Читать книгу Boneyard Ridge - Пола Грейвс - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Oh God, oh God, oh G—

Hunter’s hand closed over Susannah’s mouth as a low, keening noise filled the tight confines of the cave. It took a second for her to realize the noise was coming from her own aching throat.

She swallowed the rest of the sound and moved backward with him, deeper into the shadows of the cave.

Outside, she could still hear the swishing noise of the man with the big gun moving through the thick underbrush and dead autumn leaves that carpeted the forest floor outside the cave. A few more steps and he’d—

A harsh bark of static made her jump. Hunter’s arms tightened around her, as if he was trying to keep her from flying completely apart.

“Billy says regroup at the camp.” A tinny voice, barely audible through the rain, floated into the cave.

Hunter’s grip tightened like a spasm. Then she heard the unmistakable sounds of the man outside retreating, moving steadily away from the mouth of the cave.

Hunter let her go, and she pulled away from him with a jerk, waiting until she could no longer hear the sound of movement outside before she asked in a low growl, “Who the hell is Billy?”

Hunter didn’t answer. She hadn’t expected he would. She was beginning to understand that silence meant he knew things he had no intention of telling her.

Like how he’d happened to be waiting in the parking lot at just the right time to play hero for her when the shooting started. Or how he happened to have an emergency kit packed and tucked away in his jacket, as if he wanted to be ready for whatever might go down tonight.

Or why there had been something hard poking into her ankle where his right leg had braced her when he pulled her back into his grasp.

He was armed. Ankle holster, which was why she hadn’t spotted it before. Did that explain the limp? If he wasn’t used to ankle-carry, he might not realize that unless he balanced the weapon with a counterweight on the other leg, like extra ammo strapped to the opposite ankle, it could seriously mess up his walking gait.

Except he limped with his left leg, didn’t he? Not the leg with the weapon.

Before she had a chance to puzzle it out, Hunter snapped on the flashlight, slanting the beam across her face. She squinted, turning her face away from the painful glare. “Do you mind?”

“I do,” he said, still speaking softly. “We got damn lucky just now. But you have got to learn to listen when I ask you to do something.”

“You don’t ask. You order,” she muttered, kicking herself for saying anything at all. One of these days, her grandmother had always promised her, her smart mouth was going to get her into trouble.

As if it hadn’t a million times already.

But fear made her angry, and abject terror made her furious and verbal about it. If Mr. Enigmatic Maintenance Man with the hidden gun and a hidden agenda couldn’t handle a little pushback from her when he started barking orders, this night was about to go downhill at blazing speed.

“Look.” He was struggling with some anger of his own. She could tell by the way his jaw was working, as if he had a mouth full of chew and no spit cup. “I know you’re confused and scared. And I wish I could tell you there wasn’t any reason to be, but we both know there is.”

“I don’t need you to candy-coat anything,” she said flatly. “I just want to know all the facts. Why is somebody trying to kill me? And how did you know about it?” She swallowed the final question she wanted to ask, about the gun strapped to his ankle. It might be in her best interest to keep that knowledge to herself for the moment.

He gave her a long, considering look before he turned his gaze away, eyeing the narrow stone outcropping they’d used as a bench earlier. “I meant what I said about getting some sleep. It’s cold and it’s wet out there, and that gauze wouldn’t last long if we started trekking through the woods tonight.”

“It’ll get torn up just as badly tomorrow.”

“If you’ll promise to sit tight and wait, I may have a way to fix that problem.” He waved the flashlight beam toward the stone bench. “Get some sleep. I’ve got to go somewhere.”

She stared at him, not believing what she was hearing. “You’re going to leave me here? Alone?”

“They’re convening somewhere else for the night. You should be safe enough.” He didn’t say it, but she could see the rest of what he was thinking in his hooded eyes. Even if he was here, there wouldn’t be much they could do to hold off a whole crew of armed men looking to take her down. She wouldn’t be much safer with him than stuck here shoeless with the damp, bitter cold and the rugged mountain terrain between her and safety.

