Chapter Ten

Angie dived to her left, hitting the ground hard and rolling as she desperately thumbed the switch on the flashlight, then kept on rolling. She tried to tuck the rifle against her body but it caught on something and tore loose from her grip. She didn’t stop rolling, just left the rifle there on the ground because if she stopped she was dead. More shots came, so fast the booming cracks were right on top of each other. The blasts of lightning would reveal her position, she had to get behind a tree, something—

Another white-hot flash, and the earth shuddered as the lightning bolt went to ground somewhere nearby. The thunder was deafening. In that ungodly light she saw Chad, pistol still in his hand, but he was turned in the direction of the tents and didn’t see her on the ground off to his right side. The horses were raising hell in the corral; it sounded as if they were trying to tear it down. Chad moved forward, swinging a flashlight from side to side, trying to find her. With nowhere to go, unable to reach cover, Angie simply buried her face in the wet ground and stayed still, praying, hoping the heavy rain would obscure his sight enough.

The rain pounded on her with a force that felt like a thousand tiny hammers. The earth was churned into instant mud, rivulets of water becoming streams that gushed down the side of the mountain.

Mentally Angie grappled with what had just happened, trying to make the last thirty seconds fit into her conception of reality. This couldn’t have happened. Chad had not shot Davis, had not shot at her. Why would he? What had happened, what had she missed?

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Chad move past her position, playing the flashlight beam on the tents as if he expected to find her crouched between them. She lifted her head a tiny fraction, just enough that she could see the gleam of the rifle lying in the rain, ten, maybe fifteen feet away, but it might as well be a hundred feet. If she hadn’t dropped the rifle, she’d have him; he was three-quarters turned away from her. But she had dropped the weapon, and if she leaped for it, he’d hear her, and the footing was so sloppy now she wasn’t certain she could make the distance without falling.

One of the horses, probably Samson, was now doing his damnedest to knock down the corral. Chad jerked in that direction, his back now completely toward her, and Angie gathered herself, getting up on her hands and knees, the toes of her boots digging into the mud—

—and another flash of lightning revealed the monster coming out of the trees, a huge black hulk padding forward with a swinging gait, head down, jaws popping with a hideous sound as if it were cracking bones. Chad turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of it, then she heard the choked shriek he gave as he hurled himself toward the horses.

All the blood rushed from her head. She heard a buzzing noise, and even though the lightning kept flashing her vision kind of washed out, as if she were looking at a photograph faded almost beyond perception. She thought she might fall face forward in the mud, helpless, but if she made any movement the bear might see her and charge, so she forced herself to freeze there like a runner in the blocks, waiting for the monster to hurl itself after Chad and seize him in its popping jaws.

Instead, it raised one massive paw and swiped at Davis’s body. It shoved its snout against him, flipped him over. Davis’s legs and arms flopped like a rag doll’s. The bear circled him, bouncing up and down a little on its front paws. From behind the tents came the clatter of poles falling, a sound she’d heard so many times she knew exactly what it was. A rush of hoofs pounding on the ground, one of the horses with a dark form hunched on its back—Chad taking the horses, all of them, and running.

Leaving her alone there with the bear.

For a few seconds that felt like an eternity, she couldn’t force her panic-numbed brain to function. Then, slowly, she began to analyze the situation. The bear was … what … twenty, maybe thirty yards away? A bear didn’t have great eyesight. It had very good hearing and a stupendous sense of smell, but the rain and wind were coming at her from the bear’s direction. It couldn’t smell her. Its attention was on Davis’s body. It couldn’t see all that well anyway, and the rain further shielded her.

Every one of her instincts shrieked at her not to move, not to attract its attention, but she needed that rifle. To get it, she’d have to crawl fifteen feet closer to the bear, and pray it didn’t see her. Slowly, so slowly, she lifted her right hand from the mud and moved it forward. Next was her left knee. Then her left hand, still clutching the flashlight. Right knee. Repeat the process. Slowly, slowly, forcing herself to drag in deep, controlled breaths through her mouth, then silently letting the air ease out of her, not putting any force behind it. If she didn’t make any noise, maybe the bear wouldn’t notice her.

