She stopped, drank some water, checked the phone. Still no reception, so she pocketed it again and turned her face to the clear blue sky. She closed her eyes, just for a second, gathering up her energy to carry on.
When she opened her eyes, the mountain lion was standing less than ten feet in front of her.
She froze, completely. Stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. Stopped everything.
When her brain did actually start to function again, the only thing that she could think was how she just couldn’t believe that she’d managed to extricate herself from the clutches of one wild animal… only to wander smack in to the path of another one.
Slowly, she took a breath, then another. The panic receded, just a bit, and she scrambled to recall anything that she may have gleaned from casually flipping past the National Geographic Channel whilst drinking coffee. Maybe she’d accidentally retained something useful?
OK… weren’t you supposed to not make eye contact with wild animals? It made them feel challenged if you stared at them head-on, right? She’d certainly employed that eyes-lowered, submissive bullshit with the violent idiot that she’d laid out on the kitchen floor, so it had to work on other beasts too. Right?
Shay dropped her eyes to the lion’s paws, which was a huge mistake, because now she saw that its claws were out. She swallowed, tried to make herself smaller than she was, since she was sure that animals backed down when they didn’t feel threatened by an opponent.
This mountain lion didn’t seem to have received the memo, though. If anything, her eye-lowering and shrinking seemed to just piss the thing off more. Shay heard a low, rumbling sound coming from its chest. And it definitely was not purring.
It was growling at her.
It was also getting all tense and arched, its tail twitching wildly. Then, the surest sign that she was in big trouble: it bared its teeth at her.
Oh, shit.
Trying to keep her movements small, Shay slowly, so slowly, reached for the gun in her pocket. Still keeping her eyes down, she slid off her glove and then flicked the safety off with her thumb.
The tiny click sounded like thunder in the deathly stillness and silence of the mountains.
The mountain lion exploded in to action, launching itself at her, closing the distance between them in mere seconds. In one smooth, practiced move, she had the gun out of her pocket, aimed and ready to fire. She almost made it, too… she was less than a millisecond too late in pulling the trigger.
The shot echoed and rolled down the mountains, so loud that it stunned her a bit, and completely distracted her from the fact that the lion had its teeth in the front of her right leg. It ripped her flesh as it fell backwards, making sure to twist and shake its head as it went, ensuring maximum pain and damage.
Shay screamed, fell to the ground herself. She managed to keep a hold of the gun, though she saw that she no longer needed it. Her shot had been true and the lion was dead, its mouth bright red with her blood. Quite a lot of her blood.
No. Oh, no.
She stuck her injured leg straight out in front of her, gritting her teeth against the agony of even that small movement. What she saw damn near threw her straight in to the land of Holy-Fuck-It’s-Time-To-Panic-Now.
The white ground was stained red, her jeans were shredded, she saw teeth marks in her lower leg. She was hurt, and for a minute, she just sat on her ass, more frightened than she’d ever been in the whole of her life.
Then her survival instincts kicked in and she got her shit together. Kind of.
OK, first things first. She checked the phone again, praying hard now for reception. But the god of cell phone towers was still out for lunch or something, because he was not listening. She put the phone back in her pocket, trying to not cry, trying to think.
Right. So. If there was one pissed-off, unwelcoming mountain lion roaming around, there may well be others, and they’d possibly be attracted by the smell of blood. As she was right now, she was easy prey and that was the one way that Shay refused to go down. She had to find a place to hide, to staunch the flow of blood, to recover a bit.
That meant getting to her feet. Or, if that wasn’t possible, that meant crawling. She was good either way, so long as she was actually in motion.
Carefully, she pushed herself vertical; immediately, she was horizontal again. She cried out at the sharp, intense burst of pain, and knew that walking was out.
So. Crawling it was.
