by Linda Howard
He moved the propane camp heater closer to their feet, but not so close that he could accidentally kick it, then turned off the lantern and in the deep shadows stretched out on the mattress beside her. His feet hung off; it was a double-sized mattress, which was damn small by his standards but it was what fit best inside the sleeping stalls, and he usually slept on the diagonal just to give himself a little more length. Sometimes he folded his dirty clothes and placed them on the floor at the bottom of the mattress so he’d have something to rest his feet on, but right now he was too tired to get up and he didn’t give a shit whether his feet hung off or not.
He’d thought he would drop right off to sleep, but he didn’t. Even as tired as he was, he could still feel the burn of adrenaline pumping through his system. The ordeal wasn’t over. They were safe, for now, and relatively comfortable, but this situation wasn’t over by a long shot. There was still a killer out there, and a bear that would have to be hunted down and eliminated. The storm was over, but heavy rain was still complicating everything. He wouldn’t be walking anywhere until the weather cleared, however long that took.
“Dare.” His name floated into the shadows, just a whisper, as if she thought he might be asleep and didn’t want to wake him if he was.
“What?” he responded. God, if she had to piss, he was going to cry. The portable toilet was behind the cabin, and not only was the rain still pouring down, but he’d have to get her down the ladder, into the toilet, back up the ladder … it boggled the mind. Hell, he’d make her pee in a cup if that was the problem.
She didn’t need anything like that, though. Instead she said, “I can’t get warm. I’m so cold.”
“Do you want some more sugar water to drink?” Everything in him protested at the idea of getting up, but he’d make the effort.
“No. I—” She broke off, was silent for a few moments, then she took a shuddering breath. “Would you get … would you get under the cover with me? You’re so warm, and I’m so cold I hurt.” She sighed, made a sound from deep in her throat that was a cross between a moan and a gasp, and then she said one more word:
“Please.”
Chapter Sixteen
As little as ten hours ago, if anyone had even suggested to Angie that she’d ever, under any circumstances, ask Dare Callahan to get in a sleeping bag with her, she’d have thought about seeing if that person could be committed for his or her own safety, because obviously said person was nutty as a fruitcake. But just eight hours ago she’d been peacefully asleep in her own camp, and the night’s hellish events hadn’t yet begun.
A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then, literally as well as figuratively. There had been times when she hadn’t been certain she’d live another minute, but her only option had been to keep pushing, keep trying. Even after Dare had found her the pain and miserable cold had seemed unending; the only difference was that she hadn’t been alone. He’d been there, strong and never-faltering even though she’d known, in the part of her brain that wasn’t preoccupied with the struggle to survive, that the cold and rain and relentless effort were all wearing him down, too.
She had been so terrified that she felt as if some part of her soul had been permanently altered, in a way she couldn’t yet fully comprehend. She had been smashed down to a tiny portion of herself, all of her resources pulled inward and devoted to survival, and only now could she feel herself begin to unfold again, feel her mind and body trying to resettle into normalcy.
There was, as yet, a disorienting sense of unreality about the whole situation that allowed her to ask Dare to get under the cover with her and share his body warmth, and to be unsurprised when he didn’t hesitate.
“Just lie there,” he said, getting on his knees and unzipping the bag all the way around so it would lie flat. “You don’t have to do a thing. I’ll pull the bag from under you.”
She gave a brief nod, held herself in silence as he moved her around, pulling the sleeping bag free as he went. Every movement jarred her ankle, even with the elastic bandage snugly supporting it. Dare hadn’t said anything while he was wrapping it, and she hadn’t asked, but now her brain was reengaging. When he gently cupped her right calf and lifted her leg, she said, “Is it broken?”
He gave her a quick glance, the expression in his blue eyes sharp despite his obvious fatigue. “I don’t know. If it is, it’s just a simple fracture or a hairline crack, nothing major.”
Good news, bad news, though she’d heard all her life that a simple break in the bone would heal a lot faster than a severe sprain. If her ankle was better tomorrow, then she’d know it was nothing more than a sprain. There was nothing she could do to change the situation one way or the other.
He spread the sleeping bag out over her and the mattress; she moved restlessly, trying to adjust her foot so the weight of the down was pressing down on her toes, which made her ankle throb. Damn, this was going to be a pain in the ass, in more ways than one. “I hate being helpless,” she grumbled, then wished she hadn’t complained.
“Yeah, it sucks,” he said bluntly, not bothering with a pep talk or even sympathy, which was okay with her. He’d carried her on his back for hours, so she figured she should at least deal with the pain and inconvenience of a hurt ankle. He then moved on to the business at hand. “Okay, let’s figure out the best way to do this, considering your ankle. We can try the spoon position, with you on your left side.”
That sounded reasonable; she shifted onto her left side, curled into the smallest ball possible, and gingerly placed her right foot on top of her left one. Dare slid under the sleeping bag with her, tucked himself firmly against her and draped his right arm over her waist. They had spent so many hours in constant physical contact that she had felt a little adrift when they weren’t touching; now, feeling him all along her back, his thighs against her butt and legs, something deep inside her relaxed, as if a previously unrecognized need had been fed.
