No Going Back Read Online Free Page B

ridge.
    â€˜Good lad!’ Daniel exclaimed low-voiced, paying out the lead and starting to jog.
    For perhaps ten minutes Daniel could tell by the pull on the tracking line that the scent was strong. In the ever-thickening fog he and Reynolds hurried in the dog’s wake, slipping and sliding down a patch of scree, across an open space of knee-high heather and dead bracken that threatened to trip them at every stride, and down to a rocky stream. Here, the dog faltered and the line went slack.
    â€˜Why have we stopped?’ Reynolds wanted to know, catching up, breathing hard.
    â€˜He’s lost the scent,’ Daniel said quietly, watching Taz come and go in the whiteness as he tried, without luck, to recover the trail. ‘It happens. It seemed quite strong, but she obviously didn’t come straight out on the other side of the stream. We’ll try following the bank.’
    They walked upstream for some minutes without success, and when the dog drew a blank downstream as well, Daniel was forced to concede defeat.
    â€˜But we can’t stop now,’ Reynolds stated. ‘We have to go on. Get the dog to try again.’
    Daniel shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – it’s pointless. We don’t know whether she’s gone upstream or down. We could walk for hours in the wrong direction. We’d do better to shout for her. She may not be far ahead.’
    They shouted as loudly as they could for several minutes, pausing every few moments to listen, but the all-encompassing fog seemed to swallow their voices and no answering call was heard.
    Shaking his head sadly, Daniel put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘We’d better go back. Elena needs to get into the warm. Call Search and Rescue again. At least you’ve got coordinates on the GPS. They can start from here.’
    Reynolds protested, but Daniel was adamant and they turned to retrace their steps. As they rejoined the others and began the weary trek to Stack Ridge, Reynolds’s phone picked up a signal and he dropped back to make the call for help.
    Reynolds’s brother carried Elena, who clung to him under cover of his baseball jacket, her dark eyes just visible through her fringe. She looked cold, miserable and frightened, and Daniel’s heart went out to her, but when she realized he was watching her, she quickly hid her face against the big man’s shoulder.
    Daniel noticed that the hand that supported the girl was heavily scarred, and remembering the dog attack Reynolds had spoken of, he kept Taz at a distance.
    Back at the car park, Daniel checked that Reynolds still had his mobile number and asked to be informed when the older girl was found. Then, with nothing more he or the dog could do to help, he elected to get the lorry back on the road before the rescue vehicles blocked it in.
    Just under half an hour later, Daniel let himself into his flat, dried the German shepherd’s thick coat as best he could, fed him and ran a bath for himself.
    Sinking wearily into the steaming water and feeling the circulation come tingling back into his toes, Daniel closed his eyes and prepared to enjoy a relaxing soak, but after a few moments, he knew it wasn’t to be. Although his body was ready to call it a day, his mind was still buzzing and he found he couldn’t banish the image of the child’s pitiful face from his consciousness.
    Sure, she’d been through the mill that afternoon, and she was almost certainly worried about her missing sister, but Daniel didn’t feel that that completely accounted for the haunted expression in her eyes.
    In the course of his career he had seen countless teenagers caught up in events beyond their control and he knew the face he had seen – that he was still seeing, in his mind’s eye – was that of a child who had reached the end of her tether. Her expression had been compounded of fear, desperation and hopelessness, and to Daniel it begged