Between frantic glances at the road, Frankie looked at her brother sitting slumped against the seatbelt, bright red drops falling into his lap. His bowed head bobbed up and down as the Jeep flew over rises and plummeted down gullies. Gorge rose in Frankie’s throat. Her chest tightened and her vision blurred.
“Tim? Oh God, oh God, oh God…” She brushed her brother’s shoulder with the fingertips of her right hand, half afraid she’d further hurt him but needing the contact.
Tim breathed out a final, long sigh. The soles of his shoes did a tap dance against the floorboard as his nerves fired off their final salvos. That sound—the sound of death—would have in reality been barely audible, but to Frankie’s ears it became a pounding jackhammer.
Chapter Two
“No. No, no, no…” Frankie cried the word over and over, as if by force of will she could make the universe stop whatever was happening. She swallowed hard against the panic that threatened to make her vomit, while shoving the recognition of what Tim’s wounds meant into the recesses of her conscious mind.
Another shot shattered the outside mirror on the driver’s side. Frankie’s eyes jerked to her rearview mirror. The pickup had nearly closed the gap between them.
Slowing barely enough to keep from rolling the vehicle, she made a sharp turn onto what looked like a trail in the woods. Relief filtered into her panic-stricken brain when the pickup fishtailed and then stalled as the driver took the same turn while going too fast.
Frankie jammed her foot on the accelerator with all her strength in hopes she could somehow make the Jeep go faster. Fast enough to become airborne. Fast enough to reverse time.
The Jeep sped cross-country down gullies and over ridges toward Taos and the nearest hospital. She fought to maintain control of the whipping steering wheel as the vehicle gee’d and haw’d. Every bump jogged pieces of the shattered windshield loose. Brickled bits of glass rained onto the boxes of food, where they slid and tick-tacked with every frantic turn.
But after only a few miles, the engine sputtered and died. The odor of gasoline filled the interior, and the light on the dash indicated an empty gas tank, the evident victim of a stray bullet.
Her stomach dropped, even as her brain refused to admit what the empty tank meant. For several seconds she gripped the steering wheel, her neck and shoulders rigid.
She turned the key in the ignition over again and again, pumping her foot on the gas pedal. She pounded her left hand against the steering wheel, willing the useless vehicle to roar back to life. But the Jeep only responded with a sputtering cough that soon gave way to a series of impotent clicks.
Frankie’s heart set up a drummer’s paradiddle in her chest. The pulse in her temples throbbed in cadence, her breathing came in shallow gasps. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, host to years of happy family campouts, now surrounded her like a troop of malicious hump-backed ogres.
Sodden pine needles muted her footfall as she stumbled out of the Jeep. The rain-slick carpet made for treacherous walking, forcing her to step carefully as she walked around the vehicle to the passenger’s side. She unbuckled her brother’s seatbelt, pulled him toward her and struggled to gently lower him to the ground.
Her eyes were drawn to Tim’s face. The air whooshed out of her lungs at the sight. Was it only minutes ago they’d been laughing at childhood antics? And now Tim lay unmoving at her feet, her clothes soaked in his blood.
A keening moan bubbled up from somewhere inside, and she swallowed hard. If she gave in to the urge, she might never stop screaming. And hysteria would serve no purpose now.
Gripping Tim’s still-warm hands, she struggled to pull him toward the thick underbrush. Her feet kept slipping out from under her and she often fell to her knees. Each time, she hoisted herself back up.
In a few hours, the sun would fall behind the trees and the forest would become dark as a galactic black hole. While she would welcome the concealing darkness, it would also blot out any familiar landmarks. And an inability to find a landmark in the mountains could result in a number of outcomes, none of them good. She dragged her brother’s body in the direction she hoped the cabin lay.
An hour or so later, the burble of water flowing over stones buoyed her courage. She could follow what she knew to be the only stream in this part of the forest almost to the cabin’s back door. Offering thanks to the Creator, she pulled Tim’s body toward the sound of rushing water.
The adrenaline infusion had long since worn off by the time she reached the river, and her back felt as if it would be permanently cocked at a forty-five degree angle. Every muscle in her body ached and twitched.
