Читать книгу Last Resort - Hannah Alexander - Страница 10

Carissa’s eyes opened to complete blackness. All she could hear was the drip of water, and all she could feel was the hard stone floor beneath her. She sniffed the earthy, moist air, and remembered where she was. Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She tasted the saltiness on her lips.

“Jesus, please help me,” she prayed in a whisper. “I’m scared. Where am I? Why hasn’t anybody found me yet?”

Her soft words bounced off the rock that surrounded her…but when she stopped praying, the whispers continued, sliding past the rock wall, slithering through the blackness.

Her attacker was back! She clamped both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out.

There was a scuff of shoes on a hard surface, a flicker of light that turned the blackness to dark gray. The footsteps drew closer, the whispering voice became louder.

Carissa cringed against the wall, afraid to breathe. Could she be seen? Her head pounded once more with sudden pain, and she gasped aloud without thinking.

The footsteps stopped, and so did the whispering. Carissa squeezed her eyes shut. Make whoever it is go away, Jesus. Hide me! Please, Jesus, keep me safe!

The whispering started again, the footsteps drew closer. Then the words grew more pronounced.

“Control,” she heard, on an eerie breath of sound. “I’m in control. I can take care of this. She’s here and I can find her.”

There was a clatter of pebbles above Carissa’s head. The searcher was above her now!

She held her breath. Please Jesus please Jesus please.

Then the whispering faded, becoming less distinct. The sound of footsteps moved away. Carissa opened her eyes and peered out at the reflection of a flashlight beam against a white column several yards away. She stuck her head out of her tiny hiding place, but the light had disappeared.

She settled back into her hiding place and waited. Jesus was watching over her.

“Noelle, listen to me, please tell me what’s happening,” Nathan said quietly.

She blinked at the gloomy daylight outside the windshield, then realized Nathan was watching her intently.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re all right.” His voice was gentle, reassuring, as though he were speaking to a child. He caught her hands in his.

She tried to withdraw them.

He didn’t release her. “What’s this all about? Was this the same as last night?” he asked.

She nodded.

“How does that feel? What happens? What goes through your mind?”

“It isn’t anything dramatic or overflowing,” she whispered, as if speaking aloud might make this sudden knowledge disappear. “I’m sorry, I can’t explain, really. It’s too…new to me.”

“Once upon a time, you understood what it was.”

“Yeah, well, once upon a time I was an innocent child, but too many things happened to change that. It’s been many years since I’ve felt His blessing.” There. She’d admitted it to him. The faith of her childhood had failed her. Or maybe it hadn’t failed, but she had failed it…failed God…failed herself.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

She straightened and withdrew her hands; this time he let them go. She sat back and stared out the windshield. “If this is a gift from God, as you say, then He must have made a mistake.”

“You know better.”

She raised a hand to stop his protest. “Would you just listen for a minute? You saw the way I was in high school—desperately in need of attention and love and willing to go to any lengths to find it.”

“I came to grips with that years ago,” Nathan said gently. “You’d lost your mother, and your father wasn’t home with you much. Your sister tried to make it up to you, but that was impossible. Why don’t you give yourself a break?”

“And why won’t you at least let me complete a thought without interrupting?” She kept her voice gentle, but she needed him to hear her out.

“Sorry.”

“During nursing school I dated a drug addict, and after graduation I married him. How stupid is that? I’m talking illegal street drugs, Nathan. And I used them myself. You think God wants to give a gift to someone like that?”

“I think you’re making judgments you should leave to God. Sure, you got carried away and blew it badly a few times. But you aren’t the same person you were then, so stop with the guilt complex and tell me what you were experiencing a moment ago,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Nathan, you sound like an overeager newspaper reporter. What do you think I was feeling?”

“I don’t have your gift, but you looked very concerned about something.”

“You got it.” Her voice caught. She cleared her throat. “Very concerned.”

“But about what?”

“Carissa. It’s urgent that we find her quickly. But we all know that.” She focused on the familiar features of his face, at the unusual cedar-green of his eyes. “You really think this is a message from God?”

“Yes I do. Your gift has returned.”

She watched for some break in his gaze, some hint of doubt. There was none. “I’m not some holy saint, Nathan. If this is a gift, there are many far more worthy recipients who—”

“Worthy?” he interrupted, impatiently. “A saint is simply someone who has put faith in Him. You’ve been a believer since you were six.”

“But you know I haven’t—”

“He can use anyone He pleases for whatever work He wants done, with or without that person’s help,” he interrupted again. “With you, I think He gives you special knowledge that you need to know, not something you conjure for yourself, because He’s the one in control, not you. When you dreamed about your mother before she died, I think He was preparing you.”

Noelle nodded. “Okay. So what’s He giving me now?”

“You’re here, aren’t you? Obviously you need to search for Carissa.”

She nodded, watching the tension in his expression. “You don’t look too chipper,” she noted. “I thought you dealt with this kind of thing before in your pastoral duties.”

“This kind of thing? You’re kidding, right? This is not your normal, everyday counseling session or grief process.” He slid back behind the steering wheel, shifted into Drive and eased forward along the lane.

