Hunter's Heart ap-4

by J. D. Tyler

  “The woman appeared to me in astral form and begged for my help,” he explained impatiently, unable to hide his anxiety. He chose to leave out Nick’s interesting response to that very question Ryon had asked. “Getting S and R involved will take time she doesn’t have. There’s no way a bunch of humans will be able to find her before we do, and she’s going to die if we don’t hurry.”

  Aric stood. “In that case, I’m in.”

  The other three echoed him, and Ryon looked to Micah. The brown wolf/Dreamwalker had been rescued along with Aric, weeks ago, by the Pack and Rowan, Micah’s sister, an LAPD cop who turned out to be Aric’s mate. Micah had fared much worse in the lab facility where he and Aric had been held, and had endured heinous experiments for months at the hands of the now-deceased Dr. Gene Bowman. Micah was horribly scarred inside and out. But with drugs and therapy he was making progress, it seemed.

  “You ready to test the waters?” Ryon asked him. He was fairly sure Nick wouldn’t object to their Pack brother stretching his long-unused muscles while assisting on a simple rescue. If so, he’d take the heat later.

  Micah nodded eagerly, pushing a long strand of brown hair from his face. “You bet. If I have to stay behind again, I’ll lose what’s left of my mind.”

  “That’s settled, then. We’re meeting Nick at the hangar with the medical team. Anybody know where Jax is?” Jaxon Law was their unofficial Pack leader, right after Nick.

  “I’ll find him and Rowan. We’ll see you there.” Aric jogged off.

  “I’ll get dressed and be there in a few.”

  Ryon shifted again and took off in the direction of his personal quarters. Everyone had his own apartment at the compound and Ryon’s was situated at the end of one of the wings that housed the Pack and the rest of the staff. At his door, he shifted to human form again and cursed the necessity. His wolf was much stronger and faster in many aspects. He could follow a scent trail and locate someone in a way that was impossible as a man. But they would need vehicles and emergency equipment. No help for that.

  Anxious, he punched his code into the security pad and let himself into his quarters. As quickly as possible, given his own injuries, he dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, and hiking boots, and then braced his hands on the dresser. Mirrors didn’t lie, and this one was telling him to go straight back to bed and stay there for another week.

  Unfortunately, on top of looking like shit, he felt even worse. As he headed out again, the stab of pain in his side reminded him that he’d missed the promised dose of pain meds. But it wasn’t the pain that concerned him—he’d been through plenty of scrapes and survived. It was the possibility that his body might fail him before he found the woman.

  He didn’t doubt that if something happened to him, the Pack would find her. But every instinct in his body screamed that it was vitally important that he be with them. He couldn’t fail.

  Half-limping, he jogged into the hangar to see Nick and the others waiting. The group of men, plus the medical team, was swallowed by the cavernous space that held a number of vehicles, including SUVs, three Hueys, and a private jet. Several pairs of eyes turned in his direction, and a couple of his buddies exchanged dubious looks.

  Aric shook his head. “You need to sit this one out, bro.”

  “I agree,” Jax said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Forget it.” Slowing to a walk, he joined his team. “The woman reached out to me for help, nobody else. That makes it sort of personal.”

  Jax persisted. “We’ll find her and bring her here. You’ve done enough—”

  “We’re wasting time,” he snapped. “Can we just get on with the plan?”

  Anger flashed in Jax’s gaze and for a couple of heartbeats, Ryon thought they were about to get into it. Nick didn’t intervene, simply watched and waited. Even Aric, the smartass, went silent. But then his friend relented, albeit reluctantly. “Fine. But if you pass out, I’m not carrying your stubborn ass back to the vehicles.”

  “Like nobody’s had to carry you before,” he shot back. Jax had no comeback, and the decency to appear contrite.

  The tension gradually dissipated as Nick brought them up to speed. “I contacted the rangers’ station and learned some interesting things. First, the woman we’re looking for is probably Daria Bradford. She’s a wildlife biologist studying the wolf population in the Shoshone—the real kind.”

  Daria. What a pretty name. Ryon’s insides fluttered, but he hid his reaction.

