Deadly Hunter

by Rachel Lee

  “Like you?” she asked.

  Instantly, she wished the words unsaid. His mood immediately darkened, the last vestige of a smile vanished.

  “Like me,” he said shortly.

  Good job, Allison, she thought unhappily as they climbed into her car.

  “Sorry,” she said as they settled into the front seats. She’d left the car running while she loaded it, so it was warmed up and ready to go. “That came out wrong.”

  “No, that came out honestly. And you’re right.”

  She didn’t say another word as she backed out and turned to drive through town toward the county road that led toward the Madison ranch. She’d really put her foot in her mouth, and after that kiss they’d shared last night it seemed mean of her. Even if it was true, it was still mean. As near as she could tell from what little he had shared with her, he had plenty of reasons not to say much.

  The heater started to blast, and she reached up to unzip the front of her suit. His jacket was only partly zipped; he wasn’t dressed as heavily as she, so she didn’t turn down the heat. Instead, she listened to the hum of the engine and the blowing air inside the car, and a silence that seemed too long and heavy.

  “I received a medical release from duty,” he said eventually. “Shrapnel lodged near my spine. So that rules out the kind of heavy physical training and activity I used to do because they don’t want it to move.”

  “They can’t get it out?”

  “Too dangerous, they said. I don’t know. They seem to avoid surgery around the spine on principle. If I ever experience tingling or numbness, that will change, but right now everything’s in a good equilibrium.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “So far,” he agreed. Another long silence, then, “Anyway, they still want me for other things. I can’t talk about them. They’d be less of a physical problem, and I have skills they can use. I could go back to work in the Alphabet Soup world tomorrow if I wanted.”

  “Alphabet Soup?”

  “Places that have initials, some of them in lieu of names.”

  “Oh.” Right off the top of her head, she thought of a few and wondered about the others.

  “Or if something were to happen where I’d be useful, I could be reactivated immediately.”

  “They can do that?” The notion shocked her.

  “Of course they can. They released me from active duty. What they didn’t give me was a final discharge. I’m on something that some call ready reserve.”

  “Oh, wow. I didn’t know about that.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly the same as regular reserves. I don’t have to show up one weekend a month or anything, but I’m inactive right now. Like I said, that could change. If it doesn’t change in a few years, I’ll be considered too rusty and out-of-date to be useful, and I’ll get my discharge.”

  She turned that around in her head. “You must have a hell of a skill set.”

  “Some of which will be useful even after I get a discharge. But right now I’m betwixt and between, as they say.”

  “So you really don’t know what tomorrow holds.”

  “No. I don’t. I’m required to keep myself in shape, so I’ve been doing a lot of running and calisthenics, but other than that, I really don’t know what could happen. I’ve had some job offers I don’t want. But if they activate me, I’ve got to go in a couple of days. Sooner if the situation warrants.”

  She nodded. “But if you can run and do calisthenics... Jerrod, isn’t that a threat to your back?”

  “No, that’s okay. No more heavy lifting, though, and a few other things that need caution. Really, I’m doing fine.”

  “Except they’ve managed to prevent you from finding a perch to settle on.” She couldn’t imagine it. Well, she could, and she figured she would find it extremely irritating to live that way.

  “In a way, I suppose that’s true. In another, it isn’t all that different from the way I’ve been living all along.”

  “But surely now you should feel like you can settle into a new life? Haven’t you already given enough?”

  He didn’t answer, leaving her to think that must have been a stupid question.

  After a couple of more miles had passed, he finally said, “I’m not likely to be reactivated. It would have to be something really bad for them to call on me. So yes, I’m trying to settle into some kind of life. So far I don’t seem to have gotten the hang of it.”

  “With something like that in the back of your mind? It certainly wouldn’t help, but what do I know?”

  She heard him shift beside her, and glanced his way. He was looking straight at her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “You know more than you seem to think. Yes, it’s at the back of my mind. I don’t expect it to happen unless there’s a huge crisis. But then I didn’t expect to wind up like this, either, so I didn’t have a plan in place. My fault. And it’s been surprisingly difficult to come up with one. When you do the kind of job I did, you don’t look beyond the next mission. You can’t afford to. I’m a great tactician. Give me a goal and I’ll know how to go for it. But setting the goal? I haven’t had to do that in a long time. You’ll have to give me an F, Professor.”

  “I don’t think so. Most of us aren’t quick to adapt when our entire lives get upended unexpectedly. There’s this thing called grief, you know. However it shows itself, when we go through a total change like you are, we grieve, and grieving tends to paralyze us for a while.”

  “You think I’m grieving?”

  “More than you probably imagine.”

  She didn’t dare look at him now, for fear she had offended him beyond hope. The tough guy—and she was sure he was a tough guy from what he’d told her so far—probably couldn’t imagine that he might be mourning his old life and the changes that had happened so suddenly. It probably sounded weak to him, a guy who was apparently used to dealing with difficulties she could only guess at.

