Читать книгу Lawman On The Hunt - Cindi Myers, Cindi Myers - Страница 9
ОглавлениеLeah’s scream propelled Travis to one side, so that the bullet tore through his shirt, grazing his ribs. Pain momentarily blinded him as he rolled toward the creek, landing with a splash in the icy water. More shots hit the water around him until he reached the shelter of the bridge. Plastered against the concrete piling, he waited for more gunfire or for the shooter to climb down after him.
The expected hail of bullets came, but this time the shots weren’t intended for him. The shooter had turned his attention to Leah, who huddled behind the thick-trunked juniper as the gunfire tore at the bark. The sight of her trapped that way drove Travis to act on raw instinct. He pushed himself away from the bridge piling, deliberately exposing himself to the shooter above. “Over here!” he shouted, and fired three shots in rapid succession.
When the shooter turned his attention to Travis, Leah ran. But not, as he had hoped, away from danger, but toward it. She catapulted toward him, slamming into him and driving him farther under the bridge. He wrapped his free arm around her and sheltered her between his body and the bridge piling. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?” he muttered.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave.” She touched his torn shirt. “You’re hit. You’re bleeding.”
He pushed her hand away. “Nothing serious.” Though he could feel blood seeping from the wound. “How many of them are there?” he asked.
“It depends if Duane left someone back at the house,” she said. “There are four altogether—Duane, Eddie and two who just arrived yesterday, Buck and Sam. I never heard their last names. But I don’t think Duane would have wanted to leave the house unguarded, so he probably left Sam there.”
“Why Sam?”
“I overheard Eddie teasing him about not being a good shot. His specialty is technology.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They’ll come down the bank in a minute,” she said.
“I’ll kill them when they do.” He readied the gun to fire.
“They’ll wait until you run out of ammunition. They won’t give up.”
A rock tumbled down from the road, gathering momentum as it rolled, landing with a splash in the water. “They’re coming down,” she said, and buried her face against his chest.
He inhaled deeply, making himself go still. He had to shove aside the fear and call on all his strength. He had no control over what Duane and his thugs did, but he was in charge of his own actions. He raised the Glock and lined up the sights on where he thought the shooter would show himself, then took another breath and let it out slowly.
The echo of the gunshot against the concrete of the bridge made his ears ring, but the sight of the shooter staggering backward let him know he had done some damage. He had no time to bask in this victory, as a second man followed the first, this one armed with a shotgun capable of gutting them both with one shot. Travis retreated farther behind the bridge support, pulling Leah with him.
“We’re going to have to run for it,” he whispered, his mouth so close he was almost kissing her ear.
She stiffened. “That’s crazy.”
“Crazy enough to work. And it’s our only chance.” Already, he could hear someone moving down the other side of the bridge. “Climb onto my back and hang on tight,” he said. “If I go down, keep running on your own, but until then, don’t let go.”
“I’ll slow you down,” she said. “Leave me here. I’m the one they want, anyway.”
He was no longer certain of her relationship to Duane, but he wasn’t going to let her go back to that killer. “You’re still my prisoner,” he said. “I’m not going to give you up to him.” He slipped the revolver from the ankle holster, then turned his back to her. “Climb on. Keep your head down.”
She jumped onto his back, her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist. The weight was awkward, but not impossible. “When I give the word, scream as loud as you can,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it. Scream as if you just saw the biggest, nastiest-looking spider you can imagine.” She had always been terrified of spiders.
“All right.”
The revolver in one hand, the Glock in the other, he watched the bank to his left. When a second shooter dropped into position there, Travis said, “Now!” and charged forward.
The keening wail she let loose echoed beneath the bridge, a high, sharp note that pierced his ears, but as he had hoped, the sound startled the two shooters as well. They hesitated a fraction of a second, long enough for Travis to gain the advantage. He charged toward the downstream shooter, both guns blazing. The man fell back. At the same time, the upstream man couldn’t risk firing, for fear of hitting his boss.
He stuck to the bank at the edge of the water, feet sinking deep in the gravel and mud, staggering as if fighting his way through molasses. Leah had fallen silent, her face pressed against his neck, her fingers digging into his shoulder. He turned to fire at the men, then pulled at her legs. “Can you run?” he asked.
“Yes.” She nodded, her hair falling forward to obscure her face.
“Then we’re going to run, as fast and as far as we can.”
