After backtracking to the tent, I found Lara and Sarah sitting inside.
“Time to go.”
Lara gasped and stood. “Calder, you’re injured.”
Looking down, I winced at the dark-burgundy stain orbiting the cut in the fabric.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. The rain is making it look worse,” I brushed it off—along with the inappropriate fantasy of having her doctor me. “I have another way out, but we need to go. Now.”
I glanced at the blonde, who was shaking and still deathly pale. We had to get her out of here.
Lara blanched but nodded.
To leave now was to give up our shot at getting any more information from anyone here. Even if I called the police and they arrived first thing in the morning, only three people knew what and where Eden’s Children and the Garden was; none of them had any reason to talk and hours to destroy any evidence of what happened here tonight.
“This way.”
Single file, we walked along the path to the Sanctuary, through the clearing, and then cut a hard left the way we’d been brought in to the camp.
Sure enough, partway down the ridge was Matthew’s Jeep.
Our first stroke of luck was that it was unlocked. Unfortunately, the keys weren’t inside. Fortunately, I hadn’t expected them to be.
After getting Sarah and Lara settled in the back seat, I rounded to the driver’s-side door and climbed in.
I’d just jammed the screwdriver into the ignition when Lara grabbed my shoulder.
“What if it alerts them?”
“It won’t,” I promised because I’d already accounted for that possibility.
Carefully, I turned the flathead to the “on” position, but not beyond it.
Putting the gearshift in reverse, I released the emergency brake and looked over my shoulder. Lara had her arm around Sarah and was calmly rubbing her arm. The distress she felt for the other woman was evident—to some, it might’ve been the only thing that was evident, but not to me.
Lara’s shattered stare caught mine and I saw the personal pain she tried to hide. There was no going back now. Whatever chance we’d had here to figure out what had happened to Rachel was gone.
She lowered her head in a slow nod. A small plea to get us out of here.
In the span of a blink, I recalled the feel of her face in my hands. The brine of her tears on my tongue. And the way she’d caved into my embrace back in the woods—an embrace I both wished I could give her now and wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to give her again.
Taking my foot off the brake, I pushed in the clutch and let the Jeep roll backward. It would’ve been easier to jump the engine, but with how close Maxwell’s RV was, I didn’t want the sound to alert them to our escape; I wanted to give us as much of a head start as possible.
So I decided to compression-start the engine ... something I hadn’t done in ages, and never in reverse.
I checked the speedometer, watching the dial tick up. I didn’t need much speed, but I did need space. The dial hit 5 mph, then 10. I tempered it with the brake just above there, needing a little more distance ...
Back and forth, my gaze shifted between the rearview and the speedometer, checking our path, monitoring our distance from the campsite, and our speed. As soon as we hit the mental marker I’d placed, I pressed harder on the brake, needing only a scrap of speed to shock the engine to life.
“There’s going to be a bump,” I warned Lara, waited a beat, mentally crossed my fingers, and then took my foot off the clutch. The engine protested the stress of the forced start with a violent jolt, then settled into a steady rumble.
Success.
Slowing, I checked on the women in the back and then shifted into first. Turning us forward, I followed my mental map through the BLM terrain and back to the Wilderness Within parking lot.
“We’ll get my truck and go back to the ranch. She’ll be safe there.”
Chapter 21
