by Sharon Sala
“You know I’m the one who found the two hikers, right?”
“Yeah, we heard.”
“As you know, the paw print I found on-site was huge, and the claw marks the bear left on a tree were much farther up the trunk than you would have expected a black bear to leave.”
“We saw the markings on the tree, but the paw print was gone by the time we got to the site. We did find a big one near where the dogs were killed, but the floor of the forest is thick with leaves or rocky as hell. Hard to find tracks, and with the dogs losing the trail, it’s been frustrating.”
“Follow me back toward the creek. There’s something I want to show you,” Quinn said, then led the way.
As they drew closer, the hounds suddenly bayed. They’d already picked up on the scent.
“You got something!” Jake said, as his dog strained on the leash.
Quinn paused and then pointed up at a pine tree in front of them. “Look at that.”
Cyrus cursed beneath his breath. Avery just stared. But Jake grunted in shock.
“Hell’s fire, that’s got to be ten, maybe twelve feet up, just like the marks where you found the hiker’s body.”
“There’s more,” Quinn said. “This way.”
All three dogs were straining on their leashes and baying as Quinn reached the creek bank. He stopped, then squatted, pointing out where the earth had been dislodged.
“See this? Looks like something really heavy dislodged this chunk as it stepped down into the creek.”
The men nodded, but in their opinion, it was just more of the same stuff that they’d already seen. The bear had gone into the water. So what?
But then Quinn didn’t cross to the other side of the creek. Instead he began to wade downstream.
“Follow me down a few yards,” he said.
The men walked along the creek bank, paralleling him.
As soon as Quinn got to the rock where the moss had been scratched, he pointed again.
“Look there.”
Jake stepped out into the water with his dog, Zeus. As soon as they reached the middle of the creek where the rock jutted out of the water, Zeus sniffed the moss and bayed.
“Yeah, I’d say that’s bear,” Jake said. “So, did you find where he went out on the other side yet?”
“Now we get to my theory,” Quinn said. “I’ve said from the start that something’s wrong with this animal. It’s either sick or injured. So say I’m right, and say it’s feverish, that means it will be constantly thirsty. You agree?”
Jake nodded. “Makes sense.”
“And it won’t be able to hunt, so it takes the easiest prey it finds, and that happens to be whatever crosses its path, which is how I view the killings so far.”
Jake was still listening. “I don’t disagree. But if it’s so sick and crippled, then why haven’t we found it laid up somewhere? Why do we lose the trail at the water’s edge and not pick it up anywhere on the other side? It doesn’t backtrack, because we’ve already ruled that out. And we’ve found numerous places where it’s spent a day or two, but it never goes back to the same location.”
“Because I think it’s using the water like a highway. There’s that constant thirst, for one thing. And if it’s feverish, or it’s been injured, lying in this cold mountain water at a moment’s notice would soothe the heat and the pain. I think the only time it comes out of the creek is when it hears something that leads it to a kill. That’s why your dogs can’t find another trail on the other side, because the water is the trail. If I’m right, the only chance we have of finding it is to either follow the creek down, or go all the way down to where the creek runs into the river and come up to meet it. And—again, if I’m right—when it kills again, it will be somewhere that’s not far from the creek.”
Jake’s shoulders slumped. What Quinn was saying nullified the chance of the dogs being able to locate the bear.
“This sucks.”
“I agree,” Quinn said.
“We need more men for sure,” Jake said, then eyed the sun through the trees. It was too close to sundown to set this new plan in motion. “And I can get them, but I need to notify your ranger station. What I am saying is we’re not doing this in the dark. Not with this one.”
“I agree,” Quinn said. “So, unless I’m ordered elsewhere, I’ll see you tomorrow?”
Jake nodded. “Yes, and for the record, that’s one damn good theory.”
Quinn shrugged off the compliment. Knowing the animals and the region was just part of the job.
“I’m headed back down to where I left my truck,” he said.
“We’ll go with you,” Jake said. “I have a lot of phone calls to make and some extra plans to figure out.”
“And in the meantime, we pray to God no one else gets hurt before we find that bear,” Avery added.
* * *
The sun was about to slip behind the peak of Rebel Ridge when Quinn got his first glimpse of home. He could not deny that his anxiety had nothing to do with wet feet and an empty belly. It was all about Mariah. As a grown man, he’d never had anyone to come home to before. It felt good.
Mariah came out onto the deck as he pulled up and parked, then frowned when she saw the expression on his face. She’d seen that look before. It spelled both mental and physical exhaustion.
“You look tired,” she said, as he came up the steps.
“You look good,” he countered, smiling as a blush of pink swept up her neck and across her cheeks.
“Well, that’s a lie, but thank you anyway,” she said.
Quinn stopped at the door and pulled off his hiking boots and socks, then started to strip out of his clothes when it hit him that he couldn’t do that anymore without an audience.
“Um… I usually strip out here and throw my clothes straight in the wash,” he said.
Mariah crossed her arms. “Okay with me.”
His eyes narrowing, he tried to decide if she was kidding or if this was a test. It wasn’t like she’d never seen him naked before.
