John
Wyatt, like an idiot, was pacing outside the cabin when John pulled up. How could the fool have let a pregnant woman with a four-year-old get away from him? More importantly, how had John let himself get sucked into this mess? Why had he accepted the personal mission of stopping Isabella from getting an abortion? As much as he didn’t want any woman murdering her baby, he didn’t need this shit.
Too late for regrets. He was in up to his eyeballs. If the woman went to the police, she could identify him as her kidnapper.
That she hadn’t yet done so was a good sign. Maybe she didn’t want to have to tell the police that she had been held because she was planning an abortion.
But both for his own security and to save a baby’s life, he had to find her.
“You see her on the road?” Wyatt approached the truck eagerly.
“She’s not stupid. She’d not going to be on the road. Did you check for tracks?” John swung the truck door open and stepped down.
“Do I look like fucking Davy Crocket?”
What a fucking moron. “Why didn’t you lock her in the bedroom?”
Wyatt flushed. “I told you. I dozed off in front of the television. After dinner.”
“You… dozed off. You know, soldiers are shot for going to sleep on duty.”
“I’m not a soldier.”
“That’s for damn sure.” But John was. He was in the war to stop the abortions, and because of Wyatt, he’d been dragged into a side battle that could keep him from achieving the greater glory.
John paced to the window outside Wyatt’s bedroom. The dirt was hard-packed and showed no footsteps, although there were broken twigs and bent weeds. He tried to follow a trail, bending over to look for more signs but it was confusing. There was a lot of bent grass. A lot of broken twigs. He couldn’t tell how old any of it was, whether made by humans, whether by animals, and if by humans, by who. Maybe he wasn’t fucking Davy Crocket either. “Not going to find them by searching on foot. They either got lost in the hills or they found shelter somewhere.”
“You think a mountain lion—or some coyotes—maybe got them? Jesus Christ. I didn’t want her hurt. Or Nina. Especially not Nina.”
“You hear any screams?”
Wyatt shook his head.
“Doubt a mountain lion could have killed both of them in total silence without a trace.”
“I was asleep.”
“So you said. Let’s go.” He headed back to the truck.
“Where?”
“Just get in.”
John could drive his Ram off road, but he decided not to. While he’d discounted the possibility of a mountain lion or coyotes killing Isabella, her unborn baby, and her child, he knew it was possible. If it had happened, there was nothing he could do.
If she had gone the wrong way in the dark, not towards help, but towards wild country, there was also little he could do. She might be found eventually but possibly not. There was a lot of empty space, easy to get lost.
He had two goals. One of course was to save the unborn baby that Isabella was carrying. But almost as important was that this mess with Isabella not jeopardize his important antiabortion work.
Isabella dying with her unborn baby in the wilderness would be a tragedy. However, the more concerning question was whether she’d reached someone who would help her. That posed a threat not only to the unborn baby but to him.
The closest house was a small ranch up the hill, maybe a half mile away but out of sight.
The house was occupied by a couple, two kids, a goat, five chickens, and a dog. The kids were kicking a soccer ball back and forth, while the woman hung clothes on a line. When John stopped his Ram and opened his door, the dog barked and growled, hackles raised. John retreated back inside the truck and rolled down the window. The husband emerged from the house, a rifle slung over his shoulder, and shook his head at the description of Isabella, whom John depicted as mentally ill and prone to paranoid delusions. And a risk to her child.
“Nope, no woman wandering around with a kid. If she’d come ’round here, I’d know. My dog isn’t too friendly.” The man didn’t appear too friendly either.
“Thanks a lot.” John put the Ram into gear and drove off, followed by the dog that continued to bark and growl.
“Think they’re lying?”
“Nope. The dog. Too interested in us for there to be a stranger in the house.” John was getting worried. The longer it took, the less likely they’d find them.
This time, instead of driving up the mountain, he drove down. He should have driven down in the first place. Down was always easier. A woman carrying a child would take the easier route.
They drove in silence, back past the cabin, Wyatt half hanging out the window to scan for any sign of Isabella or the little girl, continuing down the road two miles or so to a new, three-story monstrosity that some person with money must have built for the experience of being out in the country without being in the country. Stone facade. Manicured garden.
John pulled in the drive. No cars. He looked at the signs in the window and in the yard announcing alarms to protect the property. “Go ring the bell,” he told Wyatt.
If anyone was home, it would be worth talking to them. If not, move on. Either Isabella had been there and was gone, being driven back to the city by whatever rich person owned the house, or this was a dead end. In either case, not worth him getting out of the truck.
Wyatt returned to the truck five minutes later.
“I rang and rang. No one.”
John heaved a sigh.
“You know, you missed a house,” Wyatt said.
“What?”
“There was a driveway about a mile back. Couldn’t see any house from the road, but where there’s a driveway, there’s a house.”
Maybe Wyatt wasn’t as stupid as John thought.
“Okay, let’s try that.”
John drove back up the road and then down a half-mile driveway to a dilapidated ranch house. The roof needed shingles. Paint was peeling off the side of the house. And the front porch looked old and rickety.
John parked the truck and got out.