Lone Survivor

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “Hunter?” Karissa’s small voice drove his negative thoughts away.

  He looked down to find her gazing up at him with a bemused twist to her lips.

  “So much for my scoffing at the idea of you carrying me,” she said with a thin laugh. “You can put me down now. I can wiggle my toes again.”

  “Don’t push yourself,” he answered. “I’m doing fine. You don’t weigh much more than a feather.” What was the matter with him that he didn’t want to let go of her?

  She swatted him on the arm. “I know better than that. Put...me...down.”

  He sighed and halted. “Whatever you say, milady.” Gently, he set her on her feet but kept an arm around her shoulder as she got her bearings. “Doing okay?”

  “I think so.” She took a step out of his grasp and gave a nod. “More feeling will return as we get moving.”

  “Glad you’re of the mind-set to keep on our way. We won’t be able to stop anymore. If our hunters are persistent, they’ll backtrack when the scent runs out, and the dogs could pick up the right trail again eventually as they range up and down the stream. Depends on how long their handlers will let them sniff around. I want us out of their reach before they can catch up.”

  “Lead on.” She motioned him forward.

  The rest of the night passed with no hint of dogs on their trail. Yet Hunter couldn’t shake a sense of unease. As the sky lightened toward dawn, they reached the abandoned logging road. It wasn’t much more than a rain-rutted dirt track anymore. Hunter kept them on the edge of it, partially under cover of the trees as they negotiated a downward path. Karissa said not a word, her breathing coming in strong huffs and occasional puffs.

  “Can I take bitty boy for you?” he asked.

  “He’s still asleep, so let’s not disturb him,” she answered.

  Hunter led on. Not long later, with the sun almost fully above the horizon, the back of a squat, clapboard building loomed in their path at the bottom of a steep incline.

  “Wait here.” He turned and directed Karissa to a seat on a nearby stump.

  “I thought you said these people were friendly.”

  “They are, but we have no idea if they’ve been visited by whoever is looking for us. A remote possibility, but considering the resources of who we’re dealing with, I don’t care to take chances. If the coast is clear, I’ll be right back for you. If not and I don’t return or you hear some kind of ruckus, head straight west and you’ll come to a ranger station—hopefully manned by a real ranger.”

  They exchanged grimaces as Karissa brushed a thick hank of hair back from her face. A determined smile lifted the corners of her mouth, but her eyes betrayed deep weariness. Still, despite the hardships of the night, she radiated a winsome purity and strength that drew on Hunter’s heart.

  God, help me to be here for this woman and child every second until we get this matter resolved. And somehow please keep the truth about my identity from her until that happens.

  “I’ll be right here.” She gazed up at him with enormous eyes. “You’ll be back.”

  “Hold that thought.” He turned and began negotiating his step-sliding way down the dirt incline.

  “I’ll be praying.”

  Her simple pledge bathed him in warmth and accelerated his pace. He reached the back of the bar and sidled up against the side of the building as he peered around the corner. Even this early in the morning, the portion of the parking lot in his view held a few motorcycles—several Harleys and a vintage Indian, all belonging to regulars that he knew. Likely the bikes had been there overnight, since a back room contained numerous bunks, and a lot of the gang virtually lived here.

  The Indian belonged to Hunter’s friend and the owner of the place, Thomas Buckley III. Hunter still had a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that his Christian biker buddy had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, lost the family spoon to Daddy’s bad investments, devolved into an embittered member of the infamous Outlaws motorcycle gang, wound up in prison and then transformed into a follower of Christ. Most folks simply knew the guy as Buck with nothing but guesses as to his background. Something about Hunter’s quiet suffering had drawn Thomas’s full testimony from him one rainy day as they sat across from each other in a booth sipping hot java and shooting the breeze. The tattooed biker’s trust in him and freely given spiritual mentorship had done a lot for Hunter when he was in a very low place.

  Hunter glanced back the way he had come. Was that a portion of Karissa’s sneaker barely poking out from her cover position? Wise woman. She was staying still, and hopefully the baby would remain asleep until his recognizance was completed.

