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“Ah, Detective,” Larkin said, forcing a smile through his pain. “I thought you left. Fancy seeing you here with her.”
“Put the weapon down,” Hansen said. I could see he was a little winded. He must have heard us and turned around.
Oh God, Will.
That meant the attacker was still coming for him.
“You’re interfering with an arrest, Detective” Larkin argued.
“The way I see it, you’re attacking a citizen for no reason. And trying to drug her.”
“Pervert,” I added for good measure.
“Clearly, you’re not in Ashport because of Ms. Kirby’s kidnapping,” Hansen said.
“Nor do you seem very intent on arrestingher,” Larkin countered while nodding in my direction.
“We don’t have time for this,” I interrupted. “Look at your situation, Agent.”
He didn’t have a choice. If he turned to shoot at Hansen, I would attack him. If he shot at me, Hansen would shoot him. I hoped.
Larkin considered for a moment and then took a pained step toward Hansen and handed him the tranquilizer gun, hilt first. I guess he didn’t trust me not to shoot him with it.
“You’re making a mistake,” Larkin told Hansen, who simply changed his grip on the weapon and shot the agent. The dart hit him in the stomach, and he stared down at it in stunned silence. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell sideways, hitting the ground with a thump.
“Where did he come from?” Hansen asked, holstering his own weapon, before stepping over to the unconscious man, extracting the little red dart, and throwing it away. If someone came by, likely they would think him injured or drunk.
I silently pointed behind me with a thumb over my shoulder. Whathadjust happened? Hansen looked in the indicated direction–the agent had taken a steeper but shorter trail up the ridge. Hansen shook his head and turned back where he’d been heading.
We started running again without saying a thing. There was no time to discuss any of what had happened, and we both knew the figure we’d seen had to have too much of a distance on us now. My back and side hurt, but as we neared the first camp, the pain subsided as I focused on moving further up. Desperately hoping we’d get there in time. I had been right about Hansen. He had to be running on a regular basis to keep up the pace he did. Despite the situation, I glanced at the tranquilizer gun in his hand. He hadn’t even thought twice about shooting Larkin. Simply removing the threat in one quick move. At least, for a while. I knew he’d done it before when Larkin had tried to take me out in the alley where Andrea was kidnapped. But from what Hansen had told me at the time, he had not been seen then.
The noise from the first camp reached its peak as we ran by unseen, hidden by darkness. They were quite audible, with their singing, laughter, and loud talking.
If there ever was a scream, we didn’t hear it. The smallest camp lay about two hundred yards above the other one, and I knew before we reached it that we were too late. The attacker had been too far ahead of us.
A small fire was lit outside a tent. It hadn’t been tended to in a while and would soon be dying down. A light source in the tent revealed the silhouette of a person sitting in there. There was no sound.
Hansen reached it a second before me, ripping the unzipped flap to the side as I stopped beside him. An apathetic face met us before a scream erupted. A young naked woman sitting on her knees suddenly backed away at our intrusion. She grabbed at a sleeping bag, covering herself as her scream died on her lips, terror making her stop moving. I held up my hands. Palms out, about to say something comforting as I noticed the young man who lay still next to her.
Will. It had to be him. He didn’t move. Did not react to our being there other than looking at us with a familiar blank stare.
Chapter 8
“Too late,”Hansen said, straightening up. “How long since it happened?” he asked the girlfriend.
She swallowed hard, looking at us with petrified eyes. It took her a moment to realize we weren’t there to hurt her. “Three, maybe four minutes,” she stuttered, pointing in the direction the attacker had taken.
Hansen was about to run after the person, but I grabbed his arm, halting him. “No point,” I said. “He’s quick, and we can barely see as it is.” Hansen hesitated a moment but remained where he was. I reached out and took the tranquilizer gun from him. A question seemed to form in his eyes, but he caught on and didn’t stop me from aiming the thing at Will and shooting him with it.
“What did you do?” his girlfriend shouted as she lunged forward so the sleeping bag fell down, pulling the little dart out of her boyfriend’s thigh. It was too late, though. I saw his eyes close as the drugs claimed him for what would hopefully be a while.
“Right now, he was panicking. You couldn’t see it,” I said tucking the weapon into my waistband by the small of my back, while she covered herself with the sleeping bag again. “We have some long hours ahead of us. He doesn’t need to be awake for them. What’s your name?” I added. I kept my tone level, not making facts or orders optional. It worked in keeping her panic at bay.
“Liz,” she said, tucking her dark long hair behind an ear. I saw then how young she was. Will was nineteen, and I would bet she was the same age.
“All right, Liz,” I said. “Get dressed. We’ll wait out here, and then we’ll talk. Okay?”
She nodded, sniffling a little and wiping away a tear that broke free. I didn’t really have time for crying people now. We needed to avoid the rest of their friends, and therefore, be quick about things.