  “That’s a different way to look at it,” he said a while later. “I’ve grieved when my buddies got wounded or killed, but I never thought of this as something to grieve about.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? In an instant everything changed, from what you can do to the way you lived. Even your expectation for at least a few more years went down the tubes. Grief isn’t limited to losing someone we care about.”

  “Even so, after six months you’d think I’d be getting past it.”

  “Getting past it might be easier if you weren’t on—what did you call it?”

  “Ready reserve.”

  “Ready reserve,” she repeated, cementing it in her mind. “So here you are, knowing you could be called back at any minute. That’s got to make it hard to settle. And I’d almost bet some part of you is hoping to be called back. You’d be busy again, have purpose again. Apparently you were wedded to your old life or you wouldn’t have done it for so long.”

  “You might be right.”

  No might about it, she thought. This guy would love nothing better than to be reactivated, to feel that adrenaline rush again, to do the things that had been so important to him. Whatever his duties had been, she was sure he’d felt he was serving his country in important ways, and now that was gone.

  Oh, yeah, he’d like to get that call.

  Which made her feel inexplicably glum. One kiss wasn’t enough to tie her in emotional knots, surely? She was too mature for that. Or not. She sighed quietly and turned into the Madison ranch.

  Here today, gone tomorrow, she warned herself. Keep a safe distance. She’d been through one painful breakup and didn’t ever want to repeat it.

  They weren’t greeted by Jake this time, although she’d let him know she was coming. Instead, his fiancée, Nora, stepped out, hugging her jac
ket close.

  “Jake just said to go back in,” she called. “He’s working in town this morning. Coffee and cookies here afterward if you want.”

  Allison waved and called her thanks through the window she’d rolled down a few inches. “I hope I can find the place again,” she remarked, trying to remember exactly where Jake had taken her. Being led hadn’t helped.

  “I can get us there.”

  She glanced at Jerrod. “Great sense of direction, huh?”

  “One of my skills,” he answered. “Once I’ve been somewhere, I can get there again.”

  “I hope some of it rubs off on me.”

  He laughed, letting her know the heavy stuff was behind them. “Directionally challenged?”

  “Well, I know how to find the mountains, and from the mountains I can find the road. In between there’s a lot of room.”

  He laughed again, making the day seem a whole lot brighter. “Just keep going. I’ll let you know when to make a course correction.”

  During the week, dry snow and wind had combined to pretty much rearrange the landscape. She couldn’t even see tire tracks from their passage last time.

  But with Jerrod’s guidance, they arrived at the fences she remembered. He hopped out to open and close them. Then, without a single misstep, they were staring at the roped-off area again. Some of the caution tape had snapped and fluttered in the breeze.

  “I guess I’d better replace that,” she remarked. “We still don’t have toxicity results.”

  “I can do that.”

  Of that she had not the least doubt, and it freed her up to get started. This time she needed fewer samples since they were a comparison. What she really wanted to do was find a place to cross that stream and see if there were dead animals on the mountainside. It had been a couple of weeks now, though, so she didn’t have high hopes. The carrion eaters would have scattered the remains. But if the toxin was still effective, some animals might have died only recently.

  She hoped like hell she didn’t find that.

  “Are you prepared?” he asked when she finished up.

  “For what?”

  “Hiking in the mountains.”

  She looked at him from beneath her brows. “I grew up here, mister. I can hike with the best.” She pulled a hiker’s backpack out of the rear seat of her car.

  “Food, survival blankets, matches, the works. Enough for two. We learn early out here.” Then she handed him a radio. “And this, too.”

  He nodded approval, and insisted on shouldering the backpack. She didn’t argue, figuring he knew what his back could handle. She could haul its forty pounds, and often did in the summer, but that didn’t mean she was too proud to accept his help. That left her with her corer and sample case, but he relieved her of the heavier case, as well.

  Damn, he made this a breeze.

  But she noted that once they’d found a place to cross the stream, he paused. Slowly, he scanned the area ahead and to either side of them, almost as if he expected to see something.

  Probably something he was trained to do, she decided.

  But the instant they stepped into the woods, she saw a man transformed. Unlike most of the people she hiked with, he didn’t scuff over the ground, and he became quieter than the world around him. There was little snow under the trees, but he disturbed neither leaf nor needle that she could tell. She glanced back over her own shoulder and saw that she had left a trail already, but nothing marked Jerrod’s passage.

  He lifted his feet, she noted, and planted them quite deliberately. But more than that, he seemed to flow rather than walk. Not even the backpack made its usual noises as it shifted because it didn’t shift at all on his frame.

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You’re not leaving a trail. You’re so quiet. I’ve never carried that backpack anywhere that it didn’t make some noise.”

