The Courage Tree - Diane Chamberlain [139]
Whatever the answer to this puzzle, she needed to get the searchers out here again. She turned on her cell phone, but there was no signal this deep in the woods. She tried to remember the location of that peak from which she’d called Lucas, but she knew it was far behind her, and she was no longer sure of the direction.
She got to her feet and began moving around the forest, trying her phone in different areas. With every step, the forest seemed to grow duskier, and she knew she had to leave now or face a night alone in the woods. But she was so close to Sophie. She could feel it. As close as she’d been in eleven days. She would not leave her now.
Still trying her phone every few minutes, she continued to search, losing herself in the darkness and not caring, until it was too dark to move with any sureness or safety. Then she lowered herself to the ground, ready to share the night in the forest with her daughter.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
It was the early edge of dawn when Zoe awakened. She couldn’t have said why, but she slipped her arms beneath her pillow as she rolled over on the sleeping pallette, and she felt something cool against her fingertips. The strange sensation made her jump. What was that?
Sitting up, she lifted the pillow. She was not sure what the object was at first; the light was so dim in the room. But then she looked more closely to see that it was a seed pod from the courage tree.
So, that’s where Sophie had been the afternoon before. Zoe’s heart ached with the realization that Sophie thought she could give her courage. The little girl did not know how difficult a task that was.
What was it Sophie had told her a few days earlier? That her mother would be able to figure out a way to save both her and Marti? At least, Zoe thought, Sophie’s mother would probably try.
Picking the bloom up in her hands, she looked over at the child. Sophie’s face was still badly swollen, and her raspy, labored breathing was the only sound in the room. On the third pallette, Marti was sound asleep, her hand falling over the side of the bed to the floor, her fingers locked around the handle of her gun.
Zoe put the seed pod down on top of her pillow and quietly slipped on her shoes. Then she walked carefully over to Sophie’s bed, leaning over the little girl.
“Sophie,” she whispered.
Sophie started, and Zoe held a finger to her lips. “Get up quietly, honey,” she said. “We’re getting out of here.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Today was the day.
Janine awakened, stiff from sleeping upright against a birch tree, with that thought in her mind. She stretched carefully, rolling her head around on her neck to work out the stiffness. The forest was misty, filled with the musky morning scent of earth and trees, and sunlight was just beginning to sift through the canopy.
Today she would find Sophie, one way or another. It would be over.
She got to her feet and took a long swallow from her water bottle. After relieving herself in the brush, she tried her cell phone again, but there was still no signal. She needed to talk to the sheriff. She needed to talk to Lucas.
Clicking on her GPS, she tried to pinpoint her location on the map. She was five miles from the road, deep in the heart of the forest. There was a creek nearby, she saw by the map. If she were building a cabin, she would want it to be near water, she thought, and she set out in that direction.
After only a few dozen yards, her feet began to ache and burn, and she stopped walking to give them a rest. She could only imagine how much Sophie’s feet had hurt from walking through the woods, especially given the fact that she’d had only one shoe, and that thought started her moving again.
She was near the creek, according to the information on the GPS, when she heard a crackling, crashing sound from the woods to her left.
Let it be a deer and not a bear, she thought,