Chapter Forty-Five
By the time Aiken and his men arrived back at the fishing lodge, no one was there. A sign on the door read ‘Family emergency. Will be back in a week.’ The bear bars were up and locked on all the doors and steel shutters had been pulled down across all the windows.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Aiken cursed and notified Chase by cell phone. Cameron sat down on the porch steps and played finger music on his laptop.
“Charles Kitwillie. Has 12 kids - 11 boys and one daughter. They’re spread out all over the Mason/Dixon line, six of them live fairly close. One in Titusville, the boy Kevin is a sophomore at University of Tennessee. Get this, all of them are members of the Cherokee Nations Tribe.”
“Where’s the nearest son live?” Aiken demanded. Before Cameron could answer, they heard the sounds of an approaching car. As they reached the gravel parking lot, a blue government sedan fishtailed to a stop and the doors popped open. His two other team members jumped out, guns readied.
“Rivers, Jacobs,” he greeted. “Nice car.”
“We took it off SAIC Mulder,” Rivers reported. “They’re hunting here, too.”
“Dr. Cameron has found a possible lead,” the agent in charge said. “How far, Dr. Cameron?”
“From here? By chopper, twenty minutes. By car, an hour or more. The roads suck.”
Aiken nodded and called for a chopper pickup, had Chase mobilize a unit to search out the house and warned them about the FBI. Chase came back with the unwelcome news that other agencies and operatives were converging on the area. Including foreign interests.
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Chase acknowledged and rang off.
*****
The woods folded themselves around me with a comfortable familiarity. I loved the smell of musty earth as leaves molded into the life-giving soil, the heady aroma of pine resin and the scent of rain. These were all so right with the place I had entered so when the sound of metal clinking on metal broke the quiet, I knew it for the danger it meant. Someone was invading the woods, someone who was carrying metal that knocked against metal. Like the sound of guns or rifles.
I hunkered down behind a pecan tree and wished that I had thought to bring my bow. The only weapon in sight was a broken tree branch near my left knee; it was as thick as my forearm and as long as a cane. It would have made a decent walking stick with a little whittling.
I heard someone whistling and before too long, an older man in comfortable jeans, jacket, and hat strolled into view. He had a dog with him on a leash and its tags were jingling but that wasn’t what caught my undivided attention. The thing my eyes were riveted to was a pearl handled pistol in a leather holster on his hip.
I knew the dog would scent me any second. I didn’t know what to do. If I moved, both of them would see me. He came closer and now, I saw the star-shaped metal on his jacket. I could even read it. It spelled out ‘U.S. MARSHAL’. The odds that he was here just to walk his dog in the woods was not in my favor. I eyed the pooch, he was a shepherd mix of some kind but not a color I’d seen before. He was a smoke gray with darker saddle and cream-colored shoulder markings. He looked wolfish and his eyes were the same blue as my own.
“Rashka,” the man said and the dog stopped, lifted its head and sniffed the air. I saw its hackles raise as he caught my scent. He gave off a long, mournful howl not a bark and his handler stiffened.
“What is it, Rashka?” he asked. “You find something?” He slipped the dog’s leash and before I could stand up, the dog was in my face, wagging his tail and licking me. I buried my face in his ruff as his owner stepped closer to me.
“Hi, there,” he said with a smile. “You haven’t seen a little girl around here, have you?” His face was friendly, not wary or elated that he’d found me.
“No,” I said slowly. “Is she lost?”
“Yes. Her name is Sami. She wandered away from her parents at the Walmart parking lot. We think she headed for the woods and Rashka thinks so, too.”
“Haven’t seen anyone,” I added. “I didn’t see any tracks, either.”
“I was hoping you were her when Rashka picked up your scent,” he sighed. “Her dad’s a friend.”
“Maybe I can help,” I said slowly.
“You know these woods?” He had gray eyes with hazel flecks, a straight nose, and a cleft chin. Really handsome in the way that women liked. Wasn’t more than thirty and strong. Well-muscled and he had held the straining 130-pound shepherd with ease.
“You have a scent cloth?” He eyed me with a strange expression but handed over a small pink bunny minus its button nose and one ear. I sniffed it, held it out towards the dog and said, “find Sami.”
The dog took off like a shot, back the way he had come. I followed and his owner stared helplessly at the dog, me and then turned to join us. I followed the dog’s tracks and when he reached a small creek, stopped to examine the easiest way across; the way a small kid would cross it. On rocks like stepping stones, I could see where someone had rocked and moved the ones on the bank but couldn’t tell about the stones in the water because the flowing liquid carried away any disturbed soil within minutes.
On the other side of the creek, I saw where a small sneaker had slipped in the mud and she had fallen. A perfect handprint lay there for anyone with eyes to see it. After that, her tracks were easy enough to follow; she’d made no attempt to hide them other than her aimless wanderings in circles trying to find her way back.
We walked slowly so I wouldn’t miss any sign, her scuff marks through the leaves and broken ferns along the swampy edges of the hemlock groves. She chose the easiest ways to walk, going generally downhill. I would have expected her to come out eventually on the road that led to the subdivision or the dam but the area surprised me with the extent of the woodlands surrounding the town. There were hills and hollows aplenty here; many places for a small child to disappear. He kept up with me easily even when I hurried so he couldn’t ask me any questions. We came out atop a ridge and when I looked down, I saw an open cut where something had been quarried. We could see the dog’s tail wagging just behind a large cut of stone and a pile of blocks. The way down was steep, a slope of scree that would challenge anyone without a safety rope. From the turned over darkened stones, I knew the dog had made it down and probably that the kid had fallen.
