The Thunder Keeper(63)

Another truck passed, and the Toyota started to hydroplane, flying through the rain. He let up on the gas pedal until the tires gripped the pavement again.

He realized the turnoff to Bear Lake had flashed outside his window, but he was already past. He hit the brakes. The Toyota skidded sideways before stopping broadside across the pavement. He pulled the steering wheel left and drove back, peering past the wipers for the dirt road into the mountains.

It rose into the headlights. He slowed for the turn and started winding up a narrow, muddy path. The rear wheels spun sideways, then found a purchase that sent the Toyota plunging ahead, pine branches raking the sides. There were fresh tracks—deep impressions filled with water. Wentworth’s SUV, he thought.

The road curved through a half circle and emerged into the mountain valley, with scrub brush and willows bent under the rain. The lake had to be close. He slowed down to get his bearings. After a moment he saw the gray surface of the lake rising to meet the rain.

He followed the road around the shoreline and stopped near the clump of willows where he’d parked a few days ago. There was no sign of the SUV. He hesitated. He could be wrong. Wentworth and Delaney could have taken their captives somewhere else; there were hundreds of miles of open spaces around. They could be anywhere.

He didn’t think so. They were here. It was the logical place.

The moment he turned off the headlights, he was enveloped in the gray haze. He found a flashlight under the seat. Dead. He knocked it against the palm of his hand until it sprang to life and sent a thin thread of light flickering over the windshield and dashboard. Then he got out, pulled his cowboy hat forward, and started through the willows, flashing the light about, searching for the footpath to the cliffs lost in the clouds above.

The light shone over something white in the branches. He pulled them aside. Tire tracks through the sodden underbrush led to the white SUV. A few feet ahead was the opening in the brush where the path started.

Rain beat against his jacket and ran off the brim of his hat as he started up the path. The flashlight cast a thin column of light ahead. He followed the footprints in the mud—different-sized prints overlapping one another. Ahead, the smaller prints slid into a flattened area near the trees. Ali must have fallen. Fallen and been dragged back to her feet. The small prints loped from side to side, as if the girl had been stumbling.

Let me get there in time, he prayed. He was half jogging now, pounding his boots hard into the slippery mud. He would have a chance with Delaney, he tried to convince himself. The man retained a semblance of morality, a sense of right and wrong that had driven him to the confessional. He did not want to kill again. But the boss—Wentworth—was a cold-blooded killer. It was Delaney he would have to appeal to. And Delaney was logical.

The thunder sounded like tanks rumbling through the sky. Lightning turned the air white and sent a charge through the earth that he could feel reverberating inside him. He was in an opening, with the trees falling away, when the lightning flashed again. For the briefest moment he saw the petroglyph shining on the cliff above—human looking, eyes all-seeing, hands raised in benediction. He was not alone. The spirits were here, the messengers of the Creator.

He climbed faster, light from the flashlight bouncing ahead. With every flash of lightning, he searched the cliffs above for the ledge, for some movement, some sign of the two men and their captives. There was nothing, only the petroglyph urging him onward.

He started up the boulder field, the climb steeper now, hand over hand. He jammed the flashlight into his jacket pocket and grabbed blindly at the rain-slicked boulders, depending on the lightning to see. His boots slipped backward, and a large rock came loose under his hand. For a moment he thought the boulder field would start rolling downhill, carrying him along.

Suddenly he saw a light in the rain above. He kept climbing, moving slowly now, feeling the way, trying to catch his breath as he pushed on. His chest felt tight, his throat constricted. The ledge was a few feet above. He pulled himself up onto a narrow path, keeping one hand on the flat face of the cliff for balance. Below, the mountainside dropped into the darkness.

The thunder came again, like a blast of dynamite that made the cliff tremble beneath his hand. In the lightning that followed, he made out three figures on the ledge. The petroglyph above was chalk white.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the shadow lunging at him. Instinctively he backed into the cliff. The sharp edges of rock stabbed through his jacket and into his skin. When the blow came, it was like an explosion inside his head.

There was an instant, no more, when his whole consciousness collapsed into pain that ran like a river down his spine. He felt his legs dissolving beneath him, and he clawed at the face of the cliff to stay upright in the darkness closing around.