Timber Lake (The Snowy Range Series, #2)

by Nya Rawlyns

  On the other side of the stream, Sonny patted the mule’s neck and said a quick prayer to whoever was listening. Dropping the reins, he leaned forward and whispered, “Find Red. Please, boy, find him and Michael.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Trapped

  Michael’s senses first forged awareness when the weight of air choked with debris settled onto flesh burnt so raw the mere whisper of movement was enough to force him to clamp his bottom lip in counterpoint. Pain overriding pain. The devil he knew inflicted discomfort he understood. Its origins, its lifespan, its lethal nature or lack thereof provided a measure of comfort.

  It changed the focus. Redirected his attention from burning to pinching, allowing him to follow the flow of blood oozing and dribbling down his chin, the whiskers damming and releasing droplets in random patterns. A copper-iron scent flooded his nostrils, then faded into a stench of fear-infused sweat.

  He prayed he was alone. No one deserved to inhale the rank odor of a man defenseless and awash in his own frailty, not even the man who applied incentives with inelegant grace. Metal forged to glowing, the heat announcing its arrival long before the actual kiss of searing pain... It had taken so little to tip him into unconsciousness, his body sagging thankfully into boneless nirvana as his shoulder joints popped and cracked under the onslaught.

  He needed to shunt aside the odor of burnt hair and abused flesh eating at his armpits, but there was nowhere to turn. He’d tried not breathing, denying the maniac his mindless toying with his new prey. His body rejected that submission, countermanding his attempt to fade into unconsciousness again.

  Counting his blessings, Michael tempered hopelessness with satisfaction his jaw wasn’t broken, that he still had his eyesight, though the crust of blood and mud and gravel acted like a screen through which dust motes danced in lazy patterns. It told him one thing. He was alone. For now.

  Not that it mattered, but he would have enjoyed knowing how he’d ended up in the cabin, strung up like a carcass. He’d been careful, watching his step, moving quietly as he circled the abandoned building in wide, concentric arcs. The snap of a trap closing had triggered his alarms, but it was already too late. His temple exploded with pain trailing the echoes of gunshots. Had he fired, or had it been his imagination?

  Behind him, the door creaked open, the light casting his shadow forward into the confined space. It patterned the dirt floor in lazy, twisting circles, oscillating forward, back, forward. Lengthening and shortening. He observed beneath eyelids squinting from the invasion of daylight, much preferring the dim interior to the stark contrast of his predicament so boldly displayed.

  The shadow objectified his powerlessness, driving a wedge between acceptance and rage. Like the animals caught in the madman’s snare, his fate was never in question. That left him with few choices: the martyrdom of acquiescence or the implosion of senseless fury, neither state conferring dignity nor meaning to his struggles.

  And no one was coming to humanely put him out of his misery.

  The door closed, his shadow vanished. Rage and passion jousted with serenity. He did not dare think on the last few days when he’d experienced a new kind of affirmation, even joy, in the company of a man who surprised him at every turn.

  The one thing he’d feared above all others was caring for someone else. The obligations and insecurities, the voluntary exchange of freedom for dependency, capitulation to avoid the drama of confrontation. Enslavement to another’s whims.

  There were a thousand and one reasons to go through life alone, content in your own company, never having to face unpleasant surprises and disappointments. Never confronting the inevitable when your heart shattered into a million shards as you watched your dreams vanish like mist over the lake.

  Michael pondered what images would flash before his eyes when it was finally his time. After a lifetime of pre-emptively avoiding entanglements, he had precious little in the way of those small regrets that loom large when time runs out.

  His walls had held, for years. Now, when he most needed them, they were no longer there. Fate had conspired to tear them down, brick by brick, until he’d been left naked and exposed. The persona of Mister Zero had flamboyantly turned his solitude on its ears, the friend he called Tex had opened his eyes to new possibilities. But it was Seamus Rydell who had taken him beyond caring into a universe of need and desire that blew all his boundaries to hell and gone.

  Maybe his one biggest regret was never having told Tex how he felt.