She looked around and squinted at what looked like a cave about eighty feet away, hidden high in the rock face. She stared up at it, gauging the distance, knowing that how far it was didn’t matter, in the end. It was shelter, and it was a place to hide, and so long as it didn’t house a pack of mountain lions, it was her best option.
Grimly, she started to haul her body up the steep incline, digging her hands deep in to the snow, scrambling for roots to grasp and pull herself up on. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she crawled. Night started to fall, the wind started to pick up, her injured leg dragged behind her, useless and a dead weight.
And she kept crawling.
**
The pain in Warren’s head was incredible, and he was groaning before he’d even cracked his eyes open. When he did open them, he was astonished to find himself staring at a bunch of broken eggs, spilled milk, and a jar of mayonnaise. He blinked, realizing that he was on the floor.
He rolled, cursed when he rolled in to some orange juice. He forced himself to a sitting position and looked around, wondering just what the fuck. That was when he saw the handle of the pan peeking over the edge of the island, and all memory returned in a flash.
Right away, he bolted to his feet. His head spun, the room swirled, and he cursed again.
She’d hit him. She’d hit him with a goddamn frying pan.
His gun was gone. So was his phone. He supposed he should be grateful that she hadn’t shot him in the head as she’d hauled ass on out of there, but seeing as Ace was going to kill him anyway, she’d really just postponed the inevitable. Unless he could find her and bring her back here. And when he did? She was going down to that basement until this whole thing blew over.
To hell with being nice to a woman who’d kicked him in to a fridge.
Warren went to the door, looked outside, looked down. Yep, her tracks went off in to the trees, as clear as day. He looked at the sky and was sure that it hadn’t snowed while he’d been out, but even if it had, it wasn’t a big deal.
His useless drunk of a father had taught Warren exactly one useful thing in his time on earth: he’d taught him how to hunt, and any hunter worth his salt also knew how to track his prey. Warren had never been any good at school – but he was damn good at hunting, and even better at tracking.
He went back in to the house, glanced at his face in the bathroom mirror. Oh, yeah, she’d clocked him but good, and he sported a massive bruise across his left cheek. There was blood matted in his hair from where she’d slammed his face down on to the counter, and his chest hurt like hell. He lifted his shirt, surveyed the ugly bruise on his muscled pecs.
Yeah. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
He unlocked his bedroom door and grabbed his spare gun. The he took off his cut, slipped on a heavy sweater. He donned his coat, looked for his scarf, sighed when he realized that it was gone, put on his hat and gloves. He saw that the flashlights from the kitchen were gone and he shook his head, cursing the obvious fact that Shay was a smart-as-hell woman, and no doubt. He grabbed the flashlight from downstairs, and then he was ready to go.
She had about a four-hour head start on him, and that was quite a lot. The good thing was, though, that she’d headed off in the completely wrong direction. Instead of walking towards civilization, she’d actually walked straight in to the deepest, densest part of the surrounding forest. Unless she basically retraced her steps and did a total one-eighty, she was just going to mo
ve farther and farther away from help.
Warren locked the door behind him, lifted his collar against the biting wind. Pinned his eyes to the boot prints in the ground and followed. He was on the hunt for Shay Alcott, and the woman was going to be in trouble when he caught up with her.
Big trouble.
**
Warren stared down at the dead mountain lion. He was frozen in horror, and not just at the presence of the animal. No, he was also horrified at the blood surrounding it. Fuck, it was a lot of blood, and no way it all belonged to the lion.
He squatted down, saw the blood around the creature’s mouth, saw some flesh trapped in its teeth. Suddenly, all his red-hot anger at Shay changed to frantic worry.
He felt guilt, too. After all, if he hadn’t been holding her prisoner then she’d never have been out here in the first place, never have taken flight in to the unknown wilderness. If anything had happened to this woman, it was on his head. All of it.
He stood up and in the glare of the flashlight, he saw stumbling footprints that went a few feet away, saw the place that a body had fallen. There were no more footprints after this point – there were just drag marks and a blood trail.
