Spirit of a Hunter

by Sylvie Kurtz

  Love that fervent didn’t make you brave, she’d learned, it made you afraid—of everything. And the thought of losing her son—the best part of her—now terrified her like nothing before.

  Her only job had been to keep her little boy safe. A job she’d done with a fierceness that bordered on obsession. He would have a happy childhood, if that was the only thing she accomplished.

  Overcompensation, she knew. For all the good it had done.

  Where was he? Was he warm enough? Was he hungry?

  Was he breathing?

  What would happen to him if the Colonel’s men followed their orders and she met with a convenient accident?

  On the verge of tears again, she turned to the window. She frowned as a road sign zoomed by. “Shouldn’t we be heading north, not south?”

  “I’m taking you to a safe house.”

  She strained against the seat belt. “No! That’s not going to work. I can’t abandon my son when he needs me.”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “His medicine—”

  “I’ll get it to him.”

  “Do you know anything about kids?”

  “I’ll bring him back.” Sabriel’s iron hand squeezed hers. “Safe. I promise.”

  The rigid lines of his face, telling their own tale, negated any reassurance she might have gained from the warm gesture. “Like you did Tommy during Ranger School?”

  His hand shot off hers, stinging her with ripped-flesh rawness, and gripped the steering wheel as if he needed its steadying balance.

  “I’m sorry. That was out of line.” Her cutting comment had hit a still-fresh scar, and she wanted to smooth the hurt. She’d been on the receiving end of cruel words often enough to know better. But her worry for Scotty trumped all and brought out a ruthless streak.

  She reached toward Sabriel, but his aura vibrated with an electric-fence intensity that would fry her if she dared to cross its boundary. She folded her hands into her lap. “You’re trying to help me. And I’m being ungrateful.”

  As the Colonel never ceased to remind her whenever she defied any of his orders. And like the Colonel, Sabriel was taking over without asking, expecting her to fall meekly in line and obey.

  The worst part was that letting him take over would be easy—too easy. Her spine curved in as if it had lost its anchoring guy wire. She needed his help. He was fit and strong and knew his way around the mountains. He knew how to find Tommy. He knew how to bring Scotty back to her.

  Something she could not do for herself.

  She flattened her palms on her thighs, shoring up her resolve. She couldn’t let fear rule. Not this time. And she couldn’t continue to let other people make decisions for her. Especially not when it came to Scotty. Maybe if she’d taken a stronger stand against the Colonel’s intrusive meddling, then Tommy wouldn’t have felt he had to take Scotty.

  “The Aerie’s a safe bunker,” Sabriel said.

  “The Colonel—”

  “Won’t be able to get to you.”

  “I’m tougher than I look.” Her chin flagged up. “I won’t complain. I promise.”

  “You’ll slow me down.”

  The Jeep bumped over a dip in the road, forcing her to grab onto the dashboard. “I’ll keep up. I swear.”

  “You’ll muddle the tracks.”

  “I’ll stay out of your way.”

  “The best thing you can do for your son is to let me find him. Alone.”

  He spoke to her as if she were a kindergartner who was having trouble learning how to tie her shoes. Her back stiffened. “Do you know anything about asthma? What if Tommy can’t cope? Can you handle him when he’s in a manic phase? Or, even worse, when he’s scraping the bottom of the depression barrel?”

  “No one can reach him then.”

  “I can talk Tommy down. I can talk him up. I’ve done it before.” Like in that first year when the Colonel had forced Tommy to move back to the estate and sent Tommy’s mental balance in a tailspin. “I know how to handle Scotty’s asthma. When to keep pushing the drugs, when to ease back.”

  “You said yourself that Tommy trusts me.”

  “Thing is that Tommy can’t be trusted—not if he’s off his meds. What if he’s tackled a situation that’s too big for him and he’s hurt? How are you going to carry both Tommy and Scotty off those mountains?”

  “I’ll call for a rescue.”

  “And how long would that take?” She wanted to slap him up the side of the head. “We’ve already wasted too much time.” Why couldn’t he see that?

