Striking Edge

by Kelsey Browning

  Shep said, “We’re just heading back to our campsite. We don’t want any trouble.”

  “You are on the land of Juney Whank. You are trespassing on the graves of my ancestors and her children.”

  “No,” Shep said calmly. “This is the Nantahala National Forest. Public land, public access.”

  “Your government may have laid claim to this ground, but in the eyes of the Sacred Mother, it is mine.”

  Wow. Was this guy for real? He honestly believed that he and his mother had some type of ownership of this land.

  “Well,” Shep said, “you can tell the Sacred Mother that we’re just passing through and will be on our way.”

  “The Sacred Mother demands payment.”

  Joss coughed to cover her nervous chuckle. She’d never once been mugged in LA, and now they were being shaken down in the boonies of North Carolina. The universe officially made no sense.

  “If you’re looking for money,” Shep told him, “you’re hitting up the wrong guy. I don’t bring my wallet when I’m leading a group.”

  “Your paper money means nothing to me.”

  Him or the Sacred Mother?

  “The Sacred Mother requires a sacrifice.”

  Alarm skittered through Joss. After seeing Moody’s body, the word sacrifice wasn’t something she wanted to get up close and personal with. It made her think of hooded robes, stone tables, and ritual knives.

  “Not from us, she doesn’t,” Shep pulled Joss and Puck around to circumnavigate the man, but he was quick and cut them off.

  His eyes shining like bright black marbles, the raccoon guy said, “I will take your animal as payment.”

  “Not in a million years.” Although Shep’s words were delivered in a casually matter-of-fact way, his body was one long line of tension.

  “Then I will take your woman.” He reached for Joss’s arm, and his nails and knuckles were crusted with dirt.

  Shep knocked the raccoon man’s hand out of the way and angled his body so that he would have to go through over six feet of muscle before getting to Joss. “Mister, I don’t know what mushrooms you’ve been making tea out of, but I am not handing over my dog or my… woman. The answer is no. Now get the hell out of my way or—”

  “But the Sacred Mother—”

  “I get it. You care about your mother,” Shep cut in. “I feel strongly about mine as well. But you’ll just have to find something else to—”

  The man leaned forward, sniffed Shep from abdomen to throat, as high as the shorter man’s nose could reach. “You smell of death. Have you come from the underworld?”

  Sacrifice. It reverberated through her again.

  Could he actually mean the sacrifice of a life? If so, maybe he’d come across Buffalo and decided he had to be killed for tromping around on sacred ground.

  Shep placed his palm against the man’s sternum and pushed him back several paces. “You need to get out of our way. If you don’t, the Sacred Mother will be very displeased.”

  “How could you know of the Sacred Mother’s wishes and pleasures?”

  “She and I are on speaking terms.” Shep drew his shoulders back, making him look twice the size of the other man. “Now, move aside or I will knock you down and walk over your body. Your decision. I am okay with either.”

  Raccoon Man took a grudging step aside, and Shep strode past him, dragging Joss and Puck with him. They were half a dozen paces beyond the man when he called out, “The trespassers who would foul the Sacred Mother’s earth will pay with their lives.”

  Joss plastered herself against Shep’s side. For most of her life, she’d been confident and self-assured. She’d had to be to make it as a musician.

  But being out here made her realize that her self-concept was purely situational. She wasn’t anything against nature. And apparently nothing against a man who might want to hurt them.

  “Do you think he’s truly dangerous?” she asked Shep.

  “You’re wondering if he’s the one who killed Moody.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “He’s part of a group who think they’re the offspring of the Juney Whank Falls.”

  “So this Juney Whank is the Sacred Mother?”

  “That’s the even nuttier thing. Juney Whank wasn’t a mother at all. He was a guy named Junalaska Whank. But this group of people are convinced the falls gave birth to them. They live out here, claiming they’ve taken back their land from the US government. I’ve come across them from time to time.”

  “You’ve met this guy before?”

  “Not him specifically, but others like him. They’re big on talk, but I’ve never had any real trouble from them.” That might be the case, but Joss didn’t miss the fact that they were hiking so fast that she might have to break into a jog any second.

  When it came to trouble from Mama/Papa Juney Whank and her/his acolytes, there was always a first time for everything. “So you’re saying you don’t think he had anything to do with Moody’s…”

  “Murder,” Shep said flatly. “Moody didn’t hang himself,” Shep said. “Which means someone else put him in that tree. My bet is on the person who drowned him.”

  “Is it weak of me to say I’m scared?”

  “No,” Shep’s voice gentled. “It means you are smart enough to respect danger. That is never weak. But don’t worry. Once we get back to camp, I will contact my sister Maggie and let her know what’s going on.”

  “And she’ll come get us? How quickly could she be here?”

  “Most areas can only be accessed on foot. That’s one reason it’s smart to respect the forest, the mountains. But there are a couple of places to land a helicopter—”

  “No.” Joss’s feet stopped moving. “No helicopter.”

  “It’s the fastest way out.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “‘I’ll walk a million miles if I have to. If you want to fly out on one, that’s fine. Just tell me how to get back to Steele Ridge and—”

  He grabbed her arm, gave her a little shake. “Stop. I would never leave you alone out here, so stop being stupid.”