If only the cold would go away. Shivering, she pulled the sleeping bag almost to the top of her head again, hoping their shared body heat would soon begin to seep into her. If she had a hair dryer for her hair … but she didn’t, and having a damp head was making it even more difficult to get warm. Being so exhausted that all she wanted to do was sleep, and not being able to go to sleep because she was so cold, was miserable.
He gave a weary sigh and she felt his arm get heavier. Evidently he wasn’t having the same trouble going to sleep. Angie tried to hold herself still, so her shivering wouldn’t disturb him. She must not have been successful, because after a minute he muttered, “Go ahead and let your teeth chatter; it’ll warm you up faster.”
So she did. She let the bone-rattling shudders shake her from head to toe; her teeth clattered together like castanets. Wave after wave swept through her; she’d relax, thinking they were over, only to be seized by another. Dare held her through the quakes, and gradually the time between them lengthened as her body generated heat and Dare’s warmth began to create a snug haven under the down-filled sleeping bag. With the cold banished, heavy lassitude melted her bones and she felt herself sinking from consciousness.
Just before she went out, Dare’s rough, sleepy voice rumbled grumpily, “I’ll wake up with a hard-on, so don’t give me any shit about it.”
“That’s okay,” Angie mumbled. “It’s too little for me to worry about.” He’d said so, hadn’t he? Then she nestled her face against the mattress and went to sleep as suddenly and deeply as if she’d been dropped over a cliff.
Chad Krugman huddled miserably under the rocky overhang, watching the gray sheets of rain and wondering if it was ever going to stop. During the night the lightning storm had moved on and he’d begun to hope the storm was over, then another wave of thunder and lightning had arrived and the second was even worse than the first. He’d had to spend his time going from horse to horse, settling the bastards down, until that storm, too, had rolled on down the mountains.
That had been the pattern all night long.
The thunderstorms just kept coming, and the rain never stopped. Now daylight had arrived, but the day didn’t seem a lot better than the night, other than the fact that he could at least see—but what he could see wasn’t pretty. All that water rushing downward had turned rivulets into torrents, creeks into boiling rivers, and the mountainsides into expanses of mud that he was afraid were going to start sliding, taking trees and rocks and everything else in the path along with it.
He was cold. He guessed it was a good thing that he had the horses, but spending all night in close quarters with four of them wasn’t a good thing. They pissed, they shit, they farted. Sometimes he’d felt as if the smell was burning the hair out of his nose, but whenever he tried to put some distance between himself and the animals, the cold drove him back to them. They stank, but they put off a lot of heat. Chad had a personal misery index that he kept informal track of, and this ranked pretty close to a ten. He liked to know who was causing him trouble, and how much, but he thought actually writing things like that down would edge too close to crazy, plus he never wrote down anything that might come back to bite him in the ass.
Together, Mitchell Davis and Angie Powell had caused him to have a miserable night, and he was feeling very resentful toward both of them, even though Davis was already dead. If he hadn’t had the bright idea of sitting on Angie’s front porch in the dark so he could access her wifi, he never would have been able to track down those financials, and Chad would have been able to kill both of them the way he’d planned. Neither of them would have known what was happening; Angie would be out of the equation and he wouldn’t have to worry about where she was. He still would have had to deal with the rain, but he could have spent the night snug in his tent; he’d have had food and water, and these fucking stupid horses would be in their corral, instead of nearly choking him with their farts.
From the way rain was still pouring down, it didn’t look as if the sun was going to come out anytime soon. That might be good, might be bad. The rain would make it impossible for Angie to walk off the mountain—if she was still alive, which he had to assume until he knew differently—but it also hampered his own progress. The mud was everywhere, footing was treacherous, and he might get hypothermia while riding back to the camp. To make things even worse, visibility was so poor even during daylight that he could ride within a hundred yards of the camp and not be able to see it, which wasn’t a good thing when he wasn’t completely certain where it was.
He didn’t have a choice, though; he didn’t have the luxury of waiting, not that there was any “luxury” involved in his present situation. He had to get the keys to the SUV and get out of the country before the cops could be notified and start looking for him. He couldn’t wait for better weather, because every hour now was one that he couldn’t afford to waste.
The horses were a problem. They needed food and water, but after the night he’d spent he didn’t much care about the damn horses. He had to keep the chestnut fed and watered because he planned to ride it out of here as soon as the weather cleared, but as far as the other three were concerned, all he cared was that Angie not be able to get one of them, assuming she was still alive and capable of riding, which, again, until he knew better, was the assumption he had to go with.
Water was easy; there was water everywhere. He just didn’t want to leave the shelter of the overhang, because he didn’t have a slicker and his coat was still damp from being in the rain last night. Finally he decided that, as he was going to get wet anyway while riding back to the camp, getting wet now wouldn’t make that much of a difference. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have dry clothes back at the camp. He was a decent person; he couldn’t let them go without water.
So one by one he led them out into the rain and found places for them to drink. There wasn’t much for them to graze on, but if they showed any interest in cropping at anything he stood hunched against the rain and let them grab at what food they could get. He got soaked to the skin all over again, of course. By the time he climbed on a rock and maneuvered himself onto the chestnut’s back, he was feeling positively virtuous.