  “This isn’t going to be a walk in the park.” Sabriel spoke in measured beats, but ripples of emotions still swelled beneath the glass-smooth surface of his voice. “We’re talking about a killer pace over rough terrain and steep grades. There are no flush toilets out there. No maids to cook your meals or turn down your bed. When was the last time you walked uphill for more than ten minutes?”

  She glared at him, the heat of battle rising up her neck, burning her cheeks. “What do you think I am? A spoiled debutante?”

  “I think you’re unprepared for the hardships you’re going to find out there.”

  How could she be putting all of her hopes of finding Scotty in this man when he couldn’t grasp a simple concept? He saw her as a pampered socialite, but he didn’t know she’d already hit bottom once, what she’d done to climb back out of that hole. But even all of that was nothing compared to what she was willing to endure for her son. “To find Scotty, I’d go to hell and back.”

  He turned to stare at her and his eyes churned in a jungle storm of thunder and lightning that made her want to both reach for him and shrink away. “Do you think those goons tracking you are just playing at soldier?”

  I don’t like to leave loose ends behind, Boggs had said.

  She jutted her chin. “Would you rather they get ahead? That they find Tommy first?”

  Sabriel’s gaze snapped back to the road and his jaw ground a tight circle. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

  Guilt. God, she’d wallowed in that tapioca-pudding feeling enough to recognize its lumpy texture. Was it because of Anna? He hadn’t been there when she’d died in a freediving accident. Did he feel he was somehow to blame?

  It’s okay, she wanted to say. I understand. I’ve been there. But he would think she was weak, and he needed to think of her as strong.

  “When was the last time you saw Tommy?” Nora asked. “Ten, eleven years ago?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “You have no idea what kind of mess you’re walking in to. Tommy can’t control one of Scotty’s asthma attacks. He’ll panic. Scotty could die.”

  “Ah, hell,” Sabriel said, as if his bad day had suddenly gotten worse. His gaze worked the mirrors and his demeanor braced for impending attack.

  Nora sat up and scoured the blurring landscape outside the Jeep. “What’s wrong?”

  “The Colonel’s men.”

  No! Not now. Not when she was so close to reaching those mountains and saving Scotty. She whipped to look behind them. “I don’t see anything.”

  The black Hummer crested a hill and roared up on them with surprising speed, dust mushrooming around it like an atomic cloud.

  An arm popped out of the passenger’s window.

  A shot ripped out, shattering her mirror. She yelped. Sabriel rammed her head into her lap. “Stay down.”

  A bullet smashed through the rear window and blew out the front windshield where her head had been only moments ago. No, no, no, no, no. The denial ricocheted around her skull. This wasn’t part of the plan. No loose end. Nonononono. “They’re going to kill us.”

  “Hang tight.”

  Sabriel yanked on the parking brake and twisted the steering wheel. The Jeep spun.

  “Noooooo! Are you crazy?” she sputtered. “I can’t die. Scotty—” The rest of her thought splintered in the reckless reel, whirling the world around.

  Sabriel released the brake and sped up. Breathless, she tried to sit up
. He shoved her head down again, but not before she caught a glimpse of the speedometer. Sixty. On a twisting, hilly dirt road. They were going to die. Bullets or a crash. Either way the outcome would leave her dead and Scotty at the Colonel’s mercy.

  “Hold on,” Sabriel said.

  To what? Her sanity? He was shredding that faster than a cat could a brand-new chair arm.

  She screamed at the unexpected impact of Hummer grille against Jeep fender. The clash sent a shock wave reverberating all the way into her bones. Glass shattered. Metal crumpled. The whump of a bullet pelted the bumper. Another thwacked into the glove compartment, springing it open, dumping its contents on her head.

  This wasn’t the way she’d planned to die. It was supposed to happen when she was old and tired. In her sleep. Not compacted between two trucks. Not made into a sieve by bullets. Her hands tightened around her ankles and her shaking knees bumped into her nose.

  Sabriel kept on speeding. She couldn’t see what was happening outside the Jeep, couldn’t anticipate his moves. He knows what he’s doing. She swallowed hard. He’s a trained soldier, a trained agent. He’ll keep you safe.

