Page 20 of Disappearance at Angel's Landing
Branch couldn’t help but scan the area for the dozenth time. Sooner or later, Risner and the rest of the rangers would realize something had happened and send aid, but until then, he was all she had. And he wouldn’t fail her. He wouldn’t abandon her as had so easily been done to him. All he could do was rely on his training to get to her.
Reaching the bottom of boulder mountain, he took another pull of water, but it did nothing for the light-headedness taking advantage. The world threatened to tip out from under him as he took the next step. Then another.
Hell. Maybe he’d hit his head harder than he assumed. The laceration hadn’t been deep as far as he could tell, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t internal bleeding or that he hadn’t sustained a concussion.
Didn’t matter. He’d push through. He’d been the one to drag Lila into this mess. He’d be the one to get her out of it. Risner had wanted her off the investigation—for no other reason than the man was a sexist son of a bitch—and Branch was hating himself for pulling her back in. She’d had a way out. She’d been safe in her own little bubble, and he should’ve left her the hell alone.
But he’d been selfish. Wanting her insight, wanting that addictive perfume of hers in his system, wanting her to cheer for him for something as small as finding the killer’s campsite. Wanting…her. All of her. The fake persona she wore in front ofhim and the other rangers, and the woman she’d been trying to hide as long as he’d known her.
And if anything happened to her, he’d live with the consequences of that failure for the rest of his life. Never letting himself rest. Never granting himself forgiveness. So he pushed himself harder, until his vision blurred and Branch didn’t know which way was up.
His boot connected with something metallic, and he launched forward to catch himself against a rotting pine tree. Bark came off in his hands as he blinked to get his bearings. Stinging pain blistered along his fingers and in his palms, and he watched as blood blossomed in the cracks. “Damn it.”
A metallic cylinder rolled to a stop at the base of the tree. A water bottle. Crouching, Branch took in the dents and scratches interrupting the dark green exterior coating, then allowed himself to take in the rest of his surroundings. The tree provided shade as the temperature climbed but wouldn’t do much else as the sky darkened with heavy clouds. A sleeping bag lay crumpled to his left with a supply pack resting at the far end of a makeshift campsite. And a first aid kit—complete with bloodied gauze—had been discarded a few feet away.
“Lila.” He tossed the water bottle onto the sleeping bag and headed for the kit. Every pad of gauze had been used. He avoided touching the blood directly, but from the amount that had soaked clean through each pad, he guessed the injury had been severe. Had Lila been injured during the landslide? Had the killer done something to her? Had her abductor tried to stop the bleeding? No responsible hiker would have left their supplies behind. Which meant something had happened.
Tearing into the main compartment of the pack, Brach ripped through the supplies for anything that might give him an idea of who’d killed Sarah Lantos and taken his partner, but couldn’tfind any ID. A change of clothes, protein bars, electrolyte powder, sunscreen, matches.
And a loaded magazine to a handgun. As well as a handful of blasting caps.
The metal tubes were meant to be inserted into the end of a stick of dynamite with a fuse tied to the end for safe detonation. If there was such a thing. Dynamite itself was notoriously unstable. Any small movement could set it off. The killer wouldn’t have carried it around in his pack, which meant the son of a bitch must’ve stashed it somewhere else.
An echo of an explosion replayed in his head. Right before the landslide.
Branch dug deeper into the pack, almost frantic to prove his theory. Thin twine had been stored closer to the bottom. A fuse. Hell. The killer had triggered the landslide. But to kill him and Lila, or simply to slow them down? Working with dynamite could backfire at any moment. Literally. And now Lila was in the hands of a man who’d weaponized it against them.
Extra gun ammunition had been stuffed in the bottom of the pack. Federal law prohibited hikers from bringing firearms into national parks, but this wasn’t the first time Branch had come to terms with the fact that killers didn’t like following the rules. No sign of the weapon itself, which meant whoever’d taken Lila had most likely done so at gunpoint. But for what? To help him escape? To hold her as leverage when Branch and the rest of NPS caught up?
