FIVE
Her heart was racing as she tiptoed around the tracks, careful not to disturb them, then raced toward the bushes as fast as she dared. She gently pulled the leaves apart, then reached into the bush and pulled out the small object.
To her shock, it was a cell phone. Not just any cell phone, but the exact cell phone that Senora had handed Jessica Baker the afternoon before. There was a small red light flashing on the top, which was what had caught her eye. She wiped the dirt away, and the screen lit up. The words “Emergency Mode” were plastered across the screen, with a little finger icon instructing her to swipe to unlock the screen.
She slid a trembling finger over the screen.
A video was on display, and the instant that she opened the lock screen, it started to play. She could hear the road noise and the sound of heavy breathing. The video was dark save for the glow of dashboard lights in the distance. Senora held her breath, listening intently as the smooth, asphalt road gave way to the gravel crunching beneath the tires. The phone went dark, and the fabric of someone’s clothes made a strange sound as the phone was shoved into the darkness.
Jessica Baker was alive when he pulled off the road, Senora thought, hands shaking. Was she about to witness him murdering her? She thought back, remembering the conversation with Betty when they’d first unlocked the phone. It was a newer model, and one of the features that had Betty excited was the emergency feature. Pushing the lock button quickly at least three times turned on the video and the microphone. If the service was set up beforehand, the video and voice file would go to a preset number. Otherwise, the information was stored only on the phone in hand.
Mrs. Baker must have activated the emergency mode in the car.
Senora watched the black screen, listening as the door opened and Mr. Baker groaned under the weight of the wife he was sure was at least unconscious, if not dead.
“You’re such a cow, Jessica,” he said, breathing hard.
Senora scoffed. Jessica had never been large, and after her ordeal, she was several pounds underweight. Mr. Baker, on the other hand, was soft around the middle with the pasty, untoned look that said he spent his days indoors and sitting at a desk. His words were ugly, but more so, his tone of voice said all Senora needed to know.
Mr. Baker was a horrible man and a murderer. And Senora held the proof in her hand.
The mumblings from Mr. Baker continued, then there was a loud thud as he dropped Jessica. The phone bounced out of her hand, the camera turned so that it faced the woods once it came to rest beneath the bushes.
“Damnit. I can’t see the car,” she said.
The video would be harder to prove from this angle, and unless Mr. Baker did some more talking or buried his battered and unconscious wife in sight of the camera-
“What the hell,” Mr. Baker muttered, and before Senora could wonder what was going on, Jessica came into view.
She ran for the woods, the headlights lighting her up so that Senora could see the large gash bleeding from her head.
“You stupid bitch!” Mr. Baker yelled, running after Jessica, a shovel in his hand.
Senora watched in horror as Mr. Baker chased her, but to her relief and surprise, Jessica stayed so far ahead of him that Mr. Baker couldn’t catch up. Even injured, the hours she’d spent every week jogging through the neighborhood had kept her muscles toned and her lungs clear. The mortal fear helped propel her forward, and she easily outran Mr. Baker, who was already tripping and gasping before he was out of view of the SUV’s headlights.
Mr. Baker turned, cursing again, then laughing.
“You’ll die out there, you idiot,” he said to himself, walking back to the car and wheezing. “You won’t make it to the road before you bleed out.”
He turned, flinging the shovel into the air like an angry fist and laughing into the forest.
“Go ahead and run! You’ll die out here, and that’s better than you deserve!”
Mr. Baker walked off screen, then Senora heard the vehicle turning around and the tires spinning as he tried to climb the fire road too quickly. The engine revved and the transmission protested when he shoved it into a lower gear too forcefully. The engine sound faded, and the darkness returned with the bright headlights to light the forest. Senora took her finger and scrolled to the end of the video, but Jessica Baker never returned to collect her cell phone and never came back to the fire road.