  Micah snorted. “Wolves? How’s that for irony?”

  “They’re also not too concerned about her just yet. Miss Bradford checked in with the rangers this morning as scheduled, and gave them the coordinates for her next campsite. She’s not due to call in for another few hours.”

  “So how did you explain the inquiry?” Ryon asked.

  “I told them I’d heard a call over the radio on my office from someone in distress. Of course, they were baffled that they didn’t hear anything, but they were too distracted by another development to focus too much on the discrepancy.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A couple of campers have gone missing, a man and his wife from Nebraska who are, or were, here on vacation.” Nick’s expression was grim. “They arrived eight days ago, according to a daughter who spoke with them by cell phone before they settled in. The couple didn’t check in with the rangers when they got here, though. They were only supposed to camp for four nights, and then head home, calling their daughter when they left. They never made that call and by the morning of the sixth day, she started to panic.”

  “So, Search and Rescue is already out there, looking for them,” Ryon mused. “This could complicate our effort to find the biologist.”

  Nick shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. We’ll stay out of their way, but it won’t hurt for us to keep an eye out for the missing couple while we’re looking for Miss Bradford. We’ll definitely have to be cautious about shifting with extra people combing the forest. Don’t let out your wolf, or panther,” he said, nodding to Kalen, “unless absolutely necessary.”

  “Are we taking a Huey?” Aric asked, gesturing to the big helicopter.

  “Yes,” Nick confirmed. “If we find the woman, we’ll need to get her back here as fast as possible because she’s gravely injured.”

  Aric frowned. “Why not just let the humans take her in? Ryon said it would take the rescue team too long to mobilize, but considering that they’re already out there, wouldn’t that make more sense?”

  Ryon opened his mouth to protest, but Nick beat him to the punch. “Are you questioning my orders?”

  The redhead blinked. “No, sir. Just asking.”

  “Good. Trust me when I say it has to happen this way.”

  “Yes, sir,” he drawled. “You’re the PreCog.”

  “Smart of you to remember. You’ll pilot, take Micah and the medical team with you. There’s a sufficient place to land about a mile from where Miss Bradford last made camp. The medical team will hike with us. You and Micah stay with the copter unless you hear different.”

  Aric didn’t look pleased to be left out of the search, but he didn’t argue. Maybe he figured he’d pushed Nick enough. “Will do.”

  The commander handed Aric the coordinates, then addressed the group. “Ryon, Jax, Kalen, A.J., Rowan, Hammer, and I will take the two new Range Rovers. We’ll park as close as we can to the landing site and hike to her last camp, then go from there. Any questions?”

  After so many years together, they knew the drill. Even the two relative newbies, Kalen, their Sorcerer/panther shifter, and A.J. Stone, a human who’d once been a police officer and was a damned fine sniper, pulled their weight as though they’d been with the Pack forever. They all moved like the proverbial well-oiled machine.

  They loaded into the vehicles, Ryon behind the wheel of one of the Rovers. He watched as the blades of the Huey started to whirl, and the roof of the hangar began to slowly slide open to allow it to take off. When it lifted from t
he ground, the noise was deafening. The sight never failed to awe him. Aric could pilot almost anything with an engine and, being a Telekinetic, plenty of objects that didn’t to boot.

  After the copter cleared the building and swept away, the roof began to close. Ryon took the lead, driving out of the hangar and onto the private road leading from the compound. They’d have a couple of security gates to pass through, their property being restricted to outsiders, and then they’d take one of the main roads normally used only by park officials. Beside him, Nick punched the campsite’s coordinates into the GPS.

  The drive took almost half an hour. Too long. Inside him, his wolf paced anxiously, straining to get on with the hunt for the woman. Daria. With difficulty, he shut off the questions churning in his mind because the answers didn’t matter right now.

  “I wish Zan and Phoenix had been able to come along,” Jax said from the back.

  Ryon glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Me, too. It sucks that they’re out of commission.”

  “Yeah. But hopefully they’ll be good as new when they get back from their vacations.”

