FF (March 2013) Cari Hunter - Desolation Point

“He’s going to find me,” Sarah whispered. “He’s going to find me before you do.”

One wrong step in Los Angeles leaves Alex Pascal scarred and traumatized, unable to continue the career she loves.

In England, a drunk driver shatters Sarah Kent’s family.

For Sarah, leaving England to explore the North Cascades is an opportunity to regain her health and her confidence, while Alex has already abandoned LA to make the mountains her home. Drawn to the beauty and history of Desolation Peak, Sarah is hiking alone when a storm leaves her stranded. Determined to track her down, Alex heads into the wilderness, never anticipating the terrible danger she will face. Because Sarah is already running for her life, fleeing from a ruthless criminal with a mission to complete and nothing left to lose. With everything stacked against them, neither woman expects to survive, let alone fall in love.

All they have to do now is find a way out.

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Sample

Chapter One
Los Angeles

Glass crunched beneath Alex Pascal’s boots as she took hesitant steps down the alley. The stink of garbage dumped and left to rot in the midsummer heat hit the back of her throat, and she clamped her mouth shut, sucking in breaths through her nose as if that made a difference.

“Jack? Anything?” She kept her question taut, too focused on her immediate surroundings to engage fully in conversation. Her radio crackled into life as her partner responded.

“No, all clear. I’m gonna double back, meet you halfway.”

“Copy that.”

Sweat trickled down her forehead. When she lifted her hand to wipe it away, her flashlight’s beam swung crazily across the brick walls and doorways that hemmed her in and provided so many shadows for a potential ambush. She had been driving back to the station at the end of an uneventful shift when Jack spotted the twins on the opposite side of the road, brothers who were wanted for the rape and violent assault of a fifteen-year-old girl. Their victim was still in the hospital, having needed more than fifty sutures to repair the wounds inflicted upon her.

Alex brought her hands back into position, balancing one wrist on top of the other to ensure her flashlight and her gun were aimed in the same direction. She approached and then peered warily up the ladder of a rusted fire escape, but nothing moved in the darkness and no one jumped down on her. Multiple sirens wailed in the distance, closing in at speed but not quickly enough to be of any comfort to her. With her heart thumping against her breastbone, she set off walking again.

A metal can skipped out from beneath her boot and clattered across the alley. She gasped, whirling around as the unexpected noise sent rats skittering for shelter.

“Shit.” She smiled ruefully and took a deep breath to try to slow her racing pulse. A second light at the far end of the alley caught her eye: Jack making his own tentative progress. She straightened her back, drawing confidence from the gun in her hand and the knowledge that she wasn’t completely alone.

Determined to complete her fair share of the sweep, she angled her flashlight toward a door that hung from a broken hinge. She frowned, pushing the door with her foot. It opened too easily, the trash that had been collecting in front of it newly cleared aside. Goose bumps prickling at the nape of her neck, she reached for her radio, but a sudden swish of air made her hesitate. She turned toward the sound, barely catching a glimpse of the two-by-four before it splintered across her upper back, the force throwing her to the ground. Too stunned to cry out, she landed heavily, her gun flying from her hand, its momentum carrying it beyond her outstretched fingers and out of sight. She saw a figure move past her, grimy sneakers with frayed laces looming in her vision before disappearing just as quickly. One of the sneakers struck out to connect hard with her gut; she moaned low in her throat, pulling up her knees to protect her chest even as a hand grabbed her by her collar and dragged her through the ruined door.

“Don’t—” The word left her in a rush as she was propelled forward, with no time to do anything but try to break her fall.

“Cops’re fucking everywhere, Manny.” The voice was that of a young male, breathless with fear but strangely laced with excitement. She could hear his feet tapping as he circled her restlessly. “We goin’ down in style, then, yeah?”

“Fuckin’ A, bro.” The exchange gave Alex her positive identification: Manny and Tomas Alvarez, the brothers for whom the APB had been issued.

Tomas’s hand patted her shirt. He pulled her radio free and launched it against the wall, where it shattered into pieces. She lay motionless, counting his steps and attempting to gauge his location. Then she twisted sharply, whipping her legs out to lock around his. She heard his startled yelp and felt his legs waver as he lost his balance. When he fell, he fell awkwardly, and landed in a crumpled heap at her side.

“Bitch!” A boot this time, smashing into her cheek. Her teeth caught her lip, filling her mouth with blood. She gagged and coughed on the thick fluid, dragging herself up onto all fours, her head lowered to stop herself from choking.

“Alex?” Somewhere in the alley, Jack was shouting frantically.

