Dangerous Mountain Mission, page 6
“There’s some chairs behind you,” the man said as he picked up Jesse’s handgun.
Jesse turned a half circle to where he saw a dilapidated lawn chair and a stump. He scooted the chair closer to the fire and offered it to Abigail, keeping one eye on the hermit while he rolled the stump closer to the fire.
The hermit leaned his shotgun against a tree and dropped the backpack he had on the ground. The pack hit the dirt with a thud. Judging from the bulk of it, it was quite full. Of what, Jesse could only guess. Either the man had gone out foraging, or the pack contained supplies he had with him all the time.
Jesse was still not able to get a clear read on the mental stability of the man. Once one of the hermit’s hands was free, since he held Jesse’s handgun in the other, he rubbed his knuckles on the top of his head repeatedly and did an odd shuffle when he walked—they were mannerisms that suggested mental illness. Then again, a man who spent all his time alone might develop some socially awkward behavior and might be nervous when he did encounter people.
Abigail cleared her throat. “Your soup smells good.”
With the handgun still trained on them, the man narrowed his eyes. “Cooks all day to get the flavor just right.” Jesse thought he saw a little bit of light come into the man’s dull eyes.
“We’re real hungry.” Her voice held a nervous edge to it. “I’d be willing to trade something for a bowl of that soup.”
The man tilted his head slightly and lowered the gun an inch or so. “Whatcha got?”
Abigail never took her eyes off the man. “Show him what we have, Jesse.”
Jesse removed the makeshift backpack, pulling out the candy and the knife, and then he emptied the contents of his pockets.
The man licked his lips at the sight of the gummy bears. And then he pointed to Jesse’s metro card. “What’s that?”
Jesse held it up. The holographic image caught the light. “It’s a metro card.”
“It’s pretty,” said the hermit. He walked over to the backpack and unbuckled it, retrieving a leather pouch. “I’ll take it and a handful of that candy.” He tossed the pouch toward them. “Put the card in there. There are containers inside for soup and the candy.” He lifted the gun a little higher, pointing it at Jesse. “You stay put. The girl gets the stuff. No sudden moves.”
Abigail rooted through the contents of the lean-to while Jesse placed the card in the pouch, which contained smooth rocks and pieces of metal. She ladled soup for both of them after scooping several handfuls of gummy bears into a container.
With the hermit still watching them, they settled on their chairs. Jesse’s spoon had been carved out of wood. The soup, which contained vegetables and some kind of meat, tasted wonderful.
The hermit pointed toward the bowie knife. “I want that, too, but that’s a separate trade.”
Jesse scraped the last little bit of soup out of the bottom of his bowl, which had been carved from wood, as well.
The hermit sat on the opposite side of the fire. He crossed his legs and rested the gun in the crook of his elbow.
“Your soup is so good.” Abigail rubbed her belly and slurped several more spoonfuls.
Though the man’s wild beard made it hard to discern his expression, Jesse thought he saw just the faintest of smiles. Abigail seemed to be breaking down his suspicion with her flattery.
“You can have another bowl if you like...on the house,” said the hermit.
“Thank you so much.” Abigail got up and ladled out more of the hearty soup. She sat back down. “Can my friend have some more?”
The hermit shifted his weight and tilted his head, staring at Jesse. “I’ll have to think about that.”
Abigail had managed to build some trust with the man, but he still wasn’t so sure about Jesse.
The hermit rose to his feet, shuffled across the camp and picked up another log to throw on the fire.
Abigail ate her second bowl of soup at a slower pace than the first. “I’m from Idaho, but my folks used to come out here sometimes to take us camping. I remember when I was a little girl hearing a story about a man who was in a car wreck with his wife. The man, who was driving, survived. The woman didn’t. That man disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. The gossip was that he ran up to live in these mountains. Did you ever hear that story?” Abigail had spoken slowly. Compassion saturated each word.
The hermit’s eyes clouded with tears. He rose to his feet, running his knuckles over the top of his greasy hair. “I don’t know nothing about that.”
Abigail had figured out who the man was. Sometimes it wasn’t mental illness or paranoia that drove a man to live alone; it was guilt. When he heard the story, Jesse could feel his own heart squeezing tight.
Years ago, he and Melissa had gotten married just out of high school. He had loved her since the seventh grade. Before they could celebrate their first wedding anniversary, Melissa was diagnosed with cancer. She died days after their second anniversary. Though it had been ten years, the pain of the loss, his inability to save the woman he loved, was still as raw as ever.
Jesse saw the hermit with fresh eyes now. They had a great deal in common. Because loving meant risking loss and unbearable pain, he had decided to put his energy into his work and never think about marriage again.
Abigail’s spoon scraped the bowl as she finished the last bit of soup. “Jesse, are you okay? You seem kind of faraway.”
The fire crackled and the hermit paced. Jesse studied the older man for a moment.
“Just thinking about something that happened a long time ago,” he said, surprised by the emotion that rose up in his voice. He cleared his throat. “It’s nothing.”
