Carbon Dating

by Jerusha Jones

  The male voice was still muttering, low, under his breath almost, but I’d heard those vigorous mumblings—and sentiments—before. Most people’s vocabularies narrow down to a few annoyingly redundant terms when it comes to venting their anger.

  The tiniest, slowest, half-an-eyeball peep around the stump told me what I most needed to know. Heath was alone.

  But he wasn’t happy about it. “Come on, brat,” he growled. “There’s no hiding out here, and you know it.”

  Coulda fooled me. I hadn’t spent the second half of the nighttime hours out in this wilderness to learn nothing. Hiding spots abounded, as evidenced by my own—albeit not a very good one. My heart was hammering inside my ribcage, the beat thudding in my ears with an overwhelming, whooshing roar. I ground my molars together and willed it to slow down as he approached.

  The crows flapped and scuttled, leapfrogging in the trees above him like a trailing net of paparazzi. Heath seemed oblivious to their signaling as he hunched low. He was moving too fast to be checking for footprints. If that pursuit would even be effective, since the search teams had trod all over the place anyway. Maybe he was more concerned about being spotted himself, trying to keep an unobtrusive profile among the tree trunks.

  He picked his way across the slope about ten feet above me, and his head was jerking about as though he was trying to keep everything in sight at once. The general dimness was in my favor, but I also sent out a silent thank-you to Roxy for her fashion sense in selecting black as the best color for a raincoat. My dark brown hair was probably a dirty, matted mess, making me blend in even more.

  I didn’t see a weapon on him, but I didn’t expect to. The gray gloom made it difficult to notice details with any clarity. If I hadn’t heard his voice, I wouldn’t even have been sure the person angling across the hillside above me was Heath. Without that early warning, I might’ve eagerly made my presence known and asked for help reuniting with my team. It’d been a close call.

  When he’d disappeared over the rise, I rose from where I’d merged—there’s nothing like communing, intimately—with nature. I spit out the pine needles that had migrated into my mouth while I’d been hugging the stump.

  My brain was splitting in a tug-of-war between hope and despair. If Heath and Willow had been together before, at the ATV wreck site, they’d separated now. And he didn’t seem to know where she was. Which bode very well for her health in general. If he’d killed her, he would’ve known exactly where she was.

  But, where was she?

  It only made sense to go in the opposite direction from Heath’s trajectory until I could safely make a phone call. I hunched over my phone to block the light from its screen. I turned off the volume and quickly keyed in a text to Vaughn.

  Moving away from Heath still gave me a choice of down or up. Down was easier. It was also ground that my search team had skirted. If Willow was higher up the slope, where they’d been headed anyway, they’d find her.

  The most stable, broad surface on my lanky frame is my bottom. So that’s how I began my descent—by scootching on the seat of my jeans, my legs angled in front of me to navigate the protruding branches and rocks and the heels of my hands dug in behind me, serving as brakes. Not graceful, but economical.

  And effective until the increasing amount of metal debris I was trying hard to avoid indicated I was heading toward the bomber’s point of impact.

  “Oh boy,” I groaned when my hand dislodged a bit of fabric from the pine needle duff. I tugged on it, and a triangular scrap the size of a large handkerchief peeled out of the dirt, dangling a couple slender cords from a corner. The fabric had formerly been white, probably, but it was now impregnated with dirt to the point of looking like used tea leaves.

  The cut edge had been sliced with a sharp instrument, not torn or frayed. The fabric was silk, like spun cobwebs, ephemeral and tough as nails, that stuff. And not likely to disintegrate anytime soon. Had the pilot jumped? Or had his unopened chute been trundled across acres of trees by the impact?

  Wisps of fog roiled up the hill. But between them, I could see farther still. Full daylight could not come quickly enough. I shivered, suddenly aware of the brittle cold.

  I left the parachute scrap where it was and rose uneasily to my feet. A wink of shine, something glinting, caught my eye off to the right. Hand over hand, from tree trunk to tree trunk, selecting my footing with each step, I sidled toward it.

