It amazed Gabe how fast everyone had come together to organize, but he was afraid it wasn’t fast enough. According to what he’d learned from Harper, Raylene’s captors hadn’t done anything to hide their identities. As soon as they learned Raylene didn’t have the map, they’d have no further use for her. Gabe knew what that meant, and it made him shudder. He’d never felt more powerless than he did now.
The worst part was they could be anywhere. He figured they had at least a forty-minute lead time, and no one knew what direction they’d gone. Their only hope was that they’d stayed in the area.
“We’re trying to locate her position through the GPS in her truck,” Rhys said. “Unfortunately, it’ll take a little time.”
“We don’t have time.” Gabe felt his shirt sticking to his back. It was thirty degrees out and he was sweating. Extractions were his specialty, but for the first time in his life the stakes were so high he was filled with a paralyzing fear. “Let me talk to Harper.”
“Gabe, she told us everything she knows.” Rhys paced the floor. Every one of his officers had been called in, including Jake. Despite Jake’s issues with Raylene, he hadn’t balked at working the case.
It was a small-town department, but Rhys and his people were pros.
“Chief.” Connie popped her head into Rhys’ office. “Clay and Lucky are in the lobby. They want to head up a search and rescue. What do you want me to tell them?”
“Send them back.”
Rhys waited for them to file in and closed the door. “I appreciate your offer, fellas, but this is a police operation.”
“I thought I’d take the plane up and see if I can spot her truck.”
Gabe knew Clay was a former Navy fighter pilot and owned a couple of planes. He was all for the idea. It was better than nothing, and he didn’t give a rat’s ass about protocol—not when Raylene’s life was in danger. “I think he should do it.”
“What happens if they hear Clay buzzing around, spook, and do something rash?” Rhys didn’t have to say what he meant by “rash.” Gabe knew.
“Look, because of Raylene, my stepdaughter’s safe and sound. I can’t sit around doing nothing.”
Lucky nodded. “I was thinking a couple of us could go out on horseback, search the hard-to-get-to places in the backcountry. Flynn’s already getting the trailer ready.”
“This isn’t a lost hiker,” Rhys said. “These are dangerous people.”
“We can handle ourselves.” Lucky pushed off the door. “Knowing Raylene, she’s mouthed off enough that they can’t wait to get rid of her.”
Gabe got in Lucky’s face. He needed to punch something, and Lucky had just made himself the perfect target. “You think that’s helpful, asshole?”
Lucky held up his hands. “I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s my way of dealing with a stressful situation. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care what happened to her. She tried to make amends by selling me her property for a song and I told her to go to hell. This anger I have…I’m letting it go.” He let out a breath. “Let’s find her.”
Gabe didn’t know what Lucky was talking about, and frankly he didn’t care. They were wasting time in Rhys’ office. “I’m out of here.”
“Where you going, Gabe?” Rhys tried to block him. “You’re just planning to aimlessly search for her?”
“Better than sitting around here with my thumb up my ass. What about the backcountry where you first spotted them—we’re all on the same page that it’s the same people, right?”
Rhys and Jake nodded. “I’ve got Wyatt out there and Sloane on the other side of Sierra Heights,” Rhys said.
“Sounds like a good enough spot to start.” He headed out and Clay caught up with him.
“We can cover more ground in my plane.”
“Works for me. Is it at your ranch?”
“Nervino. Want to follow me?”
“Let me swing by L&G first and grab some equipment.” A chute, because he wasn’t waiting for Clay to land if and when they spotted Raylene’s truck.
Twenty minutes later he was at the airport, boarding Clay’s Piper Cub. Clay used the antique plane to scan the mountains for his cattle. It was a sweet aircraft, and under normal circumstances Gabe would’ve liked to spend more time checking it out.
Unlike most planes, the Cub’s seats were tandem instead of next to each other. The captain piloted the aircraft from the back seat, another idiosyncrasy.
Clay started the engine outside from the prop, pulled blocks away from the front tires, and wedged himself inside the cockpit before taking off. Gabe presumed Clay had worked out a flight plan before Gabe got there with his gear.
From the front, he had a bird’s-eye view of the mountains and valleys. But, like the cliché went, spotting Raylene’s truck would be like finding a needle in a haystack. There were a lot of pickups in these parts.
