Spirit of a Hunter (12 page)

“He’s not used to losing, and you refuse to fall completely under his control.” Sabriel handed her the locket, then crouched next to his pack, removed the food from the bear bag until he’d lined up a handful of small fast-food restaurant pepper packages. He ripped them open and dumped the contents on the clump of moss where they’d sat.

“What are you doing?” Nora worked at fastening the locket around her neck. Her shaking fingers couldn’t connect the clasp to the ring, and she finally gave up, shoving the gold oval and chain into the pocket of her pants.

“One whiff of the pepper and the dog won’t be able to smell for hours. That should be long enough for us
to gain some ground.” Sabriel stuffed the empty wrappers into his pack, then stowed her belongings back into her pack and hiked it onto her shoulders. He handed her a clove of garlic. “Suck on this.”

“Why?”

“It’ll help mask your scent.” He pointed back into the woods, up where the mountain crested. “I want you to head that way. It’s downwind and will minimize point smells.”

“You’re not coming with me?” Nora’s hands gripped the straps of her pack into tight fists, paralyzed.

Ignoring her question, his finger moved to an oak near the top of the rise. “See that tree with the bump that looks like a seal’s head?”

Gulping, she nodded.

“When you get there, look to the right for a deer run and keep following it up for a quarter mile, then down until you reach the stream.”

Her heart stormed. Her blood thundered. “Alone?”

“I’m going to give them something to look for.” He held up the bandanna.

“But—”

“You’ll be okay. I’ll catch up with you.”

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t
. “I’ll get lost.”

“I’ll find you.”

“I—”

He cocked his head. Voice commands of handler to dog strafed the air like buckshot. “Hear that? That’s the Colonel’s men. They’ll be there in less than five minutes.” He shrugged. “Your choice.”

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“Go on.
Move
.” Sabriel’s predatory gaze, hawk-sharp and eagle-bold, made her shiver. This was not a man to mess with. She almost felt sorry for the Colonel’s men.

Leaving his pack behind near the pepper-baited spot, Sabriel steered toward their pursuers. The crash of men through the woods drew closer and closer, jagging her pulse in a demented reel.

Come on, Nora. Move. Sabriel’s doing his part. Time to do yours
.

Screwing up her courage, she popped the clove of garlic into her mouth and sprinted uphill toward the seal-head tree, willing her feet to go faster, praying for Sabriel’s safety, keeping Scotty—her goal—in her mind’s eye.

A root buried in the litter caught her foot, and she plowed facedown into dry leaves. Searching for her vanished breath, she scrambled to her feet. A quick glance behind showed her flashes of movement. Thug or beast? Sabriel? She couldn’t tell.

Move, Nora, move
.

Thigh muscles trembling, she took off again. Breathing hard, she reached the tree with the seal-shaped lump. She rested a hand against the deformity and caught her breath. Shifting her gaze to the right, she searched for the deer path, saw nothing but leaf litter and a tight net of tree trunks.

Tears rose up, clogged her throat.
Useless. You’re nothing but useless. You can’t protect your only child. You can’t find a damned deer path to save his life
.

If she lost Scotty, nothing would matter. She couldn’t give up.

Frantic, she scoured the woods, getting down on hands and knees, furrowing through the leaf decay like a dervish. The dog’s howls reached near orgasmic rapture and wrapped around in surround sound hyper-reality. Where was Sabriel?

In her frenzy, her wrist caved into a dip in the ground, unbalancing her. She brushed aside some leaves and found an old track—two half moons kissing to form a heart. Even she’d seen deer tracks in the snow behind the estate.

A thrill rushed through her.
I found it!

She corralled her joyful shout with her hand and stepped onto the track. Keeping her gaze fixed on the dips in the leaves marking the trail, she followed one indentation to the next, up and up and up until the trail took a sharp downward shift and the gurgle of a stream filtered above the shouts and barks of men and dogs.

Keep going, Nora. You can do this
.

As she tired, her shirt snagged on branches and her boots gouged the leaf litter, turning the dried leaves over to display their damp undercover.

Might as well paint an arrow, she thought with a sneer.

