Mickey slowed his horse and dismounted as it stopped. He held the reins in one hand and switched on his handheld spotlight in the other, pointing it at the ground. He swept his beam across the snowy forest floor, studying the area, then knelt and touched the compressed snow in the imprint of several hooves and brushed powder out of another. It made my heart ache for my father, the one I used to know, the one who had taught me that a real scout gets close to the ground and puts his hands on the earth.
Mickey said, “Looks like two horses came this way today.” He pointed ahead of us, but to where I wasn’t sure.
I stared at the ground and saw only a mass of hoofprints, despite my dad’s coaching. I’d have to take Mickey’s word for it. He trained the light on the ground around us in expanding sweeps. He stopped and reswept an area. I clucked to Jarhead. He followed Mickey and his horse, calmly walking instead of bouncing like a pogo stick.
“Four-wheeler.” Mickey turned to me. “Also today.”
The four-wheeler tracks were obvious, even to me. “Is that good or bad?”
“I’m not sure. Could have been one of the hands. Nobody else has any business up here. The tracks run parallel to the horses. We’ll follow the horses and keep an eye on the four-wheeler. I’ve got enough light without the spot, so I’m going to turn it off for now.”
“Okay.”
He switched off his light and spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Found two sets of horse tracks and one set of four-wheeler tracks, all recent. We’re following them.”
Our handsets crackled and I heard Jack’s voice. “We’ve got nothing. Assume you want us to stick to the plan?”
“Roger.”
Laura’s voice cracked. “Please find them, Mickey.”
He whispered something in a language I recognized as Apache from my visits to this area, although I didn’t know a word of it, then stuffed the walkie-talkie back into a holster on his saddle. He mounted, leaning back in his saddle, and ca-cawed long and loud. Jarhead snorted. Even I was startled at how realistic Mickey sounded. Wild. Dangerous.
We waited and I listened with every bone in my body but heard no answering ca-caw.
He motioned ahead. “Let’s ride, but we need to be extra quiet now.”
“Like an Indian scout,” I said, then immediately felt like an idiot for saying it aloud. Sure, I had idolized Sacajawea as a kid whose father taught her his white-man version of the ways of Indian scouts. I still channeled her on occasion. But to say it to Mickey, who really was a Native American? My face flamed in the dark.
He nodded, though. “Like that. But tonight we are hunters.”
Mickey’s horse took off, and I gave Jarhead his cue and he lunged after him.
As we raced silently through the woods, the tracks of horse hooves and a four-wheeler slowly converged until the four-wheeler crushed the hoofprints underneath. A shadow flashed over us, and a screech owl shattered the forest silence with his nerve-wracking cry. My heart slammed into my throat and Mickey pulled his horse up short and whirled to me.
He whispered. “Emily, someone followed them up here, I’m sure of it. Are you armed?”
I shook my head, whispering in return. “Cops have my gun. I shot one today.”
“Shot one what?”
I shook my head. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
Mickey nodded once. “Okay, well, I have a gun, so stay behind me like you’ve been doing.” He shifted like he was going to take off, but instead he said, “Listen, this isn’t exactly scientific evidence, but that screech owl—it’s a very bad omen. The Owl is evil personified in Apache lore, like an ogre or a bogeyman. It steals souls, especially those of children. Seeing an owl or hearing one, its presence in the woods . . . trust me, this seals the deal for me.”
I remembered Mickey telling Greg and Farrah about the Owl. Maybe six months ago I would have dismissed his words as nonsense, but not anymore. I’d seen the powerful magic of the Apaches firsthand. If he told me that the owl meant someone bad had the kids, I believed him.
Mickey ca-cawed again. I held my breath while we waited for a reply, but the only answer was another screech from the owl flying above us.
“The tracks have veered away from the path to the cemetery. I think they’re headed toward the old mine.” Mickey held a finger over his lips, and we moved on.
