Every time he had to slow down, he glanced behind them, certain they were being followed and feeling eyes on them but not spotting anyone. As the morning and their frantic trek wore on, the sky definitely took on an increasingly ominous feel. Not nearly as severe as a Florida thunderstorm, but the building clouds and dropping temps meant they’d have an even harder time of it if Dewi and the others didn’t come after them soon.
What he didn’t admit aloud to Nami was his biggest concern—that he didn’t know how long it’d take the wolves to find them, or even locate where they went off the road. Once someone realized they were missing, there were a lot of miles to cover between the compound and Spokane. With few guardrails on the main stretch of road between the town and I-90, it’d be difficult for anyone to tell that’s where they went off the road.
The stronger the feeling grew that they were being followed, the faster he wanted to move. Yes, he knew they were being pursued, obviously, by the men from the other car.
But this was…different. If the men had put eyes on them, there would have been shouting, maybe even gunfire.
This felt like they were being observed and watched by someone who didn’t want to reveal themselves.
A couple of times he glanced back quickly enough to catch glimpses of something, a shadow darting for cover, but the form was too short and far too quiet to be a human.
Hopefully it was just an animal, or maybe his frantically terrified imagination.
“Ken,” Nami whispered.
He stopped and turned to see her leaning against a tree and shaking her head. He walked back to her. “What?”
“I need to rest a minute. How long we been going?”
He pulled out his phone. “Almost two hours.”
“Can’t we rest? Please?”
“For just a minute.” He walked past her, the way they’d come, staring at the ground. No, he didn’t spot any obvious tracks. Between the pine needles and leaves and sometimes hardscrabble slope, anyone who wasn’t an expert tracker would have difficulty following them.
He could only hope the men somewhere behind them were not expert trackers. Then again, he wasn’t much of a tracker himself. Maybe they were doing the equivalent of painting the way in neon, for all he knew.
He stared, slowly scanning the landscape, holding his breath and listening.
The wind…birds…insects…
And that was it.
Somewhere below them he occasionally heard what he thought might be a river, but he couldn’t be certain.
Still, he felt a watchful gaze upon them. He’d bet upon it if he could.
Someone—something—was following them.
“Ken,” she whispered. “What is it? Is it them?”
He slowly shook his head. “No, nothing.” No use worrying her any more than she already was. He prayed she didn’t collapse on him. There was no way he’d be able to carry her. It was all he could do to pick Dewi up.
He slowly turned, looking west down the slope but letting his peripheral vision hover to his right, to the north, behind them.
Yep, there it was again, a dark shape that appeared little more than a shadow darting between trees.
Since it wasn’t human-shaped, he was going to go with the comforting assumption that it wasn’t human. It was too short, too silent for that. But…something still gnawed at him.
If it wasn’t human, and it wasn’t an overly large predator, he knew he could defend Nami from it with the tire iron.
Even the ball of fear at the base of his spine wasn’t screaming any louder than it already was, although it recognized their concealed follower as a predator.
Not likely a bear. It probably wouldn’t be that stealthy, for starters, and it would look a lot larger.
Dewi had warned him there was potentially dangerous wildlife out here, apex predators. Bio wolves, bears, mountain lions, coyotes. Even some of the grazers could be dangerous if someone messed with them during the wrong time of year. Moose and elk would charge, as would bison. Although bison and moose weren’t a concern in this terrain, and it definitely wasn’t a bison or a moose he kept spotting behind them.
Logic made him doubt any vegetarian prey species would track them like this.
That spoke to a predator.
For the hell of it, Ken turned his back to Nami and unzipped, watering the base of a tree. Hopefully Dewi and the others would smell it and be able to keep up with them.
He returned to Nami’s side. “Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “We need to get moving again.”
“Why can’t we go downhill now?”
“Because they will. They’ll think we went downhill. That’s why I threw the coffee cup that way.”
“We don’t even know they’re still chasin’ us. They might have given up already.”
“We don’t know that they aren’t. I won’t risk our lives. We keep moving.”
She glanced up at the sky. “It looks like it’s gonna rain.”
“If it does, it does.”
“The temperature’s dropping, too.”
Ken took a deep breath and let it out again before leaning in close. “Nami,” he whispered, trying to channel Dewi’s calm strength as much as he could. “We. Have. To. Move.”
She finally nodded and let him take the lead again. He slowed down a little, trying to pick the easiest path he could through the trees, but it wasn’t easy going even for him. He couldn’t take them directly uphill because it was hard enough for Nami to maintain their current trajectory. As it was, he suspected he’d already taken them farther down the slope than he wanted to.
If he could go downhill and try to spot how far they were from the river, he might be able to see the men, but he didn’t dare leave Nami alone. If he took her with him, getting her up the slope again would be an issue. Better to go slower up here than to descend into the valley and get caught with the cold water on one side and a steep uphill rise on the other.
