Luke crouched. The Hunter couldn’t be that far ahead, not at the crawl he’d been going. Now it was the archer’s turn to be the hunted one. Luke would slip along the water’s edge, hiding behind the tree cover until he could catch sight of the Hunter on the water. Then Luke would get ahead of him and find a place where he could hide. When the Hunter’s watercraft came into range, he would leap, catch him around the neck, pull him into the water and rip the mask from his face. He would finally bring his reign of terror to an end.
A large white boat loomed on the horizon. Rescue, perhaps. Well, by the time it got here, the Hunter would be in his custody.
Luke stood slowly and prepared to run. A cold, cruel chuckle wafted up from the water below him. No. He can’t have— Luke looked down.
The Hunter was standing on the rocks below him, his bow aimed toward the cave where Nicky, Aaron and Gracie hid unaware and helpless. An ice-cold shiver spread down Luke’s limbs like frost on a windowpane.
The Hunter had tricked him. The realization hit Luke like a blow to the gut and nearly brought him to his knees.
The Hunter drew his arrow back and aimed at the rock.
The arrow seemed to sizzle in the air as Luke ran for the edge, a prayer exploding through his heart. Lord! Please! Don’t let anyone be hurt because of my mistake!
The Hunter’s arrow flew. An explosion shook the ground beneath Luke’s feet. He felt the earth buckle and give way as the entire rock face slid out from under him. His hands scrambled in vain for something to grab. Then Luke was falling, tumbling down in an uncontrollable cascade of dirt and rocks and trees.
His body fell into the water. His head hit rock. Earth and trees tumbled down the hill around him. The entrance to the cave disappeared completely, erased and buried, under the rock.
SIXTEEN
A rumble filled the air. The cave shook. Then, as Nicky watched, it was as if the entire cave roof above her folded in toward them. “Get back!”
She scrambled backward into the cave. Rock fell around her. Dirt filled her eyes. The flashlight went out. A deafening roar of falling earth echoed in her ears. She stumbled over camp equipment before Aaron grabbed her arm and pulled her deeper into the darkness. Her head smacked against the ceiling. She started to crawl. A cry for God’s mercy filled her lungs.
Then silence.
Nicky coughed. She was lying on the ground, the granite floor pressing into her back. Her flashlight was dead. She blinked unseeingly into a wave of black and gray. Then a tiny spot of light flickered on beside her and the pale, pale faces of Aaron and Gracie swam into view. “Everyone okay?”
Gracie nodded. “Yeah. Think so.”
Aaron managed a weak smile. “Nothing seems broken.” A penlight glowed in his hands.
Nicky let her eyes close in prayer for a second. Thank You, God. Then she turned toward the solid wall of rock and debris, where just moments ago she’d watched Luke slip through the cave’s mouth and out into the light of day. Where was Luke? Was he okay?
“Are we trapped?” Gracie’s voice yanked Nicky’s focus back to attention. The young woman sounded worried, but not panicked. Good. The calmer they stayed, the safer they would be.
“I hope not.” Nicky kept her voice level. Prayers spun through her heart. She pulled herself up to crouching. Aaron’s tiny pocket light flickered over the scene. Huge chunks of the rock littered the floor. The scattered pile of camp supplies was partially buried. Her flashlight still wouldn’t turn on, so she shook it by her ear; all she could hear was the tinkling sound of broken glass. She pressed her fingers into her temples and tried to put together what she’d just seen. Luke had swum out of the cave. She’d waited, half hoping he’d come to his senses, turn around and come back. Then...
Laughter. She’d heard the sound of someone laughing. The same way the Hunter had laughed at them when he’d first ambushed them on the island two nights ago and laughed at her while she’d slept. The Hunter had probably booby-trapped the rock face above the cave with some kind of explosive that he could trigger easily, by arrow, from a distance. She sighed. They’d probably run right into a trap. “Have you guys tried climbing out of here the way you fell in?”
“Yeah,” Aaron said. “But the drop was pretty steep. We might as well have fallen down a well. We couldn’t even get up a couple of feet without sliding back down.”
