Page 86 of Tracked
Lara
My eyelids felt like they’d been stitched together when I went to open them. All of me, really, was stuck, like I’d been stitched straight onto the mattress as I slept ...at the Stone house.
That was enough to pop my eyes open and free my heavy limbs. I sat up, maybe a little too quickly, as the final sequence of events of last night toppled through my mind like a series of dominos, one falling over into the next.
We’d made it back to the retreat’s parking lot. Back to Calder’s truck. I hadn’t any energy left for the surprise when he dug his keys out from the dirt by the front wheel; he hadn’t gone back to check that the doors were locked, but to hide his keys outside like he’d known we’d need them. Then driving back to Stonewall Ranch, Sarah trembling next to me—exhausted, drugged, and crying through currents of grief.
Sarah.I turned, my hand landing on the empty space in the bed beside me.
We’d shared Colby’s room last night. Calder’s sister had offered it up as soon as we walked through the front door, saying she would stay in Colton’s room, the somewhere-in-the-middle brother who wasn’t home.
I also had no energy to stymie the surge of disappointment when Calder didn’t mention the Airstream. Not that I would’ve spent the night there with him; I needed to stay with Sarah. To make sure she was okay overnight and that she had a friendly face beside her when she woke up—clearly, something she’d already done, waking and leaving without my notice.
Had she talked to Calder already? Did she remember anything else from last night now that the drugs in her system were metabolized? Anything that could give us an idea where to find Rachel?
Pummeled with a dozen questions, I rose and heard the bed crinkle with the movement.
Dr. Julia’s notes.
I lifted the mattress to see the papers from my sister’s file folded underneath. My throat constricted as I recalled more from last night: the growing strains of the argument in the woods, hearing Sarah’s scream through the trees. I had no idea what had prompted me to take the papers with me—what had prompted me to know we wouldn’t be coming back. But I’d tucked them into my waistband before going in search of Calder and then stashed them here last night, under the mattress, when I’d stripped out of my soaked clothes.
I didn’t have time to look at them now. I needed to find Sarah. And Calder.
While leaving Rachel’s file under the mattress like a wound I couldn’t heal, a different memory struck me: the blood on Calder’s shirt, on his side. He was injured, and I ... in the tumult of our escape, I’d completely forgotten because he hadn’t acted hurt.
He’d said the injury was minor, but he wasn’t the doctor. I was.
Next to the door sat the bag of clothes I’d packed for the retreat. Calder must’ve brought it in from his truck at some point last night. After quickly changing out of the dry sweats Colby had loaned me last night and into jeans and a tee, I headed for the door.
The first voice I heard was Sarah’s unsteady one coming from the kitchen, and I assumed she was talking to Calder.
“Thank you so much—”
“No need to thank me,” a weathered, deep voice responded.
Compared to the short greeting I’d received from the indomitable Cassius Stone, it was almost hard to believe the softer words I now heard in his worn tone were coming from the Stone patriarch himself.
Not that he wouldn’t help someone. Cassius’s family—and the work they did—was a testament to the charitable values he possessed, but he still didn’t like outsiders. However, maybe Cassius saw in Sarah the face of another woman he hadn’t been able to save—just like in her, I saw my sister.
“Good morning, Sarah. Mr. Stone,” I said, entering the room and going to her side.
Cassius didn’t return my greeting with anything more than a nod, but Sarah brightened when she saw me.
“Lara.”
“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked, but I was already taking my own appraisal.
Sarah’s color had returned. Her pupils were no longer blown out. The red welt Trent left on her cheek had faded slightly.
“I’m ... okay.” She tested the words.
The psychological and emotional damage, on the other hand, wouldn’t dissipate as easily.
“Did you—oh,” I stopped, noticing the empty plate bearing food crumbs and a trail of maple syrup.
“I made breakfast,” Cassius said then, setting a plate on the island and sliding it in my direction. It was packed with eggs and bacon and pancakes, and my stomach growled.Wow, that looked good.
“Thank you.” I swallowed and took a seat on the stool next to Sarah’s, feeling like I’d been hit by a runaway train of hunger; it was crazy what stress and adrenaline could make you forget.
