Rogue's Revenge (20 page)

The terrain they traveled that morning varied. Sometimes their way was along a low riverbank close to a smoothly flowing stretch of water. At others, they climbed over rocks high above rapids and gorges where the river swirled and roiled like a thing possessed.

When they paused to rest at noon, it was in a gently sloping meadow that ended in a cluster of alders at the water’s edge. The bright sun and clear skies of early morning had vanished behind a low cloud cover, and a fog had begun to roll in. Together they gathered dry branches, and Heath lighted a small fire on the river’s edge.

“Sit here and rest.” He stood and turned to her. “I’ll find lunch.”

“I can’t wait to see what you come up with this time. I’m so hungry almost anything you deem edible will be accepted.”

He narrowed his eyes, pulled his knife from its scabbard, and ran his finger along its blade.

“Heath, no! Not some animal!”

“Hand me the cooking pot, there. I’m off to harvest nuts and berries.”

“It’s too early in the season.” She caught the teasing in his tone and knelt to open the packsack. “Although I said I could eat almost anything, I’m not fond of twigs and roots.”

“Noted. Avoid roots and twigs.”

He took the pot and headed off into the fog toward the alders along the river. Allison adjusted the pack into a headrest, lay down, and stretched out to wait. Weary after an arduous morning, she dozed. For how long, she couldn’t be sure. But she was certain that when she awoke it was with a feeling of being watched.

“Heath?” She jerked to a sitting position. The fog had thickened. She could see no more than a few feet in any direction. “Heath, is that you?” Her words sounded hollow and eerie.

There was no answer, but something moved a few yards away in the veil of whiteness.

“Heath?”

The answer was a grunt. A huge, hulking, hairy creature materialized out of the mist. It shambled toward her, hirsute hands extended toward her throat.

“Heath!” Allison stumbled to her feet, grabbed the packsack and started at a dead run in the direction in which he’d gone.

When she slammed into the hard wall of his chest, he caught her in his arms.

“Allie, what…?”

“Sasquatch! Back there!”

“Wait here.” He moved her aside, pulled his knife, and headed into the mist.

She stood trembling. Silence returned to the mist. Its surreal ambience and the memory of the monster that had threatened her made her stomach churn. Time moved like a slug. Finally she decided she couldn’t wait passively any longer. What if the creature had attacked Heath, overpowered him? Maybe at that very minute, the hairy giant was throttling the life out of him. She had to find some way to help. An inspiration took hold. She remembered the fire Heath had lighted on the riverbank near where she’d fallen asleep.
Animals are afraid of fire. If I get back to the fire, I can help Heath…

Keeping the river to her left, she started back downstream. When she finally found the fire site, she was so relieved she barely noticed the pot of greens bubbling over the flames. Grabbing a stick, she thrust it into the coals and waited. If that thing came back, all she had to do was pull out her torch and, hopefully, he’d flee in fear. Hopefully.

Hugging her bent knees, she hunkered down beside the fire and waited and hoped and prayed. What was taking Heath so long? Since no sounds of a struggle rent the silence, she could only assume he hadn’t accosted the creature. But then maybe the thing had gotten behind him, struck him down without a sound. Maybe Heath was lying somewhere out there in the fog—wounded, dying, dead!
Oh, dear God, let him be all right.

“Lunch ready?” Grinning, he stepped out of the mist. Relief flooded through her with strength-sapping force. She tried to get to her feet but stumbled and fell, unable to make her knees support her.

“Allie!” He squatted in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

“What was it?” She collapsed against his shoulder.

“Some guy in a Halloween costume.” He kissed her mist-dampened hair. “Ran like a rabbit before I could get a good look at him. We’re okay for now, but I think we’d better eat up and get moving.”

“You don’t believe what I saw was a sasquatch?” She stared up at him.

“No, not a sasquatch. Someone sent to scare us, maybe do us actual physical harm if that scare doesn’t work.” His tone lightened as he pulled her to her feet with him. “Come on. I’ve cooked up one of nature’s truly exotic dishes, available fresh for only two weeks of the year. I came back while you were sleeping and started them boiling. I went back to look for more but couldn’t find any. I was returning when Hairy Harry decided to give you nightmares.”

