He pulled off his gloves and rubbed his face. What if this was a mistake? What if it had the opposite effect? He glanced at Hazel’s journal, then at the clock.
“I’ll sit here with you for an hour, like I should’ve a year ago. And if you need me to stay alive, you give me a sign,” he whispered. He pulled her journal into his lap and opened the cover.
AMA Chapter 4 | 4:22 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
AMA TOOK THE FIRST SERIES of rising switchbacks too fast. By the time she reached the peak, she was out of breath and her calves were on fire. She stopped and planted her hands on her lower back, stretching out the cramps that laced up her sides.
She hadn’t heard a car door close, and the trail had split twice already. Even if the guy in the van was some nutjob sociopathic serial killer, he wouldn’t find her. Plus, from what she had seen, he didn’t look like he was in the best shape. She could probably outrun him.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she muttered. Still, she couldn’t shake the tingly sensation of warning. She reached into her jacket pocket for her phone. She had a single bar of signal. “Thank you,” she said on an exhale, and dialed her assistant’s phone number.
“Ama? Where are you? The phone is ringing off the hook, and two reporters have come by for comments on the Hershaw case.”
“I’m on a run up in the mountains. I need to clear my head,” she said, steadying her breathing.
“What? Why did you—?”
“Stop talking, Lindsey. I need you to run a plate for me and call in a location if there’s any kind of outstanding infraction.”
“Sure, of course.”
Ama recited the van’s plate sequence and described the location of the parking lot.
“You’re in Tarson? Is someone there with you?” Lindsey asked. “I don’t know if you should be running in meth country by yourself, especially if you’re feeling the need to call in a plate. I know you’re a monster in the courtroom, but this isn’t your jungle, Ama. You need to be careful.”
“This is me being careful,” she countered. “I will call you when I’m done. I should be off the trail by five fifteen, but the cell service up here is crap. If you don’t hear back from me by five thirty, call me.”
“Okay. But, Ama—”
Ama hung up her phone and stowed it in her zip pocket. Talking to Lindsey had calmed her down. Nervous people always had the opposite effect on her. Whether that was what made her a good attorney or was just a by-product of soothing guilty, agitated people she wasn’t sure. Right now, she was just glad it was one of her strengths.
She flexed her feet one at a time on a tree root, excising the tension from her legs, and popped on the headphones she’d been too wary to use before, in case the music blocked out the sounds of an approaching stranger. She stopped herself from checking over her shoulder, then set off at an easy pace down the back side of the first hill.
She leaned forward into the next climbing set of switchbacks, which were steeper than the first. She felt lighter when she reached the top, the weight of pushing uphill lifted once the ground leveled briefly under her driving feet. She turned downhill again and allowed her stride to lengthen as she began the descent. The trees blurred into a palette of gray and brown. She increased her speed, thrilling at the nearly out-of-control feeling of racing down a mountain. Her arms pumped at her sides. Her pulse and the bass from her music pounded in her ears.
Ahead, the trail took a hairpin turn and leveled for about twenty yards before turning down again. She eased off her pace to save her wind for her favorite part of the trail, which was coming up quickly. The second half of the descent was steeper and cut the mountainside in switchbacks all the way to the valley floor, where Cold River, narrow and infamously deep, carved a boundary between two foothills, and marked the place where she would turn around and retrace her path back to the parking lot.
The ground dipped, and she took off, racing herself, her shadows, and the thoughts in her head until they were mostly well behind her. Only the foreman’s voice from this morning kept up. She dug in, driving herself to her highest gear. Instead of quieting, his voice grew louder.
We find the defendant guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
She gritted her teeth and pushed off the ground to leap across the tight bend. Upon landing, her left toe caught under an exposed root, but she was going too fast to control the fall. Her ankle twisted and popped. Her foot slid loose from her shoe, and she landed hard on her shoulder, then rolled down the hill until she crashed to a stop against the base of a tree.
Pain shot up her left leg and radiated across her back. She spit out dirt and debris between gasps of air. Once the world around her stopped spinning, she pulled her knees into her chest, groaning. Her ankle was fire-hot to the touch. She pulled her sock the rest of the way off. She could wiggle her toes, but the idea of bearing any weight on her foot sent shivers through her.
She sat upright and patted her head, searching for her sunglasses, but they must’ve flown off. Tortoiseshell frames in a blanket of leaves. They were as good as gone. Her earphones were looped around her neck like a scarf. She dug into her jacket pocket to retrieve her phone, which came out in two pieces. She squeezed the pieces in her fist and collapsed back onto the blanket of leaves and dirt.
“Really?” she asked the sky. She raised her arm above her face and looked at her watch. She’d been running about thirty minutes, which amounted to about two and a half miles with the elevation changes. She returned her focus to her ankle. Now that the sudden agony of trauma had subsided, she was able to move her foot back and forth about an inch. Hopefully, that meant nothing was broken. The area around the joint was already swelling, and the top of her foot was turning red.
Rustling leaves drew her ear. She grabbed hold of the base of a tree and worked herself to standing. A hiker was coming straight up the hill through the trees. He had a wooden walking cane in one hand and a large pack on his back, a rolled-up tent strapped to the top. His jeans were fitted but slouchy with wear. His black hair was short and tussled. Even in all the trees, his jawline was the hardest thing out there.
Ama blinked and licked her lips. If she wasn’t crippled and didn’t have a hundred leaves and twigs in her hair, this encounter might have gone a very different way.
“Hey!” she called out, waving. The man looked up, startled. He scanned the view in front of him a second before finding her. He picked up his pace, stowed the cane between his back and his pack, and marched the remainder of the incline.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Mostly. I’m glad you came along,” she answered. She smiled, too big. Was she glad? She was alone in the woods with a strange man, and God knew what he had in that giant pack. He stopped before crossing the trail, perhaps sensing her hesitation.
“What happened to your shoe?” he asked.
Ama pointed up the hill. “I tripped on a root up the trail. The root kept my shoe.”
He smiled. “Can you walk?”
“I can hobble, as long as there’s a tree within an arm’s reach.”
“Here.” He withdrew his walking cane. “This should work better than hanging on to trees.”