Page 65 of High Country Escape
The ambulance arrived and Ledger, accompanied by Ryker and Gage, was transported to the hospital in Junction. Shane and Jake took the woman, who had refused to give her name, into the sheriff’s department for booking.
Aaron and Travis surveyed the bloody living room of the trailer. “Do you think he was telling the truth?” Aaron asked. “About killing Roxanne?”
“I don’t know,” Travis said. “But someone stabbed him in the eye and I don’t think it was the woman we just arrested.”
“Roxanne would have fought back,” Aaron said. “At least, I think she would.”
“We need to look for her,” Travis said. “We won’t know for sure she’s dead until we find her body.”
Chapter Seventeen
The day after Roxanne’s disappearance a mandatory training session for search and rescue volunteers was scheduled. Dalton had no plans to go, but Carter and Bethany appeared in the doorway of his room shortly before 6:00 p.m. “I’ve got your pack right here,” Carter said, and hefted the backpack Dalton had assembled with first aid supplies, extra food and clothing, and other supplies he might need on a search and rescue mission.
“And I’ve got your jacket,” Bethany said. She tossed him the blue-and-yellow jacket with SAR across the chest and back.
Dalton looked down at the jacket bunched in his hands. “I’m not going tonight,” he said.
“The meeting is mandatory,” Carter said.
“You’re not helping anyone, holed up in this room moping,” Bethany said. “Come with us and get out of your own head for a while.”
He wanted to protest. To shout at her, even. It would feel good to be angry with someone besides himself. But he couldn’t summon the strength. Instead, he followed his brother and sister out to Bethany’s Subaru. “I’ll wait in the car when we get there,” he said.
But when they arrived at search and rescue headquarters, he followed his siblings inside. His fellow volunteers greeted him when he entered. They didn’t stare or murmur expressions of sympathy or ask him what had happened the day before in the mountains. They treated him the same way they treated himevery time he saw them—as another member of the team. As if they trusted him with their lives and the lives of others.
“Tonight’s topic is assessing and treating compound fractures.” Danny spoke from the front of the room.
But before he could elaborate, alerts started going off all over the room. Dalton pulled out his phone and stared at the message from the search and rescue app. “This says someone reported a distress signal from the cliffs over by Cub Creek,” Caleb said.
Danny was on the phone. When he ended the call, he said. “Someone saw SOS flashing from the cliffs above Cub Creek about 6:00 p.m.,” he said. “They tried to spot whoever it was through binoculars, but the terrain in there is so heavily wooded, they couldn’t make out anything.”
“Where is Cub Creek?” Dalton asked. He thought he knew the area around Eagle Mountain pretty well by now, but this was a new one to him.
“East of here,” Grace said. “There’s a trailhead at the end of Forest Road 4624 for a couple of trails in that area, but I don’t think they’re very popular. It’s pretty dense forest in there.”
“I have the details about the location of the person who called this in,” Danny said. “We’ll have to go around the long way. The sheriff’s department says they’ve closed off the forest service road because of an incident.”
“What kind of incident?” Carter asked.
“Don’t know. But we can get to where we need to go if we cut over on County Road 7, then across the Everson Ranch. We’ll start there and see if we can see anything.”
Chairs scraped and papers rustled and everyone present prepared to respond to the call. Dalton put on his jacket, slipped on his pack and joined the line of volunteers transferring rescue gear to their vehicles. He rode with Carter, Bethany and Caleb to a ranch gate, where a man in a buff-colored Stetson unlocked the gate and let them in. From there they followed a narrowdirt track up a slope and into the woods, and stopped beside a shallow creek.
Danny pulled out a portable spotlight, equipped with a movable cover. “From the description the caller gave, they saw the signaling up there somewhere,” he said. He switched on the light, then aimed it at what to Dalton looked like a steep, tree-covered slope. Three short bursts of light. Three longer bursts. Three short bursts.
They waited. A cry rose up when a light flashed in answer. Three short, three long, three short.
Someone pulled out a map and spread it on the hood of the rescue vehicle. Tony sketched out a route to take them to the ledge. “We’ll need to cross the creek and bushwhack up the slope,” he said.
“We need a couple of people in front with chain saws, with people behind them to move the brush out of the way,” Danny said. “Tony and Harper, you get the medical gear and be ready to hustle up to that ledge. The rest of us will follow. And be careful.”
Something in his voice made them all freeze and look at him. “Something wrong?” Sheri asked.
“I’m just thinking there’s still a fugitive loose out there,” Danny said. “We don’t want to risk walking into a trap.”
Dalton walked over and pulled a chain saw from the back of the rescue vehicle. “I’ll go first,” he said. If William Ledger was up there, he’d welcome the chance to be the first to confront him.
It took an hour of cutting and clearing brush to reach the ledge where the light continued to flash periodically. Dalton remained at the front of the group, still carrying the heavy chain saw, when they emerged at one side of the ledge. At first, he didn’t see anyone. Then someone stepped from the shadows. “Dalton,” Roxanne said.