Читать книгу Wilderness Secrets - Sharon Dunn - Страница 14

Abigail’s leg and arm muscles burned as she reached up toward a rock that looked like it was stable. “This is getting too steep. We can’t climb much farther without gear. We need to move that way.” She pointed south.

Off in the distance, she saw the forest where Jesse had helped her get away from the three men bent on violence. Though she didn’t see the men anywhere now, the memory of what she’d just been through made her shudder.

“Is there some other way?” asked Jesse. “Those men are probably going to be coming from that direction.”

Even though her heart was already pounding from the adrenaline and exertion, it sped up even more from uncertainty. What was going on here? She could not process what had just happened.

Who was Jesse, anyway, and why were those men after him? Why did they think she was somehow involved in whatever had really brought him up here?

“We’ll be stuck here if we don’t move laterally. It only gets steeper if we head north.” She didn’t wait for his reply before she stepped sideways, seeking less treacherous ground. “I assume we’re moving up this mountain to get to the plane those men mentioned?” Her voice was filled with accusation.

She didn’t trust Jesse. She didn’t know what he was up to. The only thing she knew for sure was those three men wouldn’t flinch at killing her. And Jesse had risked his own safety to get her away from them. Getting to that plane seemed like the only way she would make it out alive.

Jesse didn’t respond to her question about the plane.

All of this felt so wrong. How had she gotten into such an ugly mess? Why hadn’t she trusted her gut feeling about Jesse, that he was up to something? Because the person she trusted the least right now was herself.

After Brent’s grand deception, the new rule she operated under was that nothing was as it appeared. She wasn’t a good judge of character.

Even though Jesse had risked his own life to get her away from those violent men, it didn’t mean he wasn’t a criminal, as well.

She walked carefully on the rocky, steep terrain until it leveled off a little bit, allowing her to climb upward. There were fewer rocks and jagged cliff faces and more grass on this part of the mountain. Even a few struggling junipers, trees that were more like bushes, dotted the landscape. Their tangled trunks and branches grew low to the ground. The breeze ruffled her hair as she focused on moving up the mountain. Silence surrounded her.

Then Jesse dived to the earth, taking her with him. Her stomach collided with the hard ground. She felt the weight of his hand on her back. “What’s the big idea?”

“They’re down there,” he whispered. He rolled away from her and crawled toward a juniper tree, peering through its branches.

She slipped in beside him. Two of the three men, Eddy and the blond man, huffed up the mountain at a steady pace. Eddy still held his rifle. She didn’t see the dark-haired man.

Her heart squeezed tight. Growing up and in her line of work, she’d stared down a grizzly bear and an angry moose. But the terror that invaded every molecule of her body right now was more intense than anything she’d ever experienced. Fear threatened to paralyze her. She couldn’t take a deep breath or think of what their next move should be.

They’d be spotted as soon as they left the cover of the juniper tree.

Jesse glanced one way and then the other, then looked up toward the mountain peak. He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Let’s go for it.” He locked her in his gaze for a moment.

She saw courage in those brown eyes. He gave her a half nod and then patted her shoulder as if to say “you can do this.”

He burst to his feet. She did the same. He ran in a zigzag pattern, making his way toward a rock outcropping that might provide a degree of protection.

Abby pumped her legs as her lungs filled with air.

It took several minutes before the first rifle shot shattered the mountain silence. Judging from the sound, the bullet had come from pretty close to her left.

Inwardly she cringed, but she kept running, pushing up the mountain.

The sound of a bullet propelled out of the barrel of a rifle and moving through space, which she had heard a thousand times in her life, sent an unfamiliar wave of terror through her. She had never been shot at. She had never been the prey. She had been with her brothers when they went hunting and had witnessed the terror an animal felt when it thought it would die. A deer wounded by a bullet, normally a passive animal, would charge you to save its life.

Now she understood what it meant to battle against a death that seemed imminent. How intensely she felt the need to survive, to stay alive.

She lifted her head as she headed up the mountain. She could see the peak, twenty steep yards above her.

Jesse maneuvered so he was between her and Eddy. Was he doing that to protect her from the incoming bullets?

Another shot zinged through the air.

She kept running, praying that the bullets would not find their target. Once they were down on the other side of the mountain, they’d have a measure of safety until Eddy got to the top of the peak.

When she glanced over her shoulder, Eddy and the blond man were closing the distance between them. Both men seemed to be in good shape and weren’t tiring at all.

