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The safety bar moved under her hands, but she still held on.
“We’re almost there,” Elliot said. Reluctant, she let go. He pushed the bar above their heads, then his hand found hers and clasped it. “The ground will rise to meet your feet. When it does, jump ahead then move quickly to the left, to get out of the chair’s way. I won’t let go.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Never.”
Still, when the ground pushed against her feet she startled, but his grip was firm, and she let him guide her to the side. “Whew,” she said quietly, once they were out of the way. “I have to try this sometime, when I can see what’s around.”
Elliot typed a text quickly and the chairlift stopped whirring. From there, it was a ten-minute hike to the Somerset cabin. Kay remembered the place from when she was a kid about Kendra’s age, and she hiked up there with Jacob. The old man Somerset hadn’t been up there in a while, and some kids knew about it. She couldn’t imagine why someone would want to spend any amount of time there. The cabin was barely standing. John Somerset was a trapper, rumored to have Native blood. He’d never taken to any of the local tribes; instead, he’d chosen to live a life of seclusion, hunting and trapping the old Pomoan way. When he died, his heirs were shocked to find several million dollars in the old man’s accounts, and so the battle had begun over the inheritance.
It was completely dark when the cabin came into sight, a dark shadow against a dimly lit sky. A setting crescent moon barely contoured the cabin’s shape. No sound came from inside, and the air didn’t carry the smell of recent fire.
Weapon drawn, Kay approached the cabin slowly, carefully listening for any sound. On the other side of the small clearing, Elliot tiptoed through the tall grasses, keeping an eye on the back of the cabin.
She took out her flashlight, ready to shed some light on the interior. She remembered the cabin had a latch. Feeling her way along the door’s edge with her fingers, she found it, locked. Pulling it slowly, she held the door with her foot, then released it quickly. It bounced open, creaking loudly, just as she remembered it would.
She turned on the flashlight and gasped at the harrowing sight.
Chained from the wall, Kendra had collapsed to her knees. Her head hung and her hair flowed over her bloodied, naked body. Bruises and dried blood covered every inch of her skin. She wasn’t moving.
Kay cleared the room with precise and hurried movements, pointing her flashlight and gun at every corner, then shouted, “In here.”
Holstering her weapon, she rushed by Kendra’s side and felt for a pulse. It was there, barely noticeable and thready. Elliot came inside and lifted her body off the ground, so that Kay could release her wrists from the chain they’d been bound to. He set her gently on the small table, and took off his jacket to cover her body with. Kay cut the rope tied around her wrists and started massaging her hands, rubbing some heat into them.
“Call for EMS air,” she said, feeling for her pulse again. She was frozen, still unconscious. “She won’t last long; she’s in shock. We need to warm her up.” Kay wrapped her legs in her own jacket, shivering under the cold breeze after she took it off. It was barely forty-five degrees at night, up on Wildfire, even in the summer.
Then she started blowing warm air against the side of Kendra’s neck, where the carotid arteries were close to the skin. Rubbing her hands together quickly to heat them up, she placed them on the other side of the girl’s neck and on her chest, and kept blowing.
After a few minutes, Kendra moaned and opened her eyes. The look in them was one of sheer panic, until Kay squeezed her hand and said, “I’m a cop. You’re safe. We’re taking you to the hospital.”
Kendra closed her eyes. A tear escaped the corner of her eye and disappeared under Kay’s fingers.
“Who did this to you?” Kay asked, continuing to warm up her neck as best she could.
Kendra moaned again, then whispered, “Richard Gaskell. He’s a senior at my school.”
“How about Renaldo? Was he here too?”
“N—no.” She drifted away into unconsciousness. Kay feared she wouldn’t last until help arrived. All she could do was keep fighting to warm her weakened body.
“We need an emergency airlift on Wildfire Ridge, at the old Somerset cabin,” Elliot said into the phone, standing in front of the cabin. Then he listened intently, while his jaws clenched. “If you’re not here faster than greased lightning, I’ll make it my mission in life to see you writing parking tickets in Crooked Creek, Alaska, for the rest of your career,” he said coldly, the tone of his voice matching the harshness of his words. “I don’t care if he says he can’t land here. Figure it out. Pilots are supposed to be smart, aren’t they? Then he better not have me show him how it’s done. Any half-decent Texas hog hunter would know how to land that chopper here. They should have a basket on a rope just in case.” Another pause. “He better make it faster than that.”
Elliot ended the call and rushed back inside. “They’ll be here in ten minutes or so.” Then he crouched by the old fireplace and started a fire, using old, dusty kindling he’d found in the cabin and some dry pine tree branches he’d picked up nearby. Within minutes, the fire warmed up the dreary cabin, and Kendra’s face started to get some color.
About thirty minutes later, they watched the EMS chopper taking off with Kendra onboard, lifting a whirl of leaves and dust in the air.
“Gaskell’s gone, isn’t he?” Kay said, as soon as her voice could cover the sound of the departing chopper.
“Damn right.” Elliot kicked a small rock, sending it tumbling across the clearing. “He’s been gone for a while. Left this girl here to die.”
Kay’s eyes stung under the threat of tears, maybe from frustration or powerlessness, or perhaps relief that they’d found Kendra alive. She couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter, because they instantly dried once the glimmer of a new plan took shape in her mind. “I know just how to get that bastard to come out of the woodwork.”
Elliot picked a long grass straw and bit on the tip of it with a wide grin. “Never had a doubt in my mind.”
Smiling, she fished her phone out of her pocket and looked at the bars. Only two, but it would have to work. She retrieved a number from the phone’s memory and called it on speaker.
“Barb? How would you like another exclusive?”
“Are you kidding me? Shoot,” the reported replied, not bothering to conceal her excitement. The sound of shuffled papers came across clearly. She was probably getting ready to take notes.
“Don’t bother jotting things down. Record this call instead, because I need you to quote me word for word, and use my name as your source.”