“Okay, then, so we focus our energy on digging ourselves out this way.” Nicky turned the broken flashlight over in her hands. The light bulb was shattered, but the flashlight itself was heavy, aluminum and fairly solid. Not a half-bad weapon, depending on what she met on the other side of the rock. She unscrewed the top of the flashlight, dumped out the batteries, then stomped on the open part as hard as she could. The metal flattened under her heel. Voilá, instant shovel.
“Okay,” she said. “One of you go through the supplies, find something you can use to dig, then come join me up here. The other one gather up everything we can eat, drink, use to keep warm or start a fire with, and put it together in a bag. Just in case we’re trapped awhile, I want to be prepared.”
Especially as that little penlight wouldn’t last forever. She ran her hand along the uneven wall of the cave-in, looking for a safe place to dig. Rock. Dirt. Grass. Tree roots. Pine needles. She pressed her lips together tightly. If the forest floor above had ended up inside the cave then the landslide must have been bigger than she’d realized. She dug her makeshift shovel into a patch of earth near the top of the mound.
“Where do you want me to dig?” Aaron clutched last night’s stew ladle.
“Start over here. Pull away any large rocks that move easily. Just don’t touch anything that looks like it’s bearing weight. We don’t want to risk the ceiling caving in any farther.”
It was slow going and tedious. They chipped away at the mound in front of them and pried out rocks with their fingertips. For a moment she thought she heard a boat in the distance, but then the sound faded before she could even wonder if it belonged to a friend or a foe. Gracie joined in the digging after a while. The hole grew deeper. Suddenly there was a crash from the other side of the rock. Nicky froze. They heard another crack. A man grunted. A tiny sliver of light appeared between the rocks.
Then came a shout. “Hey! Anyone alive in there?”
“Yes!” Thank You, God! “Three of us!”
“Okay. Stand back!” Rocks tumbled toward them as the hole widened enough for a man’s face to pop through.
“Neil?” She blinked. “What are you doing here?”
Well, if she was going to have a hallucination, the rival camp director probably wouldn’t have been her first choice.
“Yup. Ace Sports to the rescue.” Neil grinned. He chipped away at the hole. “George sent me. Sorry it took me a while to get to you. Had to moor the powerboat off shore a ways and paddle in on a life dinghy. Everyone doing okay in there?”
“Yeah.” She glanced past him into the clear, blue sky beyond. “Have you seen Luke? Is he okay?”
“Yup! He’s right here, sitting in the dinghy talking to police on my satellite phone. He was a bit banged up from the fall, but your boy’s a tough one.” Neil reached both arms through the hole. “Now grab my hands and I’ll pull you out of there.”
She stepped toward his outstretched hands. Then she stopped, as suspicion ruffled the back of her mind. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
Neil blinked. “Seriously?”
Her fist tightened around her makeshift shovel. “I’m not going anywhere until I see Luke.”
Neil pulled his arms back through the hole. “Okay, okay, have it your way.” He disappeared from view. “Hey, Luke! Apparently Nicky wants some proof of life from you. Can you give her a shout?”
Nicky climbed up on a rock and peered through the hole. She blinked as the glare of the late-aft
ernoon sun hit her eyes. Ace Sport’s powerboat was moored off the island. An inflatable life-dinghy bobbed in the water beside the cave, with Luke sitting inside, cross-legged. With one hand he held Neil’s high-tech satellite phone to his ear. With the other he turned one of the Hunter’s arrows over slowly in his fingers. He looked exhausted.
“Hey!” Luke waved. “Yeah, I’m alive. The Hunter is nowhere in sight and I’m on with the police right now. Now hurry up and let’s get out of here before the Hunter comes back.”
Then Neil’s face was back. “Luke told me our top priority should be getting a couple people to the hospital to get checked out. Seems like all of your campers are going to be passing through the emergency room. The whole lot of them that came back yesterday had the worst food poisoning I’ve ever seen. Showed up at the hospital so sick a couple of them even needed rehydration IVs. That’s why I told George I’d come by today and check up on you.”