But his words lingered in my head, chilling me. The mine? I’d never been there. I’d only seen it in a picture and from a distance. It sounded dangerous. Not a place for kids to hang out in the dark, even teenage kids. Especially not if someone was following them. I tried not to panic, but adrenaline surged through me, the scared kind, and all I wanted to do was get to them, wherever they were, as fast as we could.
We followed the tracks another half mile, the only sound besides the wind was the snow-muffled hooves of the horses and their panting breaths. Suddenly, the forest cleared. Mickey reined his horse in, and I did the same. From the cover of the trees, I saw a black square in the side of the rapidly rising hillside in front of us. It was the entrance to the mine. The snow ended outside its mouth, and the tracks led to its edge, horses and four-wheeler both.
Mickey dismounted and walked his horse away from the mine entrance, along the edge of the clearing. “Oh no.” He crouched low. “See this?” He pointed at tracks and gestured back down the hill. “It’s the horses. But they’re different than before.” He looked up at me. “Riderless.”
I slipped off Jarhead and bent down beside him.
Mickey pointed back to the entrance. “The tracks come from there. And there’s more. Something is blocking the entrance.”
I’d never seen the mine before, so I hadn’t known what to expect. But I peered closer now, trying to figure out what he saw in the darkness. Slowly, quietly, we moved a little closer, at an angle. Mickey drew his gun and carried it in his right hand. The object in the center of the entrance took shape.
“It’s the four-wheeler,” I said.
“They’re inside,” Mickey whispered. “Someone is with them, and they’re inside.”
The radios squawked. “The horses are back at the barn, Mickey. The kids aren’t with them.”
Mickey grabbed his radio and keyed his mike. The console light turned red. “It’s okay, Laura, we’ve found them. Jack, Collin—”
A gunshot cracked. Mickey let out an oomph and fell, spinning to the right and down, and purple exploded from his shoulder. His horse bolted, disappearing into the blackness of the woods like a ghost after the horses that had gone before.
Jarhead leapt straight sideways away from the mine entrance before the second shot. The bullet whizzed past us, so close I could hear the zing as the bullet displaced the air against my cheek. I jumped off of Jarhead, holding tight to his reins, and ran with him behind me to a tree. I couldn’t risk him running off, too. I needed him for Mickey, at least, and maybe the kids. I repeated my belt trick from that morning to tie his reins to the slim tree trunk. Then I hit the dirt and bear-crawled uphill back to Mickey, praying I was too low to be seen. I crawled past him to his feet, which positioned my body outside of the mine entrance on the opposite side from where I’d tied Jarhead. The horse snorted and pawed, then whinnied and jerked at the reins. If he pulled with any of his strength at all, he’d snap them and be back at the ranch in minutes. Dear God, please help Jarhead find his zen place without me there to sing him Christmas carols. A huge gust of wind rustled through the treetops. It whined, the trees moaned, a coyote howled. It was like a chorus, and, surprisingly, Jarhead quit pulling. He still snorted and shifted his hooves, but he stayed in place. God had come through.
I had to hope I’d judged the angle right and that the shooter couldn’t get a bead on me anymore. I counted to three for courage, then I stood and rolled Mickey over on his back using torque from his legs. I tried to be gentle, but he groaned. I winced. I hated hurting him. And this would be worse. Grasping hold of one of his ankles in each hand, I dragged him backwards down the slick hill until he wa
s well out of the line of fire. He didn’t make a peep.
“Mickey, can you hear me?” I patted his cheeks. “Can you hear me?” My breaths came in quick, quiet pants.
He rolled his head to the right, toward his injured side. “Yeah, I . . . hear you.” His voice was low, but he could speak, and that was good enough for me.
“Okay, I’m going to take a look at the bullet wound.”
I peeled the edges of his disintegrated clothing away from it. In the moonlit clearing, I could see it was bleeding fast, but not gushing. It was on the right shoulder, so, by definition, that made it less dangerous than if it had been on his left, by his heart. At least I hoped it did. I took off one of my gloves and gathered a handful of snow. I closed my eyes and pushed the snow into the center of the wound, then followed it with the glove.