Her hand touched the stock of the rifle. She froze for a moment, making certain the bear was still preoccupied. The almost constant flashes of lightning showed it in a kind of freeze-frame effect as it bit into Davis’s stomach and slung him around with a toss of its powerful head, tearing flesh free and sending his body tumbling. Like a cat with a new toy, the huge bear pounced on the dead man, completely oblivious to the storm crashing around them.

The bear’s back was to her. Now. Angie pulled the rifle toward her. The mud sucked at it, resisted her efforts to lift it. Feverishly, her hands shaking, she tried to wipe the mud away but reality slapped her in the face: She couldn’t fire this rifle until it had been cleaned. The mechanism was too caked with mud.

She almost whimpered, almost collapsed in the mud in despair. Only the thought of the bear doing to her what it was now doing to Davis kept her from dissolving into an unending wail. Silent. She had to be silent.

Just as slowly, deliberately, as she had crawled forward, she now repeated the process in reverse, dragging the rifle with her. She didn’t stop until there were trees between her and the bear, until the blasts of lightning no longer revealed the gruesome scene. Only then did she stand, clinging to a tree trunk and hauling herself up. Her chest heaved with silent sobs, sobs she didn’t dare give voice to.

Think! she commanded herself. She had to think, or she would die. She couldn’t panic. These next few minutes might well determine whether she lived or died, so she’d better make some damn good decisions.

She couldn’t stay here. Even minus the bear, there was Chad. She’d seen him kill a man; he’d already tried to kill her. The bear might continue on its way, but Chad would come back. He’d have to.

That meant she had to leave. She had to walk off this mountain, in the night, in one of the worst storms she’d ever seen. She might get struck by lightning, but she’d rather that happen than let the bear get her. And that lily-livered little bastard Chad had taken all the horses, probably hoping the bear would save him the trouble of taking care of her. By the time the bear got through with Davis, would it be possible to tell he’d died from a gunshot wound, rather than being eaten? Would there even be an investigation, or would the situation be so self-evident that it would be written off as a bear attack, a second one at that. And if she were the third victim … the rogue bear would be shot, and a murderer would walk free.

She was damned if she’d let that happen.

She needed things from her tent. Her instinct said to run, and run like hell. Her brain said she needed food and water, she needed a way to keep warm, she needed a weapon that actually worked. All of those things were in her tent.

Staying in the trees as much as possible, feeling her way between flashes of lightning and trying to stand motionless whenever the sky lit up, she made her way to the tent. She was completely drenched, her sweatpants soaking up water like a sponge and hanging heavy on her, threatening to slide down her hips. Her hair was plastered against her head, and she could almost feel her body heat leaching away. By the time she ducked into the tent, she was shaking so hard there was no way she could have stood motionless, so it was a damn good thing bears didn’t have great eyesight.

Okay, what did she need? Her saddle bag. She’d have to have dry clothes, and the saddlebag would keep them dry. Her slicker. Her clothes couldn’t get any wetter, but the slicker would help keep her body heat in, and if she found a place to shelter it would keep the rain off her. The pistol. It might not stop a bear, but it would damn sure stop Chad Krugman, and it would make the bear take notice.

What next? Food. She grabbed some protein bars, shoved them into the saddlebag. Ditto a bottle of water. One bottle wasn’t much, but water was heavy, and she didn’t want to weigh herself down. The flashlight.

She thought of quickly stripping off her soaked sweatpants and replacing them with jeans, but soaked jeans wouldn’t be any better. She hurriedly put some clothes into the saddlebags, added some extra boxes of ammo because regardless of weight extra ammo was always a good thing, then buckled the straps. She pulled her slicker on over her wet coat, slid her muddy rifle into the scabbard and slung it over her shoulder.

Then she opened the tent flap, and eased into the night.

