“Is she alive?” Ryan asked from beside Cooper.
Cooper was so stunned that he remained still, trying to discern what he was seeing. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement and glanced up to see two officers reaching for the body.
“Don’t!” Cooper yelled, his hand out to stop the men.
Danny shook his head. “What is it?”
“Maybe another bomb,” Jace said, leaning against a tree.
Cooper motioned with his hands for everyone to stay back. “Hold on, let me feel for a pulse.”
Silence filled the area. Not even the dogs made a sound as Cooper searched for a heartbeat. After a moment, he looked at the others and shook his head. “She’s been dead a few hours is my guess.”
“We need to turn her over,” Ryan said.
Jace snorted. “I wouldn’t touch her until someone searches her. With the bomb that was set for Cooper, there could be another one waiting.”
“True. And with the people we’re after, I’d rather be safe than sorry,” Clayton said.
Cooper said, “Danny. Ryan. Y’all might want to get the bomb squads out here on the double.”
Without question, both men did as he urged. Cooper turned his head to look at Jace. He could tell by Jace’s voice that he wasn’t doing well. Cooper didn’t try to tell him to go home, because he knew that his friend wouldn’t go anywhere until this was over.
Jace gave him a nod, letting Cooper know that he would make it. Each time Cooper thought about seeing the crowbar in the man’s hands dripping with blood—Jace’s blood—he wanted to do bodily harm to the bastard.
“What do you see?” Cash asked as he moved to Cooper’s side.
Cooper squeezed his eyes shut and returned his attention to the body. “Nothing yet. There are too many leaves, and too much mud and muck to see anything clearly.”
Brice cracked his knuckles. “Let me have a go at it.”
“Not happening,” Cooper told him. “You have your son and wife to think about.”
Brice’s brow furrowed as he opened his mouth to argue, but Caleb put a hand on his brother’s chest and said, “You know Coop’s right.”
“I have training,” Brice said.
Caleb snorted. “We all do, but you have a family now.”
Cooper tuned out the brothers and placed his hands on the ground before leaning down to get his face as close to the body as possible to look for any wires. There might not be anything, but given that the dogs had been following Marlee’s trail, and the asshole who had taken him had left a bomb on the door, Cooper wasn’t taking any chances.
He, along with Cash, slowly made their way around the body. Just when Cooper thought there was nothing, his gaze spotted the wires that hadn’t been completely covered by the leaves and the raincoat.
“Stop,” Cooper said. He looked over the body to meet Cash’s gray eyes. “Found it.”
Clayton pressed his lips together. “Dammit.”
Cooper slowly and methodically picked up one leaf at a time off the ground until he had exposed the wires. Every second spent doing this took him away from finding Marlee. And with dusk falling, he knew his chances of finding her were running out quicker than he could cope with.
“We’ve got this,” Jace told him. “Get the dogs after the trail again and go find Marlee.”
Cooper hesitated as he sat on his haunches. Mud and wet ground soaked through the knees of his jeans as he placed his hands on his thighs. He looked around at the faces of his friends and the authorities who were staring at him.
“I’ll go with you,” Cash told him.
Caleb stepped forward. “So will I.”
“Me, too,” Jace said and pushed away from the tree.
Cooper got to his feet and walked to Jace. “There’s no one I’d rather have by my side, but I’m going to need you after this. I need you to take care of that wound.”
“You’re right. I’d only slow you down.”
Cooper smiled. “The problem is you’d push yourself too hard.” The smile vanished. “There’s a real possibility I could lose Marlee. I don’t want to lose you, as well.”
Jace glanced away as he nodded. “Point taken. Just get that asshole.”
“Oh, I will,” Cooper promised.
He turned to Caleb and Cash and gave them a nod.
Clayton moved to stand in their way. “You boys know what you’re doing, so I don’t need to remind any of you to be careful.”
“We’ve got this,” Cash told him.
Cooper turned to find Ryan waiting with the K-9 handlers and the dogs. “You coming?”
“As if I’d let you three go alone,” Ryan stated with a half-smile.
Caleb let out a sigh. “Let’s get this show on the road, then.”
With a nod from Ryan, the officers gave the dogs Marlee’s scent again. It took them a few minutes until they were able to latch onto it, and then they were off once more.
Chapter 44
The moment she came to, Marlee groaned at the throbbing in her skull. She put her hands on the ground to push herself up, and they sank about half an inch into the mud as she pushed up on her hands and knees. She blinked to try and get her mind straight as she sat back on her haunches. For a heartbeat, she couldn’t remember why she was out in the woods. Then it all came back to her.
She choked back a sob and looked around. The light had faded significantly. She could hardly find her way during the day. How was she going to do it at night without a flashlight?
“I’ll make do,” she told herself as she tried to stand.
It took the use of the tree and a sturdy limb she found to not just get her on her feet but to keep her there. Then she looked at where she’d been lying. Roots from the tree stuck up all around her. She had tripped on one and then fell on another. Marlee reached up and tenderly felt the spot above her eyebrow. The moment her fingertips made contact, pain consumed her.
“Okay. Not doing that again,” she said while waiting for the white dots to stop flashing in her vision.
Marlee looked back in the direction she had come. She wasn’t sure if she had kept to a straight line or had veered off. Without a compass or anything to guide her, she could be going east or west and not know it. She’d run blindly, worried about covering the distance in the hopes of finding Cooper. Instead, she’d knocked herself unconscious.
Fury and frustration swamped her. Those emotions mixed with her pain caused tears to form, which only made her angry. She didn’t want to cry. She needed to focus and figure out what to do next. Despite her training, she was ill-equipped to travel in such an environment without a phone, or to protect herself without a gun.
But she did have her knife. She always had her knife.
With her shoulders squared, Marlee faced the direction she had been going and took a step.
* * *
“Where are we going?” Stella asked with a frown.
Chuck kept his gaze on the road as he drove. “I’m getting us out of here.”
“Then why are you looping back toward the house?”
“I’m not going to take the chance that those officers saw us leaving.”