Prey: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  There wasn’t any sign of that freaky bear, either. Weren’t bears infamous for trashing camps looking for food? The tents looked undisturbed. Of course, Angie had done a big song and dance about keeping the food so far away from the camp, in a basket strung between two trees, about fifteen feet high, so maybe she’d been right about doing that.

  He stood there for a long time, watching, listening, though he doubted he could hear anything over the steady drumming of the rain. Nothing moved. There was no sound other than wind and rain. Was it possible he’d been lucky enough to have hit her with that one wild shot and she was already dead? He didn’t care if she’d died from a bullet or the bear, so long as she was no longer a problem.

  It was also possible that she was stalking him as he was stalking her. He thought of her watching him, slowly bringing her rifle up, sighting through the scope … being hunted wasn’t exactly the same kind of rush being the hunter was. She might be behind him, to the left, to the right … in one of those tents, watching and waiting for him to reveal himself. His heart began beating even harder. He gripped the pistol more tightly. If she’d seen him, she’d have already shot … right? One thing was certain; he couldn’t stand here until night came again, waiting for inspiration, or luck.

  Slowly he crept around the campsite, his gaze on Angie’s tent. For the first time in hours he forgot about his physical misery, forgot about being cold and wet and hungry. All his discomfort was washed away in a heady combination of excitement and fear. It was impossible to separate the two, to tell which was making him breathe faster, which was making his stomach dance.

  Finally he stood just behind Angie’s tent, listening. Silence. If she was inside, she wasn’t moving a muscle. She could have fallen asleep. Maybe she was worn out from staying awake all night waiting for him, poor baby. How would she have liked being stuck under a rock overhang with four horses all night, soaking wet, trying to keep them calm, with only their body heat to keep him from freezing? An almost vicious sense of anticipation seized him; he wanted to make her suffer the way he’d suffered.

  He figured he’d be most vulnerable while he was unzipping the tent’s entrance. He’d be crouched, one hand occupied, and the sound might wake her—No, wait. He wasn’t thinking clearly. The zip would be secured from the inside. If she was there, he wouldn’t be able to unzip the entrance, but on the up side, he’d know for certain she was in there, because tents couldn’t zip themselves.

  That realization was elating. He might not be as good at this wilderness shit as she was, but he’d outsmart her. He’d outsmarted everyone his whole life, because they expected him to be some doofus nerd. Why should she be any different?

  Gingerly, one slow step at a time, he worked his way around the tent, until he could see the entrance.

  It wasn’t zipped. The entrance flap hung open.

  His heart almost failed him. Had she heard him coming, and left the tent before he got close enough to see the entire camp? Or was she in there anyway, just out of sight, the entrance open so she could see him and—

  He had to calm down, go back to his earlier thought: If she had the opportunity to shoot, why hadn’t she already done so? He was an accountant; he was a logical person, and he could do some deductive reasoning. If she’d been able to shoot, he’d already be dead. He wasn’t dead, therefore she wasn’t able to shoot.

  Emboldened, despite the way his knees were shaking, he quickly stuck his head inside the tent. It was empty.

  Okay. All right. She wasn’t here. Was she clever enough to hide in his tent, figuring he wouldn’t think to look for her there? No, she had to figure he’d go to his own tent for dry clothes and a slicker, which would make it the perfect interception point, right? If she was there, the best place for her to be, and the most dangerous place for him to go, was his own tent.

  He straightened away from Angie’s tent and took another look around the silent camp. Well, fuck it. He had to have dry clothes. He made his way over to his tent, his feet sinking more deeply into the mud; the ground had deteriorated more in this direction.

  He did the same routine, standing and listening for what felt like forever, and hearing nothing from inside the tent. He summoned his nerve, then quickly looked inside his own tent. No Angie. It was just as he’d left it.

  That left Davis’s tent. God, he hoped and prayed the SUV keys were in Davis’s tent, and that Angie wasn’t. Or, if she was, that she was already dead, but why would she crawl into Davis’s tent to die?

