Page 16 of Good Girls Don't Cry

“Everyone will be relieved you called again.” Kane blew out a sigh. “Keep sending your coordinates. As soon as the cloud cover lifts, Carter will be up in the chopper. If we can’t rescue you in the chopper, we’ll drop down supplies. Do you need medical supplies as well?”

Balancing between two boulders, Raven shook his head. “Nope, we have them. We need food and maybe coffee? Bottled water. If we’re here for a time, Emily will need clothes and towels. Me too, really, but I can manage as long as she can put up with my stink.” He chuckled. “We found a small waterfall this morning and she took a cold shower and then realized we have nothing to dry on. She’s currently using paper towels.”

“Emily has never enjoyed camping.” Kane cleared his throat. “Don’t kill anything in front of her either, or she’ll go ballistic.”

Raven’s heart skipped a beat as rocks moved under his boots. “I gathered that. I could hunt. I’ve seen a few critters and I have all my camping gear in the truck. We’d be fine living off the land for a time if needs be, but she’d rather starve to death.” He rebalanced his weight. “I hear heavy machinery, but I can’t see what’s happening. Do you know if the road crews are anywhere close by? I could walk out, but it would take days to get to the highway from here. I’d likely make it alone but not with Emily and carrying supplies. I don’t know where the next water might be located.”

“The road crews have been working since daybreak, but the slide is extensive and unstable. Move down the mountain as far as you can.” In the background he could hear the team’s voices. “We’ll be leaving here soon. I’ll follow the road crew and see how much farther I can get toward you. I know a few old hikers’ trails and I might be able to fit the Beast through. If you only need to walk a mile or so around the slide to our position, leave your truck and hike to us. We’ll get the truck out later. You can always use Jenna’s cruiser until we do.”

Raven let out a sigh of relief. “That sounds like a plan. We’ll keep moving as long as I can fit the truck through the trees. At least no one is shooting at us right now. I’ll contact you again within the hour.”

“The tremors will make life difficult for a shooter. They’ll also be in danger of rockfalls. He’s likely gone.” Kane’s boots crunched through the pine needles covering the forest floor. “Try and keep moving. The cloud cover looks set in and we can’t get supplies to you just now. If it’s any incentive, we have coffee and fresh food from Aunt Betty’s Café.”

Chuckling, Raven shook his head. “We’re leaving now.”

Eighteen

The Mine

Shivering, Olivia pulled the dusty blanket around her as she sat on the stinking mattress and stared at the moss on the damp wall. Overnight, water had leaked through a small fissure high in the roof of the cave and trickled down, making large wet patches across one of the walls. The water spilled across the floor and vanished down a crack. She wished she could follow the water and escape. Two of her friends had vanished, and deep inside, she understood their fate. The weird man had murdered them. He had no conscience, no remorse, and seemed to find their predicament funny. She made up games to pass the time. In the dim light the moss resembled a map and she tried to fit countries to the shape of the green patches. She picked up a tiny speck of a leaf and allowed it to flow across the floor and vanish down the hole. Did it join an underground stream that rushed all the way to the river? Or did it keep on going down to fill a subterranean cave with stalagmites and stalactites?

No sounds came from other cells and yet Isabella and Chloe hadn’t been taken away. They’d all talked until they had nothing left to say. Depression set in and hopelessness was written all over their faces. They’d both given up fighting and had accepted that they’d be murdered. Olivia had tried to talk them around, giving them hope that they’d be rescued, but after seeing what had happened to Samantha, they’d shut down completely. Olivia pushed to her feet and went to the barred window in her door. She shook the door but it wouldn’t move. All that achieved was to make the spiders run around trying to get away. “Hey, you two. Why are you so quiet? Maybe we should sing or something. If anyone was searching for us, they might hear us.”

“You’ve finally lost your mind.” Chloe’s pale face appeared at the window, and her eyes looked too big for her face. I’m trying to prepare myself for when that animal drags me out of here and rapes me before whatever end he has planned for me.”

Olivia shook her head. “We don’t know he killed our friends. He keeps his face covered and wears gloves. He doesn’t want us to recognize him. He might have let them go.”