“Okay, then if these episodes I’m having are connected to Carissa, why can’t I see where she is? Why didn’t I receive some brilliant flash of understanding, some mental map about where to go to find her?”

“Because you aren’t writing the script. God is. He’ll guide you when it’s time.” He glanced at her briefly. “So were there any other impressions a moment ago?”

Noelle gazed at the ceiling of the truck, reluctant to accept that this was even happening. But still…“I felt she was alone in the dark and frightened of some unknown threat.”

“Something? Or someone? Or just the dark itself?”

“Someone.” That much Noelle knew, though it was still a mystery to her how she’d reached that certainty. “But that doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe anyone would kidnap Carissa.”

“Could be revenge. You know Cecil. He has a way of—”

“Making people angry,” she finished for him. “I know. He’s always been quicker to engage his mouth than his brain. But still, only a nutcase would try to take that out on Carissa.”

“Excuse me, but a ‘nutcase’ is exactly who we’re talking about here.”

“Okay. Fine.” Noelle gazed out the window at the bright-red sumac bushes along the edges of the lane, at the red Virginia creeper vines outlining tree limbs, threaded among the canopy of green leaves. “Come to think of it, we sound like a couple of nutcases ourselves. If anyone were to overhear us talking—”

“They won’t. We’ll be careful.”

“Good. So that means you’re not going to go blabbing this to anyone?”

He raised a brow of affected disdain. “You can’t possibly believe I would do something so audacious as to sully my own good name among the locals. My livelihood depends on my reputation.”

She grinned, flooded with relief at this glimpse of her old friend. “Okay, fine. You don’t tell them I’m psychic—”

“You’re not psychic, you’re gifted. They’re two totally different—”

“—and I won’t tell them about the stray marbles you’ve apparently been losing because you believe me. Has Cecil fired someone at the mill or the ranch recently?”

“Not in over six months, and the last man wanted to get fired so he could draw unemployment insurance.”

“No motive for a kidnapping, then. Could Carissa have gotten lost?”

“That’s very possible. Cecil found her flashlight in the mud last night. He’s thinking that she might have gotten turned around and panicked.”

“But Carissa doesn’t panic easily,” Noelle said.

“And besides, you have a definite impression that someone is a threat…”

“I’m not willing to put my faith in some stupid impression,” Noelle said.

“Not stupid,” he insisted. “Let’s not dismiss any possibility.”

Nathan pulled up to the sawmill. The paved parking lot surrounding the huge, barnlike building was crammed with cars, trucks, SUVs and trailers, which had apparently carried all-terrain vehicles.

Ordinarily, Cecil wouldn’t thank anyone for tearing up his pastureland and traumatizing more than a thousand head of cattle and horses, but if the volunteer searchers found his little girl, he would most likely be willing to give them permanent rights to the land—if those rights were his to give. Though he managed all of the Cooper enterprises, he hadn’t yet inherited.

Nathan parked between a van and another truck, then turned to Noelle again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I told you, I’m fine. A little rattled, but what would you expect? I want to focus on finding Carissa.”

“We’ll do that.”

Noelle stared at the corrugated aluminum siding on the huge building. Even after ten years, the sawmill brought back the memories of the accident that had killed Dad and Grandma and Grandpa. Carissa’s disappearance only resurrected those memories more distinctly.

“We might as well walk from here,” she said. “We’ve got to start looking somewhere.”

They climbed from the truck to be greeted by the music of the crickets and the scent of moist earth. Noelle took a deep breath, her gaze traveling over the mossy green of the cedar trees, the splashes of orange and apricot on the tips of maple trees and the rippling green of the hay field, punctuated by huge, silver-gold bales stacked side by side in the field to the right of the lane.

This lane led around the side of the building to the Cooper settlement about a quarter of a mile away. Noelle’s ancestors had lived and farmed here for generations, expanding this property into a valuable asset that, combined with the successful sawmill, generously supported family members and dozens of employees. As a Cooper family member, Noelle received a sizable check every six months, even though she didn’t work on the property.

Noelle avoided looking at the sawmill, allowing her memories to carry her back to a safer time. She loved country life, especially the privacy and peace of this hollow in the hills. Though she also loved living in Springfield, every time she came home to Hideaway she felt a distinct tug of the heart. She loved the town of Hideaway. Even though she wouldn’t admit it to Nathan, the idea of working at the clinic appealed to something inside her that she thought had dried up and died when she’d lost her last nursing position.

Still, too many memories attacked her here on Cooper land.

“Did anyone search the mill for signs of a possible problem?” she asked. “Maybe a struggle of some kind?”

“They checked, but all they found was the ledger alongside the lane, covered in mud. Carissa obviously had been to the mill and gone, and if there’d been a problem at the mill, she certainly wouldn’t have bothered with the ledger.”

“Could Cecil and Melva have heard a car engine from the house?”

“Not necessarily, but the dogs are usually pretty quick to pick up on the scent or sounds of a stranger, and they never sounded an alarm.”