In an effort to not fall into the black hole of pain over Melissa, Jesse averted his gaze over to the pack the man had been hauling. Some of the contents had come out when the man had searched for his pouch. Jesse recognized a brick of heroin from the plane, along with some pieces of metal. One of the bricks was broken open, the fine white powder spilling on the ground. Jesse felt a surge of hope. Inside the broken brick was the hard drive he’d been searching for.
In the distance, the baying of the search dogs rose up.
Jesse shot to his feet. “I’m not sure you want to keep that.” He tilted his head toward the contents of the backpack. “Men might come for it.”
“And they might be willing to trade something for it.” The hermit squared his shoulders. “I can handle myself.”
The barking of the dogs intensified, indicating they had picked up on a strong scent. Lulubell scurried into the trees. Abigail rose to her feet as well, panic etched across her features.
“I’ll trade you the knife for that black thing there.” Jesse pointed.
“Deal.” The hermit seemed to understand that the dogs meant trouble and that they needed to hurry. He darted over to the backpack and tossed the black box toward Jesse. “You brought those men to my door. Get out of here.”
Jesse picked up the knife and handed it to the hermit. There was no time to try to negotiate for the gun. “You might want to hide out for a bit. It’s us they’re after. We’ll lead them away from your camp. But they won’t stop at violence to try to get information out of you.”
“Don’t worry about me.” The hermit seemed to understand. He tossed the pack into the lean-to and picked up both guns, shoved the knife into his belt and disappeared into the trees where the raccoon had gone.
It sounded as though the dogs were within a hundred feet of the camp.
“We better get out of here.” Abigail bolted toward the edge of the camp, opposite of where the hermit had gone. Jesse shoved the remainder of the gummy bears into the makeshift backpack. He placed the hard drive in the pocket of his coat and hurried after Abigail.
As they pressed on, the hounds’ yelping would intensify and then dim and die out altogether. Their footsteps pounded out a rhythm as they sprinted across the hard-packed dirt. The trees were far apart. Abigail chose a path that led them downward. Though he trusted that she knew where she was going, their path seemed a bit random.
As they ran, and the sound of the dogs faded, the hermit’s story played at the corners of his mind. The man must have been deeply in love with his wife, had seen it as his job to protect her. He didn’t know the circumstances of the car accident, but the man clearly blamed himself for it, and it had driven him into solitude. Though he lived and worked with people all around him, Jesse had chosen a solitary life, too.
Abigail stumbled. Jesse reached out to catch her before she fell.
She grabbed his arm and locked him in her gaze as she caught her breath. “Thank you.”
He thought again of the hermit. What did it do to a man whose choices led to the death of a woman he loved? It was a heavy burden to love someone and lose them. The guilt that he could have done something more to save Melissa plagued him always.
His heart pounded against his rib cage as he sucked in air. He squeezed her elbow. “Let’s go.”
The dogs grew closer, relentless in their pursuit of their targets.
SIX
Abigail was grateful for the full belly and renewed energy. Though she avoided the trail because it would be too easy to track them, she guided them down the mountain. They walked and jogged throughout the morning into the late afternoon. When they’d gone for at least an hour without hearing the dogs, she stopped to rest at the edge of an open area, finding a log to sit down on.
Jesse sat beside her. “Where are we exactly?”
She tilted her head toward the sky. They still had four or five hours of daylight. “If we keep going straight through the night, we’re probably about twelve hours from the trailhead.”
He pulled the water bottle from the backpack and offered her a drink. “Then that’s what we should do.”
She took several gulps of water and then handed him the bottle. “I can take us sort of parallel to the trail. It’s a little more treacherous but we’ll be less likely to be spotted.”
“That guy back there, living by himself. You knew who he was.” He drank from the water bottle.
“The accident happened when I was little, but it was big news around the Northwest. There were all kinds of rumors and stories. That he had been drinking. That the driver they collided with had been drinking. Who knows what the truth was.”
“He must have loved his wife, felt responsible.” Jesse closed the spout on the water bottle and put it back in the pack.
His voice was tinged with emotion that she hadn’t heard before. “Something about him got to you, huh?”
“Sad, really. Living up there all alone,” he said.
“That man died a long time ago. He just forgot to stop breathing.” She studied him for a moment.
Jesse’s features intensified, and the shadows on his cheekbones becoming more defined. He cleared his throat as though he were thinking deeply about something. “I never thought of it that way.”
She wondered what was going through his mind. Why the encounter with the isolated stranger had caused such a shift for him.
Her early suspicions of him had been tainted by her own betrayal by Brent. And she’d been on her guard about wanting to show him she could do her job as well as any man.
One side of his mouth curved up in a smile. “What are you thinking?”
She shook her head, feeling a connection to him and a sudden vulnerability. She shut down the emotion as quickly as it had invaded her awareness. She jumped to her feet. “I was thinking we should get moving.” Yes, he was a human being who probably had his own struggles and a story to tell, but she still didn’t know what to think about him. Had he kept her alive because he needed her expertise to get out of these mountains? Or was he who he said he was, a DEA agent who’d been framed? The jury was still out. For now, they needed to focus on getting back to Fort Madison and to her predictable life, though she wasn’t sure what that life would look like without Brent and the plans they’d made together.
