The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 5 (59 page)

“Lil. Oh, God, Lil.” As the sun lowered toward the hills, Jenna held her tight.

“I’m going to lead him to the grassland above the river.” Lil pressed her face to her mother’s hair as if in grief, and murmured against her ear. “Where I saw the cougar. Remember that. Send help there.”

“Shut up! You shut up and she goes now, or she dies now, and you after her.”

“Go on, Mom.” Lil pried Jenna’s scraped and bruised arms away. “Go on or he’ll kill me.”

“Baby. I love you, Lil.”

“I love you.” She watched her mother limp and stumble, saw the agony of emotion in her battered face when she looked back. For that alone, Lil thought, he’d pay. Whatever it took.

“Start running,” Ethan ordered.

“No. The hunt doesn’t start until I know she’s away. Until I know you won’t go after her first. What’s your hurry, Ethan?” Deliberately she sat on a rock. “You’ve waited a long time for this. You can wait a little longer.”

30

The compound was chaos. A dozen people raced from various directions when Coop jumped out of his truck, and all of them talked at once.

“Stop! You.” He jabbed a finger at Matt. “Sum it up, and fast.”

“We can’t find Lil. Lena found her phone in the yard behind the cabin. And when I went back, I found this.” He held out the plastic bag with Jenna’s hair and wedding ring. There was somebody here, paying customer. Lena got a bad feeling about him. Baby didn’t like him either. Nobody can find him. We’re afraid he took Lil. Mary’s inside, calling the police.”

“I already called them.”

“I think it’s Jenna’s ring.” Tears spilled down Tansy’s cheeks.

“Yeah, it’s Jenna’s. He’s got her, and Lil’s gone in to find her. Shut up and listen,” he ordered when everyone began to talk at once. “I need anyone who can handle a gun without shooting themselves. Lil’s got a good hour’s head start, but she’s leaving a trail. We’re going to follow it.”

“I can.” Lena stepped forward. “I can handle a shotgun. Trap shooting champion, three years running.”

“In Lil’s cabin. Shotgun in the front closet, ammo on the top shelf. Go.”

“I’ve never shot a gun in my life, but—”

“Stay here.” Coop cut Matt off. “Wait for the police, then lock the place down. Tansy, go to the Chance farm. If Joe hasn’t heard, he needs to. Listen to me. Tell him it’s most likely Jenna was taken from there. He and Farley, and whoever else he can round up, should start from there. He taught Lil to track. He’ll pick up the trail. We need radios.”

Mary came out of the cabin as two interns sprinted for radios. “The police are on their way. Fifteen minutes.”

“Send them in after us. We’re not waiting for them. You upstairs, bedroom, top left dresser drawer. Three ammo clips. Get them. Wait.” Struck, he held up a hand, looked over to the enclosures. “I need something of Lil’s, something she was wearing.”

“Sweater in the office,” Mary said. “Hold on.”

“That cat loves her. Will he track her?”

“Yes! God, yes.” Tansy pressed a hand to her mouth. “He followed her back every time she tried to release him.”

“We’re going to let him out.”

“He hasn’t been out of the habitat since he was six months old.” Matt shook his head. “Even if he leaves the compound, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“He loves her.” Coop took the sweater Mary brought him.

“We’ll have to separate the others.” Tansy hurried to the enclosure with him.

“Do what you have to do. Make it fast.”

He held the sweater to the bars. Baby prowled over, then grumbled in his throat. Rubbed his face against the sweater. Purred.

“Yeah, that’s right. You know her. You’re going to find her.”

Interns chicken-baited the range area while Eric pulled up the door. Baby lifted his head, looked around while his companions rushed through the feed. Then turned back, pushed his face against the sweater.

“This is crazy,” Matt said, but he stood by with the drug gun. “Get back, well back. Tansy.”

She unlocked the cage. “Find Lil, Baby. You find Lil.” Using it as a barrier, she opened it.

He slunk out slowly toward the unknown, drawn by Lil’s scent. Coop held up a hand toward Matt as the cougar approached him. “He knows me. He knows I’m Lil’s.”

Once more, the cougar rubbed against the sweater. Then he began to track. “She’s everywhere, that’s the problem. She’s everywhere.”

