“I’m not talking about the two-way radio. There’s a satellite phone in a cubby on the plane.”
Dirk stalked out of the infirmary, the white bandage on his nose a sharp contrast to his red face. “Why didn’t he come up with this sooner?”
“Because a sat phone is even more sensitive to the iron ore deposits in this valley than a radio or the airplane black box, but it might be able to connect with a satellite if he can climb the cliffs higher than we were yesterday.”
“Faint hope,” Rich muttered.
“Better than no hope,” Neil countered.
Lauren lowered her eyes. She couldn’t afford to have anyone read a hint of intrigue in them. Everything she had said was true...as far as it went. There was a sat phone in the plane, but Kent had checked it during one of his trips back and forth with people and supplies, and someone had removed the batteries.
The battery thief was likely Mags prior to their departure, but Lauren and Kent were hoping against hope that this little detail was not known to her accomplice. Sabotaging the sat phone was mute testimony from the copilot that she thought there was an off-chance her skilled pilot might actually land the plane after the bomb went off. As they’d laid their plans, Kent had told Lauren he could do without such backhanded tributes.
Now that the bait had been laid out, it only remained to be seen which of them made an excuse to leave the mercantile to stop Kent from trying the satellite phone. Kent would be watching and waiting from his perch to spot such suspicious activity.
Time ticked along, and Mom hummed as she got busy on her biscuits. Neil went outside to get fresh air but came back within a couple of minutes. Cliff did the same and then he and Neil gave Phil a hand with the same chore. Pretty soon everyone had been out and come in, except for Lauren and her mother, but no one was gone long enough to make an attempt to seek out Kent. Lauren hid a scowl. Their ploy might be going bust.
Hours passed, and a plate of rather chewy biscuits was passed around, along with a few more strips of jerky. Neil, Cliff and a resentful Dirk left to collect another bucket of water.
“Did you catch a glimpse of Kent?” Lauren ventured when they returned in twenty minutes with a full bucket. Nothing suspicious about that timing.
The men shook their heads. Alarm jangled in Lauren’s chest. Kent should have been back by now. They’d decided he would hang up the surveillance by supper time if no suspects presented themselves.
“My turn for some fresh air.” She stood up.
“I’ll go with you,” Mom said.
They made their way to the alley behind the mercantile, and Lauren halted her mother with a hand on her arm.
“Kent and I were running a fishing expedition for our saboteur this afternoon, but nobody took the bait and went after him. He should have been back by now. I’m worried.”
Mom’s brow puckered. “There’s no satellite phone?”
“There is, but it’s not in working order. We were hoping the killer wouldn’t know that and would make a play to stop Kent from using it.”
“We should get a search party together and look for him. We can’t lose our hero pilot.”
“No, I—we can’t.”
“Do I detect more than a hint of personal interest?” Mom’s face lit.
“Don’t get your hopes up. Go back in and send Neil and Cliff out. I’ll take them to where Kent was supposed to be, and we’ll go from there.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You need to stay here and mind the store. Especially keep an eye on Dirk. He’s more or less in decent shape, and he’s among our prime suspects—one of the three executives from Peerless One. If Dirk tries anything, have Rich clobber him with one of his crutches.”
Her dainty mother delivered a downright feral grin. “Will do. And watch out for Cliff. He’s strong again and is also a Peerless One executive.”
“But Cliff almost died from narcotics slipped into his coffee.”
“How do we know he didn’t dose his own coffee...or even take the drugs in pill form washed down by his coffee? What better mask of innocence than an attempt on his own life? Methinks our saboteur enjoys risk—dancing on the edge. He was counting on Dirk to find him within a half hour of ingesting the pills and counting on you to save him medically. Dirk failed him, but you didn’t.”
Lauren’s jaw dropped then she let out a small chuckle. “Mother! You have a more devious mind than I do, if that’s possible.”
“But I could be right.”
“You could, indeed. Please, send the guys out.”