“Give me your coat,” I said and to his credit, he didn’t argue but slipped it off handing it to me. His shirt was a long sleeved tan Carhartt with pearl snaps. I buttoned the coat back up, tied the sleeves together and knelt on the body of the coat. Before he could stop me, I rode the material down the slope almost as if it were a sled.
What stopped me was one of the big rocks that the stone masons had cut but left piled at the bottom of the slope. I hit it on my right side as my boogie board became fabric scraps. Hit hard enough to crack my ribs and my right arm. I hugged the rock with tears in my eyes and no breath left in my lungs while he called anxiously from above.
When my bones healed enough for me to move, I yelled back for him to stay there while I looked for another way down.
“Can you see her? Is she okay?” he yelled down. I pushed myself up and cradled my side as blood dribbled from my mouth. One of my broken ribs must have punctured a lung as I could barely breathe.
Beyond the cut stones of pink limestone, lay a little girl in jeans, pink jacket, and colorful rubber boots. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing in shallow puffs of air. The dog was lying next to her, whining as if he knew he couldn’t help her. There were scratches, abrasions, swelling and bruises all over her body.
Like me, she had fallen down the slope and the blocks had stopped her fall with brutal efficiency. She had broken ribs, arms, and legs but the worst was an open skull fracture, her hair lay in a growing puddle of blood. Her pupils were uneven and nearly fixed. If I hadn’t seen her breathing past a small bubble of blood in her nose, I would have taken her for dead.
I couldn’t wait for my body to heal completely before I healed her and as yet, I didn’t know how long you could be dead before I could bring you back. I put my hand out and shrieked as a massive pain tore through me and broken bones grated. It felt as if my body had literally exploded from the inside out. I fell to my knees, just missing her stomach. I couldn’t move my arms so I tucked my head on her side and called forth the blue light.
It fought me. Wanted to flow back over me but I persisted and forced it to cover her. It was faint, this strange aura. The faintest I had ever seen it, just barely visible in the morning sunlight and the longer I held it on her, the weaker I felt.
I persisted until I saw her eyelids flutter and the strange deformity of her skull round out. Called her name past a bubble of blood in my throat. “Sami? Wake up, Sami.”
She rolled over, groaning, her own arms flailing as she inadvertently hit me. It broke the contact from her and I fell back, coughing up blood and wincing in pain.
“I fell,” she said and sobbed. Her fingers rolled deep in the dog’s ruff. “I hurt. Everywhere. You saved me. I was dancing in the golden light and you found me at the door.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “This is Rashka. He’ll help us get out of here.”
“What’s your name?” Her eyes were large in her elfin face, hazel with flecks of spring green. Pretty, about seven years old and smart. Smart enough to follow water downhill because it would take her to a road. Except this quarry was between her and the road.
“Lake. There’s a…policeman at the top of the hill, Sami. He’ll get you out of here,” I said. I closed my eyes as my body struggled to repair enough of the damage so I could move.
We heard the man shouting, worry evident in his tones so I yelled back that she was found, okay, to just wait so I could find an easier way down to us.
I was able to sit up in ten minutes and using the dog as a crutch, rose to my feet. She only came to my waist and I tucked one arm into my ribs while I took her small hand in the other.
“Let’s go look for a way out of here,” I smiled at her.
“You have red teeth,” she said and tried to wipe them. “Like your red hair. This place is called Capital Quarry. This stuff is in the Capitol building in Knoxville. The road out is there.” She pointed to the right side of the pit.
I swallowed the blood and the taste of copper made me nauseous. “How’d you get lost, Sami?”
“Mommy told me to wait by the car but I saw a puppy loose in the parking lot and was afraid it would get hit. So I followed it into the woods but I lost it. That was when I saw the bad man.”
“What bad man?”
“The man who hurt the puppy. He told me it was just sleeping but I know better. He told me we had to bring it to the vet. I ran and he chased me. I ran into the woods and lost him. But I got lost, too.”
“He can’t hurt us. The policeman has a gun and this dog. His name is Rashka. He finds lost little kids. He’s a rescue dog and he’s rescued us.”
“Like you. You rescued me.”
I rounded the corner of the quarry wall and stared at a huge pit cut into the rock wall filled with cold green water. Like a marble quarry in Vermont but the colors were wrong for marble. The water was still, not a ripple marred the surface. Coming off the right side where we stood was a rough road cut out where tractors had dragged cut stone. Rivets in the mud were knee deep and dried out. Above that was a series of giant ledges cut in steps if your legs were ten feet long. If one were careful, you could climb down much the same way that one climbed the pyramid blocks.
“Marshal?” I called and heard him answer. “There’s a way down over here.” I heard him answer and then a shout of surprise, the sound of a falling body and a loud crack. I ran back to where I’d hit the block and saw him lying there in a puddle of blood. I touched his head and it moved in a manner that was unnatural. He had broken his neck and his fine eyes were no longer the bright chips I had admired. The blood spread and I tried to help him. Just as the blue field sparked and fizzled, I looked up to see another man, this one curiously silent and impassive. He held a gun and the sun sparkled off the pale ivory handle. My eyes dropped to the Marshal’s holster. It was empty. I grabbed his belt and tugged him behind the rock as the other man on the rim started firing. Bullets boomed in the pit, splintered on the rocks and sent shards of stone at us.
“She’s mine, boy!” he shouted. “I’m coming to get her!”
“I’m sorry,” I told the Marshal as my healing ability refused to work on him. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know your name.” I scuttled back to Sami, the dog and we ran. Not downhill towards the road but parallel to it. We could hear his footsteps behind us.