The beam of his flashlight cut across the room, but it was only a fleeting glimpse of rescue, extinguished completely when a hand clamped over her mouth and she was pulled farther into the building. She bit at the fingers straying carelessly close to her teeth and had the satisfaction of hearing her tormentor shriek in pain, but then his fist connected solidly with her face and her knees buckled. Sparks of light danced in her eyes, her head lolling forward as she tried and failed to hold herself up. Something long and thin lashed into the small of her back, and she realized dully as she hit the concrete that one of the brothers had taken her own nightstick to beat her with.

“Stay down.”

Manny wasn’t giving her a choice, his bony fingers grinding her face into the filth that coated the floor, while Tomas straddled her hips. She could feel Tomas tugging at her uniform, tearing at the straps on her Kevlar vest, and she heard him laugh wildly as he finally yanked her T-shirt halfway up her back.

“Can I? Can I?” That same tone of jumpy excitement, undoubtedly fuelled by the same liquor she could smell on Manny’s breath as he gave his answer.

“Sure, li’l bro.”

Cold metal pressed against the skin Tomas had exposed. Alex closed her eyes and curled her hands into fists, determined not to utter a sound as she felt the blade begin to slice smoothly into her flesh.

*

There was a smell of cordite and clotted blood and a buzz of overlapping voices. As Alex clawed her way back to consciousness, she could still feel hands holding her in place, but it wasn’t like before; this time their touch was careful and her own hand was being tightly gripped by another.

“Jack?” The word was little more than a croak, her throat sore and parched. She had been screaming—why had she been screaming? The answer was provided by an ill-advised attempt to push herself upright.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” She panted for air, the pain unanticipated and brutal.

“Whoa, lie still. Oh shit, just—please, don’t try to get up.” Jack’s voice bore an unfamiliar edge of stress and Alex obeyed it at once, forcing herself not to struggle as she tried to cope with the agony ripping across her lower back.

“Wh…happened?”

Tomas had cut her; she knew that. She could feel blood pooling beneath her and the draft of air on raw wounds, but she had no memory of anything else that he might have done.

“You’re going to be fine. They’re bringing the paramedics in now.”

She shook her head in frustration, which only made the throbbing in it more relentless. “Not what I asked, Jack.”

He sighed and she heard him shift uncomfortably. He knew her too well to try to placate her with platitudes and half-truths. “We could hear you, but we couldn’t find you, not straight away.” He spoke in a monotone, and Alex recognized it as a tactic that they both relied on at times, a way of recounting events while trying not to connect with them. “Manny had a semi-auto. He took two bullets, died instantly. Tomas was pulling at you, trying to use you as a shield. He was shot in the shoulder, but he’ll live. He, uh…” Jack ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. “He didn’t rape you.”

She let out a soft sob of relief, her shoulders beginning to shake with the effort it was taking not to fall completely apart in front of her colleagues.

“Did he…?” Her question trailed off as Jack put his hand out and touched her cheek.

“Yeah, he had enough time for that.”

The young girl whom the brothers had attacked had been found with the word BITCH carved into her back. Tomas had signed his mutilation with his gang tag.

“Shit,” Alex whispered. An unrealistic part of her wanted to grab something, anything, and cover herself up, cover the wounds so that no one would see them, but she knew it was already too late for that. It seemed as if half the division was crammed into the small room, and the other half would know within the hour. That was how it worked; that was how it had always worked. It had never bothered her before, but in the five years she had been on the force, nothing like this had ever happened to her. Nausea rolled over her in waves. She closed her eyes miserably and tried to shut it all out.

*

Manchester, England

It took less than a minute for Sarah Kent’s life to be smashed apart. Five seconds for the driver to succumb to the alcohol with which he had washed down his business lunch, ten for him to swerve from his own lane and into that of Sarah’s family. Ten seconds of tearing metal, screaming, and the impact that hurled her violently against the side window of the car. Twenty seconds of pain, obliterating everything else in a razor-sharp barrage. Three seconds for it all to fade to black.

*

The touch on Sarah’s throat was warm but not skin-to-skin, the sensation artificial and rubbery. It pressed and held, and then jerked away suddenly.

“Bloody hell! This one’s breathing. It’s okay, love. It’s okay. You’re okay. Shit.” Fainter then, as if the man had turned from her. “John, get the stretcher right up here. Spinal board, small collar. Pass me the oxygen before you go. Tell Control we have two Code One, one critical, one walking wounded. Make vehicles four.”

Another man answered, his voice wavering with stress. “Okay. Make vehicles four. Will do.”

“Oh-two, John.”

“Yeah. Shit. Sorry.”

