“Rocks under your back too?”
“Rocks and a damn tree root.”
Andrea looked around. “Where’s Cameron?”
Tori motioned with her head. “She headed up the trail. Had a flashlight out.”
“She said she was going to call Murdock,” Andrea said. “I guess to check in and give him our GPS coordinates.”
Hunter was quiet for a moment, then looked up at her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“How did you get her to let me come along?”
Andrea smiled. “I told her if I was the one who had been taken hostage, I hoped that she would not let anyone stand in her way when it came to finding me.”
Tori nodded. “Thank you.” She looked down at the fire. “I just keep thinking we’re going too slow.” She looked up again. “And I keep thinking…if something happens to Sam, I’m not going to make it out of here with my sanity. Like I said, she’s my whole life.” Tori shook her head. “Before I met her, I was…well, I wasn’t a very nice person. And I didn’t have anybody in my life. No friends.” She shrugged. “Even the job, I wasn’t in any kind of a relationship with anyone. I did my job, that’s all. And everyone tolerated me, I guess. Then Sam came along and I…God, she was dating this guy. Robert.” Tori smiled. “What a jerk he was.”
“You said you and Sam were partners on the force?”
Tori nodded. “Yeah. Homicide. Me and partners, well, I’d gone through a few of them. Like I said, I wasn’t a very nice person. But Sam, she didn’t take any shit from me. And we had so much happen to us, we just got so close. And the attraction was there for both of us. Of course, she had Robert to deal with. He wanted to marry her.” Tori stirred the fire a bit. “I fell in love with her and I was afraid to tell her.” She looked up with a smile. “She, of course, was having the same problem.”
“I imagine it was hard having a man in the picture,” she said.
“You have no idea.” Tori stared at her. “Or do you?”
Andrea laughed. “God, no. I knew I was gay when I was in high school.”
Tori nodded. “Yeah. I knew at a young age too. But Sam…” Tori smiled. “Well, she likes to say she’s a late bloomer.”
“When did you go to the FBI?” she asked.
Tori looked up at her. “After the Patrick Doe case, actually. My partner, John Sikes, he nearly lost his life. It was a bad case all around. We thought we had the bastard and it ended up being his twin.”
“Yes, I remember your notes on it.”
“I needed…a change,” Tori said.
Andrea turned when she heard Cameron coming back down the trail. The sky was lightening up quickly, and she assumed they would head out soon.
“I asked Murdock to send out a helicopter this morning,” Cameron said. “If we don’t send one out, Angel is bound to think it odd.”
“I thought you wanted to confuse him,” Tori said.
“Yeah. That’s why I’m sending one out now. Only not too close. Close enough for Angel to hear it, but far enough away for him to think we don’t know where he is.”
“But why not—”
Cameron held up her hand. “I’m not arguing about this with you, Hunter. We’re not using the helicopter to spot them. It’s our job to find them.”
Andrea was surprised that Tori seemed to accept that statement and didn’t protest further. Cameron seemed surprised as well.
“Let’s break camp,” Cameron said. “There’ll be enough light soon. We can pick up their trail again.”
Chapter Thirteen
“So how did you get your name?” Sam asked. They were traveling on even ground and didn’t seem to be climbing at all. The forest was a little thicker here than in the last two days. She found the hiking easy this morning. Easy enough to talk and not be out of breath.
“You mean since I’m a killer?”
“Well, your mother must have thought you were special. She gave you such a beautiful name.”
Angel stopped suddenly but didn’t turn around. Sam wondered if bringing up his mother was taboo.
“My mother was the angel,” he finally said. He turned to look at her then. “She died,” he said without much emotion.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said immediately. His eyes had a faraway look, and she knew he was remembering her.
“I…I was sixteen. And I have yet to forgive my father.”
“He…he killed her?” she asked quietly.
Angel nodded. “A car accident. He’d been drinking. He was always drinking. He took a corner too fast. Swerved to miss another car and ended up flipping them over. He walked away without a scratch.”
Sam instinctively reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m so sorry. Did you have siblings to turn to?”
“No. And the son of a bitch didn’t even do jail time. I left home, went to live with the family of a friend. When I turned eighteen, I joined the military.”
She wanted to ask a hundred more questions, but she held back. She let him reminisce without her pestering him with questions. After a few seconds, he nodded and she let her hand slip from his arm. He started walking again and she followed. But of course her curiosity got the best of her. She waited what she thought was an acceptable amount of time before asking her next question.
“So the military? What did you do?”
He laughed. “Do you really want to know?”
“Do I not want to know?” she countered.
“I ended up in a Special Ops unit,” he said.
“Okay. That means what?”
“My team was made up of sharpshooters.” He stopped again and turned to her. “I was a sniper. I assassinated people.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Yeah. That’s where I got my start. You’re trained to kill without thinking about it. It became too easy,” he said. “And I was very, very good at it.”
Okay, so this conversation is going downhill fast.
“What else do you want to know?” he asked.
She met his gaze. “That’s probably more than enough.”
“Thought it’d be.”
* * *
“What the hell?”
“What is it?” Andrea asked.
“I got two trails here.”
“What do you mean?” Hunter asked as she walked up beside her.
Cameron pointed up the hill. “They go up here. This is what we’ve been following.” Then she pointed to the left, into the woods. “But I’ve got a broken limb on this scrub brush. See the indention where this rock has been moved?” She stood up. “So the trail goes this way.”
“Maybe it’s from other hikers,” Andrea suggested.
“No. It’s them.” Cameron squinted into the sun as she looked up the ridge. What the hell was he doing? “Backtracking?”
“What?”
She shook her head. “Thinking out loud.” She walked up the trail a few steps then turned back. “It’s very steep. I can’t believe he’d take this route.” She motioned to Andi. “Andrea, please stay there.” Andrea nodded. “Hunter, come with me.”
“Sam’s not crazy about heights,” Tori said as she looked over the edge. “And right now, I’m not either.”
“See the rocks dislodged. They definitely came up this way.” Cameron hurried up, knowing in her gut that they’d backtracked. Maybe he’d gone up here for show. Maybe he wanted to confuse them. Hell, maybe it got too steep and they had to turn around. She felt like they were wasting precious time, but she had to be sure.
She stopped when she saw the skid marks off to the side, the smooth dirt where a body had been dragged. Christ, did she go over the side? Cameron looked down, seeing where the skid stopped.
“Look here,” she said.
“What does that mean?” Hunter squatted down. “Looks like someone slipped here.”
“Yeah. That someone is your Sam.”
Hunter looked up at her. “What are you saying? She fell off the goddamn side?” Hunter stood back up, peering over the side much like Cameron had done.