I needed more eyes on the woods. “Stef?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Do the helicopters see anything, anyone else around the horse? Anything at all close to our position?”
A pause while I presumed that she checked the screens and double-checked with the chopper pilots. “Nada. Just you, the horse, and the rest of your party behind you.”
“Looks like we’re clear,” I told the others.
Just then, one of the dog trainers called out, “Back here!”
Instead of the others riding up to join me, we turned our horses and retraced our steps about sixty feet. As I approached, I saw that the dogs had meandered off the trail, a short distance into the woods. Rodgers, the tracker, stared down at something hidden in the brush. I dismounted, as did the others. Conroy took the reins of all the horses and kept watch. Mullins and I walked in behind Max. My heart quickened when I realized that Rodgers stood over a dead body. I thought of the blood we’d seen a short distance down the trail. Was it Delilah?
Rodgers called out, “We’ve got a dead man.”
My mind grasped the most likely scenario. We had one man missing. “Is it Gerard?”
As I walked up, Max rolled the body over. We all stared at it, stunned and silent until Mullins wandered close enough to get a good look. “Who the hell shot Evan Barstow through the damn head?” he said.
Deep-red blood trailed down Evan’s broad forehead from a smoky black circle of ruptured muscle and tissue where the bullet had entered. His eyes open, he stared out unseeing into the darkness. I wished I could have asked him questions, wondered what he would have told me, but his voice was silenced, forever.
A minute earlier, I’d assumed the body would be Gerard’s. Now I had to rethink. What had I missed?
“I bet Gerard rescued the girls and he’s bringing them down the mountain,” Mullins speculated. “That would be just like the chief, to come up here on his own to rescue them. Let’s head back down, see if we can meet up with them.”
All three of the men looked at me expectantly. Meanwhile, the dogs milled around in the woods. I saw one dog amble up higher, as if still following a scent.
“No, I…” I paused, thinking it through. “Mullins, that can’t be right. If Gerard found them and had to shoot his brother to save them, he would have called for help. If he took the girls back down the mountain, it would have been on the path we took. We would have run into them on our way up.”
Mullins took off his bill cap with CRIME WATCH—ALBER PD on the crown and scratched his scalp through his thin, graying hair. “Well, I guess,” he said. “You’ve got a point there, Detective.”
“It’s Gerard we’re trailing,” Max blurted out. He appeared angry, perhaps with himself, when he added, “How could I have missed this? Why didn’t I ever consider that it could be Gerard who took the girls? Even when he went missing, I never thought… We’ve been chasing the wrong brother.”
Max had to be right. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said. “I never considered it either. He always seemed like—”
“The better Barstow brother,” Max said, finishing my thought.
“I don’t understand,” Conroy said. “The flashlight was at Evan’s house. He owns that ranch where the girls were kept. How does this make sense?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Gerard has to be involved. Either the two brothers did this together, had a spat and one shot the other. Or Gerard has had Delilah all along.”
“Look at that,” Mullins said, pointing at the bloodhounds pulling their trainers up the mountain.
“Looks like we might have been chasing the wrong suspect, but we’re on the right trail,” Max said.
“That’s all that’s important,” I said. “Somewhere up ahead, we may find the girls.”
“Detective Jefferies, should we leave anyone here to wait for the ME?” Mullins asked.
“No. We’re sticking together. Evan is long dead. No one can help him. And it’s too dangerous for the CSI folks and Doc Wiley to come up here until we’ve got Gerard.” I looked down at the body sprawled out below us, Evan’s hulk spread across the ground. “He’ll be here when we’re ready.”
“So…” Max started.
“We keep moving,” I said. “And we end this.”
Forty-Six
“We’ve arrived, girls,” Gerard Barstow said, relief in his gruff voice. “Time for you to see your new home.”
Hidden behind the trees, the vast cave’s opening yawned, a crude half-moon cut into the mountainside, black even against the dark night. Gerard dismounted from his dead brother’s stallion. “First things first,” he said. “Let’s get you two secured.”
The entrance looked scary, and Delilah didn’t want to go in. “I bet there are bats in there,” she whispered to Jayme. “Maybe rats. Could even be coyotes.”
Jayme had her arms up against her chest, bracing the one she’d hurt. “Maybe he’ll take the chains off.”
Delilah gave her the slightest of smiles, but she didn’t believe it. She felt the same dread as the evening he’d carried her through the cornfield, as much anxiety as waking up blindfolded and chained to the wall in the house.
The man walked over with the end of the chain in his hands. “Go inside.”
As frightened as she felt, Delilah didn’t argue. She led the way, Jayme behind her. Once inside, the man aimed his flashlight around the interior. As it flicked back and forth, Delilah glimpsed an old mattress flat on the ground, a pile of camping equipment, a stove, and three sleeping bags in rolls.
The flashlight landed on the gray rock wall above the mattress. The man stopped it there, lighting up something that glinted. Something metallic.
“Over there,” he ordered.
Delilah did as told. She marched twenty feet or so into the cave, her head crunched down to her shoulders, fearing an onslaught of bats. As she got closer, she realized the object in