“What are you going to do out there?”

He looked down at her bandaged feet. “Well, first of all, I’m going to get you some shoes.” He lifted the flashlight upward again, handing it over to her. “You keep the light. I won’t need it out there.”

She closed her hand over the flashlight handle. It was warm where he’d gripped it, transferring welcome heat to her numb fingers.

But almost as soon as he slipped out into the rainy night, she extinguished the beam, preferring the comforting obscurity of the darkness to the stark reality the light revealed.

She was trapped and hunted. She was stuck with a man she didn’t know, for reasons she wasn’t sure she understood, in a place that might as well be the far side of the moon, for all the chance she had of finding her way out of these woods barefoot in the pouring rain.

Who was this man named Hunter? And why did his name seem to ring a bell with her, as if she’d heard it recently but couldn’t quite place where? She’d certainly never seen him before, as far as she could remember, but there was still something about him that seemed familiar.

She made herself turn the light back on, aiming the beam around the small cave to get her bearings. Hunter hadn’t told her where he was going, so she didn’t know how long he might be away.

Bottom line, she did not need to spend the night in this cave with a man she didn’t trust. If that meant wrapping her feet in every inch of gauze she could find in that first-aid kit he’d so kindly left with her, then that’s what she had to do.

She had to get out of here before he got back, get to a safe place and start figuring out who those men with the guns really were.

Because if they were somehow connected to the Bradburys, then her life was about to get a thousand times more dangerous.

* * *

HUNTER DIDN’T THINK it was likely that Myron and the other boys had stumbled upon his hiding place while they’d been scouring the woods for any sign of Susannah Marsh. He’d stashed the large rucksack filled with emergency supplies in a hard-to-access area of the woods, where fallen trees and some rocky granite outcroppings created a natural nook perfect for hiding and sheltering something the size of the rucksack.

It was only slightly damp when he pulled it from its hiding place, and the water-resistant canvas lining would almost certainly have protected anything inside from the elements.

Not that he supposed Susannah Marsh would quibble about wet shoes; they’d certainly be a big improvement on the bloody gauze wrap currently protecting her battered feet.

He’d purchased a pair of hiking boots and another pair of tennis shoes he hoped would be comfortable for walking, though he wasn’t exactly an expert on women’s shoes. She had narrow, delicate-looking feet, although the hard calf and thigh muscles he’d seen—and felt—while carrying her through the woods on his back had suggested she wasn’t nearly as soft and ornamental a woman as she looked.

That was good. She’d need to pull her weight over the next few days, until he could figure out what to do next.

He couldn’t be sure Myron or the others had recognized him, but it was likely they had. So his undercover assignment was officially over, as far as he was concerned. While he suspected his boss might wish him to take a chance and try to get back inside the cell, he wasn’t stupid enough to risk it. He’d already come damn close to pushing up daisies twice in his life.

No hurry to do that again anytime soon, right?

Hiking back to the cave with the backpack strapped to his shoulders reminded him of the frantic run through the woods with Susannah Marsh clinging to his back like a leech. A leech with long, well-toned legs and pert little breasts that had somehow managed to feel both soft and firm against his shoulder blades.

Plus, she’d smelled like freshly cut tart apples. How could she possibly have managed such a thing after a long day in the office and a headlong run for her life?

He tried to follow the path he and Susannah had taken earlier that night in hopes of tracking down his missing cell phone, but he’d seen no sign of the phone by the time he reached the cave entrance. He had to assume it was now in the custody of one of the Blue Ridge Infantry foot soldiers Billy Dawson had sent to kill Susannah Marsh.

The phone was a burner, and he took care not to leave any incriminating evidence for Dawson or the others to find. Even his calls to his handler, as he’d come to think of the wily old ex-spy who had hired him for this operation, were calls to another burner phone that would be next to impossible for Dawson and his crew to trace.

