Spirit of a Hunter (6 page)

The pulse in Sabriel’s left hand pounded against the Beretta’s cold steel. One man. He could take him. But killing had never come easy, and his life wasn’t yet in jeopardy.

The moss ripped. A boot plunged through the opening. The tip of the toe scraped against Sabriel’s temple.

Nora’s feet climbed his leg like a tree. Her shaking fingers dug into his neck, cutting off his circulation. Her chest beat like a machine gun against his. But somehow she kept her terrified sobs caged.

Something scurried across his boots. Sabriel caught a flash of gray waddling into the clearing, snorting and snuffing.

Thank you, brother porcupine
.

“Stop!” the Colonel’s man ordered. He rescued his foot from the hole and drew his weapon.

“Got something, Hutt?”

Boggs. Off to the right. Within line of sight.

Don’t move, Nora. Whatever you do, don’t move
. As if she’d heard him, her body went death-still.

“Nothing.” Hutt swore. “Just some freaking porcupine.”

“Frisk him. He might know something.”

“You’re a riot, Boggs.”

“Keep looking.”

“We’ve already disabled her car. Let’s just leave her and come back after we find the kid.”

“We don’t know who she might have met here. I don’t like to leave loose ends behind.”

Nora’s throat pistoned against Sabriel’s shoulder.

Shh. It’s okay. I’ll get you out of here
.

The footsteps faded and disappeared. Sabriel didn’t move. He kept listening to the sounds of the woods, much too aware of the woman wrapped around him like a second skin, imprinting herself into his flesh.

Five minutes. Ten.

Only when the high-pitched
chip-chip-chip
of a chipmunk resounded nearby and the watery
toolool
of a blue jay rolled above did Sabriel relax. “They’re gone.”

“How do you know?” A hint of cinnamon rode on her breath, and he wanted to taste her.

“The birds.”

Her breath whooshed in a gust. “They’re singing again.”

He eased out of the rocky fissure, surveyed the woods, then offered her a hand, which she ignored. She slapped at the dirt sprinkled on the shoulder of her sweater, making the stingy strings of sunlight poking through the trees weave through her brown hair in golden ribbons. “What if they come back?”

“We make sure we’re not here.” Sabriel cupped her elbow, aware of her delicate bones, of her heat, of her fear, and turned her toward the trail. With Boggs in the mix, finding Tommy was going to be hard enough. He didn’t need this extra liability.

As he walked, he reached for his phone and placed a call to Falconer’s private number. When Falconer answered, the wedding reception boomed in the background. “Everything okay?”

Sabriel’s jaw tensed, and the words ground out with
more bitterness and resentment than he’d intended. “I need help.”

He gave Falconer a synopsis of his afternoon.

“I’ll alert Kingsley to fire up the computer,” Falconer said. “Liv’ll have a room waiting for your friend.”

Sabriel had no choice but to open what he thought of as a closed chapter in his life to Falconer. He couldn’t leave Nora in harm’s way. He knew the wrath an angry Thomas Camden could wreak. The goons’ guns weren’t there simply to prove their manhood. Their orders were to hurt her.

He crushed his eyes closed against the piercing pain of the video he’d watched so often he knew every frame by heart—the drooping hair, the limp body, the bloody foam.

His conscience couldn’t stand another death.

Chapter Four

Nora scrunched down in the Jeep’s seat, spine rounded, legs pressed together, arms tight against her sides, keeping still and quiet. She’d spent a great deal of her childhood quivering in fear, making herself invisible, yet fear had taken on a new dimension when she’d delivered Scotty and known unconditional love for the first time.

The thought of being pregnant, a mother, had petrified her. She wasn’t ready. Tommy wasn’t ready. Things were too unstable with the resurgence of his illness and their uncertain future. Then, when the nurse had laid this innocent little creature into her arms, all she’d wanted to do was to knit him back into the protective cocoon of her womb, away from this harsh world’s dangers.

She’d tried to protect him, whipping toy trucks and Lego pieces from under his dimpled feet, distracting him from the greenhouse of tempting plants with which his grandmother decorated every room, shielding him from the Colonel’s unreasonable expectations.

Love that fervent didn’t make you brave, she’d learned, it made you afraid—of everything. And the thought of losing her son—the best part of her—now terrified her like nothing before.