  Because it was the closest to where he’d last seen her.

  A chill ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold or wet. Shit! Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

  Calm down, calm down. This didn’t change anything. He still would have had to check the other tents, and he’d been very quiet and careful. The same scenario still held: If she was inside the tent, the entrance would be zipped.

  Davis’s tent entrance was open, the way the other two had been. Chad checked inside, just to be certain, then straightened and looked around. Where the hell was she, unless the bear had dragged her off? He wished he had some way of knowing for certain. She wasn’t in any of the tents, therefore she was either dead or trying to walk down the mountain. If she was walking, she couldn’t be making very good time, but the fact that it was possible that she was out there made it more urgent that he find those keys and get out of the country. He didn’t know all the paths on this mountain, but he did know the direction in which she’d be going: down. And her destination was the same as his.

  Which meant he didn’t have any time to waste. He ducked into Davis’s tent, wiped away the water that was streaming down his face, and began searching. Davis hadn’t brought a lot with him; he had more clothes and gear in the back of the SUV, of course, but everything he’d brought to the camp was in his saddlebags and one small duffel. Chad dumped out the contents of both, muttering under his breath and willing the set of keys to be there. Nothing. He went through everything again, more slowly this time, running his hand into every pocket of every garment, even looking under the inflatable mattress and inside the sleeping bag.

  The keys weren’t here.

  He sat down on the mattress and took a deep breath. Damn it, he needed those keys! Surely to God Davis hadn’t kept them in his pocket, when there was no use for them up here, but logically, that was the only other place to look. They had to be on his body, or what was left of it. Chad shuddered at the thought of searching a partially eaten carcass, then wondered if the damn bear would swallow keys and clothes, too, the way sharks did. God.

  Screw this. He didn’t have time to look for Davis’s remains and paw through bloody crap. Angie’s keys would do just fine; that wasn’t what he’d planned, and that rancher, Lattimore, would be suspicious when Angie’s truck disappeared, but that was a risk he’d have to take. He burst from the tent, for the first time in hours not even noticing the rain, and headed back toward Angie’s tent.

  He went through the same process, emptying the contents of her duffel onto the tent floor, kicking things over and out of his way, then looked around for her saddlebags. Abruptly it sank in on him that the saddlebags weren’t here. He checked everywhere again, just to make sure. No saddlebags.

  His heart began racing again, because the implication was obvious: She wasn’t dead. She was out there, heading down the mountain, and she had an hours’ long head start on him. She’d come here for supplies first; now that he took more notice of what was in the tent, he realized that her slicker and rifle were missing, too.

  He had to make it down the mountain before she did. And no matter how nauseating, he had to find the keys to the SUV.

  He left Angie’s tent and hurried once more to his own tent, got his rifle. The bear was probably long gone, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more firepower, just in case. Then he left the camp and cautiously headed toward the cook site, willing himself to move forward. He was furious with himself, because Angie was ahead of him, and she might screw
up all his plans. Damn it, he should’ve made sure she was dead, instead of panicking the way he had, taking the horses and running like a scared little girl. Sure, everything had gone wrong. He hadn’t expected Angie to see him shoot Davis, hadn’t expected the bear—who would have?—and he’d panicked. There was no excuse. He couldn’t let that happen again, because look how things had spiraled out of control.

  Steeling himself, he pushed through the trees. It wasn’t much farther; they hadn’t gone more than thirty or forty yards, had they? Yes, right there. They’d been standing right there. But Davis’s body was gone. Chad moved closer, and stepped on something squishy. The smell of shit made him gag. He looked down, blinking as it took him a moment to realize his foot wasn’t in a pile of crap, but instead was tangled in a length of shredded intestine. “Shit!” He leaped to the side, then completely lost it.

