by C. J. Miller
Nathan reached to his side and unsnapped his gun’s holster. “He could still be in the area.”
She nodded once, her heart galloping. She didn’t travel with her hunting rifle, but maybe this would have been a good time to start. They had a better chance against an attack when carrying protection.
Autumn looked around. Hiding in the forest was a simple matter. Was the Huntsman watching them? The hair stood up on the back of her neck. “He knows we’re here.”
Nathan pulled his gun. “How do you know? Do you see something?” He circled slowly, looking around.
Instinct. “I sense it. We’re being watched.”
“Do you want to go back to your cabin?” Nathan asked. “I can return on my own.”
Autumn shook her head. “You won’t know how to track the path.”
Nathan eyed her as if deciding. “Stay close to me. I’ll keep you safe.”
Autumn believed him. “The trail gets rougher ahead. It’s hard to get past Rock Valley,” Autumn said, thinking about the places where someone could set up shelter. Limitless possibilities, but some more practical than others.
“Rock Valley?”
She looked away from the footprints. “That’s what Blaine and I call it. It’s a pit about forty feet wide and twenty feet deep made of sharp rocks. You can climb inside, but it’s not for the faint of heart.”
Nathan shook his head. “We’re going back.”
Autumn narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t ready to give up or turn back, not when she felt they’d found something important. This might be their only break. If the Huntsman knew they were out here, if he knew they were on his trail, he would relocate. Perhaps he would make a mistake defending his territory and come after them, giving Nathan a chance to apprehend him. “I’m your trail guide and I can help. These tracks are recent. We’ll lose the scent if we don’t follow them now. The more leaves that fall from the trees, the more they’ll get covered.” As if to make a point, more red leaves fluttered to the ground.
Nathan turned his attention to the path. She’d gotten her way if only due to his relentless need to find his sister’s killer. “Why would he be that sloppy? We’ve found nothing at the other crime scenes. It could be a trap.”
Autumn swallowed hard, a chilling sense of foreboding skittering across her skin. If they left now, the killer would be in the wind. She forced her mind to think of happy things, springtime on the trail, Thanksgiving dinner and decorated pine trees for Christmas. She wanted those things back in her life—warmth, safety and happiness—and with the killer loose, she couldn’t have them. “A trap or no one else knows the area like I do. No one else had the right skills in the right place to track him.”
The Huntsman wouldn’t paralyze her with fear. The image of a scraggly mountain man with wild eyes flashed into her mind, and she stamped it out. The killer was one person. She and Nathan had each other.
Nathan cupped her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. “Stick to my hip. Do exactly as I tell you. If you see anything, if you find more evidence of a human nearby, alert me immediately. Got it?”
She nodded, her heart snapping up its pace. They’d been lucky to see the footprints, the slightest disturbance of the undergrowth. The brush and the leaves made it difficult to discern tracks in the woods. Where had the killer gone first—toward the Trail’s Edge or away from it? Despite the quiver of fear shaking in her belly, she screwed her bravery up tight. Now wasn’t the time for fear. She needed all the courage she could muster.
They were tracking a killer.
Chapter 4
It would be easy to become lost in the mountains. After a time, the trees began to look alike, the same evergreens, elms and oaks, their trunks identical, the stones and rocks dotting the way indecipherably different. The smell of pine and earth mixed with the cold air was numbing.
Autumn was at Nathan’s right side, close enough he could watch her in his peripheral vision and scan the trail ahead of them. Not so close her scent would distract him or his eyes would fixate on her slim figure and he’d trip over his feet.
She abruptly drew to a stop, grabbing his shirt. She held her finger to her lips, indicating he shouldn’t speak, and then pointed into the gorge ahead.
Her description of Rock Valley had been perfect. Gray and white stones covered the ground, some smoothed by the rain, others jutting raggedly from the dirt. On the far sides of the gorge, a full-grown bear and one smaller bear milled near the opening of a cave.
