Hunter's Quest

Chapter 3

Chapter

Two

He offered no further explanation. Without

waiting for her response, he crawled swiftly to a thicket of

rhododendron bushes ten feet away and disappeared into its depths.

Since he stayed low, her car would hide his movement from the

person approaching. She winced when she thought about how many more

scratches he’d collect in his passage through the shrubbery.

Footsteps tromped toward her. Kristie walked

to the brink of the hill, staring down into the ravine. A steep

path led down into it not far to her left, but directly ahead the

land dove sharply. Low, scrubby shrubs lining the incline wouldn’t

do much to break a fall there. “Good Lord,” she muttered. She

didn’t have to work hard to bring tears. Reaction setting in made

her feel shaky and brittle. She remembered how close she’d come to

hitting him and saw what would have happened had the tree not

stopped his slide. That didn’t mean she should lie to help him

escape, though. He might be a criminal, running away from the law.

By the time she heard voices hailing her from behind, her cheeks

were damp and she could barely see through the haze of tears.

“Thank heaven, someone’s here,” she shouted,

in what she hoped sounded like near-hysterical desperation. “He ran

out in front of my car.” She turned to face the two men

approaching, blinking tears out of her eyes so she could make them

out.

“What happened?” the thinner of the two men

asked. “You hit someone? With the car?” The questions sounded more

eager and curious than concerned.

“I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t speeding, but

coming around that curve... I couldn’t stop.”

“Where is he now?”

She nodded toward the edge of the ravine.

“Oh, Lord, I killed him.” Kristie put her hands over her face. She

had to get hold of herself. Reaction mixed with feigned distress

brought her close to an all-too-genuine hysteria. Why was she even

doing this? The man was a total stranger. She might be an accessory

now if he was a criminal.

She didn’t think so, though. The two men she

faced didn’t remind her of law enforcement types. The thinner one

had long blond hair pulled back into a tail at the nape of his

neck. A scraggly mustache drooped over his narrow-lipped mouth but

failed to conceal an infuriating grin. Blue eyes didn’t try to

disguise his satisfaction at this turn of events. He wouldn’t mourn

if the other man really did lie dead at the bottom of the ravine.

The rifle the blond man held in his right hand reminded her of the

shots she’d heard earlier and led her to wonder about a connection

with the blood on the stranger’s arm.

His heavier companion, fortyish and balding,

stepped forward to pat her shoulder. “There now,” he said, “I’m

sure whatever happened wasn’t your fault. An unfortunate accident.

Want to tell me about it?”

Something sounded off in his words. Kristie

took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. “I was driving

down the hill, and as I rounded the curve—right there—this man ran

out of the trees, right in front of my car. I braked and tried to

swerve, really I did, but I couldn’t... Anyway, I saw him rolling

away. He got to right about here and then he... disappeared. I

stopped and came back to see what had happened. I didn’t realize

there was a drop-off. I can’t see him now, but he must have gone

over.”

The heavyset man stepped forward and stopped

at the brink of the down-slope, leaning out to scan the shrubbery

below. Sweat plastered the back of his green sport shirt to his

back. “Can’t see a thing. Too many bushes. Reckon we better go down

and check it out.”

“Don’t you have a phone?” Kristie asked.

The heavyset man shook his head. “Can’t get

no signal up here. You have one?”

“No service. Do you have a car?” Kristie

asked. “Is it nearby?” The sob she managed sounded pretty

convincing even to herself.

“A couple miles up the road.” The blond man

was probably close to Kristie’s own age of twenty-six. “I’ll go get

it,” he offered.

“I think we’d better see if we can find our

friend down there,” the older man said. “He might be seriously hurt

and needing attention.”

The blond walked to the edge and looked down.

“Could be hours.”

“We need the police and an ambulance,”

Kristie said. “He might be… He might not be too badly hurt.” She

tried to put some bright hopefulness into the words.

The two men exchanged a glance, and then the

older man nodded. “Good idea. Why don’t you go on? Town’s six miles

up the road, you can get help there. In the meantime we’ll see what

we can do for our friend.”

“You know him?” she asked.

“Yeah, we know him.” The blond man’s dry

words reinforced her suspicion he wasn’t grieving.

The heavier man threw a dark glance at his

companion before adding, “The three of us came out earlier. Someone

reported a mountain lion killing stock, so we were looking for it.

He thought he heard something and went running off to check. I

warned him to be careful.”

“I didn’t mean to hit him. I really didn’t.”

She struggled to make her lie sound more convincing than his.

“It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t help it.”

His tone was patronizing rather than soothing. “You go on now and

get to the sheriff. We’ll look for him.”

Kristie wandered over to the car. She

pretended to have trouble starting the engine, hoping they’d begin

their search before she got it cranked up. But though the blond man

swung himself over the edge, the heavy man waited, watching her

until she put the car in gear and drove off. In the mirror she saw

him move to the edge, then she rounded a bend and lost sight of

him.

