Both shots. He wouldn’t be getting up.
It was the second time in her life that she had killed a man.
She heard more yelling off in the woods and shook herself to her senses. The others had heard the gunshots and were converging on her location. She wasn’t out of danger yet—in fact, now she was in even deeper trouble. She pushed through the pine trees until suddenly the ground fell away beneath her and she tumbled down a rocky embankment onto the shoulder of the road. Sharp gravel bit into the palms of her hands, and the Browning skittered across the wet pavement.
Elina rolled to her feet as a rust-colored pickup swerved and skidded to a halt a few yards away. The doors opened, two men emerged, and Elina found herself staring into the barrel of another shotgun.
“Don’t even think about it,” the guy with the gun growled at her. He was a brawny ox of a man with a dark goatee on his jaw.
The driver was smaller and leaner with reddish hair and a thick red mustache. He snatched up her Browning from across the road and stuck it in his belt. Then he forced Elina to lie facedown on the wet asphalt while he checked her for additional weapons. After that he yanked her up to her knees, tore the pack off her shoulders, and riffled through it, pulling out her scope and digital camera.
“Well, look-a here,” he said. “Whatcha doin’ with all this? Some bird-watching, maybe?”
“That’s right.” Elina grimaced defiantly. “I’m an ornithologist.”
The guy with the shotgun frowned. “A what?”
The driver chuckled. “So you got a sense of humor. We’ll see how long that lasts.”
At that point two more men emerged from the woods, both clad in camouflage jackets and carrying rifles. They slid down the embankment onto the road.
“She shot Carson!” one of them yelled, pointing back into the brush. “I think… I think he might be dead.”
The driver swore and threw down the backpack. He grabbed Elina by the collar and pressed the barrel of her Browning against her forehead. The four of them surrounded her as she fought to stay focused.
The driver pulled her close, still pressing the gun to her head. “So you think you’re a tough little
The others grunted in a primal chorus of approval. Like a clan of cavemen.
“Knock it off!”
The voice came from the woods. The men backed away, and Elina could see the man she had shot—the one they called Carson—standing at the top of the embankment, clutching his chest. He looked pale and like he was in a fair amount of pain, but he was alive nonetheless. Very much alive.
Elina frowned. Kevlar. He must’ve been wearing Kevlar.
“We gotta bring her to town,” he said. “Vale wants to talk to her.”
Elina winced as they forced her hands behind her back and secured her wrists with a set of plastic zip ties. Then they hauled her into the bed of the pickup and three of the men climbed up with her while Carson and the driver got inside the cab. They turned the truck around and headed up the road.
The plastic ties dug into her wrists, but Elina knew the pain was the least of her worries now. She was completely cut off with no backup. No one even knew exactly where she was. She closed her eyes and prayed silently. And as she did, the irony struck her. Four months ago, she wouldn’t have even thought about prayer. Four months ago, she was brash and hotheaded. Self-reliant and determined. Most people would have just called her angry. Four months ago, she’d had absolutely no use for God.
But that was then.
Now she sat in the back of the truck, flooded with fear and second guesses, praying desperately.
The road snaked through the pine forest. She could see patches of a jagged gray mountainside through the branches, and within half a mile they came into a clearing. The town ahead looked like little more than a clutch of ramshackle buildings hiding in the embrace of a looming mountain. A damp mist cloaked the shops and storefronts and houses, casting them in dreary silhouettes.
At the edge of town they passed a rough-hewn timber sign mounted to a pair of log posts along the side of the road. Elina shuddered as she saw the letters carved into the wood.
Chapter 17
Midway through town, the pickup truck turned up a twisting gravel road that led to the massive stone-and- timber house. Elina tried to control her fear as they passed through a set of iron gates and pulled to a stop at the entrance, where an enormous log-beam portico loomed over a pair of ornate wooden doors.
Carson hauled her out of the truck and marched her through the front doors into a spacious, stone-tiled foyer. The decor was dark and rustic—sort of a Gothic Wild West, Elina thought—with a whole menagerie of stuffed animal heads and antlers populating nearly every wall. To one side of the foyer a wide log staircase curled up to the second-floor balcony above them.
A thin, hawk-nosed woman greeted them as they entered. Her fair complexion was surprisingly soft and unblemished—with the exception of the dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in days. Elina guessed she was young, maybe in her twenties, but her burgundy hair was pulled back in a tight bun that made her look older. In fact, with a little mascara and lipstick—and of course a whole different hairstyle—the woman might have actually been attractive.
She looked at Elina for a long moment, and Elina could see some trace of emotion in her pale-blue eyes but couldn’t quite make out what it was. Surprise? Anger? Fear? Or maybe disgust?
“This is her?” the woman asked at length.
“Yeah.” Carson handed her the backpack. “He said he wanted her alive. Said he wanted to talk to her.”
The woman took the pack and gestured to the hallway behind her. “He’s just sitting down to lunch. Give me five minutes.”
She turned and slipped down the hall while Carson yanked Elina over to a bench near the staircase.
“Sit down and keep quiet,” he said.
Elina tried to get a better look at his chest. She spotted the holes in the jacket where the bullets had penetrated, but she couldn’t see much of what he was wearing underneath. A black shirt of some sort. She wondered if maybe it was some kind of new ultrathin Kevlar design. After a few minutes she gathered her courage and ventured a question.
“So what happened to you? You should be dead.”
“Shut up.”
“Y’know, you really freaked me out.”
“I said,
“All right, all right… I’m just saying… I shot you nearly point blank. I thought I watched you die.”
“Well, you were mistaken.”
“So… what? You got some kind of special Kevlar vest or something?”
“Something like that.” Carson snatched a fistful of her black hair and yanked her head backward. “Now
Elina decided to cooperate for the time being. She wasn’t going to get any more information out of Carson anyway. He was obviously pretty high up in whatever organizational structure they had in this town, but he was still subservient to this Vale character, whoever he was.
After several minutes the burgundy-haired woman peeked her head back into the foyer and waved them in. Carson nodded, pulled Elina to her feet, and shoved her along the hallway. They passed an enormous great room with a massive stone fireplace and a wide bank of windows. Next they came to the formal dining hall, which held a long, medieval-looking table. Several chairs were lined up along each side with the largest chair situated at the head of the table. The only seat that was occupied.
The man seated at the head was clearly engrossed in his meal. Elina could see it consisted of a thick red
