Page 22 of Disappearance at Angel's Landing
A cave.
It sat about twenty feet off the canyon floor with a few rocks and trees acting as stairs if she was careful. It was also the first place the killer would look for her. And potentially where she could be eaten alive by the mountain cougars that lived in the park. But she had to take the risk.
Her palms screamed in protest as she hauled herself up the first oddly angled tree. The bark fell away under her weight, and she slammed into the wall at her side. Rock grated against her exposed skin, but she pushed to the next obstacle. This would make a great audition forAmerican Gladiator.
Darkness enveloped her as she reached the mouth of the cave. Cold air raised the hair on the back of her neck. It was damp andsmelled of carnage and decomposition. Something definitely lived in this cave full-time, and she hoped whatever it was had gone hunting instead of waiting for food to walk right in the front door.
The cave curved deeper into the mountain, cutting off the only source of light at the mouth, but distance didn’t ease the tension knotting in her stomach. Wetness clung to the walls and soaked into her uniform, and it took everything in her not to groan out of disgust. It’d take a miracle to get the decomposition smell out of cotton. She could already see Risner’s signature drying on another write-up for disgracing her uniform.
Cringing against the sticky substance now coating her hands, she moved deeper into the cave.
“I know you’re in here, Ranger Jordan. You can’t hide from me.”
Movement echoed down the tunnel of the cave, accentuating every word out of the killer’s mouth. She hadn’t heard him follow her inside. How had he managed to keep his footsteps from bouncing off the rock walls? Or had she not noticed due to the chaos in her head?
“I know every inch of this park.” He was getting closer. “Most likely better than you.”
Fresh images reserved for her nightmares were right there on the cusp of her waking mind, but she couldn’t think about that right now. Lila felt her way deeper into the cave. This was a bad idea, but it was the only option she had right now. She’d brained him with his own water bottle, then scratched caverns down his face. Nope. She wasn’t getting out of this alive if he had anything to say about it. “Why did you kill Sarah Lantos?”
His low laugh leaked into her body like a cold drip that stole her body temperature. “Some people deserve to die. Sarah was one of them. She made me suffer by keeping her secret all these years. Threatened everyone I cared about. I granted her a meretaste of my pain by stabbing her. But then she had to go trip on a rock and fall over the edge of the cliff. Ended my fun too soon.”
Lila’s gut clenched. “Do I deserve to suffer?”
She hadn’t meant to ask the question. Didn’t want to give him any sort of power over her, but there it was. The one question she’d asked herself a thousand times since the fallout of her actions from that night. Did she deserve to suffer? Her family certainly thought so. Sometimes she did, too. Maybe this was always going to be her ending.
But then why had the universe allowed Branch to come into her life?
“You’re just like her, you know.” Gravel grated nearby, and then she could feel him. Right in front of her. As though he’d simply thought of her location and appeared. His outline solidified the longer she begged her vision to catch up. As did the gun. “You latch onto your targets by pretending to be something you’re not, then manipulate them into following your agenda. And for that, you’re going to die.”
A gunshot exploded.
Chapter Sixteen
He heard the shot.
It punctured the canyon, reverberating through him as though he’d been hit with the sound barrier. Branch slowed to pinpoint the source.
There was no denying that gut-wrenching explosion. He’d heard it multiple times over his years as a ranger in the parks. Thudding and terrifying. And everything in him froze at the realization. Blood drained from his upper body in a rush that nearly knocked him on his ass. “Lila!”
He hadn’t been fast enough. He’d followed that single scream across the valley with everything he had left, and it still hadn’t been enough. The pain in his head intensified as Branch navigated the uneven terrain of the dry riverbed. He wouldn’t be too late. He couldn’t be too late. Because that meant he’d failed her and wasted four solid months trying to keep his distance from her when he should have run at her full speed.
Lila had brought a spark into his life. Gifted him glimpses of color in an otherwise black-and-white world. She’d made him feel when he wanted nothing more than to sink into the numbness left behind by his ex-wife and best friend’s betrayal. She gave him purpose. A reason to keep going. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Two days of standing at her side wasn’t enough, damn it. “Where are you?”
The canyon swallowed him whole, rising on either side of him as if leading him into a trap. Walls of red, black and white rock towered above him but gave no indication of where the shot had come from. Cool air rippled goose bumps across his bare arms. Hell, his head hurt. He could feel warm liquid tracking down his face. The butterfly bandage had soaked through with blood, warning him not to push it, but Lila needed him. His heart threatened to beat straight out of his chest with every step. “Come on. Come on.”
Dragging his hand through his hair, he did the hardest thing he’d ever had to do during his time as a ranger. Wait. For something—anything—that might tell him where she’d been taken.
A low growl reached his ears. The canyon wall moved.
Wait, that wasn’t right.
Fur, the same color as the rock, shifted to his right, revealing the powerful body of a mountain lion. And, damn, it was big. Most likely male. Mountain lions didn’t normally go looking for trouble, but when you just happened to walk into their territory, you were fair game.
Every muscle down Branch’s spine hardened with battle-ready tension. Hell, all he could think about was how Lila would smile and want to pet the beast, and that thought alone helped calm his racing heart. She’d probably want to adopt it and bring it back home. Call it something like Fluffy or Pumpkin just to get a rise out of him. “You don’t look like a Pumpkin, which means she’ll probably call you Fluffy.”
The oversize cat hissed, exposing sharp, elongated teeth meant to snap one of his arms in half. Branch backed up a few steps as the cat descended from its perch, cutting off his access to the rest of the canyon. To Lila.
Raising his arms out in front of him as though Fluffy could acknowledge his surrender—was he really calling thisthing Fluffy?—he brought his pack around to his front. Slowly unzipping the top of his pack, he dragged the unopened bag of beef jerky—teriyaki flavored, of course—into the open and popped the seal. “You like jerky?”