  “Good, yer awake.” The gravelly voice assaulted his ears on a whisper of fetid breath, snapping his awareness into high gear. Reminding him he still had obligations and perhaps a modicum of purpose remaining.

  He should have been cataloguing his injuries and assessing his strengths instead of mooning over what he’d never have. Michael knew he was disoriented, in pain, and trussed like a side of beef ready for the meat locker, but on the plus side he still had his faculties and the patience to wait for an opportunity.

  The madman had made a mistake by going after that boy at the lake. If Michael was lucky, he would make another one. Michael knew all he had to do was stay awake and alert enough to recognize an opportunity, no matter how slight. Perhaps the counselors and their programs had been right. You never lose the anger or the pain, but you can learn to manage it. Channel it. Use it to buy you time, hold it tight so that when the pain starts it’s like the comfort of a warm embrace.

  Like Sonny...

  The man limped into view, licking his lips, his face cast in weak light. Pale eyes, the color of brutality, swept Michael up and down, lips pursed and assessing. He gave the appearance of being frail, but Michael know that to be false. He’d struggled with this creature, pinning him to the rocky ground as his life force pumped rust buckets of blood in a stuttering stream.

  They’d cleaned him up in the hospital, shaved his face, though the whiskers had grown back in splotches around scarred ridges from wounds left to mend on their own. Michael wondered if they’d been self-inflicted.

  The question of why... why me, why here, why do this or that... none of that would influence the outcome of this day, in this cabin, with him at the mercy of evil. Michael was content to go to his grave never knowing the answers because in truth, he’d already born witness to that dislocation of sanity and the sadism of a psychopath. Understanding added nothing to an experience with the end game already rigged.

  “I should have killed you, you son-of-a-bitch.” Michael’s body swung backwards and forwards as he leaned into the hate. He embraced the truth of a moment lost, an opportunity squandered to rid the world of vermin so foul no one, not even God, would mourn his passing.

  The man stood back, spread his arms in a tah-dah movement, and grinned. He chirruped, “Seth,” as if his name added weight to the proceedings, then pirouetted and giggled. The sound was high pitched and girlish, grating on the nerves. Michael would promise the moon not to hear that noise again.

  Michael growled, “Names are for tombstones, asshole.”

  “Might do, yes indeed, might do.” Michael had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Fisting his hands, he tried to relieve the pressure on his shoulder joints by lifting his not inconsiderable weight against the pull of gravity.

  Seth giggled again and muttered, “Yes. Yes, indeed,” as he disappeared toward a corner near the stone fireplace. Returning with two traps, he set them on the dirt floor and pried them open, making small adjustments to the tension on the one but seeming satisfied with the other.

  Michael had been dimly aware he was suspended to the rafters by a pulley system, his wrists bound securely with coarse nylon rope similar to what they used for lead lines for the horses. His skin already bore testimony to the chaffing from weathered threads slicing across the grain. It hadn’t cut through, yet. The simple act of breathing set his body in slow motion, activating random patterns of shifting weight as he followed his tormentor’s movements. It wouldn’t take much to saw a ragged path through the
superficial flexor muscles before attacking tendons and ligaments in his wrists.

  Seth nudged the two traps into position underneath Michael’s feet. Sweat beaded the madman’s brow as he considered his next move.

  Unsure if he was attempting to distract himself or the lunatic working below him, Michael asked, “How the hell did you find this place?”

  Seth shrugged. “Lotsa good hidey holes.” He examined his handiwork for a few minutes, then said, “Just gotta know where to look.”

  Michael’s stomach flipped. The lodge cabins at Sand Lake. He’d thought one had had a recent occupant. The thought of this lunatic being so close to the campground, with outdoorsmen and their families easy prey, nearly drove Michael mad.

  He hissed, “You won’t get away with this.” It was a meaningless threat and Michael knew it.

  The bastard would get away with it; he already had. They were in the middle of nowhere, in a cabin few knew about and buried deep in the Medicine Bow Forest where no one would hear him scream. No one would come for him.