  Her breath began to hitch, and before Joss could control it, she was hiccupping through a tsunami of tears.

  “Jojo. Shit. Don’t… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I called you stupid. You’re not stupid. You’re very smart. Let’s just get back to camp, and everything will be okay. I promise.”

  * * *

  Dumbass.

  Shep felt about like he had when he was still enrolled in elementary school and kids had called him names because he was different. Window licker. Brain dead. Fucktard.

  He’d heard them all. And back then, they’d made him feel small, isolated, unloved.

  But this time, he’d done it to Joss. Of course she didn’t want to fly out of here in the helicopter. And he’d called her stupid.

  His stomach was sick with the knowledge that he’d hurt her. Reduced her fear to a single word that wasn’t true. And now—on a day when everything had already been an award-winning shit show—he’d made it worse. Made everything feel off-balance and fragmented.

  He needed to fix the jumbled, jagged pattern of events happening around here.

  Moody disappearing.

  The first aid kit disappearing.

  The fawn carcass.

  The Moody carcass.

  Something was at play here. Something Shep couldn’t put his finger on. He hadn’t lied when he told Joss he didn’t think the kook back there on the trail had anything to do with Moody’s death. But something definitely wasn’t right.

  Details kept zooming on a speed track in Shep’s head, but rather than staying in their own lanes, they were crashing into each other like bumper cars.

  It’s okay. You don’t have to fix this by yourself.

  Maggie would help figure what was going on and bring order back to the trees and mountains Shep loved.

  But when he, Joss, and Puck made it back to camp, Shep came to a complete standstill. He looked around, sl
owly taking in the entire scene.

  Almost everything was gone. The camera guys’ tents, Moody’s tent and supplies. Lauren’s and Bradley’s packs. The flattened areas of grass were the only hint that the camp had ever held more than two people.

  Shep’s small tent was still standing, but by the way the front flap was fluttering in the breeze, it was obvious someone had been inside.

  “Where are they?” Joss asked him.

  Well, since no kidnapper would take the time to snatch four people and all their shit, he was fairly certain the others had hightailed it back here and fled.

  Fuckers.

  “They packed up and left.”

  “What do you mean left?”

  They hadn’t taken Joss’s guitar case. Probably didn’t figure a musical instrument would help them in any way. “They either started hiking down or they—”

  A sick realization hit Shep. He dropped Puck’s leash and Joss’s hand and lunged for his tent. He dived inside, and sure enough, his pack looked like a band of drunk raccoons had thrown a party in it.

  The Bitcher, The Bleeding Heart, and the camera guys—now collectively known as The Shitheads—had been nice enough to leave his water container, but it was empty. The water purification tablets, his remaining protein bars, and the burner and MREs were missing.

  But shittiest of all, the sat phone was gone. He and Joss now had no food, no water, and no way to contact the outside world.

  15

  “Shep?” Joss called from outside the tent. “What’s wrong?”

  Pretty much everything. Which was the dead last thing he wanted to tell her.

  But lying wasn’t in his lexicon, and besides, he didn’t have the extensive amount of energy that it always took for him to manufacture and deliver social lies. He stuck his head out the flap to find her sitting on the ground with Puck on one side of her and her guitar case on the other as if they were protecting her.

  “They were inside your tent, weren’t they?” she asked, but looked away from him as if avoiding a straight answer.

  “Yeah.”

  “So no one snatched them after all. Those assholes left us up here with a dead Moody. At least we can still call and…”

  Shep squatted down beside her and let his eyes close. For once, he didn’t relish the idea of telling the truth, either.

  “What?” she asked. “What aren’t you saying?”

  The feel of her palms pressing on either side of his face produced a painful pleasure. Shep opened his eyes to find her nose to nose with him. Her eyes were a kaleidoscope of pewter and smoke with a thread of slate blue. If he looked into them long enough, he might be sucked in, whirled around, and kicked back out.

  “Shep! You’re scaring me.”

  Scared females were not something he liked. He’d learned that when Riley was eight, and he left a southern devil scorpion on her pillow. He’d thought she would appreciate the natural beauty of the Vaejovis carolinianus. Instead, she’d screamed her head off when she woke to find it staring directly at her with its stinger raised.

  “They took what was left of my water and food.”

  “Okay,” she murmured, backing off and releasing her grip on his face.

  He wanted to ask her to squeeze him again, but knew that would seem weird.

  “You showed me how to find water. And we can do without food for a little while, right? Wait!” Her mouth screwed up into the cruelest expression Shep had ever seen on her. “Did they take Puck’s food, too? If they did, I swear I will hunt every last one of them down and make them eat dog food for the rest of their lives. And not that good tender cuts stuff, but the cheapest dry bag food with all sorts of crappy fillers in it.”

  “They left the dog food.” He quickly reassured her.

  “Thank God. But they’re still shitholes.”

  “Heads,” he said. “I’m now thinking of them as a whole—The Shitheads.” Unfortunately, she didn’t yet know how shitty they were. “That’s not the worst of it,” he said. “They stole the satellite phone.”

