He’d oriented himself with some visual landmarks when they’d arrived, so he was pretty sure he could find the campsite again if he needed to. Did he need to? Did he really need to make sure Angie was dead, or should he just get to Lattimore’s as fast as he could and get out of the country? He was riding, she was on foot. He’d be at least a day ahead of her, right?
Was a day long enough?
Maybe, maybe not. He’d rather have that week he’d planned on.
Then suddenly a horrifying thought occurred to him, and he groaned aloud. Fuck! How could he have been so stupid? He’d lost his head, panicked, and now … double fuck! He had to go back to the camp, and this had nothing to do with Angie and tying up loose ends.
He didn’t have the keys to the SUV.
Davis had had them. They might have been in his pocket, or they might be somewhere in his tent, but one way or another Chad had to get those keys or his whole plan evaporated beneath him and left him sitting in a big pile of shit.
He’d have to go back to the camp, pick a position from which to watch, and see if Angie was still there. If she was, he’d have to wait for his chance to pick her off, then he’d go after the keys. He only hoped they were with Davis’s belongings in his tent, and not in his pockets … or in the belly of a black bear.
Chapter Twelve
Angie hugged the ground and dragged herself along, over rocks and bushes, through rivulets of water that had already turned into rushing streams as the runoff from the mountain storm threatened to turn into a flood. Going through that water required her to check her common sense way back somewhere along the trail, because only an idiot would try to crawl through fast-running flood water without being tethered, but all in all she figured flood water was the least of her problems. If she got swept down the mountain and drowned in three inches of mud and water, well, to her that was more acceptable than getting mauled to death by a bear, or letting that murderous twerp Chad Krugman get the best of her.
So she made up her mind that she wasn’t going to drown. The only way to get through this was to focus on only the moment, not letting herself think about how far it was to Ray Lattimore’s place, or how long it would take her to get there, or how cold she was, or how much her ankle hurt—none of that had any place in her head right now, because she had to concentrate on surviving.
She’d always loved the smell of rain, the freshness it brought, the promise of life, the renewal. She’d loved to listen to it beating on the roof, lulling her to sleep at night. Oh, she’d worked out in the rain many times and that wasn’t any fun, but livestock had to be taken care of regardless of the weather, and doing so was simply part of life and she hadn’t wasted any time or effort fretting about it.
This was different. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to enjoy the rain again.
She moved forward inch by painful inch, her ankle throbbing so much sometimes she simply froze in place, her teeth grinding together, as she fought through the waves of pain. Her hands were like clumsy chunks of ice, so cold from the water that she could barely feel them, but at least the cold would slow down any bleeding and the water would wash away the scent of her blood.
Survive.
She would. No matter what. She made that promise to herself.
And she kept going.
One moment became another. Every muddy inch was a victory. Every breath she took could be counted as a win.
That son of a bitch Chad Krugman was not going to get the best of her.
Whenever lightning flashed she lifted her head and looked around,
trying to keep track of her direction and progress, and keep a sharp eye out for any pitfalls and obstacles ahead, because without the lightning and not daring to turn on her flashlight, she was literally moving forward blind. She also looked for movement, of any kind in general, but specifically Krugman or the bear. So far all she’d seen were trees whipping wildly in the wind.
Lightning didn’t operate on command, so there were times when she needed to see what was ahead of her and she simply had to stop and wait for the next flash before moving forward again.
Gradually it occurred to her how well-camouflaged she was. Unless she did something to give away her position, such as turning on her flashlight, Chad wasn’t likely to see her. She was covered in mud from head to toe, crawling along so close to the ground she’d effectively become a part of the landscape. The mud and water should also disguise her scent, at least to some degree, protecting her from the bear’s sensitive sense of smell.
Terror could be sustained for only so long; it took too much energy. After a while the body would push it away and concentrate instead on the mundane, and that was what she was doing now, her world narrowed to each inch she crawled, and how the inches became feet, and the feet, yards. Eventually she would reach her destination. All she had to do was not quit.
For a while her progress had been so slow she would have been discouraged if she’d let herself think about it, so she hadn’t. Her biggest asset was her will to live. She’d get through this. She’d survive the storm, the cold, the pain. Her injured ankle, whether it was sprained or broken, wouldn’t kill her in and of itself, but it could sure as hell contribute to her death if either the bear or Krugman crossed her trail. She’d never felt so vulnerable, and she didn’t like that feeling any more than she liked the physical pain.
She made an effort to become a part of the earth, to use the mud and the darkness to make herself invisible.
After an unknown length of time—an hour, a lifetime—the fierce heart of the storm moved on. The rain continued, but less forcefully, abating from a physical bombardment to a mere downpour. Not feeling as if she was about to be fried by lightning at any second was a plus, but the lack of lightning also meant she couldn’t pick out her points of navigation—crawl to that bush, then that rock—and had to go purely by feel. Unfortunately, she couldn’t feel much in her hands at all. Her pace slowed from a literal crawl to agonizingly slow.
Without the brilliant lightning that revealed everything in stark black and white, obliterating everything else, the pinpoint of light off to her left immediately caught her attention. She froze, not moving a muscle, blending into the earth. Krugman. No one else would be out in this storm, with a flashlight. He was searching for her.
A sense of unreality washed over her. She didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved that he obviously didn’t view her as any sort of threat. He had no way of knowing she was hurt, no way of knowing that her rifle was so encrusted with mud it was useless, and still he was out there with a flashlight looking for her, giving away his own position.
The stupid asshole. She’d be damned if she’d let someone like him get the best of her.
He had a horse. She needed that horse, but unless the perfect moment presented itself she had little or no chance of somehow getting it. She had her pistol, but that was for short-range targets, which meant Chad would be just as close to her. She couldn’t chase him down and she sure as hell wasn’t going to try to bait him into coming after her, not with her mobility so severely limited, but if he stumbled on her she wouldn’t hesitate to use the pistol.