Page 11 of Shadow of Death
Carey leaned back and Amy told her, “Please. Try to rest. I know it won’t be easy. Please believe me. I’m going back out there and we’ll find Don.” She wasn’t going to tell Carey they would find Don—they’d hunt until they found him—dead or alive. “I’m going to call my partner who excels at cases like this, and we’ll have every law enforcement agency in the country looking for him.”
Carey looked at her and nodded. She finally seemed to have calmed down.
“You will let me know...right away if you find him? No matter how you find him.”
“I promise,” Amy told her. “For your part, please, do everything the doctors tell you. The best you can do for us—and for Don—is get well and strong as quickly as possible. I will check back in with you tomorrow morning, I promise, and every morning until we find him.”
“You can do that?” Carey asked hopefully.
“I can and I will,” Amy said. “And if you think of anyone else who might help me—”
“Mr. Barrington. He will know if Don was supposed to be somewhere, if he... Oh! Do you think Don would have thought I would have just left him there in the caves? No, he’d never think that, right? But...”
Her voice trailed. She was beginning to sound distressed again.
“No. No. He would’ve called me—he would’ve worried when I didn’t answer. If he was okay, he would never have just left me! Unless he thought I left him. Or...”
“Carey, get strong. I’m going to start finding out about Don right now, I promise,” Amy assured her. “I’ll do this—and you be strong. For me, okay?”
Carey nodded again. “I’m going to try. I swear.”
“Good. I will get back with you, but I’m going to work on this,” Amy told her.
She walked out of the hospital room. The young nurse was waiting just outside.
“Thank you!” she told Carey.
“What happened to her, I have a bad time imagining. It’s so horrible,” Amy said. “But hopefully, she’ll be calmer for you now.”
“She’s hysterical about that young man. And it doesn’t sound as if it’s going to come out okay for him.”
“Hard to say. We’re going to start looking.”
“In the dark?” the nurse asked.
Amy made a face. “There’s going to be a lot of necessary research that can be done in the dark, no problem.”
“I guess you don’t work nine to five,” the young woman said. “And, of course, neither do we! Shifts.”
“Right. And nine to five? Not often, anyway,” Amy said. “Thank you. Take good care of our girl.”
“I will.”
Amy waved to her, walked down the hall, and pulled her phone out to call Hunter. She frowned when he didn’t answer. Hunter was excellent about answering the phone.
But he didn’t answer when she dialed again.
She then tried calling Andy Mason.
“Hey, kid, where are you? How is Carey Allen doing?”
“She’s given us something to work on. She didn’t go to the caves alone. She went with a man she had a huge crush on—one she never saw or heard from after she fell into the pit. She’s terrified he may be dead somewhere, and it’s all her fault,” Amy explained. “Andy, I’ve got another missing person at the moment. Hunter isn’t answering his phone. Is he by any chance with you?”
“I’m at my office. I left Hunter at the caves. He was still watching what was going on. I got the feeling he felt we’d missed something, and he didn’t know what it was himself. You could go on out there. It will be dark soon, but I know the forensic teams are still at it, and they have some lights rigged.”
“All right. I’ll get on finding Hunter. In the meantime, can you look for a man named Donald Blake who works for Barrington Advertising? As I said, he was with Carey at the caves. She’s afraid he’s dead in there somewhere, or hurt, or... Anyway, we need to find him.”
“Will do. I’m on it,” Andy promised. “Let me know as soon as you’re with Hunter.”