“Any ideas where we should start?” Gabe asked. Clay was the local; presumably, he’d know the best hiding places.
“I say we work from Sierra Heights, south. It’s a lot of territory to cover, but that’s where I’d go if I needed to lay low.”
“Roger that.”
They flew low, about two thousand feet above ground. That was the beauty of a Cub, and probably why Clay had chosen it for ranch work.
“Thanks for doing this,” Gabe said. Clay wasn’t a member of Raylene’s fan club either, but he was a standup guy.
“We take care of our own here. And according to Harper, Raylene took on all three of those bozos so my stepdaughter could get away. Emily and Drew…well, you can imagine.”
“I’m glad she got away. How’s she doing otherwise?” Gabe would imagine Harper was pretty traumatized.
“Better than you would expect. She’s mostly worried about Raylene. To hear it from Harper, Raylene was like a mama grizzly, putting herself between Harper and those men. To tell you the truth, it surprised me. The Raylene I used to know looked out for herself. Period.”
All the bad-mouthing had started to irritate Gabe. As far as he was concerned, if anyone really knew Raylene they would’ve seen an abused young woman.
You can’t go around telling people how to rear their kids. Owen’s words rang in his ears. Maybe not, but Raylene had become a product of her surroundings. And had turned herself around without anyone’s help. She was something. People around here didn’t know it, but Gabe did.
“What was Lucky talking about when he said she offered to sell her land to him for a song?”
“First I heard of it.” Clay handed him a pair of binoculars. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
They flew over the tops of trees, giving Gabe a filtered view below. “What are those houses down there?” He thought he recognized the geography. It was somewhere between Grizzly Peak and Sierra Heights.
“We’re coming up on the stables. I wanted to start there and work our way out.”
“Good plan.” Gabe trained the binoculars on the ground. As they got farther away from Sierra Heights there were fewer homes to see and the land became more rugged. Nugget was surrounded by remote pockets of fields, forests, streams, and lakes. And nothingness for miles and miles. So many places to hide that it boggled the mind. And for all he knew they were holed up in town at the Lumber Baron.
“Rhys spotted them the first time not far from your area, up in the hills.”
Gabe drew a map in his head. If they were talking about the same people, which seemed all but certain, they’d lost their backpack on Drew Matthews’ property, had broken into Raylene’s truck at the farmhouse, and had been to her land at least twice. All three locations were just a few miles apart.
Gabe theorized that Raylene’s abductors must’ve been watching her to know she was at the Sierra Heights stables alone with Harper. There’d never been any evidence that they’d traveled in a vehicle—no tire tracks, no engine noise the night Raylene caught them at the farm, no sign of a deserted car at the barn—which meant they were on foot and had been camping out somewhere within a few miles’ radius of all three locations. With wheels they could’ve gone anywhere, but Gabe didn’t think they would. Roaches typically crawled back to their hidey-holes.
“You got a map?” Gabe asked Clay.
“In there.” Clay nudged his head at a flight bag. “There’s land and aerial, take your pick.”
Gabe found a pen, grabbed a land map, and spread it out on his lap. He immediately found Sierra Heights and used it as a reference to pinpoint Logan and Annie’s farm and Raylene’s two hundred acres, then drew a circle, representing three miles around all three locations.
“I think they’re somewhere in this vicinity.” He handed Clay the map with his scribbles. “Can you find it from the air?”
“Not a problem. But a good portion of what you’ve got there is Lake Davis.” Clay pointed to the blue on the map.
Good, less land to cover. “What’s out there besides the lake?” Gabe had gone fishing there a few times with Logan and a local arson investigator named Aidan McBride, but, being relatively new to Nugget, he didn’t know the area as well as Clay.
“Not much. There’s a trailer park where a few railroad workers used to live, but it’s vacant now, and in bad disrepair. Rhys has been all over the city to clean it up. Other than a couple of hunting and fishing cabins, I can’t think of anything else. You think they could be holding her in one of the trailers?”
“Yep. I’ll let Rhys know what I’m thinking; you circle.” Gabe shot off a text.
“What about spooking them if they hear the Cub? You heard what Rhys said.”
Gabe weighed the risk. To his mind, the bad guys had been spooked the minute Harper got away—she could identify them. Every second that ticked by was borrowed time for Raylene. They couldn’t afford to tiptoe.
