Page 17 of Disappearance at Angel's Landing
Lila.
Scanning the dirt and rock beneath him for anything coming close to pink, Branch felt the uptick in his heart rate. She had to be here. She had to be okay. He swung his arms out like a starfish, and his boot slid another few centimeters. There was only one way he was getting out of this alive.
He slipped his pack free and let it drop. His supplies hit the ground with a too loud thud that triggered another sharp spear of pain in his skull. Curling his upper body, he grabbed for the branch that’d saved his life. And missed. Every muscle in his torso protested the smallest movement. Oxygen crushed from his lungs. He straightened back out to regain his breath, and his boot took the opportunity to remind him he’d run out of time. A drop from this height promised a slow death if he managed to protect his head. Not an outcome he was looking forward to. “Come on.”
Branch curled again. His fingertips brushed the rough tree bark but ultimately failed to grasp hold. The momentum and weight of his body pulled his heel free of his boot, and he shot up one last time. Bark cut through the calloused skin of his palm as he gripped the branch. His legs lost the battle to gravity, and he hung upright above the sloped landscape. With his boot still stuck in the tree. He stared up at it, out of reach. “Traitor.”
Though he had to acknowledge he wasn’t about to die. Gauging the distance between him and the ground, he took the chance. His stomach shot into his throat a split second before he hit the dirt, rolling to avoid breaking his unsupported ankle. Dirt clung to every inch of his body, worked beneath his clothes. Irritated…places.
Scrubbing a hand down his face, Branch fell against the tree’s trunk for support. Shit. How long had he been hanging there draining like a slaughtered cow?
His vision wavered, and Branch grabbed for his pack, sinking to the ground. He had to stop the bleeding. Head wounds usually bled more due to the amount and location of blood vessels, but he couldn’t determine how deep the wound was without cleaning it first. His mouth dried as he caught sight of his water bottle, and he took a few pulls to stay hydrated. It would be all too easy to get dehydrated out here in the middle of nowhere inover one-hundred-degree heat. He couldn’t do a damn thing for Lila if he wasn’t taking care of himself.
Washing the wound and his face with a couple handfuls of water, he set about cleaning the injury with the last remaining alcohol pad in his kit. He didn’t have a mirror, no way of telling if he needed stitches, so a larger butterfly bandage would have to do. The same he’d used for Lila after that first boulder had tried to kill them.
He should’ve taken it for the sign it was. Branch studied the devastation of the landscape around him. Fifty-foot trees had been half buried. Boulders that’d outlasted hundreds of years of storms cracked open around him. Dead logs and dirt had swept through and obliterated everything within a quarter mile.
Landslides weren’t uncommon in Zion. A couple of the most popular trails had been closed down in the past few months due to shifting, but he’d never seen anything like this.
He hadn’t heard it, either, that telltale roar that sounded the alarm in an event like this. But there had been an explosion…
Branch shoved a protein bar in his mouth to combat the fatigue flooding through him and hauled his pack to his back. Lila was out here. Alone, possibly injured. He had to move fast. The woman wasn’t the type to sit around and wait for someone to rescue her.
Despite her innocent facade and obsession with the color pink, there was something vicious and unpredictable beneath that smile. He’d glimpsed it only a couple times—mostly when she was threatening him—but Lila would go out of her way to prove she didn’t need anyone but herself. Potentially hurting herself in the process despite her training and familiarity with the area.
They had that in common. While he could pinpoint the moment in his life when he’d cut himself off from the world and convinced himself he was better off alone, Lila kept that part ofher life to herself. There was no telling how far she’d push herself to survive. Better he found her before it came to that.
His muscles burned as he hauled himself up the incline to where the landslide had started, leaving his boot behind. The trail they’d been following was gone, buried under several tons of rock and dirt and trees. The landslide hadn’t started with a trickle. It’d come in an explosion of death and destruction, suddenly and violently. From this angle, Branch could just make out the jagged shards where the mountain had been carved apart. Too straight. Too sharp. It looked almost…intentional.
Didn’t matter right now. Sucking in deep breaths from where the landslide impacted the trail, he surveyed the scope of the damage. At least a quarter mile of the valley was lost. Had Lila survived it?
Pain that had nothing to do with getting thrown around like a rag doll took up residence in his chest. Branch rubbed his bloodied hand into his sternum to try to ease the pressure, but it was no use. He hadn’t known. That meddling little banshee had worked her way into his life over the past couple of days. Now she was just…gone? No way in hell was he giving up.
Reaching for his radio, he hit nothing but an empty belt. Damn it. It must’ve detached during the landslide. Two other teams had set out to track this killer, each expected to check in regularly with updates, but how long would Risner wait before suspecting he and Lila were in trouble? Hours? Days? Knowing the district ranger’s hostile relationship with Lila, he’d wait until nightfall, rooting for another team to contribute something worthwhile to the investigation.
Maneuvering his pack to his front, Branch unpacked his cell phone from the front pocket. The screen had cracked from his tumble down the mountain, but the device itself still had battery life. But no service bars. He’d have to hike out of the valley to geta signal. He tossed the phone back into his pack. “This day keeps getting better and better.”
What he wouldn’t give for one of Lila’s death threats now. Just to hear her voice. To absorb a bit of her overzealous enthusiasm. She’d list all the ways they were lucky to be alive and try to recruit him into starting a gratitude journal. Which he would do without her knowledge. Just as he’d bought himself a pint of Cherry Garcia after watching her drop an armload into her cart at the only grocery store in Springdale a few weeks ago. And streamed her favorite romantic comedy after she’d referenced it in the break room a month before that.
He didn’t know what it was about her erratic daydreaming heart that had caught his attention the second he stepped into Zion. Everything she was—impulsive, emotional, upbeat—defined everything he wasn’t, but he couldn’t seem to let go. If anything, she’d hooked him deeper over these past couple of days, and he didn’t hate it. He’d come to crave her promises of murder and learning about her expertise in everything ranging from ballet to calligraphy.
Following the upper ridge of the landslide, he gritted against the small punctures of rocks biting into his socked foot. Dust puffed off his clothing with every step, the sun only making the pounding in his head worse. “Lila!”
His shout echoed off the cliff faces standing as sentries around the valley below. But there was no other response.
No glimpse of pink.
No sign she’d survived.
His chest tightened against the possibility of never setting sight on that hot pink manicure she protected with the fierceness of a pit bull. Or watching her guard drop when she thought no one was looking. And he wasn’t leaving until he found her.
Tossing his pack to the ground, Branch mapped the most likely place she would have succumbed to the landslide,probably a few hundred feet down from their original position on the trail. His heels sank into loose earth, threatening to pull him under as he descended. “I’m coming, Barbie. Don’t give up.”
Larger boulders took shape at the bottom of the incline. There was too much ground to cover in the search, and randomly digging would only waste time Lila might not have. He needed a narrower search grid. He needed a clue to her location. “Lila!”
Again, no answer. The anger he’d managed to suppress since this morning reared its ugly head, but with it came a whole new slew of emotions determined to knock him on his ass. Hopelessness. Abandonment. The things he’d nearly lost his fight to after the divorce. It hadn’t just been about losing a woman he’d loved for more than fifteen years. He’d lost a future. A best friend. Everything he’d cared about because of the misdirected impulsiveness of a single person.
Maybe that was why he’d avoided Lila for so long, convinced that having any kind of relationship with her would only end up killing him all over again. Why he’d offered favors to switch shifts, turned down her attempts at getting to know each other and sat as far from her as possible in any team meeting. In the end, he’d treated her as everyone else had. Disposable. Overlooked. Unimportant. And, damn it, she deserved better.