“Is my mom okay?”
“What about David?”
Gracie and Aaron practically spoke over each other.
“All fine. Tabitha is still in hospital, but should be out today. She was one of the sickest. Martin was discharged this morning, and also had some kind of sprain. He went home, I think. I’m not too sure. I put David up in a chalet at Ace overnight. Trevor is still saying he’s feeling too sick to go out on the water. So, like I said, I offered to motor out here and check up on things. So, you guys ready to get out of here, or what?”
Nicky stood back to let Aaron climb through first, then Gracie. Then, finally, she tumbled out of the hole and into Neil’s waiting arms. He chuckled and set her down on the rock. “Here you go. Safe and sound.”
“Thank you.” A flush rose to her cheeks. But her eyes were set firmly on where Luke sat, still on the phone with the police. He’d barely looked at her.
Disappointment dripped into the recesses of her heart, even as she told herself she had no reason to be bothered. It only made sense that Neil had been the one to haul that last bit of rock away while Luke called the police. Obviously filing a police report was more important and pressing than simply standing outside a hole in the rock waiting to catch her, and it wasn’t as if Luke wouldn’t have helped dig, too, after he was off the phone. Still...
Luke put down the phone and stood carefully, bracing one foot on a rock. Her eyes searched his face, looking for any invitation to rush to him, to wrap her arms around his neck and tell him how relieved she was to see him safe. Instead, she ran her hands through her tangled hair, then down over her jeans. She was a mess. Every single part of her was streaked with dirt. “Luke, what happened? Are you okay?”
The glimmer of a smile briefly tugged at the corner of his lips. Then he sighed like a man four times his age.
“The Hunter got away. He’d rigged the cave to explode and the fall knocked me out cold. I’m so sorry, Nicky. I really should have seen it coming. Thankfully, Neil saw the explosion from a distance and made it here before the situation could get any worse. I’m just really glad you made it out okay.” The arrow spun slowly in his hand. The arrowhead still looked so sharp it probably hadn’t hit its intended target.
“You’ve got one of his arrows.”
“Pulled it out of the water, I’m guessing it was intended as a parting shot after the rocks fell. The police are going to be out with a fleet of boats checking the shore for any glimpse of the Hunter. They’ll be combing this island for clues and launching a full-scale manhunt.”
Luke and Neil paddled the dinghy back to Ace Resorts’ sleek white powerboat. They all climbed aboard and started for the mainland.
Gracie took the passenger seat at the front of the boat with Neil. Aaron stretched out in the very back of the boat, letting his arms fall over his face. In minutes, the twin had fallen asleep. Nicky and Luke sat side by side on plush leather seats facing backward. She watched as the island faded into the distance.
That was it? So, this was how their story ended. The Hunter had gotten away. Neil had been the one to play knight in shining armor. And she and Luke were back to sitting in a boat, not even knowing what to say to each other.
Luke’s gray-blue eyes stared almost blankly out over the white spray of water spreading out behind them. It was the same faraway look he’d had years ago when they were younger, on the day before he’d tried to steal the cash box and run away. His arm was just inches away from hers. The fingers on his right hand hung in midair beside hers. It would be so easy to touch him, to just reach her hand out to squeeze his arm or to loop her fingers through his.
She sat back. Well, what had she been thinking was actually going to happen at the end of all this? That Luke was going to leap from the cave, singlehandedly defeat the Hunter, then pull her deeply into his arms and promise to stay by her side forever?
An unexpected giggle almost slipped through her lips. All that sounded exactly how eighteen-year-old Nicky would have imagined the story ending. But life wasn’t a cotton-candy fantasy. At least now God had given her a glimpse of the man Luke had become, which was a far better memory of him to be left with.
Well, Lord, I never thought I’d say this, but thank You that Luke broke my heart and ran from me all those years ago. He needed to grow up so much, and I wasn’t mature enough to take it. Seeing him now, seeing everything he’s become, I just want to say thank You for the man he became without me. And thank You for the woman I became without him.
