Bob grinned when Shauna gave Eric a hard look. “I’d say you’re all stubborn if anybody asked, and that’s a good thing these days! You’d have to be to make a trip like you did, all the way from the bottom of Florida.”
Eric couldn’t argue with that. He’d reflected on his journey as they fell into single file and turned back south on the Continental Divide Trail. The path was too narrow in most places to ride two abreast on the horses, so Eric brought up the rear behind Shauna, while Bob Barham led the way with his single packhorse in tow. As he rode, adjusting to the unfamiliar feel of the saddle, Eric reflected on the setbacks and obstacles that had come between him and his ever-elusive objective of finding his daughter and getting her to safety. Scanning the snowy peaks that filled the horizon to either side of the trail, Eric knew he had indeed come a long way from ‘the bottom of Florida.’ He thought back to that dark, rainy morning when he’d made landfall at Jupiter Inlet, hopeful that he would quickly reach his objective just a few miles away. If Megan and Shauna had still been at home, he would have too. He had planned his insertion the way he usually did when working such a mission, landing reasonably close to the target, but far enough away to give him several options if needed. He’d come prepared for anything he might run into in a hostile environment, and that had certainly felt strange, considering that it was his home country and state into which he was slipping ashore in a kayak full of weapons and ammo. It had been immediately obvious though, even in the dark, that everything on that familiar coast had changed since he’d last seen it. The reality he found at home far exceeded the rumors he’d heard while still abroad, and he was to soon find out that the dangers here in America would put to the test all of his skills and experience. And the more he’d seen since that first night, the more Eric wondered if life in his home country would ever be the same.
He’d succeeded in finding Shauna and getting her and his dad out of Florida, and now Bart was in a place of relative safety with his brother, Keith. Now he’d found Shauna again after being separated from her and Jonathan because of a delay in the mission he’d agreed to do for Lieutenant Holton back east. Eric still had a lot he wanted to talk to Shauna about, filling in and getting details about their separate journeys, but there hadn’t been time for that yet. They had ridden in silence for the most part while on the narrow trail, and more so as they neared the ranch on the gravel road. But now they’d been interrupted by the discovery of the two horses. The only question was who were their riders, and where were they now?
“Why don’t you take that one and my horse too and go check on Bob and the injured one,” Eric said, as he swung down out of the saddle. “I’m going to make a sweep around the back side of this pine grove and see if I see anything. If I don’t make contact, I’ll circle back to where you are and let you know. Then I’ll slip down to the barn and make sure Vicky’s okay,” he said, as he checked his M4 and handed her the reins to the mare he’d been riding.
“I could go…” Shauna’s sentence was cut short by the sudden blast of a gunshot in Bob’s direction. Bob was only about 200 yards away, but completely out of sight in the woods.
“That was a shotgun!” Eric whispered, “It wasn’t Bob! Let’s tie off the horses so they won’t follow and go! Stick close behind me and move as quietly as you can!” They did, and Eric started in the direction of the sound, expecting that he might hear more shots or return fire from Bob’s rifle or pistol, but the woods fell silent. It wasn’t until he had closed the gap, stalking carefully and using all available cover to keep out of sight, that he heard something else—voices!
They were male voices, two at least, and neither sounded like Bob Barham. They seemed quite agitated from their tones, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying until he moved closer and heard one of them saying he didn’t mean to do it, but he’d been scared. Eric knew then it was Bob Barham that had been shot, even before he crept close enough to get his rifle sights on the two young men who were bent over him, where he lay curled up on the ground, unmoving. Eric’s finger was on the trigger of his M4 and he could have easily taken both of the men down before they knew he was there, but he could see that they’d put down their weapons and were frantically trying to do something for Bob as they talked about how to stop the bleeding. Eric glanced back at Shauna before moving in, trusting she would cover him if he needed her.
