AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Knowing she was pretty well camouflaged didn’t make her feel as secure as she needed to feel; laboriously she crawled to a tree, then pulled herself to a sitting position with the trunk between her and the pinprick of light, and pulled the muddy saddlebags close. At least the flashlight let her know that wasn’t the bear after her. The pistol would do against Krugman; she’d rather have the rifle, but the smaller weapon was sufficient for a man, while it would only annoy a bear, especially one as big as the one that had attacked the camp and eaten Davis.
Memories flashed, much like the lightning, only much more gruesome, and she shuddered. For a while she’d been able to focus on survival and push those images out of her mind, but now they were back, curdling in her stomach, bringing the black edge of fear closer and closer until it threatened to destroy her control.
Taking deep breaths, she pushed it all away again. She could not let panic take over, or she’d never make it through this alive.
Resting her head against the tree trunk, she watched the almost fragile beam of light move closer. She didn’t pull the pistol from her saddlebag, not yet, because there was no point in getting it wet when she might not have to use it, but she put her hand inside the saddlebag and rested her icy palm on the handle grip, so she could have the weapon out in a split second if she needed it.
Now that she’d stopped moving, waves of exhaustion swept over her, leaving her trembling in every limb. Until she’d stopped to shelter behind the tree trunk, Angie hadn’t realized how tired she really was—or maybe she’d realized but hadn’t let herself feel it, because if she’d let it get too close she might never have been able to push through the pain and effort, and she’d have stopped trying. This went beyond merely being tired. This was bone-deep, dragging down every cell in her body. Abruptly she felt as if even breathing might be more than she could ask of herself. The wavering of the flashlight beam might be because she was so exhausted she literally couldn’t even see straight.
And cold. God, she was so cold. Every stitch she had on was soaking wet, and though the weather was mild for November, that didn’t mean summer temperatures, it merely meant there wasn’t a foot of snow on the ground. It was warm enough to storm. But the rain and her wet clothing were stealing warmth from her body, obliterating her ability to generate heat, and now that she wasn’t moving she knew that she was in a life-and-death situation, that she was already suffering from hypothermia and might not be able to manage on her own. She needed shelter more than she needed to keep crawling down the mountainside. She needed warmth, she needed to be dry, and she didn’t see how she was going to accomplish either of those goals … unless she could manage to kill Chad Krugman and get his horse … her horse.
She summoned the strength to peer around the tree trunk. The beam of light was moving closer, coming straight at her, bobbing up and down. She couldn’t tell by the movement if Krugman was walking or on horseback. If he continued on that course, straight at her, she’d know in a few minutes.
Her heartbeat picked up, began to pound, and her stomach twisted with nausea. She’d been around hunting all of her life. She was good with a rifle, acceptable with a pistol. She’d hunted her own food before. But she’d never thought she’d be in a situation where she would have to shoot a person, and yet here she was, her hand gripping a pistol while she waited to see if tonight was the night she crossed a line she’d never before even considered. She’d do whatever she had to in order to survive. If it came down to her or Krugman, if it was kill or be killed, she wouldn’t hesitate.
She had always thought she would have serious doubts about taking a life, but in this situation … no. She had none.
She had the advantage here. She knew Krugman was coming; his flashlight gave him away, while she was all but invisible. Unless a flash of lightning at just the wrong moment gave her away, she could stay hidden here for a very long time while he searched all around her. She was reasonably safe from discovery until at least dawn. The problem was, she didn’t think she could last that long. By dawn, hypothermia would long since have brought her down.
She waited. Her body felt both heavy and empty, weighed down yet floating. She couldn’t take action, she could only react, and hope she had enough strength left for it to matter. After a long stretch of complete darkness, lightning lit the sky. Angie took a quick peek around the tree, toward Krugman, hoping she could tell exactly where he was. He wasn’t a good en
ough rider to hold both the flashlight and the reins in one hand and his pistol in the other, especially if … A memory stirred, of those hellish moments after the bear entered the camp and Krugman had taken the horses and bolted. He hadn’t had time to saddle one of the horses. He’d be bareback. There was no way he could control a horse and hold a flashlight with just one hand, and likewise no way he could hold both a pistol and a flashlight in one hand while holding the reins in the other.