The peak drew closer. They might make it after all. She willed herself to run even faster.

She darted out, separating from Jesse as she scrambled up the mountainside.

Another shot broke the silence around them. This one seemed to have gone wild.

She reached the peak. Jesse was right at her heels.

“There.” He pointed down at the other side of the peak, at the tree line where the forest butted up against a flat meadow.

She wasn’t sure what he was indicating. She didn’t see anything that looked like an airplane. They made their way down the mountainside and sprinted across the meadow. As they got closer, she saw now that there was a small plane camouflaged by evergreen branches.

Jesse arrived at the airplane first. He pulled away enough branches to open the cockpit door. She continued to yank away the branches to allow visibility through the front windshield. The plane was a small bush model designed to land in less-than-perfect conditions and terrain.

Movement at the top of the mountain peak drew her attention. Eddy had made it to the top and was lining up another shot, while the blond man jogged down the mountain toward them.

Jesse climbed into the plane.

She ripped away several more branches before yanking open the copilot door and slipping into the seat.

Jesse had flipped several switches. Lights on the control panel blinked on, but she did not hear the rumble and whir of an engine firing up.

Abigail was out of breath from running so hard. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

Jesse continued to flip switches on the control panel. “I have a pilot’s license. This thing hasn’t been fired up for a long time. It’s gonna take a minute.”

Through the windshield, she could see that the blond man had made it to the base of the mountain and was now running across the meadow. He’d have to get within feet of them to make a shot with a handgun count. Eddy, who was halfway down the mountain, lifted the rifle and peered through the scope.

Her heartbeat drummed in her ears and she gripped the armrest a little tighter.

The engine roared to life and Jesse taxied forward. The plane wobbled a bit on the uneven ground.

Eddy gave up on making the shot from where he was perched and jogged toward a rock, where he propped his rifle to steady it.

The blond man was less than ten yards from them.

Jesse pulled a handgun from inside his jacket. “You know how to shoot, right?”

“Of course.” Perhaps it was the severe tension of the moment, but she almost laughed out loud. “My dad taught me.”

He handed her the gun. “Pretty Boy is coming up on your side.”

“Is that what you call him?” She looked again to see that the blond man, Pretty Boy, had drawn even closer. As the plane gained speed, Pretty Boy took aim at her window. The plane bumped along. She opened the copilot door and fired off a shot that sent Pretty Boy to the ground. He got right back up. He must not have been hit.

The plane lifted off. When they were about forty feet off the ground, they flew right over Eddy, who was scrambling to line up a shot.

The plane was slow in gaining altitude. Jesse eased the throttle on the pedestal. When she peered out the front windshield, it looked like they wouldn’t clear the tops of the trees.

Jesse stared straight ahead. “Come on, baby. You can do this for me.”

As they flew over the tops of trees, she thought she heard branches brushing the underside of the airplane.

Abby let up on the death grip she had on the armrest of the seat and released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “We made it.”

He turned to her. She liked the way a spark came into his brown eyes when he smiled. “Yes, we made it.”

She unclicked her seat belt and turned around to see what kind of cargo was in the plane. A tarp had come off what looked like neatly stacked rectangles of something. She leaned over the seat to get a better look.

Jesse’s face blanched. “It’s not what you think.”

Her breath caught in her throat. The tarp had been covering what looked like bricks of some kind of drug. A mixture of fear and anger swirled through her. “And what am I supposed to think?” Men couldn’t be trusted on any level. She was in an airplane with a criminal.

“Abigail, I can explain,” he said.

She slammed a hand on her hip. “I just bet you can explain.” All the anger she felt over Brent’s betrayal flooded back through her. What Jesse had done was even worse. Why was this happening? Did she have a sign on her forehead that said she was okay with being deceived by men?

The plane began to wobble.

“Face forward in your seat, put your seat belt on.” Jesse said in a raised voice.

One wing dropped lower than the other. She secured herself in the seat. “What’s wrong with the plane?”

Jesse clicked some switches on the instrument panel. “Either we’re having engine trouble or Eddy was able to hit the plane, and we just didn’t hear it over the sound of the motor.” He stared through the windshield. “Either way, I’m going to have to crash-land this baby.”

Abigail’s heart seized with terror as she stared through the windshield, watching the treetops grow ever closer.

Jesse stared out at the ground below as the plane lost altitude. He searched the landscape for a flat spot that could serve as a landing strip. What he saw was mostly forest and mountains.