The boat slowed. She opened her eyes. The burned-out shell of Camp Spirit’s main lodge loomed between the trees. Speaking of misjudging, she probably owed Neil an apology, too. She swiveled in her seat and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, I’m really sorry I was so suspicious when you rescued us from that cave.”
Neil shrugged. “Consider it forgotten. Going through everything you’d gone through, I’m not surprised if you went a little loopy.” He steered the boat past Camp Spirit and farther down the coast toward the largest of Ace Resort’s boathouses. “I promise, the fact you suspected me of being a serial killer won’t have any impact on our working relationship.”
She forced a smile. Nice try. It would take a lot more than getting trapped in a cave-in and hunted by a killer to convince her to abandon George and quit her job at Camp Spirit. “Ha-ha. Thanks, but I’ve told you before I’m not about to come work for Ace Sports. Camp Spirit is going to need a lot of help recovering from everything that’s happened this weekend, and I intend to stick with it and help see it through.”
“Yeah, I know.” Neil cut the engine. He draped one arm over the steering wheel and glanced back at her. “That’s why I told George I’d be willing to mentor you through the whole, big transition. In fact, George asked me just yesterday if I’d be willing to sit down and give you any advice I had on dealing with the new owners.”
“New owners? What new owners?” She couldn’t have sat up straighter or more suddenly if Neil had stabbed an actual dart in her spine.
Luke spun around in his seat, too. Was this what George had summoned Luke up here for? Had the secret thing George needed to discuss with Luke been nothing more than asking him to cover the story about George’s plans to sell the place?
“What on earth are you talking about? I’d know if George had been showing the place around to prospective buyers. In fact, he told me specifically he was looking for a few key investors, to keep the place running as it was. So I presumed he was planning on hanging on to it a while longer.”
Neil shrugged again. “Well, I heard it from the old man himself. And it’s not just one new owner. They’re apparently taking it to a shareholder model just like Ace Sports. So I hope you’re prepared to go from dealing with one nice old man to answering to a whole room full of money-hungry task masters. Trust me, it isn’t fun.” He turned back to the shoreline. “Don’t say I didn’t try to warn you. I told you Friday I thought something was up with him. But in my experienc
e, staff is usually the last to know.”
Staff. And here George had always made her feel like family instead of someone he just paid to manage camp counselors, teach kids how to paddle canoes and make sure people kept the cabins clean. Then why did George put her through the charade of taking a whole group of people to the island? Was he hoping the likes of Bear and Russ had enough money to buy a few shares?
Her chest felt so tight she could barely breathe. The sound of her own pounding heart filled her ears. No wonder Trevor had been so arrogant when she’d caught him searching bags. He must have known a sale was in the works and that as soon as George signed the paperwork, Trevor was finally going to get his quick cash payday.
Luke was leaning forward now. He was listening intently, with a smile on his lips.
Hang on—Luke thought this was a good idea? Tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked hard and didn’t let them fall. George had betrayed her. The camp was going to be divvied up among a group of money-hungry strangers. And Luke was actually happy about it? George and Luke were the two men she’d cared about the most in her entire adult life. Now she was left wondering how much she actually mattered to either of them.
* * *
Thank You, God, that George was finally selling the camp! Luke glanced to the sky, though, as the prayer of relief filled his chest. It was time George let himself retire and relax, not to mention, finally, Nicky would be working for the kind of place able to make her dreams come true. Not to mention, she would be safe. Sure, it would probably be hard on her. But if anyone could handle the challenge it was Nicky.
Neil leaned back in his seat, steering the boat with one hand while talking over his shoulder. “Can’t blame him really,” Neil went on. “It’s not like Trevor was ever going to want to run the place. It was pretty obvious that kid was just putting in time until he could get enough cash together to take off again. In fact, when Trevor was on a supply run back to camp yesterday, George told me straight-up that a big part of his main motivation for stepping aside now was that he wanted to give Trevor his inheritance while he was still young enough to go make something of his life. That’s one seriously nice dad Trev’s got.”
Silent Hunter Page 13
