Don't Cry for Me (6 page)

“Oh, crap, she doesn’t look happy,” Meg said.

“She doesn’t know us,” Dolly said, determined that if Quinn liked this woman, then she would like her, too.

She picked up her cobbler and headed for the cabin.

Meg followed with her own offerings as they walked up the steps.

“You must be Mariah,” Dolly said. “Meg and I brought you and Quinn something for supper tonight.”

“Quinn’s not here,” Mariah said, shifting nervously as she stepped aside to let them come in.

Meg frowned. “Oh, we’re sorry. This is his day off, so we just assumed…”

Mariah shrugged. “There was some trouble about a bear. I think they called everyone in to the ranger station.”

“Well, then, we’ll just introduce ourselves,” Dolly said, and set her cobbler down on the counter. “I’m Quinn’s mother, Dolly Walker, but you just call me Dolly. This is my daughter, Margaret Lewis, but we all call her Meg.”

“It’s nice to meet you, and the food smells wonderful,” Mariah said. “I’m sorry the sofa is out of commission, but you’re welcome to take a seat on what is now my bed.”

“We can sit out on the deck,” Meg offered.

Mariah didn’t want to argue, but Quinn had given her orders she wasn’t inclined to ignore.

“Quinn told me not to spend time outside until the bear was caught.”

Dolly glanced at the worry on Mariah’s face. Quinn had warned them about the danger, but she hadn’t taken it seriously until now.

“Then we can sit at the kitchen table just as easily.” She glanced at the clock. It was after twelve o’clock. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

Mariah shook her head. “I was debating on which can of soup to open when you drove up.”

Meg waved toward the table. “You two sit. I’ll poke around and get all three of us something.”

Mariah sat because she didn’t know what else to do. She was already out of place here. Trying to play hostess would be a joke. She wanted these women to like her, but her track record with women friends wasn’t the best. She supposed it had to do with a lack of bonding as a child. The few times she’d actually gotten attached to a foster parent, she had been moved. After a while she’d quit trying.

Dolly could tell Mariah was ill at ease, but there was one thing they all had in common that would be safe grounds for conversation, and that was Quinn.

“So, you and Quinn were in the same combat unit in Afghanistan?”

Mariah nodded.

Dolly smiled as she reached for Mariah’s hands, holding them firmly in her grasp to punctuate her words.

“I know you saved my son’s life, and for that alone you will always hold a special place in my heart. Thank you, my dear. Thank you very, very much.”

The woman’s warmth was infectious. Mariah’s nerves began to settle. She felt embarrassed to be singled out like this when there were others who’d been there, too.

“We were just lucky to find him when we did,” she said.

“And how are
you
doing?” Dolly asked.

“‘Slowly but surely’ is a good way to put it,” Mariah said, and glanced at Meg, who was banging cupboard doors and opening drawers with confidence.

Dolly caught the look. “Don’t worry about her. She’s been here enough times in the past year that she knows where things are.”

Mariah nodded, but she still felt useless. She was scrambling for something to talk about and then remembered Quinn telling her that his mother had grown up on this property.

“Mrs. Walker, Quinn said—”

“No ‘Mrs. Walker’ business. Call me Dolly.”

“Okay. So, Dolly, Quinn told me you grew up on this property.”

Dolly’s eyes widened as memories washed over her. “Oh, yes. There were six of us kids, plus Mama and Papa. The old house wasn’t much, but it was home. All the girls slept in one bed. All the boys slept in another, and Mama and Papa were in the loft upstairs. Papa worked the mines, and Mama grew a big garden. The boys learned to hunt almost before they went to school, and all of us girls learned how to manage a house and feed a family with little to nothing to start on. We were dirt-poor and wore hand-me-downs until they were thin as tissue paper, but we always had each other and a whole lot of love.”

The words painted a picture that warmed Mariah all the way to her bones. What a gift it would have been to grow up like that.

“You were very lucky.”

Dolly shrugged. “There are plenty of people who would argue that with you. Living on the mountain can be a hard life.”

“Now, Mom, you know good and well money isn’t everything,” Meg said, and then winked at Mariah.

Meg’s wink made Mariah think of Quinn. “You and Quinn look alike,” she said.

Meg nodded. “I know. All of us Walkers look enough alike that you can definitely tell we’re kin.”