Distance, that’s all that mattered.
Get away from the dogs. Get to the stream
. Sabriel would know what to do next.

Just as her pulse finally evened, the report of a gun echoed in the woods, surrounding her with a deafening boom. Her feet froze. Shaking, she whirled around to face the direction of the shot.

Sabriel?

Her breath chugged. Her heart rattled against her ribs. Was he hurt? Should she go back? If she did, she’d land right into the hands of the Colonel’s men and Scotty would become the Colonel’s captive.

But what if Sabriel needed help? He’d gone out of his way to help her. She couldn’t just leave him there to die.

He knows the woods. He knows how to survive
.

But even he couldn’t outrun a bullet.

A strangled sound escaped her. She spun around, searching through the blur of trees for an answer.
Please, someone, help me!

The choked plea turned into caustic laughter.
Who is there to help you, Nora? You’re in the middle of a forest. You’re on your own. You’re going to have to help yourself if you want to save Scotty
.

She’d keep going, make it to the rendezvous point, then she’d decide what to do next.

Move, Nora, move
.

Sabriel, please, please be okay
.

Her heavy legs balked at first, then obeyed her command. The terrain shifted, plunging her down a steep incline studded with knobby knuckles of rocks. She slipped on a slick of wet granite, landed on her butt and slid down the ravine. She threw her arms out like ballasts, praying she didn’t tumble and break something. Somehow she managed to push herself up to her feet and scrambled down the rest of the way to the stream.

This deep under the thick canopy of trees, the slant of the sun’s rays had weakened, leaving long shadows that shifted and stalked. Breath churning in her lungs,
she took stock of her surroundings. The stream ran only two feet wide and no more than a foot deep. The small clearing left her exposed, an open target.

What was she supposed to do now? She rolled the clove of garlic in her mouth. What if something had happened to Sabriel? How was she supposed to help him if she didn’t know where he was? How was she supposed to find Scotty in this no-man’s-land?

Even though her body steamed like hot coffee, the rising cold breeze dried her sweat and gooseflesh beetled her skin. She put on the fleece jacket Sabriel had stuffed in her pack and zipped it up all the way to her chin.

Where are you, Sabriel?

The longer she waited, the more her mind infected her with doubt, raising red flags of fear that flapped with dread. What if the thugs had killed Sabriel? What if the dog hadn’t fallen for the pepper trap? How long did she have before they found Scotty?

If you keep this up, you’re going to drive yourself crazy
.

She couldn’t let the Colonel’s men trap her like some sort of scared rabbit. Hide. She had to hide. A denned rabbit survived. And as long as she was alive, she could plan, she could look, she could have a chance to find her son.

Huddled in a ball behind a nest of rocks, hands pressed against the roil of her stomach, she irrationally wanted her mother. Someone to hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right. Not that her mother had ever been there for her, but that didn’t seem to
matter in this off-balance, twilight zone world. She wanted the comfort of arms around her.

The memory of Sabriel’s strong hands warmed her palm. His sure and steady gaze rippled back into her consciousness, ebbing the ferocity of her shivers.

He was alive. He was okay. He would come back and find her.

He had to. She would accept nothing else.

In the meantime, it was up to her to stay out of the path of the Colonel’s men.

* * *

S
ABRIEL FOUND
Nora by the stream, crouching behind a ring of boulders, so still and quiet, she might have been part of the scenery if it wasn’t for her navy jacket and blue pack. Fear beamed from her eyes, shot like red flares. The elastic tie had fallen from her ponytail, leaving her hair in a spiked mess around her pale face.

Balled like that, she looked small and defenseless, but even trapped, her face showed the grit of determination. The porcelain skin hid steel he’d bet even she didn’t know was there, and that quiet courage tugged at him.

Don’t let her get to you, man. You can’t afford to want someone the Colonel can use against you
.

She had no idea he was only a few yards from her, hidden by the trees. No matter how he showed himself, he’d startle her.

He crashed out of the woods, at an angle so she would easily see him. At the sound of his boots on the leaves, she tightened the spring of her body, rolled on the balls of her feet, ready to bolt.

