Prey (12 page)

Dare thought about calling Harlan so Harlan could remind him again why this was such a good idea. What else was the satellite phone good for if he couldn’t call an old friend who’d convinced him to act like a stupid idiot, so he could reinforce the idea?

Fishing. He wanted to
fish
. That was definitely a good idea. Angie wouldn’t need any help from him, or accept it even if she did, but he could use some down time. Fishing was just the ticket.

Even though guiding hunters and fishermen was his job and he spent a lot of time in the mountains, he still loved it here. The solitude, the rough landscape, the smell of the mountain—they never got old. When he’d been a hell-raising teenager he’d spent a lot of time up here on his own, but now he was a damn adult, responsible, a small-business owner, and he’d been too damn busy to enjoy life. He’d make trips up this way to resupply, or take care of repairs, but coming alone to fish? No. There was always too much to do, and taking a little vacation of his own was so far down on his list that he didn’t even know it was there. Maybe he was way past due for this kind of break.

The fact that Angie was also on the mountain with the men who gave Harlan the willies … that was a coincidence. Nothing more.

Yeah, right. After dismounting, Dare turned so he faced the direction of the camp Angie had leased for the week. He had a great sense of direction and he knew this mountain better than anyone, so he mentally placed the camp almost immediately. If not for the mountains, trees, and the distance, he’d be looking right at Angie and her hunting party. He’d been there a time or two himself, knew how far it was from his camp, which paths led to that camp. It wasn’t the best, nor was it the worst. What it was, was acceptable.

Harlan had written down the names of the men Angie was
with, and he’d said he’d do a search on the computer to see if he could find anything suspicious, then call Dare on the sat phone if he did. Dare doubted anything would turn up, but Harlan would feel better if he was doing something productive.

Angie’s truck and trailer, and an unknown SUV, had already been at Ray Lattimore’s place when Dare had pulled in with his own horse trailer. Ray, in his early seventies but as tough as old jerky, had come out to talk a bit. “Angie Powell went up early this morning,” he said, nodding toward her truck. “Two clients with her. One’s useless, the other’s an asshole.”

Dare grunted. “That so?”

Ray had more of his opinions to share, and did so at length. By the time he was finished, Dare was an hour later than he’d planned on being, but what the hell, this was a
vacation
. He wasn’t punching a damn time clock.

Because this wasn’t a guided hunt, he’d decided to use the trip to do some training on a new horse he’d bought, a three-year-old buckskin that showed promise of being a great trail horse. The youngster was full of piss and vinegar and Dare had to stay on his toes, ready for anything, but he enjoyed the challenge. When they arrived at his camp safe and sound, overall he was pleased. He wouldn’t put a client on the horse just yet, though; the buckskin needed a lot more experience and settling down. This was his first time in the mountains, and some of the less-secure footing made him nervous.

Dare unpacked and settled in with the ease and automatic mindlessness of a man who’d done it a thousand times. There was comfort in the routine, almost a sense of coming home. He saw to the buckskin first, then unpacked his fishing gear and supplies for the week. This was the first time he’d ever had this place to himself, and it felt odd to bring in one air mattress, one sleeping bag. Normally the quarters felt cramped, but with just himself and one horse, damned if everything didn’t feel roomy. He should do this more often.

This was his camp, not a lease, and Dare had designed and built it himself, with safety from predators his foremost consideration. The building was small and rough-looking, blending into the background so well it was almost invisible from any distance, but it was two stories tall and a hell of a lot sturdier than any tent—sturdier than most hunting cabins, come to that, and definitely what he considered a better design for bear country.

The bottom of the building was horse stalls, while the top was a sleeping platform, partitioned into small areas with curtains that could be pulled over the openings for privacy, but the platform itself was open to the stalls below, with a ladder that could be pulled up. The heat from the horses’ bodies rose, effectively heating the sleeping platform so during cold weather it was almost comfortable. During hot weather, the small windows in the upper section could be opened. The clients on the sleeping platform were always safe from predators of any kind, and they had a clear shot into the lower level in case a bear actually tried to claw through the heavy double door below. From the higher position, Dare knew he could take out any predator before it got near the horses.

