Prey (15 page)

The mud beneath her feet shifted, and the world was yanked out from under her. Helpless, she simply fell. She slid and tumbled through the mud, grabbing at anything, everything, and finding only more slippery mud and the occasional rock. She tried to dig in her left heel, tried to jam her fingers into the earth, but she continued to slide and roll. There were rocks, and she tried to grab them, but they were there and gone so fast she couldn’t manage. The edge of one of the rocks sliced her palm; her head slammed dangerously close to another.

And then she stopped, her momentum halted by mud. She lay there, panting, and once again took inventory. No, nothing was broken. She felt battered from head to foot, but everything other than her ankle seemed to be functioning. How far had she fallen? The slope hadn’t been horribly steep, but it was steep enough. Her rifle and saddlebags—which held her flashlight, pistol, and protein bars—were up there.

She had a choice. She could crawl up, or she could crawl down. She could keep going, or she could retrieve her stuff.

Neither option seemed like a good one, but one was definitely worse than the other. She needed the saddlebags, needed her food and the pistol. She needed that rifle. She couldn’t leave her weapons up there.

It had been tough enough moving down the mountain with a damaged ankle; moving up was torturous. Her progress was measured an inch at a time, and every muscle in her body screamed at her to stop. She’d gotten banged up in the fall, and now gravity was working against her instead of with her.

What had taken seconds to do—fall—took an excruciatingly long time to navigate in reverse. She didn’t want to think about how long it took her to climb back up, so she didn’t; she just climbed. Every minute was precious, but she didn’t have any choice. She didn’t just crawl; she dragged herself up, a cursed
inch at a time. She used her left foot to find purchase and
push
. She grabbed rocks with her bloody hands to keep herself from sliding back down. She clawed her way up, her fingers digging deep into the mud. Mud crept beneath her slicker, through her sweatpants, into her boots. Cold rain continued to beat down on her. All Angie thought about was her goal: her rifle, her flashlight, her pistol. Food.

Do it or die.

Do it or die.

She did it.

A bush gave her something to grab on to; she clutched it, pulled herself up, and then she was there, at the small shelf that had fallen out from under her. She wanted to cheer, but she stayed quiet. Even when she’d been falling, she hadn’t screamed. Her survival instincts had kept her quiet—aside from the occasional thud—and they kept her quiet now. She’d celebrate later, when she was off this mountain.

She could reach her gear. She dug her left foot deep into the mud, bracing herself so she wouldn’t slide back down before she had a good grip on the saddlebags and rifle. They were both safe, just a couple of feet way from the divot in the slope. She felt a brief spurt of triumph as she grabbed the rifle and slung it over her shoulder, then the bags.

She might not have made a success of her career as a guide, but she had never been a quitter, and she wasn’t quitting now. It was tempting to sit down and rest, but she didn’t let herself, because she wasn’t a quitter.

Instead, she held on to her gear, positioned herself, and started a controlled slide back down the hill—on her ass, this time, half sitting so she had more control. Yeah, a controlled fall. She held the rifle up, trying to keep it out of the mud as much as possible, though she wasn’t certain how it could get any muddier than it already was.

Then she was at the bottom of the slope, and the only way forward was on her hands and knees again. Angie started crawling.

Do it or die.

Dare heard the thunder well before the rain arrived. It woke him from a sound sleep and he lay in his warm sleeping bag, listening as the storm got closer. What the hell was he doing out here? He couldn’t fish in a thunderstorm. Wasn’t the rain supposed to last a day or two? He might be stuck here in camp for a couple of days, with nothing to do except twiddle his thumbs and curse himself for being an idiot.

He never should’ve listened to Harlan. He should be at home, he should be in his own fucking bed, where the rain would sound soothing instead of threatening. But he wasn’t; he was here, and if he had it to do all over again … damn it, he’d still be here.

