The bright beam of a flashlight hit Ben as soon as he was out of the vehicle and then slid over into my face, effectively blinding me. Ben called out to the uniformed officer as we walked toward the Jeep. “Detective Storm. I’m the one who called.”
The light came down out of my eyes, and I blinked to re-acclimate my sight to the darkness. I could hear Agent Mandalay talking to the officer and verifying our identities.
“You the one who found it?” Ben asked, continuing forward.
“Yeah,” the officer said as we approached. “Found it a few minutes ago, just like this.
The door of the Jeep was hanging open, and though the engine was switched off, the keys were still in the ignition. The officer shone the flashlight around the interior of the vehicle and then aimed it toward the nearby tree line.
He nodded toward the point no more than a dozen feet away where the light fell against a chain link fence, then played it upward to the strands of barbed wire across the top. There, hanging across the barrier was what looked to be one of the floor mats from the Jeep.
“Looks like your suspect might have gone over the fence there.” he said.
“Suspect!” I blurted, starting forward.
Ben’s hand clamped onto my shoulder and pulled me back. He stepped forward himself, interposing his huge frame between the officer and me.
Agent Mandalay was already on the defense. “She’s not a suspect.”
“Listen,” Ben spoke, voice calm but adamant. “Let’s get one thing straight right now, she’s a consultant, and if she gets hurt I’m holdin’ you responsible.”
I’d had enough. Standing here bantering with the Woodcrest cop wasn’t accomplishing anything other than raising my ire. Not to mention, every moment that passed was taking Felicity closer to a possibly fatal decision, if she hadn’t arrived there already.
I glanced around and saw that the three of them were intent on one another at the moment, so I began moving toward the fence.
Behind me I could hear the officer talking to Ben. “Yeah, okay, so what’s a consultant doing trespassing in a state park in the middle of the night?”
“Makin’ my life hard, obviously,” Ben returned.
“What case are you working anyway?” the cop demanded.
“Nothin’ that concerns you right now,” Ben shot back.
“It’s got to be something big,” the officer pressed. “A city homicide detective and a Fed out here in the dark…”
“Look, Officer…” Constance started.
“Martin,” he replied.
“Officer Martin,” she continued. “We’re working against the clock here, and we don’t have time for this. Now, has anyone gone in?”
I was only a few steps from the fence now, and I knew that I was going to be discovered at any moment. I was going to be very hard to miss when I started climbing.
“Not yet,” the officer replied. “Dispatch is sending a car to the main gate.”
“Good, I’ll go meet them,” Constance announced. “Storm, why don’t you and Rowan…”
The moment I heard my name, I knew my time was up. I took the last two steps at a run and launched myself up onto the fence. Twining my fingers into the metal links, I kicked the toes of my shoes into the small holes finding any kind of hold I could as I scrambled to pull myself upward.
“Rowan!” Agent Mandalay exclaimed, obviously noticing me.
“Jeezus H. Christ!” came Ben’s bellowing voice amid the sounds of them starting to move. “Rowan! Stop!”
My only saving grace was that they were stunned enough by my action not to have started moving immediately. The delay, brief as it was, allowed enough time for me to put distance between the ground and me.
By the time they reached the fence, I was already pitching my waist over the rubber mat and rolling forward. I wasn’t about to win any medals for my dismount, but I still managed to drop myself to the ground on the opposite side with only a minor stumble.
As soon as I gained my footing, at my back I could hear Ben’s exclamation, “Goddammit, Rowan, STOP!”
My gut reaction was to simply start running as fast as I could in the opposite direction of the fence. I looked forward into the woods, following the filtered beam of the uniformed officer’s flashlight that was apparently aimed at my back. I hesitated and then took a step toward the dense thicket.
“Dammit, white man, I said STOP! What the hell are you doing?” Ben yelled at me through the fence.
I froze and cast a glance back in his direction.
“She came in this way, Ben,” I shot back. “She had to have a reason.”
I couldn’t see his expression. The flashlight was aimed at my face, and the glare blinded me to any details. Ben was a massive silhouette against the chain link, flanked by the smaller shadows of Agent Mandalay and the patrol officer. I held up my hand in an attempt to block the light.
“Wait up,” my friend finally said with a heavy sigh, then turned to the Woodcrest officer. “Gimme the flashlight.” Surprisingly, the officer didn’t argue and instead simply handed over the multi-cell Mag-lite without a word.
“You stay here,” Ben instructed him as he switched off the light and tucked it into his belt. “Mandalay, you meet the other uniforms at the main gate and work your way in. If you find her first, call me on my cell.”
“How will you know where you’re going?” Mandalay asked quickly.
“Hell if I know,” Ben spat as he hoisted himself onto the fence and began to climb. “Ask Rowan.”
CHAPTER 24:
The bulk of the nearly two thousand acre park was a woodland refuge, bordered along the western edge by the Missouri River. Taken in that context, finding a solitary, petite, redheaded woman amid it all presented itself as an overwhelming task. Fortunately, we knew where she had entered, and she probably had no more than a thirty-minute head start. We hoped.
The thing that kept gnawing at me, however, was what she could manage to bring upon herself in those thirty minutes. I quickly found myself dwelling on the possibilities and had to force them out of my head at regular intervals, lest I become literally paralyzed by a fear of what might be. The thoughts were already playing hell with my confidence. The last thing I needed was to have an emotional meltdown before we even found her.
I didn’t have a solid idea of where to go from here. For all I knew, she could have simply plunged directly into the woods; or she could have followed the fence line and entered them elsewhere. However, it seemed logical that if she had taken the time to scale the fence at this specific point, walking the fence was probably the least likely of the options. So, I decided to take the straight-line approach and set out into the tree line.
I had been to the park enough times to know that it was segmented along one small portion by a railroad that was still in use. And, as I recalled, the railway ran through the edge of the park we had just entered. Something told me the tracks were where Felicity was heading. I don’t know why the rail line popped into my head, or even why it would have been the destination of the killer. But at this point, intuition was all I had going for me, and I wasn’t going to doubt it. Not yet, anyway.
The first fifty yards of our trek had been uphill, and with me in a frantic lead, we had topped the ridge quickly. Still, even with fear and adrenalin driving me, I was winded, and so was Ben.
The night had only allowed the air temperature to dip into the mid-eighties, and with our proximity to the river, the humidity was making it feel more like the high nineties. I was already drenched in sweat, and I suspected Ben was as well. Even though he was certainly in better shape than me, the closeness of the air combined with the upward sprint was enough to open anyone’s pores wide.
“Jeezus, white man,” my friend huffed as we came to a halt atop the rise. “Can’t you two do anything the easy way?”
I ignored the question. I was pretty sure he didn’t really want an answer, and besides, I was far too busy to talk. I was standing as still as I could manage, reaching out for my wife with every earthly sense I had available. My eyes were searching for shadows in the harsh beam of the flashlight as I played it across the landscape before me. All the while, I was listening for telltale sounds of movement; or even, goddess forbid, a distant scream. Every now and then, I would take a moment to concentrate on breathing in hopes of catching a whiff of her perfume. Unfortunately, I was yielding no results.