The Watchers (22 page)

“You could be right.” Sam paused then added,
“Behind that beautiful smile, I bet you have a cunning nature.”

I stepped further down the hall to spy on
them. Sam was leaning on Ellen’s desk as they talked. They were
leaning toward each other in a way that was familiar; familiar
because Daniel and I did it all the time. Ellen looked up at him
with a mischievous smile, her eyes dancing with laughter. “You’ll
never know just how much.”

They shared a moment, and I got a lot of
images I really didn’t want or need. I cleared my throat loudly to
keep the images from going further. Sam popped off of the desk with
a funny little jerk at the sound. He spun to face me, his surprised
expression priceless. “Clare! It’s nice to see you again.”

His short hair was arranged carefully, not a
hair out of place. He was wearing an expensive looking suit I knew
he hated wearing – he preferred blue jeans and hiking boots. He
smiled warmly when he saw me then held out one large hand for me to
take. I shook it, impressed again by the calluses, knowing they
bespoke of years of outdoor activity and a strong desire to work
with his hands. His hands said more about him than his suit and his
hair.

“Hey, Sam…Mom. I’m not interrupting anything
am I?” I smirked at her, and she started blushing.

She looks different today. I
wonder what happened to make her so bright all of a sudden? Let me
think...she kissed a boy and tried to pretend like she didn’t? Oh,
look at her blushing. Did I embarrass you, sweetie?
She smirked back at me.

“No, not at all,” Sam said a little too
quickly.

“Alex said ‘hi,’” I said. “She had to run to
class.”

“It’s nice of you to pass that along,
thanks.” There was an awkward moment of silence. “I’m going to
go…make a phone call.”

He pointed vaguely at his office and hurried
away. I knew he was embarrassed that I had caught them flirting. I
looked after him as he retreated, my smirk growing into a
full-fledged smile. Parents…

“What?” Ellen demanded as soon as we were
alone.

“Nothing. Can I borrow the car?”

“What for?”

“A Ranger went missing. I’m going to help the
search party, since you most graciously gave me the day off of
school.”

“I heard. Sam’s going to go a little later to
help…once he gets a couple of cases settled. Are you sure you’re
not meeting someone?” she demanded, her eyes narrowed
suspiciously.

“Define ‘sure’.”

“That boy you won’t let me meet, you’re not
hooking up are you?”

“Don’t say, ‘hooking up,’ and no. I’m really
going to go help search for the Ranger.” I raised my hand in a
pledge. “I swear.”

But you want to see
him
. “I don’t know, sweetie. I don’t know if I want
you wandering around in the woods where all those attacks are
happening.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know me,
right?”

“I like to think I do,” she said with a small
smile.

“Well, knowing me like you do what do you
think I would do if I couldn’t borrow your car?”

Ugh
. “You’ll
either find another ride, possibly with this mysterious friend,
who’s not a boyfriend, but is a boy, or you’ll walk, or hitch a
ride, which I wouldn’t want you to do. Long story short…you’ll end
up where you want to be.”

“Exactly. So, wouldn’t it just be easier to
let me borrow the car? I promise I’ll be back in time to pick you
up.”

She hesitated. “If anything happens to
you…”

“I know, I know, you’ll ground me until I’m
thirty.”

“No. I would die from a broken heart, because
I would miss you so much. And I know you would hate to do that to
me.”

I leaned forward and touched her face. “You’d
have Sam,” I teased. I picked the keys up off her desk as she stuck
her tongue out at me, another blush heating her face. “But I
promise to be careful.”

“Bye,” she huffed.

“Bye. Bye Sam!” I yelled as I ran toward the
door.

“Bye!” Sam called just as I shut the
door.

I let the car warm up for a minute, knowing
how temperamental it could be in cold weather, and contemplated
what I was about to do. It was a bit rash, and I was possibly
searching for answers in the wrong place, but I didn’t really care.
What I was searching for didn’t matter. What mattered was that I
was accomplishing something. I needed purpose.

I inched the car back then pulled out onto
the highway, grateful there weren’t any cars coming. It always took
the wagon a moment to get up to speed. It rumbled and grumbled, but
didn’t give out on me like normal. Sputtering, I headed towards the
location I had heard in dozens of people’s thoughts while in the
station.