When he broke out of the concealment of the bushes, he saw at a glance the amount of blood surrounding the fallen man and on the hands of the two young strangers who were trying to stop it. They were completely caught off guard by his sudden appearance and Eric took advantage of that fact by planting a front kick in the chest of the nearest one that launched him into his companion and put them both on the ground. When he saw that Shauna was at his side with her rifle to keep them there, he grabbed the shotgun he saw and tossed it into the bushes. Then Eric dropped to a knee at Bob’s side to check his status. It only took a moment to see that he didn’t have a chance. The old man had taken a load of buckshot square in the midsection. His eyes were already fixed with an empty stare as Eric checked for a pulse. Bob Barham didn’t make it.
When Eric turned back to Shauna to tell her, she was standing over the two strangers, covering them while the one he’d kicked began pleading for his life, saying that it was an accident, and that he didn’t mean to kill anyone. Eric would have shot them both on the spot if either made the slightest move to reach for a weapon or run, but he wanted to know who they were first, and why they were here, on ranch land belonging to Vicky’s grandparents. Seeing that there were two of them, it was reasonable to conclude they were the missing riders he’d wondered about when they found the two horses.
“I thought he was going to shoot me! Honest, I swear! He had a rifle when he turned around! I didn’t think I had a choice!” The terrified young man explained.
“Who are you? And what are you doing here? Is that your horse?” Eric nodded at the horse Bob had been attending.
“Yes! I… I mean, no… not really! Actually, it belonged to Vicky’s grandpa, but he let us use some of his horses. We were here because we were just bringing them back!”
“Vicky’s grandpa? You know Vicky? How do you know her, and who are you?”
“Yes, we know her. We’re her friends! I’m Jeremy, and this is my buddy, Brett.”
Eric glared at both of them. He knew they were names Vicky had mentioned. Jeremy was the only one talking, so Eric focused on him. The other kid, Brett, seemed too shaken to utter a word.
“Vicky told me the horses were stolen. She told me some of the friends she brought here took them, and she mentioned both of you by name! She said you all left to try and catch up to Megan Branson.” Eric grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him to his feet, pulling his face up close to his as he stared into his eyes with an intensity that made it clear he’d kill. “Do you know where Megan is?” He gave him a hard shake. “HAVE YOU SEEN HER?”
“NO! I haven’t seen her since she left! Gareth wanted to find her and talk to her, because she was his girlfriend, and he wanted her to come back. But we never found her! We tried but we couldn’t catch up to them. And then we ran into trouble and lost all our supplies. We came back here because we had no place else to go!”
“Gareth!” Eric said in disgust, pushing Jeremy back with enough force that he landed hard on his backside again next to Brett, who was now staring at him intently, as if he’d finally figured something out.
“You’re Megan’s dad, aren’t you?” He asked. “Vicky wasn’t lying!”
Eric’s gaze turned to Brett, who began backing up on the ground and looking like he wished he’d never opened his mouth. It did him little good though, because Eric leapt on top of him, slamming him flat and bending low over his face so that his every word would be understood. “When did you talk to Vicky, boy? And where is she now?” Brett’s eyes were wide, and he was shaking so uncontrollably that he could barely speak. Eric filled in the blanks for him. “I am Megan�
��s dad, that’s right! And when I left here this morning, her friend, Vicky was in the barn down there next to what’s left of the house. I’m back here to get her, and you’d better tell me that she’s still there waiting for me and that she’s all right!”
“She took the horses!” Jeremy said. “We didn’t know she was here when we came back. I went hunting with Gareth and while we were gone, Vicky came sneaking up and pulled a gun on Brett. She made him give her his rifle and then she rode off on Gareth’s horse, leading the other two. That’s one of them right there!” Jeremy pointed at the wounded horse next to Bob’s body.
“So where is she now?” Eric let go of Brett and stood up, looking at both of them. “Why were those two horses running loose and how did that one get a bullet wound?”
