by Jen Blood
“Holy crap,” a slightly overweight, dark-skinned woman sighed at sight of us. “I didn’t think you’d ever get here.”
I recognized her voice immediately as the one who had guided us here: Shonda. She crouched close to an unnaturally still figure lying on the ground, the others in the group crowded in behind them.
“Sorry you had to wait so long,” I said. Michelle called in our position and our status while I moved in for an assessment of the group. “You said two people were injured?”
Shonda turned large dark eyes on me, fear shining through now. “Becky…” she started, nodding to the figure on the floor. I knelt beside the woman, whose eyes fluttered open when I touched her hand. Her left arm was wrapped tightly in what looked like strips from someone’s T-shirt, the homemade bandage soaked with blood.
“She’s been shot?” I said.
“Yeah,” Shonda said. “Some crazy son of a bitch opened fire from the woods, and we all took off. Becky got hit in the arm. We were headed out to look for Gabby, and all hell broke loose.”
“Hang on,” Michelle said, holding up her hand. “Slow down a second. Who’s Gabby?”
“Gabriella Garcia. One of the ladies on the course with us – a big-time fashion model, married to that football player, right? You know the guy? He just got out of jail for beating the crap out of her.”
“And she was missing,” I said, trying to follow along. At the same time, I checked Becky’s vitals and was relieved to find her stable. Though she’d clearly lost some blood, it wasn’t nearly as much as she would have if Shonda hadn’t been thinking on her feet.
“Yeah,” Shonda said. She sounded a little put out that we weren’t better informed. When she continued, she spoke more slowly, giving the sequence of events in bullet points. “We were getting ready for bed, and Violet tells us Gabby and Ava took off because Gabby wasn’t feeling good, but she never came back. So Violet goes into the woods, just thinking they were off using the bathroom and got hung up or something. But then she didn’t find them, so she came back to get the rest of us. Then we’re just gearing up to go out and find Gabby and Ava, and some fool shoots at us from the woods. Hits Megan.” She paused, and took a long, shuddering breath.
“I was on my way to help her, and then Megan says no, don’t stop for her, just get the hell out of there. We start going like the devil’s on our asses, and Becky gets clipped. Then Heather gets us out to the cliff here and down the ropes, which, I’m sorry, is not what I signed up for. Next thing we know, Heather says she’s gotta go back for her sister, and we never hear a thing more.”
“Is she okay? What about Megan?” Becky asked. She was likely in her thirties, with blond hair going dark at the roots and a complexion pitted with old acne scars.
“We found Heather,” I said. “A Medevac unit came in a few hours ago and transported her to Maine Med. We thought Megan was with you, though.”
“No. We haven’t seen her since the shooting.” Becky’s eyes filled with tears, but she swallowed past them. “What about Heather’s baby?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said. I was still trying to process the realization that Megan wasn’t here, and figure out how I was going to break the news to Hogan. “But Heather’s alive, and it didn’t appear her injuries were life threatening. Did any of you see who did this?”
“Some asshole too much of a coward to show his face,” Shonda said. “Never even got up the balls to leave the cover of the trees.”
Another woman in the back began to cry, and I forced myself to breathe. We had to get everyone out of here.
“What have we got?” Michelle asked me.
“Gunshot wound to the upper shoulder,” Shonda said. Becky tried to sit up, pain flashing across her face. Shonda pushed her back, none too gently. “How many times do I have to tell you?” she asked her patient. “You might think you know everything about being out in the woods just because you been out here for five days without a shower, and maybe that’s true. But if you get shot, I’m in charge. Just lay back and wait for somebody to haul us out of here.”
“Shonda is a nurse,” Becky explained darkly.
“And you’re damn lucky I am, too,” Shonda returned.
“No kidding,” I agreed. “But you said two people down here were injured. Where’s the other one?”
She shifted a bit, moving into the light of our lanterns enough for me to see her more clearly. Her right arm was cradled in a sling I hadn’t even seen in the semi-darkness.