“As soon as we think we’re close, I’m going in.” He tightened the straps on his parachute harness.
Clay shook his head. “This ain’t a free fall from a Blackhawk, buddy. You ever jump from a Cub before?”
Gabe grinned. “There’s a first time for everything.”
Clay didn’t try to dissuade him, though he shook his head again. Gabe went back to peering through the binocs.
“What’s that?” Gabe pointed at what appeared to be a wooden structure built into the side of a mountain.
“An old mineral mine.”
“A good place to hide?”
“I don’t think so. The front’s completely open, and it’s not far off the main drag to the lake.” Clay made a slow turn. “See that? That’s the trailer park.”
“Can you get a little lower without drawing too much attention?” Gabe wanted to see if he could find Raylene’s truck.
Clay slid him a get-real glance. They were already low enough to be loud. Besides, the tall pines made it dangerous.
“From up here the place looks like a ghost town,” Gabe said. “What’s that over there?” In the distance, the sun glinted off blacktop.
“The highway, and past that, the railroad. I’d say they’re less than a mile as the crow flies from the trailer park. The workers used to walk.”
“So maybe not the best place to hide.”
Clay shrugged. “Around here, you can still be close to civilization and feel remote as hell.” He circled around the park again. “Take another look.”
They were too far away for him to use his Range-R radar device to detect motion in any of the trailers, but he didn’t see anything to indicate signs of life.
“What’s closer to the lake?”
“A campground, and those fishing and hunting shacks I told you about.”
“Let’s take a look over there.”
Clay turned the nose of the Cub toward the lake and pointed at a densely wooded area. “I’d be looking down in there. Fishing shacks tend to be empty this time of year. A while back, a wanderer OD’d in one of the cabins around here. His skeletal remains floated down the Feather River and wound up not far from Nugget High School.”
Gabe kept his eyes rooted on the area, but it was difficult to see with all the trees. “Where’s the best place to let me out?” At this point, he’d be better off on the ground.
“Not a lot of good places in the forest. Our best bet is the lake.”
Gabe had spent enough time in the ocean to be unfazed by a relatively small fishing lake, even if it was the dead of winter. “Let’s do it.” They were running out of time.
“You sure about this?”
He’d never been surer about anything in his entire military career. Failure wasn’t an option. He was bringing Raylene home…her life depended on it. “Yep. Do me a favor, as soon as I’m on the ground, have someone get ahold of Logan. He’s staying at the Honua Kai in Maui.”
He had no idea what kind of shape Raylene would be in when he found her, but she’d need her family. And him. He’d be there every step of the way.
“Will do.” Clay flew over the lake, and to anyone watching they looked like sightseers. At least for now.
“If you know of a hidden area where I can jump, that would be good.”
“Already on it.” Clay directed Gabe’s attention to a sandy bar that reached out like a finger from a corner of the lake to a strip of land less than a football field from the Feather River. It would be an excellent place for him to land. “That look okay to you?”
“Perfect.” Gabe unhooked his seat belt, double checked his gear, and prepared to jump from the open cockpit. He collected the map and stuffed a few other necessities, including his Sig, into his tactical vest. “Just give me the signal.”
A short time later, he hit the ground. He reached for his compass and took a few seconds to get his bearings. He wanted to go back to where those fishing shacks were. His phone vibrated with a text, and he held his breath. Maybe they’d found her.
The message was from Rhys. Where are you? We may have gotten a hit from her GPS.
Gabe punched in his coordinates and the question: Where?
In the general vicinity of where you are, at least according to the last time the satellite got a ping off her GPS. That was about thirty minutes ago.
Shit. Anything could’ve happened between then and now. Hell, with the right kind of transportation they could be all the way to the Mexican border. Gabe plugged in Raylene’s coordinates. According to his GPS, it was about a klick away.
Roger that, he wrote back, and cut a path through the woods.
Rhys signed off with, Sending backup.
If Raylene was there, Gabe wouldn’t need backup.
* * * *
Raylene’s head pounded as she watched her three captors fight. She’d done her best to sow discord in the group, and now they were turning on each other like a pack of angry wolves. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best strategy, because Ferret was on a homicidal rampage and Stringy wanted to keep Raylene alive so he could continue to pummel her until she “broke.”
