I’ll take him up.” She immediately wanted to kick herself for the perverse stubbornness that made her refuse Alex’s tacit offer just because of a slight challenge in the cop’s eyes that she may or may not have imagined. Trudge up the mountain alone with Aaron Donovan? Now, that was going to be a real kick in the head. But it was too late for her to back down now, and they all knew it. “See what Jessie wants and then call in the team that was dispatched along these logging roads. If the trail does pick up again, we’ll need as many bodies as we can to help us find it.”
The tire tracks flashed once more in her mind. They weren’t going to find a thing.
As Alex started to turn away, she spoke again. “Alex, make sure you protect this tire print.”
Widening his eyes, Alex scrutinized the track, then looked at her questioningly.
“Until the crime scene people get here to cast it. It might be important.” With a nod, he moved toward Jessie, leaving Sabrina alone with Aaron.
She looked him straight in the eye, refusing to flinch even though it took all she had. “Come on.” With that, Sabrina took off, darting into the trees and moving swiftly and silently up the ridge. Now that she knew where the footprints lay, she had no trouble following them back up.
Given that her job entailed a lot of hiking, not to mention rock climbing and rappelling, Sabrina was in excellent shape, despite the fact that no amount of extra sit-ups would give her the six-pack abs Jessie and Alex had. So hiking up this rather benign part of the mountain without a trail wasn’t that much of a challenge, even though it would have had most people huffing and puffing. But damn if Aaron wasn’t keeping up. Actually, he wasn’t just keeping up, he was snapping at her heels like a pack of wild dogs, pushing her farther and faster.
In less than half an hour, they reached the spot where Sabrina had seen the last of Tara’s footprints, not a word having passed between them. Careful not to disturb the trail, she motioned to the detective to follow directly behind her, leading them both to where Tara’s trail first led away from the hot spring.
“Paula said she stayed behind soaking in the pool while Tara went out to make a call on her cell phone,” Sabrina explained, even though she knew Aaron had probably learned that bit of information two hours before she had. Not that she was bitter. “You can see the lug print of her hiking boots here.” She pointed to the trail, and Aaron nodded, scanning the ground. She walked him to the clearing where Jessie and Alex had first spotted the man’s trail intersecting with Tara’s.
“So, there’s the mystery trail, made by someone we believe was on the mountain at the same time as the girls,” she continued, gesturing to the line of crushed grass that still remained, although it had grown fainter as the grass healed itself and began to stand up again. “It looks like he met up with Tara.”
Okay, now his silence was really getting to her. She stopped walking and waited for him to respond, noticing that he was staring at the ground as if he could interpret the signs himself. But she knew that wasn’t the case.
“These tracks were made at the same time as Tara’s?” he asked. He wasn’t questioning her, just asking for an explanation. For which she should probably be grateful, given their past.
She took a couple of steps to where the ground erupted in a sudden confusion of broken weeds and plants and disturbed dirt in a language that was completely foreign to him, but plain as day to her. “Look over here.” She crouched down by the prints and moved her hand above the ground to show him what she was talking about. “She stopped to talk to him. You can tell by the number of prints overlapping and shuffling here. People don’t hold still when they talk to each other—they’re always moving, shifting their weight.”
“You know the prints are male by the size?” he asked quietly, choosing to tower above her rather than join her on the ground. The jerk.
“That, and the fact that they point outward—men tend to do that, while most women turn their toes slightly inward.” It was a delaying tactic, that explanation. She didn’t want to show him what they’d seen next.
“I know there’s something you don’t want to tell me, but we’ll be up here all night unless you step it up.”
All night, alone with Aaron Donovan. Once upon a time, that might have been an appealing proposition. Now, it just made her head hurt. She reached up to rub the bridge of her nose, a soft “ahh” of pain escaping her lips before she could stop it.
He was by her side in a heartbeat, crouched before her so his too-handsome face was directly in hers. “Are you all right?” His hand curved around her bicep, as if to offer comfort, though it hovered inches above her skin.
She reared back, shocked at his question, at the notion that he might care even slightly about her answer.
“Sabrina?”
Pushing off the ground with her hands, she sprang to her feet, smacking her palms together to clean off the pine needles that had clung to her skin. “I wasn’t the one who waited for two hours before calling us in, Detective,” she replied, practically spitting out the title as she dusted her hands on the front of her pants. He rose slowly and lifted an eyebrow in response, the mocking look back on his face.
Shaken and not really knowing why, Sabrina spun away from him. She had no time for this—on that point, Donovan was right. She needed to step it up for Tara. With an impatient motion of her hand, she indicated for Aaron to follow her, not looking at him as she led the way to the next patch of dirt that had a couple of telltale hexagons embedded in it. Just ahead, she knew, were a few more complete versions of Tara’s prints. “Right here, Tara’s stride interval increases,” she said, her tone all business now. “That’s the distance between her footprints. Basically, that means she started to run.”
Aaron swore under his breath, a ridge forming between his dark eyebrows. Overhead, the sky darkened perceptibly, and the rumble of thunder from the east seemed to be coming closer.
Sabrina gestured with her chin to a spot up ahead, the quick movement reverberating throughout her skull. “He followed her. I think she fell.”
It had taken her team several painstaking minutes to piece together the whole grim story, but piece it together they had, and as she led him back down to where they’d left Jessie and Alex, Sabrina relayed it to the detective. Someone had been perched on a rock above Hot Spring Seven, presumably watching the girls as they’d soaked in the pool. As soon as Tara had gotten out to make her phone call, he’d started down the mountain, intercepting her as she’d made it to the clearing. There was a struggle, and Tara broke free and started to run, only to be tackled to the ground a few seconds later. Somehow, her attacker had managed to subdue her, and the heavy, scuffing partial prints they’d found as they made their way down the mountain indicated that he’d carried her down.
To the old logging road where his car had sat, waiting for them.
He didn’t say anything once she’d finished. He pulled out his radio and directed more police and the department crime scene techs up the mountain from where they stood, telling them in no uncertain terms that they needed to avoid stepping near the trail of crepe-paper stakes she’d left behind. Once the first people started arriving, he’d offered to escort her back to the logging road in a tone that she knew was more demand than request.
Back at the road, she turned to him, meeting his gaze directly—and immediately wishing she hadn’t. There was something so sad in his expression when you caught him off guard, just before he had a chance to close off again, a vulnerability that undid her more than his barely concealed hostility had.
“We have to find her,” Aaron said simply, and because she knew what frightened him, his words made her ache for him.
Without thinking, she reached for him, her hand closing around his bare wrist. “Aaron,” she said, because that’s all she could say.
Gently, firmly, he pulled his arm away, the cool, collected cop once more. “I’ll make sure someone casts that tire track,” he said. “Thanks for your help, Ms.