The other three horses he left tied under their rocky shelter, hoping they’d stay where they were and not try to shake the reins loose and wander off. He needed to know exactly where the horses were, so he’d know whether or not Angie had found one of them and was riding for help. At least they weren’t on any recognizable trail, and the nightlong pounding rain had washed away any tracks they’d left. He was fairly certain Angie couldn’t find them, not without a stroke of luck that would border on the miraculous.
The chestnut didn’t like the soggy, insecure footing; he had to constantly urge it forward. He hunched his shoulders against the miserable pounding rain; wherever he ended up after he escaped from this godforsaken wilderness, he was damn certain it would be someplace where the sun shone every day, and he’d know which direction was which. If the sun had been out he would have been fairly certain of his direction, but the cloud cover was so thick he couldn’t pick out a bright spot, so he had to rely completely on his sense of direction, which was tough when none of the landmarks were familiar—if you could call rocks and trees and bushes “landmarks.” The only directions he could reliably tell were uphill and downhill, but that helped. The mountain chain ran north/south, so uphill, generally speaking, was west, and downhill was east. He wanted to go south, so that meant he kept the upward slope on his right.
Beyond that, the best he could do was try to pick out something in a visual straight line, at the edge of visibility, and ride to it. From there he’d pick out another target, and ride to it. The problem with that means of navigation was that he knew he hadn’t ridden in a straight line during his panicked flight in the dark. But should he be angling uphill, or down? Who the fuck knew? He didn’t even know how far he’d ridden last night; all he could do was estimate.
God, if only he didn’t need those keys! If it hadn’t been for that damn bear, he wouldn’t be in this predicament. He’d have hunted Angie down and finished the job, he’d have the keys, and he’d have gotten a good night’s rest. Granted, the weather today would still be crappy, but he could afford to wait out the rain, if that little detail had been taken care of.
The bear would be long gone by now, of course, but he’d love to be able to put a bullet in its ass for all the trouble it had caused him.
He actually found the campsite by accident. He came to a place where it seemed as if the mountainside had washed out, and he nudged the horse uphill to see if he could get above the mudslide that had turned into a roaring torrent that had taken some trees down with it. About seventy yards up he reached the head of the mudslide and started across, but the chestnut suddenly shied and began backing up, ignoring Chad’s command. After a minute of trying to force the horse to go forward, he said to hell with it, and instead turned the horse uphill; it was willing to go up, and eagerly picked its way over the soggy, uneven footing.
Chad ducked his head; the rain was hitting him in the face. He didn’t even have a hat with him. If he’d ever been more physically miserable in his life, he couldn’t remember when. At least he’d improved his riding skills enough in the past year that he could stay on the chestnut bareback, otherwise he’d have been walking in this shit.
Then he saw, to the left and a little farther uphill, a corner of something orange, and a burst of excitement flooded him with so much adrenaline that he felt nauseated. The camp tents were a dirty orange, he assumed for safety reasons, so no one would shoot in that direction. Looking around, he thought he recognized the terrain.
He’d almost missed it. If the horse hadn’t balked, he’d have ridden right past the camp, unable to see it in the pouring rain. Maybe the horse knew where it was and associated the camp with food.
His heart began slamming against his rib cage. Angie might be in one of those tents right now, armed and waiting to see if he came back. She’d be dry and comfortable, while he’d been stuck under an overhang with four horses, smelling
their shit all night long. Maybe he’d just walk behind the tents and shoot into all of them, just to cover his bases—that would flush her out.
Except he didn’t have any ammunition other than what was in the clip, so he didn’t want to waste any. There was more ammo in his tent, of course, but until he had his hands on it he had to be careful.
Slowly he dismounted, and sank into muck that came up to his ankles. It pulled at him, resisting every step; if his boots hadn’t been so tightly laced, it might have pulled them right off his feet. No wonder the horse had been so jittery. He tied the reins to a low-hanging tree branch, even patted the horse’s neck and said a few soothing words, keeping his voice low.
Jesus. All he had was this pistol. If Angie was there, she had a high-powered rifle capable of picking him off right where he stood. She’d be limited only by the poor visibility.
Slowly he eased forward, pistol in his hand. A part of him wanted to turn around and run, but running wasn’t an option, so instead of focusing on his fear, he focused on the hunt. His plan to take care of Davis had thrilled him, in a way. Everyone always underestimated him; no one would have thought him capable of the meticulous strategy, the acting, the satisfaction that had come as he’d pulled the trigger. Hunting Angie Powell was a thrill of another sort, because she wouldn’t be caught by surprise the way Davis had been.
He wasn’t thrilled enough to show himself too soon, to take a chance that she might shoot him before he got the chance to shoot her.
At the edge of the thick wood he stopped, surveying the camp. It didn’t look like much, but it was well situated; he’d give it that. Because the tents were on low platforms, they were still dry and snug, so well anchored that the wind hadn’t taken them down. The place looked empty, though. There was no hint of movement, no smell of coffee or anything cooking, but that didn’t mean anything. Angie knew what she was doing; she wouldn’t give away her location so easily.