Her only job had been to keep her little boy safe. A job she’d done with a fierceness that bordered on obsession. He would have a happy childhood, if that was the only thing she accomplished.

Overcompensation, she knew. For all the good it had done.

Where was he? Was he warm enough? Was he hungry?

Was he breathing?

What would happen to him if the Colonel’s men followed their orders and she met with a convenient accident?

On the verge of tears again, she turned to the window. She frowned as a road sign zoomed by. “Shouldn’t we be heading north, not south?”

“I’m taking you to a safe house.”

She strained against the seat belt. “No! That’s not going to work. I can’t abandon my son when he needs me.”

“I’ll find him.”

“His medicine—”

“I’ll get it to him.”

“Do you know
anything
about kids?”

“I’ll bring him back.” Sabriel’s iron hand squeezed hers. “Safe. I promise.”

The rigid lines of his face, telling their own tale, negated any reassurance she might have gained from the warm gesture. “Like you did Tommy during Ranger School?”

His hand shot off hers, stinging her with ripped-flesh rawness, and gripped the steering wheel as if he needed its steadying balance.

“I’m sorry. That was out of line.” Her cutting comment had hit a still-fresh scar, and she wanted to smooth the hurt. She’d been on the receiving end of cruel words often enough to know better. But her worry for Scotty trumped all and brought out a ruthless streak.

She reached toward Sabriel, but his aura vibrated with an electric-fence intensity that would fry her if she dared to cross its boundary. She folded her hands into her lap. “You’re trying to help me. And I’m being ungrateful.”

As the Colonel never ceased to remind her whenever she defied any of his orders. And like the Colonel, Sabriel was taking over without asking, expecting her to fall meekly in line and obey.

The worst part was that letting him take over would be easy—too easy. Her spine curved in as if it had lost its anchoring guy wire. She needed his help. He was fit and strong and knew his way around the mountains. He knew how to find Tommy. He knew how to bring Scotty back to her.

Something she could not do for herself.

She flattened her palms on her thighs, shoring up her resolve. She couldn’t let fear rule. Not this time. And she couldn’t continue to let other people make decisions for her. Especially not when it came to Scotty. Maybe if she’d taken a stronger stand against the Colonel’s intrusive meddling, then Tommy wouldn’t have felt he had to take Scotty.

“The Aerie’s a safe bunker,” Sabriel said.

“The Colonel—”

“Won’t be able to get to you.”

“I’m tougher than I look.” Her chin flagged up. “I won’t complain. I promise.”

“You’ll slow me down.”

The Jeep bumped over a dip in the road, forcing her to grab onto the dashboard. “I’ll keep up. I swear.”

“You’ll muddle the tracks.”

“I’ll stay out of your way.”

“The best thing you can do for your son is to let me find him. Alone.”

He spoke to her as if she were a kindergartner who was having trouble learning how to tie her shoes. Her back stiffened. “Do you know anything about asthma? What if Tommy can’t cope? Can you handle him when he’s in a manic phase? Or, even worse, when he’s scraping the bottom of the depression barrel?”

“No one can reach him then.”

“I can talk Tommy down. I can talk him up. I’ve done it before.” Like in that first year when the Colonel had forced Tommy to move back to the estate and sent Tommy’s mental balance in a tailspin. “I know how to handle Scotty’s asthma. When to keep pushing the drugs, when to ease back.”

“You said yourself that Tommy trusts me.”

“Thing is that Tommy can’t be trusted—not if he’s off his meds. What if he’s tackled a situation that’s too big for him and he’s hurt? How are you going to carry both Tommy and Scotty off those mountains?”

“I’ll call for a rescue.”

“And how long would that take?” She wanted to slap him up the side of the head. “We’ve already wasted too much time.” Why couldn’t he see that?

“This isn’t going to be a walk in the park.” Sabriel spoke in measured beats, but ripples of emotions still swelled beneath the glass-smooth surface of his voice. “We’re talking about a killer pace over rough terrain and steep grades. There are no flush toilets out there. No maids to cook your meals or turn down your bed. When was the last time you walked uphill for more than ten minutes?”

She glared at him, the heat of battle rising up her neck, burning her cheeks. “What do you think I am? A spoiled debutante?”

“I think you’re unprepared for the hardships you’re going to find out there.”

