Lawman On The Hunt

“Yes.” She nodded, her hair falling forward to obscure her face.

“Then we’re going to run, as fast and as far as we can.”

She was swifter than he would have expected, keeping pace with him as they zigzagged through the trees. He led the way up a slope away from the creek, deeper into the area she had identified as wilderness. The shooters had run after them, but they were slower and clumsier, stopping from time to time to fire in Travis and Leah’s general direction. After what could have been a half an hour or only ten minutes, the sounds of the gunfire and their pursuers’ shouted curses faded away.

Travis risked stopping near a downed pine tree. Leah collapsed onto the fallen trunk, holding her side and gasping for breath. Several moments passed before either of them spoke. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” she said.

He holstered his weapon and sank down beside her. “I think we’ve lost them for now.”

She shook her head. “Maybe. But they’ll be back. They’ll hunt us down.”

“How can you be so sure?” She talked as if she knew these men so well, but how could that be, when she had only been with them a few months? He had known her for years and would have sworn he knew everything about her, and yet he had never seen her betrayal coming.

“They’re ruthless,” she said. “When Duane decides he wants something, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. He’ll steal, kill and use people every way you can imagine. He’s an expert at it.” The grief that transformed her face as she spoke made him want to pull her to him, to comfort her. But he held back.

Instead, he looked around them, at the trees crowded so close together there was scarcely room to walk. The sky showed only in scattered puzzle pieces of pale blue between the treetops. He thought the creek was somewhere to their right, but he couldn’t be sure, having lost his bearings in their frantic flight. “Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve never had much of a sense of direction, remember?”

He almost smiled, remembering. Her propensity for getting turned around and lost had been one of their private jokes. At the entrance to a mall department store she would address him with mock seriousness. “I’m going in, but if I don’t come out in an hour, you’ll have to come in after me.”

That particular trait of hers wasn’t so funny right now. “Let’s hope Duane and his gang don’t know where we are, either.” He stood and offered her his hand. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours. We need to find a safe place to spend the night, but before that, we need to get back to the creek. Without water, we won’t make it out here very long.”

“Then what?” she asked.

“Then we have to find our way out of here, back to civilization and a phone.” And they had to do it while avoiding the men who were out to kill them.

* * *

WITH NO WATCH or phone to consult for the time, Leah had no idea how long it took them to locate the creek. But by the time they stumbled and slid down the bank to the narrow stream, she was exhausted and thirsty enough that she was tempted to simply stretch out in the icy water and let it wash into her mouth.

But common sense—or maybe simply an overwhelming desire to stay strong enough to get out of here alive—stopped her. She grabbed hold of Travis’s arm to stop him as he knelt at the water’s edge. “We have to boil the water before we drink it,” she said.

Hair tousled, face streaked with mud and blood, he looked like a man who had survived a street brawl. “How are we supposed to do that? And why?” He looked around. “I don’t see any factories or even houses around here.”

“The water is full of giardia—a little bug that will make you very, very sick. I had it once at summer camp and I know I never want to be that ill again. If we boil the water or treat it somehow, it will kill the parasite.”

He sat back on his heels and scanned the bank around them. “There’s plenty of fuel. I don’t suppose you’ve taken up smoking since we last met?”

“No.” She scanned the area, then looked back at him. “What kind of supplies do you have on you, besides your gun and ammunition and that multi-tool you used to cut off my flex-cuff?”

He hesitated, then emptied his pockets onto the ground between them—a wallet with his ID, a few credit cards and some cash; badge; the multi-tool; and the Glock and a magazine with ten bullets, plus an empty magazine. The revolver and half a dozen bullets for it. A Mini Maglite, a small notebook and the binoculars. Her mood lifted when she spotted the Maglite. “We can use this,” she said. “Now all we need is something to boil the water in. Look around for a tin can.”

“We’re in the wilderness,” he reminded her, as he refilled his pockets.

“Trash washes downstream from other places,” she said. “And it lasts a long time in this dry climate.” Already, she was headed upstream, studying the bank.

Fifteen minutes later, she had almost given up when she spotted the soda can wedged in the roots of a wild plum growing along the banks. She crawled down and retrieved the can, then stopped to pick the few withered and spotted fruits left in the almost-leafless branches. She hurried with her finds downstream, where Travis was studying a deep pool. “There’s fish in here, if I could figure out how to catch them,” he said.