  Ducking slightly for no good reason except his mindfulness of stealth, Hunter slid along one side of the building toward the front. As more of the parking lot came into view, revealing no additional vehicles, he exhaled a long breath. No one here except bikers—unless someone had walked in from the distant highway. Not likely.

  Hunter rounded the corner and stepped up onto the low wooden porch. A wide window beckoned, offering a view inside. The large patron area was vacant, though a pool table sported balls in disarray across its top, the long bar held a cribbage board and cards, and a nearby booth featured an unfinished chess game. The normal gospel music with a country twang was not yet playing on the jukebox, but the strong odor of freshly ground coffee beans teased his nostrils. Someone here was awake.

  A soft creak sounded on the boards behind Hunter. He began to whirl, but a prod in his back from something hard froze him in place.

  “Lay that rifle down then put your hands up and turn around slow,” growled an unfamiliar voice behind him.

  Hunter complied and found himself gazing down the double barrels of a shotgun. At the other end of the gun stood a short, round man sporting a beard that put Hunter’s to shame. The man glared at him with eyes the color of pine bark.

  “State your business,” he bit out.

  “I’m here to see Buck.”

  “You know Buck? Then why are you sneaking around like a polecat?”

  “I’ll explain it to him. Since when did Buck station armed guards around the place?”

  “Since we heard on the radio this morning about the woman murdered in the area. Another woman and a baby are missing. The police want to find her as a possible kidnapper, along with some former firefighter who’s not right in the head. The dude called in a fake bomb threat to the Umpqua power project, torched a ranger cabin in the woods and went missing around the same time as the woman and kid. ’Course, Buck says the nutso firefighter didn’t do anything bad, and we’re to keep a lookout for strangers. You look like a stranger to me.”

  Hunter’s gut clenched. The authorities thought Karissa and he were involved in a bomb threat, arson, kidnapping and murder? How did they come up with that idea? Of course, Karissa said she had left her purse and vehicle behind when she fled with Kyle. The authorities would have found those things and no baby in a home where there should have been one. The leap in logic wasn’t great, and he couldn’t deny the timing of the bomb threat and the arson on his cabin were also suspicious, potentially tying him into the whole murder/kidnapping scenario.

  “I could call you a stranger, too. I’ve never met you, and I’ve been here plenty of times.”

  “Came in a week ago. Bronto’s my cousin,” the man said, naming one of the other members of the gang. “Now, who are you?” A click sounded as he pulled back the hammer on the shotgun.

  Hunter faded his weight onto the balls of his feet in preparation to leap aside, though he didn’t stand much chance of avoiding a load of buckshot at this range. “The not-so-nutso ex-firefighter. I’ve had it with people coming after me with deadly weapons, so either pull that trigger or take me to Buck.”

  “What’s going on out here?” Buck’s familiar voice interrupted the face-off.

  “Caught this guy
sneaking around,” said the guy with the shotgun.

  Buck lumbered up beside them. He was a big man, beefy all over. A maze of multicolored tattoos ran up and down his arms and around his thick neck, some from his BC—before Christ—days and some from after. A big one on his lower arm used to be a bloody knife, but it had been transformed into an intricate and poignant cross.

  The forearm bearing the cross motioned toward the gun. “Will you please put that thing down, Steggy, before you shoot off your big toe? This guy is a brother.”

  Hunter snorted a laugh. Bronto’s nickname was short for brontosaurus, because he was built like one, so for his cousin that meant... “Steggy, as in stegosaurus?”

  The hammer of the shotgun eased down, and the weapon lowered. Steggy grinned, displaying crooked teeth. “That’s me. You may be nuts, but you got guts.” The man stuck out his hand, and Hunter shook it.

  “Come in and give us the 411.” Buck slapped Hunter on the shoulder. “Sounds like you’re in a peck of trouble, but I know the news dudes and the cops got it wrong about who did what.”

