Page 95 of Threat of Danger
Left or right?
She had no idea.
Jess ran right and hoped she hadn’t made a mistake.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE WOODS WEREgrowing dark as Derek ran through them, receiving regular updates on the radio from Zak. His bad leg was killing him. The change of weather got to him like nothing else. The warm spell the day before, followed by the cold snap today, had activated the demons of hell in his nerve endings.
“Thirty-nine of the hundred and six cameras have reported in,” Zak said. “No images that could be interpreted as either Kaylee, Jess, or the kidnapper. Over.”
“Thanks, Zak. Over.”
Derek was trying to follow a deer trail he’d picked up in the woods, not far from Chuck’s place. Confirming that he was on the right track hadn’t taken long, even if visibility was less than optimal. Jess had left marks at regular intervals. She must have pretended to trip to kick over rocks. Here and there she slipped, dislodging the small branches and half-composted leaves that covered the ground.
Her hints ended at an ATV trail used to gather maple sap. Here the tracking became more difficult. In the middle of maple season, the trails were heavily used. Some help from the squatch-cams would have been great.
The trails bisected each other, looped, moved in psychedelic squiggles. The one good thing about them was that they weren’t made for speed, but for convenience to the trees. So even on an ATV, the kidnapper couldn’t be too far. Running at a good clip, Derek thought he was probably keeping pace.
The radio crackled. “Fifty-one of one hundred and six cameras have reported in. No sign of them. Over.”
“Thanks, Zak. Over.”
Derek ran. He picked direction by instinct each time he turned down a new trail. The signs were there, even if not pronounced enough. His subconscious mind saw them and put them together—a broken branch here, a fresh indent in the frozen mud there. He let his instincts guide him.
He was almost off Taylor land by the time the radio crackled again.
“Ninety-seven cameras have reported.” Zak’s frustration came through in the tightness of his voice. “No sign of Kaylee or Jess. Over.”
Cold spread through Derek’s veins, despite the fact that he was sweating from his run. “Copy. Over.”
Derek reached another intersection of trails and stopped. He let his head drop back, stared up at the sky. Why hadn’t the cameras recorded their passage? Someone with a good eye could have picked up on a couple of the cameras and avoided them. Derek had seen a handful of them around during his walks. But no way in hell could anyone notice every single one, and avoid them all.
Unless...
Unless the kidnapper knew exactly where the cameras were because he was a Versquatcher.
He radioed Zak. “This is Derek. Did all the Versquatchers go to check their cameras? Over.”
“Almost. All but three. Marie is home with sick kids. Marjorie is visiting her mother out of state. Nobody could reach Principal Crane. But the rest of us are covering those cameras. Everybody has a camera buddy, for emergency situations. Over.”
Principal Crane.
Derek’s brain gave a loudping. “Thanks. Over.”
Derek walked around in a tight circle. What did he know about Principal Crane? He knew that before Crane became principal, he used to be a teacher. He taught math and history. What else?
There’d been an amateur archaeology club in Taylorville years ago. Principal Crane had been its president. They got permits from the state and went around digging for early-settlement artifacts. Nearly everything in Taylorville’s minuscule town museum came from the club. Derek had written an article about them during his high school journalist days.
The archaeology club disbanded when the Park Service had shut down Silver Cave. The club had done most of their digging in there. Derek had suspected at the time that they had secret hopes for finding the silver.
He broke into a run, calling Zak on the radio at the same time. “It’s Derek. Get your people out of the woods. When you reach cell phone coverage, tell the sheriff that Principal Crane kidnapped Kaylee and Jess, and he’s holding them in Silver Cave. Out.”
Silver Cave couldn’t be more than a mile from where he was. He ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg with every step.
He found the cave’s door chained and padlocked. He shot that sucker off without hesitation.
After that shot, stealth wasn’t an option, so he shouted right in. “Kaylee? Jess?”
