Loe raamatut: «Cody's Come Home»

CHAPTER ONE

THE GUNSHOT EXPLODED against a tree so close to Aiyana Pearce that a woodchip seared her cheek.

She veered away, farther into the forest. She had no choice. Using bullets and her own fear against her, he’d bullied, hectored and directed her away from her normal route through the park.

Anger gripped her. She didn’t even know who her pursuer was.

Why was he doing this?

She’d just been minding her own business taking landscape photos...

Her biceps burned where the first bullet had cut through her jacket, sweater and long-sleeved top to bite into her like a swarm of wasps.

Heart hammering, legs burning, she ran for all she was worth. Only one thought slammed through her. Get away!

She stumbled on a root, grasped a tree trunk to steady herself and kept running.

Behind her, footsteps crashed through the undergrowth, but slower than hers. Or was that her imagination? She tried to listen, but couldn’t hear over her hammering heart.

Was he still chasing her?

Her pulse pounded. Her feet flew over rough terrain. She plowed through branches, flinging sticks and leaves every which way.

Behind her, nothing sounded.

Dear God, had she managed to outrun him?

For five more minutes she ran without hearing the hunter.

She gulped air, trying to swallow it whole, but still couldn’t get enough.

Stopping, she bent over to rub the stitch in her side, ears pricked for the slightest sound in the stillness of the woods.

Too wildly, she checked her surroundings. She should be methodical, but how could she stay calm when someone hunted her down like an animal?

If she could reach the upper trail, she might make it to safety. From there, she could phone for help.

She hadn’t caught her breath yet, but couldn’t stay here like a sitting duck, her bright pink jacket like a flag waving, shouting, Here I am! If she ditched it, she’d freeze. Even in the last week of October, the sun was already dropping beyond the horizon at only four-thirty in the afternoon. Drying sweat raised goose bumps.

She lurched forward.

A bird burst out of the undergrowth, flying so close its wings fanned her face.

She pressed a shaky hand to her stomach.

It’s only a bird, Aiyana. Calm down.

But she couldn’t. Not while he might still be out there.

Why?

Long shadows crept across the forest floor.

She’d never been in this section of the park before. Where exactly was she and how could she get to the parking lot from here? To safety? There wasn’t even the barest hint of other hikers.

Wait! There was something, someone nearby. Wasn’t there? Or was she imagining things? She didn’t know.

Another bird took flight.

Move!

A moment later, she detected in the distance what the bird had heard first...footsteps breaking twigs underfoot.

He was coming!

She hadn’t outrun him. She bit back a sob. Weakness would do her no good.

She ran straight uphill, slipping and sliding, grasping branches until she hauled herself up and over the lip of the upper trail.

At the top, she stopped again to catch her breath, sucking oxygen into her deprived lungs. She pulled her phone from her pocket and tried to dial, but her hands shook.

She dropped her phone.

“No!”

Shhh. Quiet.

This time, she heard him without animal warnings. Apparently he didn’t care how much noise he made. The hunt had become overt and he was way too close.

She picked up her phone and began running again, heedless of how narrow the path was. Falling over the side or getting shot? No-brainer. The next bullet might find its mark.

She had to live. Annie waited for her, depending on mommy to come home.

Come hell or high water, she would make it home to her daughter—

One moment she stood solidly on terra firma, and the next the ground disappeared beneath her feet, an entire section of trail crumbling down the side of the mountain. She jumped to safety, but the edge of the overhang gave way and she fell.

A sharp-edged rock sent pain bursting through her shoulder. She bounced against the disappearing edge of the hiking trail, then tumbled down a long, steep incline, her head, her hip, her shoulder hitting hard-packed earth and undergrowth. Flailing, she grasped for something to stop the slide.

Her fingers plowed furrows into mulch and leaf mold. Branches hit her legs. She closed her eyes, covering them with her forearms. She screamed. Dirt flew into her mouth.

The fall went on forever. When she landed, she hit so hard she bit the inside of her cheek and tasted blood. Her knapsack bounced over her head, pulling her hair and pinning her down.

Fire burned in her chest and spread outward, raging.

Compressed lungs begged for air. She couldn’t... She tried... Air. She needed air.

Stars flickered behind her eyelids. Just when she thought she would pass out, her body took over, finally sucking in a breath. Oh, sweet heavens, it hurt. A hot blade had been driven into her chest.