He’d never had a bear try to get to his horses, but in the mountains it paid to be prepared for anything and everything.

Dare was nothing if not prepared.

Tomorrow morning would be soon enough to head to the stream he had in mind for a little fly-fishing. The trail to that stream would take him close by Angie’s camp, but so what? It was a free country. If she saw him, she’d just have to deal.

But it wouldn’t hurt to let those two guys she was with know there was someone nearby, someone who knew Angie, and who was also armed. Dare didn’t mind doing the menacing act, because for the most part it wasn’t an act. He’d lived through too much, done too much; menacing came natural to him.

Angie eased forward, ears straining for any snuffling noises, any sounds of twigs being broken. She tried to keep the wind in her face, because bears stank to high heaven, and her nose might pick up something before her ears did. On the other hand, she kept constant watch behind her, because a bear’s sense of smell was a jillion times sharper than hers and one could easily be downwind of her. Just the thought of turning around and seeing a bear behind her made her heart squeeze in terror.

Out here by herself, there was no hiding from or disguising the fact that she wasn’t just uneasy about hunting bear, she was downright afraid of them. The only thing that gave her the confidence to be out here looking for bear scat was the rifle in her hand, loaded with heavy-duty ammunition. But a big bear could keep coming another forty, fifty feet or more after taking a fatal hit, and if the shot was off by a little the animal could do a tremendous amount of damage before going down.

When she’d come up here to scout out the territory, she’d been terrified every minute, even though she’d done everything
she could to mitigate the danger. She’d made her clothes as scent-free as possible, but that was standard. The last thing she wanted was for a big blackie to catch her scent and either vanish from the area or, worse, think
dinner!
and start stalking her. The absolute worst thing that could happen would be that in the heavy brush she’d stumble too close to a sow grizzly and her cub, or cubs, and be on them before she knew it. If there was a more ferocious animal on earth than that, her imagination wouldn’t stretch far enough to envision it. A female grizzly protecting her cubs was a buzz saw of destruction; even male grizzlies would give her a wide berth.

Damn Mitchell Davis. Why couldn’t he want an elk, or a bighorn sheep, or a moose? Moose were dangerous, but she wasn’t terrified of them. Bear … the very first nightmare she could remember having, when she was five or six years old, had featured a bear. She had no idea what had triggered the nightmare, but it had been so vivid, and in technicolor, that to this day she remembered almost every detail. She’d been running, and a black bear had been after her. Various people had tried to help and the bear had killed them all, and kept coming. She’d awakened, whimpering, before it reached her and she remembered lying curled up in bed, shaking in terror, with the cover pulled over her head until morning came.

Viewed in that light, becoming a hunting guide wasn’t the smartest move she’d ever made. This was bear territory; every guide trip she made, even if it was a photography expedition, brought her into their backyard. She didn’t have a phobia about bears, exactly, but she was definitely afraid, which she hoped meant she was less likely to have a close encounter of the bad kind because she was extra cautious.

Bears weren’t the only big predators around; there were cougars, too. Strange that she wasn’t as afraid of them as she was a bear, because she wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with a cougar, either, but she supposed she was allowed her points of illogic.
She waited for five minutes, listening hard and hearing nothing more than very small rustles—no grunts, no coughs, no sounds of branches being snapped or logs rolled out of the way—before she ventured closer to the game trail she’d located.

There was the tree with the claw marks, the thicket of chokeberry bushes where the black fur had been snagged. She mentally mapped out a grid and walked it, taking her time, carefully examining the ground as well as constantly checking her surroundings. The silver ribbon of creek below helped her keep her bearings, so she always knew exactly where she was in relation to the camp. The ground sloped away to the right of her, punctuated by groups of boulders, stands of trees. Something metallic caught her eye, over by some of the rocks, but bear scat wasn’t metallic; probably someone had left some trash, which ticked her off. She’d pick it up on her way back to the camp.

