A tripwire had been strung between two slim trees to their right. Natalie whacked at it with her stick, and a rock swung down from above, a deadly pendulum netted with vine. Brad’s face paled as he cast his gaze upward. The stone came whistling, shrilling down, aimed right at the spot where he’d been standing a moment ago.
Its back-and-forth motion took a while to slow.
Brad looked as if Bigfoot had attacked, a mythical beast turning out to be real.
When he set out again, he walked with care, using his stick to check for traps on the ground while snatching nervous glimpses overhead.
Up ahead, Natalie spotted a difference in the forest floor. The dirt there looked darker, although as they approached, she saw that the color was an optical illusion, created by the fact that the earth had actually fallen away altogether. As if some giant claw had reached down and torn open a cleft in the ground, left it ugly and gaping.
Or else a pit had been dug, with a mat of leaves and brush lain over it, designed to crumble the moment somebody stepped.
The footprints Brad had been tracking ended right at the edge.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Tim leaned with his back braced by the wall of the hole he’d fallen into, one leg folded into an odd, unnatural angle, the other splayed out. The wall was studded with stones that had bruised his flesh, his spine, but his back wasn’t broken. He had tested his fingers and toes; they could move, he wasn’t paralyzed.
The real damage had been done to his leg.
The fracture was a compound one, his shin bone protruding through the skin on his calf. Tim could feel air entering a part of his body where it had no business being. Gave new meaning to the saying blood ran cold.
The rim of the hole ran in a lopsided oval several inches above the highest reach of Tim’s hands. Tim had hoisted himself to a standing position already, keeping his weight on his uninjured leg. But that had cost him a fraction of an inch, and the lip of solid ground was tantalizingly close—less than an inch might matter. So he had placed the foot of his broken leg on the ground, then fought to rise on tiptoes, stretching the flesh around the arrowed bone so that a second shard pierced a section of untouched skin, and bellowing sounds he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of making—ox-like, inhuman—before finally falling to the dirt again, completely spent.
He wouldn’t have been able to reach anyway; his fingertips had scraped the shaft just below the place where higher ground beckoned, denying him a chance to heave himself out.
He couldn’t raise anyone on his radio. It might’ve broken in the fall, or there might not be anyone with range. Which range? Tim wasn’t sure of his exact location. If he could get out, he would be able to determine it, at least figure out how to reach—limping along, belly-crawling if necessary—some known site. But that assumed that he would, in fact, find a way out.
At least one other creature hadn’t. Tim’s shin bone glowed ivory in the vaporous sun shooting into the hole, as did the remains of a carcass, coyote-sized, or possibly a lion, pecked free of flesh by birds.
Vultures, leathery, wide-winged creatures of scavenge, had made it down here for a meal. It took a lot to give Tim pause, but as he lifted himself on his arms to look up at the sky, which had never seemed so remote and removed, a shudder took hold of his body, and he swore he heard the sound of flapping.
He sank back down to study the injury that was preventing him from jumping up and getting a hold on the circumference of the hole. His bone wasn’t shattered, but split. One piece had come away, simply sheared off from the section it was supposed to attach to. Tim had enough first aid experience to know there was no physical way to reset this himself. It was going to require surgery, pins and the like.
Time started to swerve in and out.
Tim grew light-headed, deep in the chill of the earth. The pain in his leg had become a constant; he was growing accustomed to the sensation.
Then the hole above him darkened.
Tim blinked woozily up at it. Weather moving in again perhaps.
“Chief!”
Had one of his men fallen down into this well along with him? Tim took a look around the tunneled shaft. What a feat it must’ve been to build a well this deep in the wilderness. Wait, it wasn’t a well. There was another explanation for what had happened to him, only Tim couldn’t remember it at the moment. What other type of hole would be man-sized and of this killing depth? And how would a second member of the Wedeskyull force wind up inside?
“Chief!” called the voice again.