“Do you see a human presence?” Nathan whispered. After the few footprints had ended on the side of the trail, he hadn’t seen other signs of the Huntsman.
She shook her head. “They’re upset,” she said, crouching down. “They’re too restless this near hibernation.”
Nathan watched them, fascinated. He’d never been this close to wildlife, at least wildlife not secured in cages. “I didn’t realize bears were pack animals.”
“They aren’t. But they sometimes travel in groups. It’s safer. We need to get away from here without disturbing them. Do not run. Do not turn your back on them.” Her voice was calm, but her posture tense.
They stood slowly, backing away. When they were fifteen feet from the gorge, Autumn turned on a dime and froze. Her eyes went wide. A smaller black bear was meandering nearby, eating some berries off a low-hanging bush.
Nathan caught the sense of danger immediately and reached for his gun. They were between a bear cub and its mother. The bear cub wasn’t as likely to attack, but the threat was imminent. The wind blew hard.
“Maybe she didn’t see,” he began, but the protective growl echoing from the valley answered his question. Mama bear had seen them or smelled their scent on the wind. He looked over his shoulder and saw the bear barreling toward them on all fours, zigzagging on the rocks, perhaps their only saving grace to buy them extra moments to flee.
Everything happened in an instant. He grabbed Autumn’s forearm and they ran through the woods, knowing they couldn’t outrun a bear, but hoping they could get out from between the mother bear and the cub and she’d decide they were no longer a threat and not worth giving chase.
“Shoot your gun into the air,” Autumn said.
Nathan discharged his weapon into the trees, not stopping for an instant. He didn’t need to aim. He needed noise to scare off the bear, possibly warn her of danger and make her reconsider pursuing them. They wove in and out of trees, branches thwacking into his arms and face. He did his best to keep Autumn behind him so the whip of the branches missed her.
Autumn stumbled and Nathan jerked her upright, preventing her from landing face-first in the dirt and hurting herself. He had to get her to safety. He had told her he would keep her safe.
They came to a stop behind a wide tree trunk. They were out of sight, but not likely out of mind.
He glanced around the trunk and, not seeing the bear, relief rolled through him. He gulped in the cold air. Autumn had kept a steady pace from the campground to Rock Valley and he’d been tired, but he had found the energy to run. An angry bear brought that kind of motivation.
He needed a place they could hide safely. “How far are we from the nearest shelter?”
Autumn pushed her hair behind her ears. “Miles.”
“We could climb a tree and wait,” he said. “Show me some of those climbing skills.”
Autumn’s breath came in gasps and she leaned forward, bracing her hands on her thighs. Her cheeks were red with cold and exertion. “Bears can climb, too. But faster and better. I think we were incredibly lucky. I don’t think she followed us.” She let out a noise of frustration. “I was so busy looking for human prints, I forgot to look for animal ones. I should have seen the signs before we were on top of them.”
“Can you keep running?” he asked.
She took a drink from her water bottle an
d handed him another from her pack. He’d feel better if they could put more distance between themselves and the bear.
“I’m fine. We can’t hike back in that direction. We need to circle around.”
“Fine by me. No interest in returning to the bear’s den,” he said.
“We lost the tracks,” Autumn said. She took out her compass and adjusted it. She looked at her watch and then to the sky. She pointed in a direction and started walking. “I didn’t know black bears had made a home in Rock Valley. Maybe the tracks weren’t from the Huntsman. They could have been from researchers or park rangers tracking the bears.”
“Does that happen often?” Nathan asked.
Autumn shrugged. “Like I said, it’s strange the bears wouldn’t have been hibernating. It’s cold enough they should be settling in for the winter. We can talk to Ben and the other park rangers and see if they have any bear population projects ongoing.”
Autumn had a slight limp in her step.
She had tripped while they were running. He mentally berated himself for not checking if she was injured. “Are you okay?” he asked. He had some basic first-aid training and if she was hurt, he wanted to see what they could do now.
