Thirteen minutes after he’d called, Angie was gunning along the highway, one thing on her mind.
Help her partner. Her lover.
CHAPTER 73
Maddocks’s tires crackled on the wet paving as he drove as close as he could to the trailhead that led to the narrows. His wipers struggled to keep the windshield clear of the gelatinous slush now falling. Mist drifted thick among the old-growth trees.
The Skookum Provincial Park lot was large enough to accommodate busloads of tourists who came in to watch the salmon spawn from viewing platforms built high on the rock cliffs above the rapids. It was now deserted and desolate.
A lone vehicle was parked at the trailhead—his beams hit it as he turned the corner.Lexus. The plate read BX3 99E. Addams was here.
Anxiety balled in Maddocks’s throat as he swerved to a stop alongside the Lexus. He checked his sidearm, then popped the trunk. He got out of the vehicle. Sleet pummeled down on his head. He could hear the distant roar of surf—waves crashing against rocks as the tide surged. With the moon on the wax, the tide would be pushing even higher than normal. He found a flashlight and a rifle and ammunition in the trunk. He loaded the gun and pocketed the flashlight and spare ammunition. He slung the rifle across his back.
He was already wearing his bullet-suppression vest from the Amanda Rose takedown. Before heading down the trail, he checked the Lexus. Locked. He shone his beam inside. Empty, apart from coils of rope and some other tools.
Guided by the powerful beam of his flashlight, he entered the woods and moved fast down the narrow hiking trail, his boots sucking in thick mud and slipping over areas of wet, moss-covered rock. The scent was of soil and pine and old-fall detritus and the brine of the ocean. There was evidence of tracks in the mud, but it was hard to tell anything from them in the dark and wet.
He moved faster.
As he ran, his beam bounced off trees. Shadows loomed and ducked and darted. Mist sifted through the trunks like tattered wraiths, alive, grasping for him, then retreating. A sense of the vastness of this place—the sheer size and scope of this old-growth forest—pressed down on him. No humanity for miles and miles. The trail started to rise, the incline becoming severe as he reached a rock knoll. The sound of surf grew louder.
Maddocks scrambled to the top of the knoll and came out onto a wooden viewing platform. A metal railing ran along the perimeter. Beyond the railing the earth dropped sheer away to the water. Far below him, the tide had started its push with white-capped, rolling waves marching insidiously forward, as if in a series of stairs, toward the narrow cliffs that formed a gateway to the estuary that fanned out beyond. Wind hit Maddocks as he crossed to the far railing. To his right, through the mist, he could make out the shape of the old railway trestle bridge crossing from cliff to cliff at the narrowest choke in the waterway.
Then he saw it—a small light bobbing in and out of the trees along the clifftop on the opposite side of the water. Quickly, he clicked off his own flashlight. Addams was armed with a .22 rifle at the very least. He took his own rifle from his back, chambered a round, and using railings to guide himself as his eyes adjusted to the dark, Maddocks moved slowly along the platform, changing from his last spotted position in case Addams fired blind.
He peered into the darkness and fog, trying to catch another glimpse of the light. But it was gone. Another movement caught his eye. His gaze shot down to the water below the bridge where foam on the waves glowed white with fluorescence. As mist parted, he saw a shape above the water.
His brain scrambled, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, then suddenly his blood turned to ice. Addams had used ropes. Like he had on Thetisby Island, like he had in the basement of his house—he’d wrapped Ginny up in a tarp and strung her down from the rotting bridge so that she hung just above the water. The tide was rising fast to meet her.
And he’d brought Maddocks here to watch her drown.
CHAPTER 74
Maddocks moved in a crouch to the north end of the platform. From here, an almost vertical path appearedto lead down the cliff. It looked as though another trail cut back a short way into the forest, and it possibly led around to the trestle bridge.
But as Maddocks moved toward that trail, a shot cracked through the air. He ducked. A bullet whirred past him and thunked into a tree behind him. Bark exploded. His heart pounded. So this was the trap.
If he tried to access the bridge to rescue his daughter hanging below, he’d be picked off from the other side of the narrows. He’d be shot dead, and Ginny would drown.
Or he could sit here safely and watch her drown anyway.
And hehad to believe that she was still alive.
His brain raced. He checked his watch. Had Angie managed to mobilize response teams? He was running out of time. The tide was rising. Time and tide—it waited for no man. It could never have felt more true, more stark. Mist swirled in again, completely obscuring the opposite cliff. The sound of a chopper somewhere up high in the clouds suddenly reached him. Maddocks said a silent prayer of thanks before the reality of the situation struck hard.
With the cliffs, the soaring height of the old-growth trees, and the dense soup of fog, there was nowhere to bring a chopper in.
Even so, the beat of the rotors grew louder, the sound bouncing off the rock canyon in a growing roar. Another shot rang out, and another.
Maddocks swore. Addams was firing on the helo. The chopper began to rise again, the sound growing less intense as it moved higher into the cloud and toward the west. His sense of aloneness could not have felt more profound.
Help was out there, but just beyond reach. And time was against them.
The minutes continued to tick down. The chopper was silent. He checked his watch again. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to do this on his own.
But how?
A crack of a branch snapped his attention to the forest behind him. He whipped his rifle toward the sound.
