Willing Hostage (11 page)

“Suit yourself. You're a long way from a flush toilet.” He left the truck and disappeared into the trees. Goodyear crawled out after him.

Leah sat deserted, staring at her ugly boots, wishing she could get back to the United States of America. He'd taken the keys with him. Finally, she shrugged, opened her door, and crept off into the trees.

When she returned, Glade was bent over a green backpack on a metal frame. It was like those she'd seen in the restaurant in Oak Creek and before that on hitch-hikers along the highways.

He looked over his shoulder with a smile of insolence and a raised eyebrow. “Manage?”

Leah considered answering with a well-placed kick but decided against it. She still wore bruises from her last tangle with this beast.

“At least you didn't need a dime.” He drew another pack from under the tarpaulin that covered the back of the pickup.

Above her the aspen rattled its leaves and Goodyear appeared like an overweight eagle's nest clinging to a slender silver branch. He returned her stare with cold-blue malevolence.

Glade scratched his head over a foil packet. “I've been gone a long time. I don't suppose you can cook.” It wasn't even a question. An assortment of strange packages and metal containers lay at his feet.

Leah studied him. He wore cowboy boots, but he didn't look or act or talk like a cowboy. The CIA, FBI, information.… “Are you an enemy agent?” she asked suddenly, embarrassed by the melodramatic question.

Bewilderment was replaced by amusement on his face and then his smile opened to laughter. “Lady, at this point I don't know what I am.” He stuffed the varied paraphernalia into the packs. “But I think I'm still an American citizen.”

His answers always confused her more than they helped.

He lifted the smaller of the two packs. “Let's see if this fits.” He put it on her back and adjusted straps around her shoulders and waist. It felt as if it weighed as much as a used car.

“Are we hitchhiking?”

“Hardly. These are survival packs.” He put both packs in the pickup and took the envelope that had been in the glove compartment from the dashboard, sat on a rock and examined the papers he drew from it.

“Nineteen twenty-seven,” he muttered and threw down the first paper. It was mostly green with swirls of brown and white and tiny lines of black. “Department of the Interior, Geological Survey” was printed in one corner.

He threw the next paper down with a shake of his head and Leah picked it up. It was a letter.

Glade,

Sorry about the age of the survey map. The Forest Service is getting jumpy about telling people the whole truth about the last of the wilderness. I don't blame them. As far as I know this is the last survey map of the area. I've included the latest tourist brochure—not too complete or accurate but maybe you can figure things out between the two.

I did the best I could with the second pack on short notice. She? I see you haven't changed, after all. You both should be outfitted for as long as I thought you could carry. Don't forget to leave the note with the truck. Sure wish I knew what the hell you're up to now. But good luck, whatever it is.

Ben

Glade sat staring at the yellow blaze of daisies through the trees. Leah read the letter he held in his hand, over his shoulder.

Dear Crocker,

Thanks for the loan of the truck. It sure made the move into my new pad easier. Sorry I couldn't stay for a beer but this nice lady who followed me out in my car was eager to get back. (Heh, heh.) Next time I'll stay awhile and we'll catch us some fish.

Ben

Ben's “pad” must be the cabin where Leah had spent the night before.

In his other hand Glade held a folded map with
ROUTT AND WHITE RIVER NATIONAL FORESTS
printed across the top and a picture beneath of a fisherman standing up to his crotch in a lake ringed by snow-capped mountains. It made Leah shiver just to look at it. Surely he didn't expect her to go fishing.

Finally, he stirred and spread both maps side by side on the ground. He must have studied them for a half-hour while Leah's teeth chattered as the last of the sun faded.

He rubbed the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. The brute grew beard like he grew muscle. “We've got ourselves a challenge, Leah Harper.” He put the maps in his jacket pocket and stood to stretch.

“Why do you always call me Leah Harper instead of just Leah?” She was pacing near him and he clamped his hand on her wrist and swung her around so hard she collided with his chest.