He swung about on his haunches and used a stick to lift the pot from its place above the flames. With a triumphant grin, he set the steaming dish in front of her.

“What is it?” She looked into the bubbling greenery. “Spinach?”

“Fiddleheads.” He drained off the water. “Immature ferns. They look like the head of a fiddle, thus the name. Try some.”

He handed her a pronged twig and grinned.

“You’re really quite adept at making unique utensils,” she said. “Maybe guests at the Lodge might enjoy them…the crowning touch of their wilderness experience.”

“Maybe.” He reached out and ran his knuckles lightly down her cheek. The expression in his eyes upped her heartbeat to way past the speed limit.

“You know, Heath Oakes, I’m getting a tad fond of you.” The admittance was soft, almost shy.

“Just fond?” He drew her into his arms. The next moment he was kissing her, kissing her until her feet left the ground, until all she was conscious of was him, his mouth, his body. “Just fond?” He raised his head to look down into her eyes with his amazing ones that narrowed when he was intense.

“Maybe more than fond.” He kissed her again, his tongue tasting, probing, and when he looked at her again, she could only breathe, “Oh, yes, definitely more than fond.”

“If I hadn’t promised your mother…” His words tickled her ear as his hands slid down her back.

“Heath.” His name was a breathed permission, a sensuous request.

“No, no, no.” He threw up his hands and backed off. “Hell, no. I’m a fool, but I do keep my word.”

“You pick the damnedest moments to get all trustworthy and righteous.” Frustrated, she jerked away from him.

“Sorry. But I never promised anything once we’re out of this mess and back on equal footing. I don’t think Myra, who married a cowboy, will expect her daughter to keep her own maverick waiting too long.”

“Great, good, wonderful. Let’s get going.”

****

It was nearing dusk when they reached Adams Landing and headed up across the field toward the tombstone looming out of the fog.

“We made it…” Allison began. A deafening roar and a rifle bullet ricocheting off her grandparents’ headstone cut her short.

The next instant she was flat on the ground behind it. Heath’s body pinned her to the earth.
Damn it, déjà vous!

“Don’t move!” he hissed.

As if I could.
His body giving her no alternative, Allison lay still and felt his heart pounding against her back.

“Stay close to the headstone.” Barely audible, his words fell into her ear.

“Heath…”

“Stay!”

He eased away from her, catlike, into the fog. Alone, with her heart trying to hammer its way out of her chest, Allison lay with her fingers clutching the base of her grandparents’ tombstone and prayed.

Time became a dragging, wretched thing, its passing an excruciating endurance test. Then a voice made Allison start so violently she felt her shoulders snap.

“Get up!”

She turned and looked up to find the long barrel of a rifle pointed at her head. The woman holding it was Candace Breckenridge, dressed in camouflage bush gear.

“Candace!” She stumbled to her feet. “What…?”

“You spoiled brat!” she snarled, and Allison felt her blood turn to ice water as she saw the insane rage in the woman’s face. “You think your grandfather left you a lover in his will, don’t you? That you own Heath Oakes just like you own this land? Well, think again, honey. A sexy little body like yours might be okay on a camping trip, but it takes money to keep the fire burning three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Heath Oakes knows that. He also knows that while your daddy might be rich, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are. But he damn well knows I am! He might exude all the trappings of a gorgeous savage, but remember where he came from and what he still is under all that earthy charm.”

“You can’t buy people!” From somewhere Allison found the courage to snap back.

“That’s what you think. Heath has a taste for money and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it. He got rid of old Jack and seduced that doctor into signing the death certificate, no questions asked. He’ll convince her to do the same with you after the unfortunate accident you’re about to have. Once we’re rid of you, Heath and I will turn your grandfather’s Chance into a sure thing…and have our own private love nest.”

“That will never happen.”
I have to keep her talking until Heath gets back. It’s my only chance.

“Sorry to disappoint you, sweetie, but it will. That fool Jim Wilcox may have failed in doing what I paid him to do, but I won’t! Heath Oakes is still a kid from the slums, out to grab the golden ring at the first opportunity. Within a week, both he and this place will be all mine, and you’ll be a distant memory.”

The woman raised the rifle to her shoulder, eased back on the trigger, and aimed at the younger woman’s chest.