Mickey grunted.
I grabbed his left hand and put it on the glove, forcing his fingers to grasp it. “Hold this here, tight. You hear me?”
“Yeah, hold it tight. Got it.”
I needed his gun. I felt a little squeamish about hunting for it but I didn’t have time to pussyfoot around, as my dad would say. I patted Mickey’s hips under his jacket. My fingers found the hard metal of the holstered weapon and I pulled it out carefully. It was a full-size Glock 9mm, which was lucky for me. It operated like my baby Glock, only bigger, heavier, and with more bullets.
Mickey lifted his head. “What’re ya doin’?”
“I’m borrowing this, so I can go get the kids.”
His voice grew stronger. “Wait for Jack and Collin.”
I’d forgotten all about the guys. I grabbed my walkie-talkie. I prayed the unit wouldn’t feedback and keyed it to life, hoping the wind would cover the sound of my voice. I covered the console with my hand, too, to hide its light. “Don’t answer me, just come to the mine. We’ve found them and we need help. Mickey’s been shot. Repeat, do not answer. Use caution and be quiet. They know we’re here, but not you. Hurry.” I stared at it, afraid it would squawk to life. I added, “Over and out,” then turned it off quickly, grabbing Mickey’s and switching it off, too.
I checked the glove on his shoulder. He was doing a good job with the pressure. He would be fine. He had to be fine.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t sit here with those kids possibly in there with a person who shot you. I have to do something.”
He shook his head. “You heard the Owl. He’s an omen of death. Don’t do something stupid and make it yours.”
I checked that I had my spotlight and stuck the gun in the front of my jeans. “That’s exactly why I can’t wait. If somebody is going to die, I can’t let it be one of those kids. And I know you said the owl is an omen, but you also said the coyote can outsmart him, and did you hear what I heard a minute ago, after you were shot?”
Mickey grimaced. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“So you heard the coyote, too. And it means every bit as much as hearing an owl. So make some covering noise out here, Mickey, so they can’t hear me.”
Mickey sucked in a breath then shook his head as he released it. “Gotcha covered, Standing Hair.”
I checked his pressure hand on the glove one more time, then crouched down, belly to the ground again. I took the gun from my waistband and held it in my right hand. I began an awkward bear-crawl back up the slope toward the entrance.
Behind me, Mickey screamed like a screech owl. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck as he serenaded the entire forest with his cry. I entered the dark hole in the hill, moving cautiously around the four-wheeler. The stillness was immediate. So was the change in temperature. It was warmer. A stale smell wafted toward me, the opposite of the clean, crisp air of the forest. I went slowly at first, careful not to make a sound, but then I grew in confidence as I mastered the slinking motion. I was ten feet in when I heard approaching hoofbeats. They were louder in here. Good. Backup. I kept going, moving like a salamander through the dark. One of the horses whinnied outside. I crawled faster, their noises and Mickey’s continued cries providing the cover I’d hoped for. Fifteen feet. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty.
A male voice spoke, close by, maybe another twenty feet away, but facing away from me. He sounded like he was muttering to himself. “Little bastards. I’m going to go kill your fucking friends first, and then I’m going to come back and kill you, too. Hiding from me won’t do you a damn bit of good.”
Even at its low volume, the voice echoed off the sides of the tunnel: good, ood, ood, ood, ood. I wanted to shoot at the voice, fire all fifteen shots in the magazine until I heard the man scream in pain, but I couldn’t. Not with the kids in there somewhere. Did I recognize him? Was it someone I knew? The tunnel warped the sounds, and I just couldn’t tell. At least the kids had gotten away from him. Maybe they’d found a safe hiding place. I hated the thought of them running blind in the darkness, stumbling upon some old mine shaft, and I forced my mind away from it. Action. I needed to act, not let worry cripple me. But first, I had to get a fix on this guy.