She was swifter than he would have expected, keeping pace with him as they zigzagged through the trees. He led the way up a slope away from the creek, deeper into the area she had identified as wilderness. The shooters had run after them, but they were slower and clumsier, stopping from time to time to fire in Travis and Leah’s general direction. After what could have been a half an hour or only ten minutes, the sounds of the gunfire and their pursuers’ shouted curses faded away.
Travis risked stopping near a downed pine tree. Leah collapsed onto the fallen trunk, holding her side and gasping for breath. Several moments passed before either of them spoke. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” she said.
He holstered his weapon and sank down beside her. “I think we’ve lost them for now.”
She shook her head. “Maybe. But they’ll be back. They’ll hunt us down.”
“How can you be so sure?” She talked as if she knew these men so well, but how could that be, when she had only been with them a few months? He had known her for years and would have sworn he knew everything about her, and yet he had never seen her betrayal coming.
“They’re ruthless,” she said. “When Duane decides he wants something, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. He’ll steal, kill and use people every way you can imagine. He’s an expert at it.” The grief that transformed her face as she spoke made him want to pull her to him, to comfort her. But he held back.
Instead, he looked around them, at the trees crowded so close together there was scarcely room to walk. The sky showed only in scattered puzzle pieces of pale blue between the treetops. He thought the creek was somewhere to their right, but he couldn’t be sure, having lost his bearings in their frantic flight. “Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve never had much of a sense of direction, remember?”
He almost smiled, remembering. Her propensity for getting turned around and lost had been one of their private jokes. At the entrance to a mall department store she would address him with mock seriousness. “I’m going in, but if I don’t come out in an hour, you’ll have to come in after me.”
That particular trait of hers wasn’t so funny right now. “Let’s hope Duane and his gang don’t know where we are, either.” He stood and offered her his hand. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours. We need to find a safe place to spend the night, but before that, we need to get back to the creek. Without water, we won’t make it out here very long.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“Then we have to find our way out of here, back to civilization and a phone.” And they had to do it while avoiding the men who were out to kill them.
* * *
WITH NO WATCH or phone to consult for the time, Leah had no idea how long it took them to locate the creek. But by the time they stumbled and slid down the bank to the narrow stream, she was exhausted and thirsty enough that she was tempted to simply stretch out in the icy water and let it wash into her mouth.
But common sense—or maybe simply an overwhelming desire to stay strong enough to get out of here alive—stopped her. She grabbed hold of Travis’s arm to stop him as he knelt at the water’s edge. “We have to boil the water before we drink it,” she said.
Hair tousled, face streaked with mud and blood, he looked like a man who had survived a street brawl. “How are we supposed to do that? And why?” He looked around. “I don’t see any factories or even houses around here.”
“The water is full of giardia—a little bug that will make you very, very sick. I had it once at summer camp and I know I never want to be that ill again. If we boil the water or treat it somehow, it will kill the parasite.”
He sat back on his heels and scanned the bank around them. “There’s plenty of fuel. I don’t suppose you’ve taken up smoking since we last met?”
“No.” She scanned the area, then looked back at him. “What kind of supplies do you have on you, besides your gun and ammunition and that multi-tool you used to cut off my flex-cuff?”
He hesitated, then emptied his pockets onto the ground between them—a wallet with his ID, a few credit cards and some cash; badge; the multi-tool; and the Glock and a magazine with ten bullets, plus an empty magazine. The revolver and half a dozen bullets for it. A Mini Maglite, a small notebook and the binoculars. Her mood lifted when she spotted the Maglite. “We can use this,” she said. “Now all we need is something to boil the water in. Look around for a tin can.”
“We’re in the wilderness,” he reminded her, as he refilled his pockets.
“Trash washes downstream from other places,” she said. “And it lasts a long time in this dry climate.” Already, she was headed upstream, studying the bank.
Fifteen minutes later, she had almost given up when she spotted the soda can wedged in the roots of a wild plum growing along the banks. She crawled down and retrieved the can, then stopped to pick the few withered and spotted fruits left in the almost-leafless branches. She hurried with her finds downstream, where Travis was studying a deep pool. “There’s fish in here, if I could figure out how to catch them,” he said.
“Good idea.” She held up the soda can. “If you cut the top off of this with your multi-tool, we can use it to heat water.”
“Did you find matches, too?” he asked, taking the can.
She grinned. “I still remember a few lessons from playing around in the woods as a kid,” she said.
While he cut the top from the soda can and straightened out the dents, she gathered dry pine needles and twigs. Atop these, she added shredded paper from his notebook. Then she pulled a pack of gum from her pocket. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.