Small branches, dirt and pebbles rained down on her. She tried to cover her head, but only one armed worked. When the debris stopped falling, only her pounding pulse echoed in the sudden silence.

Like an unforgiving enemy, pain visited every cell in her body. Her shoulder ached. Her ankle throbbed.

She lay still, playing possum, in case he was up top watching her. She listened for footsteps, too hurt to defend herself if he came down. Her heart pounded against the constricted wall of her chest like a boxer battering a speed bag.

For what felt like a good ten minutes, she lay still.

He was gone. He must be by now.

She peeked up the hill, but the trees and vegetation were too thick to see if anyone stood on the ridge.

The ravine was deeper here than farther along. Getting out would be hard. She refused to cry.

She struggled to shrug out of her backpack, but a searing ache shot through her shoulder. It felt as if it had been ripped from its socket.

“Damn!” she shouted.

So dumb, Aiyana. Be quiet! What if he’s biding his time waiting for you to betray your position? She clamped down on the impulse to moan.

Squirming, sweating, swearing when it hurt, she managed to get the pack off her back and toss it aside so she could sit up. The minute she did, her ankle screamed bloody murder, and she flopped back down.

Pain, so sharp her eyes watered, shot up her leg.

She rose onto one elbow, gingerly, while her shoulder sent out a banshee wail of protest. She peered along the length of her body. No broken bones, but she’d hit the ground hard enough to jam her foot under and between two boulders. What were the chances? Close to nil, but somehow Aiyana had managed it.

Story of her life these days.

No. Don’t think that way.

“I’m not a victim,” she muttered, when what she really wanted was to shout to the world, to scream at the monster with no face who had chased her here, “Never again.”

I will never be a victim again.

But, of course, she didn’t scream. She might be defiant, but she wasn’t stupid.

A squirrel argued with her from a tree ten feet up the hill. Otherwise the woods were silent.

She lay on her back, panting.

Okay. Calm down, Aiyana. How bad is it? Take stock of your injuries.

Why did her chest hurt so much? She touched herself with her good hand.

Her camera had twisted around her neck in the fall and she’d landed directly on it, the lens jammed against her breast.

She took if off and studied it. Her body had sustained damage, but not the camera. She placed it on top of her knapsack.

Alone at the bottom of a mountain—okay, a very long hill—injured and stuck, she would have to pry herself loose and crawl back up. Tentatively, she sat up, but the motion torqued her leg and ankle awkwardly, increasing the pain by a quantum leap. She had to ignore the agony and get that foot unstuck. She had to do something. Dusk settled over the valley like a damp blanket. With it, a chill seeped into her bones. She wanted to be back up that hill and on her way home before darkness fell.

No, that wasn’t true. What she really wanted was to call the police to send someone here to get her unstuck and to arrest whoever was chasing her.

She reached for her phone, but her hand came up empty. What...? Where...? She distinctly remembered clutching it when she’d started her fall.

Her heart sank. She must have lost it on the way down. Somewhere between here and the top of the ridge lay her only lifeline to the outside world.

Panic clawed at her.

You can cope, Ai. You’ve learned powerful lessons. You will do whatever needs to be done to survive. You’re strong.

She would get herself out of here.

Fury wrapped around her like a shawl, powerful and dark, and she cursed the man who’d put her here. Rage gave her strength.

Reaching for the boulders trapping her foot, she pushed. She pulled. She prodded. They didn’t budge.

Refusing to be beaten, she snagged a heavy branch and pulled it to her, then nudged the end between the soil and one of the rocks. She leaned her weight onto it with her good arm, prying the rock, straining until sweat bloomed on her forehead.

“Nnnnggggg.” The boulder moved a fraction of an inch. Yes! Then the branch snapped.

“Nooooo!” She cursed long and creatively. The squirrel scolded.

“Be quiet,” she yelled, and threw the stump of the branch as far as she could. Angered beyond bearing, she cared less and less if that guy was still here. She needed this night settled, one way or another.

Up on the ridge, the sun cast its last remaining rays over the treetops, almost horizontal now. In the valley below, dusk roared in with a vengeance, changing the light from mauve to purple to black too quickly.

The damp mustiness of the woods around her was familiar in a threatening way. She’d been here before. Not in this ravine, but here in her fear-ravaged psyche.

Get a grip, Ai. This won’t kill you.

