Hunter's Pursuit

by Kim Baldwin

  “What does he pay you? Enough for you to do what you want to do?”

  Frank looked up at her. The wild expression was gone. She was calmly awaiting his answer. “The pay is okay. A grand a week, bonuses sometimes.”

  “Frank, this is your lucky day. I’m going to offer you a one-time-only incredible deal.” She said it like she was offering him some grand prize on a game show.

  The statement made him less afraid, and Frank was intrigued despite himself. Is she serious? He struggled to sit up but couldn’t manage with his hands and feet tied.

  She came up behind him, took hold under his armpits, and pulled him up to a seated position. She did it like it was no strain at all. Frank was impressed.

  “You’re going to be my patient and cooperative guest for a little while,” Kat said, looking down at him. “And in return for your best behavior, I’m going to give you enough cash to take a nice, long vacation someplace warm when you leave here. How does that sound?” She cocked her head. The predatory smile was back, warning him to accept.

  He began to see why she had the reputation she did. “Whatever you say, Hunter.”

  She nodded. “Good boy. Think you can forget where you are and how you got here?”

  Maybe she really is serious. Might she actually let me go? He looked her right in the eyes. “That’s honestly no problem. The woods aren’t my thing, Hunter. I seriously doubt I could find this again even if I wanted to.” He paused a beat. “And I really don’t want to find it again.”

  “That’s the right answer, Frank. Don’t make me regret my generous impulse.”

  Frank hoped she was being square with him and not keeping him alive for some purpose down the road. He didn’t have much choice in the matter, really, unless some opportunity presented itself. “Good as gold, don’t worry. And if you keep up your end, once I leave, I was never here.” Screw Garner.

  “I knew you were smart.” Kat looked away from him for the first time to glance around the room. She believed Frank, but not enough to let her guard down. She went to the steel door that separated the garage from the connecting tunnel and keyed a set of numbers into the security panel beside it. She opened the door and looked back at Frank. “Don’t move a muscle, now. I’ll be back before you know it.” Then she was gone.

  He took her at her word and stayed where he was.

  Kat grabbed a stuff sack from the bottom of one of the army barrels in the tunnel. It contained a down sleeping bag and pillow. In her haste, she didn’t notice that a pair of boots and a set of coveralls were missing from among the stores of gear in the hall.

  She returned to the generator room and spread the sleeping bag in an empty corner, Frank’s water bottle beside it. She pointed her portable heater in that direction, but kept it well out of reach. It wasn’t doing much to heat the large room, but it would take the edge off and Frank would be comfortable in his snowsuit.

  Kat took a long length of chain from her snowmobile—the solid, heavy one she used to pull the sled—and took it to the corner. She threaded it through a metal ring embedded in the concrete wall. Then she found a shorter, lighter chain in her toolbox, along with two sturdy padlocks, and laid them out next to the bag.

  Frank watched her every move.

  Now she was ready for him. She took two firm handholds at the back of the collar of his nylon snowsuit and pulled him a few feet along the concrete floor until he was next to the sleeping bag. She put the small chain around his hands and feet over the duct tape and secured it to the larger chain with both padlocks. He could move around only a few feet.

  “I know that’s not very comfortable, Frank. But it’ll have to do for right now,” she said.

  Kat took her toolbox and the tool kits from both snowmobiles into the tunnel. After a final glance around for anything else he might be able to use, she nodded once to Frank. “Be good now, I’ll see you in a little while.” She left through the steel door, closing it behind her.

  Kat stood for a few moments in the tunnel with her back pressed up against the door. She wanted to check the weather forecast; she should do that next. Then fix herself up a little bit before she went to talk to Jake. That’ll give me a little time to decide what I’m going to tell her.

  *

  Despite his inexperience on snowmobiles, Otter had made good time getting to the crash site on the snowmobile he’d rented. He followed the trail out of Tawa that Frank had made.

  He sat on the parked Polaris and swept his flashlight across the landscape. Two snowmobile tracks led away from the wrecked sedan. They came together not far away and led off into the woods. Frank had followed Hunter and gotten caught. That’s why he hadn’t come back. Otter was sure of it. He just had to follow Frank’s trail.

  Satisfied with his assessment, Otter pulled a raspberry turnover and thermos of coffee from the storage compartment of his snowmobile. He had already wasted a lot of time renting the machine and finding warm enough clothing. But Otter was rusty and Hunter would be expecting trouble. Exhaustion could get him killed.

  After a short break, he put away the thermos and started up the snowmobile. These damn things make too much noise. Probably how Frank got caught. But if he was to go any distance at all, Otter didn’t want to be doing it on foot.

  As he set off on the machine, his mind drifted back to the last time he’d seen Hunter.

  He ran toward the helicopter. It was more than a hundred feet away and already twenty feet in the air. Hunter was at the controls. He waved his arms for her to pick him up. He couldn’t make out her features, but he was sure she had seen him just before she turned the chopper and sped away.

  Otter had always preferred to hit his targets from a distance. He was an expert marksman, at least in his heyday. But this one he wanted to do up close. He wanted to make absolutely certain Hunter knew just who it was who killed her.