“I think I remember Quinn mentioning nieces and nephews. Are any of the kids yours?” Mariah asked. The smile on Meg’s face shifted just enough for Mariah to know she’d asked the wrong question. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten personal. You don’t have to answer that,” she said quickly.

Meg shrugged. “It’s old news, sugar. Besides, if you’re here, you’re considered part of the family and can ask anything you want. To answer your question, I do not have children. I would like to, but I’m minus a man in my life, so it’s not likely to happen.”

Dolly frowned. “Finish the story, Meg, or I’ll do it for you. It’s time you stopped being ashamed of something you didn’t do.”

Meg’s shoulders slumped, but she managed to put a smile on her face.

“What Mom’s trying to say is, I had a husband, but he’s now in the state penitentiary. I divorced him after he murdered a man down in Louisville over drugs.”

Mariah rolled her eyes. “That’s probably where a good portion of the kids I was in foster care with wound up. It’s also why I joined the army. The first eighteen years of my life pretty much sucked. I was looking for a place to belong, and in a lot of ways the army served me well.”

Dolly blinked. “You were in foster care your whole life? You never knew your parents?”

Mariah tensed, bracing herself for that look she got when people realized she was a throwaway.

“I was an abandoned baby, only a few hours old when someone found me. I grew up in the foster care system in Lexington until I aged out. After that I was on my own.”

Meg stopped making sandwiches and stared at Mariah, trying to imagine what it would be like to be that alone in the world.

But for Dolly, the story was shocking. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry I brought up a touchy subject.”

“No, it’s nothing like that, at least not for me. It’s a fact of my life and definitely taught me to be independent.”

Dolly got up, walked around the table and wrapped her arms around Mariah’s neck.

“Every motherly gene I have is imploding. This just breaks my heart, honey girl,” she said, and laid her cheek against the crown of Mariah’s head.

Mariah didn’t know how to react. She was confused and more than a little embarrassed, and Meg saw it.

“Ease up, Mom. If we scare her off before Quinn gets to work his magic, he’ll kill us.”

Dolly looked embarrassed, but Mariah laughed. And the moment the sound came out of her mouth, a little bit of the sad child she had been disappeared.

“Sandwiches are ready,” Meg said. “Looks like you have cold pop and iced tea to drink. What’s your pleasure?” she asked.

“Iced tea for me,” Dolly said.

“And for me,” Mariah added.

Dolly put the plates on the table, chattering as she worked. Meg was putting ice in the glasses and pouring tea while acting as the straight man for her mother’s monologues.

For Mariah, it was a peek into what a relationship between mother and daughter could be. It didn’t really make her sad, but she could definitely tell what she’d missed. And it was also an interesting view of how his family had molded Quinn into the man he was today.

They continued talking even after the food was gone, and Mariah was still smiling an hour after they left. When she finally lay down to take a nap, she rolled over and fell asleep without feeling a moment of panic. It was the first time since she’d been wounded that she slept without dreaming.

* * *

Every nerve Quinn had was on alert as he kept moving upstream. The squirrels chattering in the trees along the creek was normal, but the sudden silence that followed was not. He was jumping at every rustle in the brush, afraid he was missing clues beneath the water because he was so anxious about walking up on the bear.

Still, he couldn’t quit on this. His gut instincts kept telling him this was how the bear was getting away and why the dogs were losing the scent. Except for feeding, the bear was actually using the water as a highway.

He’d gone about a mile upstream from the kill site when he spotted something in the creek bed that gave him pause. There was a large, moss-covered boulder jutting out of the water with four long, distinct scratches cut into the moss. They were equally spaced and went all the way to the rock. It made him think of claws cutting flesh down to the bone, like he’d seen on the leg of the hiker he’d rescued.

He straightened abruptly, scanning the area to make sure he was still on his own, then took another step, slower this time, and began looking closer as he continued to move upstream. The next clue he found was on the actual creek bank, where a large chunk of earth and grass had been broken off, as if something very large and heavy had stepped too close to the edge and it had given under the weight.

