stared at each other, the thousand unsaid words still hanging between them, a thousand accusations in Aaron Donovan’s still, gray eyes. It was Sabrina who turned away first, looking up to where wispy, almost-black clouds were rapidly rolling underneath the overcast sky, pushed along by a wind that was getting stronger by the minute.
“How long are you going to keep up the search?” he asked quietly.
The search had just started. It was an inappropriate question, and he knew it.
Don’t break down. Don’t cry. Don’t show that female weakness—you can’t afford it. Sabrina took a moment just to breathe, to get control of the swirl of emotions threatening to make her lose it completely. “As long as we can,” she finally replied, her eyes still turned up to the sky. She knew he wanted to hear the words “as long as it takes” come out of her mouth, but that was one promise she’d broken before. She’d never make it again, especially not to him. “But I need to tell you—” God, she didn’t want to tell him they’d lost another young girl. Not him. She didn’t think she could stand to see that blame in his eyes again.
I had no choice, you son of a bitch. Get out of my head.
“Your department took two hours to call us out here,” she snapped finally, looking him in the eye once more. “No one knows the parklands like we do. They should have called us in sooner.”
And that’s when he knew. He understood what she was about to tell him, and the knowledge drained the color from his face, his full, chiseled mouth growing even harder. One hand darted under his jacket, no doubt to find the gun tucked into a shoulder holster. But there was no one to threaten. No one to shoot. Tara had vanished, and so had the man who’d met her on the ridge, leaving a chilling story told in footprints behind them.
“Not again,” he finally managed, sounding as if he would choke on the words.
Without thinking, she reached for him, just to put a hand on his arm, to offer some comfort. With a barely audible hiss, he moved out of her reach, so her fingers only grazed his sleeve. And then they could only stare at each other.
Sabrina broke the silence when she couldn’t stand it anymore. “Cast this tire track. I think it’s important.” His face darkened for a moment, and then he gave her a curt nod, reaching for his own radio. It only took him a minute to mobilize the department crime scene techs, asking them to come out to the ridge with some dental stone as soon as possible. The drizzle wouldn’t harm the track for a while, but full-fledged rain would.
“Bree?” Behind her, she heard Alex crunching down on the gravel road.
“Wha—?” God, she hoped she’d been wrong about the car. She hoped they had discovered something she’d missed.
“You’ll want to see what we found,” Alex continued, addressing Aaron this time. “I can show you.”
Ah, so Alex was rescuing her from the big, bad detective. And heaven help her, she wanted to be rescued.
Stealing a glance at Aaron, who’d since gotten off his radio, she saw the corner of his hard mouth twitch upward, giving a slightly mocking edge to his expression. Guess he knew just how much she wanted to run away from him. But it was important that one of them take the police up to the clearing—it was a crime scene, after all, and she well knew that looking for miniscule evidence was hardly SAR’s area of expertise.
“No, Alex, it’s okay. I’ll take him up.” She immediately wanted to kick herself for the perverse stubbornness that made her refuse Alex’s tacit offer just because of a slight challenge in the cop’s eyes that she may or may not have imagined. Trudge up the mountain alone with Aaron Donovan? Now, that was going to be a real kick in the head. But it was too late for her to back down now, and they all knew it. “See what Jessie wants and then call in the team that was dispatched along these logging roads. If the trail does pick up again, we’ll need as many bodies as we can to help us find it.”
The tire tracks flashed once more in her mind. They weren’t going to find a thing.
As Alex started to turn away, she spoke again. “Alex, make sure you protect this tire print.”
Widening his eyes, Alex scrutinized the track, then looked at her questioningly.
“Until the crime scene people get here to cast it. It might be important.” With a nod, he moved toward Jessie, leaving Sabrina alone with Aaron.
She looked him straight in the eye, refusing to flinch even though it took all she had. “Come on.” With that, Sabrina took off, darting into the trees and moving swiftly and silently up the ridge. Now that she knew where the footprints lay, she had no trouble following them back up.
Given that her job entailed a lot of hiking, not to mention rock climbing and rappelling, Sabrina was in excellent shape, despite the fact that no amount of extra sit-ups would give her the six-pack abs Jessie and Alex had. So hiking up this rather benign part of the mountain without a trail wasn’t that much of a challenge, even though it would have had most people huffing and puffing. But damn if Aaron wasn’t keeping up. Actually, he wasn’t just keeping up, he was snapping at her heels like a pack of wild dogs, pushing her farther and faster.
In less than half an hour, they reached the spot where Sabrina had seen the last of Tara’s footprints, not a word having passed between them. Careful not to disturb the trail, she motioned to the detective to follow directly behind her, leading them both to where Tara’s trail first led away from the hot spring.
“Paula said she stayed behind soaking in the pool while Tara went out to make a call on her cell phone,” Sabrina explained, even though she knew Aaron had probably learned that bit of information two hours before she had. Not that she was bitter. “You can see the lug print of her hiking boots here.” She pointed to the trail, and Aaron nodded, scanning the ground. She walked him to the clearing where Jessie and Alex had first spotted the man’s trail intersecting with Tara’s.
“So, there’s the mystery trail, made by someone we believe was on the mountain at the same time as the girls,” she continued, gesturing to the line of crushed grass that still remained, although it had grown fainter as the grass healed itself and began to stand up again. “It looks like he met up with Tara.”
Okay, now his silence was really getting to her. She stopped walking and waited for him to respond, noticing that he was staring at the ground as if he could interpret the signs himself. But she knew that wasn’t the case.
“These tracks were made at the same time as Tara’s?” he asked. He wasn’t questioning her, just asking for an explanation. For which she should probably be grateful, given their past.
She took a couple of steps to where the ground erupted in a sudden confusion of broken weeds and plants and disturbed dirt in a language that was completely foreign to him, but plain as day to her. “Look over here.” She crouched down by the prints and moved her hand above the ground to show him what she was talking about. “She stopped to talk to him. You can tell by the number of prints overlapping and shuffling here. People don’t hold still when they talk to each other—they’re always moving, shifting their weight.”
“You know the prints are male by the size?” he asked quietly, choosing to tower above her rather than join her on the ground. The jerk.
“That, and the fact that they point outward—men tend to do that, while most women turn their toes slightly inward.” It was a delaying tactic, that explanation.