Yeah, she was hurt. She was hurt bad.
The pain in his head totally forgotten, his chest tight with fear, Warren followed the marks, followed the trail. They went up the mountain, and he could only imagine how hard she must have fought to keep going. She was an ass-kicking, lion-killing warrior and right this minute, he was rooting hard for her to have not lost one ounce of that spirit.
It was pitch-black now, and he shone his flashlight ahead a few feet, trying to get a sense of where Shay might have headed next. That was when he saw the entrance to a cave. The drag marks and blood went in to it, and he damn near cheered at the fact that she was sheltered, at least.
He approached quietly, since he hadn’t forgotten for one second that the woman was armed. With his luck, she’d be a sniper-for-hire in her down-time, or something. He got to the cave, pressed himself against the rock, listening. Nothing.
Chancing it, he quickly stuck his head around the entrance, shot a quick glance in. There was a faint light a little ways away, and he heaved a relieved breath that she wasn’t in the dark. He went in slowly, cautiously, hating how loud the loose rocks sounded crunching under his feet. If she heard him, though, she didn’t say a word. Maybe she was just sitting there with her finger on the trigger, quietly getting him in her sights.
When he got closer to the light, he saw that it was coming from a small tunnel off the main cave. He went in, still hoping to God that he didn’t get shot, but kind of feeling like he deserved to get shot, at the same time. Then he saw her, and the fear that he’d managed to keep mostly at bay roared to life, and went straight in to overdrive.
She was slumped against the cave wall, her legs straight out in front of her. Her right leg had a bandage wrapped around the calf, and the white gauze was soaked with blood. Her beautiful green eyes were closed and she was deathly pale.
“Oh, God,” he said, his feet feeling like they were welded to the ground. “Shay.”
She didn’t respond; didn’t even move. That was when he thought that she might actually be dead, and he moved towards her swiftly. He fell to his knees next to her, ripping off his gloves. He cupped her soft cheek in his large palm, and exhaled hard when he felt that she was warm, saw her chest rising and falling.
“Shay? Can you hear me, honey?”
Still nothing, and he turned his attention to her leg. His hands shook a bit as he gently unwrapped the bandage, and he winced at the wound that he uncovered.
Oh, hell, yeah, she’d been bitten. Deep. She needed stitches, no question. Worse than that, though, the wound was already inflamed, the area around it burning to the touch, the edges ragged and tipped with white and yellow. Definitely infected.
He touched her hands now, grimaced at how hot and swollen they were. Fuck, that meant that the infection was moving up her body, moving fast. He touched her face again, but it wasn’t too hot. Not yet, anyway.
He had to get her out of here now. He had to get her to a bed, shoot her up with drugs, close that injury up, get her core body temperature down, and he had to do it fast. And maybe – just maybe, and with a measure of blind, stupid luck – it’d all be enough to save her leg and her life.
Chapter Four
“So, Shay’s safe then?” Jack said to Ace. “For real?”
“Yep,” Ace said. “Scared, no doubt about that, but not hurt in any way. I didn’t allow it.”
“Yeah?” King growled. “Why’d you do that?”
Startled, Ace looked over at the other man. It was bizarre for King to be here, since Ace’s only contact with King’s Men had been through Jack. He was totally unsettled to even be in the same room as Matt Kingston, and he was trying hard to stay cool.
The last time they’d breathed the same air, King had killed Trigger MacGee with Ace’s gun, then used that to blackmail Ace in to turning informant. No matter what the hell Ace and the Fallen Angels got up to, King was the real deal and a serious badass, and Ace didn’t allow himself to forget that for even one second. Underestimating King was a grave error, and anyone who did that paid dearly.
Ace was already paying. He had no desire to have the price go up.
“Uh,” Ace said. “Well, why would I let her get hurt? Makes no sense.”
“Why would you care if it makes sense or not?” King pressed. “Don’t you get off on that? Hurting people?”
