But he would have to chew on the problem while he chased them down. It looked as if they still had about a two-hour lead.
He smiled when he thought how fortunate he was that they had chosen to run in the remote area that sprawled along the border between Utah and Arizona. Perhaps that was one of the reasons the kidnappers had made that particular decision. Most trackers would’ve needed hours of map reading and perhaps a native guide to know where to look for water holes.
But Hunter didn’t need any maps. He’d spent many of his boyhood summers helping his mother’s people tend their sheep herds among these canyons and sandstone slabs. He would have little trouble following the men, even across natural rock formations and among boulders that normally left no useful signs for a tracker.
What’s more, it looked as if they were having to drag Bailey behind them. Good girl. Not that he liked thinking of her being treated that way, but she was slowing them down. Giving him a chance to catch up.
Hurrying back to his SUV, he stuffed the canteen in his lightweight backpack. Then he checked his ammunition belt, threw it over his neck and picked up the carbine. He would be traveling light, but he would be traveling prepared.
As a last-minute thought, he took his cell phone out of his breast pocket and plugged it into a portable battery pack he always carried in the SUV. Then he crammed the plastic jar with the skunk musk into his pocket. No cell phone reception where he was headed.
None of it was making much sense to him yet. But he was damn sure not going to risk being unprepared. Not when it might mean the lives of two people.
And not when one of them was the only woman he might ever have loved.
Bailey was too scared to sleep. Mr. Smelly had been true to his word and gave her one lone sip of water after she’d changed Tara’s diaper. Then he’d ordered her to get some sleep, saying they would be here for only a half hour or so. He expected her to keep up.
The climb up the rock cliff had been terrifying. Her leather pumps were all wrong for navigating slippery surfaces.
Fortunately, Mr. Smelly had not dragged her up here. If he had, she probably would’ve fallen to her death for sure. Instead, he’d left her wrists tied but had shoved her up the steps ahead of him. Anytime she hesitated, fighting to get her footing on the slick rocks, the bastard had reached up and pinched her bottom hard to make her go faster.
The bruises might prove to be permanent.
She was hot, hungry and hurting all over. But most of all, she’d begun to really worry about the baby. The little girl had been listless and limp this time when she’d changed her. Bailey wasn’t positive how long it had been since the bus crash, because her watch had been smashed. But the poor kid must not have had anything to eat in at least eighteen hours.
“I said sleep,” Mr. Smelly yelled. He took a threatening step in her direction and she closed her eyes.
What were they going to do with tiny Tara? Bailey wasn’t sure the baby would last much longer without some real food.
For that matter, what were they going to do with her? The rhetorical question had way too many excruciating possibilities for her to contemplate.
She took a deep breath, felt the pain in all parts of her body and fell sound asleep.
Sunshine beat down on her face as she stretched lazily in the noonday heat. Hunter faced her, sitting crossed-legged on the wide, flat rock and grinning at her while she made erotic sounds of contentment. Below them, in a crystal pool carved by nature from ancient sandstone, a thousand points of reflected sunlight glittered in a joyful dance.
“You look very smug, Miss Howard,” he said, sounding sure of himself.
His long chestnut hair lay in wet strands across his shoulders, allowing tiny droplets of water to slither down his muscled chest and follow their own path to lower regions. Regions where Bailey’s fingers were dying to follow.
A couple of young idiots, both of them were still stark naked after their skinny-dip in the remote freshwater pond.
She refused to stop herself from doing whatever felt best in the moment. Why not? Who would get hurt?
Reaching over, she ran her hand in light circles up his thigh. “You look pretty contented yourself, Hunter Long.”
His slate-gray eyes grew dark with passion. She loved it when they did that—turned to steel as he looked at her body. In fact, she loved pretty much everything about her Native American lover.
Bailey had never thought of herself in quite those terms before she’d come to stay with her Navajo grandmother for the summer. But in truth, both she and Hunter were half-breeds.
Her with deep brown hair, golden skin and mixed up hazel eyes. Hunter with his lighter hair, worn long in warrior style, and his tuxedo-gray eyes that made him look more like a beachboy surfer dude than a descendant of the first Americans.
They made a great pair. And great lovers.
Hunter leaned over and stroked her earlobe with the tip of his tongue. Fire burned where he lathed the outline of her ear, sizzling down her spine to her core and igniting that special spot between her legs.
Oh, the man could do such wonderful things to her…and with her.
At first, she’d been surprised that such a strong, athletic male could be so tender a lover. But soon she’d become addicted to the sensual strokes of his tongue and the long, smooth way he glided his fingers across the sensitive parts of her body.
“Invite me to come inside and play, beauty,” he whispered against her lips.
Her laugh erupted, giddy and high-pitched in anticipation. “I thought I already did.”
Come inside, my love, she begged him with her eyes. You are much more than simply invited. You are welcome here anytime.
“You waiting for an engraved invitation, bitch?” A harsh voice matched the rough fingers that were digging into her shoulder and bringing her out of her slumber with a crash. “I told you to get up. You’ve got thirty seconds to get to your feet and get that kid’s diaper changed again. We’re moving out and I don’t plan on leaving any stragglers behind—not alive, anyway.”