He climbed up onto the bank to backtrack, eyeing the forest floor for further prints. But the ground was covered in leaves and pine needles in different stages of decay. If anything had passed that way, it wouldn’t have left any prints. He moved a few yards farther, still looking for signs of scat or the remnants of a kill. He was so focused on looking down that when something large suddenly darted out of the brush to his right, he fell backward. He was scrambling for his rifle when he realized it was only a deer. The doe leaped across his line of vision before disappearing downhill.

“Shit,” Quinn muttered, as he got to his feet and shifted his rifle to a better position.

He paused and looked up, then caught himself staring at the trunk of a sixty-foot pine. The gashes that had been cut into the tree were at least ten feet off the ground, maybe higher—just like the ones he’d found at the site where the hiker was killed. It was the bear—still marking territory.

He pulled out his two-way.

“Ranger Walker to dispatch, do you copy?”

“Go ahead, Walker.”

“What’s the status on the team of trackers? Over.”

“They lost the trail again about two miles from the canine kill site, over.”

“Are they still on the mountain? Over.”

“Yes. They’re moving down and east from Greenlee Pass.”

“I’m going to send you my coordinates. Tell them I’ll be waiting. I think I found something. Over.”

“Will do. Waiting to receive them. Over,” the dispatcher said.

Quinn ran his GPS, sent the location and settled in to wait. At best guess it would take most of an hour for the men to reach him. He glanced at his watch. It was already after 2:00 p.m. Once it got past 4:00, it got dark fast, and he had no intention of leaving Mariah home alone in the dark, nor did he relish a hike off the mountain after the sun had gone down.

He sat down on a rock, shed his backpack and then dug out a bottle of water and an energy bar. It wasn’t home cooking, but it served a purpose. As soon as he finished, he put the wrapper in his pocket, put the empty bottle in his backpack and settled down to wait.

Six

Q
uinn glanced at his watch, then pulled out his phone to check on Mariah. He made the call, and while he waited for her to answer, he wondered if she was on to him for the sneak visit from his mother and sister, then decided it was too late to worry about that now.

The phone rang several times. Just when he was about to become concerned, she answered, and he could tell she’d been sleeping.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” he said. “You sound sleepy. Did I wake you?”

“Yes, but that’s okay. I’m glad you called. I’ve been worrying about you…uh, I mean with the bear and everything.”

He smiled. “I’m still all in one piece.”

“Oh, my God, do not even joke about that,” she muttered. “Your mother and sister were here. They brought food for dinner tonight.”

The tone of her voice took care of one concern. She didn’t sound pissed.

“Oh. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to introduce you. Were you okay with that?”

“Of course I was okay. They stayed and ate lunch with me. I liked them, Quinn. They’re really nice.”

He grinned. “And you were surprised that they were nice…as opposed to me, you mean?”

“Oh, shut the hell up,” she said.

He laughed.

Mariah grinned and then changed the subject. “What’s going on with that bear?”

“Not sure just yet, but I have a theory. I’m waiting for the trackers and their dogs to get to my location.”

“You’d think dogs would be able to track it. Why is that not happening?”

“That’s part of my theory. There’s a creek that winds nearly twenty-five miles on Rebel Ridge before it hits a river. It was close to where the bear first attacked the hikers, and a few miles down the mountain that same creek is also close to where those hunting dogs were killed. I think the bear is using it like a highway, which leads me to think it’s either sick or injured. If I’m right, that’s one reason why the dogs keep losing the trail. It doesn’t just go in and out of water but stays in it, maybe for miles. That’s also why it’s so important to find it. A weakened animal is a desperate one. It’ll take chances it wouldn’t normally take in its drive to survive.”

She shivered. “I didn’t know all that. Now I
am
worried.”

“I survived the worst the Taliban threw at me. One sick bear is not going to be how I meet my end.”

“And you know this how?”

He had no intention of telling her that he planned on living to a ripe old age with her. Not yet.

“I just do.” Then he began to hear barking. “Hey, I hear dogs. I guess the trackers were closer than I thought. I’ll try to be home before dark. Take care of yourself, and don’t forget to do your exercises.”

“In the meantime, is there anything I could do? I mean for you?”

“Just take care of yourself.”

He disconnected, shouldered his backpack and his rifle, and waited for the trackers to arrive.

