Stranded

by Alex Kava

  Creed was surprised that Grace could smell something this soon. He couldn’t see any rust smears or smudges. No dark-colored droplets. The light color of the limestone would certainly show bloodstains. He tried to pay closer attention to the foliage, looking for broken branches, a swatch of fabric, maybe a thread or two.

  Suddenly he stopped Grace. He held out his hand to stop the others. Then he made Grace sit. She obeyed reluctantly, her haunches waggling all the way into a sitting position. Then Creed took a few steps forward into the path. He squatted down to examine a thorny vine that sprawled over the rock. Touched it. Poked a finger and jerked back his hand. It had drawn blood. He sucked the injured finger.

  “What is it?” Maggie asked.

  He waved them forward while he told Grace to stay put. He leaned down for a better look. All the way down until he was braced on one elbow.

  “This vine is crossing the path.”

  “Wow! We would have never found that without your help.”

  Creed ignored the detective’s sarcasm. He carefully pinched the vine between thorns and lifted a section.

  “Looks like it was pulled from the side where it was growing and looped over the path.”

  “On purpose?” Maggie asked.

  Creed couldn’t be certain, but on the side of the path where the plant originated, it climbed up into the brush. It didn’t appear to climb rock. Not only that, it looped back and forth over the narrow pathway, one strand over another. It didn’t look natural.

  “Noah was barefoot, right?”

  “Yeah, and his feet were in bad shape,” Lopez said.

  Creed sat back in a squatting position. He looked up at Tully and pointed to where several strings of the vine had tangled. “I think there’s some blood and skin.”

  Earlier he had seen Agent Tully fill his jacket pockets with latex gloves and plastic evidence bags. Without hesitation, he pulled one out now and bent over the area that Creed had pointed out.

  “It could be anything,” Lopez said. But he didn’t push it. Instead he leaned in, curious, and watched as Tully clipped and bagged the section of vine.

  “If there are scattered pieces of both teenagers, Grace might be trying to track in two different scent cones,” Creed explained.

  “One that’s alive and one that’s not,” Maggie said, as if reading his mind.

  He nodded. “It might be confusing.” He glanced at Lopez. Maggie had said that the detective didn’t want to believe that the missing boy was dead. He was staring at the vine and probably wondering how his men had missed that the previous day.

  In the meantime, Grace’s tail was wagging as she sat, swatting the pebbles from side to side. She couldn’t wait to get back to work. Her nose hadn’t stopped sniffing even when Creed had made her pause.

  “Okay, Grace. Let’s search,” he said, continuing to give her the command for a live rescue.

  They climbed the rocky ridge top. Below on their right, a river valley stretched for miles. Grace was getting more and more animated. Creed had to clutch her lead tight. Unlike a collar, the harness allowed him to slow her down without choking her. She was a small dog—twenty pounds, at the most—but she was strong and strained against the end of the lead.

  She had taken them off the path. Rubble made it difficult to go at a quicker pace. They found what looked like a smeared handprint, five lines of rust on the side of a limestone wall. The hair on Grace’s back went up and Creed felt it on the back of his neck, too.

  He allowed Grace to keep going. They were climbing slabs of limestone now, a rugged staircase. Some of the slabs jutted out at odd shapes, threatening to trip dog and man. Grace had to jump up twice to make a step. What had been cracks alongside them were now becoming ravines.

  The sun beat down on them. Geese honked overhead but nothing seemed to distract Grace. She was definitely on a mission.

  Creed wasn’t sure how it happened. Later in the weeks that followed when he tried to explain it, it would be a blur. That moment in slow motion, three or four seconds. A flash of bright yellow sliding out of his grasp. Falling down into the cracks as if Grace had been swallowed whole.

  She had gotten ahead of him, straining, pulling him down a rocky incline. He felt her slip and he grabbed the lead with both hands. He saw her body disappear down into a crack. He held on tight to the lead, trying to pull himself to her, hand over hand. He almost succeeded when he heard something snap and the weight of Grace was gone. Followed by a sickening thump and one last yelp from Grace.

