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As he listened to the crunch of boots on the wall of rock above, a new sound demanded his attention. Someone down the slope, gasping for breath. He spotted the flare of another flashlight ricocheting off the rocks below, as a female voice—high-pitched, hysterical—called out, “Dillon! Is that you up there? Dillon! I see your flashlight! Answer me!”
Great. Now the little counselor, or social worker, or whatever she was, shows up. Seth focused on the flare of the light as it grew brighter, closer. She was on the ledge now.
He eased himself around a boulder and in the next instant she “turned into his hand,” as bull riders liked to say. Before she could lurch away, he’d clamped her firmly in the vise of his arms. With one hand clasped across her mouth, he dragged her backward into the small hole in the wall.
She flailed wildly, skinny arms and legs and the flashlight dangling from its wrist strap all whacking him in the arm, in the head and certain other places that made a man grit his teeth. When he removed the hand from her mouth long enough to wrest the flashlight out of her grip, she screamed, “Boys! Help!”
He flicked off the light, tossed it on the ground.
“Let me go!” she howled.
“Shh,” he hissed as he clamped the hand back over her mouth. With the shotgun pressed across her middle like a crowbar, he forced her to be still against him. She was so small that he could have broken her in half if he had a mind to, which only galvanized his urge to protect her.
“It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m a cop.” He folded his arms tighter around her and was relieved when her struggling ceased. He held her backside pressed against his trunk in that fetal embrace for a few endless, tense seconds while he listened to Lonnie and Nelson above, yelling curses and scrambling away, back up the cliff. Then came the sound of a rattletrap engine firing to life, tires spinning away on a gravel road.
When at last there were no more sounds, Seth maneuvered his foot to scrape her flashlight within reach. He bent to snatch it up, switched it on and twisted the ray around so he could get a good look at her.
He raked the beam up and down her slender form. She was fully clothed—jean shorts, baggy white T-shirt, running shoes. No visible blood. But she was covered in dirt, and every inch of her was trembling. Her long blond hair was a tangled mess. She wasn’t wearing any makeup or jewelry, as far as he could see. Except for some scrapes and the dirt, she looked like a woman who’d just climbed out of bed. Even with terror contorting her features, he could see she was a genuine beauty.
And she was strong, too. She managed to wrench one hand free, tearing at his fingers on the shotgun.
“Woman!” He thrust the gun up high, out of her reach. “This thing’s loaded.” He flicked the safety on. “Listen to me,” he demanded, but held his voice to a harsh whisper. “I said I’m the law. And those weren’t your boys up there. Those are dangerous men who’ll likely kill us if they find us in here.” He turned her jaw toward the glint of his badge in the oblique light. “I am not gonna hurt you.”
“Mmmfp!” Her eyes bugged at the badge. She twisted her face against his hand and looked into his eyes, trying to speak.
“Okay. But keep your voice down. They could circle back.”
She nodded and he slid his hand away.
“A c-cop?” she coughed out. Her face was flushed and her full lips looked parched from thirst.
“Yes.”
“Well, you scared the hell out of me!” For a second Seth thought she might hit him, but instead she whirled to face him, and clutched the bulletproof vest in both fists. He reared back. He wasn’t used to people messing with his person, at least while he was on duty. “Lady—”
But she only yanked him harder. “You have got to help me…the boys… I can’t find them!”
She started babbling ninety miles a minute about the three boys, how she’d found their beds empty again, how they couldn’t be far. About pennies on the railroad track. About getting lost in the caves. The woman was near hysteria. For one irrational second a shot of adrenaline hit Seth as he wondered if the Slaughter brothers had harmed her. Harmed her the way they’d harmed KayAnn Rawls.
“Did they hurt you?” He shone the light up and down her body again. No welts. No cuts and bruises from a beating.
“Who?” She winced as he shoved her hair back to get a better look at a scrape on her forehead.
“Those men.”
“No!” She batted his hand away, seeming annoyed by his examination. “No one’s hurt me. You’re not listening!” Her voice rose. “Some little boys are missing!”
He lowered the flashlight. “Keep your voice down. The boys are fine.”
Her jaw dropped. “The boys—”
Seth pressed the switch on his shoulder mike. “Jake. Come in.”
Instantly, his partner’s voice crackled in response. “Where are you, buddy?”
“In a cave. I’ve got the counselor. I’m bringing her down. But the Slaughters got away. Call for some backup to intercept them. Probably coming down Purney’s Road.”
“Got it. I haven’t gotten much out of the kids. The talkative one clammed up. And I don’t know sign language.”
