Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3) (9 page)

Mr. James shouldered the man aside to slip inside the backseat of the Escalade.
There he reached amongst the equipment stored in the back of the vehicle to retrieve a small electronic device.
He switched the device on an
d
almost purred in response to the answering blip.
I
t
was working. It wouldn’t matter if Moose lost the Rover.

Mr. James was thankful that he’d taken the time to find the Mountie’s Range Rover, parked out back, and attach a tracking device to the inside of the rear bumper
before going inside
.
Now his prey could run but they could not hide
even in the wilderness. He had prepared for this eventuality
once he learned how remote the Gulch was
.

“Let’s go,”
Jimmy
Nine Toes barked.

“Which way
?
” the driver asked as he climbed behind the wheel.

“West,”
Jimmy
replied.

As the Escalade pulled away from the curb to give chase, the driver saw Mr. James smile, probably thinking about what he was going to do with the Mountie and the girl when he got his hands on them.

*  *  *

We pulled into a drive-thru at the city limits and Chuck ordered coffee. The Escalade hadn’t followed us, but when we pulled back out into the street, there were two thug
-
mobiles following
close behind. There were a few other cars as well, but they were headed into the city instead of out.

“Chuck.”

“I see them.” Chuck pulled out his phone.
“Damn, the batteries are gone.”

“We could turn back.
Maybe go to police headquarters.
”

“You think they’ll let us?”

No, not really. I sighed
and refastened my seatbelt
.
I hoped the cups stayed in their cup
holders.

Rain began to fall, just a few fat drops, but I wasn’t thrilled
to see it
.
It didn’t take much rain to make the
dirt
roads around Seven Forks impassable
.

“We can’t lose them on the highway.”
Chuck was thinking out lo
u
d.

“But off
-
road?”

“Out there, traction counts more than speed. They have mass but we ha
ve
maneuverability.”

“Let me have your gun
,
”
I said.

“Why?”

“You’re driving. If things get nasty I’ll have to be the one to shoot back.” I didn’t add that I was probably the better shot
in that kind of situation
. Chuck practiced with stationary targets
at a shooting range
.
Though I hated hunting,
I sometimes had to deal with things that moved fast
in bad weather
.

“You’d do that?”

“In a heart
beat.”
I didn’t like shooting animals but I had no problem shooting vehicles.

Chuck reached the same conclusion
I had
and handed over his service revolver. He had checked before we left the apartment but I
open
ed it again.
It was fully loaded
.

“You handle yourself well,” Chuck said, checking his mirrors. He was getting ready to exit the highway and not in an approved manner
.

“I don’t like guns but I’m not afraid of them.”

“You can find the way if we leave the road and head into the
back
country?”

“Of course. I’d prefer it.”

“I’m glad one of us is confident
that this is a good idea
.”

I am afraid of jails, afraid of strangers who can put me in jails.
Or kill me. But I am not afraid of the forest. Show reasonable respect for its denizens, know your terrain
,
and you’ll be okay. Mostly. Though I wished like anything that we had Max along if we were going to be spending time in the woods at night.

The E
scalades didn’t like our leaving the tarmac and as I had feared, they started shooting
the moment that it looked like we would get away
.
There were no cars in either direction so no one
impartial
to call for help.

I didn’t shoot back until we reached a band of tree
s
that offered cover
and they somehow managed to hit a tire.
We wouldn’t make it far traveling on a flat and we couldn’t very well stop to change it. Our pursuers had to be disabled
so we could escape on foot
.

Chuck had his hands full, controlling the car that was trying to pull left
,
so I rolled down the window, released my seatbelt
,
and then swung myself so I was sitting in the
window
opening.

“Butterscotch!”

I laid my right arm on the top of the
R
over and si
gh
ted on the neare
st Escalade. The ground was bump
y, so it was nothing short of a miracle that I managed to
eventually
shatter the windshield
.
Fortunately, the driver panicked and slewed sideways and the second Escalade T-boned it. It wasn’t a fatal crash, but it would slow them down.

Unfortunately, we only had one bullet left.

“Get us as close to the riverbed as you can,” I said. “It will be easier to walk
the banks than push
through the undergrowth.”

Chuck didn’t say anything. His face was pale but he was calm. I guess getting shot at wasn’t as scary as smuggling a girlfriend across the US border.
Also, as I had reason to know, Chuck is good in a crisis.

Though the batteries were dead, we took the phone, the gun with one bullet, a car blanket
,
and a survival/first
aid kit Chuck kept in the back
.

“The rods?” he asked.

“No. I don’t need them.”

We heard
angry
voices.

“This way,” I said and started down the hill where there were boulders to hide behind
while we worked
our way
toward the stream
.

There
were
few deciduous trees in these woods, but those grow
ing
there were doing their level best to bury our trail
. The rain
and rising wind
made the falling leaves stick to us in spatters of gold and rust that offered a kind of camouflage. When possible we walked on pine needles or stone. The pine castoffs were slippery but they didn’t take prints.