“You’ll see.” She unwrapped the gum and offered him the stick. He took it and popped it into his mouth, then she carefully tore the wrapper in half lengthwise, then pinched off bits out of the middle until only a thin sliver of paper-backed foil connected the two wider halves. “Now I need the battery from the Maglite,” she said.
He unscrewed the bottom from the Maglite and shook out the battery. “I see where you’re going with this, I think,” he said. “You’re going to make a spark.”
“You got it.” Gingerly, she pressed one end of the gum wrapper, foil side down, against the negative end of the battery. “This is the tricky part,” she said. “I don’t want to get burned.” Holding her breath, she touched the other end of the foil to the positive end of the battery. Immediately the center of the foil began to brown and char, then burst into flame. She dropped the burning wrapper onto the tinder she had prepared, and it flared also. As the twigs caught, she began feeding larger pieces of wood onto it.
“Where did you learn that?” Travis asked.
“My best friend’s older brother showed us when we were kids. He accidentally set the woods behind his house on fire doing that one time, but mostly we just thought it was a neat way to start campfires. I haven’t thought of it in years.” She looked around. “I think we’re ready for the water now.”
“I’ll get it.” He returned a few minutes later, carrying the first can, along with a second. “I found this,” he said. “We can heat twice as much water.”
He nestled the water-filled cans among the flames. The metal blackened and the water began to steam. Several minutes later, it was boiling. “It needs to boil ten minutes,” she said. “We’ll have to guess how long that is.” She took one of the dried plums from her pockets. “I found these. If we cut off the bad spots, they should be okay to eat.”
“I have to have water before I can eat anything,” he said. “But we’ll try them later. I had no idea you were so resourceful in the wilderness.”
“I told you my family spent a lot of time camping when I was a kid. We lived not that far from here before we moved to Texas.”
“Where you acted like just another music-listening, mall-going city kid,” he said.
“I was a teenager. I wanted to fit in.” Most of all, she had wanted to impress him—and he had seemed so sophisticated and cool. Or at least, as sophisticated and cool as a sixteen-year-old could be. Back then, she wouldn’t have admitted to knowing how to start a campfire or forage for wild food for anything.
“Did Braeswood know you were from around here?”
She focused on the boiling water, though she could feel his gaze burning into her. No matter how she tried to explain her relationship with Duane to Travis, he would never believe her. He had made up his mind about her the day she betrayed him. She didn’t blame him for his anger, but she wasn’t going to waste her breath defending herself. “He knew,” she said. She had been shocked to discover how much Duane already knew about her when they met. But that was how he worked. He mined information the way some men mine gold or diamonds, and then he used that information to buy what he wanted.
Travis shifted and winced. Guilt rushed over her. “I forgot all about your wound,” she said. “How is it?”
“It’s no big deal.” He started to turn away, but she leaned over to touch his wrist.
“Let me look,” she said. “Now that we have water, I can at least clean it up.”
He hesitated, then lifted his shirt to show an angry red graze along the side of his ribs. Now it was her turn to wince. “That must hurt,” she said.
“I’ve felt better.”
She glanced back at the water. “Where’s that handkerchief you were using to gag me?” she asked.
He pulled it from the pocket of the cargo pants.
Carefully, she dipped one corner of the cloth into the boiling water, took it out and let it cool slightly, then began sponging at the wound. “It doesn’t look too deep,” she said. She tried not to apply too much pressure, but she felt him tense when she hit a sensitive spot. As she cleared away the blood and dirt, she became aware of the smooth, taut skin beneath her hand. He had the muscular abs and chest of a man who worked out—abs and chest she had fond memories of feeling against her own naked body.
“I think it’s clean enough now,” he said, pulling away and lowering the shirt with a suddenness that made her wonder if he had read her thoughts.
She handed him the handkerchief. “You can clean that in the creek,” she said. “The water has probably boiled enough. If we put it in the creek, it will cool down faster.” She pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands, intending to use them to protect her hands from the hot metal.
“I’ll get that,” he said, and lifted first one can, then the other, off the fire with the pliers from his multi-tool.
She followed him to the creek, where they waited while the water steamed in the cans. “As soon as we drink these, we should heat more,” she said. “And try to find some food.”
“I’m not comfortable spending the night by the creek,” he said. “If Braeswood and his men are hunting for us, they’ll know we have to have water. How well does he know the area?”
