Heart of the wolf (3 page)

Her fingers lacerated and bruised, Sarah renewed her digging efforts. Then her eyes widened: The roots of the tree were lodged against a huge black boulder. Her anger gave way to disgust—then real alarm. What if she couldn't escape? What if she really couldn't free herself? Of course,
Summers
would thank his lucky stars if she was found dead up on her Blue Mountain sapphire claim, Sarah thought bitterly. Gerald Summers, the local land developer, certainly hadn't wasted any time mourning her father's sudden death. But then,
Summers
had thought she would sell out, and he'd have been too happy to take over her family's claim.

"No way. . ." she muttered through gritted teeth, stretching as far as her five-foot-three-inch frame would allow. Her prospector's hammer lay mere inches from her outstretched hand. She never traveled without her rifle, a canteen of water, and her mining tools. Her fingers dusty, her nails almost nonexistent from the demands of her livelihood, Sarah groaned as she reached farther— and managed to secure the hammer. Its long, sickle- shaped point was specially designed for digging into rock or dirt.

Sarah kept her blond hair twisted between her shoulder blades in one long, frayed braid so that it was out of the way when she worked, mining the sapphire gravel that lay approximately a foot beneath the thick groves of firs on the slopes of Blue Mountain. Although it was necessary to dig holes around and between the tree roots to find the gravel, any miner knew to dig uphill, away from the tree, so that if the fir fell, it would drop away from where the miner was working.

"Stupid, so stupid, Sarah. Where was your brain this morning?" she chastised herself as she began to chip and strike at the boulder that held her captive. The hard granite gave little beneath her relentless hammering, sparks and tiny chips of the stubborn stone flying from beneath the steel tool's onslaught—not unlike the pressure she endured from
Summers
. He just kept chipping away at her. First, he'd murdered her father—though the county sheriff, Noonan, had called it an accident. Then her fifty-year-old mother had suffered a stroke upon hearing how her husband had died. The mine was still in her parents' names and Sarah knew
Summers
would love to get her out of the way. Her mother, Beth Thatcher, was
semilucid
these days and likely to sign over the sapphire mine to anyone without question, such was the damage the stroke had done to her memory.

"No way," Sarah whispered again, her voice cracking. But this was a stupid mistake on her part, not
Summers's
work. Frantically Sarah increased the power and strokes of the hammer.
Very little of the granite boulder budged.

The sky was darkening, and Sarah glanced at her watch. An hour had passed since she'd gotten herself trapped. Both her legs were now numb from the knees down.
Had
she broken her ankles? Oh, God, it couldn't be! The mortgage payment on the mine was due in two weeks, as was the weighty bill from the nursing home where her mother lived. No, she had to be able to work every day, mining from sunrise until sunset. If she didn't, she'd lose everything. Biting down on her full lower lip, Sarah wiped the sweat from her dusty brow and continued to hammer at the boulder.

After another hour of nonstop pounding, her fingers and lower arms ached with fatigue. She was damp with sweat, and her loose chambray shirt was clinging to her body. Her jeans were filthy with the white, dusty soil.

Sarah eyed her trapped feet beneath the gnarled brown fir roots. No one would miss her. Her isolated cabin was five miles up the road. She couldn't count on her mother. Although Sarah visited her at the nursing home in town nearly every evening, her mother frequently didn't know the time of day, what month it was, or when she had last seen Sarah; time had become meaningless to her since the stroke.

Flopping back on the earth, Sarah closed her eyes, sucking in huge drafts of air, exhausted. Who
would
miss her? Maybe
Jean Riva,
owner of the small nursing home. But occasionally Sarah missed a visit to her mother in order to facet sapphires for a customer. Pepper Sinclair, a woman smoke jumper with the forest service, was stationed in town. But she rarely saw Pepper—only for an occasional meal. Opening her eyes, Sarah stared up at the turbulent gunmetal-gray sky that boiled above her. Flaring her nostrils, she drank in a huge breath of air, testing it. Yes, she could smell rain in the air. If it rained, her trap would turn into a quagmire. And even though it was nearly September, a thunderstorm could lower the temperature to barely above freezing for hours after the storm had spent itself.

Sarah knew better than to hope it wouldn't rain. She'd lived in Montana all her life, prospecting with her father and helping him mine the sapphire. Groaning, she sat back up. A thought struck her. She took the hammer and started chopping at the thick, long roots, instead of the rock. Why hadn't she thought of
this hours
before?

"Sarah, you're strung out. You're not thinking straight." The task seemed impossible; the abundant roots directly beneath the fir were the ones that held her captive. And she'd have to hack through the tap root, the main root that the tree sent straight down to find water, in order to free herself. But that wasn't all. Eyeing the massive trunk of the fir, Sarah realized that the roots actually suspended the main bulk of the trunk off her legs. If she succeeded in removing the roots, the tree would smash down, breaking both her legs.

Thunder rumbled, and Sarah shivered in response. Looking around, Sarah stretched out again, got a hold of her rifle and began to use the barrel to pull larger rocks toward her. Perhaps she could build a protective wall of rocks next to where her ankles were trapped to take the weight of the tree once she hammered through the tap root.

Without warning, the rain poured from the torn belly of the sky. Sarah winced as the hard, cold drops struck her sweaty body. The soil would turn slick and sucking if she didn't hurry to get the rocks in place. Her breath coming in uneven gulps, she quickly built her safety net. The hammer's wet handle was slippery in her clenched hand. Gripping it firmly, Sarah tried to ignore the downpour. Rain struck her head, rolling down her face and beneath the collar of her shirt.

