Page 36 of Manhunt in the Narrows
Strength drained from Elias’s attempts to get free. The weak beam coming off his discarded flashlight revealed he’d lost enough consciousness his eyes had fallen closed. She was already moving. Jumping. She secured her arms around the killer’s neck and pulled as hard as she could to break his grip on Elias. They fell as one. Then came the pain. Her head snapped back against the unforgiving cave floor. Another round of bright lights exploded behind her eyes. Weight vanished from her front.
“You just don’t know when to give up, do you, Ranger Green?” The Hitchhiker Killer stood above her. How he’d moved so quickly when she was still reeling from the impact, she had no idea. “I guess now is as good a time as any to punish you for coming between me and my wife.”
Coughing punctured through the high-pitched ringing in her ears. Elias. Was he hurt? She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the man in front of her.
“That’s one decision I will never regret.” Sayles scrambled to her feet, unsteady but determined to buy Mae as much time as possible. She was out of her depth, facing off with a man who’d killed multiple people, some full-grown men, but she wouldn’t budge. Not because of him. “And she’s not your wife. Men like you believe you’re owed everything you set your sights on. I’m proof that we’re strong enough to fight back.”
She didn’t give him the chance to respond, throwing her fist directly at his face.
He stepped out of her path, and her momentum carried her forward. Too far. Too close. Sayles braced for the attack, but it never came. Adjusting to put him front and center and block his path to the cave’s entrance, she swung again. And missed. That crazed smile that didn’t quite show his teeth and deepened the cracks around his eyes triggered a chill in her bones. He was toying with her. Making her believe she had a chance only to pull the rug out from underneath her when he got too impatient. A mouse trapped beneath a cat’s paw.
“I must say, Ranger Green, I’m quite disappointed. Surely, NPS trained you better than to provoke a predator.” The Hitchhiker Killer hauled his foot into her chest.
She was flying, her legs swinging out from under her. Slamming into the cold floor. Sayles rolled onto her side. Pain radiated from her shoulder to her hip and across her torso as she sucked in a shallow breath. It was all she could manage.
The second kick emptied her lungs and cracked something vital.
Her scream drilled through her head. The barest hint of moonlight filtered through the darkness ahead. The entrance. Escape. To lead the killer away from Elias. To put herselfbetween him and Mae. She owed it to them both. Every cell in her body screamed for her to move, but all she could do was push off with her toes. Gaining nothing but a few inches of distance at a time. She felt more than saw the killer’s presence at her back. Watching her suffer, enjoying the power it gave him.
“You can’t protect her. No matter where she runs, I’ll find her. I wasn’t lying about the tracker in her mouth. Though now I suppose she’ll try to have it removed.” Weight stacked on top of her calf, halting her in place. “In the end, she’ll still belong to me, and I will kill any man who dares put his hands on what’s mine before I take it out on her.”
Sayles had heard it all before—lived it. He wasn’t anything special, but someone somewhere had taught him he didn’t have to work for the things he wanted. Taught him he was owed. “Are you finished with your villain speech? I was promised turkey when this case was over, and I’ve got to tell you, I’m starving.”
The third kick hiked her off the floor and upturned her entire world. Gravity shifted from the center of her body to the edges as the ground ripped out from underneath her. Needles of pain clawed across the exposed skin of her face and arms. She was in free fall, out of control and moving too fast to stop down the mountain face. Three times. Four. Her spine curved around a boulder, a cry spilling into the night.
The killer’s outline crossed the path of moonlight staring down on her. This park had saved her life. She should’ve known it would require something in return. Sayles struggled to breathe around the jagged pain in her rib cage. “It’s over, Ranger Green. Look at you. You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself.”
But she had. With Elias’s help.
A second outline cleared through the shimmer of disorientation. Or was she seeing double? Movement slashed over the Hitchhiker Killer’s shoulder. He jerked in place. Thendropped to his knees and onto his face. Elias tossed a rock at his feet, kneeling beside her to scoop her against his chest. “That guy talks too much.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Ow.” The park medic prodded at the contusion bubbling from Elias’s forehead with a little too much force. He tried to jerk back but didn’t get far. The back of his head hit the ambulance door and triggered a whole new headache.
