Darkness grew deeper, and Kelly slowed, not wanting to break an ankle. She ran down the far side of the hill, down the small, dry streambed, and into a stand of cedar. It offered good concealment, and she slowed to a trot. Five minutes later, she couldn’t hear Nadine, and felt she was free of them.
Stopping to rest on a cedar stump, Kelly wept in silence for her friend, Bobbi. She had been tough, but brave, and a good person when they finally connected. She felt bad, too, because she never learned Bobbi’s last name, and wouldn’t be able to tell her mother or father what happened.
It was so dark, with the clouds covering the stars. Kelly walked between the next two hills, coming out on a small valley floor a hundred yards across. Not many trees, but some cactus and yuccas, and a few cedars. The short, springy turf of buffalo grass made walking easier, at least until the grass ran out and fist-sized rocks covered the ground.
Kelly’s legs stung in several places where she’d run into cactus and the spines broke off in her shins. She had not been aware of it at the time. Keeping up a steady pace took her to an area where cedar bushes had been killed and lay like grey broken bones on the ground. It meant someone had been here and that meant she might get some help. Her hopes lifted and she continued, still not able to tell which direction she walked because the clouds obscured the stars. Kelly knew she wanted to go south, and if the stars ever broke through, she could find the big dipper and from there, the north star.
She stopped again and sat on a boulder to take off her jeans to remove the small spines. Kelly used the edge of a broken piece of flint to scrape across her skin, like putting butter on bread. Ten minutes later she had most of them out, with a few in too deep to remove. Kelly pulled up her pants and stood on wobbly legs. She felt weak and tired.
The eleven-year-old began to weep. A voice said, “Kelly?” and she almost jumped out of her skin. Consuela appeared out of the darkness, and Kelly hugged her so tight that neither could breath.
Consuela said, “I didn’t even see you. I was still lost and then I heard you cry and recognized you.”
Kelly felt hope again. “Is anybody else with you?”
“No, I watched from a hill and saw them get captured again. They wouldn’t run far enough.” She looked around, “Didn’t you get away with Bobbi?”
“They killed her. Kit killed her with a knife.” Even in the dark, Kelly saw Consuela’s shock at the news.
“Oh my gosh.”
They sat together in silence for several minutes, each deep in their own thoughts. Kelly felt the wind change, and some of the overhead clouds parted. She looked up to see the big and little dippers revealed, and she smiled. Now she knew. She stood and said, “Come on, we go this way.”
They followed small game trails and other, larger ones left by livestock, but the two girls always pushed south, even though they felt ready to drop. An hour later, Kelly noticed a deep overhang at the edge of several cedar bushes.
She inspected it, although there was no light, and felt it was safe and a good place to hide for the night. “Let’s bring some grass and stuff in here and make beds for the night. We can put cedar branches down and they’ll smell good, too.”
Consuela said, “Where did you learn all that?”
“From my mom and dad. We used to go camping a lot.”
The two girls worked for half an hour and soon had beds side by side under the shelter of the rock above them. Consuela lay down and fell asleep in moments.
Kelly, exhausted as she was, couldn’t stop her mind from racing. She tried to control her emotions and not weep for her mother or for Bobbi, but was only slightly successful.
The other thoughts that filled her mind were imaginary images of strong men wearing badges, finding her and protecting her. She said a little prayer that it might happen soon, before they were found by the kidnappers. When she finally slept, she dreamed of a hazy figure coming at a run through fire and smoke to rescue her.
Chapter 6
Hunter drank coffee and ate three chorizo and egg breakfast tacos at the kitchen table as Norma said, “We have four now, two teams that’ll work your info.”
Hunter said, “That ought to be enough, especially if the kids are drugged like Anita was. Remind the guys that Paco is packing.”
“I will. I expect he’ll bring some help over to load the kids into that white van we spotted in the cane this morning.”
“That would be smart on his part.”
Norma reached in her small canvas bag, the one the Agents called a trique bag. It was an inside joke because the Spanish word triques meant “tricks”, and so the bag was a bag of tricks. It carried everything from lunches, to spare handcuffs and flexcuffs to extra ammo, batteries, flashlights, and other things.
Norma pulled a small scanner out of her bag and handed it to Hunter. “It’s on our channel so you can monitor things while this goes down. Are you going to be by the highway?”
“Somewhere around there. I don’t want to get too close and spoil the surprise.”
Norma left to get with her team for muster at the station while Hunter ate another breakfast taco. When she finished, she took the scanner, a snickers bar, and one of Norma’s old canteens full of water and climbed into her pickup, driving out Highway 90 to the area to be worked, the same area where the kidnappers came from when they abducted Anita.
She listened to the talk on the scanner, hearing the team arrive and hide their vehicles before proceeding on foot into the cane jungle.
Hunter found a good place to park behind an old, half-collapsed wooden shed of gray weathered wood and two-by-fours. She sipped water and listened, so antsy she couldn’t sit still because she wanted to be in on it.