“It’s your call,” he said, as he shed his shirt and dropped his pants. His thumbs were in the waistband of his briefs when she sighed and walked away.
“Whatever,” he muttered, then picked up the wet, muddy clothes and headed for the utility room.
When he emerged the washer was filling with water and Mariah was outside, walking the deck with a stiff, lopsided stride. He couldn’t decide whether she was pissed or just frustrated. Either way, he could identify. He felt a little bit of both himself.
Determined not to make an issue out of this, he went straight upstairs and into the shower. By the time he came out, the scent of heating meatloaf brought him down the stairs double-time. Mariah was at the sink washing her hands. He walked up behind her.
“Something smells good,” he said.
“Your sister’s cooking. Meatloaf and roasted potatoes. Do you want a salad or a vegetable? I can open a can or chop up some lettuce.”
Quinn put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry I was such an ass. I don’t know what made me do that.”
She hesitated. “I do. This whole thing is awkward. We have a history, right?”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s a fact.”
“Only it was nothing but sex, right?”
This time Quinn didn’t answer.
She turned around. “Quinn?”
“I vote for salad.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You asked me if I wanted a vegetable or a salad. I vote for the salad, but if you want, I’ll chop it.”
Mariah sighed. Maybe he was smart to avoid discussing their past. Not when she was like this anyway—crippled in both body and brain.
“Fine. No onions in mine,” she said, and turned away too fast to see the disappointment flash across Quinn’s face.
* * *
The bear had managed to kill a small doe that morning, which had given it a brief burst of strength that had carried it nearly two miles farther
down the creek. But the wound in its hip was like a sore tooth—the pain never went away. And it was hungry again. By the time it was dark, the bear had stopped.
As it sat, the water was just deep enough to wash over the infected wound and work a bit of medicinal magic. The cold, swiftly moving water both numbed the pain and flushed the running pus from the still-open flesh.
An owl hooted from a nearby tree.
The bear uttered a soft woof.
The owl took flight.
The bear sniffed the air, sensing a change in the weather.
Clouds were gathering to the southwest. A storm would blow through before morning. Minutes passed as the forest came alive with the creatures of the night.
Somewhere off in the distance, a dog howled. The bear lifted its head and sniffed the air again—anxiously this time. Nearby, a calf had become separated from its mother and bawled in a long, plaintive cry. Moments later, the cow answered back.
The bear’s belly was empty. The calf was near. Without hesitation, it stood up, waded to the creek bank and, grunting in pain as it climbed up and out, disappeared into the dark.
The calf was still bawling for its mother cow.
Then, all of a sudden, a roar ripped through the night, sending small animals scurrying into hiding and the night birds into flight. The calf’s crying shifted from plaintive to an indescribable sound of terror and pain.
Nearby, a dog began to bark.
The mama cow was bawling as she ran, but there was no longer an answer from her baby.
The bear was already dragging the calf’s carcass into the woods. It would gorge, then find a place to sleep off its meal.
The clouds continued to gather. A couple of hours later the storm moved in. Lightning could be seen in the distance, followed by the distant sound of thunder.
The bear didn’t care. It was holed up in a small niche on the side of the mountain just large enough to shelter it from the storm, asleep with a full belly and a rising fever.
* * *
Mariah’s sleep had been fitful at best, and when the sound of thunder suddenly blasted over the cabin, she woke up screaming. She rolled out of bed, bumped her lip on the floor and tasted blood, which just added to the delusion that they were being bombed.
“Incoming! Incoming! Get down! Get down!” she shouted, crawling on her belly, trying to find her gun.
The shaft of lightning that tore through the darkness was the flash as the shell exploded. The rush of wind as the storm front hit was the blast of impact. Corporal Conrad was under attack without a gun.
* * *
Quinn had been awake for nearly half an hour. He’d heard the storm coming long before it hit and had been lying in bed, frustrated by the fact that whatever bear sign might have been left behind was going to be washed away by the oncoming rain. It felt as if the weather and the mountain were conspiring against them.
Even though he’d known the storm was coming, he jumped when the first blast of thunder rattled the windows. The moment he heard Mariah scream, he knew what was happening, but before he could get the light on in the loft and get downstairs, she was already on her belly, crawling across the living room floor.
Quinn turned on the lights, calling her name as he ran.
“Mariah! I’m here, I’m here.”
She was halfway under the sofa bed when he reached her. But in her mind the hand on her leg belonged to an insurgent. Despite her injured leg, she kicked and fought with all the strength she had, certain she was about to be captured.
Quinn rolled sideways just before her foot caught him on the chin and then stopped. Fighting with her wasn’t going to pull her out of this. Instead he grabbed the remote and turned on the television, frantically searching for something that was the opposite of what was going on inside her head. He landed on the channel carrying classic TV reruns and found I Love Lucy.
He upped the volume until the laugh track and Lucy’s antics drowned out the sound of thunder and lightning, then settled back against the wall with his heart in his throat, waiting for her sanity to return.
