The Soldier and the Princess

“Appreciate ya,” I finally said, holding out my fist for a bump.

“Now,” Hawthorn said, placing a baseball hat on his head. Under the Yankees logo, he looked like any other hiker you’d expect to see on any given night. Or at least he would, if you ignored the gun strapped to his thigh. “Show me a picture of your girl so that I know who I’m looking for.”

Reaching into my pocket, I draw out my phone and open the photo gallery. Inside was an embarrassing number of photos of Daphne, screenshots taken from her social media profiles, snaps of her and Penelope together, even her student ID photo, shamelessly stolen from Hack’s digging through her private life at my request.

I scrolled to one of the more recent ones, a selfie she had taken a few weeks back. In it, she was smiling for the camera, her eyes bright and her dark brown hair blowing around her as she stood by the river. I could see the Brooklyn Bridge standing tall in the background, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

I must have been taking too long, because Hawthorn cleared his throat gently, reminding me we had things we needed to be doing. Blinking quickly, I flipped the phone around to show him the photo.

“You said her name is Daphne?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, let’s get moving.”

Turning in the direction of the hiking trail, we started out side by side, stopping for a moment to look over the huge map of the wilderness reserve mounted inside a small wooden shelter. On the map, I could see the trails, as well as a few other landmarks listed in the area.

“This is a big fuckin’ forest, man,” I breathed, my limbs shaking as the sheer size of the place threatened to overwhelm me. “Where the hell are we gonna start?”

“Well,” Hawthorn said, sounding calm and in control. I appreciated the fuck outta that. “I think we should start at the beginning.” He pointed to the map, his finger landing on the nearest trailhead. “Your guy said that the last place he could trace her cell to was near here, and that puts us right in the middle of the Finger Lakes Trail system.” Tracing his fingertip along the map, Hawthorn ran from one end to the other, following the red line painted on there. “Says the whole thing is over five hundred and fifty miles, going all the way to Niagara Falls.”

“She could be anywhere! This is nuts.” I was choking, the air suddenly hard to breathe as the panic started to overwhelm me.

“She could be, man, but I think we’re close.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, I don’t, really, but think about it. The gates were locked, preventing anyone from heading up this way. We haven’t seen anyone else in a long time, and the road was really rough.” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder, pointing back the way we had come. “All the roads we’ve been on since entering the park have been decently maintained. That, to me, says that she’s somewhere we won’t find on a map, within a decent diameter of that last cell tower.”

Taking a deep breath, I tried to shove down my panic and worry, focusing instead on Hawthorne’s words. What he was saying made sense, if I looked at it logically. Hack had given us the coordinates of the cell tower, and we were as close as we could be by road. This area was full of ridges and peaks, but using the tower location as a guide, it narrowed the search considerably.

“Alright,” I said, scanning the map. “So if we base our search on that information, we should head in this direction.” I dragged my finger from our location on the giant board over and up, in a general north-east direction. “This is where the forest seems the thickest, the easiest to disappear into.” Pointing to the bottom half of the map, I added, “Down here, the trails are too close together. There would be nowhere for them to hide.” Placing my hands on my hips, I turned back to Hawthorn. “You got any better ideas?”

“Better than the two of us heading out blind into a thirteen-thousand-acre wild forest looking for one woman who may or may not be there?” He shook his head, grabbing a couple of the smaller map pamphlets and stuffing them into his pocket. “Not a fuckin’ thing, man.”

“Well, then.” I turned to face the trail, staring as it disappeared into the gloom of dusk. “I guess we had better get started, then.”