Not one of his men. Tim knew who that was, the searcher who could never manage to call Tim by name. And he also knew that he wasn’t in a well. It was just as the missing wife—Natalie Larson—had tried to tell them when Brad had found her. This land was rigged with traps.
Tim glanced upward, where a second shadow had fallen, feeling a sense of mild curiosity. Then he reached down and probed the jagged sliver of his bone, chalk-rough and gritty beneath his fingers, an agonizing, brutal touch he endured with only one goal in mind: to wrest himself back from the brink of shock.
“Down here!” he shouted. “I’m down here! Here!”
Tim heard a female voice say, “He’s alive.”
Then Brad called down, “Is Steve in there too?”
“Sent him on ahead!” Tim yelled back up. He had to manually yank his voice into producing something resembling a coherent sentence. “To warn the pilot at the lake! Didn’t want him walking into an ambush! And—” What else had Steve been supposed to do? In the aftermath of Tim’s fall, both of them realizing that this land was more perilous than anything either had anticipated, Tim had refused to allow Steve to assist him in any way. Their responsibility was to the civilians. “—see if he can find the husband!”
The blotch made by the two bodies looking down with the sun behind them wavered, then thinned out. There was a patter of footsteps heading off into the woods, moving at a steady clip, not fast.
That had to be the wife.
“Brad!” Tim shouted. “Go after her!”
Search and Rescue personnel were trained to aid and support subjects, not deal with suspects. They protected civilians from nature, often from their own hubris and carelessness. But they knew nothing about madmen who rigged the land with traps.
Silence from the surface.
Brad had done what he’d been told, as was his bent. Now he was headed into an unknown, uncontained scenario, the likes of which might overwhelm trained LEOs. And Tim had given the order. But what choice did he have? The alternative was to allow a civilian to go on her own into the same situation.
Then an arm shot down, one hand reaching for him.
“Go after Mrs. Larson?” Brad called back. “She knows what she’s doing better than any of us! I’m not going anywhere until I get you out, Chief.”
Tim planted both hands against the dirt walls, and raised himself to standing. He rested his weight on his good foot so that he could lift one arm. Brad grasped Tim’s wrist with his hand and pulled him toward the light.
• • •
“Go,” Tim grunted once they were both back on solid ground.
“Chief, your leg…” Brad said. “It’s pretty bad.”
“I know what it is.” Tim was sweating, his face beaded, even though it was cold out here, the temperature promising a resurgence of rain. “Don’t worry about me.”
“But I can splint the—”
Tim stood on one foot, unable to take a step forward. He knew Brad had assessed his compromised state, and he also knew that Brad was charged with applying his skills to stabilize Tim’s condition. But there were more pressing priorities right now. Brad might not have experience in handling the circumstances that lay ahead in those woods, but from the looks of things, Tim and his own men wouldn’t have much acquaintance with anything similar either. Steve, with his milit
ary background, arguably had the most relevant know-how. Either way, time couldn’t be wasted back here.
Tim made his tone commanding. “You know your duty. Go after the wife, and locate her husband.”
Brad gave a nod. Then he dropped his gaze, his head turning back and forth. After a moment, his posture changed, the set of his shoulders squaring.
He’d spotted the first of the wife’s tracks on the ground, and as a hound or a pointer would be, Brad was poised to go. Tim was a decent tracker himself under normal conditions, but the ground looked like one muddy streak to him now.
Brad swiveled, sending Tim a last reluctant look.
Despite pain wavering around him, like the heat shimmer on a highway, Tim managed to signal Brad on.
Brad picked up a long tree branch. Focused, pausing to test each step, he moved off into the woods.
Tim let the pain reach a crescendo before patting around on the ground with his hands, feeling for his own stick, glad to have gotten the reminder. He wasn’t thinking as clearly as he would’ve liked, but Brad would leave good tracks, so Tim figured he wouldn’t need to look for additional holes or other kinds of traps quite so carefully.
First, though, he had to get himself mobile.