Bailey cringed. Reality was such a cold shock after the sweet dreams of making love with Hunter that her eyes filled with tears she dared not shed.
She gritted her teeth and did what she was told. But all the while, she couldn’t help but think of her long-lost lover and wish he were here.
He never lost his temper or acted moody. Calm, charming and so incredibly tender it made her cry sometimes, he was everything these creeps were not.
In fact, his cool detachment and Cheshire-cat smile were what had driven her to leave him in the end. Hard to imagine it right now, but he was too even-tempered and in control. So much so that Bailey never knew what he was thinking, or what he wanted past the great sex.
He had asked her to let him come inside and play. But he had never opened up and given her a glimpse of what made him tick. Nor had he ever committed himself. She had told him she loved him, but he had never returned the sentiment. It had been so frustrating.
Idly wondering if he was still single, she handed a cleaned-up Tara over to their captors and then held out her hands so they could be bound together once again. Bailey had hoped to casually run into Hunter while she was on the reservation. Simply to see how he was doing after all this time, of course.
The young Hunter Long had made it quite clear that she didn’t have enough of a Navajo temperament to suit him. Had he found a Dine woman to marry? Her curiosity was piqued.
But her chances of running into anybody ever again seemed to grow slimmer and slimmer with every hour. Was she destined to get out of this mess alive? Perhaps not, but she wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. She wasn’t even ready to start praying, she was still so angry.
She didn’t need charming Hunter Long at the moment. What she needed was a big, mean policeman. And, please God, make him arrive soon.
Hunter followed a broken shale path as it snaked through a dry arroyo. Tracking here required the ultimate care and skill. Except for
a couple of small detours, the kidnappers seemed to be heading straight toward the one freshwater source.
Odd how they didn’t seem too worried about being followed anymore. Perhaps they figured no one could keep up with the pace they had set.
Hunter took a minute to climb one of the granite outcroppings in his path. From the top of the rock that had been worn smooth by millions of years of wind and rain, the sun’s rays were still visible in the reddish glow of the western sky.
Off to the southwest, one of the vast black cloud formations that sometimes built to thousands of feet high during the late summer appeared to threaten rain. As dry as it had been this year, he knew the promise of healing water wouldn’t come to fruition. In a few minutes the sun would disappear, cooling the earth and dissipating the thunderclouds.
Perhaps in another few weeks the Navajos’ next-door neighbors, the Hopis, would begin their rain ceremonies, and then the clouds would grant their healing blessings on both tribes’ land. The Hopis could call the clouds. It was part of their supernatural beliefs and sacred ceremonies.
Hunter leaned back against the granite shelf and turned his face to a cool breeze brought on by the clouds and the growing dusk. Taking a second to admire the contrast of towering gray-and-tan thunderheads to the navy-blue skies of sunset was a big part of the Navajo Way of restoring harmony and limiting stress.
The Hopis could call on their gods for rain. The Navajos would enjoy the beauty of it.
Another stray breeze, from the north this time, brought the smell of water. He inched around to face the distant Utah border, and realized he had reached a point where he could take a shortcut to the water hole.
If the kidnappers chose to stop there and rest, it would be a good spot for him to sneak into their camp and judge the difficulty of the situation. Did they keep their hostages tied at all times? And were the two victims kept together or separate during rest periods?
They hadn’t taken any extended breaks during their trek so far. A few minutes to hide their tracks and change the baby was all they’d allowed themselves. Hunter had found the diapers buried in shallow pits. He was hopeful that the goons themselves would soon require a few hours’ sleep before they continued toward their destination.
Which was where, exactly? he wondered.
Climbing down the other side of the granite spire, Hunter decided to quit tracking for the day. Instead he would make his way up the cliffs and over the mesas, and arrive at the watering hole within an hour. Getting there while they were resting and maybe sleeping was his best hope of catching them off guard.
Just before midnight, Hunter climbed down from the rocky cliffside path on Casa del Eco Mesa. It was a moonless night, so he used the infrared binoculars to scour the rocky oasis below him for any signs of life.
Watching a young coyote dip his head to take a drink, Hunter amended that to any sign of human life. He found nothing through his glasses except normal nocturnal desert creatures.
Had he missed the kidnappers? They had to have been headed in this direction. Was he too late? Or too early?
He squatted down, took a sip from his canteen and listened to the sounds of the night. He let his Navajo senses rule his thoughts. Who were these two men?
They had been moving fairly quickly up to now. Was that because they knew the area? Or because they had been told the way to go?
Using instinct and his best judgment, Hunter decided the two men he’d been following had not designed this elaborate kidnapping plan. A few of the things they had done left him positive they were not the brains of the operation, and that these muscle-for-hire dudes were not familiar with the terrain. They had probably stopped to read their maps earlier in the evening. Halting a few miles before reaching a natural rest stop like the water hole was not something a person familiar with the area would do.
