Obsession Falls

by Christina Dodd

  Tabitha would have reprimanded him for his language and his violence.

  Kennedy put his hand on Miles’s shoulder. “That’s my boy.” To the security team, he said, “We need to send people after the gorilla, in the air and on the ground. And get a sketch artist onto the plane. Miles can describe the face on the way back to San Francisco.”

  The lead on the team nodded and gestured to the phone. “On it. You want to take the helicopter?” Rogers already knew the answer.

  “Get the helicopter in the air. Find that guy. The cars are on their way.”

  Rogers nodded.

  Miles sagged. “I want to go home now.”

  “I know you do.” Kennedy led him to a rock and hoisted him up on it, then climbed up to sit close beside him. “But we have to find that guy so he doesn’t come back for you again.”

  “And the lady,” Miles said.

  “The lady?” With a gesture, Kennedy summoned Rogers. He told him, “There’s a woman, too.”

  Rogers nodded and went back to his team, organizing and dispersing them in the hunt.

  Kennedy turned back to Miles. “Tell me everything, right from the beginning.”

  Miles stumbled a little at the beginning, but he bravely admitted he had gone with Miss Allen because she offered to take him to his father. They’d met the two men at the airport, and they had been kind to Miles … until they escorted him onto a private jet. Then they overpowered him, pushed him into the lavatory, and locked him in. When they landed, they dragged him out, wrapped him in a throw, and carried him off the airplane.

  “I fought, Uncle Kennedy,” Miles told him. “I hit the big guy in the ’nads with my head.”

  “Good for you!” Kennedy refrained from exclaiming about the swollen, purple bruise on Miles’s cheek. Tabitha would do enough exclaiming when they got home.

  The kidnappers dropped Miles into the trunk of a car and drove him forever, in the heat and the dark, over roads that knocked him around. “And you think I get carsick in the backseat,” Miles said. “I tossed my cookies all over the place!”

  “I noticed,” Kennedy said drily. The kid reeked. “But you tied your necktie to the trunk to leave a sign that you’d been there.”

  “I was trying to break through the taillight, but a Mercedes … they’re tough.” Miles was clearly chagrined.

  “Well-built cars,” Kennedy agreed. “What happened when you got here?”

  His nephew’s eyes got big and scared, and he swallowed twice before he could reply. “They pulled me out of the trunk. They had guns. Guns.”

  “Pistols?”

  “Yeah. They were arguing about … about whether they should shoot me there, and how to place me so you would see me. They didn’t want the … didn’t want the wolves to drag my body away before you got here. There was some other stuff, but I was … I was crying. And sick. I was sick. I couldn’t hear … what they said.” Miles was embarrassed.

  Kennedy pressed his shoulder. “It’s okay, Miles. You did good. How did you get away?”

  “You told me if I was ever in trouble to not panic. You said to think. I was trying, I really was, but I couldn’t figure out what to do.”

  “You did good.” Kennedy hugged the boy again. “You got away.”

  “Only because there was this lady.”

  Kennedy leaned back. “I thought the lady was one of the kidnappers.”

  “No! No, she was just … I don’t know who she was. I didn’t see her at first. Neither did they. But all of a sudden, papers started blowing from behind that boulder.”

  “Papers?”

  “Yeah. Big papers.” Miles measured them with his hands, then looked across the road, hopped off the boulder, and ran to the other side.

  Kennedy held himself back. He would not follow his nephew. He would not frighten Miles with overprotectiveness. If the boy could forget so soon, and race away from the safety of Kennedy’s arms, let him go.

  Miles rushed toward a flapping white sheet of paper caught on a dense clump of grass, retrieved it, and ran back. He handed it to his uncle.

  Kennedy helped him back on the boulder, then examined the stained drawing incredulously. The sketch was, he supposed, of the mountains. But it was, in its way, awful. Well drawn; the effort was clear. But stiff, awkward, off-kilter somehow, with the landscape looking vaguely warped and humanoid. This landscape would certainly be almost an embarrassment to—his gaze dropped to the signature—Taylor Summers.

