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CHAPTER 25
Chris stopped the truck halfway up the Cascade Mountains, ninety minutes east of Seattle. The temperature had already dipped into the forties, and he had to set up camp. He’d checked out the area many times and had never seen hikers or campers here. He’d gone through the surrounding area, up and down the road, on foot and never seen recent tire treads or evidence of people. He suspected it was used primarily by rangers, and he’d hear them coming long before they reached him.
Being in the military had served him well; years of preparation and pla
She would be free, living without pain and sadness.
He sat on the ground, closed his eyes. Prepared.
It started when Mama died. Chris didn’t know how she’d died, not then, because Bruce took him and Angel from school and they left New Jersey.
“Your ma died in an accident. I have to find work.”
They never went home. Never collected his bug collection or books or toys. Angel wept for her teddy bear until Bruce slapped her.
They first went to Texas, a long way off. It took days and days to get there.
They had a one-room apartment where Chris could hear the people next door fighting. Bruce slept in the bed with Angel. Chris slept on the floor. Angel cried all night.
Bruce hurt her.
It didn’t take long for Chris to know what Bruce was doing to Angel, but he didn’t stop him. He was small for an eleven-year-old. His mother told him he’d grow big and strong, but he hadn’t. Bruce was so big and mean and Chris didn’t want to be hurt, too. But he took care of Angel when Bruce left. He cleaned her up and hugged her and bought her a new teddy bear with money he’d stolen from Bruce’s wallet.
He had loved her and taken care of her for three years, and now she wanted to leave him.
He couldn’t let her. He would be lost without her.
Angel could never leave.
Chris rose from his spot and crossed to the truck. He unlocked the back and reached in for his angel.
A sudden, sharp jolt across his chest startled him. He reached out blindly in the dark, his fingers brushing against hair, but he was falling down.
He jumped up immediately, sensing rather than seeing his angel leap from the back of the truck and start ru
Anger burned deep and hot in his veins. She was trying to run away. Leave him.
He would never allow that.
Zack and Olivia met the Coast Guard at the docks. Doug Cohn and his team disembarked. Zack filled him in on what they’d discovered, then went back across the Sound with the Coast Guard.
“Detective Travis? You have a radio call,” one of the officers said and handed him a walkie-talkie.
“Travis here.”
“It’s Qui
“The Cascades are huge, and Road 56 is virtually impassable in places.”
“That should make it easier for us to find him. I’ve called the forest rangers to increase patrols; we have a helicopter standing by. The sheriff’s department has already called in all off-duty perso
“It’ll take us two hours to get there,” Zack said, discouraged. Two hours could be the difference between Nina living or dying.
“Thirty minutes, tops. I have a helicopter waiting for you at the Coast Guard station, with a search-and-rescue expert already on board.”
“Who?”
“My wife, Miranda. And if anything happens to her, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
Nina ran faster than she’d ever run before. Even when she was exhausted and didn’t think she could take another step, she kept going. Or stumbled. Sometimes she crawled. But she was too terrified to stop moving.
She was in the mountains, that much she knew, so she focused on ru
Nina hated the dark.
There were so many sounds competing with her rapid breath and occasional cries. Hooting owls. Scurrying rodents. The call of larger animals. Rushing water, a river.
None were as fearsome as the man she’d seen.
He looked normal. But one glance into his hateful eyes told this little girl that if she didn’t find the strength to run, he’d hurt her bad.
How long had she been ru
She was in the middle of nowhere, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t wait and try to hear him. She prayed and pleaded with God to help her. The moon came and went behind clouds, alternately guiding her and hiding her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement even before she heard the rustling of a body moving through trees. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt.
A sliver of moonlight reflected off two eyes.
He was there. Right there. Feet away.
He would kill her.
She stifled a scream, and the body-covered in fur-ran past her so close she felt the animal’s terror. Or was that her own fear?
It was a deer. A deer, not a man.
She sank to the damp earth and cried. No one would find her. She didn’t know where she was, how close she was to Seattle, if she was even in Washington State.
Get up, Nina.
No. I don’t want to. I’m tired.
But the voice was persistent. Get up, get moving, keep ru
She found a thick branch on the ground and started marking trees by either breaking a small branch or scratching the trunk with the branch she held. She didn’t know if it would do any good, but doing something actually calmed her down.
She didn’t hear him following. She heard nothing but four-legged predators. They were far less scary to her than the bad man. Like the deer, they feared her more than she feared them.
What was that?
She stopped. Listened. Faint, in the distance, a motor. Lights suddenly cut through the woods, then as the vehicle bounced, the light cut high and low.
Had help arrived?
She listened, her fear growing. No, not help. It sounded like the same as the truck the bad man drove. It was him.
She hunkered down.
A screech and an inhuman cry.
Thud. Crunch.
Silence. Dead silence.
She ran. Ran as fast as she could along a narrow trail, then suddenly she was falling…