  “Shut it.” Seth tugged on Michael’s belt buckle, removing the leather strap with one sharp yank and tossing it aside. He clucked to himself, “Stupid,” and poked at the traps, moving them out of the way so he could strip the jeans and underpants, leaving Michael naked.

  Michael had expected it, had mentally prepared himself for that kind of debasement, but the reality of cold air finally teasing his skin shook him to his core. He grappled for purchase, trying to wind his fists around the line holding him captive, kicking at the phantom controlling his movement.

  Nausea ripped through him, his scalp on fire. He shut his eyes to regain control, but disorientation won out and he slipped away momentarily. When he recovered, his legs were trussed, the distance between his bare feet and the gaping maws of the two traps lessening steadily.

  Gasping, “What the fuck,” Michael lifted away from the descent, shredding his joints in an agony of desperation. His feet dangled millimeters above the traps, held aloft by sheer strength and murderous rage. If he lost it, lost the hate keeping him alive, he’d fall and spring the traps.

  Seth chuckled. This time the sound was warm and filled with contentment. He produced a blade with a curvature, shaped like a raptor’s head with the end pointed. It looked surgically sharp.

  With a toothy grin, the sadist said, “Let’s see how well you can control yourself.” He pricked at the join of hip to thigh. “Feel free to scream, Warden Brooks. There’s no one to hear you now.”

  ****

  Dismounting, Sonny traversed the slope alongside the mule, both of them slaloming downhill on heels, hocks and butts. He was taking insane risks, but something in the back of his hard skull told him he was heading in the right direction.

  At the top of the rise, he’d traced what looked like a trail snaking through the stand of timber at the bottom of the hill. The valley spread out in a roughly north-south direction, with hummocky hillocks rolling to the east like giant moguls. Eventually they converged at a creek that led to the interstate and civilization.

  He was nowhere near having eidetic memory, but his years of doing research had gifted him with the ability to summon stray facts and images when he most needed them. Whether or not it was a genuine trail, or just wishful thinking on his part, he did know that the tie hack camp lay in the same direction the trail was running.

  He’d been forced to take the dangerous straight line to his presumed trailhead, rather than zigging and zagging and possibly working off the line and getting himself hopelessly turned around. So long as he kept it in sight, he’d be able to commit markers to memory. A taller tree. Something off color. Deadfall. A stand of boulders. Once he was on the valley floor, he would use his compass to help him navigate through the forest.

  The storm threatening them on the other side of the ridge had dissipated by late morning. On the eastern slope, rock and soil, leaf mold and pine needles littered the ground. It was dumb luck Sonny stopped to adjust the mule’s girth and check his feet with a hoof pick. The mule was shoeless, but that didn’t mean a rock couldn’t lodge in the sole or wedge in the bulb of the heels. When he glanced at the ground, his heart nearly stopped.

  A rowel off Michael’s spur had worked loose and fallen on the ground—a sure sign Michael had come this way. It also confirmed Sonny’s suspicion Michael had run into trouble. It didn’t take a genius to figure out whoever had laid those traps, and had probably been spying on them, had done something to Michael.

  There was no way his warden would have left him and the horses to fend for themselves. That wasn’t how the man rolled.

  Guiding the mule toward a stand of downed trees, he looped the reins loosely around a branch, hoping Spot would stay put while he went forward on foot. He slipped the Remington AR-15 out of the scabbard and slung it over his shoulder. With only a five round capacity and no extra shells, he was going to have to take care he hit what he aimed at first time. There might not be another opportunity.

  The hunting knife Michael used to gut fish was in its ankle holster. Feeling vaguely foolish, he set his hat on a stump and slapped moist dirt on his face, making sweeps across his brow, under his eyes, and over the heavy whisker growth along his cheeks and chin.

  To the mule, he said, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, Spot.” He patted the mule’s neck before moving off, following his nose.