  *

  Fifteen minutes after leaving the exit hatch, Jake found her forward progress slowed to a near crawl. Her knee was killing her. The adrenaline surge had worn off, and walking in the heavy, oversized boots was torturous.

  She paused on the trail to listen, but the night was absolutely quiet. Surely, she thought, she must be getting very near to the rock wall she’d seen on the monitor, so the fact that she still couldn’t hear any trace of Kat was very disconcerting. She thought about calling out Kat’s name but was afraid the intruder might still be nearby.

  Jake didn’t know she was lost yet. She worried only that Kat had been knocked unconscious in the snow—or worse. She took a deep breath and pushed ahead, wincing with every agonizing step. She had started to sweat under her coveralls.

  There in the dark night, in the depth of the forest, she didn’t immediately notice it had begun to snow.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kat came back into the living room and was about to sit down at her desk to check the weather forecast when she noticed the bedroom door was open. She had very deliberately closed it, she was certain. The bathroom door was open as well. The only sound she could hear was the very faint hum of the refrigerator across the room. A tingle of apprehension crept up her spine as she moved toward the bedroom.

  She saw that Jake was not in bed, but nothing appeared to have been disturbed. She darted to the bathroom door and looked inside. Where the hell was Jake? She checked the pantry. She even opened the weapons room to eliminate that possibility. There was nowhere else. Jake was gone.

  She looked over at the three monitors. Her heart sank.

  She saw me. She saw everything. Did I scare her? Did she run?

  Kat thought it unlikely that Jake had slipped out of the main entrance during the only time the door had been open and unattended—the couple of minutes that she’d been away retrieving Frank’s snowmobile. Jake had to have gone through the emergency entrance.

  She can’t have gotten far with that knee. She wondered what Jake had been wearing when she left. Temperatures outside were in the teens. She went into the bedroom and opened the
dresser drawers. Nothing missing that she could tell. She went into the tunnel and studied the hanging gear and footwear. She realized that her black winter coveralls were gone, and an old but fairly well-insulated pair of boots. That eased her mind only slightly.

  Kat detoured to the weapons room to retrieve a small handheld GPS—global positioning system device—which she often used to find her way back to the bunker when she was out hunting or photographing wildlife.

  She returned to the tunnel and fished through one of the barrels for a wool cap. And she picked up her night-vision goggles and Frank’s flashlight. She wondered what Jake was thinking, out there in the cold, alone. She must have been very afraid to have gone out like that, in the shape she’s in.

  Kat’s heart clenched at the knowledge. She’d been thinking only of protecting Jake. When I find her, can I make her understand?

  Suddenly another possibility occurred to her. Did Jake regain her memory? Is that why she left? She rejected the idea. It was doubtful Jake had suddenly remembered who she was and then bolted, all in the space of a few minutes, after what had occurred between them. No. Jake had to have seen everything on the monitors and been upset by it, she decided.

  Kat climbed the rungs of the emergency exit. She had no idea what she would tell Jake to explain what had happened and why. She knew she’d better start figuring that out. Kat had no doubt she would find her, but it might take a while—she didn’t know how fast Jake might be able to move, and how far. And she didn’t know how much of a lead Jake had, but it was possibly a half hour or more.

  Would Jake answer if Kat called out her name, or would she run and hide?

  As she popped the hatch, Kat considered whether she should leave it open or closed. If Jake changed her mind and came back to the bunker, she’d only know how to find that entrance—and she wouldn’t see it unless the hatch was open. But unlocked and ajar, it left the bunker vulnerable to anyone who might be following Frank.

  She emerged into the cold night. She was startled to find it was snowing lightly. Be careful what you wish for.

  The snow made the decision for her. She decided to take the risk and leave the hatch open. She couldn’t leave Jake with no way to get back in.

  *

  Jake had stopped again. She was now sweating heavily beneath the insulated coveralls. Her exertions had left her panting and tired to the bone. The pain in her knee was unbearable.

  She was worried. She had at first tried to ignore the anxious inner voice that told her she had gone too far, it couldn’t be this way. But she finally had to admit it must be true. She was lost.

  Going after Kat had been an impetuous, foolish act, she admitted in retrospect. She had no idea where to go and was in no shape to be tramping around in the wilderness in subfreezing temperatures. But given the circumstances, she knew she’d probably do the same again. She knew that despite the many unknowns about her mysterious friend, if Kat was in trouble, that’s where she should be. It was as simple as that, or felt like it was.

  But that impulse had put her square in the center of trouble. She knew she had to try to return the way she’d come, but the prospect of reversing and traveling the same long course again was daunting in her current state.

  She needed to rest a minute first. Get the weight off her knee. A few steps off the path, she spotted a large fallen tree that would serve as an adequate bench. She brushed the snow from it and sat down, glad for the momentary relief for her knee. She wondered if she should put snow on it to help with the swelling. Probably not in this cold, she decided.

  She would wait here for only a few minutes to get her strength back. She was so tired she found it hard to focus.

  *

  Kat was grateful it hadn’t been snowing long; she could still make out Jake’s trail in the snow. She scanned the area thoroughly with her night-vision goggles. Nothing. She parked them on her forehead.