“Dislocated,” she explained. “It happened while we were climbing, or falling, or whatever it was we did that landed us here. Edie over there gave me a hand, though.” She nodded toward the crying woman in the back. “Got it popped right back in.”
“You’ve done a fine job,” I told her honestly. “And now if everybody can hang on a little bit longer, we’ll have you all up top, safe and dry and fed in no time.”
A murmur of relief ran through the group as Michelle and I set to work getting the logistics in place to get everyone home again.
I did a head count once Michelle and I had assessed Becky and done a quick exam of Shonda’s arm. My stomach took a nose dive yet again when I only came up with five people in total: Shonda, and four other women.
“What happened to the rest of the group? I know you said you got separated from Megan and Heather...” I said, fighting for calm.
“Violet stayed back with Megan,” Shonda said. “We never found Gabby and Ava – the ones I told you about before.”
“Crap,” I heard Michelle say under her breath before she turned to me. “I’ll get on the radio with Hogan, let him know who’s still missing. We’ll need to have teams keep looking for the others. You start getting people lined up to get out of here.”
For the next hour, the focus was on the painstaking process of getting the injured and the rest of the group safely up the cliff face. The winds were starting to die down, the temperature holding steady at around ten above zero with the wind chill. I’d made rescues in worse conditions; then again, I’d also made them in better. Michelle and I debated keeping everyone who wasn’t injured in the cave until the wind died down completely, but we had the manpower to make it happen then and there and neither of us was keen on any more delays – particularly knowing a shooter was out there somewhere gunning for these women.
Thankfully, the evac process went smoothly. I was sweaty and shaking with exhaustion by the time we sent the last women up. I allowed myself a minute of rest, leaning against the cold granite of the cave wall as Michelle and I watched the slow ascent of the rescue baskets containing Edie and Mary, the last two WildFire women.
Once they were at the edge of the cliff, we began our own painstaking ascent. I climbed the rope occasionally, but more often was content to let the others haul me up.
That is, until we reached the halfway mark, wind battering us, fingers frozen with cold.
Suddenly, a woman’s scream rose above the sound of the wind. I looked at Michelle climbing parallel to me, and I’m sure my expression mirrored hers.
What now?
Spurred by a fresh burst of adrenaline, we climbed faster.
By the time we reached the top, my imagination had painted a dozen grim scenarios for what could possibly have happened.
At the lip of the cliff, I scrambled for a hold until I felt strong hands close around my wrists. Jack’s eyes met mine as he pulled me back to solid ground, holding me steady when I stumbled.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Sort of. What happened? We heard a scream.”
I scanned the scene. Becky had already been whisked off for emergency care, but Shonda and the others were still there, wrapped in thermal blankets. A medic attended to Shonda’s arm while Casper sat attentively beside her, happily accepting whatever spare scraps the women sent his way from the food the rescue team provided.
“Sorry,” Edie – historically, the crier in the group – said sheepishly. She was small and pale, and looked considerably younger t
han the other women. She nodded toward Casper. “Where I come from, a dog like that comes for you and you just pray to God he finds somebody bigger to eat before he gets to you. I maybe overreacted.”
“Imagine that,” Shonda said dryly, as she gave Casper a scrap of bologna.
“Hogan already has teams out looking for the others,” Jack told me as we stepped away from the chaos.
“Good,” I said. “I have a bad feeling finding them won’t be quite so easy.”
“Right. Because this was a walk in the park.”
I smiled faintly, then froze as a shiver swept up my spine and the dark, low voice I’d heard earlier filled my head once more.
I’m here for you, baby girl. Just show me that pretty face, and I’ll show you what happens to traitors.
“Jamie?” Jack said.
I shook my head. “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. I’m here. And honestly? Compared to what the women still missing are going through, I think what we just did was definitely the easy part.”
Chapter 8
WildFire Expeditions
February 4, 10:30 p.m.
