Page 38 of South of Nowhere (Colter Shaw #5)

38.

The men jogged upstream, where Millwood found his phone to make the call and Shaw slipped the rope around the smooth-barked tree he’d originally used.

He paused, though, taking stock. He was lightheaded. Hypothermia can, of course, be fatal—simply freezing you to death. But it can also disorient you to the point of making very bad decisions, which can also kill you.

But, yes, he decided, he could function.

Now, next to the inverted car, he took a breath and went back into the water.

The passenger side was closest to shore and that was the door and window he’d seen earlier—the one too close to the rocks to escape through. So he made his way around to the other side of the vehicle.

Ah, the window was open and there was a large enough gap between the car and this bank that a person could have squeezed out.

But had she?

Now, to find out…

Reaching inside. No one in the front seats.

And the rear?

He—

Slam!

Shaw jerked under the impact.

And the big gray fish—a muskie—swam indignantly away after grazing his face.

He tried again.

Fiona Lavelle was not here. The car contained only some plastic bags and luggage. Fast-food wrappers. A Starbucks cup. Suspended in space.

He pulled himself to shore and climbed out. “She got out.”

Millwood’s eyes were wide and he looked around. “Where? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Nine-one-one?”

“I called and somebody’s coming.”

“The Lexus.” Shaw nodded, shivering. “The heater.”

“Oh…Right. I didn’t think.” He ran to the big SUV and turned on the engine, and then hit the controls on the dash. He opened the liftgate, rummaging through bags. He changed clothing.

Shaw walked to his bike and opened his backpack. He too stripped off the wet clothing and pulled on dry attire. The wet items went into a pile. He’d get to them later.

Finally dry socks and his boots.

He began carefully coiling the rope. The world, Shaw had learned, was made up of two kinds of people—those who coiled rope and those who did not. There was no doubt which side of the line he fell into. All survivalists did.

“How much does she weigh?” he shouted to Millwood.

“How much?”

“Fiona? Her weight?”

“One twenty-three. That’s why she’s going to the spa. To lose a—”

Shaw ignored the rest of the words. His question hardly was about her svelte figure; he was asking if she could have been sucked into the cave.

At that weight, no.

So where?

Shaw was looking forward to the blasting heat in the luxury vehicle.

But he realized he couldn’t indulge just yet. He noticed a glint from a nearby ridge of rock. Under an overhang was a mobile phone, backward facing.

The lenses were aimed toward where the Camaro had been, according to the marks in the mud.

The woman had been recording herself.

The device was locked but the screen showed twenty-two missed calls.

He took the phone to the Lexus and climbed into the passenger seat, where the heat cascaded over him.

The sensation was consuming.

“Found this.”

Millwood gasped. “It’s Fiona’s!”

“She was taking a selfie video, I think, about getting the car out of mud, for YouTube or something. It’s not open.”

“I know the passcode.” He typed it in and found the most recent video. He hit Play .

What Shaw suspected was right. Lavelle was determined to rock the car out of the mud trap—and record herself doing it.

About four minutes in they saw the rear end leap over a branch under the doormat and carpet and slide sideways over the brink, as Fiona screamed.

Then the sound of her choking. Briefly. Then nothing.

“The hell was she thinking?” Anger flushed Millwood’s face.

Shaw said, “She did everything right. Just one of those flukes.”

Millwood was silent for a moment, looking at the phone. In a diminished voice he offered, “I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t thinking, jumping in.”

“No, you weren’t.” Shaw’s voice was staunch. This was not a moment for Oh, it’s all right . “Now, I’m going to go looking for her. You’re going to get a motel room and take a hot shower. A long hot shower. And stay there and get some rest. Wait until I call you. Understood?”

The man nodded meekly. “Sure, anything, you say.” Millwood shivered. “Mr. Shaw, what do you think happened to her?”

“I can’t speculate. I’ll look for her and the county officers will too. Now, I want to get started. You go get that shower. You need your core temperature up.”

“You?”

“Later.”

A hot shower beckoned irresistibly.

But resist he did.

Now, he needed to follow the first clue as to where Fiona Lavelle—or her body—might be.

A clue he had already spotted.

—

A makeup bag.

About twenty-five feet downstream from the underwater cave.

The dark blue accessory was circling frantically in an eddying pool at the base of the flume.

Shaw was on his bike, driving in low gear along a four-foot-wide path paralleling the torrent, bordered to his left by the towering face of Copper Peak.

After the flume the waterway widened and proceeded west—still quickly but with less frantic energy.

Ten feet later a white sweater sat half onshore, half waving excitedly in the water.

More clothing and a running shoe. And within arm’s reach was a wallet. It contained money and credit cards in Lavelle’s name.

Another item of clothing—a blouse.

And then a windbreaker.

Stained with blood.

The path ended at a cliff, over which the water poured, a smaller version of the Never Summer cascading over the injured levee.

Shaw walked to the edge and peered down at the ground about forty or fifty feet below. He was careful, and kept his center of gravity low. He did not believe in that adage that being on unprotected heights somehow ignited a desire to throw oneself into the abyss.

He did, however, believe in gusts of wind, and today they’d enthusiastically accompanied the rain to Hinowah, California.

He believed too that, though it was unlikely, Bear might be vindictive enough to trail him. TC McGuire had not called to report he had located the man.

A glance back, though, revealed he was safe from the last of those risks.

Looking down, he saw the water cascading into a pool. From there another tributary had formed and flowed on toward Annie Coyne’s farm and Gerard Redding’s mine.

The water was covering a railroad track, and sitting idle on it was a freight train—a long one with oil tanker and coal carrier cars. Three crew members, in orange Carhartt overalls, were standing on high ground, examining the flood and probably debating whether or not to proceed. A true expert in all things train, his sister had explained that today’s locomotives were not powered directly by their diesel engines, but by electric motors; the diesels ran huge generators to provide the juice. Maybe the men were concerned about electrical shorts.

The newly formed river took their entire attention, hands on hips, eyes down.

One thing they didn’t seem the least curious about were colorful items of fabric lying on the ground and in the branches of two nearby pines, as if articles of women’s clothing descended from the heavens onto their route on a regular basis.

He walked back to the bike, fired it up and returned to where the drowned Camaro lay.

He assessed the forest and rock formations around him, noting that not a single officer had yet responded to Millwood’s 911.

No problems there. In fact, he was pleased by their absence.

Colter Shaw always worked better alone.