Branch shoved to stand, eyes on what he could see of the valley. He watched for any sign of movement but noted nothing but grassland and juniper trees. She was out there. He could feel it.
Lila might indulge in self-deprecating jokes and laugh off verbal attacks from her fellow rangers, but she was a fighter and influential as hell. At the end of this, he wouldn’t be surprisedif the killer turned himself in with an expression of regret after she was through with him. Until then, Branch would have to take matters into his own hands.
Narrowing his gaze on the canyon that would lead the killer north, he crossed the perimeter of the campsite. “Where are you, Barbie?”
A glimpse of color pulled his attention to a blossoming prickly pear cactus. The yellow flowers looked almost translucent as the sun crested into the second half of the sky. And caught in its needles, a hot pink floral kerchief.
Lila’s kerchief.
Oxygen lodged in his chest. She’d been here. He wasn’t sure how long ago, but now he had proof. She’d survive the landslide. Only to be taken hostage by a man who’d already killed a woman within the past twenty-four hours.
Branch practically lunged for the fabric, pulling it free. It was softer than he expected, catching on the cuts and calluses on his fingers. The design fit Lila perfectly with black zebra stripes and a border of fringe. He’d barely managed not to roll his eyes at the sight of it this morning at the grotto, but now he could do nothing but hold onto it as though it would provide him insight into her whereabouts.
Hints of her perfume clung to the fabric, and he couldn’t help but inhale her sweet tart scent to replace the acrid bitterness collecting at the back of his throat. The effect shot a renewed charge of energy into his veins. Just as the mere sight of Lila had all these months. The kerchief itself had come unknotted, and Branch scanned the distance between where he’d recovered it and the campsite. At least fifteen feet away. She’d left it here. For him. To tell him how to find her. “Clever girl.”
His vision threatened to black out as he navigated beyond the patch of prickly pear cacti and down the incline into the deepestpart of the valley, gripping her kerchief with everything he had. To keep him conscious. To remind him of what was at stake.
Branch had spent his entire life judging others for their lack of discipline, for failing to follow through, keep their word and hold people accountable for their actions, good and bad. Every standard he’d set for himself, he expected of others, but walking in on his wife and his best friend in bed together had taught him that devotion didn’t mean the same to them as it meant to him.
But all that had gone to hell once Lila Jordan had surgically inserted herself into his life with enthusiastic smiles, ridiculous death threats and frenzied schemes to encourage people to get to know her. She was nothing if not devoted. He saw it in the way she held onto her secrets, how she clung to a personality she’d created, when she went out of her way to make everyone else comfortable at the expense of her own peace.
Where Branch had stood his ground—hoping others accepted him for who he was, but not upset or disappointed when they didn’t—Lila moved mountains and parted seas. He’d fought that charismatic influence as long as he could, and it hadn’t done him a damn bit of good. She’d gotten to him, and there was nothing he could do to convince himself she hadn’t earned a place in his life. Whatever that looked like from here on out, he didn’t care. He only wanted her safe.
Forcing one foot in front of the other, Branch picked up the pace as the downhill dragged him deeper into Zion’s backcountry. Ponderosa pines jutted up from the earth and cut off his view of the rest of the valley, closing in on him, but allowed enough room for him to pass.
The trees here had burned black, stripped of their foliage and growth for the foreseeable future due to a lightning strike that’d sparked a forest fire two years ago, turning the area into a barren wasteland. He couldn’t help but compare these trees with the black remnants of his insides, charred, weak, serving no otherpurpose than to decompose over time for the greater good. He couldn’t deny his desire to steal Lila’s light for himself—to give him something to hope for—but there wasn’t anything he could gift her in return. He was like these trees. Dead inside, waiting for the last straw to break him completely.
Branch slowed at the smallest glimpse of green at the base of one of the burned trees. There, fighting from the depths of the blackened wood against all odds, a pink-petaled flower had begun blooming. As if in challenge. To prove that even dead things still had the potential to create something beautiful.