Rainey Chapman seemed to be still recovering from her shock. “The boys are…? You’re…? You mean you found them already?”
“Yes. They’re in an ambulance, at the base of this mountain.”
“Oh, thank God!” She pressed a palm over her heart, wilting with relief. He steadied her with a light hand to her back. She was shaking worse than his aunt Junie’s nervous poodle. The counselor looked up at him and her eyes grew wide as something hit her with such impact that he could see, even in the oblique light, their unique green shade. “Did you say they’re in an ambulance?”
“One of the boys got a bump on the head. Nothing serious. One’s got some cuts on his hands. They’re more scared than hurt. They’ll be okay.”
Her lips trembled as if she were struggling not to cry. “No, they won’t. You don’t know these children. They shouldn’t have been running around in these woods. I should have called—” Her eyes grew wide. “Who called the police?”
“Nobody. We were up here on a manhunt and came upon the boys by accident.”
“A manhunt? After those men?”
“I was hoping to apprehend them. Unfortunately, I didn’t get them before they tied up your boys.”
She gasped. “Tied them up?”
“With duct tape. Luckily, the kids escaped. Like I told you, those men are dangerous.”
“But why would they tie up the boys?” She stared at him with a look of wild-eyed horror.
“Because the kids saw some things they shouldn’t have seen, some things those men have been hiding for a very long time, I’m afraid.”
“Hiding something? What?”
“I’ll explain once we’re safely out of here.” Once he decided how much she needed to know. He pulled on her arm.
But she resisted, pressing a shaky hand to her temple. “Oh, this is all my fault. Those kids have suffered enough trauma without this.”
Seth frowned. A little on the dramatic side, wasn’t she? She was the boys’ counselor, not some savior, and certainly not the one who’d caused the trauma that had put the boys in her care in the first place. “Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”
“No. I should never have tried to find them by myself.” She started to tremble so hard he feared she’d collapse.
He slid an arm around her shoulders. Not the most professional thing to do, maybe, but he wasn’t inclined to let the poor little thing shake her teeth out without offering some support. His days as a cop were about done, anyway.
“I’m sorry.” She yielded in his arms as she reflexively turned to his chest.
He reached around and pressed the arm that held the shotgun to her back. He could feel her pliant softness even through his bulletproof vest. The rest of her felt as delicate as a bird. Suddenly the air inside the small cave felt too close. Suddenly Seth’s skin grew prickly with sweat.
“Come on.” He flicked the flashlight off and guided her to the fresher air outside the cave.
She had started to cry.
“It’s okay.” He held her firmly, feeling out of his depth. Crying females always made Seth want to hightail it to the barn, but he had to deal with this one. He had to find out exactly what this Rainey Chapman knew, what she’d seen. And he had to protect her. “Don’t you think the kids had some responsibility in this deal?” His voice was gentle as he ducked his head to look her in the face. “Nobody forced them to run away from the camp. They’re not exactly little.”
“They’re not adults, either,” she sniffed. “He looks mature, but Dillon’s only thirteen. And Maddy and Aaron are only eleven. They are children.”
“They look like pretty good-sized boys to me,” he said.
She straightened away from his embrace and her voice took on a note of fierce protectiveness. “These are damaged children who need special care.”
“Like some boundaries, maybe? They’re plenty old enough to know not to sneak out of the camp.” Seth was thinking about how he and Lane had both held down odd jobs by that age.
“Age has nothing to do with it. You can’t expect children to accept boundaries until they feel loved.”
Seth didn’t agree. He believed in accountability, even for kids. But this was hardly the place for a philosophical debate.
She mistook his silence for disapproval. “You can think whatever you like, but I am the one who’s responsible for these children. And it was I who handled this all wrong.”
Seth could understand how she was blaming herself for running off in a panic and searching for the children in the dark woods on her own, without notifying anyone. That was definitely a stupid thing to do. What he couldn’t understand was why she’d done it. But there would be time to sort out all the details when they got to the bottom of the hill.
“We’ve got to get you out of here.” He stuffed the flashlight in his vest and took hold of her arm, leading her forward on the ledge, craning his neck to look down the slope. “The moonlight’s too bright. They might see us on the footpath. We’ll have to stay under cover of trees. Think you can climb back down between those rocks?”
“I came up that way, didn’t I?”
He turned, and in the moonlight he could see her eyes. Again it struck him that they were very pretty.
“Just get me to that ambulance.” She met his gaze dead-on, even though there was quite a difference in their heights. “I need to see the boys right away.”