“Pigs might fly.” Isabella barked a cynical laugh. “You’re the smart one. You must know he’s killed them. He has an agenda like he’s proving a point or something. He only wants females to humiliate, doesn’t he? That’s why he murdered the guys. Somewhere in his twisted mind he’s living out a fantasy. I’ve watched shows about serial killers and they all have some kind of story to validate killing people. The dog barking made me do it. Every time I hear the name Jill, I want to murder someone, things like that. He’s no different. I bet we’re a few in a long line of girls he’s murdered. It’s just a game to him.”

“See, we’re never getting out of here alive.” Chloe blew out a sigh and pushed her matted dark hair behind her ears. “None of us are strong enough to fight him. He’s huge. If we could get out of here, it might be different. Three of us could run at him in the hope that one escapes but he’s never going to risk it.”

Olivia pursed her lips, thinking. “Maybe we can ask him if we can have a shower. He’ll complain about the hot water and we can say we’ll all shower together. He’s a pervert. He’ll likely find that interesting.” She looked from one to the other. “We’d need to select our clothes beforehand so we can grab them and run. We wouldn’t survive outside naked.”

“You wouldn’t survive outside without water either.” Isabella sighed. “I’m in if you can convince him. If it doesn’t work, at least we’ll be clean.”

A short time later, footsteps echoed through the mineshaft and the beam of a flashlight bobbed in the distance. The metal gate squeaked and the man walked in, leaving the gate open. He carried supplies and dumped them on the desk before moving his gaze across the cell doors. Heart pounding, Olivia pressed her face against the bars. He didn’t like it if they spoke, so she waited. He’d usually ask them questions.

“Look at me.” The man stood in the center of the cave and swiveled his head to look from one to the other. “This time you choose. I want a very cooperative girl to come with me. You must be nice to me. If you do exactly what I say, I’ll leave you on the bench outside the old library.” He moved his black gaze from one girl to the next and back again slowly.

Nobody said a word.

“We’ll be real good if we can have a shower. We know the hot water is precious so we’ll shower all together. You can choose then which one of us to take to the library.” Chloe blinked at him, her eyes like an owl’s.

“Ah, no.” He shook his head. “That just ain’t gonna happen. The one I take will have a shower after she shows me just how obedient she can be.”

A shiver of mind-numbing dread slid down Olivia’s spine. She cringed away as he came closer. It was plain to see, he only had one thing on his mind.

Nineteen

Glacial Heights

Over the time Emily had lived in Montana, she’d never experienced the humidity of being in the mountains under heavy cloud cover. She pulled her shirt away from her sticky flesh and inhaled air thick with the scent of pine resin and wildflowers. Her stomach rumbled with hunger and she stared through the dense forest searching for an opening wide enough to get the truck through. Raven had gone ahead along a narrow animal trail. Although they had found themselves in a life-threatening situation, this part of the forest was particularly beautiful. Above her, the forest canopy created a patchwork of dappled sunlight and cast intricate patterns across the forest floor. She stared in the direction that Raven had taken, hoping to hear his footsteps returning, but all she could hear was the occasional call of a distant bird.

She returned to the truck and dragged out their backpacks. She’d listened with interest when Raven had passed on Kane’s instructions to dump the truck and walk rather than starve to death in the forest. The survival packs that her father had insisted on adding when she left for the crime scene still sat untouched in the back of the truck. She opened one and glanced through the supplies. There should be enough to last them a couple of days if they were careful, but water would be a problem. This must be the reason that Raven had stuck to the rock face. The chances of finding a small stream running down the side of the mountain increased tenfold. They had containers to collect the water and pills to make it safe to drink. Although, heading into the forest, without a known water supply could be a problem.

She added water bottles to their personal backpacks and any food she could find. Like Kane, Raven consumed many energy bars during the day and she found a box of them wrapped in plastic behind his seat. She pushed them into his backpack and then stowed both packets in the seat well and the survival packs between the front seats. They would be ready to grab in an emergency. A dog barked, and she looked up to see Ben bounding out of the forest with Raven not far behind. She slid out of the truck and went to meet him. “Please tell me you found a way out of here?”

“I’ve found a trail to another part of the forest, but it’s uncertain if it’s going to do us any good. I can’t see where it goes from this end. It would have been a waste of time and energy walking the mile or so to find out. I figure we should risk it. Once we move away from the signal interference from the mountain, we’ll be able to use the GPS to find a way out of here.”

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