He s
hook off the knowledge of the deepening bond, relaxed his guards against her and allowed her to pull the shield further around herself.
"That was me. " He eased the Raider into the wide gully before coming to a stop. "I found the jeep about six hours before you came through. I made it to about here, smelled the stink of the Coyotes around the bend. " He pointed to a fissure at the other side of the gully. "I noticed this area is riddled with fissures and caverns. They're like a maze inside, many of them connecting together. I was able to slip through those to work my way closer to the cavern they were hidden within. "
Megan nodded. "We had a particularly hard rainy season about ten years ago. The gullies stayed flooded and many of them washed out deep grooves into the stone. This is one of about a dozen of the hardest hit areas. The floods in these washouts would come hard and fast, many revealing small caves that go deep beneath them and now collect water when it does rain. "
"I worked my way through those washouts until I found a way to get around them," Braden continued.
"I wasn't far from you when I heard you call in to Lance. They were waiting on you. "
"But why me?" That was the one she didn't understand.
As he started the vehicle forward again, she lowered the window, staring up at the steadily rising walls that grew steeper as they moved deeper into the gully.
He didn't answer her. There was no way to answer her until they found out the reason for the Coyotes'
arrival.
He drove around the steep bend, pulling to a stop behind the black SUV
Mark and Aimee had driven.
He watched as she glanced around the area, her eyes narrowed, almost distant as she seemed to listen to something he couldn't hear. Finally, she gripped the handle of the door and stepped out of the vehicle as he set the security controls and followed her.
He continued to watch her. Leaning against the front of the Raider, testing the wind every few seconds for the rancid scent of Coyotes as she stared at the SUV, her expression solemn, intense.
"They looked so young. " Sadness washed over her, regret for the lives wasted before they could be lived.
"Aimee was twenty-three. Mark was twenty-four,'' he told her. "Neither had been out of captivity long enough to know freedom. "
She moved to the open doors of the SUV. The smell of death was thick, the blood-soaked interior boiling with heat beneath the afternoon sun. She didn't throw up as he would have expected her to. Her expression tightened as she leaned in and bent forward, checking beneath the driver's seat, then in the console beside it.
She flinched every few minutes as though she were in pain. Or feeling that of another.
"Did your people have time to go over it?" she asked him then.
"Thoroughly. " There was nothing to be found. A few fast-food bags, gasoline receipts. No notes, no letters, nothing to indicate why they had left or why they had died.
"So why are we here?' She moved back, turning to face him with a frown on her face.
"Because those Coyotes waited here for almost twenty-four hours for you to arrive. We checked the SUV. This canyon is another story. We're going to go over it, inch by inch. Every tributary leading into the rock wall, every cavern. We're going to go over it. Because the Coyotes that are dumb enough to stay with the Council are the ones too stupid to cover their tracks well. They've left something here. They were here for too long not to. Now it's up to us to find what they left and to figure out why they want you. And they do want you, baby. Real bad. "
Fear flashed in her eyes but only for a second. It was followed closely by anger, then determination.
"They can want on then. " A cool little smile curved her lips. Calculating, filled with cold purpose. "So where do we start?"
Chapter Five
They started with a perilous climb from the bottom of the gorge to the uppermost section of the cliff that rose above it. More than ten feet from the ground, handholds were few and far between; and though a fall wouldn't lull her, it would sure as hell hurt.
Their destination was the grouping of small, narrow openings into the cliff houses above. Weathered by sand and rain, the openings created dark, shadowed crevices with a narrow ledge running between them.
In the heat of the day, the climb sapped her energy as perspiration poured from her even before they reached the first set of small caves. Megan had been amazed that the large, brawny Coyotes could have existed for more than a few hours inside them, until she flattened herself against the stone floor and scooted in.
"The cave is much larger inside," she called back as she flipped on the flashlight she carried before moving further inside. The risk of rattlers was high in the area, not to mention a dozen other poisonous denizens of the desert. The caves were cool in the heat of the day, and warmer in the cold of night-the perfect hidden shelter for wildlife.
There was nothing to be found but a lingering, subtly noxious smell. Her senses detected no danger, no presence of life. Only the cold, evil intent that had filled the Coyotes.