Alexander Quinn had made sure of that. After all, the Blue Ridge Infantry might be a crew of authority-hating rednecks with a mean streak, but not long ago, they’d aligned themselves with a band of tech-savvy anarchists as well as a hodgepodge of downright entrepreneurial drug cookers that had once formed the standing army for a criminal named Wayne Cortland.

Cortland had died a couple of years ago, and the authorities had largely dismantled the organization in a series of raids not long afterwards.

But the remaining remnants now had a blueprint for success. A business model, if you wanted to put it in those terms. When the local cops, already dealing with more than their share of crime, had moved on to other cases, Alexander Quinn had apparently decided to take up the slack. He seemed to be making the job of cleaning up the post-Cortland mess a personal project.

Overhead, a break in the rain clouds offered a brief glow of moonlight, just enough to reveal the rain-slick face of the rocky overhang that hid the small cave where Susannah Marsh was waiting. He slowed his approach, trying to prepare himself for telling her the truth about why he’d confronted her in the parking lot earlier that evening—and just what he had planned for them for the next few days.

She wasn’t going to like it. That much he knew for sure. If Susannah Marsh was known for anything around the Highlands Hotel and Resort, it was her polished, professional look. Men and women alike commented on it when she wasn’t in earshot, and not all of the talk was kind, but Hunter chalked the negative talk up to envy.

Susannah Marsh was damn near flawless. She dressed with meticulous style, her clothing a compromise between fashion and function. Never inappropriate, but always sleek and attractive. Perfectly groomed, perfectly competent, perfectly lovely.

But what he had in mind for the next few days, he was pretty sure she’d find perfectly appalling.

He had been sticking with a stealthy approach to the cave to this point, but he didn’t want to sneak up on her and scare her, so as he reached the mouth of the cave, he made sure to make a little noise to give her notice of his arrival. “Susannah?” No answer.

Peering into the gloom, he tried to make out any signs of movement. But the cave interior was cold and still.

Pulling his keys from his pocket, he winced at the jingle of metal on metal as he located the small penlight he kept on his key chain. With a flick of his finger, the penlight beam came on, and he ran the light across the width of the cave.

The first-aid kit was still there, lying on the stone outcropping where they’d sat a little while earlier. Even the flashlight was there, snugged up next to the first-aid kit.

But Susannah Marsh was nowhere in sight.

The flashlight beam caught a glimmer of white on the cave floor beneath the stone bench. Crouching with a grimace of pain, he shined the light on the floor, taking in several half-moon-shaped white slivers. It took a second to realize what he was seeing.

Nail clippings. She’d cut off her nails.

He picked up the first-aid kit to put it in his pocket and stopped as he realized it was considerably lighter than when he’d used it to bandage her feet earlier. When he checked inside, he found that all of the gauze that had been packed within was gone.

What the hell was the woman up to?

* * *

WAS SHE CRAZY to be doing this?

When Susannah had left the cave, she’d been certain that the worst possible choice she could make was to stay there and wait for Hunter to get back. No matter how attractive he might seem, especially when he was standing between her and a bunch of men with guns, he wasn’t her friend. He wasn’t even an acquaintance. He was just a guy she’d seen for the first time in an elevator earlier that very day. For all she knew, he’d been lying when he told her he’d hit the button for the wrong floor.

Maybe he’d been looking for her the whole time.

But now that she was out in the woods, shivering from the cold and biting her lip to keep from moaning over the pain in her injured feet, she was beginning to second-guess her decision to strike out on her own.

Yes, she knew a little something about getting around in the mountains. And yes, she’d done a pretty damn good job of fashioning shoes out of gauze, tape and a couple of slabs of wood she’d used her Swiss Army knife to shave off a fallen tree limb she’d found near the mouth of the cave.

