The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (48 page)

Because this is home now, she thought. At least until we’re done with this, he’s home here.

And she couldn’t think of that, not yet.

“It’s harder to hide a crossbow than a handgun.” She stood there, watching the flames rise. “He’d be more likely to carry the bow when he’s specifically hunting. Maybe toward evening, or before dawn.”

“Maybe.”

“He didn’t use a bow on the cougar. If he had it, if he’d used it, it would’ve given him more time to get away, cover his tracks. But he didn’t use the bow.”

“Because you wouldn’t have heard the shot,” Coop concluded. “Which is probably why he chose the gun.”

“So I would hear it, and panic for the cat.” She turned now, put her back to the light and the heat. “How much more do you know you haven’t told me?”

“It’s speculation.”

“I want to see the files, the ones you put away whenever I come in.”

“There’s no point.”

“There’s every point.”

“Damn it, Lil, what good is it going to do for you to look at photos of Tyler before and after they dragged him out of the river, after the fish had been at him? Or to read the details of an autopsy? What’s the point in having that in your head?”

“Tyler was practice. I’m the main event,” she said, quoting the e-mail. “If you’re worried about my sensibilities, don’t. No, I’ve never seen pictures of a body. But have you seen a lion spring out of the bush and take down an antelope? Not human, but take my word, it’s not for the faint of heart. Stop protecting me, Coop.”

“That’s never going to happen, but I’ll show you the files.”

He unlocked a case, drew them out. “The photos won’t help you. The ME determined the time of death somewhere between fifteen and eighteen hundred.”

Lil sat, opened the file, and stared at the stark black-and-white photograph of James Tyler. “I hope to God his wife didn’t see him like this.”

“They’d have done what they could beforehand.”

“Slitting his throat. That’s personal, isn’t it? From my vast police knowledge from
CSI
and so on.”

“You have to get in close, make contact, get blood on your hands. A knife’s generally more intimate than a bullet. He took Tyler from behind, going left to right. The body had cuts and bruises incurred perimortem, most likely from stumbling and slipping. The knees, hands, elbows.”

“You said he died between three and six. Daylight hours, or just going to dusk on the later side of that. To get from the trail Tyler was seen on to that point of the river has to take several hours. Probably more if we agree he’d have driven Tyler over the roughest ground, the least likely areas where he’d have found help or another hiker. Tyler had a day pack. If you’re running for your life, you’d shed weight, wouldn’t you?”

“They didn’t find his pack.”

“I bet Ethan did.”

“Agreed.”

“And when he maneuvers Tyler to the right position, he doesn’t shoot him. Not sporting. He comes in close for the personal kill.”

She flipped through to the list of what the victim’s wife stated Tyler had on him when he’d started for the summit. “It’s a good haul,” she added. “Victory spoils. He won’t need the watch. He knows how to tell the time by the sky, by the feel of the air. Maybe he’ll keep it as a trophy, or pawn it later on, a few states away, when he wants more cash.”

She looked over. “He took something, some things from every victim you think he’s responsible for, didn’t he?”

“That’s the way it looks. Jewelry, cash, supplies, articles of clothing. He’s a scavenger. But not stupid enough to use any victim’s credit cards or IDs. None of the MPs have had any account activity on their credit cards since they disappeared.”

“No paper trail. Plus maybe he considers credit cards a white man’s invention, a white man’s weakness. I wonder if his parents had any credit cards. I’d bet not.”

“You’d bet right. You’re a smart one, Lil.”

“We’re the smart girls,” she said absently. “But he buys a crossbow, not traditional Native American weaponry. He picks and chooses. He’s full of shit, basically. Sacred ground, but he defiles it by hunting an unarmed man. For sport. For practice. If he really has Sioux blood, he’s defiled that, too. He has no honor.”

“The Sioux considered the Black Hills the sacred center of the world.”

“
Axis mundi,
” Lil confirmed. “They considered—and still consider—the Black Hills the heart of all that is. Paha Sapa. Sacred ceremonies started in the spring. They’d follow the buffalo through the hills, forming a trail in the shape of a buffalo head. Sixty million acres of the hills were promised in treaty. But then they found gold. The treaty meant nothing, because the white man wanted the land, and the gold on it. The gold was worth more than honor, than the treaty, than the promise to respect what was sacred.”