  He couldn’t control his reaction. He turned his head and violently vomited onto the ground, gagging on bile. He hadn’t eaten anything in hours, so in short order he had the dry heaves. Jesus! The pieces of carnage scattered around were no longer recognizable as a man, much less as Mitchell Davis. The rain had washed a lot of the blood into the ground, but nothing could cleanse this scene, nothing could make it anything less than horrible.

  When he could control his stomach, he wiped his streaming eyes, then his mouth. He took small steps forward, trying not to step on anything else that had once been part of Davis. Even in the rain, the stench was almost overpowering. He tried to breathe through his mouth instead of his nose, but then he could actually taste the stench. His stomach heaved again, and he went through another convulsive spasm, bent over from the waist, snot streaming from his nose. He found himself looking at a piece of a shirt beside what looked to be a part of a hand. Yeah, that was a finger—badly mauled, but still recognizable.

  Then he found that, after the initial horror, his brain either began accepting what he was seeing, or shut down any reaction at all. When he could straighten up and breathe again, even though he was wheezing like a hundred-year-old geezer, somehow the carnage didn’t seem quite as bad. Maybe one piece of body wasn’t any worse than the next piece. Forget about Davis; he’d already been dead when the bear began gnawing on his body, so it hadn’t made any difference to him.

  Feeling calmer, Chad scanned the clearing until he saw a scrap of denim. He made his way to it, looking only at the fabric, not the scattered remnants of what had once been a man. When he got closer, he saw that the denim appeared to be a scrap of a lower pant leg. That was useless. There were other blue scraps scattered here and there, some too small, too shredded, to be what he was looking for. If the keys had fallen to the ground, in this muddy mess, he might never find them. Damn Davis; why hadn’t he left the keys in the tent? Or let Chad drive?

  There was nothing here. Despairing, he turned in a complete circle, looking beyond the clearing into the undergrowth of bushes, and finally something that, well, it wasn’t blue, but it was—He went closer, pushed the bush aside, yelped when a thorn cut across his palm.

  He swallowed hard, then dropped to his haunches and stared at what was left of the torn, bloodstained jeans. Some of Davis was still in them. Not much, but he started gagging again. He steeled himself, then reached out and stuck his hand inside the pocket that was closest to him, searching for the keys. Even the inside of the pocket felt squishy and sticky. He closed his eyes, tried to pretend that these were just another pair of jeans, just another pocket. His fingers dipped all the way to the bottom of the pocket. No keys.

  Fuck! In a fit of rage, he stood and kicked the piece of carcass. Now what was he supposed to do?

  Think, he commanded himself. Think! What would Davis have done with the keys?

  Then he almost slapped himself on the forehead. He was an idiot. Davis was right-handed, so of course the keys would be in the right pocket. He’d poked through the mess in the left pocket, not the right.

  Using the toe of his boot, he kicked and prodded until the piece of carcass was rolled onto its other side. “One more time,” he whispered as he shoved his hand into the pocket. This time he wasn’t so squeamish; he had to have those keys. If the bear had eaten them, he didn’t know what he’d do. Ride his horse into the next town, steal a car, run like hell … The odds that plan would work were slim to none, and he knew it.

  His fingers brushed metal. He grabbed the keys, pulled them out, held them clutched in his fist. He almost burst into tears.

  For a minute he just stood there, eyes closed, keys clutched in his hand. He was so elated and relieved he almost couldn’t believe he’d actually found them, that something had gone right after such a fucking miserable night when everything else had gone wrong.

  Okay. He was back from the brink of disaster. This would still work. Maybe Angie Powell was out there, but he had a horse and she didn’t, and he had a plan and she didn’t. He’d worked too hard for this to let one woman screw it up.

  Maybe he’d run into her along the trail. Maybe he’d get another chance to kill her. He wouldn’t look for her—that would take too much time and priority number one was making his escape. But if he did run across her, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot her. This time he’d make sure she was dead before he ran.

  Holding the keys in his hands made all the difference. Things were back on track. He was in charge of his own fate again, and by God, nothing was going to get in his way.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The bear roused. After it had fed all it wanted, sated and tired, it had taken shelter from the storm under a giant deadfall that had partially blocked the wind and rain and slept through the rest of the night.