  CHAPTER 42

  Maggie clawed at Creed’s backpack. He had thrown it off his shoulders trying to wedge his body into the crack where Grace had fallen. Maggie ripped open the pack and rummaged through the side pouches until she found the nylon rope and flashlight. She handed the flashlight to Tully, who joined Creed, belly down on the rock.

  Detective Lopez was radioing for help, trying to direct a unit to where they were.

  She could hear Grace whimpering. She was alive, but Creed was frantic.

  He called down to the dog in a soothing, gentle voice, “It’s okay, Grace. Stay calm, girl. I’m coming right down.” Then he shoved his shoulder into the crack, slamming himself against the rock and groaning when he wasn’t able to squeeze through. His shirt was damp with blood where the jagged rock cut him.

  Tully pulled him back and told him, “It’s too narrow. You’re not going to fit no matter how much you slam against it.”

  Then Tully shined the flashlight down.

  “Jesus, it’s about ten, twelve feet down.” He moved the light from side to side then stopped. “Hey, Grace.”

  “You can see her?” Creed rolled back into position. “Hey, Grace, how you doing? You’re gonna be okay.”

  Maggie heard him whisper to Tully, “Oh God, she doesn’t look okay.”

  “I’ve got an emergency unit on its way,” Lopez said.

  Creed started to wedge his shoulder in again, only to have Tully stop him. “Don’t waste your energy. We can’t fit.”

  Maggie glanced at her watch. It’d taken them thirty-five to forty minutes to get up here. It might take another hour before the emergency unit reached them. She started tying the nylon rope around her waist, making a knot that would hold her.

  “You guys can’t fit, but I should be able to.”

  Both of them looked up at her as though they had forgotten she was there. In seconds they were helping to secure the other end of the nylon rope. As soon as Maggie swung her legs over the edge of the crack she felt the familiar cold sweat. Her mouth went dry and her pulse started to race. Tully handed her the flashlight and she shoved it into a pocket.

  She held on to the rock edge as the men grasped the nylon rope. She took in greedy gulps of fresh air as if they would be her last, and she hadn’t even squeezed through the hole. Then she wiggled her torso between the cracked edges. Sharp rock stabbed her back. As she twisted to get away from it, she felt it cut through her shirt and her skin.

  “Wait a minute,” Tully said. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” And she continued, letting her body’s weight and gravity pull her down. The whole time she couldn’t stop thinking, How the hell am I going to get back out of here, let alone with an injured dog?

  As much as Maggie hated to admit it, she was claustrophobic. An occupational hazard—ever since a madman stuffed her in a chest freezer and left her there to die. This was not as bad, she told herself as her head left the surface and the men slowly lowered her down. A musty scent of earth and damp rock immediately engulfed her. Her breathing became labored and triggered a fresh panic. Her heart galloped and she started to feel a bit dizzy.

  She looked up and watched the sky spin and disappear, now only a sliver of blue. The cavern around her looked and felt like a tomb. And as she descended, she realized it even sounded as quiet as one. The men’s voices became muffled.

  Her heartbeat echoed in her head. Sweat slithered down her back. The space grew darker and darker and it became ha
rder to breathe. By the time her feet found the floor of the ravine she felt so weak-kneed that she wobbled to stand.

  Then she heard Grace whimper a greeting somewhere behind her.

  Maggie fumbled for the flashlight, turned it on, and avoided pointing it directly into Grace’s face. The dog was lying on the rock floor, but she raised her head, excited to see Maggie. Grace’s eyes found Maggie’s and held them, intense and unrelenting.

  “Stay, Grace. Don’t move.” She didn’t know whether the dog was able to move but she didn’t want her bounding up out of instinct. That she could raise her head was hopefully a good sign.