“But it’s still under dispute.”

“Been boning up on your history?” she asked. “Yeah, the U.S. took the land in 1877, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and the Teton Sioux, the Lakota, never accepted that. Fast-forward a hundred years, and the Supreme Court ruled the Black Hills had been taken illegally, and ordered the government to pay the initial promised price plus interest. Over a hundred million, and they refused the settlement. They wanted the land back.”

“It’s accrued interest since then, and now stands at more than seven hundred million. I did my research.”

“They won’t take the money. It’s a matter of honor. My great-grandfather was Sioux. My great-grandmother was white. I’m a product of that blending, and the generations since have certainly diluted the Sioux in me.”

“But you understand honor, you understand refusing a hundred million dollars.”

“Money isn’t land, and land was taken.” She narrowed her eyes. “If you think Ethan is into this because it’s some sort of revenge for broken treaties, for the theft of sacred ground, I don’t. It’s not that deep. It’s an excuse, and one that might make him think of himself as a warrior or a rebel. I doubt he knows the entire history. Bits and pieces maybe, and probably bastardized ones at that.”

“No, he kills because he likes it. But he’s chosen you, and this place, because it fits his idea of payback. That makes it more exciting, more satisfying. And his definition of honor’s warped, but he has his own version. He won’t pick you off when you’re crossing the compound. It’s not the game, it’s not satisfying, and it doesn’t complete the purpose.”

“That’s comforting.”

“If I didn’t believe that, you’d be locked up a thousand miles from here. Trying to be honest,” he added when she frowned at him. “I’ve got a picture of him, a kind of profile, and it assures me he wants you to understand him, to face him, then to give him real competition. He’ll wait for an opportunity, but he’s getting impatient. The e-mail pushes it forward.”

“It’s a dare.”

“Of sorts, and a declaration. I need your word, Lil, you won’t let him goad you into that opportunity.”

“You’ve got it.”

“No argument? No qualifications?”

“No. I don’t like hunting, and I know I wouldn’t like being hunted. I don’t need to prove anything to him, certainly not to myself by going out and doing a one-on-one with a homicidal maniac.”

She went deeper into the files. “Maps. Okay, okay, we can work with this.”

She rose, cleared everything else off the coffee table. “You’ve been busy,” she said, noting he’d marked the map with incidents ascribed to Ethan Howe. “You’re trying to triangulate locations where he might have his den.”

“The sectors that seemed most likely have been searched.”

“Next to impossible to cover every square foot, especially when you’re looking for someone who knows how to move, and cover his trail. Here. We found Melinda Barrett. Nearly twelve years ago. In that case, there was no indication he’d hunted her. No signs she’d run or been chased. The signs pointed to him following her up the trail. Stalking her, maybe. Or as likely just running into her. What set him off, made him kill her?”

“If the kill wasn’t the goal, he might’ve wanted money or sex. They found some bruising on her biceps, the kind you’d get if someone gripped you hard and you tried to pull away. He knocks her back into the tree, with enough force to bash her head, open a wound. Bleeding.”

“Blood. Maybe blood was enough. The wild scents blood, it spurs them.” Lil nodded because she could see it, see how it might have been. “She fights, maybe screams, maybe insults him or his manhood in some way. He kills her—the knife, close-in, personal. If it was his first, it would have been a tremendous rush—and he was so young. A rush and a panic. Drag her off, leave her for the animals. He might have thought, probably thought, her death would be blamed on a cougar or a wolf attack.”

“The next time we can confirm he came back, it was here. The refuge.” Coop laid a finger on the map. “He made contact with you, tried to play on a shared heritage.”

“And he met Carolyn.”

“She finds him attractive, interesting, feeds his ego. And could probably tell him more about you, about the refuge. She meets a need, sex and pride, so he goes into her world. But it’s not a good fit, and she begins to see him for what he is when he’s out of his element. He follows her to Alaska, to close that door, to fulfill that need—stronger than sex—then winds his way back to you.”