* * *
Mariah would have been screaming, but she was shaking so hard she couldn’t breathe. In her mind she’d gone from hiding to being trapped under debris, just like she’d been when she was injured. The pain in her head was as real as it had been the day she was wounded, and she could feel the blood running down her leg and soaking into her uniform.
And then she heard laughing.
It didn’t fit the scenario. She pushed frantically against the weight on her back, trying to get herself free.
The laughter persisted, along with the sound of a woman’s voice. Maybe help was at hand.
“I’m here! Help me!” she cried.
The moment Quinn heard that, he was on his feet. He grabbed the end of the pullout bed and flipped it up, folding it back into the sofa, then lifted Mariah off the floor and into his arms.
“Honey, it’s me. It’s Quinn. You’re okay. Look at me, look at me.”
The desert morphed into the interior of Quinn’s cabin, the artillery fire into thunder and lightning. She touched her head, then moaned. All she could feel was the scar.
“Oh, my God,” she mumbled, and then pulled out of his arms and staggered to the chair where she curled up into a ball and, still shaking, hid her face against her knees.
Quinn sighed. He knew just how she felt. Disoriented. Crazy. Lost. All of the above.
He turned the sofa back into a bed and straightened the covers, then took off one blanket and draped it over her without saying a word.
Mariah felt the weight of the blanket and pulled it close, but she wouldn’t look up—couldn’t look up. The laughter was still rolling through the room, and it made no sense. None of this was funny.
Quinn turned off the television. The wind was blowing rain against the windows and hammering it onto the deck. Lightning flashed. The sky belched thunder.
“Mariah?”
She shook her head, denying him an answer.
It didn’t stop Quinn from saying what he needed to say. “This happened to me at least twice a day for the first year after I came back. I still have my moments. I think I always will, although it’s getting easier to rein it in.”
She shuddered. He’d been out over three years and this was still going on? She wanted to die.
“Talk to me, honey,” he said softly.
Mariah pulled the blanket all the way over her head.
Quinn sighed. He wasn’t a shrink. He didn’t know what else to say or do.
Lightning struck, lighting up the meadow in a flash of white so bright it was momentarily blinding. The thunder was so loud he could feel it in his bones. He’d grown up on the mountain. He knew what storms were like here. But Mariah was a city girl. Granted, she was tough and street-smart, but it took more than guts to face what sounded like the wrath of God.
He turned the television back on but lowered the sound so that it was playing in the background, then stretched out on the bed near her chair—just in case.
The faint scent of her shampoo was on the pillow beneath his head. He bunched it up so that he would have a better view of the chair where she’d taken refuge and remembered being in the same frame of mind. Nothing any of his family could do had helped, even though they’d been desperate to make things better. He had to remember that. She had withdrawn to recover, not to reject him. And if she was anything like he’d been, she would not want to be reminded of this later.
Time passed, as did the storm. Within an hour the cabin was quiet except for the gentle sound of rain still falling.
Quinn had fallen asleep on the bed with the lights in his eyes and the television playing.
Mariah had made herself as small a target as she could and was still curled up in the chair. She’d pulled the blanket from her head but had been unable to sleep. Instead she’d watched Quinn lie there with one arm flung out on the bed beside him and the other over his head, and wished she’d never come. T
he humiliation of coming undone like this was hard to get past. It had happened in the hospital, but there she hadn’t been the only one having flashbacks.
Here, there were no nurses running interference with sedation, or shrinks trying to help you get through it by “sharing your feelings.” Still, she knew that if they’d released her from Fort Campbell with nowhere to go and she’d freaked like this on a city street somewhere, the authorities would have arrested her, the courts would have sent her to a loony bin and she would never have seen the light of day again.
What she couldn’t get past was thinking this was hell at its finest. Just because she hadn’t died in Afghanistan it didn’t mean she’d escaped the war. It had simply followed her home.
As she sat there feeling sorry for herself, Quinn suddenly jerked and then moaned. Her attention immediately shifted from feeling sorry for herself to what was happening to him. She sat without moving, watching the play of emotions across his face.
He moaned again, and then kicked before rolling over onto his side.
That was all she could take. She threw the blanket off her shoulders and tried to stand, but her leg was numb from having been in one position for so long, and she nearly took a header.
“Damn it,” she muttered, then made her way across the floor to where Quinn lay sleeping, dragging her blanket and stumbling as she went.
Without knowing what he was reliving, she knew better than to curl up behind him. Instead she got in bed, then scooted as close to him as she could get without invading his space, pulled the blanket over both of them and took his hand.
His fingers twitched, then curled within her grasp. She held her breath, waiting to see what happened. When he twitched again, then moaned, she tightened her grip and spoke his name.
“Quinn.”
He sat up with a jerk. “What’s happening?”
“You were dreaming.”
That was when he realized she was in bed with him. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She’d been crying beneath that damned blanket. It hurt his heart.
“Thanks,” he said.
The empathy in his eyes was her undoing.
He saw her chin quiver. “Damn it,” he said softly, and pulled her close, tucking her beneath his arm so that they were lying face-to-face with his chin resting at the top of her head. Every muscle in her body was tense, and he felt it. “We’re just sleeping here,” he said.