* * *

Everyone on Rebel Ridge knew Jake Doolen’s bloodhounds were the best trackers on the mountain, maybe even in Kentucky. Jake was on call with the Kentucky State Bureau of Investigation, as well as anyone else in need, on a twenty-four-hour basis, but to the best of Jake’s memory, neither he nor his sons, Avery and Cyrus, had ever been called out just to track a bear. It wasn’t that the hounds couldn’t do it, because he had faith that they ultimately would. But this was like tracking a ghost bear. Every time his hounds picked up a trail, it always ended when the bear went into the water. And they’d never been able to pick up the trail again on the other side.

When he got the message from ranger headquarters about a possible new lead, he was ready to jump on it. He was sick at heart from the loss of life, both human and animal, and scared shitless the bear would kill again before they took him down.

According to the directions they’d been given, they should be near the site where the ranger was waiting, and when the dogs suddenly began to bay, he realized someone or something was coming their way.

Cyrus took his rifle off his shoulder, while Avery flipped the safety off his. Just in case. Then they saw the ranger coming toward them and relaxed, Cyrus lifting a hand in welcome.

When Jake saw it was one of Dolly Foster’s boys he felt a twinge of regret. If he’d been luckier in love he could have called them his sons, but Dolly had fallen for Tom Walker and that had been that. He’d settled for his Amanda without too many regrets, and he’d loved her in the best way he knew how right up until the day she died.

“Zeus! Blue! Red! Sit,” Jake said sharply, and all three hounds dropped as Quinn approached.

Avery cradled his rifle as he smiled a hello. The Doolens had gone to school with the Walkers and were old friends.

“Hey, Quinn.”

Quinn nodded a hello, eyeing the big raw-boned men. Jake’s hair used to be as red as his sons’, but it had gone fully gray. They were all outfitted in heavy-duty denim because of the rugged terrain into which they’d been sent, with orange hunting vests for safety.

“Avery, good to see you. Cyrus…Jake, you’re both looking good.”

Jake nodded. “You, too, son. I hear you have some information. I sure hope it’s good.”

“It’s a theory with substance, how’s that?” Quinn said.

“Right now we’ll take anything that might lead us in a new direction. So what do you have?”

“You know I’m the one who found the two hikers, right?”

“Yeah, we heard.”

“As you know, the paw print I found on-site was huge, and the claw marks the bear left on a tree were much farther up the trunk than you would have expected a black bear to leave.”

“We saw the markings on the tree, but the paw print was gone by the time we got to the site. We did find a big one near where the dogs were killed, but the floor of the forest is thick with leaves or rocky as hell. Hard to find tracks, and with the dogs losing the trail, it’s been frustrating.”

“Follow me back toward the creek. There’s something I want to show you,” Quinn said, then led the way.

As they drew closer, the hounds suddenly bayed. They’d already picked up on the scent.

“You got something!” Jake said, as his dog strained on the leash.

Quinn paused and then pointed up at a pine tree in front of them. “Look at that.”

Cyrus cursed beneath his breath. Avery just stared. But Jake grunted in shock.

“Hell’s fire, that’s got to be ten, maybe twelve feet up, just like the marks where you found the hiker’s body.”

“There’s more,” Quinn said. “This way.”

All three dogs were straining on their leashes and baying as Quinn reached the creek bank. He stopped, then squatted, pointing out where the earth had been dislodged.

“See this? Looks like something really heavy dislodged this chunk as it stepped down into the creek.”

The men nodded, but in their opinion, it was just more of the same stuff that they’d already seen. The bear had gone into the water. So what?

But then Quinn didn’t cross to the other side of the creek. Instead he began to wade downstream.

“Follow me down a few yards,” he said.

The men walked along the creek bank, paralleling him.

As soon as Quinn got to the rock where the moss had been scratched, he pointed again.

“Look there.”

Jake stepped out into the water with his dog, Zeus. As soon as they reached the middle of the creek where the rock jutted out of the water, Zeus sniffed the moss and bayed.

“Yeah, I’d say that’s bear,” Jake said. “So, did you find where he went out on the other side yet?”

“Now we get to my theory,” Quinn said. “I’ve said from the start that something’s wrong with this animal. It’s either sick or injured. So say I’m right, and say it’s feverish, that means it will be constantly thirsty. You agree?”

Jake nodded. “Makes sense.”

“And it won’t be able to hunt, so it takes the easiest prey it finds, and that happens to be whatever crosses its path, which is how I view the killings so far.”

