Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [91]
“I assisted with two of the search operations in Georgia.”
“You said people got hurt.”
“Yep.”
“You said he sets up scenarios like this, just to torture us.”
“Yep.”
“He’s a real son of a bitch, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Kimberly nodded. She squared her shoulders, her chin coming up in that set he already knew so well. “All right,” she said stiffly. “We’re going to find this girl, we’re going to save the day, and then we’re going to walk out of this park so we can nail the bastard. Deal?”
“You are a woman after my own heart,” Mac said soberly.
They pushed ahead into the thick, dark woods.
Footing was easy on the dirt trail. Steep, but manageable, with rocky ledges and worn tree roots forming a natural cascade of stairs. Shady, with the dense canopy of trees blocking out the sun. The heat and humidity, however, were harder to escape. Mac was already short of breath, his lungs laboring as they headed down the path. Within minutes, his face was drenched in sweat, and he could feel moisture beading uncomfortably between his shoulder blades, where his backpack pressed against his shirt. The sun was bad, but the humidity was their true enemy. It turned the high mountain woods from a shady reprieve to a steaming jungle where each footstep required hard physical effort and four hours of intense hiking would be about three hours too much.
Both Mac and Kimberly had changed clothes for the operation. Kimberly now wore khaki shorts and a short-sleeved cotton T-shirt, the casual outfit of an amateur day hiker. More experienced, Mac had donned nylon shorts and a quick-drying nylon top. As he began to sweat, the synthetic material wicked the moisture away from his body, allowing him a small degree of comfort. Kimberly’s cotton T-shirt, on the other hand, was already plastered against her body. Soon, the shirt, as well as her shorts, would start to chafe her skin painfully. He wondered if she would complain, but already figured she wouldn’t.
“Do you think she’s still alive?” Kimberly asked tersely. Her breath also came out in short pants, but she was matching stride with stride. When called upon to perform, the lady didn’t disappoint.
“I read a study once of search-and-rescue operations,” Mac replied. “Of the fatalities, seventy-five percent died in the first forty-eight hours. Assuming this girl was abandoned yesterday, that gives us another twenty-four hours to find her.”
“What,” pant, pant, “generally kills” pant, pant, “lost people?”
“Hypothermia. Or on a day like this, heatstroke. Basically, it’s exposure that does a person in. Here’s a fact for you: Did you know that children under the age of six have the highest survival rate when lost in the woods?”
Kimberly shook her head.
“Kids are better at listening to their instincts,” Mac explained. “When they’re tired, they sleep. When they’re frightened, they seek shelter. Adults, on the other hand, are always convinced they can regain control. So rather than get out of the rain or the cold or the sun, they keep walking, determined that safety is just around the corner. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do. Your odds are much better if you remain calm and stay in one place. After all, the average person can last up to five days with no water and up to a month without food. Wear yourself out walking, however, and you’ll succumb to exposure, fall off a cliff, stumble into a bear’s den, etc., etc. Next thing you know, the lost hiker’s dead in forty-eight hours, when any old schmuck should be able to last a week.”
Mac stopped abruptly. He looked at the map again, then his compass. “Hang on. Yep. We head off here.”
Kimberly came to a halt beside him and he could feel her uneasiness immediately increase tenfold. There was no clearly marked trail in front of them. Instead, the earth opened up, then plummeted down, a tumbling mass of boulders, bushes, and grass. Fallen trees lay directly in their way, overgrown with shaggy moss and brilliant ferns. Jagged branches stuck out dangerously low, while some kind of thick green vine covered half the trees in sight.
The woods were dense, dark.