I was excited yet nervous at the prospect
that my search for answers might lead me in the direction of the
Adams’ house. Despite the numerous friends Daniel had, no one from
school had ever been out there. I knew it had to be on purpose. I
wanted to be invited, but he never asked me, and I wasn’t brash
enough to invite myself. Now, I might get a fleeting look at the
place, as long as it was near where I thought the Forest Ranger had
disappeared. I didn’t know what I would do if I found out Daniel
was responsible for her disappearance. I wouldn’t think about
that…unless I had to.

I drove for a good fifteen minutes, following
the directions I’d heard, until I saw the swarm of cars pulled to
the side of the road. I drove past them and around a curve in the
road, not wanting anyone to recognize our car and come looking for
me.

I got out, tugging my leather jacket tight
around me, wondering how anyone who was missing could survive a
night in this cold. Zipping up the creaking leather, I stuck my
hands in my pockets and did some serious thinking. From the
thoughts I had picked up at the station, everyone was headed in a
southwest course. I wasn’t an experienced hiker, but it didn’t make
sense that a trained Forest Ranger would head deeper into bear
territory. I leaned on the car and tried to put the pieces together
in my mind.

Assuming she wasn’t taken against her will,
it was more likely she would have headed for a place where she
could make shelter and hide, or she would have headed for a body of
water. Ideally, she would have headed for a place with both. I
nodded to the forest littered with wet, dead leaves, thorn bushes,
and broken limbs, and started walking on a course that was more to
the west. Every so often as I walked, I picked up a stone and
wedged it in the branches of a tree as a marker of the way I had
passed. I was determined to get answers, not die of hyperthermia.
As my feet created a monotonous, dull slide on the slick leaves, I
let my mind drift back to Jennifer and Mark, not wanting to think
about Daniel any more.

I knew Mark was waiting for the right moment
to ask me out. He was also waiting to get some kind of verification
that I preferred him over the rest of the male population. I didn’t
want him to ask me; the idea gave me the creeps. If he did ask me,
I would inevitably turn him down, and that would, in turn, create a
whole pile of trouble. It would definitely get back to Jennifer,
who would inevitably try to think up ways to get back at me, using
Michelle as a minion to her evil deeds. I knew who she would target
in order to make me jealous: Daniel. I had to cut off Mark’s asking
me out before he got the chance. It was the only way to keep
peace…and keep me from going to war with Jennifer. I had a plan,
but I wasn’t sure I could do it alone. I needed to get Mark more
interested in Jennifer, who was crazy about him in her typical, “we
belong together, because we’re both popular,” way. Mark would be
thrilled to find someone was so into him. Why he didn’t see her
attraction to him I couldn’t fathom. I centered my thoughts on
different ways to redirect Mark for a while, feeling entirely
tactical, letting those musings distract me from what I really
wanted to think about.

I had walked for an hour when I found my
first clue. I almost missed it. I was passing a band of dark azalea
bushes, which overhung a tiny mountain stream when I noticed a torn
piece of fabric hanging off one of the nearby brambles. If it
hadn’t been for the shaft of sunlight shining on the one bare part
of the creek, catching my eye, I wouldn’t have seen it all. I
stepped closer, curious about the random piece of clothing so far
out in the forest, and saw that it was smeared with mud and what
looked like blood. The fabric was green and similar to what I
thought a Forest Ranger would wear.

I took a deep breath, hoping the blood was
from a scratch or another non-life-threatening injury, and closed
my eyes. If she were close, and conscious, I would be able to hear
her thoughts. If she were dead, I was already too late.

