by Sylvie Kurtz
She gazed longingly at the mountains. A measure of awe and fear gave her voice a breathy quality that sang into his bones. “Somewhere in there. That’s where we’ll find them.”
“We will find them,” he said and surprised himself with the sureness of his proclamation.
Once they hit the highway, she gripped the seat as if she expected him to push a button and eject her at any second. Her gaze darted back and ahead, no doubt searching for a black Hummer—or two, or three.
“The Colonel will be watching for us,” she said, blushing when he caught her vigilance.
“For the Jeep. We’ll just be two hikers.”
“Right.” But her fingers, knitting themselves into a snarl, betrayed her doubt.
As they neared the trailhead, Sabriel widened the perimeter of his vision, conscious of every sound and scent and sight. He took in the almost full parking lot; the groups of twos and fours, chatting, gathering up gear and checking the map on the board near the fork that speared in three directions; the goons stationed at both ends of the lot, disguised as hikers. His heightened senses also burned with awareness of Nora beside him—her fears, hopes and worries writhing out from her in heated snakes.
Hang in there, girl. All you have to do is follow my lead. He resisted the temptation to reach for her hand and stroke it.
As he turned into the parking lot, she gasped and shrank down in her seat, vibrating with tension that threatened to crack her. “That’s Boggs!”
“You’ve got to relax, Nora.” Sabriel nosed into one of the two remaining spaces and killed the engine. “We’re just two hikers out for a day trip. Smile. You’re supposed to be having fun.”
The wobbly number she pulled out wasn’t going to do the job.
“Come on,” he urged. “You can do better than that. For Scotty.”
She blew out a breath and nodded. “I can do this. I can pretend I’m a seasoned hiker.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he teased.
She exploded in shaky laughter. “Didn’t you know? Being a nervous wreck is my natural state.”
“Then we’ll make full use of your abilities.” He smiled and she smiled back—a real smile that buzzed unexpected warmth into his solar plexus. “Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.”
She turned and reached for the door handle, but he held her back and shoved a stray strand of her rich brown hair back into the navy cap, searching for words of reassurance. Ah, hell. Not a good sign. She wasn’t his friend. He needed to keep his distance or he’d never make it back in one piece.
“Put on your shades,” he said, leaning away from the lure of her scent. “There are three of the Colonel’s men hanging around. Boggs to our right on the other side of the trailhead.” The other two he recognized from the pictures in the personnel file Kingsley had forwarded to his PDA. “Hutt is to our left, five cars down.” Like a vulture, Hutt circled closer for a better look. “And Costlow is pretending to be reading the map at the trailhead. When we go by him, I’m going to say something in French. When I stop talking, giggle, okay?”
“You know French?”
At least she wasn’t questioning the plan. “One of my grandfathers is French Canadian. The group of four that was parked next to us was speaking French. We’ll pretend we’re with their party. Ready?”
She gulped and nodded. He kept his body between her and Boggs’s view as he adjusted the pack on her back.
Hutt pulled up close and drew a cigarette from a pack in his breast pocket. “Got a light?”
“Ah, non,” Sabriel said with a heavy French accent. “No smoke.”
Hutt stared, no doubt hoping to intimidate. Stare all you want, buddy. All you’re gonna see in my mirrored shades is your own reflection.
Nora started to fidget, then tugged on his sleeve and said, “Eh, on y va?”
Well, well, Nora had a few surprises of her own.
Hutt’s gaze flicked between them before he stepped back to his post.
As Sabriel and Nora strolled onto the trail, Costlow looked up from his map and nodded a greeting.
“Salut.” Sabriel waved at him and wrapped one hand around Nora’s. Her fingers shook against his and he gave them a little squeeze.
He pulled her intimately close, and bent down to tell her one of his grandfather’s bad jokes in French as if he were showering her with sweet nothings. Right on cue, she giggled. A little forced, but good enough to have Costlow dismiss them and scan over their shoulders into the parking lot.
