Page 27 of No Hope of Rescue

“That’ll have more gas than yours,” he says. He’s right. I spent hours on mine, zigzagging all over the mountaintop. He and Codie knew just where they were going. A smaller, lighter machine with a near full tank means a cleaner escape.

Digging out takes another minute, and then I position the vehicle toward the trail.

Holding his breath, he manages to swing a leg over, and I climb in front.

“What about Savi?” I start to ask, but he’s already signaled her, and she’s jumping up to sit between us.

Terrified she’s going to slip if I hit something or fall off on some curve, I ask the wrong thing. “You sure?”

“Just go,” he says with such finality in his voice that there’s no room for argument. He’s right. We can’t leave her. Chances are, she wouldn’t find her way back. The snow is still falling fast, coating everything, including evidence of our exit. Once his arm slides around my waist, I hit the kill switch, turn the key, and pull the choke out an inch. I grab the pull cord, give it a quick sharp yank, and the motor miraculously engages.

I pull out, trying not to make too much noise. We move slowly, determined, up the slight incline toward the crest.

΅

Though Brock’s arm slips twice, and I’m sure I’m going to lose him, I try to listen to the only two words he says to me over and over: “Keep going.”

Once, we fly right over a log, and the impact nearly wrests the handlebars from my grip, but we land safely and “keep going.” Suddenly, the radio comes to life: red light blinking through the neoprene case. I can’t grab it and steer at the same time, so all I do is hit the beacon with the heel of my hand so whoever’s listening knows we’re coming in.

In forty minutes, woodsmoke wafts, and the trail is recognizable even under two feet of snow. We’re closing in on the cabin. When we round the corner and I see it below, it’s lit like a torch in the flurry of snow. In the dark of a stormy morning, three figures are in the side yard, waving us in.

Savi jumps to the ground as soon as I kill the engine.

“You scared the shit out of us,” Carter says, coming up grinning. Then he sees his brother, and his eyes drop to the bloodstains on the jacket.

“What happened?” Jace and Ryan help Brock off the snowmobile. He stands for a moment, and then Jace slips an arm under him as Ryan gives me a hand. My muscles are suddenly like jelly. The cortisol, adrenaline, finding him, not finding Codie—all of it’s too much.

But I suck it up. I’m making it to the cabin under my own steam. Savi bounces around, sniffs Jace’s leg, and then bolts for the sliding glass doors.

She smells food.

Kelly stands in the doorway, her face a mixture of relief and fear, each one in equal measure for Brock and Codie.

One is here, the other isn’t.

Savi wriggles between Kelly and the door and disappears inside.

It takes fifteen minutes for Brock to recount a quick version of his story, all the while never looking at his mother. He doesn’t mention getting shot, so I take his lead and say nothing. Still in his clothes, he sits on one of the large leather chairs Jace pulled right up next to the woodstove. Savi curls up in the front, licking her paws. She’s lucky she didn’t get frostbite.

There’s so much chaos—Carter griping with me about leaving and Ryan pacing about Codie, picking up the phone and threatening to call the police.

“We can’t. They’ll use her like a hostage,” Brock says.

“She already is.”

Brock closes his eyes. “They’ll use her to leverage their own freedom, and she could get killed. Especially if they find out I’m alive.”

Kelly rises from her chair and paces along opposite tracks as her youngest son.

“You said they’re smugglers, right?” Jace asks. “What the hell are they smuggling?”

I slowly pull the figurine from my pocket.

Kelly stops for a moment and takes a hard look. She doesn’t want to touch it, so I set in on the hearth. “Not my specialty,” she says softly. “But that looks Olmec.”

“They left people for dead and kidnapped a girl for clay heads?” Jace seems bewildered.

Brock swallows. “There were other crates too. Masks, maybe. Bowls. And there were definitely fossils.”