that?
He turned around and headed for his car, and was running by the time he got inside. He started it up and peeled out of the parking lot without looking back.
Wyrick was worried all over again. Just when she thought Parks had backed off for good. Maybe he found out she’d been part of taking down Fourth Dimension. Or maybe he just hated being thwarted enough to want her dead. Either way, her sense of safety was gone. She hurried into the building, then up to the office.
Once she was inside, she locked the door behind her, then began turning on lights. She started coffee brewing, then took the sack into Charlie’s office and sat down. The moment her fingers touched the cap, she could see Tony Dawson’s face, so she closed her eyes and followed the vision.
* * *
Charlie marked the coordinates of the backpack on his GPS and then paused, trying to decide whether to go back up onto the trail to continue his search or shift to this lower location. He felt like a crime had been committed, but he still hadn’t decided if it was premeditated or a crime of chance.
As he looked around at the heavier forested area, he thought he could hear water, and remembered the map showing the location of a creek down in this canyon. If Tony was hurt, it stood to reason he would seek a water source, so he began walking toward the sound.
The canyon he was in now was rife with juniper, oak, cottonwood and ash, all of which afforded shelter to a diverse assortment of wildlife. Birdcalls and the occasional chatter from a squirrel above him were evident, and more than once, he came across deer tracks. The farther he went down into the canyon, the more animal signs he found.
When he found the creek, the cougar and bear tracks gave him pause. If Tony Dawson was no longer alive, the chances of finding him in pieces was real. And even though he’d seen enough of that when he was still serving as an Army Ranger, the possibility put a knot in his belly, so he kept walking, looking for signs of human footprints, too.
The sun was moving too fast across the sky for Charlie’s peace of mind. If he didn’t get a break soon, he would be spending his second night under the stars, and for Tony Dawson, it would be night five.
When a rattlesnake slithered out from the scrub, moving across the rocky path without concern that Charlie was even there, he froze, waiting motionless for it to pass.
When it finally disappeared into the brush on the other side of the path, he moved on until he got to an open space on the trail and caught a glimpse of something moving off to his right. Once again, he stopped, watching as a doe and a half-grown fawn moved through the trees and then, like the snake, moved out of sight.
By his estimation, he was about a quarter of a mile from where he’d found the backpack. Logic would lead anyone to believe that a hiker would never leave that behind, and certainly wouldn’t hide it. But what if he had been the one to hide it? What if he’d meant to come back for it and something happened to him?
Charlie paused again, looking around at the area, then up through the trees, trying to get a glimpse of the trail above where he was standing.
“Where the hell are you, kid? Where did you go?” Then he pulled out his phone and called Wyrick.
* * *
The cap Wyrick had been holding was on the floor between her feet. She was sitting with her head down, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that the ends of her fingers had turned white, but she was no longer in Charlie’s office.
It was dark and narrow here. And cold.
Water. She could hear water dripping.
Something was back there—growling—no, no, not a growl. A moan. It was a moan.
Sweat broke out across her forehead as a wash of heat swept through her, but she was focused on the moan. It connected to pain—pain she could feel now.
God, oh God! The pain!
* * *
She was about to move deeper into the darkness when her phone rang. The sound yanked her out of the vision so fast she fell forward out of the chair onto her hands and knees.
Her phone kept ringing, and she couldn’t focus on where she was, and then