Dangerous Refuge

chapter Forty-two



The rocky ridges ahead of Tanner were dark, the copper glow of the setting sun only a memory. Everything was drowned in shadows darker than any bruise. The dirt road was a faint, pale thread leading to nowhere.

Tanner turned the wheel and shot off the battered asphalt to follow the dirt. Dust rose all around, nearly invisible, leaving grit on every surface. The dust around the truck gathered into a ragged banner, flickering with the least change in direction of the wind. He drove like screaming hell, sending dirt spewing everywhere when the road turned, barely holding the straight pieces, and still he felt like he was glued in place.

The knifepoint glitter of a few stars and a partial moon rising were the only illumination. In the rumpled land ahead of the old truck, night spilled out of ravines and spiked up the ridges.

No lights showed ahead of him, no flash or gleam to pierce the layers of darkness. The dirt road was a shade or two lighter than the surrounding brush. So were the boulders that stuck out without warning. One of them tried to eat the truck’s right front tire.

I can’t wait any longer, Tanner thought grimly.

He turned on the headlights, losing stealth but gaining visibility. Tire tracks leaped out on the dusty stretches of the road, the tread marks crisp enough to leave tiny shadows. His memory told him that was a good sign.

Someone was here recently. Wind makes short work of tread marks out here.

The bad news was that headlights announced his presence like a siren.

Can’t see light ahead of me. They’re probably in one of the folds in those small mountains. Can’t see me.

I can’t see them, either.

He pressed down on the accelerator and settled in for a rough ride. The road was made for maybe thirty miles an hour at best. He was doing twice that. The rutted dirt rose and fell, twisted and snaked, and generally behaved like something engineered by cowboys a century ago.

With one hand he brought his cell phone up and checked the battery and signal. Battery was good.

There wasn’t enough signal to matter.

He hit the redial button just to be sure. The phone spun idly for three seconds, five, ten.

CALL FAILED.



Shit! August can’t help me anymore.

Tanner wanted to throw the phone against the windshield, but he had better self-control, so he wedged it under his thigh. Depending on where the satellites were positioned in the sky, GPS could still be an option. But he suspected there were places out here that even GPS couldn’t reach.

He hoped to hell he wasn’t in one of them.

The image of Rua’s dead face turned ghastly by the light of the fish tank kept eating into Tanner. That memory he could live with. It was the way the face kept morphing into Shaye’s that was leaving a hole in his guts.

Don’t think about it. Just drive.

And pray.

If Shaye doesn’t come out of those mountains, I’ll kill Ace.

It wasn’t a prayer, but it gave Tanner patience when he wanted to explode right out of his skin. He’d seen people like himself before—parents of missing kids, families of miners waiting outside a mine explosion, waiting, waiting, waiting for news.

After enough time, even proof of death was a relief.

Stop thinking, he snarled at himself. Do the only thing you can do.

Drive.

His hands gripped the wheel and he pushed everything else out of his mind. No distractions, no mistakes, nothing but the fact that Shaye needed him.

The phone chirped.

Tanner knew what had happened. There wasn’t enough reliable signal to carry talk, but texts needed only an instant of connection to get through. He retrieved the phone and read quickly.

CELL SIGNAL GONE.

LOOK FOR TRACK ON LEFT.

MINES IN AREA. DANGEROUS.



That didn’t surprise Tanner. People had been falling into abandoned mines when he was a boy. The mines hadn’t been covered since then and human nature didn’t change.

Easy to hide a body.

Forever.