Desolation Point Page 6

  Scrubbing her pencil across the paper, she wondered uncertainly why she hadn’t just taken a photograph. Her answer came as she stared down at the paper in her hand: an echo of Molly’s voice chattering with excitement as she ran her crayons across textured bark or stone walls to transfer their patterns onto her sketch pad. Molly would spend hours searching the garden for rough surfaces, only giving up when she finally ran out of pages in her pad. It had been Sarah who had first shown her little sister the trick…

  The pencil dropped to the ground and Sarah blinked. Her fingers ached where they were clenched around the paper and her legs felt leaden and cramped; she had no idea how much time had passed. As she rubbed her eyes dry with her knuckles, the white of the paper in her hand suddenly darkened. She looked up at the sky, nervous tension twisting in her gut.

  “Shit.”

  If her exposed position had afforded her better protection, the rapid progress of the storm through the valley would have been truly spectacular to behold. She watched wide-eyed as a surging mass of charcoal-black cloud began inexorably to swallow up what remained of the blue sky. The sun submitted without a fight, plunging the summit into an unearthly twilight. That was enough to shake Sarah from her stupor, and she ran across to the lookout station, slipping and skidding on rocks already slickened by the first drops of rain. By the time she reached her pack, the mountains and lake she had photographed not half an hour earlier had vanished entirely. Mist drifted toward her, blurring the edges of the landscape, making everything instantly alien and unfamiliar. She quickly pulled on her waterproof jacket, drew the hood up, and fastened it tightly against the hail and rain that was now pouring down. The walls of the shelter were protecting her from the worst of the wind, so she huddled next to them, trying not to panic, trying to weigh up her admittedly limited options: to stay where she was or to attempt to make her way down.

  A bolt of lightning split the sky, static electricity charging the atmosphere and making the hairs on her arms prickle. Thunder immediately followed in its wake, a furious percussion that smashed off the mountains. As the freezing rain lashed her, she tried and failed to prize open any of the shutters fastened across the windows of the shelter. The door would not budge an inch, even when she shoulder-charged it. Soaked to the skin and shivering uncontrollably, she winced at the electrified hiss and roar of the storm. She tried to console herself with her experience of the European Alps, reminding herself that even the most ferocious of storms there could sometimes burn out and pass over within minutes, sweeping out as abruptly as they swept in. In the absence of any real plan, that made her decision for her. She returned to the side of the steps, where she unfolded the survival bag she had packed almost as an afterthought, and she somehow managed to wriggle into it in spite of the wind ripping and tugging at the thick plastic. She tucked her hands between her thighs for warmth, raised her knees to her chest, and settled down to wait.

  *

  Through vertical sheets of rain, Alex could just about make out the shape of the small boat nearing the jetty on Ross Lake. A gust of wind barreled into it, throwing it wildly off course, until its skipper managed to correct its bearings and its tentative progress resumed.

  “Hey there!”

  Her hail carried on the wind, and one of the two young men waiting on the shore waved cheerfully as she walked over. The smile left his face as she drew closer, and he turned to confer urgently with his companion.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure the skipper’s done this hundreds of times,” Alex said, as soon as she could be heard without raising her voice.

  “Sorry, we thought you were someone else,” the taller of the men said in a strong Australian accent, continuing to scan the trail behind her as he spoke. “Friend of ours—well, a friend as of last night. She went up Desolation on her own this morning, and…” He gestured in the direction of the mountain and then shrugged helplessly. Its lower slopes were barely visible, the summit completely shrouded by the storm.

  His companion squeezed his bicep in reassurance. “We were going to go up after her,” he said, “but it got so bad we figured we’d only be causing more problems, and then there’d be three of us wandering aimlessly out there.” He opened his hands in frustration. “We’re fucking useless at this survival lark. We tried to phone the ranger station, but there isn’t a hope in hell of getting a signal in this.”

