Carol Ericson - Circumstantial Memories

“How are you going to stay out of sight? If he knows what the Sheriff’s Department is doing, maybe he’s watching all of us.”

“He probably has a police scanner.” He smoothed her hair back from her face. “And don’t forget, these trails and mountains served as my playground when I was growing up. Nobody knows them like the McClintocks.”

“Charlie?”

“Moved here as a teenager when his father died. He’s not a local.”

Julia smoothed her palms across his chest, the anxious lines on her face retreating. “I trust you, Ryder.”

He pressed his lips against her smooth cheek. She had a helluva lot more faith in him than he did in himself, but the full measure of her trust made him believe he could slay dragons for his family.

TEN MINUTES LATER, Ryder clambered up the side of a cliff, taking the shortcut and a rough path one level above and parallel to The Twirling Ballerinas Trail. He’d traded his boots for a pair of running shoes he had stashed in his truck and crept silently along the pathway, tangled with underbrush and rock.

He followed Julia, occasionally catching sight of her red sweatshirt in the gathering darkness on the trail below him. Once she reached the clearing with the three towering pinnacles of rock known as The Twirling Ballerinas, he crouched in a hollowed-out boulder, which gave him a clear view of the expanse of ground below.

Julia stepped into the clearing, facing the fantastic rock formations, and cried out, “Hello? It’s Julia. I’m here. Where’s my daughter?”

“Over here.” A man’s voice, deepened by the acoustics of the caves called back.

Ryder’s gut clenched. The man was in the labyrinth of caves behind The Twirling Ballerinas. Had he been hiding out here all along? Ryder and his brothers knew this spot well, but not even they could always navigate their way through the twists and turns of the endless caverns.

Julia glanced over her shoulder once before disappearing into the dark mouth of the cave entrance. Ryder scrambled from his hiding place and searched for the hole that would drop him into the center of the maze of caves below him.

This guy couldn’t be a local if he didn’t know this other, secret entrance to the caves.

Chewing his lower lip, he eyed the gap in the rocks that led to the caves. The last time he’d shimmied through that space, he’d been a skinny teenager on his way to warn Rafe that Rod planned to kick his behind for not rubbing down and grooming Rod’s horse after riding it.

Sitting on the ground, Ryder poked his feet through the gap and then rolled onto his stomach to squeeze through, using his hands to propel him downward. He pulled his gun out of his waistband and clutched it in one hand and then sucked in his breath to push himself farther down. His legs dangled below him and the hole swallowed him up to his armpits.

He was stuck, the rocks painfully gouging him under his arms. His scratched hands found leverage and he shoved against a ridge in the earth as he pumped his legs. With one final push, his shoulders popped through the opening as his face raked against the rock. A sharp edge of stone caught his hand, jarring the gun loose. Ryder made a last grab for his weapon before losing it.

Now he knew what a newborn felt coming through the birth canal.

He hit the ground with a thud and leaned against the damp walls of the cave, inhaling the smell of dank earth as his heart slammed in his chest.

He waited while his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He couldn’t exactly whip out a flashlight and a ledge of rock obscured the light from the hole above. His nostrils flared. He smelled spicy cologne and he knew Julia didn’t wear that fragrance.

They must be close.

With his hand trailing along the cave wall, Ryder hunched forward and moved toward a murmur of sound. Voices. He closed his eyes for a moment, dizzy from the relief.

He brushed his fingers against three stalactites extending from the ceiling of the cave and knew exactly where he stood. A large clearing opened up just around the next bend. They’d called it Rafe’s Retreat because Rafe used to bring his girlfriends here to make out.

Licking his lips, Ryder eased forward and crouched on the ground, wedging his body between two wet rocks to peer through a crack. Even if he’d still had his weapon, the opening was too small for the barrel of a gun and too small to see anything.

Tilting his head back, he gazed at the rocks leading up to the top of the cave. There was an overhang rimming the little room, and if he could make it up there, it would afford him a good view.

Ryder climbed the rocks, his hands and feet slipping on the moss. He scrambled to the top, hauling himself over the last edge and lay panting for a few moments. The hum of voices below reminded him of the urgency of his mission.

On his hands and knees, he crawled to the edge of the opening and hunched behind a rock, peering into the clearing.

A kerosene lamp lit the little room, casting a circle of eerie, waxy light on the three frozen figures in its center. Shelby lay on a pallet by the wall and Julia was kneeling beside her. A man with his back to Ryder extended a gun in front of him, pointing it at Shelby.

Heated blood fueled by rage pounded against Ryder’s ears. He wanted to take out the SOB here and now, and if it turned out to be Charlie, he’d crush him before turning him over to the Sheriff’s Department. Ryder cocked his head. Couldn’t be Charlie-too skinny.

“Is she all right?” Julia ran her hand across Shelby ’s brow.

The man answered, “She was tired after that riding lesson and the hike up here. She fell asleep on her own.”

The man’s voice chilled Ryder’s blood. It couldn’t be and yet there was something so familiar about his stance. Ryder lay flat on his stomach and shimmied to the opening.

He held his breath as the man turned to the side, adjusting his sunglasses. When the man lowered his hand, the light fell across his face. Nausea twisted Ryder’s gut.

Somehow he escaped.

Somehow he was alive.

And now Jeremy Scott had Ryder’s daughter at gunpoint.

JULIA SMOOTHED Shelby ’s curls from her pink cheek. When the stranger with the sunglasses emerged from the cave, her fear doubled and it had nothing to do with the gun he was brandishing. If he had been Charlie or someone she knew, she could reason with him. But she didn’t stand a chance with this stranger in sunglasses.

She had faith in Ryder. She just hoped he could find that faith in himself.

Curling her fingers around Shelby ’s, she turned toward the stranger. “Why me? Did you read about me in the newspapers? Did you see me in Dr. Brody’s office?”

The man smiled and if he weren’t pointing a gun at Shelby, she’d find the smile almost charming. He shook his head. “I thought you’d regained your memory with the help of the gallant Ryder.”

Her breath quickened. Someone from her past. “I have for the most part, but there are still incidents, people, faces I can’t recall. Obviously yours is one of them…if you’re telling me the truth.”

He clicked his tongue. “I’m hurt, but the fact that you don’t remember me worked in my favor that night I tried to get you to pull over.”

“When the police told me Dr. Brody left the bar in Durango with a man in sunglasses, I made the connection. If I had pulled over that night…” She shivered and clutched Shelby ’s hand.

“All of those other tricks wouldn’t have been necessary.” He shrugged in a very French way. “But I enjoyed it. I like playing games.”

“Killing people? You like killing people? You did kill Dr. Brody, Zack and Rosie Fletcher, didn’t you? And what about Charlie?”

“Dr. Brody knew too much. And the fact that he wanted you made it easy to set him up and throw you off my trail. The idiot sheriff’s deputy discovered I was hiding out here, and Rosie found Brody’s card when she rifled my pockets after we slept together. Charlie?” He shrugged. “That moron may have discovered Rosie’s body. He used to follow her everywhere, but I have no idea where he is.”