  There wasn’t any blood surrounding or under Grace. That was another good sign. But Maggie could see that her left hind leg was stretched out at an awkward angle. The other hind leg was tucked under so Maggie couldn’t see.

  “How does she look?”

  Maggie glanced up, startled to see Creed’s head hanging over the edge.

  “No blood. I can’t tell if there are internal injuries. Both back legs might be broken.”

  She heard his intake of air and the attempt to hold back his emotion. Instead of swearing he called out to Grace, “Hey girl. We’re gonna get you out of there.” Then added to Maggie, “Do you think we can move her?”

  Maggie watched Grace as she walked closer to her. She squatted down beside her and the dog attempted a slow wag of her tail but ended up whimpering. Maggie ran a hand over the dog’s back as she told her what a good girl she was.

  Grace licked her hand and again, stared directly into Maggie’s eyes. That’s when Maggie suddenly realized Grace was looking at her the same way she looked at Creed. It was her way to alert him—to tell him—that she’d found their target.

  Maggie felt a new chill crawl over her body. She gripped the flashlight and slowly swiped the light over the rock walls. Then she turned around to do the same on the other side of the long and narrow ravine.

  The beam found what looked like a heap of rags. That is, until she saw hands sticking out from under the pile. Two hands. Only nine fingers.

  CHAPTER 43

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Gwen convinced Kunze and the others to come to her Georgetown condo for their task force meeting. Yes, it was totally unconventional and bordering on unprofessional, but after spending so much time breathing prison air, she didn’t want to go back to Quantico and be stuck in that BSU conference room sixty feet belowground.

  She had played on Kunze’s vulnerability—probably also unprofessional of her. She knew he still felt guilty about putting her through yet another full-body search. But she had decided that if she was the outsider, she could make them meet on her terms. When she told Kunze she’d fix them all dinner, instead of arguing, he simply asked her what time she’d like them to be there.

  Racine arrived early, of course, because she wasn’t coming from Quantico. As a District homicide detective, her precinct was less than fifteen minutes away. Gwen put her to work in the kitchen. For some crazy reason, preparing, experimenting, and creating gourmet meals had always been a stress reliever for Gwen. Her kitchen was her sanctuary. She often forgot that one woman’s sanctuary could be another’s hell. Julia Racine could not look more uncomfortable. She appeared to be strangling the asparagus as she washed it.

  “I never noticed before how much these look like penises.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes and took the bundle away in one swift motion. She exchanged it for a red onion.

  “Chop,” she said and handed Racine a knife and a cutting board.

  “Crap. Cutting onions always makes me cry. Isn’t there something else you need done?”

  “Cut the top off first and do it under running water. Cold water.”

  Racine regarded her suspiciously, as if she were expecting a trick.

  “Seriously, it works,” Gwen told her as she turned back to deveining the shrimp.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Racine glance at the shrimp and wrinkle her nose. She must have decided chopping the onion wasn’t such a bad job. She went at the task without another complaint.

  “I’m surprised not to see Harvey and Jake. Don’t you usually take care of Maggie’s dogs?”

  “Ben has them. His backyard is much bigger.”

  “Ben? I thought they broke up?”

  Gwen stopped herself from saying that you couldn’t break up if you weren’t in a relationship in the first place. Maggie and Ben hadn’t even gotten there before they decided to “put the skids on,” as Maggie called it. But the two of them were still friends, good friends, and Gwen hoped that it might eventually be more. Instead of telling Racine any of this, Gwen shot her a warning look.

  Maggie and Racine had forged a friendship in spite of their differences and in spite of the fact that Racine had hit on Maggie shortly after they’d met. As far as Gwen knew, Racine lived with a partner now, a journalist for the Washington Post, and she was even helping raise the woman’s daughter. Gwen didn’t need a degree in psychology to see that Julia Racine still had a thing for Maggie.

  Racine noticed the look and raised an eyebrow. “What? I’m just asking. I thought the baby thing ended it for them.”