Ken referred to his iPhone compass. He’d put it in airplane mode for now to conserve the battery. The compass feature still worked despite not having a signal. He tried not to use it too much, afraid of wearing the battery down, but with the sun shrouded by clouds it was growing increasingly difficult to navigate by shadows.
The breeze had picked up some, too.
It was nearing two o’clock. He’d just stopped to pee again and was thinking about trying to find some place they could hunker down and wait when somewhere in the distance behind and downhill from them, to the northwest, they heard the distant crack of a lone gunshot.
Nami jumped, clinging to Ken, her eyes wide with terror.
He tried to comfort her but leaned in, his lips close to her ear. “That was in the distance.”
She nodded, not looking convinced.
He tipped his head in the direction they were still heading. She nodded, not loosening her grip on his arm and keeping up with him as he quickened his pace.
One good thing Ken noticed a few minutes later—it no longer felt like they were being watched.
* * * *
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jose screamed at Aldo as he ran down the slope toward him.
The man pointed with the 9mm in his hand. “Fucking snake!”
“Put that goddamned thing away.” Yes, Aldo had blown the head off the snake, but he’d also likely given away their position.
So much for silent pursuit.
He had the four of them spread out from the river and up the slope, but at the shot Miguel and Tomas had come running down to join them.
“I vote we go back,” Miguel said. “We’re going to get lost. We haven’t seen any sign of them since we left the crash site. For all we know, they might have gone back the other way. I told you we should have tried north. They would head back toward the town to get help.”
Yes, that was something Jose had already considered. The car’s occupants had already left by the time they’d reached the wreck. The discarded coffee cup, too far away to have bee
n ejected from the wreck, indicated they’d gone downhill.
But from that point…he had no clue.
There was something else bothering him, something he didn’t dare voice.
Jose was loyal to Manuel Segura. He would follow the man, follow his orders.
Unfortunately, he didn’t agree with how his boss was going about this. Raul had raped and murdered that girl, something which didn’t set well with Jose, who had a daughter that same age. Manuel had a blind spot to his younger brother’s more heinous shenanigans, and it wasn’t the first time.
Jose couldn’t blame someone for taking blood. He knew he damn sure would.
What he could do was silently blame his boss for letting his rage drag them into a situation they were ill-prepared for. Yet if they returned to the car now, without answers, it might enrage Manuel further.
On the chance it didn’t, Jose and his men might find themselves in the losing end of a battle with armed locals that they likely couldn’t win, no matter what Manuel thought to the contrary. Yes, the Segura cartel was feared—at home.
This wasn’t home.
And Americans were batcrap crazy.
“We need to keep looking,” Jose said. “They can’t be too far ahead of us, and they’re probably injured.” He paused for effect. “Do any of you want to be the ones to admit to Manuel that you called off the search before we were absolutely sure we couldn’t find them? What if this is the only lead we have? You want to tell him we gave up?”
His words were met by sullen, uneasy glares. Tomas, then Aldo, followed by Miguel, slowly shook their heads.
“Good. Then we keep looking.” And you’re welcome, because I might have just saved our lives.
He headed up the slope. “I’ll take the high position. The rest of you spread out and let’s keep going.”
A few minutes later, he thought he spotted something in the woods ahead, but when he raced toward it he got a glimpse of fur before it faded into the shadows.
A fox, maybe. Coyote. Or a wolf.
But not a human. Not the prey they were after, and as long as it didn’t bother them, he’d let it go about its business as long as it let them go about theirs.
It also felt like they were now being watched but he wasn’t about to admit that to the other men. He didn’t need to give them a reason to revolt and overrule him.
* * * *
Ken and Nami stumbled across a small spring trickling from the mountainside around two o’clock. Ken warily stood guard as Nami greedily cupped her hands and drank from it first.
“Take it slow,” Ken warned her. “Don’t make yourself sick.” For over an hour it felt like their shadow hadn’t been spying on them. He hadn’t spotted any sign of it.
Now he sensed…something.
Not the men, because whatever it was had plenty of experience remaining stealthy and silent. Maybe their shadow had returned.
The wind had picked up and the temperature dropped further as the clouds deepened and the sky started turning a steely grey Ken knew didn’t bode well.
Once Nami finished, Ken stepped around her and knelt on the other side of the spring so he could still keep an eye out behind them and down the slope. They were heading more south and east now, the mountainside they were on apparently curving.
He didn’t know if they were still downslope of the road or not, if it’d taken a different route at this point, but he hadn’t heard any vehicles at all. In fact, now all he could hear was the wind and the sound of trees creaking and groaning, the occasional deadfall breaking free in the distance and crashing to the ground.
Spooky, but not dangerous as long as Ken kept a sharp lookout and steered clear of deadfalls and widowmakers that might come down on them.
He thought about trying to go farther uphill when he caught sight of their shadow again.
Dammit.
“Still no service,” Nami said, sounding dejected as she returned her phone to her purse. “I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that there wasn’t cell service.” She sadly laughed. “How sad am I that I haven’t traveled much and I probably drove well over a million miles as a bus driver?”