A spurt of triumph raced through his blood. She’d done it. She’d kept her cool and fooled the Colonel’s men, who saw her every day.
The trail wound and turned, climbing northeast and skirting the rushing Flint River for the first mile through beeches, maples and hemlocks, then broke away to cut more steeply through rocky terrain. Wind gusted in small puffs, streaming through the russets, reds and browns of the woods. A hawk slid through the air above almost flush with the mountain’s side, then it dove out of sight.
Costlow followed at a distance, but Sabriel didn’t alter his leisurely pace. As the forest’s Web site had predicted, the ground was saturated with water and held on to their tracks. That was going to be a problem once they left the trail.
“How did they know where to look?” Nora asked, puffing out the question as if it had been jumping around in her mouth for the last mile.
“Maybe they spotted the vehicle Tommy used to get there.”
“I didn’t see his Jeep.”
“He could’ve borrowed or rented something else.” Sabriel slanted her a curious glance. “You know French?”
She shrugged. “Couldn’t do math worth a darn in school, but I picked up languages fast. French, German, Spanish. I’ve always wanted to travel.”
Not this way, he’d bet. For someone with wanderlust, the Colonel’s mansion must have felt doubly like a prison. Why had she stayed there so long? None of your business, buster.
He could see her in the vineyards of France, the coast of Spain, the Black Forest of Germany, soaking in all the local flavors like a sea sponge. She looked like the type who wouldn’t stick to the tourist routes, but explore side roads, making the trip exciting for anyone who’d lucked into tagging along.
He shook his head and readjusted his pack. Yeah, right, and you know that how?
They trekked along a section of deadwood, probably blown down by a storm, bare trunks lying across each other like a giant game of pick-up sticks. A little farther up dead snags, still standing, mixed with new trees—the forest regenerating itself. Heading into the mountains usually felt that way, like a regeneration, a filling of spirit.
Not today. Not with Nora a target. A liability. His responsibility. A shiver ran through him as if a bank of clouds had blown across the sun.
Forty feet farther up the trail, Sabriel spotted Tommy’s first sign, pointing them into the woods. A big toe-shaped rock stuck on a tulip-shaped leaf. “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” A smile wobbled on his lips. Tommy’s bizarre sense of humor in action. He wanted them to track through the deadwood. The blister on the leaf indicated the direction and position of the next sign.
With Nora’s inexperience outdoors, ditching their tail wasn’t going to be a breeze. This chase, this action, this hunt was what the Colonel had trained his goons for. Costlow wouldn’t fool or give up easily. Not with the scent of possible blood in the air.
Sporting a lover’s smile, which came much too effortlessly when he looked into her eyes, Sabriel turned to Nora. He bent down toward her as if to kiss her, felt the twitch of desire ripple through his gut, and whispered, “This is where we leave the trail. We just have to take care of our escort first.”
* * *
NORA’S HEART kicked into high gear. After they’d gone by the last of the Colonel’s men at the trailhead, she’d thought their ruse had worked and they’d left all three thugs behind. She jerked her head toward the trail behind them, but Sabriel held her face in place with the tips of his fing
ers, rough on the sensitive skin of her jaw.
“Don’t look.” The tranquil green of his eyes held her in thrall like a hypnotist’s pendulum. His gentle smile and the calm tone of his voice quieted the flutters in her stomach.
“Someone’s following us?” To her horror, her voice squeaked. “But how? We fooled them.”
“Just Costlow. He was probably told to track any man-woman team for a short distance.”
“Is he going to be a problem?”
His smile widened. “Not when I’m done with him.”
Dragging in a breath, she nodded. Playing along with his lover’s ploy, she looped her arms around his neck, fighting her need to plaster herself against him and drink in his confidence. “He has a gun.”
“He’s not going to want to attract attention while other hikers are around. There’s still cell reception here. He can’t afford to have the authorities mixed up in this.” Sabriel brushed his lips against hers to give the illusion of a kiss and her mouth fell open, craving a taste. “He’s still checking things out. He needs privacy.”
