Sloane nodded. “My wrist. Just give me a second.”
Molia walked to where a strap protruded from beneath rock and shale. The backpack Wade had buried. It was hard maneuvering but he was able to lower enough to grasp the strap. He pulled it from the rock, set it on the ground, and used his teeth to get the zipper open, spitting out dust. Then he turned around and felt inside the pack, pulling out the knife. Molia leaned closer, yelling in Sloane’s ear. “I don’t know what the hell just happened. Maybe you really do have a guardian angel.”
He managed to pull the blade open, hearing it snap in place. “Turn around,” Molia said. “Let’s get these off.”
They stood back to back, Molia holding the knife. Sloane looked over his shoulder and pressed the plastic tie against the blade, moving up and down until the tie snapped. Then he took the knife and cut Molia lose.
The detective rummaged through the pack and pulled out two water bottles, handing one to Sloane. He also found iodine tablets, protein bars, a loaded pistol, and the topographical map inside a sealed plastic bag. Wade had marked the location where they had left Greg’s SUV with a red star and their present location at the base of the rock with a green triangle and traced a path between the two in red. It was not a significantly long distance, but they already knew the terrain to be rugged.
Molia folded the map so he could read it inside the plastic sheath and slipped it into his pocket. “Let’s go get our sons,” he said.
Something moved.
Below the rock from which they had fallen, Jake thought he saw something move, but now he was not certain.
“What is it?” T.J. asked. “What are you looking at?”
It was probably only more of the loose stone tumbling down the side. “Nothing,” he said. The rain had increased, darkening the rock. “Come on, let’s go.”
He started down.
“Jake!” T.J. still faced the rock. “Look.”
Jake went back to the ledge and felt his knees go weak. It had not been loose rock. Sloane emerged on a footpath below the rock,
the detective behind him, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Their hands were free. “They’re alive?” T.J. said. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Jake said, overwhelmed with relief. “I don’t know.” For a moment he could not move, confused and uncertain. Then joy and instinct kicked in and he quickly got to his feet. “Come on. We have to get down there”
He climbed down off the rock, running off balance, nearly falling. This time T.J. did not lag behind, each of them fueled by hope and adrenaline. Their arms pumped. Their legs churned. Jake followed the path he hoped led to the ravine. Below them the bend in the river crashed off the wall and continued parallel to it. If they could get around the bend they could climb down to their dads’ elevation, perhaps get close enough to call out.
The sky opened, heavy drops of rain beating through the canopy. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the forest lit up with the first bursts of blue light. Jake and T.J. kept moving, running at times, slowing to get over rocks or downed trees, pushing through branches, running again. The forest had turned dark as night and the rain became fierce, a deluge of water that made it difficult to see. Jake ducked beneath the overhang of a boulder that looked to have been sheared in half. Out of the rain, they both struggled to catch their breath.
“When this passes we’ll start again,” Jake said, blowing on his hands to warm them, his breath marking the air. Water trickled over the edge of the overhang and puddled at their feet.
T.J. wiped his eyes. “Do you think we can find them?”
“We need to find a way down. We’re too high. But they were headed east.” He motioned vaguely with his arm. “We’ll head that same way.”
T.J. shook his head. “That guy shot them,” he said. “Didn’t he?”
“Hell if I know,” Jake said. “I have no idea what happened.” He stuck his head out from under the ledge. The downpour had eased, though rain continued to fall and the thunder rumbled closer. “Let’s go.”
Jake led them what he thought to be east, though with the cloud cover, unable to see the sun, he couldn’t be sure. What he did know
is that they needed to get around the bend in the river and then find a way down. His initial joy had been tempered with the realization that it remained a long shot they would actually be able to find their fathers, but the odds were certainly better than before. They were alive, and they were out there, closer than ever. That’s all that mattered. And even if they didn’t catch up to them, at least he and T.J. were moving again in the right direction, downstream. Maybe they’d find footprints or some trail to follow, if the rain didn’t wash them away. Maybe they’d find a house and be able to make a phone call. They had to try.