She still didn’t run. She had to put distance between herself and the bear, between herself and Chad, and the best way to do that was carefully. She couldn’t turn on the flashlight, so she placed each step with care.

She couldn’t even stop to think. Both of the killers she fled fell into the “what the hell?” category, but she didn’t have the luxury of analyzing why things had happened, she simply had to get the hell away from there. She had to focus on keeping her footing, on staying downwind of the bear, on not getting hit on the head by a falling tree limb or struck by lightning. She had enough to think about. She’d worry about “why” later.

Lattimore’s place was a long way away, and once Chad discovered she wasn’t here in the camp, he’d have to know exactly where she was heading. All she could do was keep moving, away from the carnage, away from what she’d seen. Caution was more important than speed … but, damn, she could use some more speed. The urge to run beckoned her, and still she resisted. She couldn’t run for hours, and she sure as hell didn’t need to try running in the dark, on slippery mud.

Dare Callahan’s camp was closer than Lattimore’s, a lot closer, but she didn’t need shelter; she needed help. Besides, the camp would be locked up tight, and even if she could locate it in the dark she wouldn’t be able to get in. Heading that way on the off chance that she could get in would cost her precious time, and gain her nothing in reaching help. She didn’t have a moment to lose, because Chad would be coming after her.

If not for the rain, she could stop for a moment and listen for them—the bear and the man—but the thundering rain seemed to overwhelm any other sound. The rain didn’t just splatter, it hammered. The wind whistled. The only good thing was that if she couldn’t hear them, then they couldn’t hear her. The weather hampered her, beat at her, but it was also protecting her by shielding her within its ferocious heart.

She aimed downhill. Where else could she go? She didn’t try to stay on the trail, which followed the path of least resistance, because that was where Chad was likely to be. The going was rough and uneven, so slick she could barely stay upright. She clung to whatever she could get her hand around: bushes, hanging tree limbs, rocks.

The wind shifted. She felt the difference on her face. She stopped, mentally working out the bear’s location. Rain or no rain, the bear would be able to catch her scent if she continued in this direction. On the other hand, if she changed directions she’d be moving away from Lattimore’s place. For that matter, without being able to see the bear, she had no idea if it was still in the same location or if it had moved on—to the west, away from her, or paralleling her movements at a higher altitude, or coming in behind her.

No matter what, she needed to move. She stretched out her left foot, feeling for solid ground, only to find a slope of mud. She tried to catch herself, grabbing for a bush, but she was already in mid-step when her left foot slid out from under her. She tried to catch herself with her right foot, only to have it land in a hole she hadn’t been able to see in the darkness. She lurched forward, completely off-balance. In the split second during which she realized she was going down, feeling helpless and stupid and afraid, she put out her hands to break the fall but at least had enough sense not to straight-arm herself. The last thing she needed right now was to break an arm or a collarbone. She landed hard, jarring every bone in her body, and for a stunned moment she lay there on the muddy ground, silently taking inventory.

She was jolted in every bone, every muscle, but she was pretty sure she was okay, except for her right foot. It was still in the hole, the toe of her boot caught, her foot twisted. The pain screamed at her, her ankle throbbing inside the boot.

She lay there with the rain beating down on her back and head, with water running under her body. Her heart beat so hard she could feel it, thudding against the wet ground. Defeat pressed down on her. God, she was cold. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to know how bad it was, because if she’d broken that ankle she was as good as dead. Maybe if she just stayed still for a moment the throbbing would ease. She’d sprained her ankle before, and the pain had been excruciating for a few minutes, only to ease and then she’d been able to walk it off.

But she didn’t have the luxury of lying there for more than a few seconds. Angie pushed the saddlebags aside, unslung the rifle scabbard from her shoulder and propped it on the saddlebag, then, very cautiously, she sat up and used both hands to free her twisted foot from the hole. She didn’t pull her boot off. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to get it back on. She wouldn’t be able to see what was wrong, anyway, and wouldn’t be able to do anything even if she could. If she’d broken her ankle, the boot would help brace it, so better to leave things as they were.

