Fletcher’s voice was drowned by static, and then there was silence.
“Whoops,” Xander said, grinning. “Looks like we dropped the call. Maybe you should switch carriers when we get home, Sam. This one really sucks.”
He handed her the phone and she didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him. A small ding indicated she’d received a text. It was the photo of Ryan Carter. She passed it to Xander and Roth so they could see who they were hunting.
Xander stared at the photo for a moment, then handed her the phone. “Okay. Break’s over. Time to go.” He and Roth shouldered their packs.
“Xander. You heard Fletch. We really should stay here, or go back down.”
Xander fingered his M-4. He looked incredibly formidable, and she wouldn’t want to have him tracking her up the side of a mountain. He was not fooling around.
“Darren Fletcher is not my commanding officer, Samantha. We are his best chance of capturing this Ryan Carter character alive. Crawford didn’t set out to have a fireside chat. If he gets to him first, we’re screwed. The fact that Carter’s coming in from Boulder is probably the only reason he’s still breathing, if he actually still is. So let’s quit jawing about it, and let me go make sure a friend of mine doesn’t go to jail for life for homicide. Okay?”
Sam took a deep breath and sat back down.
“What—”
She cut him off with a sigh. “Just give me two seconds. I’m putting a Band-Aid on my heel, just in case.”
She got out the bandage and unlaced her boot. When Xander and his father bowed their heads over their map, she took their moment of distraction to send Fletcher a text.
Didn’t work. We’re going in. Hurry up.
Two hours later, the hike became a study in pain. It was getting dark, the moonrise only just beginning, shining flat and silver through the trees. Not only was Sam scared and tired and hungry and worried, the pack had grown much too heavy on her shoulders and the imaginary blister she’d patched up when they’d last stopped had become a reality. There was no service on the cell now, and the forest had grown dense and dark around them. Little scurries in the bushes made her jump, and the lonely howl of a coyote twenty minutes earlier had completely freaked her out.
Xander and Roth seemed completely unfazed by their surroundings. Sam was a bit embarrassed, chalked it up to the fact that they were alone in the woods with a killer.
The irony of the fact that her boyfriend could be called by the same moniker wasn’t lost on her.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. He looked dark and dangerous, his beard growing in, the weapon cradled in his arms like a baby. He was carrying a modified M-4 assault rifle, and she knew he was more than accustomed to using it. It was simply an extension of his body, an extremely lethal metal hand. Part of her grieved for him in that moment, knowing what he’d been forced to do in the name of securing freedom, how he became so intimately familiar with the weapon, probably knowing it better than he knew the curves of her body.
She wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of him, that was for sure. He was so very different from her late husband, mild-mannered Simon Loughley: scientist, romantic, appeaser. They shared an incredible intellect, but that’s where the similarities stopped.
Life with Xander was never going to be boring, of that she was absolutely certain.
Just when she thought she was going to have to ask them to stop for a break so she could catch her breath, Roth whistled once, freezing in his tracks, his right hand up in a fist.
She recognized that move from the movies. It meant stop.
She did, grateful for the break, but her concern rose when Roth ducked down to his knees and gestured for them to do the same.
She listened carefully, trying to ascertain what had drawn his attention. All she could hear was the low hooting of an owl. A parade of goose bumps ran up and down her arms. Death was coming. She could feel his cool embrace on the wind that started rustling through the trees. The temperature dropped, and she realized the breeze had increased.
Xander slithered away, practically on his stomach, and Roth leaned back and squeezed her shoulder, whispered so quietly she had to strain to hear him.
“I smell a fire. We thought he would be farther up the mountain, but looks like he, or someone, is here, about a quarter of a mile to the west. Xander’s going to investigate.”
They stood carefully, quietly, and she followed Roth off the path into the woods, where they stood against a tree. Xander was back in a few minutes, speaking low so he wouldn’t be heard over the wind.
“I think this is it. There’s a cabin, and a barn. The fire’s down to embers, though, and I can’t see anyone there. It looks deserted. Could be Crawford was waiting for him. Maybe he banked the fire and took off when he wasn’t here.”
“Or it’s Carter, and he heard us coming and scatted.”