by Vella Munn
“For miles, hours. And I cried. Relief. Exhaustion. Everything that had boiled up inside me. Sometimes, Shannon, there’s nothing to do but cry.”
He had cried, this man who hadn’t shed a tear at their daughter’s death; at least, she hadn’t seen him give way to the grief that had consumed her. “It helps,” she whispered despite the hard, hot knot in her throat.
“Yeah. It does.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say after that. Yes, Cord’s career brought him in constant contact with life-and-death struggles. He’d seen more of what was raw and basic in the world than most people ever would, but he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t have some response to those struggles—a response she’d never truly considered before now. Why? Had he been that careful to keep his emotions from her, or hadn’t she known how to read the signs?
Too late, a voice inside her head mocked.
Afternoon.
Cord had known that the storm was dying long before the clouds began breaking up. Shannon had cheered when a weak, brief ray of sunlight touched her, but he couldn’t share her excitement.
He couldn’t sense his son’s presence.
True, the trail Matt and Pawnee had left behind was clear enough that he was in no danger of losing it, but the tracks told him that Matt had been walking with the determination of youth, while Cord was hampered by ground that sometimes briefly held secrets and made the search for answers tedious.
Matt would have to spend at least another night on the mountain. If he’d taken his son with him or given him the knowledge he’d already had at that age—
For maybe the fourth time today, Cord tried to shake himself free of the pounding inside his head. He knew how to be a bloodhound, how to walk and work and sacrifice and think of nothing except his goal.
But this was his son, and his son’s mother was with him and she, too, would have to endure another night of empty arms.
“Cord? Please, wait a minute.”
He straightened and slowly turned around. Because his attention had been focused on the faint road map of Matt’s journey left on the ground, it was several seconds before his eyes focused clearly on her. She stood some five feet away with the horses, which she’d been leading on either side of her. Splotches of color still highlighted her cheeks. Her eyes glistened from the effort of sorting through never — ending patterns of light and shadow—and maybe from unspent tears.
“I should be grateful.” She shook her head slightly as if she was aware of what her eyes had told him. “It doesn’t look as if it’s going to rain anymore. The birds have come out of hiding and I saw a butterfly a few minutes ago. If Matt stands in the open where the breeze can get to him, his clothes ought to dry. If the storm had gotten worse, well...”
“A storm’s nothing to fear.”
“Nothing to fear? Cord, you aren’t ten.”
“No, I’m not. Still, there’s beauty in rain and snow. The forest changes during a storm, becomes one with the wind. If you know to tuck the forest around you, let it absorb you, then a storm surrounds you but doesn’t frighten.”
Shannon ran the back of her hand impatiently over her forehead. “I don’t know who this ‘you’ you’re talking about is, but I didn’t come here to be surrounded by rain and wind and cold. I don’t want it for my son.”
She had an incredible presence. She might say she had no desire to be in the wilderness, but she belonged here. Jeans became her. A cotton blouse fit her as naturally as some women wore silk. And her body—her body with its long, lean limbs, competent hands and slender yet broad shoulders—was made for a life-style beyond walls.
Her breasts and hips and thighs were made for a man. For him.
Despite everything, he had never stopped wanting her.
“I’m trying to make it easier for you,” he said in an effort to place a smoke screen over what he was thinking and feeling. “Some children, especially those who’ve never been told that a storm is something to fear, see one the same way I do.”
“Children don’t like loud, sudden sounds—like thunder. Lightning frightens them. They don’t like being cold and wet and hungry and...and lost.”
She was right, of course. And as she stood up to him, he realized he had no more defenses against her than a leaf caught in the wind.
With an effort, he turned his attention back to the ground. “What you’re following now...” she said, “can you tell whether we’ve made any ground?”
“No.” He hated having to say this. “No. We haven’t.”
She drew in a quick breath and he barely stopped himself from reaching for her. “I’m sorry,” he started to say.
A sound, faint as a midnight whisper, pricked at him. He froze. He forgot where he was, what he’d been saying, even who was with him.
A rifle shot. Several miles away, and distorted by the rocks it was echoing off. So faint, most people wouldn’t hear it.
The sound was repeated.
For two, nearly three minutes, he remained with his senses open and receptive, but nothing else came to him. Finally, reluctantly, he brought himself back to where he was and ignored his heart’s erratic pounding.
“Did you hear something?”
Shannon hadn’t made any attempt to keep the combination of tension and anticipation out of her voice. Maybe she was beyond any pretense. He wanted to tell her about the shots; he didn’t want to carry this burden alone or have to find a way to battle cold fingers of dread alone. But someone with a rifle was on this mountain and, if possible, he wanted to spare her from knowing what she couldn’t do anything about.
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure?” When she leveled him a gaze, he wondered if he could keep anything from her.
“There are a million sounds out there, Shannon.” His throat didn’t want to work. “I can’t be sure of all of them.”
“I’ve never heard you say that before.”
Where did she keep those memories of him? “We don’t have much more time. It’s going to get dark—”
“Not for another four or five hours.”
“Five hours isn’t going to get us far enough.”