“You’re not the only one,” Ken said, his gaze focusing on where he’d last seen the shadow. “The not traveling, I mean.” The feeling of being watched had definitely returned with a vengeance, although that tingly ball of nerves at the base of his spine seemed more concerned about where the men were than whatever was following them.
Instincts.
I need to let Dewi and Beck work with me when we get home.
* * * *
Manuel had put Saul in charge of the group going in on foot. As Saul led the way, silently cursing his boss for their ill-prepared cross-country hike through the woods, he tried to tamp down on the bad feeling congealing in his gut.
No, he couldn’t speak it aloud for fear of reprisal from the others, or of any of them telling Manuel later, but he secretly hoped they wouldn’t find anything.
Correction, anyone.
Good with maps, he’d memorized how to get to the large, central building that almost looked like some sort of meeting hall adjacent to several campground areas. There were homes scattered around to the west and north of that, which was where Manuel, Guillermo, and Carlos had headed.
The plan was to meet up in that area. Manuel didn’t want both vehicles there, both as a backup plan, and to try to mislead the residents as to how many of them there were.
But now that Saul checked his phone, he realized he had no signal, even though they’d had one in town.
Dammit.
With Jose and three other men sent after the man and woman from the gas station, their numbers were spread too thin. He didn’t like the odds of seven against an unknown number of locals who were out there.
Technically four, since Manuel and two other men were out there, somewhere, and not with them.
Not to mention they’d heard the eerie howls of wolves several times, some of them sounding fairly close.
This entire operation was flawed from the start, from its hasty inception. They weren’t prepared for any of this. At least while chasing Carlomarles to Colombia, they’d known what they were doing, were prepared for it, had locals on their side.
He was all for going back to Spokane to regroup, or even getting rooms at the hotel in town here and laying low for a couple of days and seeing what happened. Play tourist so they weren’t blatantly obvious. Not to mention getting some damn clothes that didn’t make him feel like he was standing out.
Saul shivered as the breeze stiffened. It felt like a storm coming. Yet another reason to postpone this for another day.
But he’d been given orders. If they didn’t meet up with Manuel where he expected them to be, there’d be hell to pay.
Risking that man’s ire far outweighed his personal reservations.
Ricardo tugged on Saul’s arm to get his attention. The man had his gun drawn and pointed behind them.
Now Saul drew his weapon and they all froze, listening.
After a moment, he couldn’t deny it felt like they were being watched.
Studied.
Saul paired Ricardo with him, and Victor with Roberto. They split up with the other two men dropping back to follow them off to the side. He pulled out his phone and used the compass to verify his course. They should only be about a mile, if that, south of the target they were heading for. They had paralleled the main road for a while before it curved away to the north.
He knew from the maps and satellite photos he’d studied that it meant they were getting close.
Ricardo grabbed his arm again, pointing ahead of them.
Three small wolves stood there, staring at them for a minute before they bolted at a dead run to the north.
Must be young ones.
But wolves weren’t the kind of animal they were hunting.
Saul breathed a sigh of relief. “They must have been what we were feeling,” he said.
Ricardo nodded
but didn’t look completely convinced of that.
Saul softly whistled to get Victor and Roberto’s attention and bring them in again.
But the men didn’t approach.
The woods they were traversing weren’t so dense you couldn’t see a couple of yards around you, and yet there were no sign of the other two men.
Saul whistled again, a little louder this time.
Ricardo held his gun ready but Saul made him point it at the ground. “Don’t shoot them. Don’t shoot anyone yet. We don’t need people hearing that and investigating.”
“Where the fuck are they?”
“I don’t know.” He walked a couple of feet away and tried to listen.
Nothing.
“Victor, Roberto,” he softly called.
Nothing.
“Where did they go?” Ricardo asked.
Saul turned. “If I knew, do you think I’d be looking for them?”
“This isn’t right, man,” Ricardo said. “There is something really fucked up, here, and I’m not afraid to say it.”
“Don’t say it around Manuel,” Saul counseled. “He’ll gut you for cowardice.”
“I didn’t say I was going to tell him. And I didn’t say I’m running. But you have to admit there’s something wrong here.”
“Shh.” Saul headed back toward the last place he’d heard the men, trying to find their tracks, but there was too much ground cover to really see anything.
“Man, how the hell did they just fucking vanish?” Ricardo asked.
“They didn’t,” Saul said. “They ran. Like cowards. Come on.” Saul started leading them back toward the car.
“Where we going?”
“We’re going to find them.”
What Saul didn’t want to tell Ricardo was the real reason for backtracking, because Saul didn’t honestly believe they had run. Maybe they had, but there had to be a damn good reason, and it wasn’t because of the young wolves they’d seen.
He had a strong suspicion they might stumble across the men’s bodies. Just like every goddamned horror movie he’d ever seen, which now ran through his fucking mind.
A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) Page 22