The wind increased, bending the tops of the hundreds of firs that surrounded Sarah. Biting, wintry cold clawed at her, and she began to shiver in earnest beneath the sheets of rain. Her muscles trembling with the strain, Sarah worked on. Her hair fell in flat wet strands across her face, blinding her. With the back of her muddy hand, she shoved the strands away from her eyes enough to see what she was doing.

Half an hour later, the storm ceased, as suddenly as it had started, leaving Sarah stranded in a pool of muddy water. She cut a channel away from her through the mud with the butt of her rifle, allowing most of the water to drain away. Then her teeth chattering, she wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees.
Cold.
She was so cold.

The wind died down, the forest around her becoming quiet and serene once more. Sarah rubbed her arms, longing for warm, dry clothes. Mud squished around her when she moved. At least half the roots had been destroyed, but she had
a good three or four hours
of work ahead of her.

Suddenly a sound registered, growing louder.
A car?
At first, Sarah thought she was hallucinating because of shock and hypothermia. She rarely saw anyone on this back road bordering forest-service land. Tilting her head, she listened. Yes! She could definitely hear the faint growl of a truck making its way up the now-muddy dirt road leading to her cabin.
Impossible!

Grabbing her rifle, she waited impatiently for the truck to draw nearer. A sudden paroxysm of fear grabbed her heart. What if it was one of
Summers's
henchmen come to check up on her? Once they'd dressed as forest rangers to fool her. The ruse had worked. Sarah had been caught without her 30.06 rifle nearby, and they had wrecked her mining camp. She'd managed to knock one of her
assailants
unconscious with her hammer, though, and the other had run, caught off guard by a "helpless" woman fighting back. Although she'd pressed charges, neither man had served time in the county jail. Sheriff Noonan was on
Summers's
side, and he'd refused to take her charges seriously.

Her heart pounded in triple time as the truck drew close, and Sarah gripped the rifle tighter. She
had
to take the chance!
So few people knew about this back road.
Closing her eyes, trying to control her shivering, Sarah fired the rifle once, twice, three times. She heard the truck stop and the engine cut off. Sarah opened her eyes and could barely make out an olive-green vehicle through the trees and brush below. Who was it? She bit down hard on her lower lip. She was growing desperate. No matter who it was, she'd hold the gun on them and force them to help her get her legs free.

Wolf Harding was sure he'd heard the rifle shots. So had his half-red-wolf, half-malamute companion, Skeet. The dog barked once, his tail wagging furiously as he stuck his head out the window of the truck. Ahead and to the right, pulled off the road, Wolf saw a battered white pickup—probably ten years old. The rusty vehicle was covered with a multitude of dents and scratches. Putting his truck in park, Wolf got out, his well-worn cowboy boots sinking into the mud. He took the rifle off the gun rack on the back seat and placed a round in the chamber.

Wolf concentrated, focusing on the sixth sense that had saved his life many times before. His gaze ranged across the fir-covered hill, and he breathed in the damp, fragrant air. Suddenly he spotted movement, halfway up the steep slope. Skeet whined.

Walking around the pickup, Wolf opened the door and released the dog.

"Stay," he ordered, quietly.

Skeet was shivering with anticipation, his eyes and ears riveted to the hill. Probably a hunter shooting out of season, Wolf thought. Well, the unsuspecting poacher was going to get a surprise today. Taking out his notepad, he wrote down the license number of the white pickup,
then
tucked the pad back into his olive-green gabardine jacket.

"Come."

Skeet leaped and whined, but remained at Wolf's side as he quietly worked his way in zigzag pattern up the steep slope. A ground squirrel spotted Skeet, shrieked, and jumped back into the safety of his hole. A blue jay above sounded his warning cry, the call absorbed quickly by the surrounding forest. Wolf's breath came in white wisps in the chilly aftermath of the thunderstorm. A far cry from the jungles of South America, he thought suddenly. The unbidden memory evoked a powerful chill that worked its way up his back and into his shoulders, where an old bullet wound
twinged
in response. Some things were hard to forget.

Shaking off that all-too-recent memory, Wolf forced himself to concentrate. Hunters frequently shot deer out of season around
here,
he had been warned by his superior. And more than one forest ranger had been shot
at
because he'd been caught in the same area, as a warning to mind his own business. Wolf's predecessor in the job had taken a bullet in the leg doing the very same thing: stalking poachers in the national forest. Up here in Montana, Wolf thought, these people think they're a law unto themselves. And he was used to teamwork, not working alone. But a lot of things were changing rapidly and drastically in his life. Two months ago, he'd been released from his unhappy three-week hospital stay. Now, with eight weeks of forest ranger training under his belt, he was traipsing through the woods of Montana. Well, he'd wanted to get away. . . .

Skeet growled, the hackles on his red-and-gray coat rising. Wolf froze, his eyes moving to where Skeet was looking. Up ahead he could see a huge mound of recently dug earth. Frowning, he signaled Skeet to remain at his side. He wasn't going to lose his dog to some trigger-happy poacher. His heart started a slow pounding, and he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his system, the familiar friend that heightened his senses and reflexes—perhaps to save his life, as it had before. Wolf didn't want a shoot-out with a poacher his first day on the job.

Sarah gasped as a giant of a man walked into her camp. She hadn't even heard his approach. Out of instinct, she swung her rifle into firing position.

"Hold it!" she ordered. "
Don't move
or I'll shoot!" He'd crouched into a combat stance.

Frightened and confused, Sarah tried to control her chattering teeth. "Who are you?" she croaked, and she saw his intent gaze soften. Her heart pounded beneath his cursory inspection. The hard line of his mouth relaxed slightly.