In the seconds that followed his words, he could hear her breathing. He didn’t need to probe into her to know what she was feeling and battling.
He knew because the same war was raging in his own soul.
This search was different from all the others. Love for a ten-year-old boy had gotten in the way of what he needed and wanted to do. He could fight the emotion, but it would only return, slamming into him just as memories of making love to Shannon did. Because he wasn’t up to the battle, he could only force himself to go on, to acknowledge why his heart felt so heavy.
He cared, truly cared for only two people in this world. He was trying to find one before that distant, deadly sound did. The other—
She looked so brave and determined and trapped.
Without moving, without having any control over what was happening, he reached out with his heart and absorbed her emotions.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“A deer! Didn’t you see—”
Chuck didn’t care what, if anything, Andrew might have been going to say. Cursing, he yanked the rifle out of his client’s hands and trained his binoculars in the direction Andrew had shot. Although he stared for several minutes, he didn’t see anything, but between the clouds and the sun trying to break out from behind them it was no wonder.
“We’ll have to go look,” he grumbled. “But I can guarantee you, you didn’t kill any damn deer.”
“How do you know?”
On the verge of telling Andrew that he couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn if he was standing inside it with the door closed, he hoisted Andrew’s rifle over his shoulder and started walking. Behind him, the three men chattered like drunken schoolchildren over whether Andrew had indeed made a kill and if he had, what the chances were that it was a trophy buck.
He wished they had. That way he
could stop baby-sitting these overgrown morons and pick up some clients who understood that being caught hunting out of season would net him a lot more than a simple fine. He’d already been arrested twice, forfeited his hunting license, and been leveled fines that he’d had no intention of paying. Getting nailed again wasn’t what bothered him since bureaucrats were lousy at collecting, but the last thing he wanted was jail time.
Jail time?
He’d shoot all three of these jokers and leave their bodies for the buzzards before he let that happen—them and anyone else who tried to stand in his way.
“Something.”
Something. What in God’s name did that mean? When Shannon turned anguished eyes on him, Cord gave her a shuttered look, then leaned forward in the saddle, a deeply tanned hand on his horse’s neck. His eyes, now trained on their surroundings, grew even darker. His nostrils flared, and she almost thought she could hear him drawing in deep, revealing breaths.
What did he see, smell, hear that others couldn’t? Was it possible that the spirit that moves in all things spoke to him?
She prayed so.
When Cord moved, it was to slide off the mare and land, silently, on rain-soaked earth. He stepped away from the animal and in a matter of seconds disappeared into the dense forest. She tried to listen, but there were so many sounds that she couldn’t begin to sort them out. She thought of how quickly the woods had swallowed Cord and how wonderfully wild he’d looked with evergreens framing him.
Cord hadn’t told her to follow him and she knew better than to infringe on his space. She waited, not knowing enough, and yet trusting that eventually he’d come back and tell her what he’d learned. She’d accept whatever it was, just as she accepted this raw and unwanted physical need for the man who’d turned her from a girl into a woman.
Her horse tried to lower its head to eat. She momentarily argued the point and then let it have its way. Cord’s mount was wandering away as it searched out fresh outcroppings on the pine needle-blanketed rocks. Shannon concentrated on wind, frogs, her limp and still-damp hair, memories of Cord’s faded and body-formed jeans, the wind again. The absence of rain.
How much time had passed? She’d just made up her mind to dismount when Cord’s mount lifted its head and snorted. Her horse followed suit, neck arched in interest.
There was no change in the rhyme of the forest, nothing for her ears to decipher. But the horses knew.
A moment later Cord came out of the woods leading Pawnee. Cord seemed to glide, so sure of his footing that he never once took his eyes off her.
Black eyes, dark as midnight. Forever eyes.
Matt’s horse!
“That fast?” she managed around her heart’s furious beating.
“No,” Cord cautioned. “Nothing’s changed.”
“But you found Pawnee.”
Cord shook his head, his incredible eyes so sober that she couldn’t fight them, couldn’t hold on to her short-lived elation. “Only because Matt either let him loose or didn’t tie him well enough. Or—Shannon, on his own, would Pawnee be able to make his way home?”
With an effort, she pulled herself out of endless depths and wild hope and explained that more than once one of her rental horses had wandered back to the corral after an inexperienced rider fell off. Pawnee, however, was full of himself, not as accustomed to life’s routines, and as such, more likely to be sidetracked even with an empty belly and memories of food and water.
“I’ve got to find where Matt and Pawnee parted compant.”
“How long will that take?”
“As long as it takes.”
She bit her tongue to keep from telling Cord not to be flippant. An instant later she knew it wasn’t that at all because he was explaining that from the number of tracks he’d found around Pawnee, he knew the animal hadn’t been there long. “He’s been on the move, running, which means there’s no easy way of telling where Matt left him, or where he fell off.”
She felt her heart slow, then beat quick and erratic. No easy way... Fell off. “Wh-what do you have to do now?”
“Backtrack Pawnee.”