He should be asleep. Generally, under the right circumstances, he liked storms. The room was completely dark, except for those moments when flashes of lightning showed at the very edges of the shuttered window, and when the rain began he expected the sound to soothe him right to sleep. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Angie, though. Were the tents in the camp she’d leased sturdy enough to withstand the storm? He imagined they were, because it wasn’t like they didn’t get thunderstorms up this way now and then, and the campsite she’d leased was frequently used, but still … tents and storms weren’t a great combination.

Then a sharp sound echoed through the mountains and Dare bolted upright. That wasn’t lightning, that was a pistol shot. He’d heard small arms fire too often to be mistaken.

A second shot followed the first, then more, and even with the windows shuttered tight and the storm raging around him, he knew those shots had come from the direction of Angie’s camp.
Damn it, what was going on out there? A rifle shot wouldn’t have been so out of the ordinary, but a pistol … in a hunting camp, the only legitimate reason he could think of to use a pistol was if something unexpected happened, and you couldn’t get to your rifle.

What could have happened at Angie’s camp that was unexpected?

Some very ugly possibilities occurred to him.

He didn’t think twice, but turned on a single light, a battery-operated lantern powerful enough to light the entire upper level, and began dragging on his clothes. When he was dressed he grabbed a slicker and his hat, the sat phone and his rifle. He grabbed a heavy-duty flashlight and switched it on before turning off the lantern. No more than two minutes after he’d heard the second pistol shot he was descending the ladder into the horse stalls below.

The horse snickered as Dare saddled up quickly and efficiently, slipped his rifle into the scabbard, and dropped his sat phone into a saddlebag. Before he stored the phone he gave a fleeting thought to calling someone in town, Harlan or the sheriff, but what would he say?
I heard a shot and it seemed to come from Angie’s camp
. Fat lot of good that would do. It would cost him precious time he didn’t have to waste, and no one was coming up here in the dark anyway. No, he was here, and this was on him.

He opened the big double doors and led the horse through them. It danced nervously as he closed and bolted the doors, but calmed a bit when he mounted up. Dare pulled the brim of his hat down low, pointed the flashlight toward a stand of trees and the narrow path there, and headed toward Angie’s camp.

The rain was pouring down in windswept sheets, like solid walls smashing into them. The footing was so treacherous he couldn’t go any faster than a walk. The flashes of lightning let him see, but they also made the young horse nervous. He held his mount steady with knees and reins, calmed him when a bolt struck about half a mile away and the whole earth shuddered. “Easy, guy,”
he crooned, letting the horse know by his tone and touch that everything was okay, there was nothing to be afraid of.

The going was slow, damn slow. The rain knocked visibility down to almost nothing, and he could feel the horse’s agitation growing. Even with the flashlight, the unevenness of the trail was dangerous. He had to let the animal pick its way along at a pace that left him silently swearing, because he was damn certain he could cover the distance faster on foot.

Damn it, he should’ve ridden into Angie’s camp while it was still light, shown himself and glared at her clients a time or two, even though it would’ve pissed her off big time. Maybe if those men had realized she wasn’t as alone as they thought she was, there wouldn’t have been all those pistol shots in the middle of the fucking night.

The silence that had followed the initial shots worried him as much as anything else. Who had been doing the shooting? Angie, or someone else. He didn’t know if she had a pistol, but he damn sure knew she had a rifle. If something had warranted a couple of pistol shots, why hadn’t there been a follow-up of rifle fire? There should have been return fire, and the fact that there hadn’t been bothered him.

If there had been only one shot, he could’ve eased his mind with the idea that maybe the loser Lattimore had told him about had brought a pistol along on the hunt and had somehow mistakenly fired it. But that many shots in a short span of time … that was no mistake, no misfire. He tried to come up with some explanation that didn’t put Angie Powell in a world of hurt, but nothing came to him.

And while he was closer to her here than he’d have been if he were at home, where just a few minutes ago he’d been thinking he should be, he wasn’t nearly as close as he needed to be to help her.

If anything happened to Angie, Harlan was going to kill him.

And if anything happened to Angie … Dare wouldn’t lift a finger to stop the old man.