She dropped Tim’s now-cool hands and straightened her back, gritting her teeth at the resulting pain. No use in racing against the clock any more. No use praying for Tim’s life to be spared. No more pretending not to recognize what the coldness of his body meant.
Frankie locked her trembling knees in place and surveyed the still unfamiliar surroundings. A few feet from where she stood lay a slab of sandstone about three feet wide and eight feet long. Overhung with sod and tree roots, the flat stone formed the floor of a shallow cave that ran parallel to the river. Well above water level, it would serve her purpose perfectly. She dragged her brother’s body down to the ledge and positioned it on the sun-warmed stone.
Somewhere along the way Tim’s shoes had come off, uncovering dark socks, one with a hole in the toe. Something between a sob and a moan hissed through her lips at the sight of Tim’s big toe peeking through the tear. She’d teased him about those toes, told him they were big enough to merit smaller, tacked-on shoes all their own—like an add-on to a one-room house. Those two thick, wide big toes he proudly claimed made swim fins unnecessary.
Sunlight slanting through the pines mottled the scene, and the merest whisper of a cool breeze stirred Tim’s hair. Frankie sobbed at the normalcy of the sight. At the memory of summer fishing trips, winter snowboarding, and high school basketball games during which his hair had ruffled in exactly the same way.
After removing her windbreaker, she pulled off her blue cardigan, then put the jacket back on over her white turtleneck. Hands trembling, she wrapped her brother’s head in the soft folds of her sweater, careful to cover his ruined face.
She caved in the soil that jutted out over the shelf. The rich, wild smell of forest earth mingled with the fragrance of the evergreens and fall wild flowers.
Her ears tuned to pick up sounds of pursuit, Frankie found two large fallen tree branches and pulled them on top of the makeshift grave. Then she spent precious minutes collecting river rocks for a cairn at the head of the mounded earth.
In spite of the crisp autumnal mountain air, perspiration poured down her face. It stung her eyes and pasted her hair against her forehead. The salty fluid worked its way along the crease of her lips, even as her mind registered the danger the moisture represented.
She knelt beside Tim’s grave and patted the fragrant, muddy soil. “I’ll be back.”
Shivering, she turned and headed upstream. She could feel her body heat evaporating in waves. Her water-repellent windbreaker protected her from the rain, but her cotton turtleneck underneath was soaked in perspiration. She had to find the cabin within the next couple of hours or be forced to find a place to hole up for the night. The prospect brought fresh panic bubbling up her throat.
Stiff-legged and aching, her body reluctantly followed her command to keep moving. She focused on trying to ignore the knots in her leg muscles and the growing cramp in her side.
The sight of a familiar outcropping of rock brought a prayer of gratitude to her lips. In minutes she would drink fresh water and could use the cabin landline to call for help. She would tell the police about the men in the green pickup. Then she’d go back for Tim.
But before she could step into the clearing around the cabin, the sound of a rifle shot pulled her up short. Adrenaline again erupted, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck moved as if alive. She pressed herself against the trunk of a large pine tree and willed her body to fuse with it. The sound of angry voices hit her like a slap.
“I told you not to shoot, dammit.” A masculine voice crescendoed into a bellow.
Someone mumbled a response, the words unintelligible.
“I don’t care what you thought. Bad enough you took the first few shots. And now look what you’ve done. Thanks to you, they’ve gone to ground, and we’re well and truly screwed.”
Frankie turned back in the direction from which she’d just come. In spite of her racing heart, she made herself walk for several yards before giving in to the urge to run. Then she ran pell-mell, heedless of direction, and long after her burning lungs told her to stop.
After several minutes that seemed like hours, she stopped to listen for sounds of pursuit. She stooped over at the waist, put the palms of her hands on her bent knees for support, and sucked in great gulps of air. Except for her gasping breaths, no other sound broke the silence. No thumping footfalls, no voices arguing over how best to proceed. No evidence of the two murderers intent on… Intent on what? On catching her? On killing her? What in God’s name were they after?