It was then that she noticed that Pawnee was wearing his saddle and bridle. The loose reins that had been trailing behind the horse were muddy from dragging. “Maybe Matt ground-tied Pawnee and left him for a few minutes, but something spooked Pawnee.”
“Maybe. Look at his legs,” Cord observed. “He’s been deep in the woods for a while, getting scratched up.”
“You said that when you found where the two of them parted company, you’d be able to really start tracking Matt. How are you going to get to that point?”
Cord stepped over to his horse and pulled on the reins, lifting the animal’s head. “I’ll have to go on foot.”
Without another word of explanation, he turned and slipped, silently, into the woods. After a momentary hesitation, she started after him, leading both Pawnee and Cord’s horse. She stretched over the neck of the one she rode so the thick-growing branches wouldn’t knock her off.
Ahead, Cord walked Indian style, his movements starting in his hips, eyes trained on the ground. She tried to make out what he was concentrating on, but for her there was nothing except the generations of pine needles that thickly carpeted the forest floor. Still, she trusted.
This was Cord’s world.
And their son was in it, somewhere.
Safe?
Chapter 8
Afternoon had become evening. The sun was setting. Although he all but had to double over, Cord continued to stare at the ground as he sought out the nuggets of information Matt had left behind. Several times in the past few minutes he’d placed his palm over a faint boot print and let his nerves absorb the silent messages.
Matt had slowed down, and there was no pattern or destination to what he was doing. Like a rabbit, the boy had hopped in one direction for a while before taking off in another. Yes, he continued to climb, but there was no efficiency, no purpose. Cord wasn’t sure whether Shannon was aware of how much crisscrossing they’d been doing. He’d explain why once it was too dark to see where he was going, so she wouldn’t have to pull the information out of him. If she sounded strong enough, he’d admit that their son was getting tired and toeing out like a fat man in his attempt to keep his body going.
What he wouldn’t tell her was that he was certain Pawnee had thrown Matt. The signs had been all too clear, a mass of churned hoof prints, at the middle of a steep slope and, in among those prints, two easily recognizable handprints and two indentations that he was convinced had been made by a pair of knees.
To him, the scenario was spelled out as clearly as if he had a video of the whole accident. Matt had tried to make Pawnee climb the hili and, panicking, Pawnee had begun bucking. Made awkward by his backpack, Matt had fallen off and landed on his bands and knees. Pawnee had run away while Matt had been left behind. Because the ground was rocky and Pawnee had done so much damage to it, it was impossible to know how long Matt had remained there before picking himself up and going on alone.
And maybe Pawnee had been startled by a rifle shot.
At least Matt hadn’t been injured enough by the fall that he couldn’t move, Cord reminded himself again. But the boy was disoriented. Lost. Were the poachers responsible? If they were...
Cord crouched low and extended a shadowed hand over a smear in the pine needles made by a toe dragging over the ground, studying not just the mark but his own hand. The last time he’d seen Matt, they’d shaken hands. Matt had seemed pleased by that, a growing-up boy wanting to say goodbye to his dad man to man.
Why hadn’t he clutched that slender yet muscled body to him? Ten wasn’t a man yet. Ten was a child. Just because he hadn’t thought of himself as one at that age didn’t mean he should subject his son to the same standards.
But he had. Somehow, unwittingly, he’d given Matt the message that it was time—past time—for him to become a man.
That’s why Matt was out here.
; “Cord, please, give it up.”
For an instant, he wanted to order Shannon to be silent because he couldn’t rest until their son was safe, but she was right. He’d been going more by feel than sight for too long and if he wasn’t careful, he might talk himself into believing he’d seen something that wasn’t there. When he straightened, he felt a slight pull in the small of his back, but as he’d done many times over the years, he quickly assessed the inconsequential discomfort and dismissed it. It might be different for Matt. His fall from Pawnee might have left him bruised and sore.
“You’ve done all you can for one day,” she said softly. “Get some rest.”
“I haven’t done enough.”
“You aren’t superhuman—I’m not asking you to be. Besides, there isn’t any go left in me.”
His attention was instantly drawn to her. She stood with her legs splayed farther apart then he’d seen them all day. Her mouth was parted, and when she breathed, she straightened slightly, as if needing to increase her lung capacity. Her fingers had swollen a little and he guessed her feet felt the same way.
She hadn’t said anything about being tired before. He couldn’t remember whether they’d stopped to eat or rest today, something he’d always made part of his agenda before—before his son was the one out there.
“Shannon.” He started to lift his hands toward her. After a couple of seconds, he let them drop to his sides. “I should have paced us better. I pushed you too hard.”
“No more than you pushed yourself. All I had to do was follow your lead. You’re the one who did all the tracking. You’re incredible. So determined. So patient. I mean it. No wonder you’re in demand.”
He could have pointed out that he was used to this life-style and had trained his mind and body to accept what he required of it, but despite the deep shadows, he could see fine lines at the corners of Shannon’s eyes, the way her mouth drooped as if she was tired of holding it in place.
Still, she would keep going until she dropped if she believed it would help their son. He didn’t dare forget that.