Page 57 of Rescuer
She reached out and grabbed his hand. He halted and half pivoted to face her. She released his hand and patted the gun nestled against her side. “We’re going back.”
Because there was no way she’d be left alone out here.
Twelve
Fueled by the thought that it might be Dylan lying bleeding on the ground, Jackson took off, running like he was on a mission, fighting through his own pain to get to whoever had been shot.
Mia ran at his side. Fleetingly, he noted she hadn’t argued, asked questions, or complained, but instead had accepted the change of plans and joined him.
Jackson stopped briefly, holding his hand up. Mia stumbled and halted beside him. She bent, hands on her knees, and breathed in deep.
He listened for a cry. A moan. Sounds of movement. Anything that would lead them to the person. Nothing.
“We should split up,” Mia whispered. “Not too much. Near enough that we can call out to each other but do a search pattern.”
It made sense. They separated and moved in a straight pattern. It would have helped if they had more than some vague noises to go on. Or if they had more people to widen the search. As it was, they were pretty blind.
Jackson’s gaze swept the ground and the surrounding foliage, searching for clues. This pattern repeated multiple times before he finally caught a glimpse of something. “Hey! Footprints. They look fresh.”
Mia returned to his side and examined them. “They do. The ground is still damp from the storm. Any footprints from before the storm would probably be washed away.”
“We should follow back to their origin, and not where they’re leading.”
She nodded. Together, they followed the path. Jackson’s heart dropped when he saw a pair of feet sticking out from behind a tree. Mia gasped. They approached the body, tension simmering in the air. When they finally had a view of the individual, lying on his side, facing the other direction, Jackson sighed, the tension leaking out of him like air from a balloon.
He hated that anyone had been murdered, but from the height and bulk of the man, it definitely wasn’t one of the boys. In fact, he rather suspected it was the man who’d been shooting at them the night before.
They walked around to the front of the body. Jackson noted the bullet hole in the center of the forehead and the wide staring eyes. “He’s definitely dead. And look at the tear in his hoodie, near his shoulder? I see a bandage under it. I’ll bet that’s where you shot him. They must have been into something really bad if he didn’t go to the hospital for that.” Plus, he knew the man was willing to kill. “Let’s not touch anything. This is a crime scene.”
Mia hissed. “I know him.”
Jackson’s head whipped around. He stared at her. “What?”
She looked a little dazed. “He was at the camp this summer. The one that I worked at.”
“The one that didn’t pay you?”
She blinked. “They finally did the other day. But I still haven’t heard back from them. When we get back to civilization, I’ll look up the website again. Maybe whatever was wrong with it has been fixed.”
Questions began popping up in his mind.
“Let’s take pictures of the body and the scene.” He pulled out his phone. “If his buddy comes back for him or tries to clean up, or if an animal comes through, we want the police to have a clear view of what it looked like.”
She firmed her mouth, her complexion greenish, but held it together. Again, she was proving she had more to her than he’d ever thought.
It took them another ten minutes to get enough pictures to satisfy him. He didn’t want to miss a thing. They even got the footprints leading to the scene.
“We can go now.” Jackson slipped his phone back into his side pocket. “I want to get to our vehicles. We’ll have better service there. I need to call this in and get someone to help search for my brother and Reggie.”
A thick silence fell as they trekked back to her car and his truck. Jackson’s thoughts stayed locked on Dylan. The violence they had witnessed in the past day convinced him that Dylan was in serious trouble. He’d never believed his brother had run away, and now he was one hundred percent certain of it.
What had Dylan gotten himself into?
Desperate to find his brother, Jackson kept a punishing pace. Mia didn’t complain; she kept up with him. When he finally noticed her long legs were moving almost at a run, he slowed.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to make you run all that way.”
She shrugged. “I’m okay. I know this is important, so I’m not about to slow you down. We have to find Dylan, right?”