With cold fingers she probed at the ankle, trying to feel any break. There didn’t seem to be any one particular place that produced any extra agony when she touched it, but when she tried to rotate her foot pain shot straight to her head and threatened to make her pass out. “Okay, that wasn’t a good idea,” she muttered. She didn’t think it was broken. If it was, maybe it was just a hairline fracture. More than likely it was a bad sprain. On a practical basis, it didn’t matter which it was. All that mattered was whether or not she could walk on that ankle.

Gritting her teeth, putting her weight on her left foot and steadying herself by clutching a sapling, Angie levered herself upward. She hugged the tree, hauling herself up slow and steady. Bark scrapped against the slicker, snagging and scraping. It was a balancing act, but she made it to an upright position. She reoriented herself, checked the wind, took a deep breath, then let go of the tree and took a hobbling step forward, willing herself to stand the pain, to walk. As soon as she put weight on her right foot that blinding pain shot through her ankle again and it gave out beneath her, sending her sprawling again. This time she wasn’t fast enough to brace herself, and she landed facedown in the mud.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to beat the mud with her fist and howl. Talk about bad karma! What had she ever done to deserve this? Her business was gone, she had to sell her home, throw in Dare Callahan, that asshole Davis, Killer Krugman, and, oh yeah, a fucking bear. And now she’d either broken or sprained her ankle, when she had to get off this mountain as fast as possible before either Killer Krugman or that monster bear got her. Beyond any doubt, her life had gone to shit.

If she couldn’t walk off the mountain, which was a tough enough prospect under the best of circumstances, what would happen? What was she supposed to do, just lie here and wait for Krugman or the bear to find her? She had her rifle, but she had to clean it, somehow, before it would be usable again. Still, she had the pistol. She could handle Krugman, as long as she saw him coming. But that bear … yeah, she was more terrified of that huge son of a bitch, any day of the week, than she was of Krugman.

That bear would find her here if she didn’t move.

Son of a bitch!

Abruptly she was mad. No, not just mad, she was furious. No way in hell would she lie here feeling sorry for herself and wait to die. It didn’t matter why she’d ended up in this position; if she gave up she was dead. Damn it, no one could accuse Angie Powell of lacking determination or sheer damn stubbornness. She’d get off this mountain if she had to crawl.

She sat up, slung the rifle scabbard on her back again, got her saddlebags. Mud had splattered into her mouth when she’d fallen the second time, so she spat it out. Then, on elbows and knees, she began crawling. She tried to keep her injured ankle from banging into anything because it hurt like a son of a bitch if she didn’t, but she kept going even when pain made her grind her teeth together.

She made progress, slow and steady and miserable, but progress all the same. Then her right hand hit nothing but air, and she stopped just short of tumbling over an unseen sheer drop. Panting, she eased back. What was she supposed to do now? How wide was this drop? Was she on the edge of a precipice? She waited for a flash of lightning, and after a few seconds of darkness realized that the heart of the storm had moved on, because the lightning wasn’t nearly as intense or frequent as it had been. Briefly she debated turning on the flashlight, just long enough to see what she was facing. Was the chance worth it? Right now, she was invisible; Chad had no idea where she was. But the flashlight might well pinpoint her position for him. On the other hand, she was stuck unless she could see what kind of obstacle was in front of her.

Before she had to make a decision, a flash of lightning very obligingly lit up the landscape for her. The drop in front of her was straight down—for a few feet. Three feet, max. Getting down without putting any weight on her right foot was going to be tough, but she wasn’t going to let this little cut in the earth stop her.

She dropped her saddlebags, heard them plop in the mud below. Then she unslung the rifle scabbard and carefully let it slide down. Then she turned around, spinning on her belly in the mud, and slid over the edge, her good foot feeling for the ground, her hands digging into the mud to steady herself until she had solid earth beneath her. She stood there a moment, balanced precariously, and took a deep breath. Maybe she wasn’t moving quickly, but she was moving in the right direction: down.