  Zander Cole was a black wolf, the team’s Healer, and also Jax’s best friend. Zan was sorely missed as a friend, but more than that, his skills were often crucial in the field when they incurred severe injuries. But Zan had been badly hurt himself a few weeks ago, when the Unseelie king Malik had tried to destroy them all. Kalen had unleashed the full fury of his Sorcerer’s power, killing Malik, but Zan sustained a head injury in the blast that had left him deaf and suffering from terrible headaches as a result.

  After that horrible nightmare, Nick had granted them all well-earned vacation time and they’d spent the past few weeks rotating out so they weren’t all absent at once. Soon, Zan and Phoenix would return and all would get back to normal—whatever normal meant to them.

  Using the rangers’ service road, Ryon managed to get them all the way to the flat clearing where the Huey rested. Once they’d parked a safe distance from the copter, they unloaded the backs of the Rovers and divided among themselves the packs that contained rescue equipment such as harnesses, ropes, pulleys, and a carrying basket for the injured party. There was a bunch of other stuff they might not need, but it was best to be prepared.

  He saw Mac, Melina, and Noah jump from the copter and shoulder their backpacks filled with first-aid supplies. The trio joined them and waited for Nick’s instructions.

  “We’ll stay together until we reach Miss Bradford’s last camp. Then we’ll fan out and do a sweep in the direction of her next site. She told Ryon she was pushed into a ravine, which means she went off the trail at some point. Stay sharp. You all know what signs to look for.” He paused. “And one other thing—be alert for whoever, or whatever, attacked the victim. We don’t want any more nasty surprises. Christ knows we’ve had enough of those,” he muttered, gesturing for them to move out.

  Ryon couldn’t agree more. All of his senses were wide open as they walked, scanning the area for anything that didn’t belong. Especially the damned ghosts, who never left him alone and yet were strangely absent today. Could be that no one had died in this area in the past few years, if ever, but that typically didn’t make a difference. Spirits were drawn to him and would travel from far and wide to try to communicate with him.

  He should be glad they were making themselves scarce, but he wasn’t. There was a weird vibe in the air. A disturbance in the atmosphere that he couldn’t pinpoint. It was a tangible feeling, not simply an intuition that something was wrong. He and Nick were in the lead, so he halted in his tracks and turned to the others. They stopped and waited in question.

  “Does anyone else feel that?”

  After a few seconds of silence, Micah said, “I do.”

  Nick glanced between them sharply. “Feel what?”

  How to explain? “It’s like a vibration in the air. A sound wave or something, only with no sound.”

  Jax frowned. “That makes no sense.”

  “This is going to sound bizarre, but . . .” Micah shifted, looking uncomfortable. Then he pointed to the scarred side of his face. “My skin is prickling, almost like I have ants crawling on me. But just on this area of my face, nowhere else.”

  They stared at him, and Ryon’s unease intensified. He couldn’t imagine what the hell that could mean, but it probably wasn’t going to be good.

  Nick looked to Ryon. “Do you sense an actual presence? Are your spirits telling you anything?”

  He gave a humorless laugh. “What spirits? I think they all got the hell out of here and I don’t blame them. As far as a presence, there’s something making the disturbance. I just don’t know if it’s a living thing, or if there’s another explanation.”

  “All right. Let’s keep going.”

  They started out again. Nick didn’t have to remind them to stay sharp. Considering the weird vibe, plus the injured biologist and missing campers, it was clear that something bad was going on in their forest.

  And the thought came unbidden that Malik was the last creature to stalk it.

  No way could that Unseelie asshole have risen from the dead. Because that’s what he was—a deep-fried crispy critter sent to hell, thanks to Kalen. Any alternative was unthinkable.

  Reaching the first campsite took longer than Ryon would have liked. At least his head had cleared some on the way and he was able to focus as they walked into the deserted area. He looked around, disappointed.

  “There’s not much to see,” he observed, digging the toe of his boot into the cold, black ashes left from the fire. “She was here, and then she left.”

  “In a hurry, though. She left this behind.” Micah held up a travel-sized bottle of whiskey that was three-quarters full.

