Dave smiled as he walked through the woods, the weight of the young buck he'd killed slung comfortably over his shoulders. The deer meat combined with what they would get from the pig that was almost ready to butcher would give them enough meat to last until next winter.
As he approached the clearing where the cabin sat, he could hear Hannah screaming Sassy's name almost hysterically. Alarmed, he let the deer drop to the ground as he took off running for home.
As he broke through the trees and into the clearing, he saw Hannah standing in the middle of the yard, tears streaming down her face, as she frantically yelled their daughter's name. When she saw Dave, she immediately screamed his name and stumbled into his open arms, burying her face against his shoulders as she began to sob.
Dave was torn between comforting his distraught wife and demanding to know where his daughter was. His heart was beating wildly with a fear of the unknown but he forced himself to remain calm. "What's wrong?" he said, keeping his voice soft and gentle, as he ran a soothing hand up and down his wife's back. "Where's Sassy?"
"I don't know!" Hannah choked out through her tears. "She's been gone all day! I think she heard us arguing and got scared."
"Heard who arguing?" Dave demanded, taking Hannah's chin in one hand and forcing her to look at him. "Tell me what happened…" His voice was still quiet and calm but firm.
"That man came back yesterday after you left…the one who was here the other day with the sheriff," Hannah told him "He said that he wanted to talk to you."
"The man that Sassy said she met down by the lake?" Dave asked. He felt his heart rate accelerate as his own fear rose. Whenever he had to leave Hannah and Sassy alone for any length of time, his greatest fear was that something would happen to them in his absence. He didn't know why he had such an irrational fear of outsiders but he sensed that somehow it had to do with whatever had happened that had brought him to Hannah and to this place.
"Why?" Dave asked in a confused voice. "Why would he want to talk to me? I don't even know him."
"He said that he came here looking for someone…someone who used to be his friend." Hannah said as she struggled to control her tears. She took a deep shuddering breath and looked deeply into the eyes of the man she loved so deeply. "HE said that he was looking for you…that YOU are his friend…"
"That's crazy! I've never met the man before!" Dave said, ignoring the pounding of his heart in his chest.
"How can you be so sure?" Hannah whispered fearfully. They seldom talked about the past that Dave could no longer remember…the life that he had led before he came to this place, or how Hannah had found him more dead than alive in the woods and had nursed him back to health with her homemade remedies and her everlasting love.
"What does any of this have to do with Sassy?" Dave asked deftly changing the subject to avoid answering her question.
"I yelled at him. I told him to get off our land and not come back. I told him that I wouldn't let him hurt you again…" Hannah admitted. "He left…but he said that he would be back…that he wasn't going to just leave. I think that Sassy may have overheard us arguing and got scared. I think she might have followed him into the woods when he left."
"Are you sure that she's not just hiding somewhere?"
"YES! I've already looked everywhere she could be! She's not here!" Hannah cried, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks as she grabbed her husband's shirt in desperation.
"She's gone! Our baby's gone!"
"We'll find her!" Dave said in a fiercely determined voice, grabbing his wife by the shoulders and giving her a gentle shake. "I swear to God…WE will find her." His sapphire eyes darkened with rage, a rage that Hannah had only seen once before in the kind, gentle man that she knew and loved.
As Dave grew stronger, recovering nicely from his multitude of injuries, he had been withdrawn and slow to trust Hannah. He struggled to remember his past, where he came from, and how he ended up on the mountain. The more he struggled to remember, the angrier he became when he couldn't. Trying to force himself to remember had caused severe migraines that only intensified his agitation. One evening, he had lost control, almost destroying the cabin before Hannah managed to calm him down. Afterwards, he had let her hold him in her arms as he cried bitter tears for the past that haunted him.
A muscle in Dave's jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth to control the rage that was boiling up inside of him. As he turned as if to head back into the woods, Hannah frantically grabbed his arm. "What are you going to do?" she asked
"I'm going to go to see the sheriff!" he snapped "I'm going to make sure that the man who was here didn't take Sassy!" His dark blue eyes turned even darker as he spit out the words in a clipped voice, "Because If he did…then I'm gonna kill him with my bare hands!"
