Vicious Memories

Chapter 43

They have to be close.

We crashed through the jungle like a pair of steel-tipped arrows. Dangling vines leapt aside, hanging moss ripped, and branches swung out of the way as we whipped past. The storm worsened and mud kicked up in a chaotic spray behind our passing feet.

My head swiveled left and right, trying to find shadows that shouldn't be there, to catch the flash of a running limb. The path leading away from Shana's body was a mere fifty yards across. Alice, when I caught up to her, told me between breaths that it continued that way for about two miles. In the driving rain any trail would be washed away within minutes.

As we ran, I saw Shana's raw and ragged throat, the sluggish red blood still dripping down the sides of her neck, the red smock on the front of her torso, the expression on her face frozen in surprise for all time.

We covered the two miles in just over an hour. We doubled back a dozen times, hoping against hope to find a freshly broken branch. The sheer density of the jungle in certain places slowed us to a walk. But when we came out the other side - despite my hammering heart and the steadily mounting feeling that we had to be getting close to something - our hands were empty.

"They have to be here," I said. I reached up and brushed the hair from my face angrily. "They have to be."

The western foothills of Mount Home loomed directly above us. Alice looked up at the peak of the mountain through a gap in the canopy, shrouded by thick rolls of gray.

"There was no other way out," I insisted.

She turned. "Sure there was. They could have scaled up the cliff, or down the other side. They could have run faster than us, or disappeared into a hidden cave or crevice we've never seen before and waited until we passed."

"Or it could have been Felix."

"Do you really think that?"

I thought about it for a second. "No," I said. "That was the face of a man who was truly grieving. And his alibi for Jessica's murder is absolutely rock solid. Four people, including the two guards on duty, confirmed it. He never would have been able to make it over to her cave."

Alice hummed her agreement.

"I'm not ready to give up," I said.

"It's okay," she answered. "Neither am I."

We searched through the gray for two more hours, the world a prism that reflected nothing but dirty puddle water. It was probably past five, but the storm made it feel like midnight.

The path widened further up into the foothills of Mount Home and we zigzagged across it. The passing of another hour brought a peal of thunder that made us both jump, and lightning forked brilliantly across the sky. The tap of rain worsened again. It became a sledgehammer that shook the earth itself. We needed to find shelter.

"What about under here?" I pointed to a copse of thick trees that looked promising.

Alice looked at me and held her hands up; the wind had stolen my words. I pointed at the trees again and mimed hunkering down. She shook her head.

"This way!" she mouthed.

We could barely see through the rain. The trees thinned out as we walked, the soil broken by dark gray boulders as if a meteor shower had shattered the land thousands of years ago.

Alice walked south, leaning into the wind. More thunder cheered as we made our way, soaked to our bones, toward a series of rocky rises. They climbed fifty yards into the sky in terraced sections, a more barbarous version of the stone Coliseum.