Finley pointed. ‘Hey. A critter. Toes up.’
Vivian covered her mouth and turned away fast.
‘Probably a raccoon,’ Cora said.
‘Should we fish it out and take it along for lunch?’
Cora and Abilene stared at her.
Finley shrugged. ‘Guess not.’
Walking away from the pool, Abilene realized that she’d been holding her breath. She inhaled. The air was fresh and sweet. But the smell of rot and the image of the dead animal seemed to be stuck inside her head. A raccoon? It might’ve been a dog. She wondered if it had jumped into the pool on purpose. Maybe it saw something appetizing down there, leaped in, and found itself trapped. Or it might’ve been careless, gotten too close and fallen off the edge. Maybe someone had killed it, then thrown it in.
Could’ve been Helen down there, she thought.
But it wasn’t.
Finley has to be right: Helen wasn’t killed. For whatever reason, she was taken prisoner. Abducted. Led away.
Why?
As Abilene wondered about it, Cora led them to the border of the forest at about the same place where the kid had rushed in yesterday afternoon. She was glad to get out of the sunlight. But the hot air felt motionless and moist.
Cora stepped around a clump of bushes and halted. ‘A trail,’ she muttered.
‘All right!’ Finley said.
The footpath was barely visible, a narrow strip of matted leaves and undergrowth winding away from them. It didn’t look as if it had been heavily used. It might’ve been made by a lone person trampling over the same area every once in a while. A couple of times a day. Maybe only a few times each week.
‘This must be the path the kid takes,’ Cora said.
‘I’d bet on it,’ Finley said.
Abilene wondered why they hadn’t found a similar track leading across the field from here to the lodge. Maybe once clear of the forest, however, the kid altered his route often enough to avoid making a trail.
Single file, Cora going first, they began to follow the path.
Helen might’ve walked over this same ground just a couple of hours ago, Abilene thought. It was probably the way Finley suggested: more than just the kid taking her away. He and some friends. One guy just couldn’t have handled someone as big as Helen. Not the kid, anyway. He’d been fairly small and thin. So he must’ve had help. Even if there’d been several attackers, however, it didn’t seem likely that they would’ve carried Helen away. They took her, but didn’t hurt her. Didn’t hurt her so much, at least, that she wouldn’t be able to walk under her own power.
Could’ve been just one guy, Abilene thought. If he had a gun. Threatened to shoot her if she didn’t cooperate.
‘I hope he doesn’t have a gun,’ she said.
Finley glanced back at her. ‘That’d sure be the pits, huh?’
‘Gun or not,’ Cora said, ‘we’re gonna have to take him by surprise. Sneak up on him. So maybe we’d better keep quiet for a while.’
‘They’ve got an awfully big head-start,’ Finley pointed out.
‘Yeah,’ Cora said. ‘And they might’ve stopped anywhere. For all we know, they’re ten feet away from us right now.’
‘Do you think we should try calling out?’ Vivian asked.
Cora and Finley, in unison, said, ‘No.’
After that, they stopped talking. Abilene, at the rear, listened for sounds of voices or movement in the woods around her. She peered through breaks in the trees. For a while, she held onto hopes of spotting Helen off in the shadows. Then she began to hope that she wouldn’t. If Helen were out here, she might be on the ground. Sprawled motionless. Left behind. Discarded like trash.
Afraid to keep looking, Abilene turned her eyes to those in front of her.
Cora’s head kept swiveling. Her short hair, the color of dry hay on top, was dark around her ears and neck where it clung to her skin in wet points and Curls. Her tank top was sodden. Her tanned shoulders looked greasy with sweat. The seat of her red shorts looked molded to her buttocks.
By comparison, Vivian appeared almost cool in her white knit shirt and shorts. But the back of her shirt was pasted to her skin. It took on the contours of her shoulder blades and rib cage. Abilene could see the straps of her bra through the thin fabric.
Finley, just in front of Abilene, wore her baggy shirt with its tails hanging out. It looked dark as rawhide down to her hips. There, where the shirt overlapped her shorts, it was still dry and its usual tan color.
We’ll be lucky if we don’t all collapse, Abilene thought.
Though her head seemed clear, she felt hot and filthy and miserable.
She wished she’d worn socks. She didn’t like the slimy feel of her moccasins against the bottoms of her feet.
Her denim skirt was damp and thick and heavy, but at least it was very short and air came up from below. Her panties, bra and blouse were wet and clinging. After a while, she asked the others to wait. She clamped the cool, wet pack of hot dogs between her thighs, peeled off her blouse and removed her bra. It felt good to be free of the hot, confining straps and cups. She folded the bra, tucked it under the waistband of her skirt, then struggled back into her blouse. As she fastened a couple of its buttons, Finley set down the water bottle and bag of chips. She pulled the pack of hot dogs from between Abilene’s legs.
‘Let’s go ahead and eat these suckers,’ she said. ‘I’m starving.’
‘Just a short break,’ Cora said.
Finley peeled open the plastic wrapper. She slipped out a wiener, poked it into her mouth, and held the package while the others helped themselves. ‘Gourmet breakfast,’ she said, her words garbled, the end of the frank bobbing and wiggling.,
Abilene took a bite of the hot dog she’d taken. It was warm, moist, mushy. It tasted okay, but she suddenly felt sick as she remembered dinner last night. The sizzling dogs had tasted wonderful, then. Helen had wanted the last one. They hadn’t allowed her to eat it. They’d passed it around, instead, ‘helping’ Helen with her diet.
Abilene’s throat went tight.
God, she wished they’d let her have it. It might’ve been the last hot dog she would ever get a chance to eat.
She’s all right. She’s gotta be all right.
Abilene had a very hard time swallowing, but she managed to finish her hot dog, washing it down with a lot of water. Finley offered her another.
‘No thanks.’
‘Go ahead. Two each, then we can toss the package.’
‘Maybe we should save a couple for Helen.’
Finley looked as if she felt a sudden pain. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and nodded. Cora, about to bite into her second hot dog, slipped it back into the wrapper in Finley’s hand.
Nobody ate a second one.
Finley shook some juice out of the pack, then folded it carefully and slipped it into a deep pocket of her shorts.
They all drank some more water, then resumed their trek through the woods.
Soon, they came to a split in the trail. One path veered off to the right and the other continued straight ahead.
‘Now what?’ Vivian asked.
‘Flip a coin?’ Finley suggested.
‘We can come back to this if we don’t find anything,’ Cora said.
They stuck to the original path and soon came to a lake. An old, weathered dock reached out from its shore. Off the end of the dock was a diving platform that floated at such an angle that one corner dipped into the water. Apparently, one of the drums buoying it up had sprung a leak.
Abilene supposed this must be the lake Helen had told them about. Somewhere near its shores, the hunters had killed that girl.
The lake was bigger than she’d pictured it. Maybe a quarter of a mile wide and twice that long. She saw no boats on its surface. No other docks. No dwellings along its shores. No people. In spite of its blue, glinting surface and the lush beauty of the forest surrounding it, the lake seemed forbidding. An alien, ominous place.