  A chunk of the fuselage. Big enough to see where part of the glass canopy had been attached and the beginnings of a scratched identification number toward where the tail would have been. The ribbed metal sheeting appeared strangely fragile—in this, the very wrong and shrubby context for a machine that was designed to soar.

  But there was more. A disturbance in the thick moss that had grown up the edge of the rubber seal where the window had been. A long, fresh scrape that left hunks of moss hanging off the side. I squinted carefully. Could have been caused by a foraging raccoon or a falling branch. But the damaged section of the fuselage was big enough to shelter a smallish teenage girl if she was curled into a tight ball.

  I decided to take a chance. “Willow!” I hissed.

  Nothing.

  I wanted to snap on my headlamp to better see inside the cavity, but I also didn’t want to signal Heath if he was still in the vicinity. Or scare her.

  “It’s Eva,” I added, just in case. What details would Heath not be privy to? Do male and female voices sound the same when they’re whispering? How would she know it was really me? “Of the Tin Can. You think dulce de leche is the bomb.”

  I let out a deep breath and straightened, my knees creaking. False positive. Just a guess, really—an indiscriminate hope.

  But a whimper had me whirling back.

  And then she tackled me, latched on, her arms squeezing around my neck. “Eva, Eva, Eva,” she blubbered.

  “Shhhh.” My hand was in her hair, pinning her head against me. “Quiet,” I breathed in her ear.

  The crows’ rakish cawing was coming closer.

  CHAPTER 22

  We could run, making a lot of noise and risking broken ankles or concussions. Not to mention being on the receiving end of whatever weapon Heath might have. Or we could hide.

  Seemed like a no-brainer.

  Willow’d had a great hiding place, and I’d flushed her out of it. Too bad it wasn’t big enough for me too. I locked my fingers with hers and tugged her downhill. That Great Bluedini hair was going to be our undoing if we didn’t find cover fast.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I fished it out. Willow and I were slingshotting at a slant across the landscape, still joined by our intertwined hands. There was no way I was going to let go of her, urgent phone message or not.

  So I hauled her to a stop behind a tree trunk that was wide enough to hide half of one of us. We’d put some distance between ourselves and the crows, but a decent hiding place hadn’t yet materialized.

  “Just a moment,” I wheezed, waving my phone for her to see the reason for my delay. “It’s the cavalry.”

  Her nostrils were flaring with her effort to regain her breath, but she nodded and slumped against the trunk. She had freckles—several, a short dash of them across her nose and cheekbones. I’m not sure I’d ever noticed that before. Which meant daylight was coming on strong, and that the adrenaline coursing through my veins had almost sabotaged my thinking process.

  But Vaughn’s text snapped me back into focus. He was acknowledging my report of having spotted Heath and wanted to know exactly where I was.

  There was too much to say, and my thumbs were too numb to handle the task. I punched Vaughn’s number and held the phone to my ear.

  I didn’t even let him talk, just blurted, as quietly as possible, “I’ve got her.”

  “Where are you?” was his curt and immediate reply.

  “On the hill above the farm, in the bomber wreckage field.”

  “Can you see me?”

  I blinked, surprised, sta
ring hard at a still panting Willow as sunlight diffusing through the clouds picked out droplets here and there to sparkle and shimmer in shades of golden-green. Color was returning along with the light.

  “Eva,” Vaughn barked, jolting me again. “Look down the hill. Do you see my truck?”

  I turned, stood on my tiptoes. Heavy pine branches blocked the way. Craned my neck, swung my gaze from side to side.

  “Eva,” Vaughn barked in my ear again, impatient.

  “No,” I breathed.

  “Head downhill anyway. As soon as you can see my truck, come toward me. I’m parked at the close edge of the gravesite, right at the base of the hill.”

  “Okay—” I muttered.

  But he cut me off with further instructions. “Listen. Jack’s looking for you. He’s circling back, which means that the two of you may have accidentally flanked Heath on that hillside. I don’t want to make him more desperate than he already is. Anything happens at all—you get low and you run. Got that? I don’t care if you’re injured. We can deal with broken bones. I don’t want you or Willow shot. Do you understand?”