He had a loop of rope on his belt, and he cut off several hanks with his knife. A strong, stout branch lay within reach, roughly the right length. Tim lined up the branch with his leg and bound the two together, panting with the pain of shifting his limb, but not pausing to rest. He reached for two more branches, stripping their twigs off, then standing to test his weight on the makeshift pair of crutches.
They held.
Scouring the ground for the first imprint Brad had left, Tim started forward.
The pace he had to maintain was excruciatingly slow, but it enabled Tim to spot the snaking thread of a thorn-studded vine, twisted into a coil on the ground. Cut by Brad, surely, who could’ve simply stepped over the tripwire, but had instead rendered it inert in case Tim managed to make it this far.
“I’m making it,” he muttered. “I’m making it.”
The ground was uneven, humped with piles of dirt and rocks that threatened to trip him even without the added threat of booby traps. Tim swung himself along, relying on the crutches, and then one of the sticks split, just shattered into a bundle of splinters, and Tim went down, his broken leg beneath him.
His howl rocketed up to the sky, a shrieking, shameful sound. He lay on his back, breath coming in hitches, helpless tears coursing down his face. He had rolled some distance when he’d fallen and was now several feet from where Brad would have planted his next step. Tim couldn’t imagine how he’d ever spy another print on the ground.
He heard a voice, shallow, light, female, and thought he might be dreaming. Was that his wife, come to assist him? Or an apparition?
Tim sat up. He began searching the ground for a replacement crutch.
The voice called out again, and this time it was accompanied by the faraway sight of an outline, a vague form glimmering in the sunlight.
Tim crawled forward, agony to be on his hands and knees.
A young girl sat concealed by a pile of brambles like some fairy-tale creature, hidden away. She was hurt or sick, her eyes glazy and unfocused.
“Please,” she whispered, the one word mushy, indistinct, like a record album spun too slow. Her hand grazed Tim’s wrist, light as a breeze. “He went that way.”
On all fours, Tim turned to look toward the last print Brad had left.
“Not that way,” the girl said. “There.” She pointed off in the distance, at a series of tree stumps and what looked like a conical pile of stones. Her arm flopped and fell back to the ground.
Tim frowned at her, trying to determine to what degree she might be confused. The direction she’d indicated wasn’t the way Brad had gone.
The girl nodded, a slow, pained motion. But her voice was insistent, and very, very certain. “Hurry. I think he’s got my aunt.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
Natalie’s first glimpse of Doug in the hut caused her throat to thicken and turn solid. There was a barrier preventing air from passing into her lungs, and she swayed, throwing one arm out to keep from falling. Her hand struck the stick-and-mud wall, and she clutched at a rod in order to remain standing.
Being back here again had the strangest feel. As if the land Kurt inhabited was a magnet, exerting its own pull, impossible to escape.
And also as if in some bizarre way she’d come home.
Natalie ran to Doug’s side, her flying footfalls beating like wings in her ears. Her husband lay on a brightly colored mat, padded despite its thin heft. Additional spoils from some ill-fated hiker. Perhaps it had belonged to Terry.
Natalie felt tears prick her eyes. She crouched down, staring at Doug’s still face, the muscles motionless, his eyes shut without so much as a tremble beneath the lids.
Her husband lay swathed in the same silvery wrap that had been placed on Natalie after she was found. Steve must have been here with his emergency supplies. He was gone now though, the hut abandoned. Doug’s injured foot extended from an opening at the bottom, transformed by gauze into a cocoon of white.
Natalie searched amongst the folds of stiff material for Doug’s throat. His skin felt cool, but not icy. This blanket couldn’t have been on for long; Steve hadn’t had that much of a head start. Doug might simply not have warmed up yet. Natalie felt with two fingers for a pulse, even a weak and thready one, but couldn’t make anything out.
“Doug,” she said aloud, her voice echoing in the stillness of the dying day. “Honey, please.”
