edge of the trail, walking perpendicular to the footprints on the ground, searching for the sets that would signify that Paula and Tara’s Ecco hiking boots had put their stamp on the ground. They hadn’t even made it to the switchbacks before Sabrina found the telltale hexagonal lug pattern of Tara’s size-sixes, and Paula’s larger prints were right beside them. Bending down, she once again slipped out of the backpack’s shoulder straps, setting the bag on the ground and fishing out a piece of sturdy wire and some crepe paper.
“Nice work,” Jessie said, once more holding out the copy of the footprint they’d made from Paula’s boot back at the ranger station for comparison.
“Easy enough in the middle of the afternoon,” Sabrina replied, bending a piece of wire and tying a bit of crepe paper to the end to make a miniature stake to mark the tracks. Sticking the tiny flag into the ground next to one of the prints, Sabrina rose, pulling her radio to her mouth as she did so.
“Base, this is Tracker One. We’ve IDed the trail and are continuing to the PLS, over,” she said.
“Roger that, Tracker One. Over,” came the reply.
With the trail found and freshly laid, Sabrina didn’t have too much trouble following it—especially since they knew it was heading toward Hot Spring Seven. It was very rare to find non-locals who’d discovered number seven—well-hidden as it was by lush ferns and the tangled roots of an ancient moss-covered Douglas fir. The girls were local, and they knew these trails well.
But that fact didn’t make the thought of Tara leaving her friend any less strange, given that the girl was allegedly afraid of hiking alone.
Eyes on the ground, Adelante.
The three reached the spring within an hour, jogging on the flat parts of the path, walking as quickly as they could with the aid of their walking sticks on the switchbacks and steeper inclines. Because they knew where Tara had ended up, they’d had the luxury of speeding up the trail instead of searching out every last print, even though the smooth-soled prints had intersected with and rubbed out the girls’ tracks every so often. Just before they reached the spring, Sabrina slowed their pace. Fortunately, it was easy to see that no one else had been to this particular spring recently, as there were quite a few to choose from, so they wouldn’t be dealing with any other tracks on the grass.
“Looks like they stopped right here.” Jessie pointed to the cluster of telltale heel curves, smooth spots, and dislodged pebbles in a patch of dirt around the steaming waters of the spring. “They probably hung their clothes in these branches.” With an impatient flick of her hand, she brushed her ponytail behind her, then patted a low-hanging branch that hit her at waist level. “Took off their shoes here and slipped in.” She pointed to several overlapping prints, made by booted and bare feet.
All business now, Alex took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair, then jammed the hat back on his head, never taking his eyes off the ground. “We know that Tara got out of the spring before Paula did, saying she had to make a call on her cell phone. So where did she exit?”
Sabrina scanned the edges of the clear pool, the soft, mineral-packed mud at its bottom long settled after the girls’ departure. A few tiny bubbles surfaced from the bottom, as Mother Nature piped in steaming water from an underground river.
“There,” she said finally. Though it wasn’t a full print, Sabrina could clearly see a flat spot in the dirt, on the other side of the spring just behind the Douglas fir’s rough trunk. Pretty much the only things in nature that created flat spots like that were humans and hooved animals, and she didn’t think any hooved animals had decided to climb the ridge and go for a dip today.
Grabbing a low-hanging branch, Sabrina negotiated her way around the spring and moved into point once more, Jessie and Alex falling into place behind her. She marked the first print with one of her wire-and-tissue-paper stakes, and then followed Tara’s tracks, which ran along the side of the ridge.
She could see where Tara had stopped in the pine-needle-strewn dirt, obviously shifting her weight around as she’d tried to use her phone, and then, for some reason, the girl had continued forward, starting to snake upwards as well toward a break in the trees up ahead. When Sabrina and her team reached the break, they spilled out into a small, grassy clearing.
“Trail intersecting about fifteen feet ahead, coming from above,” Alex called out. Sabrina took her eyes off the ground.
With their years of experience, tracking in grass was as easy as tracking in dirt. You just had to know what to look for. And the still-flattened line in the grass practically screamed at her that another person had been here, too. But whether that person had come down the mountain at the same time Tara was wandering up remained to be seen.
Turning her attention back to the trail, Sabrina moved forward once more, finding and following every place where Tara’s feet had left a spot of bent grass or broken and bruised plants.
“Trail intersection coming up,” Jessie called.
Sure enough, the line of crushed greenery came into her field of vision with her next step.
Sabrina came to an abrupt halt. Behind her, Jessie blew out a noisy breath. “Bree? Oh, no.”
She felt the two flank trackers move in beside her, as they, too, took in and interpreted the tracks on the ground. A thick silence descended as they all studied the chaotic sign once, twice, three times. Sabrina knew they were all probably hoping that one of the team would speak up, reassuring the others with a benign interpretation of what lay before them. The reassurance never came.
In her peripheral vision, Sabrina saw Jessie bend to pick up something in the grass. Jessie held it out to her, and Sabrina’s fingers closed on a cell phone.
Not again. Please, God.
Behind her, she barely registered when Alex radioed the base and told Skylar to call 911.
“Roger that,” the staticky voice replied. “Cops are on their way.”
And all Sabrina could think was, Too late.
TARA AWOKE to a sharp pain piercing her between the shoulder blades.
Ow. Not fun.
She felt groggy, sluggish. Like she’d just stayed up studying all night for a test. And her arms hurt.
Lolling her head around to loosen the tight muscles in her neck, she tried to relax, to go back to sleep. But her body hurt all over, and her head was pounding. And she was so cold. Had Dad turned the heat down again to save money on the electric bill? Drove her nuts when he did that. She felt like she was ninety years old when she woke up freezing like this, every joint creaking and groaning in protest when she rolled out of bed.
But she wasn’t in bed. She felt like she was standing.
Weird.
Too disturbed by the unfamiliarity of her situation to go back to sleep, Tara struggled to open her eyes. But for some reason, they wouldn’t cooperate. So she flexed her shoulders and brought her arms down to her sides.
Or tried to.
A faint rattle was her only reward. Her hands stayed firmly above her head, pinned by something clinging to her wrists. She pulled her arms downward again, causing the pain in her upper back to radiate throughout her body.
What the heck?
Some kind of crust seemed to have formed on her eyes, like the kind that made your lashes stick together when you’d forgotten to take off your mascara at night. But this felt stickier, like mascara times seven, and it had gunked her eyes completely shut. And her head hurt like nobody’s business.
Once again, she tried to bring her hands down, to wipe away the crud on her face and stretch her aching muscles.
Nothing. Just that sound again.
The fuzziness of sleep left her abruptly as adrenaline shot through her system. That man.
Her arms jerked