The sound of screeching tires comes from the highway. I turn to see an army-green Jeep with three passengers swerve across the highway from the left lane in order to catch the exit to the gas station.
I take a split second to assess my strength against theirs. I have no doubt Whit’s companions are armed. It’s three against one, and I have only a crossbow and a knife. The odds are against me.
I drop Poe, scoop up my pack from where I had set it on the ground next to the car, and leaping over the gas station’s cement barrier, run at full speed into the pitch-black night.
38
MILES
DAD’S SECURITY DETAIL TAKES A PRIVATE JET TO Twin Falls and arrives at the hotel in less than two hours. They introduce themselves as Redding and Portman but don’t need to say much more—I see them standing around security-guarding every time I visit Dad’s office. “Do you have any idea where she was headed?” Portman asks me, leaning over the seat as we speed away from the El Dorado.
I pause. “She was heading toward Salt Lake City,” I admit, feeling a pang of guilt when I think of the expression on Juneau’s face as she drove off in my car. Is this just another betrayal? No, I decide. I’m helping her. Once she talks to Dad, this manhunt will be called off and he’ll go after the people who actually do have the information he needs.
While Redding drives, Portman flips between trucker CB ham radio stations and the police scanner. We’re on the road less than fifteen minutes when a blue BMW is identified as abandoned at an interstate highway gas station about an hour away in the direction of Salt Lake. The plate number matches my own.
39
JUNEAU
MY EYES HAVEN’T ADJUSTED TO THE DARKNESS. I am running blind through low scrub, with my pack thrown over one shoulder and my hands stretched in front of me in case I run into anything. But there is nothing to run into, just knee-high grasses slapping my jeans with a hissing swish, and occasional bushes crackling under my shoes.
I don’t dare look back. I’m certain they saw me under the bright lights of the Shell station, and this pastureland offers nowhere to hide. I see a dark wall rising slowly to meet me, and after a few minutes realize that I’m headed toward a tree line.
I hear shouts behind me and am glad for the waist-high barrier around the gas station’s parking lot. If it weren’t for that, Whit and his men could have driven off-road right after me. But from the sounds of it, they decided to follow on foot. The trees get closer, and my vision is clearer now that the fluorescent glare has worn off.
As I reach the first of the trees, I allow myself a split second to look back, and see two bulky forms lumbering across the pasture, vaguely in my direction, flashlight gleams bobbing up and down as they run. They haven’t seen me, or they would be headed directly my way. I take off through the trees, leaping over broken branches and bushes, headed in no particular direction besides away from them.
The trees turn out not to be woods, but rather clumps of evergreens separated by stretches of barren grassland. There is no good cover—I am exposed.
And then it happens: I step into some kind of hole, and my trapped foot remains stationary while the rest of me keeps going. I am blinded by a white blaze of pain.
Crouching, I use my fingers to pull the dirt away from my foot until it is free. Although I can barely see, I can feel that the hole is a big one. Fox or badger den, I think. Making a split-second decision, I grope around until my fingers touch a fallen branch, and I use it to dig out the tunnel. Driven by fear, I uncover the empty animal den in less than a minute and, dragging my injured foot behind me, gather the nearest sticks and branches.
I throw my pack in the three-foot hole and then lower myself down into it, lying on my side with my pack at my stomach, curling up fetal-style around it. Reaching up to my pile of evergreen branches, I sweep the stack over and around me until I—and the hole—am completely covered. And then I wait.
Now that I am motionless, my ankle throbs with pain. I want to touch it, to feel if something is broken, but I’m afraid that any movement will shift the branches and uncover my hiding spot. I bite my lip until I taste blood. Every crackle of leaves, every creaking branch is amplified in my ears as I listen for my pursuers. And what seems a mere moment after I am hidden, they arrive. One is close by—I hear the plodding of heavy boots. From a distance I hear the other one yell, “There’s no one out here. Like I said, she went the other way.”
The nearby footsteps stop, then shuffle around as the man sweeps the area with his flashlight. A ray of it pierces down through the pine needles into my den. But I am hidden well enough that he sees nothing, because his footsteps get fainter as he moves farther away.