  She jumped to her feet and paced a circle around Puck. He watched her, turning his head right, then left, then bending it back, trying to track her progress. “Okay,” she said, half to herself. “Maybe they called for help, right? They can’t be too far away. If we just pack up and head back down the trail, surely we can catch them.”

  It was possible, but Shep didn’t know that he wanted to travel with that pack of hyenas anymore. Moody’s killer was still in question and they’d obviously thought so little of Joss’s, Shep’s, and Puck’s lives that they’d stolen from them and left them behind.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not…” She whipped around to look at him and froze. “Are you saying that you think one of them did that to Buffalo Moody?”

  “They ripped off our supplies and our only communication device.”

  “That’s a long way from murder.”

  To Shep’s mind, there was no scale on lying, cheating, and stealing. You were either a liar, a cheater, and a thief, or you weren’t. “Do you really want to sleep beside people who are capable of swiping the items most critical to staying alive?”

  She crouched down and cradled his face, this time more gently. But Shep found himself wanting to lean into it. “No,” she said softly. “If they’d wanted to really take what’s most likely to keep me alive, they would’ve taken you.”

  A feeling that was hard for Shep to identify seemed to fill his chest, inflating it to the point he thought it would burst. The sensation made it difficult for him to catch a breath, form a thought.

  Joss touched her lips to his, but didn’t give him time to do more than blink before she drew back.

  “Because you, Shep Kingston,” she continued, “are the most capable, most reliable man I’ve ever met in my life.” A little smile started at the right corner of her mouth. “In fact, you would be the number one draft pick on my Zombie Apocalypse team.”

  “You don’t really believe in zombies, do you?”

  “It never hurts to be prepared.” Her smile disappeared and she rocked back onto her butt, plopping onto the ground. “So what do we do now?” Before he could answer, she held out a hand. “No. Wait a minute. It’s not fair for me to ask you to think for me. Give me a few minutes here.”

  Intrigued by her request, Shep ducked back inside his tent and set his pack to rights. Multi-tool and flashlight in the front pocket so they were accessible. Spare clothes stuffed into the bottom of the main compartment. He rolled up his thin mat and secured it to the pack with compression straps. Once he was done in here, he’d drop the tent and do the same with it. His remaining supplies back in their proper places, he crawled outside and leaned his pack against a rock.

  Joss was staring across the small clearing to where the camera guys’ tents had flattened the grass. She tapped her lips before speaking. “Okay, so an immediate evacuation is out for now since we have no way to get in touch with anyone in Steele Ridge. Which means we need to be prepared to handle a couple more days out here. You taught us that shelter and water were most important.” She blinked. “Did they take your gas burner, too?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “They grabbed almost everything but my clothes and tent. And honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t steal it.”

  Joss shook her head. “They didn’t need it. Why carry more weight than you have to?”

  She was really starting to understand. Gazing up at the sky, she said, “I’m figuring it’s about one o’clock, right?”

  Shep consulted his watch. “One-twenty-two.”

  With a satisfied nod, she said, “That gives us between five and six hours to hike.”

  “Don’t forget that it’s easiest to deal with water and shelter while it’s still light out.”

  “True. So more like four hours. How far do you think we can make it in that time?”

  “Well, we won’t be taking the trail in the direction we hiked up, since that’s the way The
Shitheads probably went.” Although the camera guys knew this trail made a circle, which meant they may have urged the group to continue on around. He and Joss needed a different option.

  “There’s another trail about five miles from here. We’ll have to hike southeast to pick it up and then it winds back and forth across the mountain some.” If it were just him, Shep would consider ditching the trail altogether and walking straight down the mountain. Not with Joss. She might be getting the hang of all this, but she was still a soft city girl in many ways. An extra day on the mountain wouldn’t make or break them. Besides, if the other group showed up in Steele Ridge without Shep and Joss, Maggie would come looking for them pronto.

  After she chewed on some asses.

  The thought of their ragged asses made him happy.

  “Will you be okay to walk a little before we get water?” he asked. “I figure Puck can probably go another hour.”

  Joss’s smile was fierce as she hopped to her feet, picked up her guitar, and held out a hand to Shep. “Whatever Puck can do, I can do.”

  * * *

  They made it to the other trail in under two hours, even though they were trudging through what seemed to Joss like a haunted forest.

  Shep approached a big maple and used his multi-tool to tap it. The sap definitely didn’t flow like water from a spigot, as Joss well knew. But Shep stood patiently, filling Puck’s water container.

  “How did you learn all this nature and survival stuff?” she asked him.

  He lifted a shoulder as he watched the liquid drip out. “Some from my dad. Some from reading. A lot from actually doing.”

  “What’s the longest you’ve ever been out here by yourself?”

  “About six weeks.”

  “Six? As in forty-two days and nights?” She couldn’t imagine. “But you had plenty of supplies, right?”

  “Actually, that was before I got Puck,” he said. “So the trip was what you might call minimalist. Enough basic supplies to allow me to live off the land.”

  “As in gathering all your own food and water?”

  “And making shelter.”