Halfway out of her crouch, she recognized him and relief swam through her wide eyes, flowed down her shoulders. “You’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Even as she rose, her breaths came in the choppy bursts of rattled nerves. She staggered a little as if she’d forgotten she wore a pack on her back. He steadied her, the small bones of her forearm fragile in his palm.

“The gunshot…I thought…” She shoved her hands into her hair and pulled at the crown of her head as if she was going to yank the brown strands out. “I thought they’d shot you. I thought you were hurt, maybe dead.”

His arms hitched in rescue mode, but he stopped them before they pulled her to him to absorb the tremor of her shock into his chest.
Way to keep your distance, man. You can’t save her any more than you could save Anna. Stick to the mission
. “You don’t have much confidence in me.”

“I do. I do.” She closed her eyes, folded her arms over her chest and shook her head. The vibrations of her emotions rolled deep into his gut. “I didn’t know if I should stay, if I should go.”

“You did just fine.” Better than he’d expected. “You found the stream. You crossed on the rocks. And you picked a good place to watch and wait.”

She nodded, her voice calmer now. “I did.”

She lifted those big, brown eyes up at him, and he swallowed back the sudden urge to kiss her. “Why did they shoot?”

“They killed the dog.” A bloody mess he wouldn’t soon wipe from his mind. Such a damned waste.

Her eyes widened and her mouth gaped open. “Why?”

“He wasn’t of any more use to them.” His jaw flinched. So little respect for life.

“But he was trained—”

“With his nose out of commission, he couldn’t track. Taking him back would have taken too long.” Another miscalculation on his part. “We need to get going.”

“Because of us. They killed him because of us.”

Sabriel turned away from the naked horror in her eyes and lifted the pack onto his shoulders. “It also bought us time to find Scotty.”

“I didn’t want anybody to get hurt.”

“Then let’s not waste his sacrifice,” Sabriel said, and couldn’t quite tamp down the cold edge of his guilt. “Let’s go. Daylight’s almost gone, and we have a lot of ground to cover.”

* * *

S
ABRIEL STRODE
into the woods, and Nora followed. They climbed up the ravine, using switchbacks carved by the deer to ease the strain of the rise. The trail leveled off to a ledge with overgrown views of Mt. Washington.

There he found Tommy’s next sign. The crude tattoo of a mountain and valley on a leaf skewered by a stick pitchfork and held in place by an egg-shaped rock. “The Farmer in the Dell.”

Sabriel grinned. He’d thought old man Wagner would have been dead by now. He’d looked a hundred years old seventeen years ago. He couldn’t imagine how the farmer was still milking cows and collecting eggs.
Was he still plowing his field with the Clydesdale that had to be as ancient as he was?

Nora walked behind Sabriel in a quiet that was too introspective. Never good, he’d learned from experience. That’s when the mind twisted things around, made you question yourself. They had at least three miles before they reached the Wagner farm and not much light to get there with.

Keep her moving. Keep her too busy to worry about the dead dog, what the Colonel’s men were up to or the fact that he’d taken her no closer to her son than she’d been this morning. He lengthened his stride. “Pick up the pace.”

She kept up like a seasoned soldier, wringing another notch of admiration out of him that he didn’t want to give.

She’s not your type
, he reminded himself. No, these days he preferred women whose BlackBerries were jam-packed with meetings and action items and to-do lists, leaving them with little time or desire for strings, which suited him fine.

The grade of the descent through an old strand of red spruce lessened. Nora’s tired feet managed the rock-strewn and rooty ground and her breath evened out.

“I’m a liability,” she said.

She’d been one from the moment she’d called in Tommy’s chip. But Sabriel wasn’t going to tell her that. Or how much the Colonel still wanted to destroy him. He gave an absent grunt that was neither agreement nor denial and swore he could feel her body brace behind him.

“How much of a liability am I?”

He shot her a look. “You’re safe with me.”

Her head dropped to her chest. “I’m sorry.”

“What the hell for?”

“I never thought looking for Scotty would get so…complicated.”

“With the Colonel, nothing’s simple.” Or maybe everything was too simple. His way or the highway. And his way wasn’t always what was best for the other parties involved.

Anna’s face materialized in Sabriel’s mind. Her blue eyes, so sad the last time he’d kissed her.