A few minutes later, she was trudging out of Trouble Creek, Cliff flanking her on one side and Neil on the other. The sensation of potential threat on either side was unpleasant to say the least. By the time they passed the wrecked plane, the sun was leaning hard into the mountain ridges that soared up beyond their imprisoning valley. They would have to hurry.
Abruptly, Neil let out a yelp and collapsed onto the ground. A few not-nice words escaped his lips as he massaged his ankle. “Some critter dug a hole in the ground, and I stepped in it. Twisted my ankle.”
“Can you walk?”
Neil rose and made the attempt, but stumbled with a whimper. Cliff grabbed him and held him upright while Lauren knelt and pulled up the man’s pants leg to eyeball the ankle.
“Possible mild swelling, but it’s early. A sprain will continue to swell and become more painful as time goes on.” She rose and looked at Cliff. “You’ll have to get him back to the mercantile as quickly as you can. Then haul in some ice water, and let him soak the ankle. My mother can wrap it after the soak.”
Cliff shook his head. “You need to come back with us.”
“Not going to happen. I know where Kent was going, and I intend to find him before dark.”
“Your mother will have our scalps,” Neil protested.
“She, more than anyone on the planet, knows how stubborn I can be. But to stay on the safe side, don’t let her lay hands on the hatchet.”
Cliff snorted a laugh, as he turned a groaning Neil back toward town.
As Lauren watched them go, a long sigh shuddered through her. Another name on the injured list. Please God, don’t let me find Kent injured, too, or—Stop! She couldn’t let her mind go in the direction of worse than hurt. He was fine. He had to be! Hopefully, she’d meet him returning to the mercantile. Any minute now...
* * *
Kent’s awareness floated in and out of focus. One moment his senses registered heat washing over his front side, cold against his back and intermittent snapping, crackling sounds. The next who-knew-how-many moments faded into oblivion.
Where was he? How long had he been here? Why did his head hurt? The questions flitted through his brain like moths that refused to light upon anything solid.
Finally, a semblance of coherent thought gelled. Someone had clobbered him. That’s why his head hurt. Those snapping sounds were sap-filled branches burning. He seemed to be within a few feet of the fire, which was why his front side felt warm and his back chilled. He lay on a hard surface, and his muscles ached. Time to open his eyes and figure out where he’d been taken, but his eyelids rebelled against his will. Consciousness faded again.
Scents awoke him—piney smell from the fire—metallic dankness—an overlaying stink like dead animal mingled with human body odor. His eyelids flew wide then winced shut at the brilliance of the flames a few feet from his face. He opened his eyes to slits and studied as much of his environment as he could take in. His body ached to stir and stretch, but his sense that he was not alone held him still.
The uneven rock walls surrounding him were that of a cave, which he could see was strewn with assorted belongings of a human variety. A pickax and a shovel rested against the nearest wall. A metal mug rested on a rock beside an old-fashioned coffeepot. Dented pots and pans, some containing crusted remains
of food, cluttered the perimeter of the fire. Kent’s stomach growled even as his gorge rose, and he tasted bile on his tongue.
Tentatively, he lifted his head. Pain shot through his skull, and stars spangled his vision. An involuntary groan left his lips.
A guttural cackle answered his pained noise. Kent struggled onto one elbow, and discovered his hands were bound together in front of him with strips of tanned leather. His gaze found a pair of dirty boots standing a few feet away. Above the boots a pair of filthy jeans led past stocky knees to an uneven row of gopher and squirrel tails sewn around the hem of a coat made of many animal pelts. The unpleasant stench was coming from the coat and the unwashed man beneath it. Kent’s neck ached as he craned his head upward to take in the mountain of a man. Inky eyes stared back at him set into a face framed by a tangled mat of deep brown hair and beard. Thick, red lips frowned down at him.
Firelight glinted off a shiny object, and Kent dropped his gaze to the bowie knife the mountain man gripped in beefy fingers. His captor grunted and motioned with his knife that Kent should stand up.