  Hunter faced his friend and shook his head. “I can’t come in yet. The missing woman and baby are with me, all right, but I’m protecting them, not kidnapping them. And she’s not a killer or a kidnapper, either. They’re waiting up in the forest. I came down to make sure none of these strangers Steggy was looking out for were hanging around.”

  Buck let out a low whistle. “Well, let’s go fetch them.”

  With a nod, Hunter led them back the way he had come.

  “This story just gets stranger and stranger,” Steggy grumbled from the rear of the procession.

  “You haven’t heard the half of it yet,” Hunter said.

  They reached the base of the steep incline.

  “All clear. We’re coming up,” he called to Karissa, and began the climb. He’d take the baby, and Buck and Steggy could help her down.

  No answer came from the edge of the forest. No movement, either.

  Hunter’s heart leaped into his throat as he scrambled upward, tossing all caution to the wind. He and his companions arrived at the log where he’d left his charges. Kyle lay sleeping under the shelter of a nearby bush, still wrapped in his sling, but Karissa was nowhere to be seen.

  FOUR

  It happened so fast!

  One moment Karissa was closing her eyes, succumbing to the exhaustion that wrapped her like a cloak, and the next her eyes popped wide as something cold and hard pressed into the back of her head.

  “Don’t cry out,” a low, harsh voice said. “Where’s the boyfriend?”

  A strangled noise escaped Karissa’s throat. How did she answer that? This was probably not the time to quibble about Hunter’s non-boyfriend status. She simply lifted one hand and pointed to the bar below.

  The man with the gun against her head grunted and grabbed her shoulder. “Too bad. It would have been better to scoop him up now as well. I will leave that to someone else. Put the baby down. You’re coming with me.”

  Karissa complied quickly, ducking her head out of Kyle’s sling and laying him tenderly in a patch of soft grass under the protective boughs of a bush. If she was falling into the hands of a killer, there was no way she wanted Kyle with her.

  Then she was yanked around and shoved into the woods, her captor following close behind. He began pushing her at an uncomfortable pace. Every beat of her thundering heart racked her body, and every sense seemed magnified a hundred times. Piney and loamy odors assailed her nostrils, and her breath caught at each snap of a dry twig beneath her feet. She hadn’t yet glimpsed the person holding the gun and directing her progress with muttered curses and prods with the barrel of his firearm.

  “The boss can just sue me,” the thug mumbled under his breath as he shoved her along.

  “Sue you for what?”

  “Not grabbing the kid. I don’t mess with kids, you know. I’ve got standards.”

  “But you tried to burn us all up in that cabin.”

  “I didn’t give that order. Not my doing.”

  “But someone shot at me at Nikki’s cabin while I was carrying the baby. Was that you?”

  “How was I to know you had the kid with you?”

  Karissa’s mouth gaped open. Amazing how self-righteous a hired gunman could make himself sound and believe every word of his own blather.

  “Clearly, you have no such standards when it comes to me,” she said. “Why didn’t you just shoot me and leave me there on the road?” She bit her lower lip. If only she could recall the heedless question before it popped out of her mouth.

  “Shut up and move faster!”

  The gun barrel jabbed into her back again, and she winced. She was going to have a cluster of round bruises...if she lived long enough to develop them.

  Karissa scurried down a short slope, stumbled on a tree root and pitched forward. A hand clasped her elbow and stopped her from face-planting on the ground. She righted herself and looked toward the man who now stood beside her still squeezing her elbow in a vise grip. Her gaze first met the black hole of his gun then traveled up the barrel to take in his navy blue shirt then a leathery neck and a beaky nose, and finally to lock stares with flat brown eyes beneath a mop of dark hair. Yes, this was the man who’d shot at her at her cousin’s house. Almost certainly the one who’d killed Nikki.

  “Why did you leave my cousin’s place after killing her and then come back again?” When would her mouth learn to stop speaking before thinking?

  Her captor grinned, stretching a white slash of a scar that marred his upper lip. “No cell reception. I needed to make a call, and I’d already disabled the lady’s landline before I went in after her. You weren’t supposed to show up yet.”