“MEG? HEY – COME ON, Megan. Wake up. Please.”
Hogan’s hand rested on her cheek, his blue eyes gone dark with concern. God, he had good eyes. And hands: long and lean, surprisingly gentle. He never called her Megan, though – always Hunter. Give me a break, Hunter. She focused on his eyes, his hands, and pushed aside those niggling doubts. Tried to ignore the pounding of her head; the flames of pain that licked at her side.
“You have to get up,” Hogan said to her. “Please, Megan.”
“Yeah, right. You first,” she said – or tried to say. Her lips were so chapped, her mouth so dry, that nothing came out but a groan.
“Damn it, Megan.” His face wavered in front of her. Blurred. God, she was so damned cold.
“Megan!” This time, it wasn’t Hogan’s voice. No doubt about it, this voice belonged to a woman. An angry woman, based on the tone. Hogan vanished, receding into darkness. Megan tried to blink him back, but he stayed gone. Typical man.
She opened her eyes.
“Please, Meg,” Violet whispered. Her eyes were wide, utterly terrified. “You were talking in your sleep. You have to be quiet. He could hear otherwise. We can’t risk him finding us again.”
Megan looked around, painfully awake now. At the movement, a furry head appeared beside her, tongue slopping kisses on her cheek. Recluse. She felt a lightening at the knowledge that at least the dog was okay.
They were inside, in a little hunting shack with an unlit woodstove at the center of the room. Megan lay on a lumpy double bed. Apart from a cupboard of rusty canned goods that the women had already made a dent in, that was the extent of the amenities.
“Sorry. You should have woken me sooner – I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said.
Another face appeared in front of her, this one darker than Violet’s, with big brown eyes and full lips. Ava.
“We thought you were in a coma or something,” she said, in heavily accented English. “Don’t do that again, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
She sat up, reorienting herself to everything that had happened. Someone tried to kill us. Just thinking the words made it hard to breathe. Once she’d realized she was shot, she and Recluse had hunkered down there in the open while the other women ran like hell. Then came a pause in the gunfire. Megan had known she was bleeding, but she had no idea how bad her wound might be; for all she knew, she would die right there. And then Violet had swooped in like some kind of skinny blond superhero, got her on her feet, and dragged her to safety.
“Do you think Heather’s all right?” she asked, thinking of her sister. The last she’d known, Heather had been holed up in the tent. She imagined the shooter coming out of the woods after everyone else had gone. Opening the tent flap. Megan closed her eyes, trying to shut out the rest of that scene.
“We don’t know,” Violet said. “Everybody just ran. She was in the tent when I grabbed you, though, and the shots were still coming at us. I don’t think he was after her.”
“I still want to know what happened to Gabriella,” she said, thinking of the first woman to go missing.
“I lose her,” Ava said, though she’d told the story before. “We are in the woods. She had to use the bathroom, so I give her privacy for that. I am looking for her when I hear the gunshots, and then I couldn’t find her no more. Then Violet finds me, and we get you.”
“They must have started the search by now,” Megan said. “We should send up a distress call.”
“Pretty hard to do without a radio,” Violet reminded her. “Or a transponder. You must have dropped it when we were running away.”
“I didn’t drop it,” Megan said. Again, a conversation they’d had before. She had reached for the transponder just before the shooting started, but it wasn’t there. “I never had it. Someone must have taken it.”
“It seems more likely maybe you just forget,” Ava said, doubt clear in her voice.
“Of course I didn’t forget it. And I didn’t drop it. The shooter must have come into the camp and taken it from me.”
“The dogs wouldn’t have let anybody do that,” Ava pointed out. “They would have barked their heads off. That man came for a visit yesterday, and they try to eat him.”
“They didn’t try to eat Chase,” Violet said. “They were just…surprised.”
“Weren’t we all,” Megan said dryly. The unexpected appearance of Violet’s husband yesterday during the expedition remained a sore spot between them, though she knew it hadn’t been Violet’s idea.