  She took out the flashlight and shone the bright light along the trench in the snow and followed it. She came to the jag Jake had made when she’d heard the snowmobile. Kat knew the detour had gone directly toward the main entrance of the bunker. It couldn’t be far, and she wondered about that. Had Jake left the bunker early enough to have heard some of her interrogation of Frank at the wall below?

  The trail ended abruptly, and Kat realized Jake had backtracked, so she did as well. She nearly missed where Jake had turned off onto the game trail, but at each intersection she came to, she gently blew away the upper powder on the trail to see the shape of the prints in the more solid snow beneath. She saw the boot imprint and recognized the tread. She hurried where she could. She was afraid the falling snow would make her task much more difficult. Soon she was far from the bunker.

  Kat paused to catch her breath. It was tough going through the knee-deep snow. She heard the faint drone of an engine. Her senses went on high alert, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise, but it was difficult. She thought it came from the same general direction as the bunker.

  Kat wondered whether Frank had gotten free and was fleeing on one of the snowmobiles. If he was, she thought, he was a hell of a lot smarter than she’d given him credit for.

  Probably not, she decided. It could be another of Garner’s men coming to collect on the contract. She hoped that wasn’t the case, but she had no intention of turning from her search for Jake. She just had to hurry. She really hoped now that Jake wouldn’t try to evade her and would come back to the bunker willingly. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

  *

  Otter cut the engine on the snowmobile. Though it was only snowing lightly, the accumulation was making it more and more difficult to follow Frank’s trail. He realized with a sense of alarm that his route back would also soon be impossible to follow if the snow kept up.

  He hadn’t seen any lights since he’d left the main road. No sign of civilization at all, for that matter. He’d just been on a slow, difficult trail through the woods, a path that seemed to lead nowhere. He’d brought extra gasoline, but not enough for running around lost if the route became obscured in front and behind. He had to make a decision soon. Continue on or return the way he came. Even if he found Hunter and killed her, it wouldn’t do him much good to die in the process.

  On the other hand, a million is worth a hefty risk, he figured. Hunter had to be somewhere, probably somewhere nice and warm where he could rest up and figure out how to get back to town. He’d make her give him directions—just before he killed her. There may never be another opportunity like this. This trail is your big payoff. You have to go forward. He started the engine, committed to finding her at any cost.

  *

  Jake was so fatigued from her trek through the snow that she dozed off momentarily and nearly toppled off the fallen tree. She jolted awake, berating herself for her carelessness. That can get you killed. She wondered what had happened to Kat and said a prayer that her new friend was safe and unhurt.

  She knew she should start heading back. She tried flexing her knee, but it felt as though the short period of inactivity had done it more harm than good. It had stiffened up, and any movement in the joint at all sent wrenching pain up and down her leg. She couldn’t imagine how she could stand on it. But she had to try.

  Jake slid carefully off the log, putting her weight on her good leg. She tried to hobble the few steps back to the trail she’d made but paid dearly for every bit of forward movement. The pain in her knee was so bad now she could not stop from crying, and Jake began to doubt she could make it all the way back to the bunker.

  She threw herself forward in clumsy, lurching movements, trying to keep as much weight off the knee as possible. She looked around for a stick she might use as a crutch or cane, but any that might have been on the ground were hidden completely by snow, and there were no low-hanging branches that might suffice. She fought on until a misstep caused her to careen forward, off balance.

  She tried to stop her fall by throwing out her hands. When her splinted left arm hit the gro
und, the pain was so intense she nearly blacked out. She lay where she had fallen, rolling over to face upward toward the sky, sucking in deep breaths against the pain.

  She began sobbing. Great heaving sobs. They were cries of pain, of frustration over her memory loss, of anxiety over what might have happened to Kat, over the foolishness that had put her in this situation. But mostly they were the result of sheer exhaustion. She didn’t think she could go on.

  She closed her eyes. It was comfortable lying there in the snow. Peaceful.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jake felt hazy, foggy. Like when she woke up at Kat’s after the crash. What she wanted more than anything was to hear that soothing, low voice again. It had made her feel safe and protected from the first moment she’d heard it. I hope you’re all right, Kat.

  She remembered the intensity of their last moments together. Before the alarm changed everything. Her body felt heated from the memory of their kiss. She relived it, took comfort in it, relaxed into it. She was just drifting off when she felt herself being lifted into the air. Nice dream. Then she was truly asleep.

  *

  Kat was grateful for Jake’s pain. It helped her locate the woman. It was getting very hard to see Jake’s trail even with the flashlight because of the accumulation of new-fallen snow. Kat had turned off the light a short while ago and was using her night-vision goggles because she was afraid Jake would hide if she saw someone pursuing her.

  Kat paused in her tracks when she heard something break the silence of the night. It was Jake, sobbing, and the sound sent a deep ache of regret to her very core. She felt responsible for causing it. She felt guilty, too, for any momentary doubts about Jake’s intentions. She’d obviously not run because she’d gotten her memory back. She must have been upset by what she’d seen.