Cold air flooded out from the mask as it was hurriedly fixed over Sarah’s nose and mouth. She tried to raise a hand to loosen it, but her effort amounted to little more than a twitch of her fingers. Something pressed heavily on her chest, making it almost impossible for her to pull in a breath, and she heard a panicked cry for assistance an instant before hands reached in and hauled her from the wreckage. There was a brief lucid moment in which she recognized that she was probably going to die, and then darkness claimed her again.

*

Overly bright strip lighting and an odd rocking motion made Sarah blink and squint in confusion. Incapable of processing complex thoughts, her mind gave precedence to the baser instincts telling her that she was cold and that every part of her hurt. She whimpered, her hands flexing against the restraints pinning them to her sides.

“Shh, try not to move, love.” A man’s voice that she vaguely remembered from some time earlier. “You’re in the ambulance. We’ll be at the hospital in just a few minutes. Can you tell me your name?”

He used a piece of gauze, already blood-soaked, to stop more blood from trickling into her eyes. She licked her lips, tasting something salty-sweet and coppery.

“Sar…” Her head ached horribly when she tried to shake it, though a hard collar and two rubber blocks prevented the movement from being anything more than a gesture. “Sarah.”

“Sarah what?”

“Molly…”

“Is that your surname, love?” The paramedic’s brow wrinkled in confusion, his pen poised above his clipboard. He moved toward the gurney and pulled Sarah’s mask up slightly, straining to hear her.

She tried again, each word punctuated by a gasp as her breathing faltered. “In the car, my sister. My mum. They okay?”

He lowered the mask again and leaned back in his seat. He didn’t give her an answer, but then he didn’t need to. The bleak expression on his face told Sarah everything that she needed to know.

*

Sarah’s gurney came to an abrupt stop at the side of a hospital bed. Faces loomed above her, their expressions intent, some more overtly worried than others. Several hands fumbled in their rush to release the safety belts, and she heard the paramedic tell the medical team that he and his colleague would deal with the straps. In a voice strained by tension, he began his handover as a series of jolts raised the gurney to the level of the bed.

“This is Sarah. Twenty-five years of age. Rear seat passenger in a rollover, two-vehicle collision. Seat belt worn, air bags deployed. Main impact to the driver’s side, but severe widespread damage to the car. Unconscious at scene. Rapid extrication when her resps dropped off.”

He paused while a disembodied voice counted to three. Without further warning, the board to which Sarah was strapped was lifted across to the hospital bed. Even though it landed with only the slightest impact, she cried out at the pain that ricocheted through her. The paramedic resumed his handover and she tried to listen, but she only half-understood the medical terminology in the rapid-fire list of her injuries.

“Right femur’s gone, left tib-fib. Reduced breath sounds on her left side. Complained of left upper abdominal tenderness. BP initially unrecordable, she’s had a liter of saline and it’s hovering around seventy systolic now. She’s got a scalp lac that was bleeding heavily, but I couldn’t find any other head injury.”

She choked back a sob as someone began to cut her clothes off and a needle was slid into her arm with only the most perfunctory of warnings. The paramedic drew a blanket up to cover her and then deliberately stepped into her line of sight.

“Hey there. You’re in the hospital and they’re going to take really good care of you, all right?” He squeezed her hand, the one without the IV line, and she caught her breath at the pain his gesture unintentionally caused. He looked horrified and placed her hand carefully back down on the board. “Her left wrist is broken,” he said quietly.

He stepped away then, toward a young nurse who didn’t seem to have a role in the team and was watching the proceedings with wide eyes.

“What happened to her?” the nurse asked, eager for details. They hadn’t moved far enough from the bed; even through the wail of monitors and the babble of voices, Sarah could hear their conversation.

“Drunk driver took out a car of three. Double-fatal on scene.” The paramedic nodded toward Sarah. “She’s a real mess.”

“Damn. The drunk?”

“Busted nose, minor lacerations. Bloody typical. The bastards always seem to walk away from it. The police arrested him.”

The nurse nodded and patted him sympathetically on his back. “Go get yourself a cup of tea, mate.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I might just do that.” After one final glance toward the bed, he pushed through the door of the trauma room. Sarah stared at the doors as they closed behind him, and then she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and did her best not to scream.

*

“Are you sure you’re okay to continue, Officer Pascal?”

Alex set the plastic cup back down on the table, all too aware that the tremor in her hand must have been noted by the detective sitting beside her.

“I’m fine.” She really wasn’t fine. Her lower back burned constantly, the pain exacerbated by the infection that had taken hold over the past twenty-four hours; apparently, weapon cleanliness was not something that gangbangers considered a priority. The