No, not in fact, but it felt like it would.

She picked up a clod of earth and threw it with all of her strength, choking on her frustration.

Retrieving a cotton handkerchief, she wiped her face. Sweat chilled her as the temperature dipped.

She called for help, screaming for all she was worth. She waited. Silence mocked her. Whoever had been chasing her was gone. She was alone.

“No panicking allowed, Aiyana. Take stock.”

The squirrel complained again and Aiyana shot back, “I’m not talking to you.”

She looked through her bag for every speck of extra clothing she had brought with her. She tried to get out of her jacket to put on her wool sweater, but her shoulder hurt too much.

She’d have to use her good arm to lay the sweater over herself and tuck it around her sides as best she could.

Done. Next she took stock of her provisions. One protein bar and half a bottle of water. She unwrapped the bar and bit off a small portion, chewing slowly, making it last. She ate only half of it and took only two sips of water.

She lay back down on the undergrowth, studiously ignoring whatever creepy-crawlies might be hidden under the redolent leaf mold. It smelled of death. Maybe by October all the insects had gone into hibernation, or whatever they did for the winter.

A nerd who loved science and all things natural, Aiyana’s stepmom, Emily, would know for sure, but she wasn’t here to advise Aiyana, or to help her.

She hoped Emily came soon, or her dad. They knew where she’d gone this afternoon. They would search for her when she didn’t return.

Her sister, Mika, would stay home with little Annie. At the thought of her daughter, every motherly instinct Aiyana possessed kicked in, glad that she hadn’t brought her with her today.

What if Aiyana died here tonight? What would happen to Annie?

Oh, cut the self-pity, Ai. You are not going to die. You are going to get out of this and go home to your daughter.

Slashing her arms across the ground, she gathered leaf mold against and around her until she was covered with it. Gross, maybe, but it provided warmth even as the ground beneath her chilled her back. As best she could with her good arm, she shoved her pack underneath her to lift her away from the damp earth. A lumpy bed, sure, but not as cold.

Darkness closed in around her. Creatures scurried. Her imagination bloomed and ran riot. The fear coursing through her veins was an old and too familiar enemy threatening to annihilate her common sense.

She wouldn’t die here. She would survive. Memories were funny things, though, with willpower of their own, crawling into her bones along with the cold.

She covered her face and breathed into her hands. She hummed a tuneless song. She counted backward from a hundred, by threes. Nothing helped. It was twelve years later, but the woods and the encroaching darkness brought back those desperate memories of her naive fifteen-year-old self.

They flooded her, barreling past every dam and barrier she erected.

“I don’t want to do this,” Aiyana said.

“Can’t you feel what you do to me, princess?” A part of Justin’s anatomy jutted hard against her thigh.

“Don’t call me princess.” Aiyana’s voice shook. “I don’t want you touching me there.”

“You said you wanted to be my girlfriend.”

“I do.”

“This is what dudes and girls do, Aiyana.”

“It’s too soon.” Cripes, this was only their first date and Justin hadn’t even taken her out for ice cream like he’d said he would. Instead, he’d brought her down here into the ravine.

Some small creature moved on the other side of the tarp behind her head. Aiyana shivered.

“Grow up.” Justin pulled his hand out of her pants with a hard flick, hurting her. She winced.

“I can’t believe how ungrateful you are.” He downed the rest of the beer. How many beers made a boy drunk? She didn’t know. She scrambled to put distance between them.

“I went to a lot of trouble to make this place for us.” Justin adjusted himself inside his pants. Justin’s place, his makeshift tent at the bottom of the ravine, didn’t feel safe, not to her, but more like a black hole in the dark woods.

“I want to go home.” Her fingers trembled when she pulled up her pant zipper, but shook too much to do up her button. She yanked her jacket down over it. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” she begged. “I don’t want people to think I’m easy.”

He thrust his fingers through his hair. Even mussed it looked good. What she could see of it. There was hardly any light left in the tent.

“Easy,” he scoffed. “That’s a laugh. Find your own damn way home.” With that, he bolted.

Aiyana sat stunned. How could Justin do this? He’d seemed so nice. He was the most popular boy in school, for Pete’s sake.

As though living a bad dream, she crawled out. The woods were dark and foreign. Hostile. Every rattling tree branch, every bush, was a monster coming to get her. Justin must have run up the hill because she couldn’t see or hear him. He’d left her alone in the ravine at nighttime. What kind of boy did that? Terrified, she ran up the hill.