Had Steve administered pain meds that knocked Doug out? Natalie placed her head lightly against her husband’s chest, but the crinkly material made it hard to detect any activity.
“You always were frightened of the wrong things,” said a voice.
The words had come from behind her in the tight confines of the hut. Natalie was on her feet without being aware of making a move.
Kurt’s camp was impossible to escape, and so was he.
Her gaze shot to the rough wooden shelf at the same time as Kurt’s did. But Kurt moved a splinter of a second sooner and snatched up the machete.
“Doug is going to be fine,” Kurt said as he rotated the blade. “Relatively speaking anyway. I’m eager to see his reaction when he learns your fate, however.”
Natalie’s thoughts spun. If Kurt was willing to kill her, then it meant she’d become of no interest to him. Why? The question distracted her from the impossibility of preventing Kurt from doing what he’d clearly already decided on. He overpowered her physically even without a lethal weapon in his hand.
“Don’t worry,” Kurt added. “Physical suffering has never been of interest to me. I keep this blade so sharply honed, you’ll hardly even feel it.”
Natalie cast a sharp, desperate look around. Steve had been here—would he come back? Or had that downed policeman sent Brad on to help?
Kurt shook his head, walking toward her with a reproachful expression on his face. “Still waiting for someone to save you, Nat?”
Her nickname sounded poisonous on his tongue. Natalie felt her fists fold.
“Maybe the small-town copper I passed on my way here will arrive just in the nick of time,” Kurt suggested. “Although I don’t know how much he would actually do, even if he wasn’t down in a hole. The police chief is a by-the-book kind of guy, I could see it in every fold of his no-longer-clean uniform. A procedure patsy, trapped by his policies and protocols far more than by anything I dug in the dirt.”
Natalie stared at him.
“I would’ve liked to see you learn one lesson, Natalie,” Kurt said, his tone regretful. “That relying on anybody besides yourself is folly. But I will have to turn my attention to other things. Your husband. Your niece.”
Hearing
this madman mention Mia caused Natalie’s fists to tremble, made her yearn for that machete or any other implement to carve out the knowledge she’d given Kurt about her family. He had even less right to take up residence in her life than he did to try to end it.
Natalie’s throat felt dry, incapable of much sound, but she let out a grunt. “Your reach isn’t that great, Kurt.”
Kurt’s expression perked up at that, reflecting a flicker of renewed interest. “You didn’t come upon her then. Good. I hid her well.”
Natalie’s limbs loosened, overcome by doubt. Did this explain Kurt’s sudden willingness to do away with her—that he’d found a replacement? She wouldn’t give Kurt the satisfaction of further protest or denial. Why in God’s name had Mia come here?
Kurt answered as if Natalie had spoken aloud. “To find you, of course. Beset by the misbegotten belief that she could serve as rescuer.” Kurt paused. “Perhaps she didn’t want to wind up like her aunt, years from now. A do-nothing, waiting around for someone else to call all the shots.”
Despite being prepared for Kurt’s mental grenades, Natalie recoiled at that one.
“I didn’t put two and two together immediately,” Kurt continued. “But the family resemblance is strong, and I recalled you talking about a niece caught in the throes of teenage self-aggrandizement. I took a guess, and watched Mia’s reaction when I said her name.”
Natalie pried her fists open, a gesture of surrender. “I’ll stay,” she said.
Kurt gazed at her.
“With you, in camp,” Natalie went on, stumbling over, choking on the claim. “Just please. Let’s get Mia out of here.” She’d never tried begging Kurt, and had the feeling that doing so would simply provide one more interesting motivation for him to examine. But what other recourse did Natalie have? Kurt was right—she’d never been the master in any situation. While he was the lord of all his.
“You don’t have to worry. Mia will do fine here,” Kurt answered, gazing levelly at Natalie. “At least, I hope she will. Head injuries can be unpredictable, but I tried to be judicious with this one.”
Wicked River Page 37