barbecued meat.
It was twilight now. Through the branches directly above him stripped half bare by the storm the night before, Ren saw the faint gleam of an emerging star. The woods were a murk of tree trunks and low brush gone gray or black in the failing light, still and indistinct as images in an underdeveloped photograph.
Ren’s shoulders and arms ached from the hanging weight of his body, but he tried to ignore the pain and think if there was some way to warn Cork and the others. Because there was nothing else he could do, he tried kicking, hoping to break free of the branch. His legs struck at empty air and the effort only made his shoulders hurt even more. He considered the quiet of the evening, the dreadful calm, and thought hopelessly how easy it was going to be to hear the cars coming up the lane. Occasionally from the woods around them came the rustling of a squirrel scampering among the fallen leaves beneath the undergrowth. At first the sounds had startled the man, but he quickly learned to ignore them.
In a while came the distant whir of a vehicle on the main road, the engine winding down. Someone was coming. The man moved to a prone position, his eye to the rifle scope. Ren tried to think what he could do. He decided when the others drove up, he’d make the loudest sound he could behind the seal of the tape and maybe, just maybe, they would hear and be warned. The man would probably get mad and do something horrible to Ren, but he’d take that chance.
Amid the stillness all around him, he suddenly saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Had he been looking straight on in the dim light, he might have missed it. He swung his gaze left. For a few moments he didn’t see anything. Had he been mistaken? Then he spotted the soundless slide of something large, pale, and horizontal against the vertical darkness of a tree trunk. Only a second of motion, then nothing. Ren strained to see clearly, but the mottled shading in the woods made it difficult to distinguish anything.
Motion again, a brief creeping movement, and now Ren recognized the stalking behavior of a cat. He discerned the outline of the cougar moving stealthily-creep, pause, creep-toward the man, whose attention was on the cabin and who had no idea of the danger at his back.
What Ren understood from the reading he’d done after he first discovered the animal’s tracks was that cougars preferred to attack from behind, allowing their prey to pass where they crouched before pouncing. Attacking a man was unusual, but this was a desperate beast, hungry, maybe half-crazed because it had been wounded by Calvin Stokely.
Then Ren had another thought. Maybe the cat wasn’t coming for the man. Maybe the cat was interested in the easy meal hanging from the tree.
He held his breath, felt the terrible ache of his shoulders, the kicking of his heart. He hung directly between the beast and the man, and Ren couldn’t tell which of them was the prey. He wanted to close his eyes to keep from seeing what he couldn’t stop-the long claws, the deadly teeth-but he couldn’t force his eyelids closed. He hung there powerless, damned to see the end as it came.
48
Dina turned the Pathfinder onto the rutted lane leading to the cabins. Ahead was a long stretch of gray growing dimmer as the daylight faded. She switched on her headlights, and immediately a figure leaped from the trees.
Dina braked and said, “Charlie?”
The girl rushed to the vehicle. Dina opened the door.
“Ren,” Charlie gasped. “He’s got Ren.”
“Who’s got Ren?” Jewell said from the passenger side.
Charlie caught her breath. “I don’t know. A stranger. A dude. He came after you guys left. He was, like, hiding in the woods.”
“How do you know that?” Dina asked.
“I was hiding, too, watching for Ren to come home. After you left, this dude comes out of the trees. He’s got a gun. He’s all, like, creeping around, checking everything out. He looks in Thor’s Lodge, then Cork’s cabin. Then he checks out the car behind the shed with all the bullet holes in it. Finally he goes back to the trees and waits and when Ren comes home he follows him, brings him out, and hangs him up in the woods.”
Jewell leaned across Dina. “Is Ren okay?”
“Yeah, when I sneaked away he was. But we have to get him back.”
“You don’t know this guy?” Dina said.
“No.”
Dina looked confused. “Gary didn’t say anything about anybody else.”
“Maybe this isn’t about the kids,” Cork said from the backseat. “Maybe this is about me.”
“The hit?” Dina thought it over and nodded.
Jewell stared desperately down the lane. “Ren,” she said fearfully.
Cork swung his door open and clambered out. “Jewell, get on your cell phone and call Hodder. Tell him the situation. Charlie, can you show us where this man has Ren?”
“Sure.”
Dina was out, too, and checking her carbine.
“I’m coming,” Jewell said, climbing out her side.
Cork took her by the shoulders firmly. “You have to stay here, Jewell. When Hodder shows up, or anybody else, they need to understand the situation. They can’t come barreling in. Dina’s going to give you one of the Motorolas. When we know what’s going on, we’ll contact you. You have to do this. You have to do it for Ren.”
“I can’t just wait here.”
“I know how hard that is, but you have to. Dina and I do this for a living. We’re good at it. We’ll get Ren back safely, Jewell, I promise you.”
He could see how torn she was and he understood completely. Finally she nodded and said, “All right.”
She reached for her cell phone. He reached for the Glock Dina had given him earlier.
Cork and Dina followed Charlie. They cut through the woods west of the lane until they came to the Killbelly Marsh Trail. Charlie moved quickly-too quickly for safety, Cork thought. Dina must have thought so, too, because she touched the girl’s shoulder and spoke close to her ear. After that, Charlie led the way more cautiously.
A quarter mile up the trail, she stopped and pointed toward the trees that hid the cabins. “A hundred yards in,” she whispered.
Dina nodded and whispered back, “We’ll take it from here.”
Charlie shook her head vigorously and started ahead. Cork reached out to stop her but was too late. Dina held up her hands in frustration, which was all she could do, because any verbal objection now, any undue disturbance, might alert the man who’d taken Ren. There was nothing but to follow Charlie.
Cork brought up the rear, his wounded leg ready to buckle. He concentrated all his efforts on moving the leg forward, carrying him carefully and quietly toward Ren. They had no plan, which was a problem, but there was no time for planning. The light was fading and dark was the worst enemy of all. They had to rely on Charlie to guide them, and then they would have to improvise. In this, he trusted Dina. At that moment, there was no one he would rather have as a partner.
Charlie raised her hand and stopped. Her head turned slowly right, then left. Had she made an error? Were they off track? Charlie turned to them, a pained expression on her face. She was uncertain.
They were near where the trees edged the old resort. If the man’s plan had been to shoot Cork, then he’d probably set himself up just inside the tree line. This was a delicate moment. They were close enough to give themselves away easily, but still not certain of the exact location of Ren.
He touched Dina’s shoulder and pointed for her to move right. He indicated he would go left. She nodded and signaled for Charlie to come with her. They separated and crept away twenty yards, then waited. Cork slipped left the same distance. On his signal, they moved forward again. With luck, he hoped Ren and his captor would be caught somewhere between them. Cork walked on the outside of his soles, an old stalking technique he’d learned hunting that allowed him to move silently. All his senses were focused on the woods around him as he sought to pick up anything out of place. A trickle of sweat crawled down his face like a spider. Suddenly he walked into the
