Escape to Morning (19 page)

He stayed silent, but something like pain crossed his expression. Yeah, well, she felt the same way. Sick at heart.

“Okay, then what?” Sarah said. “We carry Missy out?”

“Yes. That's exactly what we're going to do,” said Will.

Dannette frowned at him, noticing up close that his whiskers had hints of gray amidst the deep brown. She disentangled herself from his arms, common sense faintly kicking in. “Wait, Will. All that jostling might injure Missy even more.” She crouched next to her dog, ran her hand down her fur.
Missy, oh, Missy
. How could she have let this happen? What had ever possessed her to drag them out on a wild-goose chase?

Old voices, accusations rose like specters, and she fought to close her ears.

“Yeah, and hiking out to bring back help will take double the time.” Will hauled out his topo map and studied it. She saw his concentration in the rise and fall of his chest, the way he ran a strong finger over possible trails. For a moment she wondered where he'd ridden out the storm. He had a welt on his jaw, as if he'd been nicked by a branch, and he winced once when he repositioned his legs. Yet she had a feeling that he could have all his teeth knocked out and he'd still grin and deny any pain.

“We're on Tom Lake. I'm not sure how we got here, but if we follow the shoreline, we can cut off at the forest-service road. And from there, we'll find Tom Lake Road. We can flag down a ride, or if the road is clear, I'll run up to my truck and get it.”

Sarah peered over his shoulder. “Your route will bring us out a good ten miles from the rest area. And you'll just
run up
and get your truck?”

He gave her a lopsided, shy grin. “I'm in pretty good shape.”

Sarah lifted her hands in surrender. “Whatever.”

Dannette recognized her friend's frustration. She never reacted well to a guy telling her no.

Maybe it
would
be faster if Sarah went alone. She had the experience and knowledge to navigate the woods quickly. Then again, Will did seem to know his way around the woods. Dannette had to give him credit—he'd kept up like a trooper. No, more than that … he'd tried to get them to safety before the storm hit.

And right now, he was proving to be just that friend he'd asked to be.

Will rose, strode over to Dannette's mangled tent. “Help me fashion this into a stretcher. We'll carry Missy between us.” He laid the fabric out and produced his knife. She'd forgotten he'd had it and tried to ignore the cold slide of shock down her spine.

In five minutes he'd made a makeshift bed, using downed tree lengths, the tent, and Dannette's sleeping bag.

“Sarah, cover Missy with a blanket, and if you can, Dani, put on a muzzle. Disoriented and in pain, Missy might react with fear. But make sure she can still breathe.”

What, now he was Dr. Doolittle? Dannette, however, dug through her pack and unearthed Missy's muzzle. She and Sarah transferred Missy to the stretcher, tucked her in the sleeping bag, then strapped it down to keep her immobile.

Missy appeared so frail, so dwarfed by the swaddling and the sleeping bag, Dannette wanted to cry.

As Will shouldered his pack, his jacket opened.

Dannette stared hard at a small black piece of hardware in a shoulder holster. “Is that a gun?” she asked, her voice high and tight.

Will turned, and any last shred of belief that he was some backwoods reporter vanished when she saw his granite expression. “Let's get moving. We're running out of time,” he said.

Was he talking about Missy … or something else? An image of Will Masterson looking dark and dangerous burned into her mind as she followed him down the shore.

“Two men got out of the pickup, and when they came down to the picnic area, they asked if we'd seen a young girl. I think she was afraid of someone.”

Dannette hid a gasp as she followed Will. What kind of journalist was he? If at all?

Suddenly she wondered if her unnamed, perhaps even phantom victim, might be safer if she was never found.

Will didn't want to push Dani, and he knew that she'd feel better helping carry the animal, but they would make twice the time if he took the dog in his arms and ran. What was left of the day disintegrated slowly as they traversed the shore, cut south at his determination, and finally found the forest-service road. It looked like it had been hit with the same ammo used on the shoreline. Trees down, branches littering the road. At one point he suggested Sarah take one handle, Dani the other so they could move faster through the debris.

Dani walked in silence. Whether from agony or from horror, he didn't know. What he did know was that she had questions. And he didn't want to have any part of the answers.

He felt nearly ill thinking about the possibilities. If it weren't for the fact that Dani and Sarah could be ambushed, he might have talked them into letting him pack Missy out alone. He couldn't escape the rather ugly picture of Amina weathering the storm only to be killed by the two Hayata thugs who had jumped him in the forest.

His Special Forces training in the Green Berets had taught him to deal with one task at a time. To plan ahead but not borrow trouble. He'd get these ladies out safely, hopefully pick up his new partner in town, even up the teams a bit, then head back to Tom Lake and complete his mission.

But when he looked at Dani's tear-soaked face, he had a hard time remembering exactly what that mission was. A huge part of him wanted to haul her into his arms and tell her it would be okay.

Which it wouldn't be if her dog died. He was smart enough to know that much. Missy might be a canine, but Will knew that she occupied a special place in Dani's heart.

Will wasn't going to let the dog die on his watch.