The mud beneath her feet shifted, and the world was yanked out from under her. Helpless, she simply fell. She slid and tumbled through the mud, grabbing at anything, everything, and finding only more slippery mud and the occasional rock. She tried to dig in her left heel, tried to jam her fingers into the earth, but she continued to slide and roll. There were rocks, and she tried to grab them, but they were there and gone so fast she couldn’t manage. The edge of one of the rocks sliced her palm; her head slammed dangerously close to another.

And then she stopped, her momentum halted by mud. She lay there, panting, and once again took inventory. No, nothing was broken. She felt battered from head to foot, but everything other than her ankle seemed to be functioning. How far had she fallen? The slope hadn’t been horribly steep, but it was steep enough. Her rifle and saddlebags—which held her flashlight, pistol, and protein bars—were up there.

She had a choice. She could crawl up, or she could crawl down. She could keep going, or she could retrieve her stuff.

Neither option seemed like a good one, but one was definitely worse than the other. She needed the saddlebags, needed her food and the pistol. She needed that rifle. She couldn’t leave her weapons up there.

It had been tough enough moving down the mountain with a damaged ankle; moving up was torturous. Her progress was measured an inch at a time, and every muscle in her body screamed at her to stop. She’d gotten banged up in the fall, and now gravity was working against her instead of with her.

What had taken seconds to do—fall—took an excruciatingly long time to navigate in reverse. She didn’t want to think about how long it took her to climb back up, so she didn’t; she just climbed. Every minute was precious, but she didn’t have any choice. She didn’t just crawl; she dragged herself up, a cursed inch at a time. She used her left foot to find purchase and push. She grabbed rocks with her bloody hands to keep herself from sliding back down. She clawed her way up, her fingers digging deep into the mud. Mud crept beneath her slicker, through her sweatpants, into her boots. Cold rain continued to beat down on her. All Angie thought about was her goal: her rifle, her flashlight, her pistol. Food.

Do it or die.

Do it or die.

She did it.

A bush gave her something to grab on to; she clutched it, pulled herself up, and then she was there, at the small shelf that had fallen out from under her. She wanted to cheer, but she stayed quiet. Even when she’d been falling, she hadn’t screamed. Her survival instincts had kept her quiet—aside from the occasional thud—and they kept her quiet now. She’d celebrate later, when she was off this mountain.

She could reach her gear. She dug her left foot deep into the mud, bracing herself so she wouldn’t slide back down before she had a good grip on the saddlebags and rifle. They were both safe, just a couple of feet way from the divot in the slope. She felt a brief spurt of triumph as she grabbed the rifle and slung it over her shoulder, then the bags.

She might not have made a success of her career as a guide, but she had never been a quitter, and she wasn’t quitting now. It was tempting to sit down and rest, but she didn’t let herself, because she wasn’t a quitter.

Instead, she held on to her gear, positioned herself, and started a controlled slide back down the hill—on her ass, this time, half sitting so she had more control. Yeah, a controlled fall. She held the rifle up, trying to keep it out of the mud as much as possible, though she wasn’t certain how it could get any muddier than it already was.

Then she was at the bottom of the slope, and the only way forward was on her hands and knees again. Angie started crawling.

Do it or die.

Dare heard the thunder well before the rain arrived. It woke him from a sound sleep and he lay in his warm sleeping bag, listening as the storm got closer. What the hell was he doing out here? He couldn’t fish in a thunderstorm. Wasn’t the rain supposed to last a day or two? He might be stuck here in camp for a couple of days, with nothing to do except twiddle his thumbs and curse himself for being an idiot.

He never should’ve listened to Harlan. He should be at home, he should be in his own fucking bed, where the rain would sound soothing instead of threatening. But he wasn’t; he was here, and if he had it to do all over again … damn it, he’d still be here.