Senora stood, looking in the direction that Jessica had gone. The foliage was dense with no discernible path. There was no way to tell which way she’d gone, and even then, Senora wasn’t an experienced hiker. She needed to call for a search team, but that would take time, too, and they would be out of daylight by then. The earliest the search team would be able to start would be the next morning. And what if Mr. Baker was looking for her? No, she needed help and she needed it now.
Jessica was counting on her.
She took out her own phone, dialing the number she’d tried to forget so many times and waiting for him to pick up.
“This is Ty,” he said, his voice too happy. He knew it was her. “I was kind of hoping you would call. Good thing I-”
“I need your help,” she said, cutting him off. “I’m in Shenandoah, in Virginia. How soon can you get here?”
“Just over an hour,” he said.
“What?” she asked, shocked. “An hour? Where are you?”
“I’m at the D.C. airport. A little birdy called me last night and told me you’d been forced to take a vacation, and I thought I’d catch you before you left so you didn’t leave without me.”
Senora rolled her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. As happy as she was that he was so close, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Betty,” she muttered.
“You didn’t hear it from me. Do you want to come get me or should I grab a rental car and come to you?”
“Grab a rental,” Senora said. “Make sure it can handle rough terrain. And grab some camping and hiking supplies while you’re at it.”
“Are you alright?” Ty asked, the happiness fading into concern in an instant.
“I’m fine, but I have a kidnapping victim out here in the woods. She’s injured, she’s scared, and she’s been out here since last night in sweats and a t-shirt.”
“Oh my,” he said, his southern drawl so familiar. “I’ll be out there as quick as I can. Send me your location and stay put.”
“I will,” she said.
The phone went dead in her ear, and she sighed, the tension still there but fading slightly. She was going to have to have a talk with Betty about sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, but it had worked out far better than she could have planned. Ty was close, and Senora had a good idea of where Jessica Baker was. Mr. Baker wouldn’t dream that anyone was looking for Jessica since Senora had left so easily, so they had time to find Jessica. There was just a matter of keeping everything quiet long enough to rescue Jessica without him fleeing.
And then, there was Evie. Senora took a deep breath, trying to figure out what to do. Evie was at daycare now, and Senora was sure that Mr. Baker had gone to work. That was the only thing for a man to do when his wife and long-dead sister-in-law were on a retreat. If he’d done anything else, it would have been suspicious. As long as he thought he’d gotten away with it, everything would be fine; she was sure of it.
She hated the man, but she didn’t think that Evie was in danger with him while he believed that he’d gotten away with murder. She could keep this quiet until they found Jessica, and from there, they would figure out what to do.
Senora checked the time and grumbled at how slow the clock was moving. It had only been a few minutes since she’d sent her GPS coordinates to Ty. It would be an hour before he arrived, and she couldn’t risk heading off into the woods alone. They would have a hard enough time scouring the hundreds of thousands of acres looking for Jessica Baker. If Senora managed to get herself lost too, that would complicate things even more. She had to stay where she was and trust that he would be there as quickly as possible.
She decided that she would get one thing done while he was gone, and hopefully that would keep them from wasting precious time. She put Jessica’s phone into her zippered pocket on her hoodie, then used her own phone to call Ty back.
He answered on the first ring, this time only saying hello.
“I’m going to send you a second set of coordinates. My car is a little,” she paused to search for the words, “out of place where I left it. I’m going to head to the entrance of the park and put it somewhere else so that no one finds it here and gets suspicious.”
“Sounds like a smart plan,” he said. “I have to go; they’re bring the car around. I’ll see you soon.”
She said goodbye and hung up, already walking up the hill to her car.
She pulled out onto the fire road slowly and carefully made her way up the hill. She turned left when she got to the top, heading to the entrance that Ty would come to first, then headed down the road until she saw the sign sending her to the Ranger’s Station.
She parked in the small parking lot and rummaged through a concealed compartment under her driver’s seat. She pulled out a fake driver’s license with her picture on it and a matching credit card. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she didn’t want anyone at the office to know where she was. It was just safer that way.
A ranger greeted her when she walked in, his smile wide and welcoming.
“Do y’all rent cabins?” she asked in her best southern accent.
