Finding His Child

      Tracy Montoya

      

      Contents

       CAST OF CHARACTERS

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

      To Tom and Troy Rysavy, so you’ll quit nagging me about not dedicating—Ahem. To the coolest, sweetest, best brothers ever. Love you guys!

      CAST OF CHARACTERS

      Sabrina Adelante—Port Renegade National Park’s lead search-and-rescue tracker, Sabrina has long carried Rosie Donovan’s disappearance on her conscience because she had to call off the search when it reached a dead end.

      Aaron Donovan—The police detective knows in his gut that his missing daughter is still alive, and he’ll do anything to find her.

      Rosie Donovan—The daughter of Aaron Donovan who went missing while hiking in Renegade Ridge State Park six months ago.

      Tara Fisher—When the Port Renegade High School student disappears while hiking, Sabrina and Aaron wonder if it might be connected to Rosie.

      Jessie DiCosta and Alex Gray—The other two members of Sabrina’s tracking team, Jessie and Alex are also her good friends.

      Skylar Jones—The liaison between the Park Rangers and the search-and-rescue trackers, Skylar is responsible for coordinating searches for people missing inside the Park.

      Eddie Ventaglia—Aaron’s partner on the police force, Eddie is also Rosie’s godfather—and he holds a grudge against Sabrina for calling off the search for her.

      Mary Beth Peterson—A “floating” psychiatrist who serves the Port Renegade Police department, Mary Beth won’t let Aaron disappear into his grief.

      The Overman—A predator who’s behind the disappearances of at least three young women from Port Renegade State Park.

      Chapter One

      Sabrina Adelante’s sturdy Casio Pathfinder watch beeped once on the hour, the shrill noise causing her skin to prickle with restless anxiety.

      Time was working against one very young and very lost girl, and even her watch had something to say about that.

      Time, and some idiot at the Port Renegade PD. Tara Fisher had been missing for nearly two hours inside the state park. Two hours before the police had thought to call in the park search-and-rescue unit—never mind that the hiking trails on which Tara had disappeared were as familiar as breathing to every member of the SAR team. Two hours during which Tara, walking at an average pace, could cover about five miles.

      Given that Tara could have traveled in any direction from point last seen, or PLS, their search area was a circle with a radius of five miles and, as any geometry student could tell you, an overall area of nearly eighty miles.

      Damn the Port Renegade Police to hell.

      With a snap of her wrist, Sabrina wrenched the steering wheel to the right, executing a too-quick turn into the parking area at the Black Wolf Run trailhead and sending a spray of gravel into the air. She barely registered the sound of tiny stones raining against her shiny black paint job as she stomped on the brake, bringing the car to a skidding halt.

      Muttering a few Spanish curses that years ago would have had her mother stuffing a bar of soap in her mouth, Sabrina angrily kicked open the Jeep’s door. As she stepped out, Alex Gray and Jessie DiCosta, the other two members of her tracking team, jogged across the parking lot to greet her. She gave them a quick nod of acknowledgment as she hefted her bulging backpack in front of her to rummage through it.

      When the two of them reached the Jeep, Alex reached inside its open back to pull her walking stick out, just as he had a hundred times before. “Here you go, beautiful.” Holding the stick out with one hand, he used the other to readjust the backward Mariners baseball cap that had already flattened his short, dark hair. He wore the thing so often, it was a wonder it hadn’t fused to his head.

      She glared at him while leaning her body against the driver’s-side door until it closed with a heavy click. Normally she would have laughed or at least snorted at the “beautiful”—her mom had always said Alex would flirt with a broom in a dress if one presented himself. Today, she merely smacked the sheet of paper she’d dug out of her pack against his chest, leaving him scrambling to grab it when she let go. She tucked her stick under her arm and then handed a second sheet to Jessie, who’d been quietly waiting beside her.

      And then her skin started to prickle and crawl with the peculiar kind of restlessness that her family generally referred to as “ants-in-her-pants syndrome.” Whatever they wanted to call it, all she knew was that her body needed to be in motion, because standing still in the parking lot had suddenly become unbearable. Knowing Jess and Alex would understand, Sabrina pulled her pack onto her shoulders and started off toward the trailhead without another word.

      A few seconds later, Jessie came up beside her, her long, athletic legs matching Sabrina’s stride for stride and then some. She reached out with one pale, freckle-dotted hand and untwisted one of the shoulder straps of Sabrina’s backpack as they walked. “Jacket?” She motioned with her head back toward the Jeep, then caught her shoulder-length blond hair in her hands, tying it up with a rubber band into a messy knot. “Smells like rain.”

      Sabrina slanted a glance at Jess and kept moving, her hiking boots crunching down hard on the gravel as she headed toward where the trailhead sat enshrouded by a thick cluster of hemlock and giant sequoias. “Screw the jacket,” she said, then immediately regretted her harsh tone. While she didn’t mean to direct her anger at Jessie, she knew her tracking partner well enough to know that her colleague’s sweet nature also came with a highly sensitive side. “But thank you,” she added.

      Alex whistled as he jogged up to take his place on Sabrina’s other side. “Damn, you’re tense today. Whaddup, boss?”

      “We’re looking for Tara Fisher.” All three of them were finally on the move, but that fact did little to settle the butterflies of anxiety knocking against Sabrina’s rib cage. “Senior at Port Renegade High. She’s five foot one, weighs 110 pounds, and is wearing a navy-blue zip-up sweatshirt and jeans. Her point last seen is Hot Spring Seven, which is where she and her friend Paula Rivers were soaking when she decided to try to find a sweet spot on the mountain where her cell phone might work. Paula said she waited about twenty minutes and then tried to look for Tara, but she never found her.”

      Hot Spring Seven was one of at least twenty hotspring pools along Black Wolf Run, an intermediate five-mile hiking trail that wound up the first third of Renegade Ridge, through what was arguably one of Washington state’s most beautiful forests. The springs—some hidden, others out in plain view—were what made Black Wolf Run one of the more popular trails in the whole fourteen hundred square miles of Renegade Ridge State Park. Despite the unpredictable terrain in the park, visitors