How could she be putting all of her hopes of finding Scotty in this man when he couldn’t grasp a simple concept? He saw her as a pampered socialite, but he didn’t know she’d already hit bottom once, what she’d done to climb back out of that hole. But even all of that was nothing compared to what she was willing to endure for her son. “To find Scotty, I’d go to hell and back.”

He turned to stare at her and his eyes churned in a jungle storm of thunder and lightning that made her want to both reach for him and shrink away. “Do you think those goons tracking you are just playing at soldier?”

I don’t like to leave loose ends behind
, Boggs had said.

She jutted her chin. “Would you rather they get ahead? That they find Tommy first?”

Sabriel’s gaze snapped back to the road and his jaw ground a tight circle. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

Guilt. God, she’d wallowed in that tapioca-pudding feeling enough to recognize its lumpy texture. Was it because of Anna? He hadn’t been there when she’d died in a freediving accident. Did he feel he was somehow to blame?

It’s okay
, she wanted to say.
I understand. I’ve been there
. But he would think she was weak, and he needed to think of her as strong.

“When was the last time you saw Tommy?” Nora asked. “Ten, eleven years ago?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “You have no idea what kind of mess you’re walking in to. Tommy can’t control one of Scotty’s asthma attacks. He’ll panic. Scotty could die.”

“Ah, hell,” Sabriel said, as if his bad day had suddenly gotten worse. His gaze worked the mirrors and his demeanor braced for impending attack.

Nora sat up and scoured the blurring landscape outside the Jeep. “What’s wrong?”

“The Colonel’s men.”

No! Not now. Not when she was so close to reaching those mountains and saving Scotty
. She whipped to look behind them. “I don’t see anything.”

The black Hummer crested a hill and roared up on them with surprising speed, dust mushrooming around it like an atomic cloud.

An arm popped out of the passenger’s window.

A shot ripped out, shattering her mirror. She yelped. Sabriel rammed her head into her lap. “Stay down.”

A bullet smashed through the rear window and blew out the front windshield where her head had been only moments ago.
No, no, no, no, no
. The denial ricocheted around her skull. This wasn’t part of the plan. No loose end.
Nonononono
. “They’re going to kill us.”

“Hang tight.”

Sabriel yanked on the parking brake and twisted the steering wheel. The Jeep spun.

“Noooooo! Are you crazy?” she sputtered. “I can’t die. Scotty—” The rest of her thought splintered in the reckless reel, whirling the world around.

Sabriel released the brake and sped up. Breathless, she tried to sit up. He shoved her head down again, but not before she caught a glimpse of the speedometer. Sixty. On a twisting, hilly dirt road. They were going to die. Bullets or a crash. Either way the outcome would leave her dead and Scotty at the Colonel’s mercy.

“Hold on,” Sabriel said.

To what? Her sanity? He was shredding that faster than a cat could a brand-new chair arm.

She screamed at the unexpected impact of Hummer grille against Jeep fender. The clash sent a shock wave reverberating all the way into her bones. Glass shattered. Metal crumpled. The
whump
of a bullet pelted the bumper. Another thwacked into the glove compartment, springing it open, dumping its contents on her head.

This wasn’t the way she’d planned to die. It was
supposed to happen when she was old and tired. In her sleep. Not compacted between two trucks. Not made into a sieve by bullets. Her hands tightened around her ankles and her shaking knees bumped into her nose.

Sabriel kept on speeding. She couldn’t see what was happening outside the Jeep, couldn’t anticipate his moves.
He knows what he’s doing
. She swallowed hard.
He’s a trained soldier, a trained agent. He’ll keep you safe
.

The sudden sharp turn caught her unprepared, throwing her sideways against his hard thigh like a rag doll, then smacked her back against the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he hurled the Jeep along a maze of twisty, tree-lined back roads.

“Just peachy.”

“Are you hit?”

She scanned through the cotton numbness of her limbs and shook her head. “You can sit up.”

She wasn’t sure she could. Her fingers wouldn’t unclamp from her ankles and her spine didn’t seem to have any starch. She was cold, so cold, as if ice water flowed through her veins and chilled her from the inside out.
Normal. It’s been a crazy day
. Tommy taking Scotty. Lying to the Colonel. Being shot at. Her voice croaked up her throat. “We lost them?”