The trees thinned. Then they stopped altogether and he and T.J. stepped out onto a large domed rock without any foliage but for patches of low-lying scrub. They’d reached the bend in the river and looked down perhaps a hundred feet onto the foaming water as it crashed against the face of the sheer cliff.
The forest lit up again, this time a huge flash of lightning that made the hair on Jake’s arms stand on end. Thunder exploded immediately, a deafening blast that shook the ground.
“Get down!” he said. “Get down!”
They retreated back beneath the canopy and pressed their backs against a large pine tree. Another burst of light lit the area in a blue light. Jake felt a tingling sensation in his arms and legs as the sky exploded. He looked back at the boulder they had to cross and estimated it to be the length of a football field.
“Should we wait?” T.J. asked.
Jake shook his head. “We can’t.”
“But the lightning?”
Jake couldn’t help but laugh. “Really? After everything we’ve been through? Come on.”
They left the shelter of the trees and scrambled up the side of the rock, feet slipping on the slickened surface, sliding backward. Jake dropped to all fours and bear crawled to the top, then turned and offered T.J. his hand, helping him. The lightning struck again, and this time Jake heard a crackling noise in the forest. Thunder boomed, louder than the others.
“Run,” he shouted.
They took off in a dead sprint, picking their spots, trying not to stumble. Three-quarters of the way across, the rock sloped down. The footing became treacherous. Jake slowed and dropped onto his butt, scooting the final yards, sliding off. The drop was farther than it appeared, and he landed hard in the dirt. T.J. fell beside him.
Jake helped him to his feet. “We did it,” he said. “We’re almost there, T.J.”
The lightning struck again, illuminating T.J.’s face a brilliant blue. When it faded the color did not return to his face. He had gone pale.
The voice came from behind, and it made the hairs on Jake’s neck stand as straight as the lightning had.
“I hope you boys had a nice hike, because I guarantee you it will be your last,” Atkins said.
TWENTY-SIX
E
LDORADO
N
ATIONAL
F
OREST
S
IERRA
N
EVADA
M
OUNTAINS
T
om Molia pulled out the map and considered it in between sips of water. Soaked through, his clothes felt weighted. The rims of their floppy hats sagged like wilted flowers. They’d found cover beneath the branches of two trees, enough at least to consider the map and the compass that unscrewed from the bottom of the handle of the knife.
“Are we still going in the right direction?” Sloane asked, looking over Molia’s shoulder.
“I sure as hell hope so,” Molia said.
“You hope so?”
“We are. We are,” he said. “But we got a couple more miles to cover.” He showed Sloane the route on the map. “When we came up the mountain with Barnes we took this route. We’re heading perpendicular to that now and should intersect it about here, above the drop-off location. It should afford us a good view to determine if anyone beats us there.”
“Then let’s get moving,” Sloane said.
Atkins grabbed Jake by the throat and shoved him against the trunk of a pine. “You’ve caused me problems for the last time.”
The two Mexicans stood to the side, looking exhausted. The guard Jake and T.J. had tricked had blood down the front of his water-soaked shirt, a split lip, and an open wound at the tip of his nose.
A second man leveled a gun at Atkins’s head. “Let it go, Atkins. You heard Sheriff Barnes; we get them back to Fresh Start.” Atkins shot the man a look, enraged. “What happens to them there is your concern. But it’s like Barnes said, we can’t afford to have more people searching for anymore bodies up here, and I’m not carrying them back down the mountain. So chill out and let’s get moving.”
Jake looked to T.J., an unspoken thought passing between them. They think they’re dead. They think our dads are dead.
Atkins loosened his grip, but leaned in close. “I’m going to feed you to Big Baby,” he said.
He spun Jake around, pulled his arms behind his back, and secured his wrists with a zip tie so tight the edge of the plastic cut into Jake’s flesh. He secured T.J.’s wrists in a similar fashion, shoving them from behind. “Move.”
They kept a blistering pace, despite the rain, which eventually eased to a drizzle, the clouds giving way to pockets of blue sky. Jake and T.J. stumbled ahead. If they fell Atkins kicked at them or hit them with the butt of a rifle. T.J. got up each time, no doubt thinking, as Jake was, that Sloane or Molia would materialize from around a tree at any moment. But the longer they pushed on, the more Jake realized they were not heading east to where the bus had dropped them off, the direction their fathers had taken. They were heading due south, down the mountain. That meant Atkins was hiking them directly back to Fresh Start, as he and Overbay had done the first day, when they took Jake hunting.