  “Practice.”

  Little enough of an answer, but probably the best one he could provide. His parka didn’t even rustle. She wondered what kind of fabric it was, or if it was the way he was moving. Regardless, she almost winced at the amount of noise she made with every step. The legs of her snowmobile suit rubbed together loudly. And even as she tried to lighten her step, she could still hear it.

  But what did it matter? she asked herself. He was trained to move silently. She was just out here hunting for dead animals.

  “What area do you want to search?” he asked.

  “Now, that’s the question. It’s been two weeks since the cattle died. By now anything that was poisoned back then has probably disappeared. Depending on whether it poisoned other animals...” She shook her head. “I’ve got to check, but I don’t have a whole lot of hope. The animals can travel for hours before they even get sick.”

  He surprised her by squatting and picking up a dried twig. “Okay, let’s make a plan.”

  She squatted, too, grateful that the woods were breaking the wind. It seemed warmer under the pines, even though there was less sunlight.

  “We might have to come out here several times,” he remarked. “We’re not going to be able to cover a very big swath on foot in one day. So we need to break it up. We can either follow a circular pattern, starting at the farthest point and moving inward, or we can start here and circle out. Or we can make a grid search.” He lightly drew arcs that expanded outward. Then next to it, he drew a grid.

  She thought about it as she stared at his rough drawing. Reality was beginning to settle in. “It’s already getting toward noon, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite. I figure about eleven, maybe a little past. But that still only leaves us four hours before we’ll wish we were on open ground. These woods will darken up fast.”

  He was right. “Maybe I should come here in the morning first thing.”

  “If you want. But since we’re here, we might as well look around. My recommendation would be to stay close to the ranch today. If you want to spread out farther, it’d be better to have a whole day for it.”

  He was good at tactics, and she felt a little stupid for not having thought of all this herself. Just march into the woods and look around for dead animals? It had sounded okay until she really thought about the task.

  “I went off half-cocked,” she remarked.

  “No, you’re just not used to thinking in these terms.” He flashed a small smile. “That’s what you have me for.”

  “So suggest away.”

  He straightened and motioned her to do the same. “Now take one step away.”

  She did, then watched in amazement. Squatting had caused their feet to twist and move the pine needles around, leaving a clear mark. In moments, using that twig and his gloved hand, the marks vanished as if they’d never been.

  “Is that really necessary?” she asked. For the first time she truly accepted that he believed there might be danger in what she was doing. For all she’d been dismissing the possibility that someone might think she was a threat, his actions seemed to bring it home. There could be someone out there stupid enough to think he could be traced by the poison. After all, he’d been stupid enough to use it.

  All of a sudden, the woods didn’t feel anywhere near as friendly.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he answered. But she didn’t like the way he straightened and listened. As if he expected to hear something.

  “Someone or something is watching us,” he said quietly. “Do you feel it?”

  Actually, she did, but she wasn’t sure that the feeling hadn’t been caused by him mentioning it. But then she realized she’d been uneasy for a while.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered. “Now.”

  He nodded and turned with her, leading the way back down slope.

  “And sometime,” she added quietly
, “you’re going to have to teach me how to walk like that, without leaving tracks.”

  “It’s just a matter of not scuffing. On this kind of surface, it’s easy. On dirt or mud, it’s a different story.”

  So she picked her feet up and tried. That wasn’t easy, either.

  But as they got closer to the stream and the ranch, her uneasiness began to dissipate.

  Maybe he’d caused it all. That was an unwelcome thought.

  * * *

  Up on the mountain a man sat, rifle now slung over his shoulder. Annoyance barely began to cover what he was feeling. He had thought this would be easy, but those two were never far apart for long out here. While he had the advantage of knowing where his target would be, at least on weekends, he didn’t have the advantage of taking just his target.

  Not with two of them. And now they had a radio, making it all the more difficult. He’d seen the woman carrying it. If he decided to take them both out, he’d have one chance and he’d have to be quick or he wouldn’t have time to cover things up and get out of here. Yeah, the cops were generally far away, but if they got reports of someone shot, they’d be all over this place with their helicopter.

  Not as easy as he’d first thought. Not that he’d be stopped. No way.

  And now they were leaving, but he had no idea why. His opportunity was walking away with them. He’d hoped the next hours would open things up, but apparently not today.

  He counseled himself to patience, but since he’d made up his mind that he needed to do this, he just wanted to get it done.

  Cussing under his breath, he climbed the slope again, sticking to rocks as much as possible so as not to leave even a minimal trail. He’d get his chance. He was sure of it.

  But bashing that woman’s windshield should have scared her off. It had been meant to warn her off snooping around.

  He bared his teeth to the wind as he climbed. Some people, he thought, were either too stupid or too stubborn for their own good. He had to find a way to take advantage of that, to encourage these two to separate.