She bent to rub her knee. “I twisted my knee. I’m fine. I can walk it off.”
He had a hunch it wasn’t as minor as she made it sound, but he didn’t push the issue. Not yet. “I’ll carry the pack,” he said.
She waved him off. “I’m fine. It’s just a little sore. We should keep moving.” She glanced behind her.
He looked over his shoulder, as well, half expecting to see a bear charging toward him. As they walked, he could see she was in pain, her eyes slightly narrowed, her lips pressed together to keep from grimacing. Twenty minutes later, she finally gave up and sat on a downed tree trunk, massaging her knee. “I need to rest for a minute. I have a general direction from the compass, but I don’t know how far we are from the Trail’s Edge or the trail itself.”
Nathan stopped and squatted in front of her. They’d had an early start in the morning. They could find their way to the trail. As long as she could walk, they’d be fine. “Let me take a look at it.”
It must have hurt terribly because she acquiesced. She rolled her pant leg up her shapely calf, past her knee. He rubbed his hands together to force out some of the cold and cradled her knee in his hand, gently turning her leg left to right. Her skin was warm and soft in his hand. Nothing was protruding, but he couldn’t see the extent of the damage. It would probably bruise and make it difficult to walk. He needed to do something to make it easier for her. Seeing her in pain was difficult for him. It niggled at the protective part of his brain.
She slid her day pack off her shoulders and dug inside. She pulled out a long roll of cloth and held it up. “I’ll wrap it to give it some support.”
He took the roll from her hand, needing to feel useful. “Let me do it. It’s easier from this angle,” he said.
He held the bandage in his hand, started below the knee and wound the stretchy cloth up and around her leg several times, tightening the material around her knee to give support without cutting off the blood supply to her foot. “How’s this? Too tight?”
“No, it’s good,” Autumn said, pointing and flexing her shoe, brushing his side with her foot.
Nathan ignored the warm shiver moving down his spine at the contact. When he ran out of cloth, he secured the edge and then pulled her pant leg over it.
“That should help,” he said, setting her foot on the ground. He gave her his hand and helped her to her feet, another zap of heat striking him. He took the pack from her shoulders and stood on her right side, bending his elbow. “Use me as a crutch.”
She bent and straightened her knees slightly, as if testing the injury. “I can’t do that. We have a few miles to walk. I’ll tear your arm from the socket.”
He shot her a look that said get real. She was tall, but she was thin, and putting a little weight on him to take it off her knee would make the journey easier. “I’ll hardly feel it, but if I have to carry you and our packs for miles, my bum knee will have problems.”
Autumn looked at the sky. “Let’s hope the weather holds. It will get more difficult if we have to hike in a snowstorm.”
She took his hand, bracing her arm on his. Her hand was small, her fingertips cold. He closed his hand around hers, trying to warm it. She was relying on him, and though he was out of his element in the woods, he was acutely aware that taking care of her gave him a sense of rightness and completeness.
Thunder clapped in the sky. A storm was approaching. A light drizzle struck the trees. They had some shelter from the trees, but a small bit of water could soak them and cause hypothermia. Autumn withdrew two ponchos from her bag.
They could hunker down and wait for the storm to pass, but the poncho would help and home was the safest option.
As they walked, their pant legs and shoes grew muddy and wet. Nathan distracted her with tales of growing up, the pranks he and his friends had pulled, the trips they went on and the disasters they narrowly avoided. They’d never been chased by a bear, or gotten anywhere close to the den of a predator, at least that he knew of, but their antics had gotten them in more than a few scrapes.
He and Autumn found a white blaze painted on a tree two hours later. In a small celebration, they tore into granola bars she had packed, shoving the wrappers in their pockets. Autumn turned in a slow circle, looking at the treetops. “I’ve been this far before. We only need to go another twenty minutes, brisk pace.”