  “I’m not gossiping about Maggie’s life.”

  “I understand.”

  But she was hesitating. She had something more to say.

  “I know you know,” Racine said, one hand on her hip.

  When Gwen met her eyes she noticed that Racine was biting her lower lip like this was a sort of confession. Oh, God, why did people always think they should be confessing to her? She was a psychologist, not a priest.

  “I know Maggie probably told you about two years ago. It really was just one kiss.”

  “So how was it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She’d thrown Racine completely off and tried not to smile at the expression on her face. That’ll teach her, if she thought she was going to get absolution for her confession.

  “The kiss. How was it?”

  Racine smiled, definitely relieved, then said, “It actually was very nice.”

  “You know the most difficult affairs to get over are the ones that never happened.” Gwen let it sink in before adding, “They remain forever perfect in our minds. No bad memories to get in the way.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Enjoy it for what it was. Don’t invest in what might have been,” Gwen said.

  “Is that the kind of crap you tell your clients?”

  “Yes, and you’re lucky I’m not charging you, because you’re a pain in the ass and you can’t afford me.” Then Gwen pointed to the onion, indicating that Racine should get back to work.

  Amazingly she did, but of course, she couldn’t do it silently.

  “So have you heard from Maggie or Tully?” Racine asked.

  “Both of them have been checking in with me almost every night.”

  “Alonzo’s been filling me in on the details. Pretty crazy stuff. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the victims he chooses. Male, female, different ages, occupations, and backgrounds. I’ve been beating my brain trying to find some common denominator. There doesn’t appear to be any connection in where they’re taken or their destinations. I even had Alonzo do a vehicle comparison. You know, thinking maybe all of them drove Fords or SUVs.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. Alonzo can’t come up with anything and that guy is like the king of data. Best guess is that he’s a long-haul trucker who enjoys killing a smorgasbord of travelers.”

  “Can we please keep food references out?”

  Gwen glanced up to see Racine had been chopping like a pro. She seemed to have no problem with kitchen prep as long as she kept her mind on work.

  Gwen’s cell phone started ringing and she did a quick hand wash before answering.

  “This is Gwen Patterson.”

  “Gwen, it’s Dr. Halston. I apologize for calling you at home.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem,” she sai
d, but immediately realized that she’d never had a personal phone call from her doctor, after hours or otherwise. Someone from Dr. Halston’s staff usually called to set up appointments or answer questions and her nurse always called to go over test results. Results. Something was wrong. She knew it before Dr. Halston continued.

  “I got the results for your mammogram and there’s … well, a questionable area on your left breast. I’d like to set up an appointment for a core biopsy.”

  “Biopsy? That sounds serious. Are you saying it could be cancer?”

  “It might be nothing. But I’d rather we err on the side of caution.”

  “I guess I could make time late next week.”

  “Gwen, I think we should do it before next week. I’ll have my nurse call you tomorrow and set something up.”

  Gwen wasn’t quite sure what else Dr. Halston had said after that. When she ended the call she turned around and saw Racine staring at her. Then she did the strangest thing, something that Gwen would never have expected of the tough and often crass detective. Without a word, Julia Racine walked over to Gwen and hugged her.

  CHAPTER 44

  KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY

  VETERINARY SMALL ANIMAL HOSPITAL

  MANHATTAN, KANSAS

  Maggie handed Creed a bottle of Mountain Dew and took her place beside him in the reception area. The waiting was excruciating. It was going on three hours since they had talked to the young surgeon, Dr. Towle. Her team of students and professors were still in surgery working on Grace.

  Earlier the internal medicine chief resident, Dr. Smee, had examined Grace then ordered an assortment of tests, scans, and X-rays while the surgical staff prepped. Though they wouldn’t know the full extent of Grace’s injuries until she was under anesthesia, they were able to tell Creed that Grace’s left hind leg had sustained the worst of the impact. It was broken in at least two places.