He’d gotten quieter as the day went on, too. Pain tightened his face whenever he didn’t remember to hide it. The flush she saw on his lean cheeks above dark stubble made her more uneasy. Even with all the willpower in the world, pushing himself to get back on his feet as soon as he did couldn’t have been good for his recovery. She’d known all along that his risk of infection was high. She’d been able to don sterile latex gloves, and the gauze, scissors, needle and suturing material were sterile, too. Unfortunately, the blade of that black-handled knife Joe had used on him wasn’t. Then there were the dirty shirts used to stem the bleeding. This was an awful time for the infection to appear. Dumb thing to think—was there a time that would have been good? If only there’d been antibiotics in that first-aid kit, or Spencer had stocked them along with the pain meds.
He was capable of going on with a fever, at least for now, Leah convinced herself. But what if they hadn’t found their way out of the wilderness two days from now? Three?
He did go on, and on, hours upon hours, until her thighs burned and she’d quit thinking about anything but the next step. She’d thought of taking the lead but decided against it. With Spencer in front, he was more likely to stop when he needed it, while she might misjudge his stamina.
Just then Spencer stopped, Leah stumbling to a halt just before she walked into him. Blinking, she realized the light had changed without her noticing, deepening into purple.
“We risk getting injured if we continue in the dark,” Spencer said, his voice rough. “I’m sorry we didn’t come across any berries.”
She took the hand he held out. “Going without for a day or two isn’t that big a deal. Isn’t fasting supposed to be good for you?”
“I’ve read that. I’m not convinced.”
“Me, either.” Studying him anxiously, she said, “I should look at your wounds while there’s still some light.”
“Why?” He let her go and lowered himself to another mossy piece of ground with a few pained grunts he apparently couldn’t hold back.
“Why? Because—” She didn’t finish.
“I’m not sure we even dare wash the wounds out in a stream,” he said wearily. “What if that introduces different microorganisms into my body? And, in turn, I’d be introducing bacteria into the stream that might be deadly to fish or mammals downstream that drink out of it. What’s more—” he continued inexorably “—we have no supplies to rewrap my wounds and especially my ribs.”
The ribs might be hurting him more than anything, she realized. The binding did offer some support. Yes, she could tear her T-shirt into strips, say, but the knit fabric would be too stretchy to provide the same kind of support.
“I’m sorry.” She sank down beside him. “I wish I could do something.”
“I’ll be okay. I just wish—” He shook his head as if regretting having said that much.
“Wish?” Leah prodded.
“I was sure I’m not leading us astray.”
“Short of your watch converting into a compass, I don’t see how you can know. You’re not Superman, Spencer.” Then she stopped again and frowned. “Why am I still calling you that?”
“You don’t have to.” With a sigh, he rolled his head. “But I might not answer to Alex.”
“Really?”
He managed a smile. “No, I’m kidding, but I’ve even been thinking of myself as Spencer. It’s like... Do you speak a foreign language?”
“I’m pretty fluent in Spanish.”
“You think in it when you’re speaking it, right?”
“Yes.”
“When I go undercover, I immerse myself to that extent. I’m not Special Agent Alex Barr. I am Spencer Wyatt. I can’t slip.”
“I can see that,” she said slowly, even as she wondered how he could possibly do that. He’d said something once about not being sure who he was anymore, and how he’d done things, bad things, he didn’t name. Not raped women, she felt certain. If he’d beaten men to death, or shot them, she believed he’d had adequate provocation.
Apparently losing interest in the subject, he said, “I think I’d like to lie down.”
He let her help him, which said a lot about his condition. He encouraged her to join him, and soon they were curled up together. As the temperature dropped with nightfall, he had to be cold on top of everything else—unless he was burning up, of course. Leah rubbed his bare arms and lifted his hands to her skin beneath her sweatshirt. That he didn’t protest told her how lousy he felt.
She kept thinking about a man who’d spent—she didn’t know—much of the past several years, at least, undercover with violent fanatics who wanted to remake the country into their twisted ideals. She hadn’t heard any slurs from him, as she had from some of the other men, but he must know all the right things to say to allow him to blend in.
How jarring it must be to return to his real life, whatever that was. An apartment? How homey was that, when it stayed empty for months on end? He presumably had no pets, he’d said he wasn’t close to family and she didn’t believe he had a girlfriend or fiancée waiting patiently for him. Spencer Wyatt—no, Alex Barr —wasn’t the kind of man to make promises to one woman and have sex with another.
Feeling him relax into sleep, she thought, I do know him. Of course I do.
He’d been willing to give his life for her. That said enough about him to erase even fleeting doubts.
Hunger pushed off sleep for another while, but she was exhausted enough to drop off eventually.
Waking suddenly, the darkness unabated, she lay very still. What had disturbed her...? The answer came immediately. A wave of convulsive shivering seized Spencer. His back arched and his teeth chattered before he could clamp them shut.
Terrified, she realized there wasn’t a single thing she could do except hold him, and keep holding him.