  Taylor Summers. He would never forget that name.

  Miles babbled on, picking up the story where he had left off. “Those men, the ones who wanted to kill me—when they saw the papers fluttering by, they stopped and stared. Then she ran out from behind the rock, toward the forest.”

  Son of a bitch. They had a witness. If she had survived …

  “She was running like crazy, dodging and jumping. She yelled, ‘Run, kid!’ The big guy said”—Miles shot Kennedy a sideways glance—“you know, he dropped the f-bomb. Then he took off after her. I thought he was going to shoot her right away, but he didn’t.”

  “He couldn’t shoot and run,” Kennedy told him.

  “The skinny guy ran after them, too, and I figured she was right. This was my chance. So I ran the other way.” As Miles relived his ordeal, he talked more and more swiftly. “I heard gunshots and just … I sprinted. I couldn’t stop. I was so afraid. I got away. I ran up the mountain. I was hiding in the brush when I heard you calling, and I was afraid then, too, that you’d go away before I could get to you.” Miles’s brown eyes grew big and brimmed with tears.

  Kennedy hugged him again, and handed him a handkerchief.

  “Do you think she’s dead?” Miles’s voice trembled. “The lady who helped me?”

  Kennedy’s gaze swept the meadow, observed the grim set on Rogers’s face, the purposeful way his men moved out.

  Kennedy never lied to the boy. He didn’t lie now. “Odds are against her. But there’s a chance she’ll survive.”

  “What about … what about the gorilla? The big guy who ran after her? He was mean, Uncle Kennedy. He was really mean. I want him to be dead.” Miles couldn’t have sounded more fervent.

  “We’ll work on that,” Kennedy assured him.

  But the damned thing was—although the trackers had spent the night scouring the mountains, they’d lost both the gorilla and the woman. Then while Kennedy’s guys were strategizing their next move, Taylor Summers’s rental car exploded, starting a small forest fire.

  So whoever this Jimmy was, he was vindictive, nimble, and smarter than Kennedy had first given him credit for.

  Kennedy had moved swiftly to take control of the still-burning crime scene, analyzing the data himself. In her shattered cell phone and the footprints leading away from the vehicle, they found proof the woman had been there, had survived the blast, and run like hell afterward.

  But they fixed their report to the police to say she had been killed. They fixed everything, and when the police deduced she must be one of the kidnappers, Kennedy did not contradict them. He didn’t dare; to reveal what Miles had told him about Taylor would also reveal that Miles had not lost his memory of the events. Kennedy did not want the kidnapper to think he was in imminent danger of being revealed; Miles must be protected at all costs.

  Besides, Kennedy was sure his trackers would find Taylor Summers.

  They had failed. They believed she must be dead.

  So he pulled those trackers off the job—no use funding those who found it a hopeless cause—and hired a small, exclusive private investigative firm. They would watch the airports and car rental agencies, observe her mother and her former fiancés, monitor the Internet, the shelters, any place and anything a woman on the run might utilize to continue her flight.

  Kennedy needed to know what Taylor Summers had seen, what she had heard … who had taken his nephew. He refused to believe Taylor was dead.

  He wanted Taylor Summers.

  Yet despite all his resources, s
he was nowhere to be found.

  Where was the woman?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The next day, in the early morning hours, Taylor left the Renners’ house the same way she had come in—through the broken window, and wearing three layers of Cissie’s warmest clothes.

  By the time the Renners returned, they would have received the report from the security firm. They would be worried. Then they would look around and realize their home was in good condition. They would decide the wind had blown the branch through the glass, make a claim with their insurance, and go on with their lives without being any the wiser.

  At least, that was Taylor’s plan.

  She went to the shed behind their garage, knelt on the small concrete pad in front of the door, and considered the padlock. According to the Internet site she had found, picking a padlock was easier than picking the lock in a door. Okay. She had patience, the correct tools—and her schedule just happened to be free.