  “Tell Jack to watch the crows. Heath has a shadow,” I whispered and clicked off.

  Because that swirling, clacking, flapping, black-spotted mélange of shadows was nearly overhead.

  I’d been faithfully reading the bird guide I’d bought to help me acclimate to my new setting—and my avian neighbors at the marina. The American bittern is a shy, chunky, speckled brown wading bird that blends into its background whenever it feels threatened by tipping its long bill straight up, unmovingly joining the ranks of pointy grasses at a marsh’s edge.

  We weren’t in the right habitat, but we employed the bittern’s time-tested freeze-and-wait technique. We stood stock-still. Willow didn’t need coaching, although I had a desperate urge to unzip my raincoat and toss the flap over her bright-blue hair. But we couldn’t afford the rustle that precaution would cause.

  Based on the crows’ movements, Heath was behind a slight ridge just above us. Any moment, I expected to spot the top of his head as he crested the ridge. Maybe he’d seen the broad streaks my bottom had made through the duff and followed my path. Maybe he’d figured out that Jack was stalking him—or pursing me, the clumsy missing team member. Maybe he was plain old lost. That was the best we could hope for, but unlikely.

  Willow was cutting off the circulation in my hand, her pale gray eyes huge. I nudged her leg with my knee and tipped my head the tiniest bit, indicating downhill. I couldn’t relay Vaughn’s instructions verbally. She’d have to follow my lead.

  It was tempting to lie down and roll. The slope was conducive to that mode of traversing, but the dense tree trunks weren’t. I pulled and then pushed Willow in front of me, so that I’d be trailing her, hopefully blocking sight of that blue hair. I pointed with my free hand over her shoulder, aiming us in the general direction.

  And she took off—cautiously, slowly—but with a strong sense of footing, making use of the biggest trees as partial shields. Somehow, when she’d fled from Heath the first time, she’d learned how to navigate through the brush and forest litter with apparent ease.

  But it wasn’t enough. Almost immediately, I heard twigs snapping behind me and the heavy, soft thuds and skids of running thick-soled boots. Very close.

  I prodded Willow in the shoulder. She’d heard it too and picked up her pace. As Vaughn had implied, our safest bet was to get more elevation distance between us and Heath, so that the needled boughs that started branching out twenty to thirty feet in the air on each tree also became a factor in hiding our movements.

  Heath couldn’t yell either—he had to know by now that the woods were crawling with searchers. But he was going to be faster than Willow and I were, since we were functioning tethered together. A tether I wasn’t willing to break.

  Heath hacked—the kind of low, raspy, clearing cough that happens involuntarily to people who are exerting themselves more than they’re accustomed to. A sound I was familiar with, and on the verge of succumbing to myself. I could almost feel him breathing on me.

  We gave up all pretense of subtlety and flat-out ran. Slid. Jerked each other along. Mashed into each other and went tumbling. Yanked each other up and raced on.

  We made a crashing racket a mile wide, it seemed.

  “Police! Stop!” The rough, sharp command was shouted behind us, from farther up the hill. “We have you in sight.”

  I didn’t believe him. Or maybe I did, but I was pretty sure the command was for Heath to obey, not for Willow and me. I had a single-minded focus, and that was Vaughn. Or his pickup. Whichever came first. And running like I’d never run before.

  “Stop!”

  Then a shot—a loud crack that seemed to ricochet off the tree trunks and whistle a fractal course through the woods.

  Followed by two more shots in rapid succession.

  Willow went sprawling. Face first, her free arm outflung, as though she was taking off in a hang-gliding mount but missing the glider, into a rolling, torquing spin that took me with her.

  Above us, there was a flurry of yelling, barked commands I didn’t at that moment comprehend. It sounded like a small army had been let loose up there. A small army that was strangely, but comfortingly, distant from us. Like they were in another dimension. Same woods, different plane of existence.

  It took a long minute—or maybe five—to realize that I’d been kidney-punched by a tree stump and that the roaring in my ears was actually pain. Kidney-stopped was more like it, by a brick wall that just happened to be a somewhat spongy leftover from a logging venture a long time ago and which was growing a mushy layer of moss. I wasn’t exactly right side up.