  Alex nodded, her brow furrowed with concern. “I’ve got a radio. Should be able to get through to them. I can give them a heads-up that there might be a rescue pending. Oh, whoa, catch hold of that.”

  The sodden rope hit the jetty with a thud, and the Australian stamped his foot on it to stop it from slipping into the water. Together, the three of them managed to haul the boat into place while the boat’s skipper jumped out to moor it securely. Without pausing to exchange pleasantries, he began to throw their bags aboard.

  “You getting on too, ma’am?” he asked, his voice strained with the effort it had taken him to negotiate the crossing safely.

  Forcing her gaze away from the storm that was battering what should have been her destination, Alex shook her head. “No, you get on out of here.”

  The skipper nodded brusquely, disinclined to waste time by arguing with her, but the other two men hesitated.

  “What are you going to do?” The Australian had obviously tracked her line of thought.

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Carry on up a little way, hope that I meet her on the way down.” She gestured for them to get on board. “Go on. I’m sure she’s fine.”

  The men climbed onto the boat, where they hung on to the sides as the wind buffeted them and the lake roiled. The Australian seemed the steadier of the two, raising his hand in reluctant farewell.

  “Her name’s Sarah. Tell her that Johnno and Zach said hi. Get her to ring us, will you?” he called.

  “No problem.” Alex slipped the knot free from its mooring post and threw the rope for Johnno to catch.

  “Oh, hey,” she shouted as the boat’s engine coughed and then fired up. “Why’d you hide your truck?”

  “Our what?”

  “Your truck, back at the highway.”

  Both men looked completely mystified. “We don’t own a truck,” Johnno yelled back, the wind tearing at his words. “Neither of us can drive…”

  *

  A full hour had passed, but the storm showed no signs of abating. Her eyes fixed on the sky, Sarah listened to the wind clatter and howl around the shelter, and gradually realized that this wasn’t one of those flash in the pan weather fronts that washed humidity from the air and left everything fresh and sweet smelling. Thick cloud had descended on the mountain, rain continued to fall heavily, and visibility had narrowed to less than half a yard. Her phone sat silent and useless in her hand, her fingers numb with cold as she gripped it like a lifeline that she wasn’t yet ready to give up on. She knew she had to try to descend, try to find the right trail and lose enough height to drop beneath the cloud cover. She also knew that finding the right trail might well prove to be impossible; it had tapered out just below the summit, and there were no landmarks left for her to fix upon. Unwilling to wander blindly, she fumbled for her compass and used the only thing she could see—the shelter—as a reference point. Her calculations and her memory were leaden with cold and panic, but they both urged her in a vaguely westerly direction. She kicked her way out of the survival bag and then wrestled with the slick plastic until she had managed to fold it and stuff it back into her pack.

  “You can do this and you’ll be fine,” she whispered as she stood to her full height and the wind immediately knocked her sideways. “And you’ll laugh about it in the morning.”

  Her bottom lip was trembling, so she bit it. Bowing her head against the rain, she took a deep breath and set off walking.

  *

  “This is stupid,” Alex muttered, “really, seriously stupid.” She splashed through yet another in an endless series of puddles, mud and cold water sinkin
g through the long-defeated waterproofing on her boots and soaking into her socks. On the bright side, she could no longer feel her feet, which was definitely a blessing. Ahead of her, smoke billowed from the blackened stump of an ancient pine. A bolt of lightning had cleaved the trunk in two, shattering hundreds of years of painstaking growth and neatly blocking Alex’s path. Back at the camp, she had decided to leave the heaviest items of her gear and switch to carrying a day pack, and she was glad of that now as she hefted the smaller bag over the tree before climbing over it herself. The forest surrounding her creaked ominously as she dropped back down onto the trail. She already knew the storm had been severe enough to cause real damage. Before setting off, she had spoken to Walt on the radio, the reception fading in and out as he told her that several of the access roads into the park were blocked by debris or flash flooding. He had advised her to sit tight at the campsite and wait for a rescue party to reach her, although when pressed, he had admitted that the storm was forecast to last for several days and that any evacuation attempts would be delayed until the conditions improved. At that point, she had changed her mind about telling him of her slightly less than sensible plan to find the missing hiker. She didn’t intend to go very far, he couldn’t do anything to help, and she really didn’t want him to worry.