“I don’t know!” Brett said. “They were fine when she rode off with them. I guess they got away from her. I saw them out on the road and was trying to catch them when Jeremy came back here to get me. He said he and Gareth had seen somebody out there where they were hunting, riding Gareth’s horse.”
“It’s true!” Jeremy said. “I didn’t see them, but Gareth did. He didn’t know for sure if it was Vicky though. He just knew somebody was on his horse and that it looked like a girl. He went after her on foot and he sent me back here to get Brett and the other two horses, and that’s when I found out that it really was Vicky, and that she’d taken all three of the horses, but the other two were up here somewhere. We were just trying to round them up when we came upon your friend. He was bent down over that one that’s on the ground, and when he heard me coming, he stood up with the gun and I thought he was gonna kill me. I figured it was him that shot that horse. It had to be, because there’s nobody else around here.”
“I can assure you that Bob Barham didn’t shoot a horse!” Shauna screamed. “That man loved horses more than anyone I’ve ever met!”
“He didn’t shoot the horse,” Eric said. “It was already wounded when we first spotted it. We just came down from the pass, on the trail that begins where this road ends. Bob wanted to see if he could help it while she and I went to catch the other one.”
“I’m so sorry about what happened,” Jeremy said, a genuine look of remorse on his face. “I’ve never shot anybody in my life, but we’ve already had people trying to kill us since we came out here to the mountains. I was scared to death when I saw him with that gun.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” Eric said. “What I want you to do right now is show me the place where you saw that rider on the other horse. I think you know now it was Vicky. You’d better hope she’s okay and that your friend Gareth doesn’t try to hurt her!”
“Gareth won’t do anything to her,” Brett said. “He just wants the horse. We’d be stuck out here without horses, now that we know Vicky’s grandparents are dead and everything that was here has been either burned up or stolen. Besides, nobody’s gonna mess with Vicky as long as she’s got that pistol. I thought she was about to shoot me with it. I really did!”
“That’s why I gave it to her,” Eric said, “to shoot anybody that needed shooting until I got back here to do it myself!” Eric gave Brett a hard look that let him know he still hadn’t ruled the two of them out of that category.
Six
VICKY FELT HER HEART pounding as she bent low over Tucker’s neck, dodging low-hanging spruce branches as she guided him up the steep slope on the west side of the drainage. She now knew for sure she was dealing with a group of desperate and deranged young men, if she didn’t know it before. Brett hadn’t hesitated to open fire on her to try and stop her from escaping with the horses, and after his third shot, long after the deer he’d been shooting at had vanished, she knew Gareth was quite willing to kill her too. Vicky began to second-guess her actions now: Maybe she’d made a terrible mistake, taking those horses… Maybe she should have just found a place to survive the night and waited for Eric Branson to show up…. She’d known when she did it that it was a bold move, but in her mind, she was doing it for her late grandpa. The horses belonged to him and those three users who’d betrayed him didn’t deserve to get away with them. They didn’t care one bit about the animals anyway; that was obvious by the way both Brett and Gareth had fired indiscriminately in their direction. Vicky wondered how bad the other gelding Brett had hit was hurt. He’d been able to run off, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a serious wound.
With the horses gone, her three pursuers were desperate now, and Vicky knew that meant they’d do anything. From the looks of them when she saw them riding in, they were quite desperate before too. They didn’t come back here because they actually intended to return the horses to her grandpa, as Brett had said, but because they were hungry, and out of other options. Whatever or whoever they’d encountered out there in the mountains had convinced them to give up their pursuit of Megan and anything else they had in mind when they left here the first time. They’d come back without Colleen, and Vicky could only wonder what fate had befallen her because those three had failed to protect her. Whatever had happened though, they had managed to save themselves. She knew there was a lot Brett wasn’t telling her, and that she’d probably never know the truth. Whether they were responsible for Colleen’s disappearance or not, Vicky was under no delusion that they would do anything less than kill her if they could catch her now. Not only had they returned to find nothing here to sustain them, but she’d deprived them of their only means of transportation as well. She was fighting hard to overcome the fear that gripped her as she realized how serious her situation really was.
The weight of her grandpa’s old varmint rifle across her back was comforting, but Vicky wished she had something better than a .22 Magnum. She didn’t know a whole lot about firearms, but she knew enough to know that she was outmatched with just a low-capacity bolt-action in such a small caliber. Eric’s Glock that was tucked in the back of her waistband again was far more suitable for defense against humans, but Vicky knew that like all handguns, it was designed for close range encounters. Neither it nor the Remington was a match for the high-powered deer rifle Gareth was shooting, especially since it was likely that it was her grandpa’s favorite .308 that had an excellent scope mounted on it. That one was among the several they had stolen, and she’d watched both Gareth and Jeremy leaving the barn earlier with long guns in their hands. Regardless of what they were carrying, she knew she was both outgunned and outnumbered, even if Brett didn’t manage to join them in their search.
Vicky couldn’t afford to give them an opportunity to use those longer-range weapons against her, and the only way to avoid that was to stay out of sight. For now, the terrain and the heavy forest cover was working in her favor but taking advantage of that meant staying on the timbered slopes. Farther up the canyon, where it became steeper and rockier, she knew the trees thinned out. Even worse, the head of the drainage was effectively a box canyon, far too steep for riding. She knew the topography there well, as she’d been there many times with her grandpa, who took her to see the series of small waterfalls on the upper reaches of the creek. Vicky had loved the place at first sight as a little girl; especially the huge boulders that seemed to have been piled up around the creek by a giant. She’d loved exploring the grottos and caverns the spaces between them created, and it was among those boulders that she’d hoped to find shelter for the night when she first took off with the horses. That was out of the question now though, of course. Gareth knew she was here, and she was pretty sure he’d explored this canyon before too and would know that he had her in a trap.
She wouldn’t have entered it at all if she’d thought Gareth and Jeremy might roam so far from the barn that afternoon. But it was too late now. She couldn’t simply turn around and ride out, because from the vantage point from which he’d fired his rifle, Gareth could see the entirety of the lower end of the drainage, especially in the open area through which she would have to pass in order to exit. And for all she knew he might leave Jeremy there to watch that exit w
hile he followed after her. She had no choice but to keep going up, even though she knew it led to a dead end, at least for Tucker. And while she was still mounted for now, riding gave her little advantage here, as speed was out of the question, the horse unable to safely walk any faster than a person could. In order to escape the canyon, Vicky would have to leave him behind. The only way out was to literally climb out with her hands and feet, pulling herself up a series of steep rock faces to reach the canyon rim.
The only way it wouldn’t come to that was if she could stay ahead of her pursuers until dark. She was already in the deep shadows of the canyon walls and in another hour and a half, she knew it would be fully dark there. If she could stay hidden until then, Gareth and Jeremy might decide to hold off until daylight returned. They would be facing the same cold in the coming night as she, and she knew from watching them leave earlier that they had nothing but their guns and the clothing they were wearing. All their other gear was in the saddlebags they’d stowed in the barn when they decided to stay. But knowing Gareth’s determination and recklessness, Vicky wasn’t betting on him giving up just to avoid discomfort. He was the obsessive type once he set his mind to something, and right now, she was afraid she was the target of that obsession, the one thing in the world he was zeroed in on. Thinking of that chilled her as surely as the dropping temperature.
The slope continued to steepen, and Vicky decided to dismount and lead Tucker from that point forward. It was much safer that way anyway, both for her and the horse, as it would be far too easy for him to slip and break a leg among the rocks. She gave him a gentle pat and whispered to him that he was in good hands now and that they would get out of here, but she wondered if she could keep that promise. If it came down to having to leave him and climb out in order to escape, Vicky told herself she would do so and find a place to hide out and wait for Eric. He would help her get all three of the horses back, and then he would rid her grandpa’s property of Gareth, Jeremy and Brett, one way or the other.
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