Chapter Sixteen
A murky haze that made Leah think of smog had settled over the usually crystal-clear silver-gray of Spencer’s eyes. Or maybe it was more like a film. All she knew was that he couldn’t possibly be seeing as well as usual. He couldn’t hide that he was still shivering, too.
She watched as he staggered out of her sight to pee, returning a minute later. His usual grace had deserted him. How could they keep going? If they’d been on a smooth path or the road, maybe, but as it was...
How can we not keep going? Leah asked herself bleakly. It wasn’t as if he had a twenty-four-hour flu bug. He wouldn’t get better until he was on powerful antibiotics. If they didn’t reach a hospital, he might die.
Even if they’d both been healthy, each day would be more grueling than the last, considering that they were able to drink only occasionally, and had nothing whatsoever to eat. It surely couldn’t be that far before they reached the highway.
“You ready?” he asked gruffly.
Leah nodded. “Let me go first today.”
He stared at her for long enough, she wasn’t sure whether he was really slow in processing what she’d said, or resisting the idea. But finally, he nodded. Good.
She had to look around before deciding which way they’d come from, and therefore which way she needed to go. Some feature of ancient geology had formed a shallow dip here, and the forest was dense enough, she couldn’t see very far ahead. As they started walking, her thighs let her know when the land tilted downward again.
Once, she said, “Oh, did you see that?” and turned, for a minute not seeing Spencer at all. Her heart took a huge, painful leap.
He plodded around the trunk of one of the forest giants. He hadn’t heard her, and the small mammal she’d seen had long since dashed out of sight. His teeth were clenched, his eyes glazed, but he was able to keep moving.
No choice.
From then on she made sure to look over her shoulder regularly to be sure he was still with her.
The pace seemed awfully slow, but she felt
sure that raw determination was all that kept Spencer moving.
A distant sound caught her attention. She grabbed Spencer’s arm to stop him and listened, momentarily confused. That could be a river, but if it was the Nooksack, that meant they’d also reached the highway that followed it. Of course there were tributaries, like the one that flowed from the side of Mount Baker, running past the resort to meet the larger Nooksack, but the water didn’t rush like—
It was a car engine. It had to be.
Traffic on the highway? Or had they unintentionally come close to the resort road?
Leah wished she could be sure where the sound came from, but her best guess at direction wasn’t even close to precise. It wouldn’t be so bad if they spotted the resort road, would it? At least they’d know where they were.
She glanced at Spencer, and fear gripped her. He looked bad. Really bad.
Maybe she should take the gun from him, start carrying it herself. If one of the men suddenly appeared in front of them, was Spencer capable of reacting quickly enough?
Could I? she asked herself, and was afraid she knew the answer. There was a reason cops and soldiers were supposed to spend so much time at gun ranges. She’d never fired a weapon in her life. To aim it at a person, one she knew, and pull the trigger—and that was assuming the gun didn’t have a safety, which she had no idea how to identify.
Keep going. She had a very bad feeling that, if they took a break and sat down, she might have a hard time getting Spencer up again. She wouldn’t be doing it with sheer muscle, since he had to outweigh her by eighty pounds, at least. There had to be a way...but he was still walking.
The light began to seem brighter ahead. They emerged from the trees between one step and the next. Stumps and the kind of mess left by logging told her this land had been clear-cut, probably a couple of years ago. Some scruffy small trees grew, alder and maple, she thought. And a wealth of huckleberry bushes, many growing out of rotting stumps.
“Berries!” she cried.
Spencer bumped into her. For the first time in several hours, comprehension showed on his face. She steered him to a bush covered with purple-blue, ripe berries. Once she saw that he was able to pick them himself and stuff them into his mouth, she started doing the same.
They shouldn’t eat very many; the last thing they needed was to end up sick, but oh, they tasted good, the flavor bursting on her tongue. And she was so hungry!
Within minutes her fingers were stained purple, as were Spencer’s. But who cared?
Bushes a short distance away shook. Hand outstretched for more berries, Leah stared. It kept shaking, and that was an odd sound. Sort of...snuffling. Or grunting.
“Spencer,” she whispered.
His head turned, his eyes sharp. He had to have heard the alarm in her voice.
He stared at the trembling leaves, and in a move so fast it blurred, had his gun in his hand.
“We need to back away,” she murmured.
He nodded agreement.
“Probably won’t pay any attention to us,” she said, just as quietly.
A stick cracked under her foot. She’d have frozen in place if his hand hadn’t gripped her upper arm and kept her moving.
Craning her neck, she saw brown fur. An enormous head pushed between bushes. Supposedly, bears didn’t have very good vision, but it was staring right at them. And, oh, dear God, it kept pushing through the growth, canes snapping.
“Not too fast.”
The bear wasn’t charging, but Leah would have sworn it grew to fill her field of vision. Seeing the hump between the shoulders had her already racing pulse leaping.
“Spencer!” she whispered loudly.
“I see.”
Another step, another. The head swung back and forth. Leah would swear the small eyes looked angry.
Suddenly, Spencer cursed, and she, too, heard a deep-throated engine cut off. Car doors slam.
“I see them!” yelled a voice she recognized and detested.
TJ Galt.