No scat. She moved upward another hundred yards, but though she found some scat it wasn’t as fresh as what she’d found a few days before. Reversing directions, she began working down toward the creek. Water was a lodestone. Eventually, every creature in the mountains needed water.

When she reached the steep drop-away where she’d seen the glint of metal, she left the game trail and carefully worked her way over to it. A careless step could mean a sprained ankle, or, God forbid, a broken leg or a concussion, and she didn’t trust either Chad Krugman or Mitchell Davis to help her. She’d told Chad in detail where she was going, but as inept as he was in the wilderness she didn’t have a lot of faith he could find her. Davis had still been in his tent when she left, so he didn’t have any idea where she’d gone. If anything happened, she’d have to depend on herself; there was no one else.

A camera. The metallic glint came from a microdigital camera. She leaned down and picked it up. It was scuffed up, dirty, and probably wouldn’t work after being left out in the open. She examined it, saw that the switch had been left in the “on” position.
When she flicked the switch again, the little screen lit up. Out of curiosity she hit “playback” and scrolled through some shots of the scenery. There were a hundred fifty-three pictures, but after viewing a few of them she turned the camera off. She’d look at the rest later, though she doubted there’d be any way of telling who the camera belonged to. It must have fallen out of the photographer’s pocket, who knows how many days ago.

She slipped the camera into the inside pocket of her jacket and zipped it shut, then resettled her orange vest. She looked around once more, and that was when she saw a shred of cloth, maybe ten yards away, close to a big cluster of boulders. It looked like part of a blanket, maybe. She checked all around her, saw nothing, so she eased in that direction.

Not a blanket. Part of a plaid shirt. The plaid was visible on a small portion of the fabric; the rest of it was black and stiff with blood.

She stopped in her tracks, hair lifting on the back of her neck. She didn’t go any closer to pick up the fabric, just stood where she was and once more checked her surroundings, three-sixty. The mountainside was quiet.

She looked back at the ground surrounding the fragment of shirt. The ground was dark in patches, gouges in the earth showing dark and raw, mixed with the imprints of big pads, the short claws that said black bear, not grizzly. There were scuff marks, as if something had been dragged. She followed the drag marks with her gaze, saw what looked like a piece of raw meat, dark red, stringy.

She edged back, away from the scene, so she wouldn’t disturb it, then farther down the trail a few yards before once again working her way across. The going was harder now, the slope much steeper; she had to brace herself with one hand, check each step to make sure it was solid before she put all of her weight on it. When she was even with the cluster of boulders, she looked up.

And gagged.

The man’s remains—possibly a man, she couldn’t be certain, because there was no face that she could see—had had dirt scratched over them. Bear did that with a half-eaten kill. The viscera had been eaten. Part of an arm lay nearby. And as if to leave proof of ownership, she could see where the bear had crapped.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit!
Not the bear shit, but oh-my-god-get-me-out-of-here kind of shit.

She’d seen wildlife kills before. Nature wasn’t neat; it was messy and brutal. But she’d never before found a half-eaten human, and her stomach heaved. She fought down the nausea, fought the abrupt sense of panic as she suddenly imagined the bear looming right behind her on the trail just like in her nightmare.

Swiftly she pulled her rifle from the scabbard on her back, jacked a round into the firing chamber. The reassuring mechanical sounds of metal parts moving were all she could hear. She did another three-sixty check. No bear, no cougar, or coyotes attempting to raid the bear’s kill. Nothing. The “nothing” was almost as terrifying as “something,” because she knew the bear was in the vicinity. They didn’t willingly abandon their kills. It wasn’t close enough to scent her, though, or she’d have already been fending off an attack.

But if it came back for its kill, and crossed her scent trail, would it track her? Black bears did that. They stalked people. Humans were just part of their food chain.

She returned to the trail, heading back for the camp as fast as she could safely go. She checked the time, calculating distances. This had to be reported immediately, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Department alerted that there was a man-eater in the vicinity. The body had to be recovered and identified. But it was already so late in the afternoon that she’d barely have time to make it back to the camp before dark; there was no way they could make it to Ray Lattimore’s.