As I turned around to go back, I slammed my toe on a rock, hidden beneath the bed of pine needles.
“Ow!” I shifted my weight to my other foot and sucked in a gasping breath. Why did something as small as a toe have to hurt so much?
The pain throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Blood mingled with the dirt. No wonder it hurt so much. I hadn’t just stubbed my toe; I was bleeding.
A dog’s bark in the distance carried through the trees.
“Max?”
The sound had come from deeper in the woods. I waited, hoping he’d bark again. Birds chirped and danced through the sky above me, but I didn’t hear my dog.
With my bloody foot still throbbing, I followed what I hoped was the direction of his bark. It definitely hadn’t been the way I’d come. I had to keep going.
“Max, where are you?”
I couldn’t keep from limping and I vaguely wondered if I’d broken a toe. Another bark came from up ahead and it was definitely Max. What was he barking at? If I could hear him, he could certainly hear me. Was he barking to get my attention? Another image of him caught in some sort of trap came to mind, although I didn’t hear yelps of pain.
“Max!”
With every step, I thought he’d come running out of the woods ahead of me. But he didn’t. Was he so preoccupied with whatever he’d chased? I had a sinking feeling that he’d actually caught a squirrel and was currently dismantling its poor little body the way he tore open stuffed toys and pulled out their squeakers and stuffing.
This could be very messy.
He barked again and this time, it was close. Another noise grew and I realized I was hearing the rush of water.
Was it the river? Or the waterfall?
Josiah had said you could hike to the waterfall from the other side of the hill behind my house. Had I really gone that far? I didn’t know the area well enough to be sure, but I could definitely hear water.
That was good. The river would mean trails and I could find my way back to civilization, or at least to a spot where my phone would get a signal.
But why wasn’t Max coming?
I slowed to a walk because I had a feeling I knew.
Someone had him. It was the only thing that made sense.
My heart started pounding, harder than it had when I’d been climbing the hill. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe Max had come upon a hiking trail and a nice hiker was hanging onto him for me, realizing that it would be easier to find a stationary dog.
I didn’t really believe that. I just wanted it to be true.
“Max?”
He barked in answer. It sounded like he was just over the next rise.
I didn’t want to be stupid, the proverbial girl in a horror movie who ran up the stairs when she should have gone out the front door. I knew what was probably waiting for me on the other side of the hill.
But if he had my dog, I couldn’t just leave him. Whoever he was, he’d already killed two squirrels. I doubted he’d hesitate to hurt Max. And I loved my derpy dog. I was his human, I couldn’t walk away if he was in the hands of a monster.
With a deep breath, I limped up the hill. The river flowed by, its waters churning as it approached the drop of the waterfall.
Max was right on the bank, restrained by a leash that wasn’t mine.
Holding it was a guy I recognized. But it didn’t make sense. It was Hayden.
CHAPTER 38
Josiah
The pine trees all looked the same.
I’d grown up in these woods, I knew how to keep my sense of direction. Getting lost wasn’t the problem.
The problem was I had to guess which way Audrey had gone.
Straight up the hill? That made the most sense. She wouldn’t have known whether Max had veered to one side or another, so getting to the top and going from there would be the smart move.
But that didn’t tell me where she’d gone from there.
The heat baked the pine forest and gritty dust coated my mouth. My shirt was already half-soaked with sweat by the time I got up the hill. And I had no idea which way to go.
I paused to look at the forest floor, hoping to see evidence of a trail. But the pine needles were so thick and long dried out from the summer sun, it was hard to see where they’d been disturbed.
“Audrey!”
No answer.
Birds chirped overhead but the air was oppressively still. I swiped the sweat off my forehead, picked a direction, and kept going.
“Audrey! Max!”
I wondered if Max had a good enough memory to retrace his route back to the hole of stink where he’d gone last time. Even if he’d started out chasing a squirrel up the hill, he would have lost it up a tree pretty quickly. Something else had to have caught his attention, otherwise he’d have gone back to Audrey.