Manhunt (A Rocky Mountain Thriller Book 1)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  A gasp broke from Shanna’s lips. She struggled to push herself up from the dirt and gravel.

  Jace scooped his hands under each arm and lifted her to her feet.

  She tested the leg, grimacing.

  He slipped an arm around her, supporting her weight. “The hell with walking. Run.”

  He led her back, circling the fence, using the chain-link as a screen between them and the SUV. The dog followed, snarling and growling. So much for hiding. Whoever was in that sheriff’s vehicle—deputy or sheriff himself—he’d likely check out what was giving the dog such a fit. They had to get out of here. Across the field and away before the vehicle reached the junkyard.

  He grabbed a glance behind.

  The SUV was closing fast.

  There was no way they’d make it. Not unless they moved more quickly than this.

  Jace slipped his arms free. “Get on my back.” He leaned down in front of her as if offering a kid a horsey-back ride.

  She gripped his shoulders. With a little grunt, she jumped up and clung to his back.

  He gripped a leg in each arm and ran. He raced across the open field, heading for a stand of cottonwood, orange and gold blazing against the dark spires of pine.

  Shanna’s weight bounced at first. She gripped tighter, pulling herself closer, pressing her body into his back.

  He plunged into the trees, not slowing his stride. He ran, picking his way over felled trees and around clumps of brush until he reached the barren understory of young lodgepole pine. Panting, he stopped and lowered Shanna to the ground. He searched her face, wanting to make sure she was okay.

  Her skin was pale. It glowed in the shadow of the forest, as bright as the orange beacon of her hat and coat.

  Damn. He hadn’t thought about the hat and coat. He swiped the hat off her head. “Coat.”

  She shrugged out of her coat.

  Jace didn’t have to look hard to see she was trembling, even though her skin glistened with the slight sheen of sweat. He reached a hand into each sleeve, pulled them inside out and handed the coat back.

  She pulled it back on, the deep green lining now facing outward. “Do you think they spotted us? My coat?”

  “We’ll know soon enough. We’d better put some distance behind us. At least that way, they probably won’t be able to follow our trail without dogs.”

  She shuddered at the mention of man’s best friend. “Let’s go, then. I think I can walk for a bit, let you rest your back.”

  “Let’s see.” He pulled off his glove and raised a hand, wiping a thick strand of hair back from her cheek. His fingertips vibrated with the softness of her skin and hair. He knelt down to take a look at her leg.

  Her calf looked like hell, mottled red and blue. “Are you sure you can put weight on it?”

  She did, unsuccessfully stifling a hiss that escaped through her teeth. “I can walk. At least for a while.”

  “You don’t weigh much. I can carry you.”

  “Up the mountain?” She shook her head. “Maybe in a while. Right now it’s stiffening up. If I don’t do some walking, you’re going to have to carry me all the way.”

  He rose to his feet. “Fair enough.”

  They set out through the easier going of the pine forest. Shanna kept up, staying right beside him despite the fact that her leg had to be throbbing like hell. She was tough, far tougher than she looked. And from what he could see, she was worth a thousand guys like Anthony Barstow. And the law officers they bought.

  Wordlessly, they kept moving. The pitch grew steeper. The forest grew sparse. Scrub brush and rock filled in where trees left off. Dense and hard to negotiate. Sweat trickled between Jace’s shoulder blades.

  An hour passed in near silence, nothing but the sound of labored breathing in the cool air. Then two hours. The sun moved across the broad sky.

  They picked their way upward, winding through gray boulders as big as trailer homes. Even though the fall brilliance of aspen had begun to wane, their yellow leaves still throbbed bright against the dark, straight spires of lodgepole pine. Here and there, sharp peaks of gray rock rose far above them, jutting into the sky.

  Finally they reached a clear spot. Down a slope, skirting along the crest of a ridge, a dirt path wound over rock and threaded through scrub. “The trail.”

  “Where?”

  Jace let out a heavy breath and came to a halt. He pointed out the trail below. “The worst going’s behind us. Most is downhill from here. Rest?”

  Shanna nodded and collapsed onto a step of lichen-covered rock.

  For a while, both just focused on catching their breaths. Shanna was the first to speak. “How did they know we were at the junk yard?”

  “We don’t know that they did.” Throughout their hike, he’d been keeping his ears open for the sounds of pursuit, the baying of bloodhounds, any sign that they’d been spotted. He hadn’t noticed anything. “That deputy could have just been checking out the area. There isn’t much between my place and the roadblock. They might have been searching every place you could have gone.”

  “Do you think he saw us?”

  “So far, I’d say no.”

  “I hope you’re right.” She rubbed the side of her neck, flinching from her own touch as if her leg wasn’t the only injury she’d sustained.

  “You okay?”

  “I will be.”

  He hadn’t been kidding earlier, when he’d said she was tough. He got the feeling that even if she wasn’t okay, she’d will it to be so.

  He lowered himself to the rock next to her and squinted out at the afternoon sun. “Jace.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He turned to look at her. “My name, Jace Lantry.” He held out a hand.

  She took his offered hand, giving a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Jace.”