  Willow’s face was inches from my own, also upside down. A trickle of blood was threading its way across her pale forehead. “That was pretty spectacular,” she said. “Can you breathe?”

  “Were you hit?” I gritted out. “Shot?”

  “Goodness, no. Just my amazing dexterity at work there. Don’t tell anyone.” She pushed against my hip, doing something to my lower half that mostly set me to rights.

  The blood rushed out of my head, sending the flashing spots behind my eyelids reeling. I groaned.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were getting old,” she continued cheerfully.

  I wanted to smack her, but shakily raised a hand to wipe something clammy and goopy from my cheek instead.

  “Slug,” Willow announced—unnecessarily, since I’d already figured it out. I smeared the slime on my jeans. “You can walk, right? ‘Cause we gotta skedaddle.” She cast an anxious glance over her shoulder.

  And that’s when I became aware that the yelling hadn’t stopped.

  “Oh, sure.” I pushed to my feet like it was no big thing. It did help that Willow had her hands wedged under my armpits and was doing the bulk of the lifting.

  “Geez Louise,” she huffed. “Since when did you gain a ton?”

  “Mind your own beeswax,” I muttered, but gave her the grin she wanted. “March,” I commanded, assuming my adultly duties. I even pointed in the correct direction for emphasis.

  “Aye, aye.”

  It would take much more than several hours of terror in the company of an unhinged archaeologist, a night in the woods without adequate clothing and supplies, and a headlong plunge across rough terrain to knock the snark out of Willow. Good girl.

  We left the sounds of altercation—shouts, bellowing replies, boots crashing through underbrush, the scratchy squawk of radios—behind us, moving with the awkward expediency of limping plus sliding.

  When we finally tumbled out of the woods, we were no more than thirty yards from Vaughn’s pickup.

  He was angled away from us and was staring at the hillside as though he had X-ray vision, trying to divine what was going on up there.

  “Eeep,” I might have gurgled, but it was enough to draw his attention.

  He was with us in an instant, an arm around my waist, the other aroun
d Willow’s shoulders.

  “Maybe don’t touch me,” I whispered, wincing.

  Concern flared behind his deeply amber-flecked brown eyes, and he instantly released me.

  I sagged, but regained my footing before he grabbed me again. I’d worry about which Mardi Gras colors my body turned later, when I had the luxury for such things. “Heath?” I blurted.

  “Got him. Jack and some of the others. Just took him into custody.”

  “Wounded?” I had enough oxygen for one-word questions only, but Vaughn understood what I meant.

  “Heath, yes. Flesh wound, not life-threatening. The others are all fine.” Vaughn shook his head, still leaning close to both Willow and me as though he could support us through the strength of his own will. “He’s unstable—Heath. Off his rocker.”

  “Not really,” Willow replied softly. “He was entirely coherent when I gave him a ride yesterday afternoon.”

  “You did what?” Vaughn gritted out.

  She shrugged. “He was here, inspecting the gravesite. I saw him when I was bringing a load of pumpkins back to the storage shed. Offered him a ride. I assumed he’d parked up by the farmhouse.” She paused, and tears collected in the corners of her gray eyes. “But I was wrong,” she finished weakly.

  I thought Vaughn was going to lose it. He’d flushed deeply, and the muscles along the strong ridge of his jawline were working overtime. I also thought I was missing something.

  “What were you wrong about?” I asked gently.

  “Everything, it turns out.” Willow sniffled. With a trembling hand, she spread open the top of her jacket pocket, angling the fabric away from her body so that we could see into it. At the bottom, like little jewels, lay three small syringes.

  “When I interviewed you, you never said…” Vaughn was breathing so hard he couldn’t finish.

  “I forgot.” The tears were real and huge, streaming down her cheeks. “I really did. It’s just that when my mom—when she was using…I just got accustomed to cleaning up after her. I hate it when the stuff’s just lying around. I didn’t think about it. Habit, I guess.”