He heard about a billion ticking clocks even as he upped his pace. Hayata terrorists were still searching the woods and if they hadn't found the girl yet, they would. Nazar was waiting to be extracted from the game he played, and Hayata poised to take out another target … possibly like the one that had killed Lew and a hundred other soldiers.

And Missy lay as still as death.

Will lifted his end of the stretcher over another log. “How are you doing?” He directed the question at both women but glanced at Dani. She looked strung out, her hair wild from the storm, her eyes reddened. She didn't smile at him, and he saw suspicion in her eyes.

He forced an encouraging smile. “Not much farther.”

They hiked the rest of the road in silence. By the time they emerged to Tom Lake Road, the moon had risen. Stars twinkled, as if a reminder that, while their corner of the world had been ravaged, the universe was still intact.

Or at least some of it. Dani looked unraveled as she sat by the road, stroking a motionless Missy.

“I'm going for my truck,” he said.

“No, please get mine,” Dani said suddenly. She pulled out her keys, tossed them. “It's got a first-aid kit in it.”

Sadly, his was closer. Much closer. But he wasn't thrilled to tell her that. He shook her keys in his hand, wanting to meet her eyes, to tell her it would be okay. “I'll be right back,” he said quietly, then took off in a run.

He reached his truck nearly an hour later. Sweat dripped off his temples, drenched his sweater, and his feet felt on fire. He climbed in behind the wheel and floored it to the rest area, where he switched vehicles. As he drove away in Dani's pickup, in the gleam of the headlights he noted a Jeep Cherokee and beside that a beat-up Chevy with a bed topper and sticks littered over the windshield. As if it had been sitting there as long as their vehicles had.

Will punched the gas.

Dani and Sarah had made a shelter just off the road. Good. Even with the moon, they were difficult to spot. He pulled up, and silently they loaded Missy into the built-in shelter in the back of the truck. Dani climbed in with her K-9, her eyes on Will as he shut the door. He climbed into the driver's seat, Sarah into the passenger side.

Sarah was already on the cell phone, waking up the local vet.

Fadima shook, the chill finding her bones, her every molecule. Hunger had her by the throat, and she felt as if she might be better off simply surrendering.

The storm had scared her. Like an ancient god, its hand covered the sky, its breath flattened the forest, its anger spewed out tears and sweat. She'd huddled in a pocket of forest, just beyond what looked like a lake, and prayed for forgiveness to whatever being was controlling the elements.

She should have never run away. Maybe she could have bargained. Maybe she could have waited. Maybe she was going to cost her family their lives.

Maybe she wasn't truth at all but a pitiful, giant lie.

She gulped a deep, shuddering breath.
“Fadima, you are my light.”
Her father's face flashed through her mind, picking at her fears.
“You will free us all. It is your destiny.”

Freedom. She was so
free
it was going to kill her. She knew there was a lake not far off. If she could reach it, get a drink, and maybe find food … She forced herself to her feet and stumbled forward, the press of night nearly suffocating into its completeness. If it weren't for the occasional fractured beams of moonlight, she'd be without hope. But she saw the gray dent of shoreline through the knot of forest and kept her eyes riveted.

Night sounds pecked at her courage—a hooting owl, the rush of wind, trees cracking.

Voices?

She stilled.

A flashlight beam scraped the night, and she crouched into a ball, her heartbeat filling her throat.

“This is stupid. She couldn't have lived through this.”

Men. Their feet broke branches, the cracks resounding in Fadima's soul.

“We have to find her. We can't return without her body.”

Her body?

She made herself very, very small, tucking herself under a tree, breathing in shallow breaths like her brother had taught her.

The thought of Kutsi nearly brought tears to her eyes. She conjured up his face, trying to find his calm as her searchers scanned the forest. Kutsi had never seen her like the other men did—as her father's princess. Of course not. He was only one year older, and they'd spent their youth fighting, studying the way of their people, handling weapons, learning strategy and even evasion skills. Her father's idea of fun meant dropping them off in the far hills with instructions to return before dinner.

As if he knew that someday her life would be about hiding. About fighting.

“The key to a good defense is surprise,” Kutsi said once as they'd watched their father scope the hills for his children. Just knowing he was looking for them, despite his words, had sent warmth to her chest. He may have been the esteemed ataman of a hundred warriors, but he was still her papa.

A papa who believed in her.

She would die before she let him be executed or discovered as a traitor.

Instead of running through the forest looking for help, she should have been fashioning a weapon, concocting a surprise for the men trailing her.

A branch snapped a few feet away, and she ducked her head as the flashlight beam skimmed slightly beyond her.

If she got out of this alive, next time she would be prepared.

She may be only a woman where she came from, but in this country she was a priceless asset. And despite her gender, her father had taught her well. The eldest daughter of Ataman Erkan Nazar would die as a warrior.

Chapter 12

WILL HAD GONE back to his cabin, changed clothes, and looked every inch like a swaggering South Dakotan cowboy when he strolled into the vet's office. And from the pleasant smell of soap emanating off him, Dannette guessed he'd showered.

He changed his appearance like a politician changed plat-forms. Where had the guy with the look and equipment of a special-ops soldier disappeared to?

Dani didn't know what to believe about Will Masterson, and the worry around his dark eyes did nothing to sort things out in her heart.