Baby leaped onto Lil’s cabin’s porch, called, called. Then leaped off again to circle around.

“I packed you a kit.” Mary pushed it into his hands. “Bare essentials. Put that sweater in this plastic bag. It’ll confuse him otherwise. Get her back, Cooper.”

“I will.” He watched the cat stalk over the yard, then gather himself to run for the trees. “Let’s move.”

 

 

 

LIL GAUGED HER time, mentally planned out routes while she sat on the rock in the dying day with the man who wanted to kill her.

Her nerves smoothed out with every minute that passed. Every minute took her mother farther away and brought Coop closer. The longer she could keep him here, the better her chances.

“Did your father teach you to kill?” She spoke conversationally, her gaze aimed west, toward the setting sun.

“To hunt.”

“Call it what you like, Ethan. You gutted Melinda Barrett and left her for the animals.”

“A cougar came. A sign. Mine.”

“Cougars don’t hunt for sport.”

He shrugged. “I’m a man.”

“Where did you leave Carolyn?”

He smiled. “A feast for the grizzlies. She gave me a good game first. I think you’ll do better. You may last most of the night.”

“Then where will you go?”

“I’ll follow the wind. Then I’ll come back. I’ll kill your parents and burn their farm to the ground. I’ll do the same with that zoo of yours. I’ll hunt these hills and live free, the way my people should have lived free.”

“I wonder how much of your view on the Sioux comes from actual truth or your father’s bastardization of the truth.”

Color flooded his face, warning her not to test him too far. “My father wasn’t a bastard.”

“That’s not what I meant. Do you think the Lakota would approve of what you do? The way you hunt down and slaughter innocent people?”

“They aren’t innocent.”

“What did James Tyler do to deserve to die?”

“He came here. His people killed my people. Stole from them.”

“He was a real estate agent from St. Paul. It’s just you and me here, Ethan, so there’s no reason to pretend this is anything but what it is. You like to kill. You like to terrorize, to stalk. You like the feel of warm blood on your hands. It’s why you use a knife. Otherwise, saying you murdered Tyler because of broken treaties, lies, dishonor, greed perpetrated by people who’ve been dead more than a hundred years would just be crazy. You’re not crazy, are you, Ethan?”

Something—a slyness—came and went in his eyes. Then he bared his teeth. “They came. They killed. They slaughtered. Now their blood feeds the ground like ours did. On your feet.”

Fear blew through her again, one icy blast. Ten minutes, she reminded herself, if he kept to his own rules. She could cover a lot of ground in ten minutes. She got to her feet.

“Run.”

Her legs quivered to. “So you can watch where I go? Is that how you track? I thought you were good at this.”

He smiled. “Ten minutes,” he said and backed into the cave.

She didn’t waste time. Her first priorities were speed and distance. Cunning had to wait. The farm was closer, but she needed to draw him away from her mother. Cooper would come from the east. She scrambled down the slope, warning herself not to sacrifice safety for speed and risk a broken ankle. Fear urged her to take the shortest, straightest route toward the compound, but she thought of the bow. He’d track her too easily that way, and he could disable her from a distance with the bow.

And any trail she left for Coop, Ethan could follow.

She veered north, and raced ahead of the dark.

 

 

 

AT THE CHANCE FARM, Joe stuffed extra ammo in his pockets. “We’re losing the light. We’ll use flashlights until moonrise.”

“I want to go with you, Joe.” Sam gripped Joe’s shoulder. “But I’d just slow you down.”

“We’ll stay by the radio.” Lucy handed him a light pack. “We’ll wait for word. Bring them home.”

He nodded, moved out of the door ahead of Farley.

“Be careful.” Tansy wrapped her arms around Farley, held hard and brief. “Be safe.”

“Don’t you worry.”

Outside, Farley took point with Joe ahead of the three armed men who would join them on the search. Dogs, already on the scent, bayed.

“If he’s hurt her,” Joe said quietly to Farley. “If he’s hurt either of them, I’ll kill him.”

“We will.”

 

 

 

MILES AWAY, Coop studied the signs Lil had left for him. He hadn’t seen the cougar since it had run into the forest. He had two college kids with him, and twilight falling fast.

