say you’re going to make a full recovery.”
Tears spilled over Lacey’s lashes and fled down her cheeks. The chief looked away awkwardly as Lacey wiped her face.
“Thank you. I—”
“Mommy!”
Flynn sped through the door like a missile, heading toward Lacey’s bed. The chief held out a cautionary hand.
“Slow down, son. Careful around your mom.”
He slowed. His mouth drooped into a worried frown.
“It’s okay, Flynn,” Lacey said. “I look a little scary, but I’m going to be okay.”
Lacey reached for her son. He grasped onto her hand. Harper was quick to follow and the chief fell back a step.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said.