  Jax smoothed his dark goatee thoughtfully. “You know you’re booking out when you don’t notice you’ve left the booze behind, or you do and don’t bother to go back for it.”

  Ryon walked over and took the bottle from Micah. “I wonder if something scared her and she took off from here. Maybe she was running from whoever pushed her into the ravine.”

  “Nah,” Jax said. “I think she was nervous at first, cleared out in a hurry. If she ran from here she would’ve left everything, not just the bottle.”

  “True.” Holding the bottle up to his nose, Ryon sniffed. A faint tinge of sweetness that didn’t belong to the liquor inside teased his senses, and he unscrewed the lid. The full bouquet of the whiskey was pleasant, though that wasn’t what hit him the hardest.

  She had touched the glass. It carried her rich and earthy scent. How he knew it was hers when he had never scented her before was an easy one to answer.

  His wolf was going fucking berserk.

  “You’ve got her scent?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me get a whiff.”

  Nick took the bottle and sniffed it. Then inhaled again, giving Ryon a bemused look. “I don’t smell anything but whiskey. Wonder why you picked it up but I can’t.”

  “Got no clue.” He had a feeling Nick did, though. Damned if he was asking in front of his Pack brothers.

  Nick waved a hand at the trail ahead. “We’ll keep going and spread out some, but no farther than shouting distance. If you pick up her scent again, let us know.”

  Quickly, Ryon took the bottle back, screwed the lid on again, and stuffed it into his pack. She’d want a nip, later. Especially after she recovered enough to recount what had scared her. Almost killed her.

  He and Nick walked the center of the trail while the others split off to the left and right of them, searching deeper into the woods. Now and then, Ryon caught the barest hint of her essence in the air, or on some brush. No sign of her, however, or where she might have veered off the path.

  Until Micah called out from the left of the trail and stepped from a copse of trees, waving an arm. “Hey! Over here!”

  Guys, Micah has something to the left of the trail, Ryon pushed into their heads. It was easier and more efficient
than yelling.

  He and Nick struck out through the trees, hurrying, the third group behind them. Micah disappeared briefly and he worried they would lose him, but it wasn’t long before he and Nick spotted Micah, Hammer, Mac, and Noah in an area where the trees thinned a bit. Micah was agitated, glancing their way, and then down at a lump on the ground. Hammer was outwardly calm, his expression unreadable.

  The first fact Ryon became aware of was the stench. The putrid odor of death clogged his nostrils and threatened to send up the meager contents of his stomach. As he and Nick approached, he was damned grateful that his breakfast had consisted of little more than dry toast and some juice. Apparently, Mac, who was Kalen’s pregnant mate, wasn’t so lucky.

  “Excuse me,” she croaked. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Ryon felt sorry for her. The doc was a pure professional, but pregnant women sometimes couldn’t handle certain sights and smells very well. Hell, he’d almost been sick and he didn’t even have an excuse. Ryon almost went after her, but Kalen showed up and intercepted his pea green mate, leading her away from the gruesome scene.

  “Fuck me.” Noah breathed. “As a nurse I’ve seen plenty of dead people, but nothing like this.”

  Ryon nodded. “Me, neither. Christ.”

  “Can’t tell if it was a man or a woman,” Jax observed. He coughed, holding a hand over his face. Not that it would help.

  Rowan, Aric’s mate, had been quiet throughout the search, until now. “Woman,” she said, pointing. “Look how small the shoes are, and the laces are pink.”

  Noah arched a brow. “That doesn’t mean anything. I have pink shoelaces.”

  Ryon shot him a grin. “So it’s like that, is it? Shoulda figured.” Noah winked at him and several of the guys laughed. The exchange dispelled some of the depressing atmosphere, but Nick wasn’t amused.

  “Focus, idiots. We’ve got a murder here and two more possible victims we need to find.”

  Sobering, Ryon crouched near the body and studied it. God, it was torn to pieces. Hardly recognizable as human, just shredded clothing here and there, clumped with bloody flesh and muscle, writhing with maggots. A sliver of garment that used to be white caught his eye, however. Reaching for a stick on the ground, he used it to lift the white strip of cloth from the clump.