Frankie straightened her back and scanned the area, hoping to spot one of the hundreds of landmarks she’d memorized from the annual two-week forest survival training her uncle Mike had put her and Tim through during their growing-up years. Just one landmark to tell her where she was standing, that’s all she needed.
She should have paid attention to where she was going—shouldn’t have allowed panic to blind her to everything but the thought of putting distance between her and Tim’s murderers.
Her eyes strained, pulling at their muscle-moorings, as if by sheer effort they could pierce through the dense foliage and thick underbrush. Gorge rose in her throat.
She turned around again and again as renewed panic clawed its way through her chest. Lost. Like a death knell, the words rang through her mind: lost and alone.
A gentle rain started up again as she considered her options. The good news was that the rain would keep most mountain predators and creepy-crawlies snuggled in their warm homes for a while. Although poisonous snakes would not yet have gone into hibernation, they tended to shy away from human contact unless cornered. And she had no intention of being either the cornerer or the corneree.
A shiver ran across her shoulders as she remembered Uncle Mike’s stories of ill-prepared hikers who got lost in these mountains. Some of them, usually the ones who ignored the hikers’ cardinal rule by not telling at least one other person where they were heading, had never been seen again. And then there were the stories of bodies so gnawed by animals they were only identifiable through their DNA. But the most horrific story of all was about the hiker who became pinned under a boulder and had to sever his own arm with a penknife to escape.
Frankie adjusted the hood of her nylon jacket. She was grateful for its protection from the rain, but underneath it, the perspiration-absorbing fibers of her cotton shirt pressed against her body, cooling it and making her a perfect candidate for hypothermia.
And hypothermia impaired judgment. It made thinking difficult and increased the probability of an accident. She could fall victim to it and not even realize what was happening.
Calm yourself, Frances. Fear sucks up your energy, and you’ll need every scrap of it before this is over. Remember what I taught you and you’ll find a way.
The standing-right-next-to-her sound of her dead uncle Mike’s voice pulled her back from the edge of hysteria. She clung to its echoes, assuming it was only a memory stirred up by terror.
Snippets of her uncle’s survival speeches floated through her mind as she worked her memory for the skills he had taught her and Tim. Her first job was to get out of the drizzling rain. She scanned her surroundings and spotted two fairly large boulders propped against each other, forming a kind of lean-to.
Watchful of any other creatures that might have had the same idea, she approached the rock shelter. She picked up a long stick, poked it as far into the recess as she could and shook it around, banging it against the stone walls. When nothing moved or scurried out of the enclosure, she dropped to all fours and crawled in.
Hunkering down with her back toward the opening, she curled into a ball. She pressed her knees against a semi-soft mass of what she assumed to be a pile of needle-covered branches and tried to get comfortable. She had to cock her head at an angle and push it up against one of the boulders, but at least the ground beneath her was dry.
Frankie focused on her breathing. After a few minutes, she was surprised to find herself warming up. Her body stopped shivering, and she fell into an uneasy sleep.
Dark dreams periodically jerked her awake, and she jumped, banging her head, elbows, and knees against the boulders. She dozed off and on, while the temperature outside the stone teepee dropped.
Sometime during the night the rain stopped. Its cessation pricked Frankie’s subconscious, and she jerked awake.
A coyote howled from what sounded like only a few yards away, and she held her breath. It was a useless tactic, of course, since the coyote didn’t need to hear her breathing to know she was there. He’d probably smelled her long before she heard him calling his mate to dinner. Smelled her covered in Tim’s blood.
When the coyote inexplicably neither howled again nor showed up with a knife, fork, and bib, Frankie breathed a sigh of relief. Coyotes are generally afraid of people, but the smell of blood and her own weakened condition would have been a temptation to any carnivore trying to find a meal during New Mexico’s worst drought on record.
She’d been lying on her right arm, and now it was numb. In an effort to get into a more comfortable position, she moved the arm as much as she could in the confines of her shelter until feeling began to return. Her body complaining like a circus contortionist with arthritis, Frankie tried to straighten her legs a bit.