Gritting his teeth, Kent managed to get to his knees without tipping over. His slow and sloppy response evidently strained his captor’s patience. The man grasped his shirt in a massive fist and hauled him upright then half carried, half dragged him to a spot on the cave wall where he hooked Kent’s bound wrists over a natural protrusion. Kent’s knees buckled, sending pain through his arms and cramping his lungs. He forced his legs to stiffen and hold his weight.
His captor waved the knife back and forth in front of Kent’s face. Slowly, the unnaturally red lips peeled back, exposing blackened teeth. Rank animal breath assaulted Kent’s nose. He turned his head away, but the mountain man gripped his chin and forced his gaze forward. Bizarre noises that sounded nothing like words began to leave the man’s mouth.
A strangling sensation gripped Kent’s throat as he gazed into his captor’s maw. The man’s tongue was a stump, and what passed for lips was little more than scar tissue. Something horrible had been done to this guy. Was that what had driven him into a hermetic existence in the mountains?
The man tried again to form words, but Kent shook his head. His captor threw his arms up and let out a cry that communicated frustration and anger. He stomped over to a crate sitting nearby and picked up a thin, black square and a stump of what appeared to be chalk.
Silence descended, except for the occasional snap of the fire and the hiss of chalk across the miniature blackboard. At last, the mountain man finished his painstaking message, strode back to Kent, and thrust the board nearly into his face.
“Woman come here for you,” Kent read aloud.
He lifted his gaze to the pair of flat, black eyes that locked with his over the top edge of the board. His captor lowered the chalkboard, exposing a wide grin. Tentacles of ice wrapped around Kent’s heart. He’d been in a lot of tough spots during his tours of duty, but any fear he experienced then paled before this moment. This filthy brute was using him as bait to capture Lauren!
Heat flared in his chest. He leaped upward, freeing his bound hands from the rock, and lunged for his captor. The man’s ham fist connected with Kent’s chin, and his teeth snapped together. White-hot shards of pain sliced through his head as his back slammed into the stone wall. His legs buckled, and unholy laughter faded in his ears as he descended into a pit of nothingness.
ELEVEN
Lauren struggled to concentrate as she climbed the cliff face toward the ledge. Something was definitely wrong. There was no way Kent would still be sitting up there, watching. Not after he must have seen her trudging toward his lookout spot.
At last, she pulled herself up onto the ledge. Her mouth went dry as her gaze hunted frantically for him. He was no longer here. She scanned the valley. Nothing moved below. The sun was cradled between a pair of mountain peaks and settling lower every moment. She couldn’t remain here long before heading back. It was out of the question to be in the open alone after dark.
No sign of Kent on the ledge. Or was there?
She knelt and studied the rock. A pair of faint parallel scuff marks led toward the rock face behind the ledge, as if something—or someone—had been dragged. The mystery dweller must have gotten Kent! But where did the mountain man take him? No way did the guy carry Kent off this ledge, either up or down. Not physically possible.
Following the intermittent drag marks, she came to the cliff side, and the marks disappeared into a blank rock wall. Sort of.
Heart pounding, Lauren sidled to the right, and there it was—a crack in the rock just wide enough for a person to slip through. Staring at the cliff straight on, she couldn’t have seen the crack because one side of the entrance folded over the other. The opening had to be approached obliquely in order for it to be noticed. And what was more, in the growing dusk, an unnatural light glowed from within.
Was this cave the mystery dweller’s lair? Goose bumps prickled over Lauren’s flesh. No wonder he had been able to slink up behind her, startling her into tumbling off the ledge. He’d no doubt sneaked up on Kent also. The creepy guy must have taken Kent into the cave. Was he hurt? Was he even still alive?
She should go back and get help, but the only able-bodied people available were her mother and Cliff. She wasn’t going to bring her mother up here, and doing anything alone with Cliff would be foolish. It was looking more and more like he was the saboteur who got them here in the first place. That left only her, and if Kent needed help, she was all over it.