He should’ve come alone, he thought now. Shouldn’t have wasted even the few minutes it had taken to outfit the backup, release the cat.

The others were ten minutes or more behind him, with some steering south, others north. He knew Joe, by the information relayed by radio, led another group headed in from the west.

And still, there were untold acres to cover.

“You two wait here for the rest to catch up.”

“You’re worried we’ll screw up, or get hurt. We won’t.” Lena looked at her companion. “Right, Chuck?”

Chuck’s eyes were huge, but he nodded. “Right.”

“If you fall behind, go back. Radio back our new direction,” he ordered Chuck, then headed southwest.

She’d left clear markings, he thought as he forced himself not to run, not to run and miss one of those markings. She was counting on him. If he hadn’t stopped to play Good Samaritan, he’d have gotten her call, he’d have convinced her to wait until he could go with her. He’d have . . .

No point, no point. He’d find her.

He thought of Dory. Good cop, good friend. And the long, syrupy seconds it had taken to draw his weapon.

He wouldn’t be too late, not this time. Not with Lil.

 

 

 

SHE LAID A trail to a stream, backtracked. With sundown the air chilled. Despite the sweat of exertion and fear, she was cold. She imagined the warm sweater she’d shed in her office that afternoon as she took the time to remove her boots, her socks.

Brushing out tracks as she went, she returned to the stream, gritted her teeth as she waded through the icy water. The false trail might fool him, might not. But it was worth a try. She waded downstream ten yards, then ten more before she began to search the banks. Her feet were numb by the time she spotted the tumble of rocks. They’d do.

She climbed out, put her socks and shoes on again, then picked her way over the rocks until they gave way to soft ground. She ran, cutting away from the water, circling the brush until she was forced to shove through it. Her boots thudded as she propelled herself up a slope.

She sought the shelter of trees again to rest, to listen.

The moon rose like a spotlight over the hills. It would help her avoid tripping over roots or rocks in the dark.

Her mother should be halfway back to the farm by now, she calculated. Help would be coming from that direction, too. She had to believe her mother would make it, and would direct the help toward the high ground she’d chosen for her stand.

She had to cut east again. She rubbed her chilled arms, ignoring the sting from nicks and scrapes she’d incurred on the run. If her maneuver at the stream bought her any time, she had the distance to make it. She just needed the stamina.

Gritting her teeth, she pushed to her feet, then cocked her head as she heard a quiet splash.

Some time, she thought as she turned east. But not as much as she’d hoped.

He was coming. And he was closing in.

 

 

 

COOP STOPPED AGAIN. He saw the slash, fresh, on the pine bark. Lil’s sign. But he studied the prints—cougar tracks. The first pointed west, and the second north.

Nothing to prove it was
her
cougar, he thought. And clearly, she’d gone west. Following Ethan’s trail, to find her mother. But after, he’d want the hunt. Want the thrill.

Coop’s head said go west, but his heart . . .

“Head west. Be slow, go quiet. Follow the slash marks. Radio back, tell them I’m heading north from here.”

“But why?” Lena demanded. “Where are you going?”

“I’m following the cat.”

Wouldn’t she have led Ethan away from her mother? Coop asked himself. His heart thudded every time he thought he’d lost the trail. What made him think he could track a cougar? Mr. Fucking New York. She wouldn’t leave signs now. No handy slash marks or rock piles. She couldn’t leave signs because by now he was hunting her.

Come after me, she asked him. He could only pray he was.

Twice he lost the trail, so desperation and terror made his skin clammy. And his belly would clutch each time he found it again.

Then he saw the bootprints. Lil’s. Even as he crouched, touched a finger to the impression she’d left on the ground, his body shuddered. Alive. Still alive and moving. He saw where others—Ethan’s—crossed hers. He was following, but she was still ahead. And the cat followed both.

He moved ahead. When he heard the murmur of water on rock, he picked up his pace again. She’d headed toward water, to lose him in the water.

When he reached the stream, he stood, baffled. Her tracks led into the water, while Ethan’s moved forward, back, circled around again. He closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind and think.

What would she do?