“You know this area. Is there any place close by that would be flat enough to land on?”

Abigail stared through the front windshield. It took her a moment to respond. “Everything looks different from up here. Veer off to the west. I think there’s a grassy patch on the other side of that cluster of trees.” Her voice trembled as she spoke, a sign that revealed the level of fear she was battling.

The plane continued to sputter and lurch up and down as though traveling on waves. Jesse changed course. He dropped altitude as they drew near to the trees. He could see the flat spot Abigail had referred to. When he checked the gauges, he saw that they had lost substantial fuel since takeoff. The gas tank might have been hit. But some other damage was making it hard to keep the wings level.

The plane drew even closer to the ground, skimming the treetops. The strip of land was not very long. He’d be pushing it to try to get the plane stopped before they ran into the trees on the other side.

He nose-dived the plane, then leveled it off and dropped the landing gear. The wheels touched the ground, and the plane bumped along. The landing was so rough his body felt like he was being shaken from the inside and the outside at the same time.

The aircraft remained on the ground, but continued to rumble toward the trees. The entire cockpit vibrated as the trees drew closer. The nose of the plane shot through them. They rolled along, cutting through the trees that were far apart. Branches snapped until the larger trees served as a sort of net that stopped them. The body of the plane thundered and shook.

Both of them sat, clinging to their chairs while the dust settled, and the plane stopped creaking and groaning.

“If there’s a fuel leak, there could be a fire,” Jesse said. “You need to get out.” He had to find that hard drive, or all of this would be in vain. Lee had died before he could tell Jesse where in the plane he’d hidden it.

Abigail leaned to push on her door. “My door won’t open. There’s a tree in the way.” Her voice was filled with anguish. She slumped back in her seat and stared at the ceiling. Her lower lip quivered.

Jesse reached over and stroked her shoulder. “It’s all right. We’re on the ground now.” He tried to sound reassuring, but they were far from being, literally or figuratively, out of the woods. He stood up from his seat and took a step toward the cargo area. “You can get out from my side.”

“And what are you going to do?”

Her accusatory tone got under his skin. He was an honest man. “There’s something I need to locate.”

“You said yourself this plane could catch on fire.”

He had no time to argue with her. “I’ll explain later. Get outside and tell me if you can assess why we went down.” He didn’t mean to sound harsh, but time was of the essence.

She scowled but shifted over to his seat and pushed open the door.

Jesse scanned the cargo area. He flung open several storage drawers, not finding anything that looked like a hard drive. Maybe Lee had taped it underneath the control panel. He hurried toward the nose of the plane and ran his hands underneath the control panel. Nothing. He flung open a storage box behind the copilot seat and rifled through the contents. Not there.

The pilot-side door screeched open and Abigail stuck her head in. “There are flames shooting out.”

He stopped his mad search long enough to register what she had said. A thunderous noise that sounded as though it was contained within a bubble surrounded him. A small explosion from the fire. More, bigger explosions might follow.

He needed to find that hard drive.

Smoke filled the interior of the plane. He coughed. His vision blurred.

He felt Abigail grab his hand and drag him out of the plane.

When his vision cleared, he saw a wall of flames by the plane’s engine. Smoke began to rise in the air. He coughed, feeling a sense of defeat.

He hadn’t found the hard drive. The cartel would be set on revenge even more because of their loss of product. He wasn’t sure they had fired shots at the airplane. It didn’t seem like they would risk the drugs burning up, but then again, if he got away in the plane they’d lose the drugs for sure and he could identify the three men.

Abigail rose to her feet. “It looks like it’s too wet for the trees to catch on fire. The fact that it’s been a wet spring will keep the fire from spreading.” She still sounded shaken and upset.

Already the fire was dying down. That single burst of flame must have consumed all the oxygen and fuel. Part of the plane would still be intact when the flames died down, though the interior had filled with smoke.

Smoke rose up in the air. Probably not enough to be noticed by anyone in Fort Madison, the little town they’d hiked in from. The three men who had been after them would see it and know where they were located. They hadn’t flown that far before landing.

Still trying to clear his mind, he placed his hands on his hips. What now? They needed to get off this mountain before the thugs found them. “Can you guide me back down to Fort Madison?”

She crossed her arms and glared at him, then angled her body so she had a view of the smoldering plane.

“Look, I understand your suspicions, and I’m sorry I wasn’t up-front with you.” The less she knew the better, for her own safety. “I’m a drug enforcement agent. I was set up by another agent so it looks like I was working with drug dealers. I needed to get this plane back. It has evidence that could clear me.”