  For a second, she allowed herself to rest. She leaned forward to grip her knees with her hands and pulled in a ragged breath. She didn’t sit down; her legs were already shaking simply with the effort of holding her upright, and if she sat down she was certain she wouldn’t have the energy to stand again.

  “Sarah? SARAH?” After the first two miles, she had started shouting intermittently, and she continued to do so, more out of habit now than with any real hope of success.

  Her only answer was the moaning of the wind through the trees.

  *

  The premature dusk that had fallen at the onset of the storm was gradually darkening to true night, and with a sickening certainty, Sarah knew that she was lost. With no way of second-guessing herself, she had picked up a trail that had initially seemed to be heading in the right direction, but a series of switchbacks, steep descents, and equally steep ascents since then had completely confused her. Still enveloped by thick cloud, she had continued to follow the trail in the hope that it would lose height, but several hours later, the nature of the terrain suggested that she remained at a considerable altitude, and she was utterly exhausted.

  The trail was sodden, but she sat down regardless, too wet and too weary to care. She forced herself to eat a handful of dried fruit, washing it down with gulps of water that chilled her even further. As she was steeling herself to push to her feet once more, she heard a voice crying out.

  Chapter Five

  The mist muted everything. It drifted at the mercy of the wind, twisting around Alex’s feet to conceal her path and hide the trees until she almost walked into them. It dulled sound to the point where she was painfully aware of her own heartbeat, the effort her body was making thumping too fast and too hard in her ears. The forest had tapered off some miles ago, the remaining scattered trees and shrubs providing her with little shelter from the wind, driving rain, and seemingly endless swirling of gray. Every few minutes she promised herself that she would turn back, take Walt’s advice, and return to the lake to wait for rescue. Then another five minutes would pass and she would decide to go on just a little farther. She was walking largely on autopilot now, and the sudden shock of the radio vibrating at her hip made her stumble into a small bush. Carefully extricating herself from its thorns, she slumped down at the side of it and pulled the radio free.

  “Go ahead, Walt.”

  A buzz of static assailed her, forcing her to scramble onto a high rock to try to clear the signal.

  “—Don’t know if—stay the hell away from them—killed one man already.”

  Her hands slick with sweat, she hesitantly raised the radio to her lips. “Walt, say again. Over.”

  The stress in his voice was apparent even through the breaks in the reception. “Cops got a hit on the partial plate you gave Marilyn. The truck was used to hijack an ambulance transferring a prisoner to the hospital. Alex, are you getting this okay?”

  “Yep.” She was already scanning her surroundings, waiting for something to leap out of the mist at her. She lowered the volume of the radio as far as it would go yet still be audible. “I hear you.”

  “Convict’s been named as Nathan Merrick. Cops think his girlfriend Bethany played a part and they might be traveling together. No idea what they’d be doing in the park, but Merrick spent two summers up here working trail maintenance about fifteen years back.”

  Alex nodded, even though there was no one there to see her. She felt surprisingly calm, her years working on the force coming into play as she compartmentalized the information. “What was he in for?”

  A pause, before Walt answered with obvious reluctance. “This time around, aggravated assault and armed robbery…” He hesitated and Alex said nothing, the inference hanging in the static. She could sense his indecision and dreaded what else was to follow. It only took him a second or two to steel his nerve. “He was on a federal watch list for his links to a number of white supremacist groups. Apparently, he was their go-to guy for weapons, explosives, clean cash. Two trucks were used in the breakout. One was found burned out and traced back to a lieutenant in one of the bigger groups. I guess Merrick was too valuable to lose for twenty-five to life.”