But the makeshift shoes were already starting to fall apart, no match for the wet, tangled underbrush and rocky soil. The temperature had to have dropped another five or ten degrees since sunset, and her coat was made for getting from the office to the car, not for traipsing around in the woods on a cold, damp October night.

And worst of all, she had a bad feeling she was lost.

She usually could find her way around anywhere, but in her panic to get away from men shooting at her, she’d lost track of what direction they’d gone. She’d never learned to navigate by the stars, having grown up in the middle of the Smoky Mountains, a long way from the sea. And the heavens had opened up again, anyway, mountain fog and driving rain obscuring everything outside a fifty-yard radius.

She might as well be in the middle of a big, tree-strewn void for all the good her surroundings were doing her at the moment.

Stubbornly quelling the panic starting to hurtle up from her trembling gut, she made herself stop and take a long, deep breath. Look around. What do you see?

Trees. Fog.

Someone moving through the woods ahead.

Shock zapped through her, compelling her to run. She clamped down on the instinct, knowing that movement was the worst possible thing at the moment. Standing very still, several yards from the dark silhouettes she could barely make out moving through the mist about thirty yards away, she had a chance to escape their notice. Her coat was a dark olive-green trench that covered her from neck to knee, and the underbrush covered her legs from toes to knees. Only her face and hands would be visible in the damp gloom, and they might be mistaken for the patchy white trunk of a birch tree.

As long as she stayed very, very still.

Nearby, something rustled in the underbrush. She held her position, ruthlessly suppressing the urge to turn her head and see what was moving around so close by.

Ahead, the two dark-clad figures walking through the trees kept moving. Apparently they’d heard nothing, or if they had, they’d chalked it up to an animal wandering around in the rain.

The pounding rush of her pulse in her ears was so loud it almost eclipsed the staccato beat of the rain, which had risen to a torrent. Even the thick evergreen boughs overhead weren’t enough to keep her from becoming thoroughly drenched. But she didn’t move, not even to wipe the rain out of her stinging eyes.

The dark figures kept moving, gliding with terrifying silence through the fog until they disappeared from her sight.

She ignored her body’s urge to crumple into a boneless heap and stayed still a few moments longer until she was sure the prowling men were no longer in earshot.

She heard the rustling noise again. Closer this time.

Her patience and control left in a snap, and she started running headlong through the woods, heedless of the noise she was making or the painful slap of her unraveling gauze-and-tape footwear against her battered feet. All she could think about was the chill-inducing menace of the men she’d seen gliding through the misty woods like vengeful ghosts.

The tape on her right foot tore away completely, and she went sprawling, barely catching herself from landing face-first on the rocky ground. She hit hard, the impact driving the air from her lungs and leaving her gasping and heaving for breath.

For a few terrifying seconds, the world around her seemed to go completely black as her oxygen-starved lungs struggled to refill. And in that frightening void, Susannah heard her grandmother’s voice, sharp and clear.

“Get yourself together, girl. Ain’t nobody gonna fix your troubles ’cept you.”

Air seeped into her lungs, easing the blackness. Cold, damp air replaced the burning pain in her chest, and slowly her pulse descended from the stratosphere to a fast but steady cadence.

Get yourself together, girl, she repeated silently, gathering up the remains of her ersatz shoe and examining it to see if there was any hope of making a repair.

Nope. It was a goner.

Allowing herself only a second or two of despair, she rose to her feet and shoved the bundle of tattered gauze and tape in the pocket of her flimsy jacket. Gingerly putting her injured foot on the ground, she gauged the discomfort level and, while it hurt like hell, she thought she could bear it, at least a little while longer.

She took a careful step forward. The ground was rough, wet and hard, but she could take it.

The flurry of movement behind her came out of thick silence, like a whirlwind born from dead calm. She had time to suck in a quick breath and take a stumbling step forward before she was jerked back against a wall of hard heat. A large hand clamped over her mouth and a low drawl rumbled in her ear.

“Don’t make a sound.”