“All you have to do is stay hidden until I can reach you. You’ve already got more than enough supplies there to be comfortable. You can catch up on your sleep. It won’t take me long.”
“How long?”
“Depends on how far I have to go to find a place to hide the vehicle, but I don’t think it will be more than five hours.”
“Five hours!”
“Think. They’ll be searching by air. They know you’ve been active in these mountains before. You want me to leave this car anywhere near you?”
Parrish brooded. The rest of us stayed silent. I would have loved to have added invisibility to my attributes, especially when Parrish’s brooding suddenly shifted its focus to me.
“I have some plans for Irene, so I suppose I can make a start on those. If you aren’t back in five hours, don’t expect to find us at the cave. I don’t think I’ll just sit there waiting for you to show up with the police.”
“If I thought it would do any good to argue with you that the last thing I want right now is to be anywhere near law enforcement, I’d sit here for another twenty minutes to do it. As it is, every minute we’re here is another minute when the sun gets farther up in the sky, which will make it easier for this SUV to be spotted on a road that is supposed to be open only to the Forest Service.”
The argument seemed to work. Donovan helped me get out of the backseat and cut the tape on my ankles.
The air was cold. I was glad for the parka. I could hear water flowing nearby, a small stream, judging by the sound of it.
The forest carried that rich scent that comes only with autumn, the sharp crispness of pine that had filled the air for the few hours of our drive combined with damp, dark earth, fallen leaves, and decay.
Donovan went to the back of the SUV and unloaded a few things-the shovel and two light packs. Kai took charge of the shovel, a folding type used by campers, which he managed to do only by holstering his gun. He seemed confused and overwhelmed. Parrish took out another gun and held it on me while Donovan helped Kai. He took Kai’s parka off and removed his injured arm from its sling, then helped him don the parka again, carefully guiding the injured arm into the parka’s sleeve. Donovan was gentle, but Kai was clearly cold and in pain while this went on. Donovan picked up one of the day packs, adjusting its straps and belt to better fit it over the parka, then arranged Kai’s arm in the sling again. He fitted the shovel into the pack as well, trying to center its weight.
Next he helped Parrish to don the other pack, again adjusting the straps. Parrish grew irritable as we stood there in the cold and snapped at Donovan to stop fussing over him. Donovan asked him when he had last carried anything on his back. Parrish stopped objecting and allowed him to ensure that the shoulder harness, sternum strap, and hip belt rested where they should.
Finally, Donovan stood before me. I had thought I was fearful before, but now I realized there were other levels of panic I could achieve. The notion of being left with Parrish and Kai without Donovan suddenly made me aware of all the ways in which he had served as a buffer, in which he had been the alpha dog in this pack whether they saw it or not. He had been subtly controlling them, whatever his reasons for doing so, and now he was in all likelihood abandoning me.
He reached in the hood of my parka and roughly took my face between his hands, which were ungloved and already chilled by the mountain air. He looked straight into my eyes and said in a cold, hard tone, “You’ll move faster if I don’t tape your mouth shut, because you’ll be able to breathe better and drink water as needed. But if you start screaming or do anything else to attract attention, you’ll be gagged. Do you understand?”
I stayed silent because, hidden by the hood, his fingers were tapping against my face, and I needed to concentrate on that tapping.
“Understand?” he asked again, more harshly.
I nodded.
He released me. “Good.”
He turned back to Parrish. “See you in a few hours.”
He got into the SUV and backed it down the narrow road, until he came to a place where he could turn around. We watched its taillights vanish around the first curve in the road.
Parrish turned on a flashlight and began to walk toward an opening in the trees. We were soon making our way along the stream. I was marched behind Parrish, with Kai bringing up the rear. Kai stayed close to me. I could hear his breathing grow rapid. Whether that was because of pain from his wound, altitude sickness, or a city boy’s fear at finding himself in the woods at night, I didn’t know.
With my hands bound, I began to realize how much I used my arms to help me stay balanced when walking. The uneven route along the stream was especially difficult, and I didn’t find it much easier when we were hiking over tree roots. Parrish wasn’t moving very fast, but five times I nearly fell, once recovering my balance just before landing in the icy cold stream.
Before long birds were beginning to sing, and squirrels and jays chattered noisily above us. Parrish turned off his flashlight and pocketed it as dawn broke.
“I don’t understand why you trusted him!” Kai called from behind me, as if he had been fretting over this since Donovan drove away.
Parrish laughed and called back, “Who said I trusted him?”
I kept my head down, watching my footing. I thought of the message Donovan had tapped out:
Have faith.
Faith. But then, who said I trusted him?
FORTY-FIVE
Donovan drove until he reached a point where he felt sure that if Parrish decided to hike down the road instead of going up his makeshift trail, he wouldn’t discover that the SUV hadn’t been moved very far. Donovan’s next requirement for a stopping place was not as easily met as he had hoped, but it was important that the vehicle could be seen from the sky.
He had studied Irene Kelly. He had read as many of her articles and columns in the Express as he could find online, then searched out others in the local public library. He had learned as much as he could about her previous experiences with Nicholas Parrish and, perhaps as important, her thoughts about those experiences. He had learned about her husband’s and friends’ roles in her rescue.
That was also how he had come across a column published last April, on the birthday of the inventor and artist Samuel Morse, which talked of how his invention of the telegraph-considered by many to be the birth of electronic communication-had changed the world.
She had written about the code itself as a creation that had an impact beyond its use by telegraphers, how-although it was in danger of becoming a lost art-in this day when cell phones and GPS needed signal strength, Morse code could be sent with a mirror, a flashlight, by tapping against almost any surface, and a dozen other ways. The column included a story about her having learned the code as a girl. She used it to communicate secretly with her best friend in school. Years later she was delighted to discover that her husband knew Morse code, too. Although she claimed the slowest ham radio operators were more proficient, Frank and Irene kept in practice by sending messages to each other.
Donovan had thought of the ways this information might be useful and had brushed up on his Morse code.
He had learned everything he could about Irene Kelly, and had also studied Frank Harriman. He knew that their friend and neighbor, Jack Fremont, had sold half his interest in his helicopter service to Irene’s cousin Travis Maguire. Both Fremont and Maguire were devoted to Frank and Irene. They had used their helicopters for search and rescue operations in the past, including a mountain search for Irene Kelly.
Which was why Donovan looked for a place that would allow the SUV to be visible from the sky.
Weather changes were frequent and unpredictable in the autumn in the southern Sierra Nevada and obscured visibility or other conditions would keep a helicopter on the ground. There was rain-possibly snow-in the forecast, but it wasn’t due for another twelve to twenty-four hours, and so far, it looked as if this would be a clear day. Although snow could be found at the higher elevations of this range even in the summer, Donovan thought that it was unlikely Parrish would hike that far.