  The sudden sharp turn caught her unprepared, throwing her sideways against his hard thigh like a rag doll, then smacked her back against the door.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he hurled the Jeep along a maze of twisty, tree-lined back roads.

  “Just peachy.”

  “Are you hit?”

  She scanned through the cotton numbness of her limbs and shook her head. “You can sit up.”

  She wasn’t sure she could. Her fingers wouldn’t unclamp from her ankles and her spine didn’t seem to have any starch. She was cold, so cold, as if ice water flowed through her veins and chilled her from the inside out. Normal. It’s been a crazy day. Tommy taking Scotty. Lying to the Colonel. Being shot at. Her voice croaked up her throat. “We lost them?”

  “For now.”

  Her body finally cooperated and she sat up. She rubbed her arms and could not get a kilocalorie of warmth into her body. “Scotty. We can’t let them get to Scotty.”

  “I won’t.”

  On the main road up ahead, sirens shrieked in the dying afternoon. Blue lights swirled through the bleeding sky in a mottled tapestry of bruises. Nora swiveled her head to look over her shoulder. The Hummer wasn’t in sight. But it was back there, somewhere in that ant’s nest of dirt roads, hunting for them.

  They were trapped.

  And they were still in Camden country. The two police cruisers blocking the road were not there to help them.

  A loose end.

  Forward or back would lead them straight into the Colonel’s clutches.

  He would once again get what he wanted—her out of the picture and Scotty to himself.

  I’m sorry, baby, so sorry.

  Sabriel swore and steered the Jeep into the trees. Nora hung on to the dashboard as they catapulted onto a barely-there rut.

  In spite of her tight grip, the ride bobbed her like a cork in a fast-moving stream. And like that cork, she had no control over her situation.

  “Tree!” she squealed as Sabriel almost hit an oak.

  “I see it.”

  “Could you slow down?”

  She might as well have spit into the wind for all the good her request did. He kept racing ahead, the sharp cranking of the steering wheel jostling her from side to side.

  “If we crash,” she said, “they get what they want. Us dead.”

  “You want the cops to hold us until it’s too late to find Tommy?”

  “I want to get to the damn mountains and find my son. Preferably alive.”

  Sabriel made a bone-rattling entry into a snarl of bushes and braked to a jarring halt, killing the engine.

  A minute later, the black Hummer crept by on the narrow track they’d left. Sabriel remained unfazed, a statue in his seat, while she turned into a quivering mass of ringing nerves.

  How could he stay so calm when everything was falling apart? They could end up dead before they ever reached the mountains and Scotty.

  “The Colonel’s men tried to kill us,” she said, watching the taillights, red evil eyes, retreat into the darkening woods.

  “The Colonel wants his grandson,” Sabriel said. “And what the Colonel wants, the Colonel goes after.”

  “No matter who gets hurt.”

  Sabriel’s jaw flinched. “Collateral damage.”

  Nora rubbed at the tightness in her throat with one ice-cold hand. “He wants to control Scotty like he controlled Tommy and Anna. And look how that turned out.” Her gaze speared Sabriel’s jungle-green eyes. “I can’t let that happen.”

  In the depth of his steady gaze, she found reassurance. An understanding that went soul deep. For the first time in her life, someone was seeing her. Really seeing her, and not flinching at what he saw there. He knew. He understood. The Colonel had almost broken him, too. But he’d survived, and that gave her hope. Heat returned to her cold limbs, and she wanted to linger there in the calming balm of his sight.

  Sabriel broke the odd connection pulsing between them and studied the woods until the Hummer was out of range. “We’ll find your son.”

  She took his promise to heart.

  He cranked over the engine and continued his mapless track through the woods.

  “I can’t guarantee your safety out on the trail,” he said.

  “Safety means nothing to me as long as Scotty’s out there.”

  A few minutes later, without so much as a touch of the brakes, Sabriel shot out onto a two-lane road. At least it was asphalt and relatively smooth. Her tentacle grip on the dashboard loosened.