Jake was still listening. “I don’t disagree. But if it’s so sick and crippled, then why haven’t we found it laid up somewhere? Why do we lose the trail at the water’s edge and not pick it up anywhere on the other side? It doesn’t backtrack, because we’ve already ruled that out. And we’ve found numerous places where it’s spent a day or two, but it never goes back to the same location.”

“Because I think it’s using the water like a highway. There’s that constant thirst, for one thing. And if it’s feverish, or it’s been injured, lying in this cold mountain water at a moment’s notice would soothe the heat and the pain. I think the only time it comes out of the creek is when it hears something that leads it to a kill. That’s why your dogs can’t find another trail on the other side, because the water
is
the trail. If I’m right, the only chance we have of finding it is to either follow the creek down, or go all the way down to where the creek runs into the river and come up to meet it. And—again, if I’m right—when it kills again, it will be somewhere that’s not far from the creek.”

Jake’s shoulders slumped. What Quinn was saying nullified the chance of the dogs being able to locate the bear.

“This sucks.”

“I agree,” Quinn said.

“We need more men for sure,” Jake said, then eyed the sun through the trees. It was too close to sundown to set this new plan in motion. “And I can get them, but I need to notify your ranger station. What I am saying is we’re not doing this in the dark. Not with this one.”

“I agree,” Quinn said. “So, unless I’m ordered elsewhere, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Jake nodded. “Yes, and for the record, that’s one damn good theory.”

Quinn shrugged off the compliment. Knowing the animals and the region was just part of the job.

“I’m headed back down to where I left my truck,” he said.

“We’ll go with you,” Jake said. “I have a lot of phone calls to make and some extra plans to figure out.”

“And in the meantime, we pray to God no one else gets hurt before we find that bear,” Avery added.

* * *

The sun was about to slip behind the peak of Rebel Ridge when Quinn got his first glimpse of home. He could not deny that his anxiety had nothing to do with wet feet and an empty belly. It was all about Mariah. As a grown man, he’d never had anyone to come home to before. It felt good.

Mariah came out onto the deck as he pulled up and parked, then frowned when she saw the expression on his face. She’d seen that look before. It spelled both mental and physical exhaustion.

“You look tired,” she said, as he came up the steps.

“You look good,” he countered, smiling as a blush of pink swept up her neck and across her cheeks.

“Well, that’s a lie, but thank you anyway,” she said.

Quinn stopped at the door and pulled off his hiking boots and socks, then started to strip out of his clothes when it hit him that he couldn’t do that anymore without an audience.

“Um… I usually strip out here and throw my clothes straight in the wash,” he said.

Mariah crossed her arms. “Okay with me.”

His eyes narrowing, he tried to decide if she was kidding or if this was a test. It wasn’t like she’d never seen him naked before.

“It’s your call,” he said, as he shed his shirt and dropped his pants. His thumbs were in the waistband of his briefs when she sighed and walked away.

“Whatever,” he muttered, then picked up the wet, muddy clothes and headed for the utility room.

When he emerged the washer was filling with water and Mariah was outside, walking the deck with a stiff, lopsided stride. He couldn’t decide whether she was pissed or just frustrated. Either way, he could identify. He felt a little bit of both himself.

Determined not to make an issue out of this, he went straight upstairs and into the shower. By the time he came out, the scent of heating meatloaf brought him down the stairs double-time. Mariah was at the sink washing her hands. He walked up behind her.

“Something smells good,” he said.

“Your sister’s cooking. Meatloaf and roasted potatoes. Do you want a salad or a vegetable? I can open a can or chop up some lettuce.”

Quinn put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry I was such an ass. I don’t know what made me do that.”

She hesitated. “I do. This whole thing is awkward. We have a history, right?”

“Yeah, I’d say that’s a fact.”

“Only it was nothing but sex, right?”

This time Quinn didn’t answer.

She turned around. “Quinn?”

“I vote for salad.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You asked me if I wanted a vegetable or a salad. I vote for the salad, but if you want, I’ll chop it.”

Mariah sighed. Maybe he was smart to avoid discussing their past. Not when she was like this anyway—crippled in both body and brain.

“Fine. No onions in mine,” she said, and turned away too fast to see the disappointment flash across Quinn’s face.