Jesse rose to his feet, as well.
She stepped away from the trees. From this vantage point, she could see the river snaking through the mountains. Though not visible from here, Fort Madison was just beyond the far mountain range. They had a long trek ahead of them.
They ran at a steady pace without stopping until the sky turned charcoal and then black. Darkness slowed their pace.
They walked side by side and chose their path more carefully, winding around trees and bushes and across rockier, more open terrain. From time to time, they heard the dogs baying. The barking made her heart beat a little more intensely. Because the sound echoed off the mountains, it was hard to discern where the dogs were exactly.
She got caught up in the rhythm of their footsteps and took advantage of the chance to find out more about Jesse. “You never answered my question. Did you always want to be a DEA agent?”
They walked for several more feet before he said anything. He ducked to avoid a low-hanging tree branch. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. “I just sort of drifted into it and found out I was good at it. Did a tour in Afghanistan, was a cop for a while. I really can’t talk about my work, Abigail.”
So he wasn’t about to give her any details about his life. “What can you talk about?”
“I thought I was supposed to be the extrovert?” His voice held just a note of teasing.
“Guess the silence was starting to bother me, too.”
They walked on for hours as the sky grew even darker. The steep mountains turned to more rolling hills. When she looked all around her, there were no flashlights shining in the distance. That didn’t mean they could let their guard down, though.
She stopped short and pointed off in the distance at the twinkling lights of Fort Madison so far away it would be easy to miss them unless you knew to look for them. “Not much of a city.”
“But it’s a welcome sight,” Jesse said. “Now all we have to do is walk toward the lights, right?”
His comment sent a little wave of fear through her. What would he do if he didn’t need her expertise anymore? “We still have a long way to hike. We’ll go down into a valley in a little bit. Then you won’t be able to see the lights anymore.”
“I’m glad I’m with someone who knows the way,” said Jesse.
They stopped to rest and eat handfuls of candy. Jesse remained vigilant, pacing in an arc to look all around them. “I don’t see any signs of the thugs. That kind of worries me. What are they up to?”
Her chest squeezed tight at the question. She jumped to her feet. “The best thing for us to do is to keep moving.”
As they drew closer to civilization, the unspoken suspicion about Jesse sat like a rock in her stomach.
When they wandered down into the valley, the sound of a helicopter reached her ears. She could see the tiny flashing light far in the distance. The chopper didn’t come anywhere near them. The lights disappeared behind the mountain they had just come down.
“That could be anybody, right?” Jesse’s voice held a note of tension as they stood together in the darkness.
She trudged ahead. “Yeah, people hire choppers all the time.” Tension knotted through her chest. “Night flights are a little unusual, though.”
“There wasn’t one available for hire when I looked into it. You never would have been dragged into this if I’d been able to go that route.”
Though she could not see his expression in the dark, his tone sounded genuinely apologetic. “Hopefully, all of this will just be a memory for me soon.”
Jesse walked a little faster as they rose up out of the valley and the lights of Fort Madison became visible again. Their path intersected with the trail.
“This looks familiar,” said Jesse.
“Yes, the trail leads right into town.” Which meant he didn’t need her anymore. She tensed, waiting for his response.
“Probably be smarter not to be out in the open, right?”
She pointed. “We can zigzag through the trees that run parallel to the trail.”
“Let’s go, then.” He patted her shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough for all your help.”
If he was who he said he was, a lawman who had been wronged, she would be back at home within hours. She stared at him for a long moment, unable to discern his features in the predawn light. “Let’s get moving.”
She darted toward the trees and trotted along the soft ground, slowed only by the lack of light.
As the sun came up, the forest thinned. She could see the outskirts of Fort Madison, some scattered cabins and barns still far away but discernable. Though the town was visible now, they still had hours of hiking ahead of them. She ran even faster. A weight seemed to lift off her as they drew closer to town. “My place is closer than the Big Sky Outfitters office. My car is there. I jog into the office most days. You can make calls from there, or I can take you where you need to go.”
He stopped for a second. His forehead creased. “Yes, I guess I need to figure out my next move.” He patted his pocket, where he’d put the hard drive.
They hiked for several more hours as the sun moved across the sky.
Her home, which was a thirty-foot camper trailer, was on a piece of land just outside town. She nearly cried when they came up over a hill and its silvery exterior glistened in the noon light.
“That’s where you live?”
“Yes, I’m really into the tiny-house concept and traveling light. The outdoors are my living room,” she said. Also, she had thought she and Brent would be buying a house together once they were married.
She felt a heaviness as they got closer to her home. What kind of life was she coming back to here, anyway? If she stayed and worked in Fort Madison, she’d run into Brent sooner or later.
They jogged the remaining distance. She got her key from underneath the trailer, where the trim was curved enough to hold an object, and unlocked the door. “I just need to get my car keys. You can come inside. I can make us some food.”