  Sabriel whipped on the headlights, shifted gears and sped up. He was heading north. Relief fluxed through her muscles. She didn’t want to fight him, but she would if it meant saving Scotty.

  The day faded to night, leaving behind a black so deep the headlights barely cut through its thickness. Sabriel’s profile slashed a jagged silhouette in the dim glow of the instrument panel. High cheekbones. A nose like an Indian brave’s in a Beverly Doolittle print. Square chin. The yellow cast of the light burnished his skin to dark copper. A good face. A strong face. One that wouldn’t crumple under the Colonel’s will.

  Afraid Sabriel would change his mind and turn the Jeep south again, Nora sat flagpole straight, hands folded in her lap, gaze on the road.

  The silence between them grew until it was as dense as the darkness around them.

  Her fingers itched to crank the radio full blast, tune in to a rock station, blow the roof right off the Jeep. She needed drums. Big, banging drums. Lots of drums. Entrain—“Rise Up,” “River Run,” “Mo Drums.” Loud enough to drown out the beat of her doubts driving her crazy.

  She was at his mercy, just as she’d been at the Colonel’s and at her mother’s. And look where that had landed her. A wuss afraid of her own shadow, begging for just another chance.

  I’ll be good, Mommy, please, I promise. Just don’t leave.

  I’ll accept your terms, Colonel. Please, just don’t take my baby away from me.

  I won’t complain. I promise, Sabriel. Please, just help me find my son.

  * * *

  “TELL ME ABOUT Tommy,” Sabriel said.

  Though he appeared to study the road, Nora was acutely aware that he was watching her. For signs of a meltdown? Won’t happen. Not until she found Scotty. “Like what?”

  “His mental state.”

  Tommy with his mischievous smile, his eclectic playlists and his unabashed shows of affection. At eighteen, starving as she’d been for attention, she’d fallen for his easy charm. So fast. Too fast. She’d never suspected that pharmaceuticals were holding him together. Not until it was too late. Regret rolled around her heavy heart.

  “He seemed to be doing so well. He’d finally found a psychiatrist that got him.” She snorted. “One that wouldn’t report back to the Colonel.”

  “What about his meds?”

 
“What about them?” A certain protectiveness where Tommy was concerned brought up caution.

  “You said you thought he was off his meds.”

  She’d forgotten the desperation of her pleas. “I thought he was keeping up.” She picked at the pale pink polish on her thumbnail. Had she missed the signs? The few minutes of conversation they shared when Tommy picked up Scotty weren’t enough to pass judgment. Not with the Colonel standing guard more often than not, listening to their exchange.

  But in the past few months, Tommy had turned back to the man she’d fallen in love with eleven years ago. Sweet, funny, loving. But that was the danger point, wasn’t it? When the patient thought he was well enough to do without the meds. She shrugged and shook her head. “Taking Scotty like this, though…I don’t know.”

  “Do you know the name of his psychiatrist?”

  “You won’t get anything from him. Patient-doctor confidentiality.”

  “Kingsley can.”

  “Kingsley?”

  “Seekers’ computer expert.”

  She didn’t dare ask how, just savored the relief that someone could tell her if Tommy was a threat to Scotty. Sorry, Tommy. It’s for your own good, for Scotty’s. “Dr. Montgomery at the Whiteside Clinic.”

  “What was Scotty wearing when he left?”

  What had she noticed missing in his room? Was it only this morning? It felt more like a week.

  “His clothing could snag against branches,” Sabriel offered before she could answer—as if he was trying to make up for his earlier brusqueness, but didn’t quite know how to go about it. “Could let me know where he’s been.”

  Nora nodded and knitted her fingers into her lap. “Red backpack. Yellow fleece jacket. Camouflage pants. Hiking boots.”

  “What else?”

  “I didn’t exactly have time to take inventory.”

  “A backpack’s a good sign.” The words hitched out as if acts of comfort were foreign to him. “Tommy probably had him pack layers.”

  If Scotty had layers, then he’d stay warm at night and maybe his asthma wouldn’t flare up. The hopeful thought soothed the raw edge of her nerves.