He was thinking how climbing up the open footpath with a flashlight and going down between the huge boulders in the dark were two different things, but all he said was, “Stay close then.”
As they climbed over the first of the large boulders he heard her suppress a little yelp. Instinctively, he reached back to her. “You okay?”
“I just slipped.”
“Here.” He bracketed her waist with his hands and helped her down. She felt like a tiny doll in his grasp. Her hot breath brushed against his temple as he lowered her to the ground, and he was startled by a surge of attraction.
He set her a respectable distance from him and decided keeping her engaged in talk would calm her—and him—down. “Ms. Chapman—”
“How do you know my name?” she asked.
“The boys. They figured you’d come looking for them.” He glanced back up the dark wall of rock that rose above them. “What made you come all the way up here, anyway?”
“I’ve found them here before. Twice, actually.”
“Doing what?”
“Exploring the caves.” She sighed and swiped at her sweaty brow.
“Did you see anyone else on either of those nights?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“And what about tonight?”
“Nothing except the lights. I should have realized the boys’ flashlights wouldn’t be that bright. But all I could think about was finding them so I could get them back to camp before Lyle realized they were missing.”
“Lyle Hicks?” Seth had dealt with the officious jerk, who made a big deal out of the fact that he was in charge at Big Cedar Camp. The guy’s body language always screamed “hostile.” He crossed his arms like an umpire, issued demands, didn’t like to be inconvenienced. Seth could imagine the effect a guy like Lyle had on wayward boys. He decided that for Lyle Hicks, the embarrassment of having three kids picked up by the cops would undoubtedly be more of an issue than the kids themselves.
“Lyle.” Rainey lowered her head. “Lyle and I aren’t exactly singing on the same page of the songbook. I guess you know that most of the boys who end up at Big Cedar are wards of the state. All have behavioral problems. Many have physical problems, as well. I try to help them, but Lyle, he only wants to warehouse them. He’ll never let me live this down.”
“The guy’s a prick.”
Rainey’s head snapped up, the expression in her green eyes keen now. “Yeah. He is, actually. But how’d you know?”
“We’ve been called about incidents at the camp before. Lyle seems to be more worried about damage control than the kids. Once he asked me if the media monitored our police radios.” Seth took her hand and led her on. “Is Lyle the reason you didn’t report it when the boys ran off?”
“Partly. I thought it would be enough to chastise them.”
Chastise them? If it were up to Seth, he’d chastise their backsides. Coach Hollings and his famous paddle flashed to mind.
“You have to understand how harsh the system can be,” she added. “I didn’t want them to end up… I thought I was keeping them safe with me.”
“Right.” Seth’s tone was sarcastic. “Safe.”
He had pulled her along until they reached a dropoff. He lowered himself over the edge and put the shotgun on the ground to help her down off the rock. When she had her footing, he picked up the gun and pulled her into a narrow cleft between two giant boulders. “Stay close,” he said. “It gets a little rougher now.”
The claustrophobic passage was pitch-black and so treacherously steep that they were forced to half scramble, half slide down.
Rainey used her free hand to steady herself against Seth’s back, and her touch communicated tremors of fear.
“Can’t we turn on the flashlight yet?”
“No. Even between the rocks a beam might be seen. I know where I’m going.”
Seth could find his way through these passages with his eyes closed. From the time he was old enough to ride a bike, he and Lane had explored every nook and cranny of this part of the Kiamichi Range. And he had made many trips up and down this exact passage in the years since Lane’s death, sensing that the answer he sought— KayAnn Rawls’s bones—lay up at the top of these cliffs.
KayAnn Rawls. Her name filtered through the dark passageway like an echo that he couldn’t silence. KayAnn Rawls. The trouble had started with KayAnn Rawls. For years, Seth had made it his mission to find out what had happened to Lane’s girlfriend on the night she’d disappeared. He told himself he did it for Lane’s sake. But lately he wondered if he’d carried this obsession around for so long he couldn’t let go of it even if he wanted to.
And now these boys were involved in this mess. And this woman.
“We’re okay,” he reassured her. But in his mind he had to add, for now. Because navigating down this treacherous path was sure to be the least of their problems.
CHAPTER TWO
AS MUCH AS RAINEY LOATHED confined spaces, she had bigger worries. Inching her way between giant rocks that felt tighter than a tomb, she clung to the back of the cop’s vest and hoped she wasn’t making another stupid mistake.
This guy was a cop, wasn’t he? With her imagination conjuring up thoughts about serial killers pretending to be cops so they could lure their victims into remote, dark places like this one, she forced herself to review the facts.
