Wolf Tracker (13 page)

“I’ll avenge you, Tami. The men who put those shadows in your eyes are dead already. They just ain’t stopped breathing quite yet. But they will. I promise, they will.”

* * * *

When Glory came to town two days after Thanksgiving, she confessed to Tami she had sold the pencil portrait to Tracker. “He saw me working on it and traded me a little stone statuette of a wolf. Sorry,” she apologized. “I just couldn‘t resist the cute little wolf.”

“You can’t resist the cute big wolf, either,” Marissa quipped.

Glory smiled like a cat licking cream off its whiskers. “He’s all mine. Why would I want to resist him?” she purred, and sauntered off to the kitchen.

Marissa grinned after her. “You should!” she yelled. “Make him work for it!”

Without turning around, Glory gave them a one-fingered salute.

Marissa laughed again and turned back to Tami. “I think Dan likes you. He took that drawing like it was a ten thousand-dollar bill.”

Pleasure bubbled up in Tami at that, but she ignored it. “Did Tracker come to town, too?” she asked casually.

“No, he left again to go back to wherever he comes from.” Marissa waved. “I’m going to find my son. See you later.”

Tami hid a little shudder. Marisa looked like she was in her early twenties and her son was in his mid-fifties. Faron Paulson had been born before Marissa had gotten on the plane, and had grown up to be a middle-aged man while his mother had remained the same age. Seeing them together was weird. Things like that made Tami feel like she was stuck in a dream, as if this life here in 2064 must be a delusion.

Tami was sorry she had missed Tracker. She thought of him from time to time, increasingly grateful for his help. If he hadn’t found her, who knew where she would be right now? Or if he were a different kind of man, she could be in a pretty bad place now. With help from Jodi and Dixie the frequency of the nightmares was lessening, and she found herself dwelling on her memories of Tracker. She thought of the shadows fluttering over his face in the glow of the campfire, his long braids swaying against his back with the gait of his horse, the way his blue eyes flared to sapphire brightness in the sun, his deft hands working with the little chisel and stone to make a figurine like the wolf he’d traded to Glory for her picture. She remembered him frankly admitting he wanted her, and his voice when he promised she was safe with him. He had proven that to her by giving her the pistol to sleep with, keeping to his side of camp, and taking her to Taye’s den. When ugly memories of Leach and the other men tried to paralyze her she combated them with memories of Tracker.

Both Jodi and Dixie told her she was handling things really well. The nightmares were normal. So were her occasional daytime attacks of anxiety, and her unusual irritability. She felt sorry for her roommates, Jas and Randie. If she wasn’t snarling at them for talking, she was waking them up with her nightmares. But they remained sunny and friendly in spite of it.

“Hey!” Glory snapped her fingers beneath Tami’s nose. “You coming?”

The taller woman must have come back for her while she was daydreaming. “Sure.” Tami followed Glory to the kitchen to sit in on today’s cooking lesson. Tami knew perfectly well how to cook over a fire, but not with the degree of expertise Renee showed. Tami could make rough-and-ready trail food, but Renee produced gourmet meals fit for the finest big city restaurant.

Renee was already there, with two of the men from the den lounging in the corner. JaNae and Katie were there, too, flirting determinedly with the fascinated wolves. Tami hid a smile. Taye’s Pack knew almost nothing about women, and they weren’t sure how to handle flirting. Renee rapped her spoon on the counter to get their attention, like an old-school nun bringing a class to order.

“Today we’re learning how to make Three Bean Casserole with Bow-tie Pasta,” Renee announced. “It’s the perfect side dish to serve after Thanksgiving, with leftover turkey. Pasta dough can be made from a lot of different things, but we will make a basic pasta from flour, eggs, salt, and water.”

“I thought noodles came out of a box,” Glory remarked.

Renee looked pained. It might have been from the still angry-looking scar on the side of her face, but Tami didn’t think so.

The lesson was interesting. It was a lot of work for something that could be bought pretty cheaply at the grocery store. Of course, that wasn’t an option here. Tami enjoyed the early supper that night, joking with the other women about whose pasta bowties were cut more perfectly. As soon as they were done eating, Des marshaled his force to take the women back to the den. Tonight was visiting night, when dozens of men from all over the area came to sit in the big room and try to attract a wife, and Des didn’t like that. Tami saw him standing with Connie as Renee and the others got ready to go. Tami noticed when Connie wasn’t looking at him he wore a melancholy, yearning look on his face. The expression disappeared when Connie turned back and said something to him.