  Sonny estimated he was less than a half-mile from the cabin. On a good day, at normal hiking speed, he’d have covered the gently sloping incline in fifteen or twenty minutes. But this wasn’t a good day, and he was forced to expend energy searching either side of the so-called trail just to make sure he was on track. Occasionally he lucked onto a hoof print or two. They were large enough to belong to the big red gelding. If Michael had left a boot print, Sonny wasn’t seeing it, though if he’d been riding that would explain the lack of sign.

  At the base of a dry gully, he found evidence of a struggle. Hoof prints, gouges in the hard ground, stones dislodged. The hoof prints led in the opposite direction of the cabin. A splotch of rust on a rock and parallel lines that looked like something or someone was being dragged confirmed his suspicions.

  Crouching low, Sonny crab-stepped to the lip of the gully. There wasn’t much to see. A stand of ponderosa pine, old, rotted stumps and new growth filling in where the lumber company had cut down trees for the railroad ties gave him no clues as to where Michael and the trapper might be camped out.

  Staying low, Sonny raced down the gully, periodically poking his head up to get his bearings, but he was running out of real estate. At some point he’d have to decide which way to go. His gut told him to stay left and follow the contours toward what might have been a stream.

  Avoiding the worst case scenario—that the trapper had already killed Michael—Sonny swung the strap off his shoulder and cradled the rifle as he ascended the short incline. As he topped the ridge, a scream rent the air.

  Sonny jumped and spun wildly, not sure which direction it came from. His stomach in his throat, he scanned the area, searching for the source of the heartbreaking cry. On his second rotation he spotted the outline of a cabin in a small clearing. Using the trees for cover he raced for the open area, praying he’d be in time to rescue Michael.

  As he approached from the side, Sonny swore silently. The two windows along the side wall had been barricaded shut, preventing him from seeing inside. That it also preserved his anonymity was less a concern. As he rounded the front of the dilapidated structure, muted whimpers and laughter meshed together, terrifyingly obscene.

  The door hung at a skewed angle, partially open, yet blocking his view to the inside of the cabin. A sane man would have stopped to evaluate, to plan. That man would have approached cautiously, assessing the best way to handle the situation. Looking, stopping, and listening.

  The high-pitched scream trailing into a sobbing whimper stripped away sanity, and in that void rage and unimaginable pain filled the vacated space.

 
Sonny swung wide and came at the door full tilt, ramming it open with his left shoulder, using the impact to direct his momentum. He twisted and raised the rifle, planting the stock against his left shoulder and caressing the trigger with a lover’s touch. He squeezed off three rounds, noting the tight pattern of blood blossoming on the trapper’s torso. The man’s body sailed toward the fireplace, his body impacting with a crunch and crumbling to the dirt floor in a heap.

  Sonny stared at the bloody mess, mesmerized, unaware of time passing until Michael whispered, “Help,” and he turned to find Michael’s feet and legs slowly sinking toward the steel traps.

  Yelling, “You fucking do NOT get to hurt him anymore,” Sonny swung the butt of the rifle at the traps, knocking them to the side as Michael’s feet touched down.

  The rifle tumbled to the floor as Sonny reached for his hunting knife, his left hand steadying Michael’s ravaged torso. It took an eternity before he was able to saw through the restraints making a bloody mess of Michael’s wrists. Sonny eased his broken lover to the floor, then made quick work of loosening the bindings off his wrists and ankles, taking care not to further chaff the severely damaged flesh.

  Holding Michael in his arms, Sonny crooned, “I’ve got you, babe. You’re safe now.”

  Michael weakly husked, “That was a damn fool thing to do...” as he drifted away.

  Grimly Sonny murmured, “It’s what fools do, Warden Brooks. Get fucking used to it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cavalry

  Michael gritted his teeth, partially from the pain, but mostly because Tex was driving him batshit crazy, stopping every two minutes to check on him.

  “You’re bleeding again.” Sonny tut-tutted, not something Michael had ever actually heard a human do, but what came out of his caretaker’s mouth certainly mimicked the sound. Sonny added, “You need stitches.”