Not as reassuring as she would have liked. Finding her balance, she let her hands slip from his neck, missing his solid warmth. “Once he figures it out, he’ll have a starting point. He’ll call the others. They could get to Scotty first.”
“We don’t have to hand him a map.” Sabriel set off, holding her hand firmly in his. “Pretend you’re fascinated by the scenery.” He grinned crookedly. “Or me.”
Her head roared with a rush of blood. Under different circumstances, he would fascinate her. The dark, exotic looks. The wild green of his eyes. The contrast of savage vitality and wry humor. Her pulse sobered. All she could think of now was Scotty. Finding him and keeping him from the Colonel.
And since Sabriel had pointed out the thug’s presence, his preylike energy hooked the back of her neck like leeches. The trail up ahead curved into a bend, and she couldn’t wait to break the sticky hold.
Sabriel caught her elbow, his fingers transmitting both reassurance and urgency. “Stay an arm’s length behind me and follow my every footstep.”
Just before the bend, Sabriel left the trail as if he planned on cutting the corner. “This way.”
Nora plunged into the thick undergrowth right behind him. This did not seem like a good plan. They were going even slower now, giving Costlow a chance to catch up.
Around a maple thicker than her arm span, Sabriel did some sort of fancy footwork that made the seconds tick by with molasses slowness. Costlow’s black fleece bobbed through the woods, and Nora turtled into her jacket, seeking to make the smallest possible target.
She drew her lips in, biting down on them to keep her questions trapped so her voice wouldn’t beam their position like a clarion. Ha! As if her voice would matter with her footsteps stirring dead leaves into a mad frenzy.
Sabriel zigzagged, twisted and veered, and she struggled to keep up. You’d think she weighed a thousand pounds with the racket she was making. What was he thinking?
Away from the trail—she sucked at distances—he shifted direction again, forty-five degrees to the right. Then started walking in a way that would double them back on their own trail.
Hurried footsteps and frustrated curses echoed somewhere behind them. “I need backup.”
Oh, great, Sabriel’s maneuvers had given them away. For all she knew, Costlow had still thought they were French before Sabriel acted oddly enough to attract attention.
At the edge of the trail, using a fat oak for camouflage, Sabriel paused and scanned the area, then burst onto the trail and into the blinding sunlight, making her blink. He was heading in the direction they’d just evaded. This was crazy. He was trying to get them caught.
She jabbed him with her elbow, frowning fiercely, and silently asked him what was going on.
He shook his head, but didn’t elaborate. He looked up and down at their tracks, then slowed and walked backward, signaling her to do the same.
Where granite poked through the thin skin of earth, Sabriel dodged left, on the opposite side of the trail, taking them into the tangle of dead trees that looked ready to break ankles.
Moving as silently and as smoothly as a fox, setting a fast pace, but adjusting for her slower gait, he slid between impossible gaps, squeezed past trunks, snaked around boulders, crawled under branches. While she crashed behind him like a drunken squirrel, chugging breaths as loudly as a steam locomotive. How was that going to fool Costlow?
The dead strangle of downed trees gave way to forest and the trees choked around them as if they would never let them go. A maze with no exit.
Sweat poured down her torso, chafing her skin under the pack’s strap with every step. She whipped a frantic glance toward the marked trail they’d left only minutes ago. Damp leaves glittered like pennies in the sun, shimmering the tree trunks around her in a mirage that transformed the landscape into something as alien as Saturn.
One truth mushroomed with each of her labored breaths. She could not crack this wilderness code alone. If anything happened to Sabriel, she would be profoundly lost.
She didn’t like being so dependent on him. On anyone. In this thick vastness of the outdoors, she realized just how bleak a prison she’d made for herself and for Scotty at the mansion. Rather than prepare herself for independence after the divorce, she’d hung on like some sort of remora on a shark. She’d done so with good intentions, for Scotty’s sake, but everybody knew what road good intentions paved.
At least the trail behind them was deserted. Had they lost Costlow?