A sudden, stabbing ache in her head made her

suck in a sharp breath. Not now, she thought. Please, not

now. Kristie drove another half mile, pulled to the side of the

road, and waited, hoping the pain would subside quickly. Instead

the pounding in her head increased to jackhammers-on-pavement

level. She fumbled in her purse for ibuprofen and downed the

tablets with a swig of very warm water from a bottle.

She dug out her cell phone, but there were

still no bars showing. Coverage had been spotty for the last few

days, depending on where she was in the mountains.

How long would it take the men to get to the

bottom of the ravine? Would the heavy man even go down, or would he

leave the work to the other? And what if they’d been wise to her

deception all along? If that were the case, she’d left the stranger

in the lurch. Worse yet, they’d be waiting for her when she went

back. But she felt pretty sure the blond man bought the story

entirely, and the other one hadn’t given any sign of doubting. He’d

waited to be sure there wouldn’t be any witnesses to whatever they

planned to do when they found their quarry.

And why was she even considering going back?

She knew nothing about the man she’d nearly hit except that he was

injured and frightened.

Kristie stared at the marble-sized, faceted

crystal ball dangling from her rearview mirror. Its shimmering

depths held no answers, not even a suggestion. This was crazy. She

wasn’t even sure the stranger would wait around for her return. And

the throbbing headache made her want to go back to the hotel and

settle down for a nap.

She put the car in gear. Before her foot hit

the accelerator, though, The Voice spoke. She’d heard it

before, but only on a few occasions. It wasn’t literally a voice

speaking in her head, nor was it exactly a vision, though it had

characteristics of both. “Voice” was closer because she did get

words with some fuzzy knowledge/pictures attached. She’d learned to

listen to it.

“He needs you,” it said. “You have

to protect him.”

“Protect who?” she asked aloud. She stared

into the rearview mirror, looking for someone nearby, but the back

seat and the road around her were empty. Of course. “Protect? How?

And who?”

“You know who.” Dammit, she did know,

no matter how hard she wished otherwise. “You’ve got to help

him.”

“Help him how?” The Voice had always

been right in the past, but it didn’t always make clear what she

should do when it gave her a mission. It tended to be clearer on

what needed to be done than on how.

“Protect him. He fights a great evil, but

he doesn’t realize how strong it is. He doesn’t know he can’t do it

alone. You have to help him.”

“I’m a photographer,” she responded. “I don’t

fight great evils. I take pictures of them.”

“He’ll die if you don’t protect

him.”

“Protect him—how?”

No answer.

“Right!” she protested. “I’m supposed to

protect someone I don’t know from something I don’t understand in

ways I don’t have a clue about. I don’t suppose you could be more

specific?”

Apparently it couldn’t. Her question got no

answer, no response of any kind, except some increased throbbing in

her head.

“This really isn’t a lot of help, you know.”

She said it louder this time. And still got no answer. That was

it—the end. No more information was coming.

She sighed and took another swig of water

from the bottle.

Ten minutes should give them time enough to

get so far down they couldn’t easily or quickly return to the top.

She couldn’t believe she was doing this. The seconds stretched out

to torment her. She strained her ears for some sound from back down

the road but heard nothing.

It seemed to take forever, but the last few

minutes ticked off. Kristie started the car, executed a smooth

U-turn, and drove back the way she’d come. Her headache began to

lessen as she got closer to the scene. None of the men were in

sight when she drove cautiously around the bend just before the

area where she’d left the stranger. She pulled across the road onto

the shoulder, stopping the car at the point nearest the

rhododendron thicket he’d crawled into. After shifting the car into

park, she tossed her camera bag and notebooks onto the back

seat.

When nothing happened for several long,

nerve-stretching moments, she debated her next move. Should she get

out and look or just drive off and leave the whole mess behind her?

The man had lost blood and was in pain. He might have passed out.

Or he might have given up on her coming back and crawled off to

find what shelter he could on his own. Probably he hadn’t expected

her to come back at all. Sweat gathered at her temples and rolled

down her chest under her blouse. The other two men would surely

have heard her car return and come to investigate. She didn’t want

to think about what might happen if they saw her.

Just as her nerves were about to give way

completely, a flash of movement caught her eye. The man sprang out

of the shrubbery and rushed toward her. He all but fell against the

door, and she had to wave him around to the other side, then reach

across to unlock it for him.

The stranger collapsed into the Toyota’s

passenger seat and slumped there for a moment, breathing in loud,

labored gasps. “Drive,” he ordered as he pulled his legs inside and

yanked the door closed.

“Any place in particular?”

He shook his head, then let it sink back

against the headrest. “Away from here.” The grayish cast of his

brown skin suggested injuries and exhaustion catching up with him.

Kristie put the car in gear and swerved back onto the road.