  It had fed well the past few days. Early in the evening, before the storm, it had gone back to its previous kill to finish eating, and picked up the fresh scent trail of another human. He followed it to a place that was rich with odors, that of big animals mingled with more of the humans. Then the smell of fresh blood had all but exploded in his nose and he hadn’t been able to wait, the prey was there, the meat still hot and fresh, the blood still flowing. This prey hadn’t even run; catching it was much easier than before.

  Now the bear had rested, and for now it was content to stay in its shelter, curled up and content. He heard some noises, but the weather and his own well-fed state gave him no incentive to investigate. There were a couple of interesting smells, but in his content, sleepy state they weren’t strong enough, enticing enough, to pull him back out into the rain.

  He had scratched some debris over the uneaten remains, and when his stomach was no longer full he would go back to his kill.

  The scent would still be there.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Angie jerked awake from a deep sleep, sharp pain shooting through her ankle. She must have made a sound, because the big hand resting on her stomach gave her a comforting pat.

  “Ankle bothering you?” The mutter, in Dare’s gravelly voice, came from just behind her ear. He sounded as if he were barely awake.

  “Just when I move it,” she answered groggily. Her head was so filled with fog she could barely form the words. Her body was still heavy with fatigue, her muscles like noodles. She managed to crack her eyes open a slit; the small space was gloomy with dark gray shadows. She knew where she was, but she didn’t know when she was. Was it twilight? Dawn? Had they slept around the clock?

  “How long have we been asleep?” she asked on a sigh, her eyes already closing as she nestled deeper into the delicious warmth.

  “Couple of hours.”

  “ ’Zat all?”

  He grunted. There was an upheaval behind her and chilly air rushed under the sleeping bag, making her hunch her shoulders as he sat up. Frowning, she cranked her eyelids open just enough to see what he was doing as he sat up and turned off the small propane heater. Oh, okay. They were warm now, so they should save the fuel.

  Her eyelids drifted shut again, closed out the dim light. It was still raining, hard, but now that she was dry and warm the eff
ect was soporific. Dare lay down behind her again, sliding up close and tight, his heavy arm resuming its place draped over her waist. It was almost like sitting in his lap. She snuggled even closer against him, wiggling her butt to find the most comfortable spot, and went back to sleep.

  She surfaced again with a sharp “Ouch!” when she banged her foot against his. Still not fully awake, she struggled to a sitting position and sat there, owlishly blinking her eyes, looking around but not really seeing their surroundings. With a groan, Dare rolled onto his back, letting his arm fall over his face to block out the light.

  Angie closed her eyes and leaned against her upraised left knee. The pain in her ankle had already subsided, leaving her with no imperative to do anything except sit there, caught in a sticky web of inertia. She would have glared at the offending joint, but that took too much effort, so she just sat there, grumpy and half asleep. “You awake?” she whispered after a few seconds, when Dare hadn’t moved again. If he wasn’t she didn’t want to disturb him, but if he was … well, she didn’t know why she was asking.

  “After you punched me? Yeah, I’m awake,” he growled.

  She thought about that, wondering if she should be indignant at being falsely accused, but again unable to muster the energy. “I didn’t punch you.” Maybe. She was pretty sure she hadn’t. She turned her head, still resting it against her knee, and opened her eyes a little. “But I might have kicked you, because it hurt my ankle.”

  “You punched me.”

  Even as sleepy as she was, as punch-drunk, she was still capable of logic. “How? You were behind me. I can’t punch backward.”

  “When you sat up.” He moved his arm just enough for one half-opened eye to glower at her. “You punched me in the stomach.”

  They glared at each other, sleepy and irritable. She could feel herself weaving. Heaving a sigh, she closed her eyes again while she thought about what he’d said. “Not a punch,” she finally insisted, having fumbled her way through her cloudy memories and making a decision. “That was my elbow, not my fist.”