“My point is,” Ava continued, “if they want to eat a good looking guy like that who doesn’t mean anybody no harm, what you think they do if a bad guy starts sneaking around?”
Megan started to argue her point, but Violet interrupted smoothly. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, we don’t have the transponder now. I don’t know how we’re supposed to reach the searchers without something, though. We’re miles from nowhere at this point.”
For much of the day, they’d been running. Whoever was chasing them, he hadn’t simply gone back into the woods after the first shots were fired. He hadn’t shown himself, had never spoken, but nonetheless he’d been herding them as effectively as cattle since one-thirty the previous morning. His goal couldn’t have been clearer, as far as Megan was concerned: get them as far as possible from the track searchers would be following to find them.
“We’ll figure something out,” Megan said. She didn’t know what in hell that something might be, but she knew she had to do something.
Recluse whined beside her, jockeying for a better position to reach Megan. She lay her hand on the dog’s head, drawing strength and some measure of calm from him.
“We have to do something to get someone’s attention,” Violet said.
“How do we do that without the shooter seeing us?” Ava asked.
An excellent question – one Megan had no answer for, at least not yet. She shifted on the bed, swinging her feet to the floor, and winced at a twinge of pain.
“How bad is it?” Violet asked her.
“You’re the one who cleaned it, you tell me.”
“Not as bad as it could be,” Violet returned. “It’s just a graze. As long as it doesn’t get infected, you’ll be fine.”
“Good thing you have those love handles,” Ava said. “It could have been a lot worse.”
“I don’t have love handles,” Megan said irritably.
“You have less now,” Ava noted.
“If Recluse hadn’t pushed you out of the way, who knows where you would have been hit,” Violet said. Megan scratched behind the dog’s ears, and Recluse lay his muzzle on her leg with a sigh.
“Thanks, buddy. Good boy,” she said to the dog.
“If we don’t get word out to someone soon, it won’t matter that he saved you,” Violet said.
“And how do you suggest we do that? Smoke s
ignals?”
“Maybe he’s taken off by now,” Violet said. “He did what he came to do – scare the bejeezus out of us – and now he’s gone back into whatever hole he crawled out of.”
“He is not gone,” Ava said. Her eyes were serious, wide with fear. “He won’t leave. Not until he’s done.”
Violet looked away at Ava’s words, but Megan caught the frown before she did.
“Done with what?” Megan asked. “What are we talking about here?”
“Ava believes her husband may be the shooter,” Violet said.
“What do you mean?” Megan said. “What makes you think it’s him?” Even as she was saying the words, though, she felt a bizarre surge of relief. If it was Ava’s husband, it couldn’t be the man she’d feared might be out there from the moment that first shot was fired.
“I’m so sorry – I never think he’ll find me here,” Ava said soberly. “He was in the Marines, then he works for himself. He hurts people. Kills them – this is what he does for a living. And I take his children from him. I should have known that he would find me.”
“I was the one who encouraged you to come on this trip,” Violet insisted. “There’s no way you would have even dreamed of something like this if I hadn’t pushed you into it.”
“That’s true,” Ava said, deadpan. “I never would come if you didn’t say it would be so good for me. ‘Just think of the dogs, Ava. Imagine all that snow, Ava.’ Now look at us. You are not the best social worker ever.”
Violet laughed. “Well, at least you’re not pulling any punches.”
“We can’t blame each other for this,” Megan said, relieved that the tension seemed diffused for the moment. “If this is really your husband, Ava, the fault lies at his feet. Not ours.”
Despite the brave words, Megan battled through the pain in her side and a growing sense of panic herself. They were trapped. Inevitably, she flashed on her own history with Justin, her ex-husband – the man she’d initially thought could be behind this nightmare. In prison for the past five years, Justin was the reason Megan was so committed to working with abused women now. She pushed the thought away, struggling to retain reason. It didn’t change what she knew to be true, though: