Harlequin Intrigue June 2015 - Box Set 2 of 2: Navy SEAL Newlywed\The Guardian\Security Breach (28 page)

Chapter Nine

Michael scrabbled for a hold on the crumbling shale that continued to give way beneath his feet and slip from his hands. He dropped the phone and the radio—the radio somersaulting into the air and out of sight, the phone bouncing like a thrown rock as it, too, disappeared into the canyon. He kicked out his feet and found only air, and an image of his body, broken and bleeding, at the bottom of the gully flashed through his mind.

Frantic, he hurled himself toward a ragged piñon that jutted from the canyon wall. His fingers grasped the prickly needles, and he swung his other hand up to grip a branch. The tree bent and creaked, but held.

He hung there for a long moment, struggling to breathe and to slow the pounding of his heart. He found a toehold for one foot in the rock below and supported his weight partially on one leg, with the other resting uncomfortably against the slick, steep canyon wall.

He'd fallen about ten feet, though it had seemed farther. His instinct was to shout for help, but he checked it. All of the men from the camp might not have left in the trucks. He didn't know who was up there, looking for him.

And looking for Abby and the baby. He had to keep quiet for their sake.

Just then, Abby's face appeared above him. She was kneeling at the edge of the drainage into which he'd fallen, looking down at him, her forehead creased in a worried frown. “What happened?” she asked, her voice carrying to him in the clear air, though she didn't shout.

“I must have slipped. Stupid move.” He should have known to be more careful on this unpredictable terrain, but it was too late to berate himself now.

“Can you climb up?”

He considered the almost vertical wall above him, lined with brittle shale and slick mud. Here and there tufts of grasses or wildflowers clung to the side—feeble handholds for a man who weighed one-eighty. “I don't suppose you have a rope,” he said.

“Sorry. I'm fresh out.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” Already his arms were beginning to feel as if they'd pull out of their sockets. He couldn't hang here much longer. “What's happening up there?” he asked.

“Angelique is fussy—I think she's hungry. I've got her here beside me.”

Of course her first concern was for the child. “No sign of the bad guys?”

“No sign of them. What can I do to help?”

“Maybe say a prayer.” He focused on a clump of grass three feet overhead. “What do you know about native grasses?” he asked.

“Um, a lot, actually. What do you want to know?”

“Do they have very deep roots?”

“It depends. Some of them have very deep roots. That helps them find scarce water, and also prevents erosion.”

And maybe they'd save his life. He took a deep breath, stretched up and took hold of the clump of grass. He lost his toehold and scrabbled for a new one, plastered against the side of the canyon, cool mud against his cheek, the scent of wet earth and sage filling his nostrils.

He clawed at the canyon wall and dug in with fingers, knees, toes—anything to keep from falling. Agonizing inch by agonizing inch, he crept toward the top, muscles screaming, mind fighting panic. Whenever he dared look up, he saw Abby's face, pale against the dark juniper and deep blue sky. Her eyes never left him, the tip of her thumb clenched between her teeth.

Having her there helped some. She gave him a goal to reach, a bigger reason to hang on. She and that baby depended on him to get them out of here safely. Giving up wasn't an option.

The climb to the top seemed to take an eternity, though in reality probably only fifteen minutes or so passed. When he dragged himself over the edge at last, he lay facedown on the ground, spent and aching.

Abby rested her hand on his back, a gentle weight grounding him to the earth and to her. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He pushed up onto his elbows. “Do we have any water?”

“No.”

Of course they didn't. They also didn't have a phone or radio or GPS. They had two guns, the energy bar he'd stashed in his jacket, the hard candies he always carried and whatever Abby was carrying in her pockets. They also had a baby, who was going to get hungry sooner rather than later, and no idea where they were.

He sat up and pulled out his bandanna to wipe as much mud as he could from his face and hands. The baby began to whimper and Abby gathered it into her arms and rocked it. He studied her, head bent low over the fussy child, her blond hair falling forward to obscure half her face. She reminded him of a Madonna—a particularly beautiful one.

The memory of the way she'd touched him just now lingered, but he pushed it aside. He had to focus on how they were going to find their way back to headquarters. “Do you know where we are?” he asked.

She jerked her head up. “Don't you?”

He fought the instinct to play the macho man and lie to her, but lies like that only led to trouble. He shook his head. “We arrived in the dark, so I couldn't orient by landmarks. I made the mistake of relying on GPS.” He looked around them, hoping to recognize some familiar rock outcropping or group of trees.

She moved up behind him to look over his shoulder. He became aware of her body pressed to his, her warmth seeping into him. “What do we do now?” Her breath tickled the hair at the back of his neck, sending heat sliding through him.

“I'm open to suggestions.”

Abby cradled the child to her shoulder and rocked her gently. “We've got to get food for the baby,” she said. “And water.”

“The creek has water. I can't say how safe it is to drink, but it's a start.” His own mouth felt as if he'd been chewing sawdust. He couldn't let dehydration cloud his judgment.

“So we'll walk back to the creek and get water,” she said. “Then what?”

“Then I think we'd better sit down to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For the Rangers to find us—or for whoever is in charge of the camp to return.”

“Do you really think they'll come back?”

“They know we're still out here. Without a vehicle, we can't go too far. If they know we have the baby, they'll realize that will slow us down, even if we had a destination in mind. So yeah, I think they'll come back. We're a problem they won't let rest until they take care of it. The trick will be for us to take care of them first.” He reached back and took her hand. “Come on.”

* * *

A
BBY
'
S
FEET
DRAGGED
as she followed Michael back toward the creek and the deserted encampment. She hadn't slept well last night—the vision of the rattlesnake, alive and ready to strike, imprinted on the insides of her eyelids every time she closed them. Up at four this morning, then the tension and adrenaline rush of the events of the day, plus the ground they'd covered on their hikes around the area, had all taken their toll. She was exhausted, and the baby in her arms felt like a twenty-pound bowling ball.