  She went to work. Forty-five painful, frustrating minutes later, the lock clicked open and she hooted with delight. She pushed the door open. The place was dark, filled with dust, cobwebs, plywood, and a lawn mower. Someone had placed a small flashlight on a shelf to the left of the door. She turned it on; the beam was strong and clear. She shone it around the shed.

  Shoved in the corner, she found a collapsed one-man tent. She knelt and touched it with reverent fingers. She desperately needed this to keep the mosquitos away, to protect her from the snow when it fell, to give her the feeling of having a home. She missed that, having a home, more than she could imagine.

  She could carry this size tent. She really could.

  But why was it here? Did she dare take it? She hunted around for instructions; of course, they were nowhere to be found. So she quickly tried to put it together, and soon discovered one plastic support was broken. That made her pause and think. Possibly in the woods she could adapt a branch of the right length and strength … She would try it, and if that didn’t work, she would scrounge another plastic support from another tent in another house.

  Already, she was making more plans to break and enter.

  If she was going to live through this, that was what it would take.

  She packed the tent into its carry bag and used a bungee cord to hook it to her backpack. She clicked off the flashlight and started to place it on its shelf, then hesitated. Flashlights got carried away from their intended position all the time. Perhaps no one would notice it was gone until spring … and her need was greater than the Renners’.

  She left the same way she had come, clicking the padlock closed behind her, and climbed the ridge overlooking her family’s land. She seated herself, knees pulled up to her chest. She watched as the sun rose over the waving yellow grasses, the stands of trees, the herd of antelope grazing peacefully in the sun. She saw the earth come alive … and saw, too, the rise of dust as a pickup rolled up the long gravel driveway to the Renners’ front door.

  The security technician. Good luck to him at finding the chewed-on wire.

  When he had disappeared inside, she stood.

  She ran her fingers through her hair one last time, fingered it lovingly, wistfully. Then with one hand, she gripped it tightly. In the other hand, she held scissors. Scissors she’d taken from the Renners’ kitchen drawer. She lifted her chin and she cut off her hair. She cut it off to within an inch of her scalp, then threw the strands into the air. The wind caught them and scattered them across the landscape and over her family’s ranch, obliterating the Taylor Summers she had been.

  The new Taylor Summers moved on, into the mountains, determined to find herself a home.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Moving swiftly, fiercely intent on staying ahead of the oncoming winter, Taylor searched for a protected place to establish her permanent camp.

  She found a cave etched into a granite cliff, with a narrow mouth and a tunnel that went back twenty feet. The shelter seemed promising until she realized the smelly fur bundle in the corner held two dark glints that looked like eyes. Were eyes.

  Taylor decided she could not spend the winter months with a bear and left at a great rate.

  A day later, in a protected hollow near a stream, Taylor found a small shack, a lean-to, really, built of logs and shingles with a steep, metal roof. It was dusty, primitive, appeared to be uninhabited: her perfect winter home. She hung around twelve hours, camping close, waiting for an occupant, if there was one, and when no one showed up, she finally gathered her courage and knocked.

  No response.

  Feeling much like Goldilocks, she pulled open the door and called, “Hello, is anyone here?”

  Something small and gray with a long tail scuttled across the floor.

  She used to be afraid of rodents. Now she paid no heed, but shone her flashlight around. One room, about eight feet square, with a low ceiling, a splintered wooden floor, and two tiny windows covered with oilcloth. The place was filthy. Old. Not fit for human habitants.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God. Oh, God.” Her heart quickened with pleasure, with anticipation. In the corner, there was a stove. A cast-iron, fat-bellied stove. A stove that would heat this tiny area and keep her warm and safe throughout the winter.

  The place was clearly abandoned. The primitive bed of canvas and sticks was broken. Dirty rags were shredded in one corner. The hut would take two days of cleaning to make it habitable.

  But it had that stove. That beautiful, rusty, functional stove.