Lauren stepped into the cave. The walls continued close for several paces, and then widened gradually to six feet apart or so. A gamy, smoky smell grew stronger the farther she went and so did the flickering illumination. Fire, no doubt. A sudden snap as of burning wood bore out that deduction. Lauren hardly dared breathe as she crept forward. No other sounds warned her of what she might find ahead. Was the mystery dweller lying in wait for her?
Abruptly, one side of the passage came to an end, and a space like a large room opened before her. She stood stock-still and scanned the area. At the center, a fire crackled in a rock-encircled fire pit. A few pots and pans lay to the side of the pit next to a ragged and stained camp chair. No one perched in the seat. On the far wall, a variety of animal skins hung from a line, plus a pair of dingy white socks at the far end, ludicrously out of place. To the left, a variety of foodstuffs occupied a large set of shelves, reminiscent of the shelving in the burned hut. To the right against the wall lay a bundle of furs. A face poked out from the bundle. Kent’s face!
Lauren hurried to him and knelt at his side. Drying blood spread from above his ear down the side of his face and disappeared at his neckline. The head wound didn’t appear to be bleeding further, and his breathing was regular, but his eyes were closed, and he lay inert. She pulled the furs away from him and discovered his hands were bound. She needed to get him loose.
“Kent,” she said softly as she struggled with the tight knot. “Please wake up. We’ve got to get out of here. Kent!”
A groan and a mumble answered her. Kent’s body stirred.
“C’mon, honey, wake u-u-u-up.”
His eyes popped open, and he winced, but a rather loopy grin appeared. “Honey?”
“You’re imagining things,” she snapped. How did that endearment slip out? No time to examine her own lunacy now.
Awareness abruptly sharpened Kent’s gaze. “Leave me. Get out of here! Now!” He lifted his head as his gaze sprang wide on a spot over her shoulder. “Too late! Look out, Lauren!”
A guttural growl sounded behind her, and every hair on her body stood to attention. Slowly, she rose and turned. Something between a squeak and a gasp left her tightened throat.
A hulking brute from somebody’s worst nightmare stepped out of the shadows and blocked the cave exit. He was covered in furs from knee to neck, and a fur hood shrouded his head with the tail of some critter dangling
down to his nose. No wonder she’d mistaken him for a bizarre animal in the glimpse she’d had of him before she tumbled from the ledge. His inky stare froze her in place, and she didn’t dare to move a muscle.
“Where...is...your...gun?” she half whispered to Kent, who was struggling to gain his feet.
“I don’t know. It’s not on me. He must have it.”
What the creature held in front of him was not a firearm, but a massive knife that glinted, sharp and deadly, in the light of flickering flames. He let out a grunt and motioned toward the fire with the knife. Lauren edged in that direction in a slow shuffle, gaze fixed on the hulking menace.
If he charged her, where should she go? His presence blocked the exit to the outdoors. And even if she got past him, she was likely to take a fatal tumble trying to climb down the side of the cliff faster than a guy who’d lived here indefinitely.
“Keep the fire between you and him,” Kent said in low tones.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him working with his teeth at the bonds around his hands. If he got loose, she’d have help, but would it be soon enough?
Their captor was motioning insistently for her to sit in the ratty camp chair. She shook her head so hard her ponytail whipped her face. Become stationary so he could grab her? Not hardly. She continued to back away, and he let out a deep growl. Her flesh crawled.
“Let’s talk about this,” she said, lifting her hands, palms out. “We mean you no harm.” Too bad the sentiment didn’t seem to be mutual. “Can you help us get out of this valley? We’ll go away and leave you alone.”
He responded with a slash of his knife and a leap toward her. Kent yelled and lunged to his feet, continuing to struggle with the leather ties. Lauren screamed and backpedaled, heart hammering. She tripped over something and sprawled onto her back, pain spiraling through her torso. The mountain man was almost upon her when Kent hit him in a full body slam, and they tumbled to the ground a few feet away.
“Run, Lauren!” Kent hollered.
Rocky Mountain Secrets: Rocky Mountain Sabotage ; Rocky Mountain Pursuit Page 13