"Then I'm coming with you!" Hannah declared. "I'm not going to let you go there by yourself." Hannah's biggest fear was that Hutch was one of the men that had hurt Dave so badly in the first place. And if he wasn't, IF he really was a friend from her husband's past, then that made him an even bigger threat to her little family. Dave was also angrier than Hannah had ever seen him. She wasn't about to let him confront the big blond in his present state of mind without her calming influence at his side to defuse the situation if need be. In her heart, Hannah did not believe that the stranger had anything to do with Sassy's disappearance but she still would have preferred for Dave to stay away from him.
"You should stay here in case Sassy comes back." Dave told her
"I'm coming with you." Hannah insisted, the tone of her voice making it clear that she wasn't taking no for an answer. It would be the first time in her life that Hannah had actually ventured off the mountain but her fear for both her husband and her daughter overrode her fear of the outsiders.
Dave nodded curtly and took her hand as the couple walked into the woods together. As Dave led the way towards the lake, they paused several times to call their daughter's name, praying that she would answer them but she never did. It took almost two hours for them to make their way down the mountain to the main road.
Hannah was frightened as they left the safety and security of the mountain, but curious enough about the change in her surroundings to look around at the unfamiliar sights that met her eyes. The large frame farmhouses with the freshly painted barns. The vast fields of crops. The different vehicles that she could see parked in some of the driveways. It was as if she had stepped into another world, a world where she didn't belong. She knew that her Dave came from this world and the idea that he might want to return to this way of life if he ever remembered his past was something that Hannah tried desperately not to think about. If he ever decided to leave the mountain, Hannah knew that she and Sassy would go with him because that was her duty as his wife, but she also knew that she would never fit into this world.
Another hour of walking along the two lane highway brought them to a small ranch style house with a picket fence surrounding the yard. As they turned up the driveway, Hannah could see the sheriff and the big blond that Sassy had called 'Mr. Ken' in the front yard picking up the remainder of the debris from the recent storm. Shyly, Hannah fell in step behind her husband as they approached the two men.
Hutch was the first one to notice their approach. He reached out and touched the sheriff's arm to alert him to his unexpected visitors. Buck looked up at the couple from the mountain, his mouth breaking into a warm, welcoming smile.
"Mr. Dobbs, I presume…" he said in a friendly tone. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"I wanna talk to him!" Dave growled, glaring at Hutch and ignoring Buck's friendly overture. He directed his next words to Hutch "I wanna know where you get off coming on my land and upsetting my wife? And I wanna know where my little girl is!"
"What you mean where your little girl is?" Hutch asked in an alarmed voice. "Did something happen to her?"
"She disappeared after you were at my cabin arguing with my wife!" Starsky snarled as he took a threatening step towards Hutch, stilled only by the touch of Hannah's hand on his arm. "And I wanna know where she is! Because if you did anything to her, then so help me God I'll kill you!"
"Mr. Dobbs," Buck interjected before things could get out of hand. "Why don't you and your wife come into the house and tell us what happened?"
'I DON'T WANT TO COME IN YOUR HOUSE! I NEED TO FIND MY DAUGHTER!" Dave yelled, struggling to control his temper. He turned his attention back to Hutch. Sapphire eyes locking with ice blue.
Hutch had seen the same cold rage in his former partner's eyes more than once in the past. He knew that he had to choose his words with care so he wouldn't agitate the volatile brunet any further. He held his hands out in a non-threatening manner. In a soft, soothing voice he said, "I don't know what happened to your little girl but we'd like to help you find her if you'll let us."
"I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP! HAVEN'T YOU DONE ENOUGH? THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" Dave shouted in an outraged voice. "IF YOU HAD NEVER COME TO MY HOME AND HARRASSED MY WIFE THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED!"
"Starsk, please…" Hutch said, using his abbreviated version of his friend's name without even realizing that he had done it. Dave was too angry to notice the slip of Hutch's tongue but Hannah did and instinctively moved closer to her husband's side, clutching his arm tightly. "We just want to help you…"
"We don't need your help." Dave repeated, lowering his voice but obviously still angry and upset. "I don't want YOU on my land or near MY family again!" When he took another threatening step towards Hutch, his hand curled into fists, Buck decided to take action before the situation escalated any further. Reaching down for the gun that he wore strapped to his hip, he pulled his weapon and pointed it at the curly haired man. He had no intention of shooting him, just keeping him back until he could defuse the situation.