“He knows it pretty well.” She closed her eyes, picturing the maps of the Weminuche Wilderness he had taped to the walls of the room he used as his office. When she opened them, she found herself looking right into Travis’s blue eyes. That intense gaze—and the mistrust she saw there—made her feel weighted down and more exhausted than ever. “He had maps of the area,” she said. “He planned to escape through the wilderness if the Feds trapped him at the house.”
“Why did he come back when he did?” Travis asked. “We should have had plenty of time to search the place and get out before any of you returned from Durango.”
“The neighbor, Mr. Samuelson, called Duane. He said some utility workers were up at the house, but they looked suspicious. Duane had made a point of making friends with the old man. He asked him to report if he saw any strangers around the house. He used the excuse that he had a lot of valuables that burglars would want. After he got off the phone with Samuelson, Duane called my driver, Preston Wylie, and told him to take me back to the house and he would be right behind me.” If she and Wylie had reached the house first, she had considered asking the strangers, whoever they were, to take her with them. But she dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to her. She knew Wylie had orders to kill her if she tried to get away. Duane almost never left her unguarded, but the few times he had risked it, he had made it very clear that he would hunt her down and kill her if she ever left him. He had the men and resources at his disposal to find her, probably before she had gotten out of the state. She had resigned herself to being trapped with him forever.
Then Travis, of all people, had pulled her from that car and risked his life to help her get away. Maybe he only saw it as protecting a prisoner, but the result was the same. No matter if he hated her, she would always be grateful to him for taking her away from an impossible situation.
“What can you remember about that escape route Braeswood had planned?” Travis asked. “Are there back roads or trails he intended to follow? A hideout where he thought he could hole up for a while?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything. I only saw the map a few times, and I didn’t pay much attention to it then. He certainly didn’t share his plans with me.” If the time had come to flee the house, he would have assigned a guard to drag her along with them, one more piece of baggage he considered necessary, at least for the moment.
“I guess he didn’t like to mix his personal relationship with his professional ones,” Travis said.
“I think the water is cool enough to drink now.” She ignored the gibe and plucked one of the cans from the stream and drained it. Even warm, it tasted so good going down. As soon as she had drained it, she refilled it and carried it back up to the fire. “I’m going to look for something to eat besides those plums,” she said.
“I’ll come with you.” He added his refilled can to the fire and followed her.
“I told you, you don’t have to worry about me running away,” she said.
“Right now I’m more worried about you getting lost.”
“I’ll be okay, as long as I follow the creek.”
He fell into step behind her. “What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Berries, cattails, more plum trees. There are edible mushrooms, but I don’t know enough about them to risk it.”
“If I had line and a hook, I could try fishing.”
“We could try to make a string from grass or vines,” she said. “And you could try my earring hooks.”
“Maybe I’ll give it a go later, after we’ve found a safe place to camp.”
She paused beside a small shrub and began pulling off the bright red fruit. “What are those?” he asked.
“Rose hips.” She bit into one and made a face. “They’re supposed to be full of vitamin C. They taste pretty sour, but they’re not the worst thing I ever ate.”
He took one, bit into it, then spit it out. “I don’t want to know the worst thing you ever ate.”
In the end, she collected two more plums, a handful of rose hips and some wild onions. “I sure hope you can catch a fish,” she said. “This isn’t going to get us very far.”
“I’m determined to find a way out of here long before we have to worry about starving,” he said. “Let’s go back and get the water, then find a place to stay tonight. Then we need to figure out a route away from here.”
They headed back downstream. She smelled the smoke from their little fire long before they reached it. Not good, if Duane was tracking them. She hurried to retrieve the cans of boiling water and set them aside to cool. “We’ll need to scatter these ashes and cover them with dirt, then leaves, to hide the fact that we were here,” she said.
“I’ll get a branch or something to dig with,” Travis said, and moved off into the woods.
For the first time since they had stopped by the creek, Leah began to feel uneasy. They had remained in one place too long. It wouldn’t be that difficult for Duane to follow the creek in the direction he knew they had fled. Another man might have left them to die in the wilderness, but Duane didn’t take those kinds of chances. He was successful because he believed in controlling all variables. She was a variable he was most determined to control.
Footsteps behind her alerted her to Travis’s return. “The water’s cool enough to drink now,” she said, gingerly picking up the still-warm can. “Let’s empty them and take them with us.”
Strong hands grabbed her roughly from behind. The can of water slipped from her grasp as she felt a sharp sting, and then the pressure of a razor-sharp blade held to her throat. Duane’s gravelly voice whispered in her ear, “Where’s your friend the FBI agent?”