When she was only halfway up, scrambling in the darkness toward the glimpses of street lamps flickering through the trees, the rain started. The bushes beside her rustled and she cried out, scrabbling to catch branches to help her up the steep incline.

Her feet slipped and slid in the muck.

Rain streamed down her face, ruining the makeup she’d applied so carefully to look good for Justin. At least the rain hid her tears.

She ran home, past their meeting place two houses down from hers. He’d refused to pick her up at her front door. Cripes, Aiyana, that should have been your first clue. You’ve been so dumb.

She rushed into the house, careful to close the door quietly, even though she ached to throw and break things.

She tiptoed along the hallway and into her room. Closing her bedroom door, she leaned against it and let her tears flow.

Justin hadn’t really wanted her. He’d just wanted an easy lay.

What made him think she would be? She didn’t go out with boys. She was quiet at school. Was it because of her heritage?

In her mirror, she saw the reflection of a fifteen-year-old girl with dark raccoon eyes due to her ruined mascara. She swiped it with tissues until it was all gone.

Her hair, usually midnight black and shiny, hung in wet strings. With the broad cheekbones she’d inherited from her dad, there was no mistaking her heritage.

Native American. Ute.

She hated her face and her name.

Would Justin have attacked her if her name had been Brittany? Or Madison? If she were white, would he have tried to make her drink beer and have sex?

She grasped the corners of the heavy blankets decorated with the symbols of her heritage and hauled them from her bed, wadding them into a ball and tossing them into the corner.

It took forever to get out of her wet clothes, to haul the clinging denim down her legs. She crammed them into her laundry basket. Dad would be mad that she hadn’t hung them to dry. So what? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

She curled into a ball on her plain white bedsheets and shivered.

She hadn’t thought about that incident in years, but here in the suffocating darkness, it came flooding back. She, and the whole town, had learned how truly indiscriminate Justin had been. He hadn’t tried to take advantage of Aiyana because of her heritage. He had targeted all kinds of girls at school, not just her.

They’d gotten their revenge, though.

Since then she had learned to handle and face down her fears, but here in the dark woods, reason and logic flew out the window. She had just fallen back into her nightmare full force.

She laughed without humor. Fallen. Literally. She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the chill creeping across the land.

Emily. Dad. Someone. Help.

Stop freaking out!

She fought her demons. She was no longer a helpless young teenager. She tried meditating, visualizing walking out of this cold, dark place, but her shivering deepened.

Find the beauty, Emily would say.

Now too dark to see, Aiyana could still hear. Ignoring the scurrying of a small creature on her right, she filtered the sounds until she found ones that soothed.

A breeze whispered through the trees above her, singing songs of longing. Nearby, a stream laughed sweetly, trickling over rocks. She closed her eyes and let the breeze and running water rock her into a gentle doze, but when she slept, she dreamed about things sneaking up on her, about hands pawing at her, about rocks burying her.

A great clap of thunder startled her awake. Darkness shrouded the land. Nothing stirred. How long had she slept? It felt like the middle of the night.

The heavens opened. It started to rain hard and fast.

* * *

PERSISTENT KNOCKING ROUSED Cody Jordan from a troubled sleep. He rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Home, but not home.

Where was he?

Oh, yeah. Back in Accord, in his childhood bedroom, not in his big house in LA. At thirty, he was back where he’d started. Talk about eating humble pie.

Thoughts of yesterday’s and last night’s marathon sixteen hours on the road from LA to Colorado—a brutal drive—swirled in. Loneliest drive of my life.

Mile after endless mile through the darkness had echoed the bankrupt emptiness of his life.

Someone pounded on the front door downstairs. Ah. That’s what had awakened him.

He reached for the jeans he’d dropped on the floor last night and hauled his sorry bag of bones out of bed. A full-body stretch worked out some of the kinks.

Swift footsteps alerted him to his parents rushing down the stairs.

He stumbled to his old desk, took a moment to touch the small blue urn and said a brief prayer. He turned away before he broke down.

In the bathroom he splashed cold water onto his face. Too bad he couldn’t wash away the past. Strong coffee and a hot shower might help.

Heading downstairs to find out what was going on, he noticed Mom and Dad were already at the door letting someone in.