The racket off to the right made the bear even more agitated. It took a few steps toward them. Ignoring the two voices Leah now heard, Spencer held her to a slow, steady retreat.
Until the scrubby growth toward what had to be the resort road began to shake and snap as the men trampled through it. One of them yodeled, “Got you now, traitor!”
The grizzly lowered its head and charged.
“Run!” Spencer ordered. She didn’t hesitate, racing as fast as she could back the way they’d come. It was a minute before she realized he’d split away, probably intending to draw the bear’s attention.
But a gun barked. Again and again. TJ and Arne intended to shoot them down.
She heard a crashing behind her and dared a look back. The bear had stopped and swung toward the two men who were yelling gleefully. One took a shot at her that stung her arm. Spencer... She saw him trip, recover his footing and keep running.
The grizzly charged the men. One of them bellowed, “Bear!”
As if she’d stepped into a noose, Leah pitched forward. She didn’t land gently, but didn’t even acknowledge pain. Pushing herself to her hands and knees, she twisted to see what was happening.
Gunshots exploded but didn’t slow the bear. Screaming, one of the men went down. The other stumbled backward. Even from this distance, she saw his horror.
“Keep going!” Spencer roared.
She used her position like a sprinter on a starting block to run, gasping, hurting, horrified by the snarls and terrible screams she heard behind her.
Leah hadn’t gotten far into the woods when she slammed against a hard body. Even as she fought, she couldn’t stop herself from looking back.
“Leah! It’s me. It’s just me.”
She was whimpering as she took in his face. If she’d thought he looked bad before, it was nothing to now. He was as sickened as she was by what was happening behind them.
“Come on.” He all but dragged her forward. She jogged to keep up with his long strides. Then she realized which hand he gripped her with.
“Your wrist.”
“To hell with my wrist.” He still held his gun in his right hand. “Let’s circle around. If they both went down, we might have transportation.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the engine roared to life. Tires skidded on gravel as the driver floored it.
There was one more strangled scream.
* * *
SPENCER’S LUNGS HEAVED like old-fashioned bellows, and his heart was trying to pound its way out of his chest.
He and Leah had slid down an unexpected drop-off and collapsed at the bottom, their backs to a big tree.
She breathed as fast as he did, her eyes dilated, each exhalation sounding like a sob although she wasn’t crying. “TJ,” she gasped. “That was TJ.”
“Yeah,” he managed. “And Arne.”
“He took off and left him.” She sounded disbelieving.
He and she had taken off and left TJ to a terrible death, too, Spencer couldn’t help thinking. They’d had more motivation to run even than Arne had, but Spencer also thought sticking around to try to rescue the grizzly’s victim would have been useless and possibly a death sentence.
Shaking from reaction or the damn fever or both, he got out, “You okay?”
“I...don’t know.”
He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he hadn’t been shot. In fact, he bent his head to search for blood. He saw some, but on Leah, not him.
With an exclamation, he laid down his Sig Sauer and reached for her arm. “Does this hurt?”
She tipped her head to peer dubiously at the bloodstain on her upper arm. “Something stung me.”
Yeah, there was a rip, all right. He parted it enough to see that the bullet had barely skimmed her flesh. Its passage might leave a scar,
but the blood flow wasn’t worrisome. Her face was decorated with some new scratches strung with beads of scarlet like polished rubies crossing her cheek and forehead.
He lifted a hand to smooth her hair, tangled with leaves and twigs. “Damn,” he whispered. “I thought that was it.”
“Me, too.” She blinked against some moisture in her eyes. “TJ sneered at me when I said I was watching for bears. You know, when we were picking berries...”
“We’d better not stick around,” Spencer said after a minute. As shitty as he felt, he wanted to kiss her, and maybe more. Nothing like a shot of adrenaline to fire up a man’s blood and clear his head. Unfortunately, adrenaline didn’t hang around long, and he’d crash when it dissipated. “That bear has to have taken a bullet or two. It’ll be mad.”
“It won’t die?”
“I don’t know. Not immediately, I’m guessing. Probably it just thinks it got stung by some yellow jackets.”
Gutsy as always, Leah nodded sturdily. She got to her feet faster than he did and picked up his gun for him. Holstering it, he said, “I guess we found the road.”
“Yes, and I’m pretty sure we’re close to the turnoff.”
“We still have to be careful, you know.”
Her head bobbed. He had the feeling she was checking to see how he was, even as he did the same for her.
She looked like she’d been in a cat fight. Scratches, new and old, on her face and hands. Hair a mess. Her clothes, ripped and dirty, hung on her as if she’d already lost weight. Horror darkened her beautiful eyes.
He hadn’t taken very good care of her.
They were alive, he reminded himself. Unlike TJ Galt.
An hour later they had circled around the clear-cut land and saw the resort road. It was paved here, which encouraged him. Not that far to go.
They hiked on, trying to move parallel to it, just near enough they could see it occasionally. Twice they saw a black SUV driving slowly along the road, once heading out, then coming back up.
“They still think they can cut us off,” he said.
“What if the driver let off a couple guys who are on foot out here with us?”
The Last Resort Page 17