In a few minutes the Plane Women’s House would fill to the brim with hopeful men looking to get married. Maybe it was a sign she was learning to cope with her trauma, but Tami was glad when Snake came to her and said he would be stuck like glue to her tonight during the visiting hour. With a werewolf guarding her, the men from town wouldn’t dare to get too close to Tami. Not even Dick Dickinson. The fickle rancher had switched his attentions from Connie to her. The men wouldn’t press too close to Sherry either, since Stag would be only a few feet away, glaring.

Tami sat down in front of one of the stoves and took out her rope braiding supplies. Connie walked over, leaning lightly on her cane. It wasn’t quite the set time for the men to arrive, but the door opened a minute after the wolves had left to admit Dick Dickinson. Connie grunted in her throat. Connie was jubilant Dick-Dick had switched his affections from her to Tami. Tami was less so. The rancher sent her a heated smile as he took off his coat and gloves.

Connie nudged Tami. “Oh, congratulations!” the former co-pilot crowed in a low tone. “Did you know he’s the richest, most important man within three hundred miles? Any woman would count herself lucky to be his wife.”

Tami wanted to pull her hair out. “You’re quoting him!” she accused in a whisper.

“I know,” Connie admitted cheerfully. “Lord knows I heard him tell me so a million times. Now it’s your turn.”

Richard Dickinson was a good-looking man, with a house a lot of the ladies from town said was up-to-date with indoor plumbing, and a fireplace or stove in every room. Plenty of women probably
would
count themselves lucky to be his wife. Not Tami. He reminded her just a little bit of Tom Leach. Leach had also taken pains to let her know how successful he was. Some days it was all she could do to hold her temper around Dick. He came over to her stove and politely greeted Connie, but it was a distant courtesy. He completely ignored Snake and the other werewolf, Chad, while he took the seat beside her and pulled it so close to her she broke out in a sweat.

“Miss Tami,” he said with a charming smile. It was a charming smile, Tami admitted. But, somehow, a bit too charming, with its hint of possessiveness. “How nice of you to allow me to join you.”

Tami forced back a rude comment and held her half-finished rope more tightly when he tried to take one of hands. Something about him made her breath come faster, but it wasn’t in a good way. She fastened off her rope braid and quickly coiled it back up. “Mr. Dickinson,” she said as politely as clenched teeth allowed. “I was just going back upstairs.”

“So soon?” he said, disappointed. “I just got here.”

Exactly
, Tami thought. “I’m very tired tonight.”

“I’ll escort you to the stairs,” he said in what he must have supposed was gallantry. He seemed to think she was incapable of standing up without his hand under her elbow, and she was disgusted by the way he made it a point to try to maneuver her away from the others. Disgusted and frightened. She hated the fear that bloomed in her at every little thing. She jerked away from his caressing hand with her heart pumping terrified fury through her blood.

Snake reached for the buttons on his shirt and eagerly asked, “Can I bite him?”

As a man, Snake was built like a pro wrestler, with a sweet boyish face under his shock of black curls. A lot of the wolves seemed to Tami almost child-like in their polite fascination with women, but they were dangerous men, too. Something in Snake’s smile made her know he wasn’t joking. He would like to drop his clothes, turn wolf, and shred Dick with his teeth. Chad was growling audibly at Dick. It was weirdly comforting to know a pair of werewolves were protecting her.

Dick’s already ruddy face edged toward purple, and Tami wanted to say,
Yes, Snake, bite him
. But that would cause trouble between the den and the townsmen.

“No,” she told the wolf firmly. She considered asking for help from Faron, but she had always fought her own battles. She would take care of this, too. If worse came to worst, she could punch Dick-Dick. She doubted the penalty would be very severe. Women were far too valuable to hang one because she slugged her would-be husband.

“Mr. Dickinson, I am not interested in marrying anyone. You can tell me until Kingdom Come how rich you are and how lucky I’d be to marry you, but I won’t. So you may as well give up, okay? I don’t want to have a problem with you. Snake, let’s go upstairs.”

Snake knew better than to try to hold her arm. She looked Dick in the eye, hoping her message had gotten through his thick stubborn skull. Tami forced herself to calmness, and walked steadily up the stairs with Snake one step behind her, growling under his breath that killing Dick-Dick would take care of the problem. Dick-Dick may have used his stubborn persistence to become the most successful rancher for hundreds of miles, but Tami was just as focused on getting away from him.

