AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Did they stay in one of the cabins?” Ellie asked.
“No. Some old, abandoned hunting shack before you got to the cabins on the creek. My husband was too cheap to rent something. But he knew the area and it was off season so he figured no one would be there.”
“He might have taken Ava there,” Ellie said.
His mother staggered backward, her face turning a sickly shade of green. Then she clutched her chest and collapsed onto the floor.
Ellie rushed forward, dropped to her knees and checked for a pulse. Low and thready. She pulled her phone to call for an ambulance, but Derrick strode in, took one look and called.
The next half hour was fraught with tension as the medics arrived and worked to revive Nolan’s mother. They suspected a heart attack induced by stress and were transporting her to the hospital.
“I’ll call Cord and ask him about Blood Mountain,” Ellie told Derrick. “He may know where those cabins are.”
Her stomach was in knots as she stepped back outside. Dusk had come and gone, and shadows from the thunder clouds created spidery patterns across the full moon. Ellie imagined Lara at home, pacing and worrying.
And little Ava terrified as night set in and she was missing her mommy.
Twenty-Six
Blood Mountain
Ranger Cord McClain parked at the entrance to the cabins where Ellie had asked him to meet her and Agent Fox. While he waited, painful memories bombarded him as his gaze encompassed the tall peaks and ridges of Blood Mountain.
With an elevation of over four thousand feet, it was the highest mountain on the Georgia section of the AT and a huge tourist draw for hunters and hikers. The smell of winter swirled through the air and the wind howled through the trees like a bear roaring, just as it had the first time he’d been here.
Any beauty of the mountain was tainted by his past. His foster father had dragged him here when he was barely a teenager.
“You got to either kill or be killed,” the old man had said. “Now pick up that gun, follow the deer in your sights and shoot the damn thing.”
“I’m not a killer,” Cord had said, lifting his head to prove he was brave.
“You’re a pussy,” the man had snapped.
Then he’d raised his fist and beaten the shit out of him.
Cord had flung his arms in front of his face to protect himself, but the old man had hit him so hard he’d heard his wrist snap. Then his foster father had clobbered him in the face until he couldn’t see for the blood in his eyes and the pain in his ribs sent him to his knees.
“I don’t have time for a sorry worthless boy like you,” the man had said, then kicked him in the stomach and left him in the wilderness.
For hours, Cord had lain there barely moving, bleeding and in agony. Hours later, when the blistering sun came up, he dragged himself to the creek and washed up. For days he’d stumbled through the forest, lost and hungry, with nothing but the ragged clothes on his back. Right then and there, he’d decided he had to toughen up. That he would survive no matter what he had to do.
The old man hadn’t believed Cord would find his way through the miles of rugged forest. He’d gotten lost so many times in the dense woods that when he’d finally broken into a clearing, the light had burned his eyeballs. A rainstorm had flooded the creek and he’d been swept up in the current and dragged for miles, his body slamming into rocks, the sharp edges battering his skin. He’d lost consciousness for days and been dehydrated. He’d gotten sick and feverish, even hallucinated a couple of times and thought he’d died. He hadn’t cared if he had.
But he had survived. Barely, but he had.
Only he’d never gone back to live with that sick bastard. Instead, he’d chosen to stay in the woods alone where he’d learned to survive with nothing.
And now, he was back at the mountain that held so many haunting memories. While he was at the café talking to Lola, Ellie had called and asked him to meet her here. He could never say no to Ellie. Especially when she was searching for a missing child.
He flipped on his radio and heard Angelica Gomez’s briefing with Ellie airing, jarring him back to the reason he’d returned here tonight.
Little Ava Truman might be out here lost in these woods with a monster, just as he had been.
Twenty-Seven
Nerves danced along Ellie’s spine as she maneuvered the switchbacks and climbed the mountain. She could just imagine what Nolan’s father had done to him when he’d gotten him alone.
“I came here with my dad,” Derrick said, his voice faraway. “He said there was once a long gory battle between the Cherokee and Muscogee up here.”
