Montana Refuge (18 page)

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

She opened the kit and the bag next to John and Andy. As she handed John what he asked for, she looked up at Tyler. “Andy was like this when I got here. The horses were gone. I assume the doctor and Julie were taken by force. Andy’s gun is on the ground beside him.”

“He must have tried to defend them,” Tyler said as he climbed down. He checked Andy’s gun and found two rounds missing. Had Julie or the doctor taken the other bullet? Andy might have used the rifle, too, the one he carried on his horse. As Shasta was also missing.

Next he searched the ground, looking for some indication of how many horses may have been involved, but the ground was a mess of tracks. He walked a wider circle and found a few headed off to the east. He followed them a few steps, half afraid he’d find Julie’s or Dr. Marquis’s lifeless body discarded behind the rocks.

Hoping for a better view of the land off to the east, he climbed the outcropping, arriving at the top out of breath from exertion and anxiety. But the countryside that greeted his gaze was hilly and rocky, dotted with trees and seemingly devoid of any life.

He climbed back down. “I have to go after them,” he announced as he grabbed Yukon’s reins. “Who knows how much of a head start they have.”

“At least two hours,” Mele said. “Maybe as much as four.”

“Listen, you two,” he said, climbing back in the saddle. “Do what you can for poor Andy, then get him into the wagon and head back to the others. Mele, tell half the wranglers to take the cattle up to the pasture by themselves. John, you and the other half of the wranglers head back to the ranch with what’s left of the guests.”

“I’ll come with you,” John said, looking from the wounded man to Tyler’s face. “Who knows what you’re getting into.”

Tyler shook his head. “Meg Peterson is going to be frantic when she learns the doctor isn’t there to help her. She’ll need you to stabilize her wrist and you’ve built a rapport with the others. Everyone is going to be very upset.”

“Do you even know what direction they went?”

“Two or three sets of tracks lead off to the east, at least for a ways. Don’t worry about me, just make sure the herd gets up to the meadow tomorrow and the guests start back today. And be careful. Whoever did this now has two hostages.”

“You’re the one who should be careful,” Mele said, her eyes flooded with anxiety. “Who would do this? Why?”

Tyler shook his head again.

John stood up. “We’ll start back to help you after we make sure—”

“No, don’t. Who knows where tracking them will lead me? By the time you get back, I could be anywhere and I have a feeling it will be way too late for anyone to help.”

John turned his attention back to his patient, but Tyler could see it was killing him not to ride along. Maybe all those years in law enforcement made sitting on the sidelines hard work.

Turning Yukon toward the east, he headed into the least hospitable countryside this area had to offer, full of rocks and canyons. Night was fast approaching. Who knew what he would find.

Julie. She was out there somewhere and he had to save her. That was all he needed to know.

Chapter Thirteen

Tyler was the first to admit he wasn’t the best tracker in the world, and as the daylight faded and mile after mile passed with few clues to go on, he worried that he might have missed something. As his gaze darted between the horizon and the ground, he tried to figure out what had happened back at the wagon.

The blood on the seat probably belonged to Julie or Dr. Marquis. He didn’t think it was Andy’s for the simple reason Andy had probably been riding Shasta. Had they been ambushed? Someone could have easily hidden in those rocks, picked off Andy and jumped out. Julie would have been driving and Dr. Marquis was no doubt as lousy a shot as he was an archer or horseman. But maybe he tried to protect Julie and was shot for his efforts.

Tyler wouldn’t allow himself to consider the thought that either one of them was dead. Surely he would have come across their bodies or seen vultures circling overhead.

He should have gone with Julie instead of riding with the herd. The switchback was tricky, and he’d always been careful to bring up the rear on that part of the trail. Today he’d been there to help Meg Peterson, but he hadn’t been around to help Andy, Rob Marquis or Julie.

Common sense said if he’d been there, he’d be the one bleeding to death in the middle of the trail, but common sense tended to take a hike when so many things were going wrong.

Night was quickly approaching and Tyler was uncertain what to do. If he traveled in the dark he stood the chance of missing some sign of a detour. There was nothing out here. Why would anyone keep going in this direction with two unwilling hostages?