Allison looked into the face of death.

Chapter Twelve

Out of the fog leaped a creature, a hairy, dirty creature that hit Candace Breckenridge in mid-back and sent her face forward onto the ground.
Oh, God, a baby sasquatch!
The rifle discharged up into the fog, then flew from Candace’s hands to skitter across the wet grass toward Allison.

Amid the woman’s cries to get the thing off her, Allison grabbed the gun and stumbled to her feet.

“Jack!” The dog’s name was a gasp as she recognized the animal standing on the woman’s back and stilling her efforts with vicious growls and rolled-back lips.

“What the…?” Heath burst out of the fog. His eyes widened. “Sweet Jesus, what’s going on?”

“Jack appeared out of nowhere and saved my life.” Allison handed the gun to the man as he came to stand beside her. “She was going to shoot me.”

“Get this miserable thing off me!” Candace cried. She tried to rise, but Jack grabbed a mouthful of her hair and yanked her back into submission.

“It’s okay, boy.” Allison stepped forward to take the dog’s collar and pull him, protesting, off the woman. “But thank you, thank you, thank you.” She knelt and hugged the filthy animal, whose coat offered no evidence of its former snowy whiteness. Muddy and tangled, he did resemble a small sasquatch.

“Here.” Heath pulled off his belt and tossed it to Allison. “Tie her hands behind her back.”

“Stupid, ignorant, backwoods garbage!” Candace raged. “You could have had it all!”

“Get something I can use to tie her up with from our pack, Allie.” He thrust the woman against the grave marker as Allison finished her task. “Just to be sure she’ll stay available until we can contact the RCMP.”

Her hands suddenly shaking, her knees threatening to desert her, Allison did as instructed. When she handed a plaid shirt to him, his expression mirrored remorse and tenderness.

“All this was my fault, Allie,” he muttered, taking it from her. “None of this would have happened to you if…”

“Heath, what she said about you and her…”

“Fantasies.” He wrapped the material around Candace’s ankles and pulled it tight.

“Fantasies?!” Candace Breckenridge screamed at him. “Moonlight strolls, drinks in front of the fire, talking for hours over breakfast coffee… You call all that fantasies?” The woman glared at him. “You’re a backwoods gigolo, Heath Oakes. I hope you make this little bitch as miserable as you’ve made me.”

“Heath! Heath! Where are you?” Marty Mason’s voice echoed eerily out of the fog.

“Over here.” Heath stood from his task. “By Jack’s grave.”

Jack muttered a growl. “It’s okay, boy.” Allison held his collar and spoke reassuringly.

Mason and his three buddies from the service station appeared out of the mist. The former’s bearded face relaxed when he saw the restrained woman on the ground.

“Thank God!” he muttered and drew the back of his hand across his mouth. “This woman,” he indicated Candace, “Stole my ATV and my deer rifle. Told me I was fired, that she’d finish the job herself.”

“Fired?” Allison stared at the man. “Fired from what?”

“She hired me to play sasquatch and ruin the Lodge’s business so she could buy it cheap and easy.” He avoided her eyes. “A few days ago, when she called to see how things were goin’, I told her I’d heard from a couple of guys who were mindin’ the Lodge that you and Heath were gone down river campin’ for a few days. She got real upset and offered me a lot of money to dog you two along the trip, shake you up with sasquatch sightings, a few shots over your heads, and the like.” He turned to the man holding the rifle. “I really needed that money, Heath.”

“Leaving us without our gear was a notch or two above scaring,” Heath muttered. “We might have died.”

“Ah, Heath, you know I wouldn’t have let that happen. I called the Mounties after I accidentally knocked you off the boathouse roof. I only planned to take the ladder and leave you stuck up there for a while, or force you to jump into the river to get down. I was mad as hell for you sackin’ me. But now, serious hurtin’ or killin’? You know I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“You were with me when we saw the sasquatch on the road to the Chance.” Allison looked at the man.

“That was me,” one of his companions admitted. “Marty set me up to do it while you were in the service station, when he said he had to gas up his Jeep.”

“But this woman,” Allison pointed at Candace Breckenridge, “was going to use your rifle to murder me!” She swung back on Marty Mason.