  “It might have been nice under better circumstances.”

  Somewhere behind them, a branch snapped.

  Jace bolted to his feet. Adrenaline buzzed along his nerves, making everything seem sharp. The distant call of magpie. The whistle of wind around rock. The faraway shush of a waterfall. No hum of voices. No hint of dogs.

  He couldn’t have failed to notice someone pursuing him. Could he?

  Another twig cracked, followed by the shuffle of stone.

  The sound wasn’t from behind. It was in front. He squinted down the slope toward the trail, staring past rock and into shadow. Trying to see what had made the noise…what he had missed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHAT IS IT?” SHANNA WHISPERED, barely able to hear her own words over the pounding of her heart.

  Jace held up a hand, signaling quiet. He turned around, once again peering under his hat brim in the direction of the sun. The corner of his mouth quirked into a dry smile. “Looks like we’re going to have to take the long way.”

  Not following, she shot him a questioning frown.

  He nodded down the slope.

  She followed the gesture with her gaze. All she could see was the path he’d pointed out winding along the rock-strewn ridge. “The trail?”

  “Not that. Closer.”

  She raised her hand, shielding her eyes from the sun. Something moved in the shadow of a large rock. It stopped…and looked at them.

  A bear. And judging from the size and bushy, blond-tipped coat, it was a grizzly.

  She’d heard stories about grizzlies. Horror stories of attacks. Amusing stories of bear antics. Awe-inspiring stories about up-close sightings. They all spun together in her mind until she wasn’t sure what to think. And she sure didn’t know what to do. “Jace?”

  “She’s seen us, so for the time being, we just sit still.”

  “What if she comes closer?”

  “Then we sit even more still.”

  That didn’t sound like much fun. At this point, she didn’t even know if she could force herself to remain in one place if the bear approached. Her body might just take off running without any input from her. “Is it true, about griz
zlies? Do they charge?”

  “Not usually.”

  “But sometimes?”

  “I’ve never been close enough to one to find out.”

  “That wasn’t what I was hoping to hear.”

  He chuckled, but even though he might be acting cool, he sounded less than relaxed. “If she charges, there’s a chance it’s just a bluff.”

  “So we call her bluff? I don’t like that picture. What if it’s not a bluff?”

  “Drop to the ground and roll up in a ball.”

  She pulled her gaze from the bear and focused on Jace. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not even a little.”

  She swallowed, her throat tight, and turned back to the grizzly. The animal was still cloaked in shadow, but she seemed closer, as if she were ambling this way. “Is it my imagination, or is she coming up the slope?”

  “It’s not your imagination.”

  The bear broke in to the waning sunlight. She was larger than Shanna had originally thought, her head bigger than most horses’ she’d seen. Her shaggy coat rolled as she walked. Her belly hung low with fat stored up for winter.

  “I don’t want to wait to see her at close range.”

  She could hear Jace’s coat shuffle. “Maybe we don’t have to.”

  She turned her head.

  He held the two Snickers bars aloft. “This is probably what she smells. Why she’s coming up here.”

  Looking at the bars, Shanna’s mouth had the audacity to water. Before they’d left the truck, she’d thought candy bars to be barely sufficient, as far as food was concerned. Now that she hadn’t eaten since daybreak and had been running nearly all day, they seemed precious. Life-sustaining. A delicacy her body craved.

  Apparently the bear craved them, too.

  “Give them to her.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind.” He slowly raised a hand to point to one side of where the bear approached. “When I toss these, I want you to walk slowly in that direction. We’ll circle around to the trail from below.”

  She could see what he meant by taking the long way. “On three?”

  “On three. Slowly, remember? We don’t want her to think we’re prey trying to escape.”

  Wasn’t that exactly what she was? If not to the bear, to Mr. Barstow and the county sheriff’s department.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “One…two…three.” He tossed the chocolate toward the bear and to the opposite side of their escape route. And grasping Shanna’s hand, the two of them started their slow-motion retreat.

  ______

  Shanna’s side ached. Her legs wobbled. Her breath rasped in her ears, yet as hard and fast as she panted, she couldn’t seem to get enough air.

  The detour around the grizzly had amounted to two extra hours of cutting through thick brush and climbing a slope of ankle-twisting talus. She could no longer differentiate the pain in her calf from the ache of exhausted muscles. She no longer thought about her neck at all.

  She wanted to stop. To sit. To rest. But thoughts of the grizzly and the sheriff’s trolling SUV kept her moving her feet forward. Copperville had to be close. It had to be. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

  By the time they’d gotten back to the trail, the sun had already dipped low in the sky. As they hiked along the ridge, she kept her eyes focused on the trail in front of her, on Jace’s boots, on nothing. The mountainside that had once awed her with its beauty felt cold and hard and unforgiving. The sky that had seemed so wide and majestic had darkened to gray as twilight closed in.

  The bugling of bull elk rang off rocks, echoing from valleys below. A cross between a melodic whistle and a guttural bellow, the sound felt melancholy to Shanna. Lonely. A plaintive mating cry.

