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“I’ll find you, baby. That’s a promise I’ll keep even if it costs me my life.”
* * *
The look in Maverick’s eyes was enough to irritate me, but I held my glare. He was the only man who could help me at this point. I’d become certain of that after checking out his credentials. A tracker by trade, he worked independently for various law enforcement agencies as well as private citizens, locating lost individuals in the mountains as well as criminals attempting to use the mountains as a hiding ground.
So far, his record was ninety-eight percent success. Knowing his personality from years before, I had a feeling the two percent fueled his continued anger.
“You’re fuckin’ out of your mind,” he said as he lowered his gaze toward Apollo.
“Yeah? Maybe so, but I will track her down with or without your help.”
Maverick shook his head, purposely turning his head toward the mountains. “You know these mountains as well as I do, Ricky. If that bastard has her holed up somewhere, it’ll take an act of God to find her. This isn’t like the search cases I work on. We have no starting point.”
“He wants to be found.”
Half laughing, he raked his hand through his long, scraggly hair. The man was entirely different than when we were kids, barely recognizable. He’d put on a solid eighty pounds, growing at least four inches. He appeared a wall of steel. And his features were as hard as mine, as if whatever he’d endured over the years weighed heavily on his mind.
“What makes you think that?”
As I handed him the photograph, he narrowed his eyes. “Come find me? Where the hell did you get this?”
“It was left for me in my goddamn house. While I was searching for Chasity, finding her car, he’d circled around, coming to my house. He’s obviously been following us for some time. How long, I don’t know.”
“He thinks she belongs to him.”
“Evidently so.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “After your call, I made contact to some buddies of mine in law enforcement.”
“So you know the whole story.”
“Enough to know I don’t want to touch this shit with a thirty-foot pole,” he answered, handing me back the photograph. “Sorry, buddy, but there are some tracking jobs that aren’t worth the risk.”
“She’ll be killed this time.”
He stood staring at me. I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face, but what good would that do?
“To hell with you. I’m doing this with or without your help. That woman was kept as his captive for two months. Two. The Feds didn’t do shit back then. What makes you think they’re going to do anything now? I need to find her, Maverick. No, I will find her. I don’t care what I need to do.” As I turned around, he cleared his throat.
“Have you ever trained for this, Garcia? Have you ever tracked a man through dense, mucky forest for days, finding nothing but certain you were on the right track? Did you ever fight grizzlies because they were starving from the recent fires, and considered you fresh meat? Do you even know what it takes to track a man down? It ain’t like the movies.”
As I slowly turned to face him, I debated what I wanted to say. “She’s all alone with a monster, Maverick, and he will hurt her just like he did before. He has a thing for cutting human flesh, creating art, so he called it. She’s scarred on her arm and stomach from what he did to her.”
He continued staring at me for a few seconds before noticing the file I had in my hand. “What else?”
I yanked the file I’d brought to chest level, flipping through the various pages I’d printed. I’d spent three hours searching every site I could think of, finding several well-hidden articles on the corporal. I’d also called in a favor to my old commanding officer, who’d agreed reluctantly to dig through classified files, finding additional disturbing details.
Lance Rollington had displayed signs of dysfunctional behavior before being blown up by an IAD. If what my commanding officer said was true, the corporal was about to be tossed out of the service with a dishonorable discharge after beating another Marine to death in a heated brawl.
Why hadn’t his service record been brought up at trial? When I handed him the notations regarding his record as well as the collage of images of what he’d done to Chasity, I sensed he was seething.
“Why the hell is this piece of scum walking and talking?” he barked out the question, his entire demeanor changing.
“Good question.”
“What do you have on him? Anything I can use to track him with?” he asked casually.
“Just my gut feeling he’s close. As I said, he wants me to find him. This is just a chess game for him now.”