“And you came up here all by yourself? Don’t you people usually work as a team? Even if you are a DEA agent, I’m sure they end up on the wrong side of the law all the time.”

Without the evidence, he had no idea who in the home office would even believe that he’d been framed. As far as the agency was concerned, he’d gone rogue. Though DEA work involved a level of deception with undercover work, he knew it was for the cause of justice. He was a man who always tried to do the right thing. It bothered him that his character had been so smeared by Lee’s frame-up. The only thing that bothered him more right now was the way Abigail was looking at him with suspicion.

“Look, we both need to get out of here and back to civilization as fast as possible.” He took a step toward her.

Her mouth twitched, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Please trust me. I’m one of the good guys.”

“Trust you?” The word seemed to upset her, when he had hoped that it would build a bridge between them.

“Abigail, what are you going to do? Those men are armed and they still have gear and food.”

Again, she studied him for a long moment, probably considering her options.

He took a step toward her. “I need your expertise to get out of these mountains as fast as possible, and you need my protection in case those guys do catch up with us.”

She stared at him, her mouth drawn into a tight line. “I wish I had my backpack.” She turned sideways in the direction from which they had come.

He let out a breath. At least now she seemed to be in problem-solving mode. Maybe she was starting to come around, regardless of what she might think of him. “Going back for your gear is not an option. The fire is dying out in that plane. I’ll go back in there and see if there’s anything we can use.”

A raindrop hit his nose. Good for drowning the fire, not so good for staying dry.

Abigail jogged toward the forest. “We can stay drier in the trees.”

He liked the use of the word we. She seemed to understand the need for them to stay together. Really, he needed her more than she needed him. She was an experienced guide. She probably knew how to defend herself against man and animal. He was a city boy and could not navigate his way out of a paper bag in an environment like this.

By the time he reached the edge of the forest, the drizzle had turned into a downpour. The fire would be put out that much faster. Unless other people were close by, the chance of the smoke alerting someone other than the criminals that a plane had crash-landed was close to zero. The fire hadn’t burned long enough and the smoke hadn’t risen high enough for it to be seen in town.

It was possible that there were other hikers in these mountains who might alert authorities once they returned to Fort Madison. But Fort Madison was a three-day hike away. Help from the outside was not something they could count on.

Abigail found shelter underneath the long branches of an older evergreen. She crouched down and pulled her knees toward her chest. He sat down beside her. The rain pelted against the higher branches, but he and Abigail remained relatively dry.

“We need to assess what we have to work with. I have a Swiss Army knife I always carry with me, an energy bar in my jacket pocket and waterproof matches,” Abigail said matter-of-factly.

He liked that she was thinking about how they were going to get off this mountain. “I have a gun with eight bullets left in it.” He rifled through the pockets of his jacket. “And a metro pass, a very old piece of hard candy, a couple of paper clips, a pocket Bible and a tire gauge I forgot to put back in my toolbox the last time I checked my tire pressure.”

She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. “That is not very helpful. Even MacGyver would say that’s not much to work with.”

He laughed. “You watch that show, too?”

The faintest hint of a smile, a spasm almost, lit up Abigail’s face. “I might have caught a rerun a time or two. That show’s been around forever.”

He liked her smile, however brief it had been.

Her expression turned serious once again, eyebrows drawn close together. “You didn’t follow my instructions. When I told you how to pack, I said there were some essential things you needed to have on your person at all times.”

“I know. I didn’t think I’d be hiking out,” he said.

“Rule number one about being in the mountains—you always hope for the best but plan for the worst.”

“Yes, I remember you said that.” He leaned a little closer to her. “Sorry I’m such a bad student.”

She pulled away. She was still a little prickly. Maybe her coldness was about something more than just him.

“By landing where we did, we have gotten quite a ways from the main trail, which is the most direct route back into town,” she said.

“But you can get us back into Fort Madison?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course I can. It’s what I do for a living.”

“We can’t wait here much longer. Hopefully, that fire will die out.”

He listened for a moment to the rain falling on the higher branches, creating a sort of melody.

“Yes, I suppose we need to get moving as quickly as possible.”

He imagined that she was thinking the same thing he was. Though they had a head start on the three men, waiting for the plane to stop burning would cost them valuable time, but hiking with no supplies could be costly, too. It was just a matter of time before the men tracked them to this spot.