But she could do nothing but keep moving. Going back to wait for the people who wanted them dead seemed foolhardy at best, suicidal even. But the move also made sense. Every survival manual she'd ever read stressed staying in one location if you were lost. Wandering aimlessly complicated the search for you and wasted precious energy. At least by the camp they'd have water, which they all needed, but Angelique, especially, had to have.

Michael looked back over his shoulder. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm hanging in there.”

“And the baby?”

“She seems to like the movement.” She smiled down at the infant, who had fallen asleep. “She must have spent a lot of time moving around with her mother.”

“It looked as if Mariposa was in charge of the cooking today. She probably spent a lot of time on her feet, gathering water, cleaning up and cooking the meals.”

“What did the other people, the ones we saw eating, do?”

“They probably worked tending a crop of marijuana, or making meth, though I didn't see any signs of production around the trailer, and I didn't smell anything off. So probably marijuana.”

“Are they here voluntarily?”

“Probably not. They may have crossed the border looking for work, but once they arrived here, they were prisoners.”

“So they're slaves?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“It...it's like something out of another century. Not something that should happen today in the United States.”

“It happens more than people imagine—probably more than the statistics say, though the Justice Department estimates that more than seventeen thousand people a year are brought into the United States for trafficking purposes. They're forced to work in factories or on farms, and as household help. More than eighty percent of trafficking victims are sex slaves. Many of them are immigrants, though young Americans, runaways and homeless teens get caught up in trafficking, too.”

“That's appalling.”

“It is.” He looked toward the now-deserted camp. “If these people are involved in that kind of thing, I want to stop them.”

“I want to stop them, too,” Abby said. “But we also need to get Angelique to a safe place. She's going to need to eat soon, and she'll need diapers.” So many things they didn't have here in the middle of nowhere. Worry settled like a brick in her stomach. “How long do you think it will be before your team realizes we're missing?”

He glanced up at the sky, the color of purest turquoise. “They'll expect me to check in in a few hours, at the latest.”

And it would probably be hours after that before anyone became really concerned, she thought. After all, their plan had been to spend the day in the backcountry, where it wasn't unusual to be without cell phone and radio signals. She shifted the baby to her other shoulder. They needed to find a place to settle and wait.

They had to cross a hundred yards of open prairie to reach the first cover that led along the edge of the wash to the creek. The wash itself began as a depression in the landscape, then gradually deepened and widened into the side drainage where Michael had fallen. That mini canyon was only about thirty feet deep—compared to the Black Canyon that gave the park its name, which plunged more than two thousand seven hundred feet at its deepest point.

Michael drew his gun. At least he hadn't lost it in the fall. “How do you feel about making a run for it?” he asked. “Just in case someone is out there looking for us?”

“Do you really think they left someone behind to search for us?” she asked.

“I don't know. But we shouldn't take chances.”

She nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“Run as fast as you can to that clump of trees over there.” He indicated a grouping of scrub oak. “I'll cover you. Then you can do the same for me.”

She studied the expanse of ground, with its scant vegetation and rocky surface. “All right.” Then she took off, cradling the infant to her, her feet raising little puffs of dust as she zigzagged her way across the ground. Within seconds, she'd reached the safety of the rocks; no one had fired.

He waited until she removed the Sig Sauer from the holster at her right hip and nodded in his direction. His darted out into the open, running hard, pumping his arms and legs, taking long strides, covering the ground as rapidly as possible. Then he threw himself on the ground beside her, too winded to speak.

“You looked good,” she said. “Did you ever run track?”

He nodded. “In high school.” He wiped his mouth. “A long time ago.”

“I never liked running,” she said. “Those drills were the worst part of basic training for me.”

“I'm still trying to picture a beauty queen in boot camp.”

She made a face. “I didn't tell anyone I was a beauty queen. If anything, I tried to make myself as plain as possible—no makeup, hair scraped back into a ponytail.”

“I'll bet it didn't work,” he said. “No one—no man, for certain—would ever mistake you for homely.” He stood and offered a hand to help her up. “You ready?”

“Ready.” She stood, but didn't let go of his hand right away. When their eyes met, she offered a shy smile before turning away and moving toward the creek.

At the creek bank, Michael knelt to drink. Abby wandered along the bank, searching the ground.

He looked up, the cuffs of his sleeves and the front of his shirt damp from the creek water. “What are you looking for?”

“This.” She held up a nearly new tin can she'd plucked from beneath a tree. She'd spotted the label earlier and it had vaguely registered as just another piece of garbage—a can that had once held corn and been discarded. “We can make a fire and boil water for Angelique,” she explained. “You and I can deal with an upset stomach from anything that might be in that water, but a baby could die from the wrong bacteria.”

“Good idea.” He stood and pointed up the creek bank. “Let's move to that rock outcropping there. We'll be sheltered a little from the sun and wind, and we'll have a good view of anyone approaching the camp from this direction.”

He led the way to a spot beneath a lone piñon that seemed to grow straight out of the surrounding rock. The stunted tree leaned crazily to one side, its branches spread like open arms, casting a pool of shade on the red granite. Michael began gathering pine needles and bark for tinder. “I had fire starters and matches in my pack,” she said.

“See if you can find some broken glass around the camp. Otherwise, I can make a fire drill out of two sticks. It takes forever, but it does work.”

She returned to the creek to wash out the can and fill it with water. She got a drink for herself and studied the plants that grew in or near the water. Ten minutes later, she returned to camp, feeling triumphant.

“What are you grinning about?” Michael asked.