  His dead eyes studied her—like being under the scrutiny of an alligator or a shark. Karissa swallowed against a dry throat. Apparently, the assassin didn’t care if she saw his face. As if she needed any confirmation that she was marked for death.

  “If I had my way, I would have dropped you back there or right here and now,” the man grated out. “But since we didn’t catch you last night and the authorities are swarming, the boss says we need to stage the scene carefully to confirm their suspicions that you killed your cousin and snatched the baby with the help of that firefighter.”

  Karissa’s jaw sagged. The police thought she’d killed Nikki and kidnapped Kyle? And that Hunter had helped? Of course, the authorities would have all her information from her abandoned purse and car. Hopefully, they were also asking themselves what sort of kidnapper left that stuff behind.

  Her captor’s lips twisted into a nasty smile. “Nice of you to leave us your handbag containing the car keys so we could grab the vehicle but leave some incriminating belongings of yours in the house.”

  Her gut clenched. So much for the presence of the purse and car creating doubt in the authorities’ minds. She had to assume the perpetrators were instead going to use those things to create some of that staging this guy had mentioned.

  “Hunter knows I didn’t kidnap Kyle or kill anyone, because you goons showed up and tried to kill us.”

  “No worries.” The man shrugged. “Some of the other guys are on the way and will take out the firefighter and anyone else you’ve managed to involve. The boss will lay those killings at your doorstep, too. Now keep moving.”

  A deep chill settled in Karissa’s core as they trekked onward. So, there was indeed a mysterious boss behind the horrendous attack on her cousin and now her and even Hunter because of his involvement with her. But who could he or she be, and what could be the motive? Whatever was going on was despicable, especially when an infant was deprived of his mother and could easily have been hurt in all that had transpired so far. Now Kyle was abandoned on the edge of the woods all alone. Hopefully, Hunter would soon find him, but what might happen to Hunter and the baby when her captor’s thre
atened reinforcements arrived didn’t bear thinking about. Embers of heat began to displace the chill in her gut.

  All at once, Karissa’s stomach growled, and the man chuckled. She gritted her teeth against angry words. How charming that he found her hunger and discomfort amusing. Not that she really had any interest in a last meal before this creep and his mystery boss carried out their plans for her.

  Not long later, they climbed a berm onto a narrow gravel road where a black pickup sat idling. It was the truck the gunman at her back had driven up to Nikki’s house only yesterday. Karissa’s captor shoved her into the back seat and climbed in beside her, gun still pointed in her direction. The blond man behind the wheel took off in a spurt of gravel.

  * * *

  Hunter raced through the forest with Buck on his heels. Steggy had been sent back to deliver the baby to Buck’s wife, where he would receive good care. Karissa and her abductor had left a fairly obvious trail of trampled grass and weeds and snapped twigs, so they were likely relying on speed rather than cunning to elude any pursuit. They couldn’t be far ahead, yet he hadn’t caught a glimpse of them. If only there hadn’t been that delay on the bar’s porch while Steggy interrogated him. Worse, Hunter had left his rifle where he’d set it down when Steggy ordered him to do so. Hunter leaped over a fallen branch and plunged down a shallow draw then up again, lungs sucking in deep drafts of piney air and blood pumping as fast as his feet.

  What if the captor got away with Karissa before they could catch up? No, he couldn’t think like that. At least, they’d found no evidence that the kidnapper had killed her yet. Speculating as to why not was futile. He could only be thankful. If the abductor’s trajectory continued in this direction, they were likely headed for a nearby service road. A picture of a coal-black pickup truck flashed before his mind’s eye, the vehicle that had carried destruction to the ranger cabin and nearly to themselves.

  How had the murderer found them? Another futile question with insufficient data to provide an answer. Hunter mentally kicked himself. He’d been so sure they’d lost their pursuers because they’d heard no dogs. He’d been wrong and had left his charges vulnerable and alone.