“No.”
“You’re lying to me, man.” King’s gray eyes were flint in his rugged face. “You like it.”
“I’m not, and I don’t,” Ace protested. Hell, disagreeing with King was undoubtedly a boneheaded move, but goddamn it. Ace didn’t like seeing people get hurt – not if they didn’t deserve it, and Shay definitely didn’t deserve it. “I do it when I have to. When I don’t have to, I avoid it like the plague. I’ve always done things that way, whenever possible. Trigger made it damn hard, most of the time, since he was fond of creating situations where I had no option but to shoot my way out… but if given a choice in the matter, I don’t want to see anyone hurt or dead. Especially civilians who have no part in any of what’s going on. That ain’t right, man.”
King glanced over at Jack, raised his eyebrows. Jack was a former FBI profiler, and he read people’s expressions, body language, and tone so quickly, so easily, that it looked like mind-reading. The man was nothing less than a lie-detector with legs, and King trusted him implicitly.
Jack caught his unspoken question, nodded slightly.
“He’s telling the truth,” Jack said. “Believe it or not.”
“Huh.” King regarded Ace. “Who’d have thought it.”
Ace didn’t know if King was referring to him not hurting innocent people for the hell of it, or to his ability to utter the truth once in a while, but he didn’t ask. Pushing and taunting King was the equivalent of poking a sleeping bear… and Ace saw no pay-off in doing that. He stayed silent, knowing that King’s presence here was about more than just hanging out in the corner and glaring daggers of death at him.
“So, how about I cut to the chase, yeah?” King said abruptly, in his usual, no-bullshit way.
Ace nodded, tensed up at what was coming. No way it was good news.
“I want to end this,” King said. “All of this.”
“All of – what?” Ace asked, hesitant. “You mean me feeding you intel about Kirk Jensen?”
“No.” King’s voice could crush asphalt, Ace was sure. “I mean, I want to end Kirk Jensen.”
Stunned, Ace just stared and blinked stupidly. Yeah, he looked like a moron and he knew it… but he was genuinely caught out.
“But,” Ace finally managed to say cautiously. “Aren’t we doing that already? Like, shutting down his operations, and pu
tting his people in jail, and generally making his life a living hell?”
“Sure we are. And look what he’s doing in retaliation. All’s that’s happening is he’s taking it out on people who can be used as pawns in his messed-up game. He's not gonna stop behaving that way, and we all know it. In fact, I’ll bet that he gets worse as the heat’s turned up even higher.”
Ace thought of Shay, and her terror and tears, and he had no choice but to agree with King.
“The only way to end this whole mess is to end him,” King said. “Once and for all.”
“You mean – jail?” Ace knew good and well that wasn’t what King meant, but he had to ask, for some reason. “Making sure he goes down at long last?”
“No. I mean a bullet between his fucking eyes.”
“Oh.” Ace stared some more. “And… and you want me to do it?”
“Well, that’s what we need to discuss.”
“It is?”
“Yep.”
“OK.”
Jack sat straighter, totally alert. Whatever King had planned, whatever the hell was going on in that steel vault of a mind of his, he was actually about to share. Jack held his breath and hoped that whatever it was, it was going to get everyone out in one piece.
“The way I see it, Cuddy, is you’ve got two ways to be a part of this.” King’s voice was low, harsh. “You need to choose which way you want to go.”
Ace swallowed, hard. The last time that King had laid out two choices in front of him, one had involved him ending up dead, the other had been the offer to be King’s informant. Neither had been safe or appealing, but at least one had kept him alive.
Well. Alive so far. Alive for now.
“OK,” Ace repeated.
“See, Jensen’s going to die. That’s non-negotiable. I don’t care if you do it, or I take care of it personally… the man won’t live to see the spring. That’s my personal promise and it’s a guarantee. It’s done, you get me? It’s done.”
Dark Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 6) Page 4