I concentrated, and for the first time since
inheriting my gift of reading minds, I tested the limits of what I
could do. I reached out with my mind, like a silent hand exploring
the foliage, and started searching the forest around me. As I did,
I felt the life around me. The squirrels as they searched endlessly
for food, desperate this time of year, the few birds that had
decided being cold was worth not having to fly to Florida, even the
insects, they all touched my mind briefly. But I didn’t feel any
Forest Ranger named Susan. I pushed the field of thought out
further wondering if this were normal. It didn’t feel normal. I
laughed, almost disrupting the energy I had pushed outward in my
search for her. As if anything about my life, about being born to a
fallen angel, could be normal…

I was about to give up, and move on to
another part of the forest, when I felt a pinprick of energy. Or
was it light? My eyebrows furrowed as I concentrated. Whatever it
was, it was definitely more than just a squirrel or rabbit. I
followed the feeling, stumbling over the uneven ground. The feeling
got stronger. Whatever I was being drawn toward was large and well
hidden in a small cave further up on the mountain. I could almost
picture the spot in my mind. I opened my eyes, the feeling of the
presence very close, and scrambled up the side of a mountain to
find what my mind had seen.

I searched through all the rocky overhangs I
came across, the energy pulsing like a beacon. It was like a drum
inside me. Dah dum dah dum dah dum. I felt it inside my head and my
chest, urging me to go faster. I increased my speed and scrambled
across another rock outcropping, my own heart in my throat. The
sound increased tenfold. DAH DUM DAH DUM. I stopped. My breath
caught in my throat. There she was! I had actually found her! Her
arm was at an odd angle and she appeared unconscious, but she was
undeniably there. At least, I hoped she was unconscious. A trickle
of blood trailed down her face in a trickle of doubt.

I ran to her, not knowing how to help,
wishing I had taken that first aid class last spring like Ellen had
wanted me to. I checked her pulse; she was definitely alive – but
just barely. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her. For
once, I was glad I was freakishly tall and that my jacket was big
enough to cover her from her neck to mid-thigh. I stood up and
looked around.

Now what? As usual, I hadn’t remembered my
phone – not that I thought I would actually find her. I had known
the odds when I started out; had known I was looking for something
that was impossible to find. Yet, impossible was lying there at my
feet.

I looked down the embankment and gulped when
I saw how much of the hill I had scaled. She obviously needed a
hospital…fast. How was I going to get her down or even carry her
back to the car? Did I dare risk leaving her and coming back with
more people? No. I didn’t want to leave her. I would never forgive
myself if she died while I was off getting help. What I needed was
something to drag her on. I looked around the barren, wintered
mountain for help, but there was nothing. I would have to carry
her. There were no other options. I knelt down on my knees to pick
her up.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said as I threw her
over my shoulder, trying to avoid her broken arm.

She groaned slightly in response. Even
unconscious, she could feel the pain. I grunted as I settled her
dead weight on my shoulder. My knees buckled slightly when I rose,
but I kept my feet. I started down the hill, placing my feet
carefully, immediately feeling sweat pour down my forehead. I
slipped and slid down the mountain on leaves wet with last night’s
rain, glad that the slipping didn’t result in falling. I had to
stop at the bottom, leaning against a tree for support against the
weight of Susan’s body.

Once I had caught my breath, and managed to
cool down a little, I started down the trail, dreading the hike I
had ahead of me. As I walked around the base of the mountain, the
sweat started double time, and the veins in my neck popped out in
strained protest. I had to stop every couple of minutes to rest and
catch my breath. I switched shoulders whenever I stopped, hoping to
relieve some of the pressure, but it didn’t help. It only made both
my shoulders hurt.

I realized, as I hauled Susan onto my
shoulder for the fifth time, that saving people was a lot less
glamorous than the movies made it out to be. It was sweat and bone
aching tiredness and fear that I might fail. I didn’t want to fail
this woman. Would I fail? It was all I could think about.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to think
of good things, things I would do when I got back home. A bath, a
good book, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, maybe looking up Daniel’s
number and demanding to know where he was, sleeping a million
years, not moving unless I had to…

Twenty minutes passed of the grueling hike
before I stopped for a reason other than rest. It was a sound that
halted my feet. More precisely, it was a growl. It was as if
someone had figured out how to put all the evil of the universe
into one hair raising growl. I looked at Susan. She hadn’t made any
noise since I’d picked her up. I bit my lip, hesitating. Where had
that noise come from? I started walking again, my heart pounding
hard. The forest was silent. There were no birds chirping, no
movement among the leaves. Only a terrifying stillness.