The ranger’s smile grew wider, and he nodded.
“We have new cabins that are down that dirt road over there,” he pointed. “Or you can go with the standard ones down the paved road.”
“Which ones are more secluded?” she asked, then lowered her voice. “I’m a bit of a nudist, and I don’t want to have to worry about neighbors if you know what I mean.”
His face turned red, but his smile never wavered. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He was easily baited, and she hoped that he didn’t come knocking on her door in the middle of the night. Not that she would actually be in the cabin.
“The cabins down the dirt road are spaced pretty far apart and surrounded by trees. You’ll never know that you have neighbors.”
“That sounds perfect,” she said, smiling at him warmly. “I’ll take the furthest one.”
He nodded, ringing her up and gesturing to some of the clothing, blankets and other amenities they sold in the small store that catered to hikers and campers.
“Is there anything else you need? It’s supposed to be cold tonight. Unless you have someone to warm you up.”
She smiled to hide her annoyance, then shrugged.
“My husband won’t be coming in until late tonight, but I guess I should get a blanket and a few more supplies just in case,” she lied.
The ranger seemed deflated, and she felt bad for toying with him. But she needed him to give her the most secluded cabin, and she didn’t want him looking too closely at her ID. He was distracted, and that was exactly what she wanted.
She loaded up her arms with a few extras that she thought she might need, as well as an additional set of clothes for Jessica, socks and a pair of hiking boots. Thankfully, she remembered Jessica’s sizes, and the little store had a wider assortment of necessities than she would have imagined.
The ranger rang up her purchases and read out the total.
It was over eight hundred dollars for everything and the cabin for the weekend. She kept her face friendly but passive, not even reacting to the large total. The ranger ran her credit card and waved away her ID when she tried to show it. Then, he pulled out a map and showed her where she would be.
“You’re all the way at the end. Watch out for ruts in the road, and keep your food in the lock box provided. We do have bears, and they’re finishing up the final stretch of binge eating before they hibernate. There are a lot of wild animals, so just be careful. There is wood already stacked up for the fireplace and the stove. Be cautious when you get wood; sometimes, snakes make their home there, even though it’s a little late in the year for that. If you need anything, the station closes at five. Have a great time, and enjoy the wilderness.”
He circled another part on the map and winked at her.
“If you want to take a more natural hike in the woods, this trail is rarely used because it’s not easily accessed from anywhere but these cabins. There’s no one in any of the other cabins, so you should have all the privacy you need.”
His smile and his interest in her fabricated nudist love life made her skin crawl, but she thanked him anyway and hurried to the car.
She drove down the road as fast as she dared, using the car’s undercarriage airbag system to lift it higher off the ground so it didn’t bottom out. When she got to the end of the road and found the cabin she’d rented, she almost whooped with delight. It was almost a mile away from the nearest neighbor, and the little dirt road that served as a driveway led around back. Her car would be well out of sight, parked behind the cabin and shaded by massive trees. This was the perfect spot.
After she parked, she sent Ty her GPS coordinates then hurriedly started unloading the car. They probably wouldn’t stay there that night unless it was late when they found Jessica, but at least they could bring her somewhere to change and regroup while they figured out what to do about Mr. Baker. Senora had a good idea, but she was sure that Mrs. Baker knew more about her husband’s involvement in her kidnapping than she had the day before. It was obvious that he had hired someone to kidnap her and make it look like the other kidnappings, but that was all Senora was sure of. Hopefully, Jessica would be able to tie in the rest and they would be able to nail Mr. Baker’s ass to the wall. Then, Senora could go on vacation. Maybe Ty would come along.
If we find her tonight.
She pushed the thought out of her head and scolded herself. They were going to find Jessica, and they were going to find her alive.
Her phone chirped, and she read the quick text.
“Be there in thirty minutes,” it said.
Senora set the phone down and headed out to get the last of the provisions she’d bought. That thirty minutes would fly by, and then they’d be in the woods and looking for Jessica Baker. She didn’t have much time at all.