“Looking back like that—” Sabriel signaled toward the tube attached to the water bladder in her pack and took a sip from his own. “That’s good. People get lost because they don’t look back to see how things would look on the way home.”
She was in the belly of a magnificent, dangerous and unpredictable beast. It could swallow her up without a burp. Please, Tommy, keep Scotty safe.
“Being scared isn’t a weakness,” Sabriel said, striding forward again, climbing around a tumble of boulders. “It’s facing reality. You’re out of your element here. It should scare the crap out of you.”
“You must have failed Comfort 101.”
He laughed and the sound was so unexpected and rich that it tripped an echoing rattle in her gut that had nothing to do with the rough terrain. “Yeah, but I aced survival school.”
Knowing that was true helped calm her. “How do you know where to go?”
“I can read the signs Tommy and Scotty left behind.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Wherever you go, you leave a trace.” He stopped and, using his finger as a pointer, he drew a snaking line in the air to the rising terrain ahead. “Tommy’s path is steady. There, Scotty skips ahead. He stops there, probably to check out a bug on the rock. He sat there on that jut. Tommy sat next to him on the fallen log. Looks like they had some trail mix. There’s a half a peanut and a raisin on the ground.”
“You can see all that?” And she saw nothing. Was he making this up to make her feel better? She knuckled the bony joint between her breasts. It didn’t matter. She’d take his tale—lie or truth. Scotty was alive. He was healthy. He was happy. And Tommy was taking good care of him.
Sabriel turned her around, the hard length of his body a comforting brace behind her. “Look where you’ve been. Can you see the crushed vegetation? The imprint of your boot in the moss? The scratch of your pack on that birch?”
She frowned. The tiny fresh scar on the white flesh, maybe. But the others?
“It took me a lot of dirt time to learn,” he said. “All it takes is practice.”
Sure. Easy for him to say. But she didn’t have time to practice.
She nevertheless hung on to the image of Scotty skipping, safe in Tommy’s care, and pushed on, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other on the moist leaf litter that sucked at her boots.
The silence between her and Sabriel grew as she focused on fol
lowing his footsteps in the ever changing, yet indistinguishable, landscape.
The smell of evergreen and moss and a biting kind of spiciness that was unique to wilderness scented the air. Giant boulders, strewn cascades of rocks and trip wires of roots bulging out of the sparse ground all conspired to make her stumble on a regular basis.
They came to a slope that seemed to have carved high steps out of the granite. The rock was slick with a trickle of water and her boots scuffed along the slippery surface. She fell down hard on one knee, letting out an oomph of breath.
Sabriel reached for her hand, helping her up the odd staircase. A man’s hand, strong and rough. As soon as she was over the obstacle, he dropped his hand, but its warmth lingered against her palm.
What was wrong with her? How could she think of Sabriel as a man when her son was in danger?
Survival, she thought. Her life and her son’s depended on this man. Forming a bond of trust was normal, necessary even. Hadn’t she done the same to survive the streets of Boston after her mother had dumped her?
On the rising ground, her ankles rolled through every possible contortion of their joint. Her feet were so hot they felt on fire. So were her lungs. The pack’s straps cut into her shoulders, numbing them.
Still, she soldiered on. She wasn’t going to complain. She wasn’t going to make Sabriel regret he took her along. They would find Scotty. Soon. Safe. And somehow she would find a way to save him from the Colonel.
The trees thinned and they came to a flat expanse of bare rock that provided the first view of their upcoming journey. The vast breadth of boundless sky stole her breath away and stamped her mind with the impossibility of the task ahead of them.
All those trees. All those cliffs. All those mountains. Ridge after ridge of them. Even living in their shadows for eleven years had not prepared her for how far the White Mountains stretched out. Her heart kicked. Scotty might as well be a needle in the haystack of these endless woods.
“We’ll find them,” Sabriel said as if he could read her mind.
“It’s so…big.”
“Tommy’s leaving us the map.”
Nodding, she willed her mind to slow and not jump straight to the worst-case scenario. Sabriel could read the map. He would find them. She had to trust.
