“Lei,” Kara calls.
“I’m here,” I yell back.
We call out until she finally manages to locate me. She flashes the light around the area I’m standing in, but Emily isn’t anywhere. She managed to outrun me in the dark and unless she’s standing very still and hiding, then it’s safe to say she’s now gone.
“She’s gone,” I say, exhaling as I try to look for signs of anything.
But I can’t see a damned thing.
“She has no flashlight, she couldn’t have gone far,” Kara says. “Come on.”
“She took her pack, she would have more in there. She’s gone, Kara.”
“We can keep looking...”
“We don’t even know which direction she ran in. If we get even more lost right now...”
Kara’s shoulders drop and she stares off into the distance. “I don’t know where we are. I’m scared, Lei.”
“It’s okay,” I say, stepping closer to her. “Rhett will have figured out we’re gone by now, he’ll come looking. They’ll find us, but if we keep moving around, we’ll get lost.”
“She’s going to get away.”
“She won’t. Emily thinks she has a plan, but she’ll get caught. You have to believe she’ll get caught. We’ll call the police as soon as we can.”
“Do you think she dropped our phones when she was rummaging through that pack?”
I hope so. “Let’s go back and have a look.”
We manage to find the area we just came from, but the only thing on the ground is a few snack bars, a bottle of water and a set of keys. No phones. Kara sits down by the tree, putting the flashlight in an upright position so we can both see. I sit down, too, handing her a snack bar. “At least we have food, right?” I say lightly.
She takes it off me. “I just can’t get over it. Emily. It seems like a nightmare. She’s a good person, I just don’t know why she would ever hurt someone and do a runner. It just doesn’t seem right...”
I shuffle closer to her, taking her hand. “I know. It doesn’t mean that she’s a bad person, she’s a scared person, a person who made a mistake, but she didn’t hurt us just now and she could have.”
“I know,” Kara sighs. “It’s just so sad that she didn’t choose to come forward. I always thought of her as the person who did the right thing, she always had our back, she was always pushing us to do better...”
I squeeze her hand.
The sound wolves howling has me shuffling a whole lot closer to her.
“Were those wolves?” she squeaks. “That sounded really close.”
Another howl.
It does sound super close.
My heart slams against my ribcage as I lean forward and say, “Maybe we should turn this light off.”
“Or climb the tree?” Kara says, her voice shaky. “Can we climb?”
We can climb.
I take the flashlight and shine it around the trees until I see one into which we could potentially get. I point to it and Kara gets to her feet quickly as the sound of another howl echoes through the night. I pick up the bottle of water, the keys and my snack bar and then we both rush over to it.
I hold the light for her as she uses the low lying branches to hoist herself up. When she is high enough that she’s satisfied, she reaches for the flashlight and holds it for me as I climb. When we’re on the thick branch, I do feel a little safer. I get into a comfortable-ish position with my side against the trunk, my feet dangling. Kara squishes in next to me.
“How long do you think it’ll take Rhett to find us?” she asks.
“It’s hard to know, we walked a good long time and I have no idea which direction. It might not be until morning light.”
“We have to stay here all night?”
“It’ll be okay.”
God.
I hope I’m right.
I really hope I’m right.
21
Nobody comes until morning light.
At least, they didn’t come in this direction.
Safe to say it was a long, terrifying night but we got through it.
At one point during the very early hours of the morning, I let Kara lean against me and fall asleep. My body ached and my legs went numb, but I knew how scared she was, and I couldn’t not let her get some rest. By the time she woke up, I thought there was a strong possibility I could lose a leg because it was that dead, it wouldn’t move. It happened to be the leg I have stitches in, too, so the pain is decent.
Still, we made it through the night and at least now, we can find our way back to the ranch.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I fell asleep,” Kara says, rubbing her eyes as she sits up.
“It’s okay, but we should get out of this tree and start trying to find our way back.”