That conclusion decided his next course of action. He would scout out a good hiding place and wait for them to arrive.
Hunter was known throughout the reservation for his limitless patience. Bailey hadn’t always appreciated that fact about him, he remembered.
But that was who he was. How he was raised. Unlike his older brother, Kody, who had been away at boarding school, Hunter had been in grade school when their father retired from being a master of disguises for the U.S. Marshal service in order to work as a consultant to the Navajo Tribal Police. Being only one-eighth Navajo, their old man had dragged Hunter from one small subagency office to the next, using him to translate from Navajo to English.
Hours of waiting, sometimes days of traveling in the car while trying to teach his father the Navajo language, had taught Hunter the value of patience. Though he’d had to fight within himself every day to maintain his Navajo sense of balance and harmony.
At the same time, he’d also learned a few things about his dad that he would’ve rather not known.
Hunter still had a lot of anger toward his father. And no way to let it loose, since the man had been dead for over ten years. But Hunter did know how to channel all that anger to good purpose when necessary.
It didn’t matter how long he had to wait at the water hole for the kidnappers to show up. He would be ready to greet them when they arrived.
He had made up his mind that this was as far as they’d get. One way or another, Hunter planned to take their captives with him when he left.
It was only a matter of which of them had the most patience and whose will would be stronger. And in that kind of battle, he was unbeatable.
3
Once again, Bailey stumbled to her knees on the hard gravel. “Hey,” she shrieked.
“Shut up and stay put,” Mr. Smelly Jacquez said as he kicked his foot in her direction. “We’re stopping here. Don’t make me punish you for talking.”
She dropped back on her bottom and bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry out against all the pains in her body. Inching her way by the light of the stars to the shadow cast by a boulder, she leaned her back against the rock and tried to focus on the actions of the two creeps. Hopefully, if she was out of sight, they would ignore her for a while.
It seemed odd that they were stopping again so soon. She hadn’t heard Tara crying, so why the need to halt their march?
A scent of wetness reached her parched nose and throat. They must be near water. She was actually smelling water like an animal, for heaven’s sake.
Bailey tried to swallow against the dryness in her mouth and ended up coughing. No. Please don’t let them notice her.
A flashlight clicked on suddenly, terrifying her. Then she saw in the luminous glow that both her captors were only interested in the water. The man with the crazy eyes roughly dropped Tara’s carrier from his back to a rock right next to a small black pool, but he kept one hand on the baby as he knelt to drink. Mr. Smelly was carrying the flashlight, and he trained the beam on the water, apparently trying to assure himself that it was drinkable.
Bailey wished they’d ordered her to take care of the baby while they were stopped. It was hell not knowing how Tara was getting along. How much farther would they be traveling like this? And how much more sedation could the poor child endure?
A few seconds later, both men were splashing water over themselves and laughing. Across the breeze she heard them talking to each other. The guy with the crazy eyes talked only in Navajo. Jacquez spoke English.
Bailey remembered a few words of her childhood Navajo, but it was difficult keeping up with their conversation.
“Only a couple more hours from here, and we’re supposed to wait for daylight.” She’d caught only the tail end of Mr. Smelly’s words. “You sure we have to keep the woman alive until we get there? Dragging her is a pain in the ass.”
The response in Navajo was not totally clear. But what she did understand sent a chill down her spine.
“And orders are to keep the kid healthy until we get to the cabin. Some old wet-nurse has been hired to meet up with us there and she’ll take care of the brat until the baby’s grand
father pays up.”
“Then we will kill the mother?”
The man with the wild look in his eyes laughed again. “When we get to the cabin, we can do whatever we like with the mother. Maybe there will be some fun to be had before we get rid of her.”
Bailey again didn’t comprehend all the Navajo words, but found the sentiments unmistakable.
She had a few hours left and then…
Desperate, she fought with her numb brain to figure out a plan to avoid her fate. There didn’t seem to be any way to physically break free from the two creeps before they got to their meeting place.
For a fleeting second, her only thought was of getting her hands on one more line of coke. Wouldn’t drugs make this whole nightmare more bearable? Wouldn’t it give her the strength to see it through?
With another blink of her too-dry eyelids, she came back to the horrible present with a deadly reality check. She knew drugs only complicated things. She’d at least learned that much in rehab. Besides, her parents would be terribly disappointed if she fell right back into her old habits.
Nope. She couldn’t wish for that. When her father came to rescue her, Bailey intended for him to be proud of how she’d survived. And she would survive. She knew it.
Maybe if she offered the crazy goons money, they would let her go. Perhaps she could tell them who she really was, give them her father’s name and let them demand a ransom from him.
Why was Tara the one who was so important for ransom, and not the baby’s mother? It was confusing, but Bailey figured if the point was money, her father could no doubt match or best the baby’s grandfather’s fortune. Luther Howard could easily pay for the release of both captives. No problem.
It wasn’t much, but it was the only plan she could come up with when her whole being throbbed in pain and her brain had shut down due to exhaustion.
Books by Linda Conrad Page 58