“And I’m in Peru. He has to wait.”

“While he’s waiting, he comes down at night, pays at least one visit.”

“When Matt was here alone. Yes. And he disabled the camera, here. Only a few days before I was due back.”

“Because he knew you were coming back. If someone else had gone to check it out, he’d have disabled it again. Until he got you.”

“He assumed I’d come alone,” she continued. “I like to go into the hills and camp alone. I’d planned to. He’d have been able to start the game if I had done that, and he might have won it. So I owe you.”

“He probably thought he could take me out once he saw you had company. Eliminate me, take you. So I’d say we both owe countless nights on stakeouts and the ability to sleep light. Comes into camp here,” Coop continued with his attention back on the map. “Heads back to camera site here, and doubles back to camp. Then it’s to the main gate of the refuge to dump the wolf. Another pass at the refuge to let your tiger out.”

“And to some point on the Crow Peak trail where he intercepted Tyler, to here, at this point by the river where he left him. Hits the Good-win farm, which is about here. That’s a lot of ground. The majority of it’s in Spearfish, so he’s at home here. Well, me too.”

She glanced at her empty mug of coffee, wished more would magically appear. “Lots of caves,” she added. “He has to have shelter, and I don’t see him pitching a tent. He needs a den. Plenty of fish and game. His best cover, best ground would be in here.” Lil drew a circle on the map with her finger. “It would take weeks to search that many acres, that many caves and hidey-holes.”

“If you’re entertaining the idea of going up as bait to draw him out, you can forget it.”

“I entertained the idea for about two minutes. I think I could track him, or certainly have as good a chance as anyone they’ve got searching.” She rubbed the back of her neck, where the lion’s share of her stress had chosen to make camp. “And I’ve got a better chance of getting whoever’s with me killed. So no, I’m not going to be bait.”

“There should be a way to look at this and figure where he’ll go next, or where he goes when he’s done. There should be a pattern, but I don’t see it.”

She closed her eyes. “There has to be a way to goad him into coming out, to pull him into a trap instead of the other way around. But I can’t see that either.”

“Maybe you can’t see it because you’ve had enough for one day.”

“And you’d be willing to take my mind off this.”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“In the interest of truth, I’ll admit the thought crossed mine.” She turned to him. “My mind’s pretty busy, Coop. It’s going to take some doing to distract me.”

“I think I can handle it.” Even as she reached out he rose, evading her.

“Straight upstairs, huh? I thought you might warm me up a little right here.”

“We’re not going upstairs.” He turned off the lights so only the fire glowed, then moved to her little stereo and punched the button for the CD player. Music poured out, low and soulful.

“I didn’t know I had any Percy Sledge.”

“You didn’t.” He crossed back, took her hand to bring her to her feet. “I figured it might come in handy.” He drew her in, and swayed. “We never did this much.”

“No.” She closed her eyes as Percy’s magic voice told her what a man would do when he loved a woman. “We didn’t do this much.”

“We’ll have to start.” He turned his head to brush his lips over her temple. “Like the flowers. I owe you several years worth of dances.”

She pressed her cheek to his. “We can’t get them back, Coop.”

“No, but we can fill them in.” He ran his hands, up and down, up and down the tensed, tight muscles of her back. “Some nights I’d wake up and imagine you were there, in bed beside me. Some nights it was so real I could hear you breathing, I could smell your hair. Now some nights I wake up and you’re in bed beside me, and there’s this moment of panic when I hear you breathing, when I smell your hair, that I’m imagining it.”

She squeezed her eyes tight. Was it her pain she felt, or his?

“I want you to believe in us again. In me. In this.” He drew her back until his mouth found hers. And took her under, deep and breathless while they swayed in the gold shimmer of firelight.

“Tell me you love me. Just that.”

Her heart trembled. “I do, but—”

“Just that,” he repeated, and took her under again. “Just that. Tell me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Lil. You can’t believe the words yet, so I’ll just keep showing you until you can.”

His hands skimmed up and down her sides. His mouth sampled and savored hers. And the heart that trembled for him began to beat for him, slow and thick.