Molia knelt. They were looking down over the horseshoe cul-de-sac at the end of the dirt road. The Suburban was gone. He scanned to the edge of the trail, looking between the swaying branches and shimmering pine needles and saw something red. Upon closer examination he saw the faces of two boys. They sat with their hands tied behind their backs. Neither was Jake or T.J. The second guard, Barnes had called him “Bradley,” stood watching them. Two horses and a donkey had been tied to the trees.
“They’re not here,” Molia whispered. “But the others are.”
“Could mean they haven’t found Jake and T.J. yet,” Sloane said.
“Or they have and haven’t arrived yet.”
Molia pulled out the map. “Fresh Start isn’t far from here. They could have decided to take them directly there instead.”
“What do we do now? Should we wait. See if they arrive?”
“Can’t wait.” Molia pointed. Far down the hill Sloane spotted a glint of yellow, the Fresh Start bus ascending the hill.
“I’m open to ideas,” Sloan said.
Molia turned to Sloane then looked back to the bus. “How well do you know your Greek mythology?”
Half an hour later, Jake looked down at the rectangular plot of dirt and the metal roofs of the buildings reflecting the light of the reemerging sun. Fresh Start. He didn’t get much time to admire the view. Atkins shoved him, and they continued down the mountain, every step one step closer to the inevitable confrontation with Big Baby.
They approached Fresh Start’s back fence. The gate pulled apart, and Atkins and the man in camouflage escorted them and the two Mexicans inside. The other inmates working in the field and the garden stopped and stared, as if uncertain what they were witnessing. Atkins marched Jake and T.J. past the dormitories and the mess hall directly to the Administration Building. Inside he instructed the civilian at the front desk to open the Plexiglas safety door. Captain Overbay met the party in the lobby with three other men Jake had never seen.
Overbay stepped forward, inches from Jake, his breath acidic and sour. “Some who come here, simply can’t be helped,” he said. “It is an unfortunate reality of our society that some are incorrigible. They cannot follow rules. They cannot live by rules. It is innate in their nature to break the rules, to break the law. They are beyond redemption. They are beyond rehabilitation. They are beyond saving.”
“If this is being saved, you can shove it up your ass,” Jake said.
Overbay raised a hand to strike him but one of the men grabbed it. “They’re not to be touched,” he said. “Put them in the holding
cell and keep them in isolation. Nothing happens to them until we get the rest of this sorted out.” Then the man motioned to the others and they departed, taking the Mexican guards with them.
Atkins stepped closer. “Oh, we’ll get this sorted out, Stand-up. You bet your ass we will.”
Molia came down the hill behind where the guard stood watching the road, no doubt for the approaching bus. Sloane waited in the brush near the trailhead. They didn’t have much time. When Molia was in position, Sloane stood and Bradley took notice. He reached for his weapon at the same time Molia steppe up behind him and pressed the gun Wade left in the backpack behind the guard’s ear.
“Don’t,” Molia said. “Take your hand away from the gun.” Bradley complied.
Molia disarmed him and ordered him to kneel with his fingers laced, hands behind his head.
Sloane cut the ties binding the two kids’ wrists. The black kid moved quickly to the horses. “They keep the zip ties in the saddle,” he said, returning with a handful. Molia took one, bound Bradley’s hands behind his back, then dragged him back into the brush.
“Where are Jake and T.J., do you know?” Sloane asked.
“They’re taking them back to Fresh Start,” the black kid said. “Big Baby is going to kill them.”
Sloane felt his pulse quicken. “Who’s Big Baby, one of the guards?”
“He’s worse than a guard. He’s an inmate. He’s a certified psychopath.”
Sloane heard the whine of the bus engine. “Okay, time for a little acting, boys. Sit down and put your hands behind your backs.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
F
RESH
S
TART
Y
OUTH
T
RAINING
F
ACILITY
S
IERRA
N
EVADA
M
OUNTAINS