“I'm convincing myself that was Sheila back in the burning car.” His other hand grabbed her hair and snapped her head back so that she was looking up into his face. “And that you are indeed Leah Harper.”

She saw nothing but cruelty in his eyes.

“You'd better pray that I become good and convinced,” he said in a tight whisper.

Chapter Fifteen

“Yowl …” Cat eyes glinted back silver moonlight.

“Be still, you good-for-nothing creep.” Leah nuzzled her cold face against the warmth of lush fur. “You're a bad kitty.” She scratched him under the chin until he purred. “And we are involved with a bad and unpredictable man.”

She stood beside the backpacks and watched through the trees as Glade drove over a small bridge in front of a lodge made of logs. The lodge was lit and so were several cabins to the side of it. People moved behind windows.

A stream chattered under the bridge. Trees moaned low in the wind. Frogs croaked and crickets answered. A horse whinnied. Wood smoke wafted by, occasional voices.

She wasn't alone with him now. She didn't know for sure that she faced the same danger as Sheila. Might she be in as much danger from Glade?

Leah could run, elude him and find people here and tell her story, ask for the police and protection. That had to be the wisest course.

But still she hesitated, even as the truck disappeared into a shadow next to the lodge and car lights moved up the road. Glade would be captured if she publicized his whereabouts by turning herself in. Who of all the people after him would be the first to find him?

Would the goons torture Glade as they had Sheila to get the information-property? Why should she care if they did?

The car turned to cross the little bridge; its headlights pierced the shadow that held the pickup, but she couldn't see Glade.

Leah moved from one foot to the other, clutching the cat, trying to decide what to do. She didn't want Glade captured. She didn't know why. But she did sense that her habit of hesitation was the very fault that had let Welker push her into this position to begin with. Glade had told her just enough to make her unsure but not enough to let her make an informed decision.

A shadowy figure moved across the bridge and she damned herself and gullible people like her who let people like him and Welker and governments and giant corporations use them and then Glade was across the road, through the trees and beside her and the moment was lost.

Brushing the cat from her arms, he slung a backpack over her shoulders, and cinched the waistband. He crawled into the other pack and stared at the shadow of Goodyear at his feet. “We can't leave him here,” he whispered. “He's so weird, he's recognizable.”

“You aren't going to kill him,” she said through her teeth.

“I should. And bury him deep. He'll only get in the way. Cats are unpredictable.”

“I won't let you. I'll scream.”

“I can't anyway. If you think you're an innocent bystander, that poor cat.…” He scooped the Siamese up in his arms. “I guess once you've broken training you might as well go completely berserk. We're going to regret this, though.”

They walked in the trees beside the road until they came to a pickup-camper and a roaring fire. A man, woman, and three teenagers sat in folding patio chairs around the campfire and rock music blared from a transistor radio. The couple argued in harsh voices, the teenagers—all boys—looked stony with boredom. A dog barked. Other campfires and vehicles loomed beyond.

Leah could smell charred steak and so could her ulcer. Goodyear moaned.

They moved onto the road and walked between campgrounds with the homey sounds of crying babies, music, crackling fires, and human voices.

Again Leah considered breaking away and causing a commotion. Again she saw the disfigured Sheila and hurried to catch up with the man ahead of her.

“The trail head is supposed to be straight on to the end of this road. There'll be a sign of some sort,” Glade whispered.

“Trail to what?”

“Escape.”

“I've been escaping for a week and all I've done is get in more trouble.”

“It's been ten months for me. Faster!”

“What are you escaping from?” she asked.

“I've told you.”

“No. You haven't told me anything that makes sense.”

They left the campfires behind and walked through dazzling moonlight and oblique shadows. The road curved.

“Thanks for not bolting back there, if you are Leah Harper,” he said in a shadow.

“I'm not Sheila,” she said in a patch of moonlight and wondered why she hadn't bolted.

“It's this goddamn cat,” he said in the next shadow. “I've heard of fog tactics, but a giant Siamese. I can't figure an operative with a cat. You even seem to like him, aren't just using him as a—”

“I hate him. He adopted me. I hate you. You got me into this. And where for God's sake are you going? And why am I going with you? I can't carry this load on my back much longer.”