He finally stopped out of consideration for Yukon and the failing light. He wasn’t going to start a fire, but perhaps the kidnappers would. Waiting until dark, he scrambled to the top of another crop of boulders and settled down to wait, his binoculars ready, his flashlight off. Unfortunately, he saw no sign of a distant fire or anything else that would pinpoint their location.

Digging for his flashlight, he had discovered the lunch he’d never gotten around to in his saddle bag and he started eating it, saving the apple for Yukon. It wasn’t until he had almost finished the sandwich that he realized Julie must have made it that morning.

Peanut butter—his favorite, made by
his
wife. He swallowed the sudden lump and stared up at the stars, wondering if she was nearby doing the same, knowing she must be terrified....

And knowing, too, that if she had to go off and live without him, he was going to have to let her. Not just physically, but emotionally, for both their sakes. He had to let her go. Finding her alive was going to have to be enough for him. Her freedom to live her life was going to have to be enough. Anything but burying her, anything but that.

He was up and going at first light after a miserable night spent sleeping on the ground. He was cold, tired, worried sick. Two hours later he came across the first sign that he was heading in the right direction and he would have missed that if Yukon hadn’t lowered his head and whinnied, snuffling the rocky earth.

By the time he dismounted, the horse was just finishing eating something crunchy. Tyler thought he detected a whiff of apple and wondered if the horse had found a discarded apple core. He looked around and caught sight of the sun reflecting off something else a few feet away. That turned out to be a foil-wrapped sandwich with a single bite taken out of it. Peanut butter and jelly...

“Thank you, litterbug, whoever you are,” he grumbled and got back on Yukon.

No way to tell if the food had been eaten today or the day before, but he was reenergized by the fact he had proof they’d at least come this way. He had a feeling he was getting closer, a feeling prompted by nothing unless it was instinct.

The sun climbed in the sky and he rode. He had a canteen for a little water for himself, but it was dry out here and the horse must be getting pretty darn thirsty. As distances went and the crow flies, they were probably less that twenty miles from the meadow and forty from the ranch. In a car, it would be a hop, skip and a jump. On a horse, it just took longer.

He knew John would alert the police as soon as he got back to the ranch or call them if someone on the drive had a phone that would get a signal. Tyler half expected to see the helicopter Meg had wished for buzzing in from the south. But the skies were open, dotted with nothing more than wispy white clouds. It was getting warmer by the second.

At last, scanning with his binoculars, he spied movement off to the north. His heart about jumped in his throat. He focused in until he made out Shasta and a big roan—Marquis’s horse, Tex. There was no sign of a human being. The horses weren’t together. In fact, they seemed to be loose, both nibbling on the sparse grass, saddled, riderless, untethered, their reins dragging on the ground.

His heart sank as he lowered the glasses. There was absolutely no sign of Julie or the doctor or anyone else for that matter.

He urged Yukon forward, eyes peeled, gun at the ready, the image of Andy’s wounded body fresh in his mind. Shasta and Tex sensed his approach and lifted their heads, neighing a greeting to Yukon. Shasta trotted toward them while the roan went back to grazing.

Try as he might, Tyler could see no sign of any human, not even a body. But the horses were loose and who knew how far they’d wandered since losing their riders?

He directed Yukon toward a pile of rocks that might afford him a little height. He had to find Julie; she had to be nearby.

The rocks were hot in the midday sun. Carrying his binoculars, he leaped from one boulder to another, climbing steadily toward the top, avoiding the inevitable crevices. When he reached the top, he glimpsed something blue halfway down the other side and instantly thought of Julie’s faded denim shirt. This time his leaps were wild as he raced toward the blue, stopping abruptly when he saw that it was a shirt, but not Julie’s.

Dr. Marquis lay partially in a crevice, his arm flung wide, a rifle on the rocks beside him. There was a makeshift bandage on his upper arm and it was covered with dried blood. Tyler knew he was dead the minute he saw him, but he still knelt to feel for a pulse, wondering what had killed the man, what he was doing on these rocks, and most of all, where Julie could be.