She would be glad to get back to the den, where Dick-Dick couldn’t go.

* * * *

Tracker returned to the small camp he had hidden not far from Greasy Butte, grimly satisfied with his night’s work. The first of the men who had tormented Tami was dead. Dwight would be found soon, and Tracker hoped his death would make the other men uneasy. Hell, no, so scared they pissed themselves. He had left Dwight draped over the porch swing, his pants undone and his shirt open to show the word “Rapist” written in soot right under the arrow that pierced the hollow of his throat. Dwight had raised a pistol to fire at Tracker the moment he had seen him on the trail outside of town. His first bullet missed. The second had come so close to Tracker’s shoulder he’d felt the heat of it. Dwight never got a third shot. By that time Tracker had an arrow on the string and sent it through his windpipe.

Tracker fed a tiny bit of wood to his fire. Which of the remaining three should he kill next? It was a question he’d pondered at length. Steve, the man who enjoyed strangling a woman while he raped her? Tom Leach, who had started the whole thing? Or the youngest man, Tim, who had made it possible for Tami to get away? Tracker had said he would kill them all, but did Tim deserve to die? Tami said he hadn’t hurt her. So maybe Tracker would let him live. Maybe.

Tracker leaned away from the fire and took out his two treasures: a scrap of fabric that now held only the merest hint of Tami’s sweet scent, and a square of paper he had folded and unfolded so many times in the last week that the pencil drawing was creased and smudged. He looked at Tami’s image in the dim, uneven glow of the fire, his eyes following the line of her jaw and the curve of her lips longingly. He reached a callused fingertip to trace her penciled eyebrow, but pulled it back before touching the paper. He didn’t want to risk smudging the drawing more. He wanted to see her, the real Tami, in the flesh. He wanted to feel his fingertip smooth over her real eyebrow. That would never happen, but he wanted to see her. He needed to know she was all right.

Night was falling and the stars were hidden by clouds. Snow was coming. He would pack up his camp and head down to Kearney in the morning. Tami’s tormenters weren’t going anywhere, and a wait between deaths would make them all the more nervous. Steve and Leach wouldn’t die until he was sure they couldn’t sleep for terror.

Chapter Fourteen

The wind slapped the icy rain against the dark window and howled around the corner of the old apartment building. The weather had turned sharply nasty after Thanksgiving. Tami was intensely grateful she was inside, sitting near a pot-bellied stove with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. She’d even thanked Dick for donating three more stoves to the Plane Women’s House. He’d also donated the half a dozen turkeys and the potatoes for their Thanksgiving dinner. Connie had thanked him for the food, but still hadn’t allowed him to come to Thanksgiving dinner. The only men who had been in the dining room that day had been Faron, Stag and Snake. Many of the women had cried that day, missing their old lives. Sherry had broken down into hysterical sobs and had had to leave the table. Stag had watched with his hands clenched helplessly in front of his chest.

The icy wind screamed outside the window again, making Tami more grateful than ever for the stove. The warmth was especially welcome tonight. Tami’s gratitude for the stoves probably wasn’t as personal as Dick would have liked, but it was sincere. That was all that kept her sitting by his side as he hinted broadly that the weather was too harsh for him to make the trip back to his ranch tonight.
Well,
thought Tami acidly,
then you shouldn’t have stayed for the visiting tonight
. But Tami kept a small noncommittal smile on her face as she braided leather into rope. There were places in town that would put Richard Dickinson up. The mayor’s house had plenty of room. Faron Paulson, sitting knee to knee with survivor Donna Morgan, told him so. Loudly. Tami wondered if Faron liked the rancher.

The women had finished supper only an hour ago, and those whose turn it was to wash dishes and clean the kitchen came into the big room now. The big wind-up clock someone had donated to the House said it wasn’t quite seven, but it had been dark for over an hour, so Sherry, one of the women on KP, held a lamp with the hand that wasn’t maneuvering a crutch. Even Tami, who was used to roughing it, hadn’t been prepared to live continuously without the convenience of electricity. Candles and lamps were nice for camping or for a couple of hours when the power went out, but when it was the only light to be had, habits changed. People tended to go to bed a lot earlier. Tami was sitting here in the big room because the lamps and stoves provided light and warmth. The absence of central heating was a comfort much mourned by the women, including Tami. So were hot showers.