Hearing him on the stairs behind them, they turned and glanced up.

“Cody!” his mom exclaimed, rushing to him with a rib-crushing hug. “You came home. I’m so glad.”

He suffered the hug stiffly. He no longer took affection. He no longer gave it.

His mom released him by increments. He disliked how her eyes probed, how she needed to see into his soul. No. That was open to no one but him. Even then, most days it was closed off. Better that way.

“When did you get in?” she asked, her expression sober and loving.

“About two this morning.” His tone forbade further questioning. Gently, he extracted himself from her hands on his arms and avoided her penetrating gaze. He knew what she saw when she studied him, a son too old and worn-out for his years.

“What’s up?” He directed the question to Salem Pearce, who stood in the foyer.

Salem lived in Accord. He and Dad were good friends. Dad had given Salem his first job as a teenager, probably thirty years ago.

Where was the time going? He glanced at his parents. Laura Cameron and Nick Jordan were institutions in the town of Accord, and well respected. Mom was in her early seventies. Had Dad turned seventy, too? Cody couldn’t remember.

He directed his attention to Salem and the open door. Outside, the rain he’d driven through last night had abated, but a gray curtain of cloud absorbed light. He glanced at the clock on the mantel in the living room. Six thirty and it still looked like nighttime.

“What are you doing out here this far from town at the crack of dawn?” Cody’s voice came out morning rough.

The frown and the anxiety on Salem’s face set Cody’s alarms into overdrive. Salem was normally as serene as an empty pond, but Cody knew still waters could roil beneath the surface with this guy. Once Salem got upset, it ran deep and strong, slow to heat up but even slower to cool down.

“It’s Aiyana.”

Salem’s eldest daughter. Cody hadn’t heard that name in a long time.

Images flashed of hair as dark as a raven’s wing and clear, tanned skin taut over high cheekbones. Even now, his fingers had an imprint of desire, an itchiness to run through hair that had hung straight and thick to her waist.

He had never acted on his desire. She’d been too young. But they had meant something to each other once upon a time. A lifetime ago.

“She’s missing,” Salem said.

Cody had been leaning against the newel post with his arms folded across his chest, flushes of memories warming his raw soul, but straightened away at Salem’s words, his hands falling to his sides.

“Missing?”

Don’t worry, he told himself to defuse his burgeoning fear, she’s no longer a vulnerable teenager. She’s a grown woman who can take care of herself. Yeah? Tell that to her dad who looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

“What do you mean, missing? Since when?”

Salem rubbed the back of his neck. “Since yesterday. She went hiking in Paintbrush State Park, but didn’t come home last night.”

Cody stilled. His first instinct, in the heat of panic, was to run out the door to find her. A cooler head had to prevail. They needed to organize and be smart.

Even so, a witchy dread whispered through him.

Cody’s mom directed them toward the kitchen. She turned on the coffeepot.

“Sit,” Cody’s dad ordered Salem.

“Thanks, Nick.” Salem fell into a chair he edged away from the kitchen table.

“You’ll have something warm before you go back out there,” Nick said. “I’m assuming you’ve already been.”

Salem’s limp hands hung between his spread knees. “Yeah. When she didn’t return last night we went to the park after dark.”

Laura turned on the pendant lamp hanging over the table, highlighting how haggard Salem looked. A handsome man with warm Native American skin, at the moment he looked like death warmed over.

Parched, Cody poured himself a glass of water straight from the tap and gulped it down. It tasted pure and clear.

In LA, he’d filtered his water twice, once from the faucet and again with a Brita. Here, even without filtering, the water tasted fine. Better than fine.

He’d missed the simple pleasure of purity, of clean air and uncomplicated food.

LA appealed to all kinds of people, but it had never been Cody’s kind of town. God knew he’d tried to like living there.

He drank another glass of water while ignoring his mother’s intent gaze. He sat down at the table, so damned relieved to have someone else’s problems to worry about.

The fact that Salem was so full of worry for his daughter’s safety that he’d forgotten about Cody’s recent tragedy and didn’t look at him as though he thought he might shatter was a relief.

“We found Aiyana’s car in the parking lot,” Salem’s dull voice intoned. “Park personnel wouldn’t let us mount a search in the dark.” He slammed his hand on the table. Spoons danced. “She’s been out there all night, but they were afraid one of us would get lost.”