But he did want her. His body ached for her. A familiar ache that had haunted him for all these years. Buzz figured he could live with it because there was no way he could overlook what she’d done, no way he would ever let himself get tangled up with a woman he couldn’t forgive.
Buzz woke to a scream. Scrambling out of his sleeping bag, he jumped to his feet, blinked the sleep from his eyes. He looked down, saw that Kelly had left her sleeping bag.
Where the hell was she?
Dawn brushed pink and gold on the rocky peak above where they’d camped. A yellow finch chirped angrily from the branch of a lodgepole pine. The breeze rustled the tall, dry grass from the meadow.
Had he dreamed the scream?
“Buzz!”
The terror in her voice sent him into a dead run. He burst through the brush, around an outcropping of rock and into a stand of aspen and pine. A hundred scenarios rushed through his brain. Panic nibbled at his spine, but he shoved it back. Buzz Malone was a professional. He didn’t panic. Wouldn’t panic because he knew a little boy’s life could very well depend on his keeping a cool head.
“Kelly, where are you?” he shouted.
“Over here! Please, Buzz! Hurry!”
His sock-encased feet pounded over the dry earth. He broke through thick underbrush, the branches scratching him like sharp tentacles. An instant later, the forest opened to a clearing. The sound of rushing water met him. He stopped. Held his breath. Listened.
“Buzz! Over here!”
Twenty yards away, he saw a flash of blue near the water. Kelly. He dashed toward her, keenly aware of his heart hammering against his ribs. Fear gripped him like a vice as he stumbled over river rock and into the icy water.
“What happened?” he shouted.
The water level was low. Kelly stood next to the muddy bank, her arms wrapped around herself, looking down at the ground.
Buzz reached her a moment later. Her eyes met his. The ravaged expression in her face devastated him. He saw pain and terror and the dark fringes of panic in the brown depths of her eyes. All the caution he’d been feeling the night before left him abruptly. He went to her, put his hand on her shoulder, heard himself say her name.
Her hand trembled when she pointed at the muddy bank.
Buzz looked down at the perfect imprint of a cougar’s paw.
Kelly looked wildly around, felt her control leave her like a physical departure. She stared down at the print, horror zinging through her like a gunshot, her heart pounding pure terror.
“Eddie!” she cried. “Eddie!” Panic resonated in her voice when she screamed his name. She tried to squash it down, get a grip on it, put it in a compartment for later, but it reared up inside her like a maddened beast, took her in its jaws and shook her violently.
“Eddie! Sweetheart, where are you?”
She turned in a circle, looking frantically for something, anything, any sign of her son. Trees and brush and rock blended into a single, dark threat as her gaze skimmed the surrounding woods. The shadows within mocked her, refusing to give up their secrets. Every sound taunted her, a child calling out.
On the other side of the stream, she spotted a disturbance in the sparse yellow grass. Her heart stopped for a beat, then banged hard against her ribs. The next thing she knew she was running, through shallow water that ran swift and cold around her ankles. She scrambled over rocks, slipping on moss and tripping over loose stones the size of basketballs. Vaguely, she was aware of Buzz calling her name, but she didn’t slow down, and she didn’t stop.
Wet sand sucked at her hiking boots when she reached the bank, but Kelly was in good physical condition and muscled her way up it. Calling out to her son, she paused, breathing hard, shaking uncontrollably, her every sense honed on her surroundings. She wasn’t sure what caused her to look down, but when she did everything inside her froze into a solid mass of ice. A perfect imprint of Eddie’s sneaker was set into the dry earth. Right next to it, several drops of bright red blood glistened dark and wet.
Kelly stopped breathing. Her blood stalled. The sound of the birds and swiftly moving water faded to a dull roar. Around her, the trees and underbrush and jutting rocks blurred into a kaleidoscope of black and gray. Terror like she’d never felt in her life enveloped her, a dark smothering hand that shut down her senses one by one. She felt it cover her, pressing down, constricting her heart and lungs and squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.