  She gave a short, humorless laugh. “I’ll bet.”

  “There’s something else, Alex.” If it were possible, Walt sounded even more troubled. “They killed one of the prison guards, and a second is missing.”

  She stared with loathing at the radio in her hand as if it alone was responsible for the bad news that just kept on coming. When she finally answered, anger made her voice hard. “They could be anywhere by now.”

  “I know. They’re not likely to be by the lake, so just hang tight. The cops and the feds’ll be all over this as soon as they can get up there.”

  “Yeah, uh…” She wiped a hand across her face, raindrops immediately re-gathering on her eyelashes and obscuring her vision. “I’m not by the lake, Walt.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Not exactly sure. Most of the way up Desolation, I guess. Two guys told me about a friend of theirs. She went up there earlier today and didn’t make it back. Figured I’d try and find her.” She kept her tone light, as if to imply that this wasn’t anything to make a big deal about. After all, she’d had nothing better to do, had she?

  The radio emitted a series of high-pitched beeps followed by an ear-splitting wail. There were only two bars left on its battery, and she hadn’t thought it necessary to bring a spare. In fits and starts, the signal cleared again, and despite the circumstances, she couldn’t help but smile. Walt obviously hadn’t been fooled by her attempt at nonchalance.

  “—’king stupid-ass things to do—middle of nowhere—’king storm with the gods only know—running about out there―”

  She gave him a few more seconds to calm down. “Sorry, Walt,” she said, genuinely contrite, when he ran out of steam. “Just…she’s on her own up here, and besides, she won’t know anything about this guy Merrick.”

  His sigh was perfectly transmitted. “I know. Doesn’t make you less of an idiot, mind.”

  “I’m hoping she’s on the trail somewhere or holed up at the summit.”

  To her surprise, he didn’t try to talk her out of continuing, didn’t try to persuade her to return to the relative safety of the lake. It had only been three months, but apparently, he knew her better than that.

  “Keep your head down, Alex.”

  “I will. Promise.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  “I will.”

  Her hand was shaking as she clipped the radio back onto her belt.

  “Shit,” she whispered. She lowered herself from the rock and winced at the noise of her boots landing heavily in
a puddle.

  With dusk now rapidly giving way to night, the trail ahead of her was almost completely invisible. She pulled a flashlight from her pack, tempering its beam with a spare sock so that the dull light was just about enough to guide her, and set off again, painfully aware of every sound she made and every sound that filtered through to her out of the mist.

  “You sure as hell pick your moments to try and be a hero.” She shook her head at the sheer scale of the odds stacked against her. She knew that if she didn’t laugh about it, then her only other option was giving up and turning back.

  *

  The relief surging through Sarah gave her the energy she needed to push toward the sound of the voices. Her narrow trail was winding precariously along the edge of a steep drop-off, the depth of which she couldn’t gauge with the thin beam of her flashlight. The tenuous nature of her path had hampered her progress, but she was close enough now that she could distinguish the cadence, if not the actual words, of a man and a woman. She was about to draw breath to shout across to them when the quiet buzz of her phone made her hesitate.

  “Typical, you bloody work now that I’ve found someone,” she muttered, pulling it out to find a text that Ash had sent over twelve hours ago. The signal on her phone was wavering between one bar and two, and her mood lightened immeasurably as she grinned at the photograph of Jamie, a picture of innocence with chocolate cake smeared all over his face.

  Deciding to delay replying until she was somewhere warm and dry, she returned the phone to her pocket. Then she tilted her head to one side, listening and trying to reestablish the direction she needed to take. The ledge she was negotiating gave her no protection from the wind that whipped rain into her face, wind that tormented her by intermittently lifting the mist to give her a few precious seconds of clear visibility before casting it down to conceal everything once again. Her gloves were soaked through, her fingers numb from trying to find purchase on the slippery rocks, but as she strained to concentrate, the chill that suddenly made her shudder had nothing to do with how cold she was.