He gurgled a low laugh. “We've just begun, Leah Harper.”

They climbed an earth embankment to find moonlight glimmering on a board sign, making the print, merely etched into the wood, stand out dimly white.

“Flat Tops Primitive Area. No motorized vehicles,” Leah read aloud.

“Warning,” she continued. The sign was worn. “Something about trails and in the open … and beetles. Beetles?”

A dog growled not far away and a voice snapped, “Sasha!”

Goodyear climbed Glade's face.

“Sorry,” said the voice. “Come along, Sasha.” The dog followed the figure into a streak of moonlight on the road below. It was indiscriminate in shape, but big. Thank God, it was leashed.

“Come on,” Glade whispered and she followed him into the trees.

“I'm so stiff after today I hurt everywhere. It's the middle of the night.”

“You'll loosen up.” He moved ahead of her briskly. “And it's only nine o'clock.”

The trail was a narrow path between trees. In the shadows Leah stumbled over rocks and tree roots she couldn't see.

“Pick up your feet,” he ordered.

“I can't walk this fast. Slow down.”

Glade stopped ahead to wait for her. Wind moaned down the trail and they were surrounded by cracking, creaking groans. Leah grabbed his arm. “What's that?”

“Dead trees rubbing against live ones. They fall over against their neighbors sometimes when they die. Wind makes them rub.” His entire face was in shadow as he turned his head from side to side. “Seems to be an awful lot of deadfalls in among the trees. Some kind of pine beetle's been through here, killing trees. That's what the sign was about.”

His long legs carried him so fast that several times he was out of sight ahead of her and she had to run to catch up, panicked at the thought of being left alone. Although she didn't feel that comfortable with him either.

They crossed streams, fallen trees, and open meadows where bogs sucked at their boots. The weight on Leah's back dragged on her shoulders, her head felt as if it would tear itself open. Dead trees creaked eerily with the slightest breeze. And then one splintered, cracked, and thundered to the ground somewhere. Leah could feel the earth under her feet vibrate with the impact.

“What if one of those trees fell on us?”

“It wouldn't hurt for long.” He started off with Goodyear blinking back at her over his shoulder.

What kind of a man was he? A man who could slug a woman in the stomach and who had admitted he'd killed, but who carried a twenty-ton Siamese up a mountain because he couldn't bear to do away with it.

“And what kind of woman am I?” she thought. “Even to be up here with this man?” But she hooked her thumbs under the padded straps of her pack to take some of the pressure off her shoulders and plodded on behind him like a squaw. Leah found the wilderness around her more frightening than anything human, including the man ahead of her.

The distinct odor of skunk … Leah's eyes moved to either side of the trail. Dead trees stood naked and ghost-white next to their shadowed pine-covered neighbors. When they had passed the skunk smell, other odors took over—sharp pine and the softer scents of earth, leaves, and mold. The sour smell of horse droppings on the trail and a faint fragrance of flowers.

After an hour Leah's lungs burned. She fought for air but it seemed thin and unsatisfying. Her feet ached, her knees felt rubbery. Her heart pounded at her ears until she couldn't hear her boots hitting the ground. The pack seemed to tear her shoulders away from her neck.

And still he moved ahead of her. She could see her breath on the crisp air but felt the dampness of perspiration on her face and under her arms.

Finally, Leah sat down in the middle of the path and burst into tears.

Glade lifted the pack from her shoulders, offered her water. “Not much farther now.”

Goodyear crawled up her legs and stuck a cold inquiring nose in her hot face.

“I'm going to die,” she blubbered. “My heart can't beat right.”

“How long have you been in Colorado?”

“Four days.” It seemed like four years. She hadn't thought of her mother for hours.

“You're not acclimated yet. Here, eat this.”

It was a bar of chocolate that tasted like mousse. “If you think I'm sleeping in some moldy unheated barn or something tonight, you're crazy.”