Noelle reached into the back of Nathan’s truck, where she’d placed water flasks and a backpack with supplies, including a first-aid kit. “Want to hike from here?”

“I’d love to,” he said. “But let me carry the backpack. It looks heavy.”

She strapped herself into her pack. “Think I can’t carry my own load?”

“No,” he said dryly. “I just thought, after all these years, that competitive streak of yours might have mellowed a little.”

“I’m not competitive.” She shifted the shoulder straps. “You should know that by now.”

She gazed along the lane. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone in her family right now, especially since no one had called her about Carissa. Still, the lane was the quickest and safest route into the rest of the hollow, with connecting lanes and cattle trails beyond Cecil’s place. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and make it past the houses without anyone noticing us,” she said as they set off.

Nathan sniffed the tealike scent of early autumn leaves and listened to the crickets chirping from the forest on either side of the lane. Cedar Hollow—two thousand acres of fertile farm valley settled deep in the tree-lined hills—had changed little since he’d grown up here. His family’s dairy cows had grazed just across the road from the Cooper beef cattle. He and Noelle had played along Willow Creek, which followed the curve of the land until it reached Table Rock Lake, a little over two miles away.

Noelle turned and glanced over her shoulder at the field to the south as the sound of an all-terrain vehicle reached them. “That’s Carissa’s favorite place to ride Gypsy,” she said.

“It’s where we loved to ride, too,” he reminded her. “The field is level with amazingly few rocks to trip the horses.” He and Noelle had often played in the field and along the creek when they were growing up.

“Why do some things stay the same, when other things change so drastically?” Noelle murmured.

“I’ve asked that enough times myself,” Nathan said. “Remember how many times we walked down this lane when we were kids?”

“Or rode our bikes.”

“And tried to hide from my little sisters.”

“And my big sister.” Noelle chuckled. “I felt so secure, so protected then. I mean, I had family all around me, and my best friend lived right down the road.” She glanced sideways at Nathan.

He nodded. How many times in the past few years he had thought about those days, wondering if he would have done things differently, given the chance.

“Two thousand acres of Cooper property, joined by Trask property,” Noelle said. “The searchers couldn’t have covered everything yet, could they?”

“Not every inch, of course, but—”

“But Carissa knows this hollow so well. All she has to do is find Willow Creek and follow it down.”

Nathan glanced at Noelle. “Maybe Carissa’s done just that. She might be home by the time we get to the house.”

“You don’t sound convinced.” Noelle pulled the cell phone from her pocket, punched numbers again, asked whoever answered about the status of the search without identifying herself, and then expressed thanks. “Not yet,” she reported to Nathan, kicking a rock to the side of the track. “Carissa knows this land as well as we did at her age.”

“That’s true, but everything looks different in the dark. My friend Taylor Jackson thinks it’s possible she got lost, and he’s working on that premise while others are searching farther afield.”

“Taylor’s the ranger who’s dating Karah Lee Fletcher at the clinic?”

“Yes. He’s been helping coordinate the search. The sheriff suggested Carissa might have run away for some reason.”

“Ridiculous. Greg should know better.”

“That’s what Cecil and Melva keep insisting,” Nathan said. “But you know Carissa can be headstrong, and she and her parents did have a little confrontation yesterday.”

“What about?”

“Gladys.”

Noelle’s steps slowed. “What about her?” she asked quietly.

“She wants to see Justin and Carissa again.” Gladys had given up any right to see her children when she had abandoned them and their father. Her lack of concern for their suffering had outraged the whole community. “Carissa wants to see her, and Melva’s pitching a major fit.”

Noelle stepped around a mud puddle and ducked beneath a tree limb. “Does Gladys think she can just suddenly walk back into their lives and stir everything up again? When she left, Carissa was devastated. For at least a year, I think she continued to hope her mother would come back to them.”

“As you said, Carissa’s strong-willed,” Nathan said. “So it could be possible that she’s in hiding somewhere, maybe protesting.”

“No.”

“But if she were hiding, where do you think she’d hide?” He gestured around him, indicating the expanse of ground they would have to cover. “Where would you hide?”

“Not around here, and no, I’m not feeling any kind of leading.”

“But just for the sake of a place to look, where would you hide?”

“Does that old dirt track still wind through the woods to the national forest a couple of miles back?” she asked.

“I think so. I heard Pearl complaining about people trespassing on Cooper land from the logging trail in national forest land. Why? Do you—”

She turned and looked up at him, and he glimpsed an interested quickening in those intelligent eyes. “Where did we go when we were kids? You know, when we got in trouble.”

“The caves?” he asked. There were at least four in the vicinity that ranged from mere indentations in the rock to caverns that cut deeply into the hillside.

She gave him a look of approval. “Exactly. Is Bobcat Cave still sealed?”

“I think it is. At least, I hope it is.”

She bent over and tucked the cuffs of her jeans into her socks. “We may be beating some brush. Still ticks and chiggers here, I suppose.”

“Not in this section, there ain’t.” A deep, strong female voice suddenly spoke from the trees a few yards ahead.