  The flashlight’s white beam picked up a glint on the wall. She walked over to a bronze plaque, rubbed off the worst of the grime, and read, Wayfarer’s cabin, built 1971 to help those lost in the woods. Welcome, stranger, make yourself at home.

  Nineteen seventy-one? No wonder the cabin was falling apart.

  In very small letters in the lower right-hand corner, she read, Young Americans to Help Preserve Wilderness and Fight the Oppressive Federal Bureaucracy.

  Oh-kay. She’d never heard of the organization, but she loved them with all her heart. She set to work to make the place habitable, a job that took weeks of hard labor: repairing the roof, bringing in wood, using one of her precious paper clips to make a hook to catch fish … and then, actually catching one.

  She went down to the valley and used a paper clip to pick the Renners’ front door lock. She gathered supplies, food, mostly. She left no trace of her stay, but she no longer worried quite so much whether the residents wondered at their loss of canned goods.

  She returned to the cabin and settled in for the winter—and six nights later, the rusty chimney caught the roof on fire. She grabbed her backpack, her sleeping bag, her flashlight, then stood in the clear, cold night and watched the cabin crackle and burn.

  She was in trouble. It was early October. Winter was here, not the nightly freezing temperatures of summer, not the early snows of autumn, but winter, and in a place that frequently recorded the coldest winter temperatures in the continental United States.

  Once more she descended into Wildrose Valley, and as she did, she marveled at how well she found her way now. She was becoming almost competent at survival. Once there, she scouted some of the smaller houses and chose the empty one with no security stickers on the windows. She climbed the porch roof, discovered an unlocked second-story window, and got inside. A well-ordered calendar on the kitchen counter made her hustle through the house; in four days, the family was returning from vacation. She found her cold-weather sleeping bag and portable can opener, but she had to be careful not to take too much. She might not have many scruples left, but she knew she wanted to leave each house in such a condition that the owners had no idea someone had been there.

  So she would take just enough food, gather just enough gear, to get her to the next place to gather more food, more gear. If she did this right, if she planned and schemed, she would survive long enough to figure out what to do, how to clear her name, how to escape the threat of imminent death before winter truly set in.
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br />   In the attic, she found a dusty pair of snowshoes with one broken binding. With the worn jump rope tossed nearby, she could make these work. She packed food; the unopened jar of peanut butter was her blue-ribbon prize. And then … and then good luck caught up with her. While rummaging through the master bedroom closet, looking for long underwear or warm, thick socks or a pair of ski gloves, she pulled down an old-fashioned, padded hatbox and found … a pistol.

  She stared at it. And stared at it. Questions chased through her mind. Why was it here? Had someone hidden it from a curious child? Had someone feared the violence it evoked? Maybe. That made sense. Would a shot from this stop a charging bear? No.

  Would it stop Dash?

  Yes. Yes, it would.

  Cautiously she put the box on the floor and knelt. She picked up the pistol and turned it over and over. It was cold. Sleek. Black.

  When she was a child, she had fired a pistol. Her father had taught her how. Up here, a pistol would be helpful. So helpful. And maybe, with this in her grip, her constant, gnawing fear of Dash would ease.

  A side holster and two boxes of bullets were stored with the pistol.

  She made her decision. She took the pistol, the holster, and one box of bullets. If that many bullets didn’t kill Dash, she wouldn’t need the second box.

  Before she returned to the wilderness, she did check the weather report … and knew she had to save herself now, because a storm was closing in.

  She trekked the mountain, found the stony overhang that she’d marked as a possible winter shelter if she discovered nothing better, and set up camp. And lived through her first winter storm.

  On the first day, she plotted her strategy to contact Kennedy McManus without revealing her identity.

  On the second day, she plotted again, taking notes on everything she could do and everything that could go wrong.

  On the third day, her flashlight failed. She needed more batteries. Or an LED flashlight. She lay in the dark and considered how best to explain to Kennedy McManus what had happened and why she was involved.