My eyes had adjusted some to the darkness, enough that I could see roughly to the end of my nose, where before I had seen only pitch black. I wasn’t going to be able to do this by sight. Outside the mine, I heard the mournful howl of the coyote again, and it galvanized me. I could outsmart this guy. It was my only chance.
He had said he was coming this way, and I was running out of time. I reached toward the sides of the tunnel in both directions, but neither hand connected. I had to believe he couldn’t see much better in here than I could, so if he was walking out holding a gun, he’d probably be touching the wall with the non-gun hand. Odds were he was right-handed, so that would be his most likely gun hand. He’d be on the left, using his left hand on the wall. So I needed to be to his right, which was my left since I was facing inward.
I rolled to the left, three full revolutions until I hit the side of the tunnel. Footsteps moved toward me, and I realized that as soon as he passed me, he’d be slightly silhouetted by the light from the tunnel entrance. I’d have a shot. Heck, even if he ran into me, I’d have a shot, away from the kids. But if I missed, I could hit Collin. Or Jack. The thought of hurting Jack, of accidentally killing Jack, made my stomach lurch. But if I didn’t take the shot, this man was headed out there to shoot them. To kill them. I had to stop him.
I faced my prone body on my side toward the center of the tunnel, the gun in my hands. I held my breath as the footsteps came closer and closer.
A man’s foot stepped on my left foot and a huge body toppled forward and on top of me, his feet at my feet, my face under his chest.
“Goddammit,” the man’s voice growled.
I heard a clatter on the rocky floor of the tunnel, a sound I hoped was his gun. If so, he would gather himself and go after it before I could draw another breath. I closed my eyes against who knows what in the utter darkness, twisted the Glock hard to get the mouth of the barrel aligned toward the body before it moved away from me, and fired up at an angle into it.
“Ugh, pfft . . .” the man said, and his body jerked. Then nothing. He lay completely still on top of me. A warm wetness oozed onto my hands.
“Jack?” I called. I raised my voice to nearly a shriek. “Jack?”
“Emily!” Jack’s voice shouted into the mine’s opening.
“Emily!” Greg and Farrah screamed my name almost simultaneously from the other direction.
“All clear,” I shouted, or tried to under dead weight that felt as heavy as a pony. “I got him.”
A light shone from the entrance and footsteps pounded like buffalo toward me from all directions. My head was turned to the side and I saw four feet in boots, and then the body rolled off of me.
Collin aimed the light down on me. “Are you hit?”
Jack fell to his knees at my side. He grabbed my hand in his and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. Lighter footsteps pounded toward us from the interior.
“I’m fine. It’s his blood, not mine.”
&nbs
p; Greg and Farrah careened up to us and both of them threw themselves on top of me, pulling my hand away from Jack.
“I’m so sorry,” Farrah sobbed.
I put both arms around her and squeezed. Someone grabbed one of my hands. “I’m just glad you guys are all right.”
Greg stood, and by the pull on my arm, I knew it was him that held my hand. He let it go. “I knew he’d come for us.”
Collin had crouched by the unmoving figure. I watched him, in a sort of daze as I continued to hug Farrah.
“He’s got a pulse,” Collin said.
Collin rolled the man to the side, pulling his hands behind his back, and cuffed him. Then he took off his own jacket and shirt and ripped the shirt into strips. He started tying them around the man’s abdomen.
I released Farrah and stood. Jack had, meanwhile, pulled out the guy’s wallet and pawed through it. He shone a light on its contents. Farrah rose and nestled into Greg’s shoulder, clinging to him. Greg rubbed her back in circular motions.
Jack clutched my left hand. “Take a look at this.”
He pointed the illuminated wallet at me. A man’s Texas driver’s license. It was hard to see in the low light, but I read the name.
“Samson.” I said it as a statement of fact. He’d tried to pretend he was the good cop, but I was beginning to wonder if there even were any besides Collin.
Earth to Emily Page 27