Chad Krugman’s heart was pounding so hard he thought he’d vomit, and he couldn’t take a deep breath. It was raining in a way he’d never seen it rain before, the drops hitting his face like tiny rocks being blasted at him. He had a flashlight but he couldn’t see where he was going, even with the almost constant lightning, because the rain was so heavy. Finally, to save the batteries, he turned off the flashlight and stuck it inside his coat.

He had his hands full, anyway. Guiding three horses while riding one bareback—he’d chosen to mount the horse he’d ridden to camp, figuring it would be easier than getting used to a new one, but nothing about this was easy—keeping a constant sharp eye out for a goddamn bear and a woman with a rifle was tough, possibly the hardest thing he’d ever done. At least the horses had calmed down, now that they were away from the bear. At first he’d thought it was the storm that had spooked the horses, but since the storm continued but the bear was behind them, he figured it had to be the animal that had stirred them up.

He couldn’t blame the horses. That damn bear had freaked him out, too.

He’d been prepared to kill, to do what had to be done in order to survive—that had never been in question. But he’d never expected to see anything like that monster of a bear tearing into Davis’s body. God, that thing had been
big
. Chad didn’t feel one minute’s regret about killing Mitchell Davis, but to be torn apart that way, to be eaten … that was sickening. And horrifying. He wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, and, yes, Mitchell Davis had been his worst enemy.

Shit, shit,
shit
! Things had gone all wrong. If Angie Powell hadn’t found that body up the trail and insisted on going back to town in the morning to report it, he would’ve had a chance to kill Davis while they were out on the hunt, so his body would be more difficult to find. Angie’s body, too. He’d always planned on killing her, too; there was no way around it. He did feel some regret over that, but not enough to influence his plans. By the time anyone thought to look for them, then mounted a search, and finally found their bodies up on the mountain, he would have been long gone.

His plan was to ride back to that rancher’s place where they’d left the SUV—arriving after dark so he wouldn’t be seen—then he’d turn the horse loose and simply drive away. He might even have left the horse about a mile up in the mountains and walked the rest of the way down. He’d been practicing his riding with this whole plan in mind, since right after he’d gone on that first hunting trip last year. When the rancher got up in the morning all he’d notice was that the SUV was gone, but Angie’s truck and trailer would still be there, so he’d probably assume that one of the hunters had had enough and opted out, but Angie had stayed on with the other client—and the rancher would have no way of knowing which client had left. He probably wouldn’t think another thing about it until Angie failed to show up a week later.

By that time, Chad would have been long gone—first into Canada, and from Canada to Mexico. Once in Mexico, he would simply have disappeared; he had the money to do it, and in certain parts of the world disappearing was a lot easier than it was on the North American continent. He’d collect his passport from the post office box in Butte, along with all of his account numbers and passwords. He wouldn’t have any trouble at all, if he just had that week or so before their bodies were found.

Angie was the perfect guide for this particular trip: Her outfit wasn’t top of the line; he’d noticed that she didn’t have a satellite phone or a personal locator, both of which could be used to summon help fast. He got the idea that money was tight for her, which was great for him.

But all of that had been in the perfect world of his plan, and now his plan was all fucked up, he didn’t know if he’d wounded Angie or not, he was riding through blinding rain leading three horses who didn’t like the situation at all, and he didn’t know where the hell he was. Worse, riding like this at night was a good way to end up with a broken neck; all it would take would be for his horse to stumble and they’d all go down, and he’d be at the bottom of a four-horse pile-up.

Slowly he reined in; when the horses had all come to a nervous stop, with the three horses he was leading milling around and jerking hard on the leads he held in his left hand, he forced himself to take several deep breaths and hold them until his lungs protested, pushing the panic away. The horses knew he was scared and that was making them harder to handle.

Sitting on horseback out in the open, with huge flashes of lightning popping all around, was pretty much stupid, but he had no idea where to go. Taking shelter under some trees would be even more stupid. If the rain would let up, the lightning might reveal a rock overhang or something, but as it was he could barely see ten feet in front of him.