He heard a distinctive noise and jumped backward, almost falling as he skittered away from a sound no one who had ever heard it ever forgot.

Rattlesnake.

Even as Tyler watched, a baby snake slithered out from under Rob’s thin body and across the rock in the opposite direction, stopping to coil as it sensed his presence. Another one appeared in another crevice and another one from near Tyler’s feet. He jumped back so fast he almost fell off the rocks. He knew rattlesnakes were born live, independent, pugnacious and poisonous from the get-go. But they weren’t born with rattles and he’d heard that unmistakable sound—the mother must still be around....

What was a rattler doing having babies this early in the season? He grabbed for the abandoned rifle and circled back to Yukon in a hurry. Where was Julie?

Shasta whinnied again as he got closer. He reached out to take her reins, but she tossed her head and trotted away from him.

“Shasta,” he called, pulling Yukon to a stop. He needed to get out the binoculars and look for Julie, but he wasn’t going back up on those rocks.

Shasta kept walking and he saw she had headed toward a small copse of stunted trees. Could the horse actually know where Julie was? He sped up and trotted past Andy’s horse, arriving within a few minutes.

At first he didn’t see anything, and then he picked out a dusty, white, rectangular shape lying under the trees, its surface covered with branches and leaves as though someone had sought to obscure it by kicking debris over the top. He recognized it as one of the Hunt ranch bedrolls fully extended, zipped from head to foot. It was absolutely still and yet there was the distinct shape of a human form under the canvas cover.

He had the gut-wrenching feeling he’d just found Julie and that he was too late. He bombarded his way through the trees, arriving beside the bag without taking a single breath. He fell to his knees and brushed off the cover, then unzipped it and folded it back, knowing what he would find and dreading the moment her sightless gaze met his.

Her appearance stunned him. Damp from perspiration, hair stuck to her face and neck, she was blindfolded with her own bandanna, gagged, wrists and ankles bound with rope. But she was alive. He could see the pulse beating in her throat and the way she recoiled when he touched her.

“Julie,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

Her whole body jerked and then she lay very still. He untied the blindfold and she looked up at him, fear in her eyes turning to tears as he removed the gag. She was sobbing by the time he hacked through the rope binding her hands and feet, and then she threw herself into his arms.

He held her trembling body as close as he could, amazed she was alive. “Are you hurt?” he asked, holding the sides of her face and staring at her.

She shook her head. “I’m so glad you’re here—” she began but he didn’t wait for her to finish. In that instant he forgot his vow to himself, to let her go, and when he claimed her lips it was as her husband, the man who loved her and needed her.

She tasted as sweet as she always did, and the desperation in her kisses instantly hiked up his libido. He wanted to possess her, right that moment and forever....

She broke away but clung to him as though he was a life preserver. “We have to get out of here,” she whispered frantically against his neck. “Now, before he comes back.”

“Before who comes back?” Tyler asked, looking beyond her to the three horses who by their calm demeanor suggested no one new was approaching. “Julie, who is behind all this?”

“Trill,” she said icily.

“He’s here?”

“No, his partner was. Dr. Marquis,” she added, standing. “Only he isn’t really a doctor.”

Tyler stared at her for a moment, her words not making any sense to him. The man had bandaged wounds and listened to heartbeats. And yet, had he done anything any media-savvy adult hadn’t read about or seen performed on a screen a hundred times?

“I finally recognized him,” she added. “He was one of the men in the photograph I found in Professor Killigrew’s notebook. The heavy-set one.”

“But he’s as thin as a rail,” Tyler said as he got to his feet.

“He told me several days ago that he had his stomach stapled. I bet he isn’t half the size he used to be. But none of this matters right now,” she added, pulling on Tyler’s sleeve. “He said he was going to find someplace his phone would get reception. You have a gun with you, we have to go someplace and hide and ambush him when he comes back for me—”

“He’s not coming back,” Tyler said. “He’s dead.”

Her eyes were very wide as she gasped. “Did you—”

“No, I didn’t kill him. It appears he fell into a crevice and landed in a nest of rattlesnakes. Who was he going to call? Did he say?”