"NO!" Hannah suddenly screamed, startling all three men as she made her presence known. She jumped in front of her husband protectively and cried out, "I won't let you hurt him again! Not like you did before! This time you'll have to kill me too!"
Dave stood there staring at his wife as a flood of disjointed memories suddenly overwhelmed him. None of them made any sense.
An image of Indian pottery…
A colorful black man dressed in outrageous clothing…
Flashes of something red and white
The sound of a man's laughter
Gunshots and then pain
Pain in his stomach and chest
Unbearable pain that took this breath away…
It was too much. His eyes rolled back in his head as he slowly crumbled to the ground.
"DAVE!" Hannah screamed, turning her attention from the two men that she viewed as a threat to her suddenly collapsed husband. As she knelt beside her unconscious husband she suddenly sensed Hutch's presence at her side. Turning blazing eyes on the big blond, she hissed "STAY AWAY FROM HIM! DON'T TOUCH HIM!"
Annie had came out of the house at the sound of the loud voices in her front yard just in time to see the strange man with the long curly dark hair and full beard crumble to the ground. Buck had told her about the man and his wife who lived on the mountain, the man that Hutch was convinced was his missing partner, and she instinctively knew that this was the couple even if she didn't know why they were here.
Deepening her almost forgotten accent, Annie knelt beside the distraught woman and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "It'll be all right. Why don't you let us take your husband in the house? Nobody wants to hurt him. We just want to help."
Reluctantly, Hannah nodded her agreement. With Sassy missing and her Dave lying unconscious on the ground, she knew that she had no choice but to trust these strangers and accept their help. Hutch stepped forward and gently, almost reverently, lifted Dave up into his arm to carry him into the house. Annie slipped a comforting arm around Hannah's shoulders as the two women trailed behind.
Hutch carefully laid his precious burden down on the sofa in the living room. He was overwhelmed with the fact that he was finally touching a very live Starsky again but he was worried with the news that Starsky's child was missing, lost somewhere on the mountain. Sassy may have been born on the mountain and lived there her entire life but she was still just a little girl and she was lost.
Buck quickly checked Starsky's pulse and respiration, pleased to find them both normal. Annie went into their bedroom and returned with a down comforter that she used to cover Starsky to keep him warm. Within a few minutes, Starsky's eyes fluttered and slowly opened, looking around in confusion.
"What happened?" he asked "Where am I?"
Hannah quickly moved into his line of vision to reassure her disoriented husband. "Oh, Dave…I was so scared. I thought you were hurt…you just collapsed…"
"You thought the sheriff was going to hurt me…like they hurt me before you found me…" Starsky replied, remembering his wife's words before he collapsed and her attempt to protect him from the danger that she perceived from Hutch and the sheriff.
Hannah hung her head, avoiding the curious eyes of the other adults in the room. In a halting voice, she said,
"I'm sorry…it's just…when I found Dave on the mountain almost nine years ago…he was hurt so bad. And then I saw these three men and I knew they were looking for him…one of them was wearing a uniform like yours and a badge." She glanced shyly at the sheriff. She took a deep shuddering breath. She felt Dave take her hand, holding it tightly, and she drew strength from his support as she continued her story. "That's why when you came to the cabin that first day…I was scared that you were there to hurt Dave again…I couldn't let that happen."
Starsky frowned as he looked at Hutch, really looked at him this time. He saw nothing but compassion and caring in those ice blue eyes. "My Sassy considers you a friend…so; I guess I owe you an apology too. Hannah told me that you think that I'm a friend of yours that you came here looking for…"
"YOU are." Hutch told him firmly. "Your name is David Starsky and you disappeared almost nine years ago. It's a long story and I'll tell you all about it later…but right now…we need to find your little girl."
Annie had disappeared into the kitchen as they were talking. She returned with a tall glass of spiced tea and handed it to Starsky. "Drink that. It'll make you feel better."
Starsky accepted it gratefully and took a long deep swallow. He was still apprehensive but he no longer felt threatened by these men, especially not by Hutch. He could sense the truth behind his heartfelt words. 'Mr. Ken' did know him from before even if Dave couldn't remember him.
"I'll give you a ride back up to the mountain." Buck told them "Then I'll round up my deputies and come back to help you search for your daughter."
"We'd appreciate a ride if you're sure it's no trouble." Starsky said.
"No trouble at all." Buck said with a pleasant smile. "Let's go find your little girl and bring her home."