“Good idea.” She held up the soda can. “If you cut the top off of this with your multi-tool, we can use it to heat water.”

“Did you find matches, too?” he asked, taking the can.

She grinned. “I still remember a few lessons from playing around in the woods as a kid,” she said.

While he cut the top from the soda can and straightened out the dents, she gathered dry pine needles and twigs. Atop these, she added shredded paper from his notebook. Then she pulled a pack of gum from her pocket. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“You’ll see.” She unwrapped the gum and offered him the stick. He took it and popped it into his mouth, then she carefully tore the wrapper in half lengthwise, then pinched off bits out of the middle until only a thin sliver of paper-backed foil connected the two wider halves. “Now I need the battery from the Maglite,” she said.

He unscrewed the bottom from the Maglite and shook out the battery. “I see where you’re going with this, I think,” he said. “You’re going to make a spark.”

“You got it.” Gingerly, she pressed one end of the gum wrapper, foil side down, against the negative end of the battery. “This is the tricky part,” she said. “I don’t want to get burned.” Holding her breath, she touched the other end of the foil to the positive end of the battery. Immediately the center of the foil began to brown and char, then burst into flame. She dropped the burning wrapper onto the tinder she had prepared, and it flared also. As the twigs caught, she began feeding larger pieces of wood onto it.

“Where did you learn that?” Travis asked.

“My best friend’s older brother showed us when we were kids. He accidentally set the woods behind his house on fire doing that one time, but mostly we just thought it was a neat way to start campfires. I haven’t thought of it in years.” She looked around. “I think we’re ready for the water now.”

“I’ll get it.” He returned a few minutes later, carrying the first can, along with a second. “I found this,” he said. “We can heat twice as much water.”

He nestled the water-filled cans among the flames. The metal blackened and the water began to steam. Several minutes later, it was boiling. “It needs to boil ten minutes,” she said. “We’ll have to guess how long that is.” She took one of the dried plums from her pockets. “I found these. If we cut off the bad spots, they should be okay to eat.”

“I have to have water before I can eat anything,” he said. “But we’ll try them later. I had no idea you were so resourceful in the wilderness.”

“I told you my family spent a lot of time camping when I was a kid. We lived not that far from here before we moved to Texas.”

“Where you acted like just another music-listening, mall-going city kid,” he said.

“I was a teenager. I wanted to fit in.” Most of all, she had wanted to impress him—and he had seemed so sophisticated and cool. Or at least, as sophisticated and cool as a sixteen-year-old could be. Back then, she wouldn’t have admitted to knowing how to start a campfire or forage for wild food for anything.

“Did Braeswood know you were from around here?”

She focused on the boiling water, though she could feel his gaze burning into her. No matter how she tried to explain her relationship with Duane to Travis, he would never believe her. He had made up his mind about her the day she betrayed him. She didn’t blame him for his anger, but she wasn’t going to waste her breath defending herself. “He knew,” she said. She had been shocked to discover how much Duane already knew about her when they met. But that was how he worked. He mined information the way some men mine gold or diamonds, and then he used that information to buy what he wanted.

Travis shifted and winced. Guilt rushed over her. “I forgot all about your wound,” she said. “How is it?”

“It’s no big deal.” He started to turn away, but she leaned over to touch his wrist.

“Let me look,” she said. “Now that we have water, I can at least clean it up.”

He hesitated, then lifted his shirt to show an angry red graze along the side of his ribs. Now it was her turn to wince. “That must hurt,” she said.

“I’ve felt better.”

She glanced back at the water. “Where’s that handkerchief you were using to gag me?” she asked.

He pulled it from the pocket of the cargo pants.

Carefully, she dipped one corner of the cloth into the boiling water, took it out and let it cool slightly, then began sponging at the wound. “It doesn’t look too deep,” she said. She tried not to apply too much pressure, but she felt him tense when she hit a sensitive spot. As she cleared away the blood and dirt, she became aware of the smooth, taut skin beneath her hand. He had the muscular abs and chest of a man who worked out—abs and chest she had fond memories of feeling against her own naked body.