Fallen limbs were everywhere, victims of the early winter that had stricken
green
boughs still heavy with leaves and needles when the snows came.

“They’re still behind us,” Chuck said softly.

Most city people would call it a day when their quarry left the sidewalks and went into the wild. This group was ambitious. There was no lowering of expectation
s
just because they were heading into the heart of darkness
with a storm coming on
. I figured that either they had a local guide, or they were very arrogant. I was hoping for the latter.
Arrogance would get them killed faster than anything.

After an hour, I called a halt. We needed to rest and I hadn’t heard any voices for a while.

“I hate hiking,” Chuck said in a mild voice
as he brushed leaves out of his hair
.
The rain was taking a break.

“Me too. But we’re going to be fine,” I said
,
kneeling and
opening Chuck’s survival pack. “These guys may be super badasses in the city where they can predict everything. But they’re in my country now.” I almost believed this. “Now let’s see what we have
to work with
.”

The list wasn’t bad. We had a thermal blanket,
a
flashlight, some basic first aid supplies, packets of instant coffee and sugar, an orange fla
re
gun, a butane lighter, and a bottle of laxative. I raised a brow at Chuck as I held up the last item.

“I hate drinking stream water. It’s unsanitary.” He colored. When he spoke
again
, he sounded defensive. “Fish spawn in it. Animals defecate and die everywhere. So I don’t drink it.”

“And?”

“And you get constipated if you don’t drink fluids for a week.”

“Oh. Well, it may come in handy.”

“I sincerely hope we aren’t out here that long.”

“We won’t be. And I know of an abandoned cabin near here. So we’ll have shelter for the night. And I’m a good fisherman, so we’ll have something for dinner. Tomorrow we will hook up with Anatoli and the boys. It’s going to be okay.”

Before Chuck could answer, we again heard voices. I couldn’t imagine why the morons were making so much noise. Perhaps they had fanned out and were afraid of losing each other as they searched.

I repacked the rucksack and we started
on our way. Not a quarter mile o
n I ran into a thriving patch of poison ivy, all shiny orange and dripping with white berries. It might be too much to hope
that our pursuers would be dumb enough to actually fall for it
, but
in case they were really that ignorant,
I was going to try and fake them right into
the
stuff.

“Chuck, be careful not to break any limbs on the trees over there.” I pointed to the left. “I want you to go around this poison ivy
without leaving a trail
.”

He stared at the bright orange and red leaves and then turned away. I picked up a fallen
branch
and started swinging it, making a narrow path
through the vines
. I am not particularly allergic, but I was careful not to get any on my hands and only went in about six feet and then abandoned my fake trail. We needed to keep moving and I couldn’t invest more than a couple minutes in a trap that might not work. I hoped at least some of them would fall for it. Poison ivy is bad at any time of the year, but at its magnificent worst in the fall.
A bad rash would offer serious discouragement.

I would like to have known how many of them there were on our trail, but the rest
of the problem
was pretty obvious. We knew who they were
—
bad guys
—
and where they were
—
approximately
—
and what they were after. I might have been tempted to offer them a trade, the stick for our lives, but I knew Chuck wouldn’t go for it. And I was pretty
sure
they would try to kill us anyway.
Our best option was to keep moving
and try to lo
se them
.

*  *  *

“Mr. James,”
Tony
said
tentatively
. “It’s the boss. I guess your phone is dead.
Mine is
n’t
sounding too good either.
”

Jimmy didn’t swear out loud, but
Tony
thought he might as well have. His face was looking ugly as the bruise spread
over his scar
and he was clearly still pissed off
at losing their vehicles
.

Jimmy ground his teeth for a moment and then held out his hand for the phone.

“Yes?” he said. “Speak up. I can’t hear you.”

*  *  *

Though it was slightly off course, I detoured into
the edge of
bear territory.
I didn’t mention to Chuck what I was doing. So far, he was doing really well
with the hiking through the wild thing
, but the whole not drinking from streams
explanation
kind of clued me in about his level of wilderness enjoyment.
I was out of my comfort zone, but Chuck was redlining.

Chuck didn’t notice anything, but I began to see tufts of dark hair stuck to some of the trees. I started keeping eyes and ears open for more than voices.

Bears are curious creatures. There are lots of theories about how to deal with them and each species is different
in temperament
.
With b
lack bears, you
r
best shot is to fight them, to make noise and look big and mean.
Sometimes you can frighten them away
or discourage them with a fist to the nose
.
With grizzlies, it is better to fall down and play dead. Polar bears
—
well, just say your prayers. There wouldn’t be any polar bears in these woods
,
but grizzlies and black bears were a possibility.
The other thing about bears in the autumn is that they are just walking nose, olfactory organs on legs, looking for food so they can get fat and hibernate.