She didn’t know how much more she could take. She was pretty sure she had a few broken ribs, a concussion, and her face was so bruised and beaten it felt numb. She wanted Gabe. That was her only thought as Stringy delivered one punishing blow after another.
Even though giving them the numbers they so desperately wanted would be akin to a death sentence—they would no longer need her around—she would’ve done it if she knew what they were. She had never realized that the digits at the bottom of the map were anything other than illegible handwriting.
Tiny and friends obviously knew something she didn’t. She’d tried to ascertain where they’d gotten their information—or the gold—but hadn’t been given a clue. And really, what did it matter? Every second that passed, she was living on borrowed time. Even Ferret, who appeared to have the IQ of a hazelnut, realized they couldn’t remain here much longer. None of them had gotten the memo that Raylene was public enemy number one in Nugget, and they believed there was a huge manhunt on the rise.
The only person she knew for sure was searching for her was Gabe. He was the light at the end of the darkest tunnel she’d ever been forced to walk through. It was odd how the universe worked. She’d come here never expecting more than to celebrate her brother’s wedding, to make amends to the people she’d hurt, and to shut the book on her past. And in walked Gabe Moretti. Even now, she could hear his New Jersey accent. Cawfee. That deep laugh that seemed to reverberate from the bottom of his stomach. And the way he looked at her, really looked. Like she was special, instead of head case Raylene Rosser: self-indulged, backstabbing bitch.
“I say we take one more crack at her,” Stringy said. “If she doesn’t give it up, we move to plan B.”
No one had to tell Raylene what plan B was.
“We don’t have time,” Tiny said. “I say we cut our losses and get the hell out of here.”
In their debate over what to do next, they’d forgotten Raylene, who sat propped up in the folding chair like a punching bag. She moved her legs, an experiment to see if they still worked. Then she tried her arms. The movement made her chest ache something fierce, but she still had a little life left in her and she didn’t want to die. She wanted to welcome Logan and Annie’s baby into the world. She wanted to raise the best cutting horses in California. But most of all, she wanted to tell Gabe that she’d fallen for him. Even if he hadn’t fallen for her, she wanted him to know how she felt. How amazing he was.
While Tiny and the boys continued to fight, Raylene made her move. The gun, which sat on the windowsill across the room, was too far away. But the pickax was within reach, just a few stretches in front of her. All she had to do was lean forward and grab it with both hands. Stretch, she told herself. Stretch.
With her eyes swollen and her head muzzy, it took all her focus and strength to wrap her hands around the wooden shaft, stand up, and swing the pick with all her might. She heard herself let out a primal scream and, like a deranged animal, began launching her attack. Hacking and hammering in wild strokes, blindly bludgeoning anyone in her way. The only goal was to get out. She ran to the door, made it outside and into the sunshine.
Lake. Houses. People. Gabe.
Those were her only thoughts as she stumbled past the brambles that hid the cabin from view. She followed the crude road they’d driven from Dover Trail and ran toward the water.
Lake. Houses. People. Gabe.
It became a silent mantra as she tore through the woods, her body protesting at every step. Her lungs devoid of air, gulping oxygen like it was water to a person dying of thirst. But she could hear them, yelling, chasing after her. They were so close she considered falling on the ground and begging for mercy. No, she wouldn’t let them kill her while she pleaded for her life. Gabe would tell her to keep running…to keep fighting.
She pushed forward, envisioning Harper. Sweet little Harper. Raylene wanted to teach her how to ride. And Lucky and Tawny’s girl, Katie. She wanted to make that donation to Children’s Hospital in their name. And Donna Thurston…she’d miss the witch. What about Cecilia? Raylene would never get to tell her she was sorry face-to-face. Or Jake, for getting up in his grill while she was drunk. And what about one hundred and twenty days sober? She’d never make that milestone.
She heard a twig snap, heavy breathing, and sneakers beating the ground behind her. They were closing in and she had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Her lungs felt ready to collapse and her legs were caving beneath her. Dizzy, she was so dizzy. But Gabe was in her head, telling her to keep going.
Go, go, go!
Where was the lake? She couldn’t find the lake. Just lots and lots of trees. And snow and dirt. And then the earth was pulling her down, her body so light it was like floating.
Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom.
The blood, there was so much blood. And sleep, blessed sleep.