He should be asleep. Generally, under the right circumstances, he liked storms. The room was completely dark, except for those moments when flashes of lightning showed at the very edges of the shuttered window, and when the rain began he expected the sound to soothe him right to sleep. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Angie, though. Were the tents in the camp she’d leased sturdy enough to withstand the storm? He imagined they were, because it wasn’t like they didn’t get thunderstorms up this way now and then, and the campsite she’d leased was frequently used, but still … tents and storms weren’t a great combination.

Then a sharp sound echoed through the mountains and Dare bolted upright. That wasn’t lightning, that was a pistol shot. He’d heard small arms fire too often to be mistaken.

A second shot followed the first, then more, and even with the windows shuttered tight and the storm raging around him, he knew those shots had come from the direction of Angie’s camp. Damn it, what was going on out there? A rifle shot wouldn’t have been so out of the ordinary, but a pistol … in a hunting camp, the only legitimate reason he could think of to use a pistol was if something unexpected happened, and you couldn’t get to your rifle.

What could have happened at Angie’s camp that was unexpected?

Some very ugly possibilities occurred to him.

He didn’t think twice, but turned on a single light, a battery-operated lantern powerful enough to light the entire upper level, and began dragging on his clothes. When he was dressed he grabbed a slicker and his hat, the sat phone and his rifle. He grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight and switched it on before turning off the lantern. No more than two minutes after he’d heard the second pistol shot he was descending the ladder into the horse stalls below.

The horse snickered as Dare saddled up quickly and efficiently, slipped his rifle into the scabbard, and dropped his sat phone into a saddlebag. Before he stored the phone he gave a fleeting thought to calling someone in town, Harlan or the sheriff, but what would he say? I heard a shot and it seemed to come from Angie’s camp. Fat lot of good that would do. It would cost him precious time he didn’t have to waste, and no one was coming up here in the dark anyway. No, he was here, and this was on him.

He opened the big double doors and led the horse through them. It danced nervously as he closed and bolted the doors, but calmed a bit when he mounted up. Dare pulled the brim of his hat down low, pointed the flashlight toward a stand of trees and the narrow path there, and headed toward Angie’s camp.

The rain was pouring down in windswept sheets, like solid walls smashing into them. The footing was so treacherous he couldn’t go any faster than a walk. The flashes of lightning let him see, but they also made the young horse nervous. He held his mount steady with knees and reins, calmed him when a bolt struck about half a mile away and the whole earth shuddered. “Easy, guy,” he crooned, letting the horse know by his tone and touch that everything was okay, there was nothing to be afraid of.

The going was slow, damn slow. The rain knocked visibility down to almost nothing, and he could feel the horse’s agitation growing. Even with the flashlight, the unevenness of the trail was dangerous. He had to let the animal pick its way along at a pace that left him silently swearing, because he was damn certain he could cover the distance faster on foot.

Damn it, he should’ve ridden into Angie’s camp while it was still light, shown himself and glared at her clients a time or two, even though it would’ve pissed her off big time. Maybe if those men had realized she wasn’t as alone as they thought she was, there wouldn’t have been all those pistol shots in the middle of the fucking night.

The silence that had followed the initial shots worried him as much as anything else. Who had been doing the shooting? Angie, or someone else. He didn’t know if she had a pistol, but he damn sure knew she had a rifle. If something had warranted a couple of pistol shots, why hadn’t there been a follow-up of rifle fire? There should have been return fire, and the fact that there hadn’t been bothered him.

If there had been only one shot, he could’ve eased his mind with the idea that maybe the loser Lattimore had told him about had brought a pistol along on the hunt and had somehow mistakenly fired it. But that many shots in a short span of time … that was no mistake, no misfire. He tried to come up with some explanation that didn’t put Angie Powell in a world of hurt, but nothing came to him.

And while he was closer to her here than he’d have been if he were at home, where just a few minutes ago he’d been thinking he should be, he wasn’t nearly as close as he needed to be to help her.

If anything happened to Angie, Harlan was going to kill him.

And if anything happened to Angie … Dare wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the old man.