“Hold still or I’ll sedate you, Agent Broyles.” Okay. There was a witch underneath the expertly done makeup, platinum-blond hair and gum snapping. Ranger Barbie was actually a sadist. His investigative skills had failed him.
The first morning rays of a new day made him sick to his stomach. Then again, that could be the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything substantial in three days, fought a killer determined to gut him and fallen from 1,000 feet off the side of a cliff. But what did he know? He narrowed his gaze on the ranger setting a butterfly bandage across his forehead. Honestly, he hadn’t even known he’d hit his head while fighting the Hitchhiker Killer. At least, not until Sayles had winced looking at his face. “You’re not as nice as you look.”
“I get that a lot.” Another snap of her gum. She set piercing blue eyes made for magazine covers on him with a slow spread of her lips. Demonic. That was the word that came to mind. “Comes in handy for one-night stands. They can’t leave fast enough.”
Shock caught in his throat. Elias had to swallow to keep himself from spitting all over her pressed uniform with laughter. “I’ll warn whoever I can.” At the moment, that included Grant,who’d interrupted Elias’s physical exam twice now to ask Ranger Barbie about a mole on his back. Then his front.
Elias closed his eyes and set his head back against the ambulance bay door. He and Sayles had somehow dragged themselves back to Mae and Javier’s tent after their face-off with the killer. The radio hidden inside had given them direct contact with Risner and search-and-rescue. Since the helicopter couldn’t retrieve them at night, they’d had to settle in beside a dead man and wait until the sun crested the horizon in the east. Another team had been sent up the Narrows to retrieve Mae, who was currently wrapped in a solar blanket on one of the park benches with an oxygen mask strapped over her face. Alive. Traumatized, but alive. She and Javier had been on their honeymoon. Married just two months ago, they’d chosen to take a road trip across the country to start their new life off with adventure. Right around the time bodies had started turning up on the interstate.
The Hitchhiker Killer, identified as Patrick Corrl—yes, he’d actually given Sayles his real name—had been airlifted in a basket. And right into a body bag. Now that the case was concluded, each of the victims would be returned to their families for burial or cremation, including Javier and the hiker murdered at the base of the Narrows.
“You’re good to go. Keep it clean and dry, and there will be minimal scarring.” Ranger Barbie shucked the bright pink latex gloves she’d donned to examine and treat his injuries and tossed them into the biohazardous waste bin in the rig. “You know, I think my mom said the same thing about the first time I had sex. She wasn’t wrong.”
“Thank you for that visual, Ranger Jordan.” Elias shoved to stand. Mistake. He’d made a mistake. His bones hurt. Was that possible? Hell, how they’d managed to escape with nothing more than a few bruises and cuts—well, apart from his broken noseand Sayles’s cracked ribs—he didn’t know. Some X-rays were in order.
“I can go all night.” Was every word out of Ranger Barbie’s mouth meant to be sexual?
Elias wasn’t interested in finding out and left her to pack her supplies. There was only one woman on his mind. Searching the parking lot, he headed for the visitors’ center. Away from the chaos of Risner giving the media snippets of the harrowing assignment his department had taken on, Grant’s incessant attempt to get Ranger Barbie’s attention and law enforcement rangers begging to confirm his statement for the fourth time. The tug he’d experienced while racing to find Sayles led him through the visitors’ center’s tinted glass doors and toward the theater seating set up for hikers heading out of the trails.
The exact location he’d first set eyes on her.
That intense green gaze snapped to him as he approached. He couldn’t shut down the flinch as he took in the bruising across her face and a matching butterfly bandage on her chin. Taking a seat next to her on the bench, Elias fought against the pain in his torso. New dressings pulled at the skin across his side and along his inner thigh, but he’d yet to change into a fresh set of clothes. “To think just a few days ago you were trying to get out of this assignment. Look how far we’ve come.”