  “Would you look at that.” Jace stopped in front of her.

  She almost ran in to him. She lifted her gaze from the trail and focused on his face. It took her a second to process the unfamiliar expression, the strange light in his eyes. “What is it?”

  He pointed to the horizon.

  She followed the gesture, over layers of rough terrain, to the brilliance of the sky.

  Shanna almost forgot to breathe. A moment ago the vista had felt harsh and imposing. Now it was lit with the fire of angels.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” The glow she’d seen in his eyes radiated from his voice. “That’s one reason I moved here. These sunsets can sustain a man.”

  She couldn’t disagree. She might not have moved to Wyoming for any reason so poetic, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate the state’s beauty. Even if a moment ago, she’d been beat down by its brutality. “It’s gorgeous.”

  He looked away from the sunset and focused on her. For a moment he didn’t say anything, he just watched her. Then he nodded abruptly as if breaking away from a spell. “We need to find a place to hunker down for the night.”

  A jitter she didn’t think she still had the energy to feel centered in her chest. As if in looking out over the expansive sunset together, she had shared something intimate with this man she barely knew. A man who was now looking for a place to spend the night.

  Her exhaustion must be warping her brain. “How close are we to Copperville?”

  “Close.”

  “Then can’t we keep moving?” She knew the jitter she felt was ridiculous. But that wasn’t her only concern. The sooner she could reach safety, the better. Even if she had to walk all night.

  He shook his head. “We need to make it down the ridge to Bonner Canyon. We’re not likely to do that in the dark.”

  “But staying here can’t be all that safe. What about…animals?”

  As if on cue, a coyote howled, the sound’s source uncomfortably close.

  He nodded in its direction. “Coyotes are noisy, but they aren’t going to mess with us.”

  “I was thinking of bears.”

  “They won’t find us very interesting anymore. We’re no longer carrying any of that five-star cuisine.” He gave her a teasing grin.

  Shanna found herself smiling back. She touched a hand to her stomach. “Thanks for reminding me.” She looked back to the vanishing sun.

  She couldn’t figure out Jace Lantry. How could he be so cynical and brusque one moment and yet wax poetic about the sky and warmly tease her the next?

  Not that she’d ever been good at figuring out men. Nor was she interested in figuring out this one. He was helping her, and for that, she was grateful. Her jitters were likely just fatigue…and hunger.

  Jace strode away, leaving her gaping at the sunset like a tourist. She scrambled to catch up.

  He walked to a rock face that angled outward at the top, forming a shallow shelf. Bending down, he pulled brush away from the rock’s base. “Here. It might not be one of those cushy hotel beds, but this will do.”

  Shanna looked at the tiny space. “It’s kind of small.”

  He shot her a dry look, as if he thought she was kidding. “You’ll like the close quarters when the temperature drops.”

  The temperature was already dropping. She could see her breath cloud in the air when the angle of the setting sun was right.

  Maybe he had a point.

  He grunted and crouched down slowly, the first sign he’d shown that he might be as stiff and tired as she was. He fitted his back against the wall of rock and gestured to the spot next to him.

  She hesitated.

  “I don’t bite. I know it might not have seemed that way back in the truck. But in my defense, we didn’t meet under the best of circumstances.”

  Shanna let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She forced herself to crouch down and fit her body into the tiny space next to him. Her side touched his from shoulder to hip. “There.”

  He watched her, his face close enough for her to see the few silver hairs glinting among the rough stubble on his chin and cheeks. Light lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. He was probably older than she’
d previously thought.

  “How long have you been a rancher?”

  “I bought my place a few years ago.”

  “How many?” As well as he seemed to know the land, she’d assumed he’d lived here all his life.

  “About five.”

  “What did you do before that?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “It’s important to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. After all you’ve done to help me, I guess I just feel I should know something about you.”

  “You know I’m not going to hurt you. You know I’m at least trustworthy enough to get you to Copperville. That’s all you need to know.”

  He was probably right. Then why did she still feel the need to know more? Unless she just wanted to avoid the silence between them, a silence that seemed more intimate than words.

  “The person you need to focus on is yourself,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “How are you a threat to Anthony Barstow?”

  “A threat? I’m not a threat.”

  “Then why does your boss want to kill you? Why is the sheriff’s department after you?”

  A threat. She hadn’t thought about it that way. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the whole idea. How could Mr. Barstow want to kill her? How could someone like her be a threat to him? “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It must make sense to him. Think, Shanna. There has to be a reason. People don’t just pick up rifles and start shooting.”

  Her head ached. Her leg throbbed. A hitch lodged in her lower rib cage, a pain like a needle piercing her with each breath. “I don’t know why Mr. Barstow would shoot at me. I don’t know why the sheriff is after me. I just…don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  She stared at him.

  “Think.”

  She searched her memory. She’d never had anything but glowing job evaluations. She’d moved smoothly up the company ladder. She and Linda had both been sure the invitation to the hunting trip would lead directly to an invitation into management. She shook her head.

  “Is there something personal between you?”

  It took her a second to realize what he was suggesting. “Between me and Mr. Barstow? He’s married.”