Would he even try to ride, under those conditions? Or was he more likely to be on foot, flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other? She needed to know what was coming.
The flash of lightning was too brief, and she wasn’t able to locate him. Instead of drawing back she stayed in position, eyes straining, until once more she saw the sweep of the flashlight beam. Then she waited, gaze locked on that beam as it came closer and closer. The next flash came several seconds later, exposing a figure on horseback, as starkly revealed as a photo negative. The flash of light was brief, and when it was over she was blinded—and would be until her eyes adjusted to the darkness again—but she’d seen enough. Though the angle and trees disguised the rider, the flashlight was in the hand of someone on horseback, in a saddle … and it wasn’t one of the horses she’d taken to the camp less than twenty-four hours ago.
Someone else was out here in this storm. Good God, why? No one would be searching for her other than Krugman, unless there was a lot going on that she didn’t know about, and someone was looking for Krugman. But doing so in this weather, at night, was so unreasonable she couldn’t think of any scenario that would fit. Either that, or her exhausted brain couldn’t grasp the obvious.
She had to allow for that, that she might possibly be so exhausted she couldn’t think straight, which made her decision more difficult. If the rider somehow found her, and it was someone she didn’t know … could she, should she, shoot? She didn’t know. She needed help, but what if this was a bad guy? She didn’t want to make a wrong decision, so she focused on making herself small, on disappearing into the earth, so whoever it was wouldn’t find her and she wouldn’t be forced to make that choice.
She sat very still, willing the rider to move on past her position. Maybe she faded out of consciousness, her tired body just checking out for a moment, because there was nothing other than blackness inside and out, then suddenly the rider was almost directly in front of her, just down the slope, and a flickering sheet of lightning lit up the landscape again, and all the blood drained out of her head.
She couldn’t see the rider’s face, but she didn’t need to. She knew the way he sat a saddle, and, damn it, she knew that hat. What the hell was Dare Callahan doing out in the storm in the middle of the night?
Angie tried to force her sluggish brain into action. Whatever the reason, he didn’t know about the bear, and he didn’t know about Krugman. With that flashlight in his hand pinpointing his location, he was a sitting duck. Her heart knocked hard against her ribs, and a silent cry formed in her throat.
She didn’t know how she did it. One second she was sitting on the ground against the tree, and the next she was crawling forward, muscles and ankle screaming. She kept trying to pull enough air into her lungs to call to him, tried to force some sound, any sound, past the constriction of her throat, but all that came out was a weak moan that wasn’t even his name.
He was moving past her now. No. No!
Desperately she scraped her hand across the ground, found a rock. She threw it. Rather, she tried to throw it. She didn’t have any strength left. The rock sort of rolled out of her hand and thumped to the ground just a few yards away.
She searched through the mud and darkness, found a stick, and beat it on the ground. The noise was lost in that made by the steady drumming of rain, the increasingly distant rumble of thunder.
She crawled, toward the light, toward Dare. Minutes before she’d had the bleak thought that she might not make it. She wouldn’t give up, she would never just surrender, but the thought had been there, sapping her strength. Now he was here, and she wasn’t alone. He was literally the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, and he was moving away from her.
Desperately she scrabbled for another rock, couldn’t find one.
“Dare.”
The word was a whisper, strangled in her throat.
He reined the horse around, sweeping the flashlight beam across the ground. The horse shifted nervously, not at all happy with its circumstance but obeying the strong hand holding the reins. Horse and rider changed direction.
Angie fought to orient herself, and abruptly realized he was headed straight for her camp. He must have been at his camp; maybe he’d heard the shots and come to see if anything was wrong, and was having difficulty locating her camp in the darkness and hellish weather. No matter what the reason, he was here, he had no idea what might be waiting at the camp.
No. He couldn’t go there.