He didn’t point out he’d been setting a slower pace, not wanting to aggravate her knee injury. He could tell it was better with the makeshift brace, but the way she flinched every few steps told him she needed to get off it soon, maybe pack it with ice and keep it elevated.
“Is the trail always this deserted in the fall?” he asked.
“Because of the weather, it isn’t prime hiking season. Between the Huntsman and the cold, I think people are finding other places to hike.” Her tone twinged with sadness.
He patted the hand she’d looped through his elbow as they walked. “We’ll get him and we’ll put things back to normal.”
Autumn glanced at him and then focused her attention on the trail ahead.
“What?” he asked, catching something in her eyes.
“I was just thinking that I’m not sure I want things back to normal. I want things to get better.”
Autumn had begun letting him inside her private thoughts. He wanted to know more. He wanted to learn about her, what made her tick, what mattered to her. “What do you want to change?” he asked. Her life seemed to revolve around her business and the Appalachian Trail, and from what he could gather, she didn’t leave the Trail’s Edge unless she had no other options. Was she hoping to change that? Break out of her shell?
“I’d like to be able to talk to my brother,” she said. “We were close when we were younger, before my uncle died. But Blaine took his death hard and we drifted apart. He eventually shut everyone out. He didn’t want to help run the Trail’s Edge anymore.”
A stab of disappointment pierced him. He’d wanted her to say she would make herself less isolated. He’d worry about her alone at her campground. Getting in touch with her brother was a start, though. “Maybe if you let him know how you feel, Blaine will come around.”
Autumn shrugged. “I hope you’re right. For Blaine’s sake and for mine.”
* * *
“Let’s put some ice on your knee,” Nathan said, helping Autumn up the stairs to her cabin.
Autumn unlocked the door and Thor greeted them, his tail wagging excitedly. Locking the door was a new habit she promised herself she’d commit to, and with her guard dog in place, she felt marginally safer.
“Have a seat. I’ll get some ice,” Nathan said.
Autumn grabbed her satellite phone and hobbled to the plush chair next to the couch, propping her foot on her ottoman and rolling up her wet pant leg. She unwound the bandage and rubbed at her knee. The injury couldn’t have been too major or she couldn’t have put weight on it. If it wasn’t better by the end of the week, she’d make an appointment to have a doctor look at it. Her experience with twists and sprains was that given enough time and a little rest, they mended themselves.
Thor plopped beside her chair, his tail thumping against the wood floor rhythmically. She glanced over her shoulder at Nathan. He was breaking ice out of the tray she stored in the freezer and wrapping the cubes in a clean dish towel.
She faced the empty fireplace and closed her eyes, relaxing her muscles and letting the heat of the room seep into her bones. Nathan had been attentive and sweet, even though she had walked him into a dangerous situation. She’d forgotten basic rules for survival on the mountain. She knew better than to fixate on one thing and forget the world around her.
Her uncle had been an expert tracker and he had taught her tricks to finding signs of an animal—worn paths, paw prints and excrement. She was tempted to go out again, maybe in a few weeks when the bears were in hibernation, and practice her tracking skills. Though she hadn’t been as expert as her uncle at tracking, so her skills had gotten rusty.
She sent a text message to Ben, asking about the bears in the area. He replied that he hadn’t had requests from researchers to work in the area nor was he aware of unusual bear behavior. So much for that theory.
Nathan sat across from her. Her skin prickled in awareness. He was handsome, almost to the point that it hurt to look at him. She wasn’t normally attracted to men who were polished and groomed, but on him, it worked. The mud on his pants and the dust on his face reminded her of a model in a fragrance ad, rugged yet refined.
She dreaded listening to her phone messages, likely more cancellations. Her reservations book was wide-open. If she didn’t get some guests soon, she’d have to find another job to pay the mortgage. She shouldn’t have remodeled the cabins all at once. She should have waited until they’d had the capital and taken each improvement slowly, over time. When business had been good, she’d calculated the investment would pay off in five years. At this rate, it was more like fifty.
