LANYON Josh (11 page)

“Where’s Stitch?” Orrin asked evenly, gaze on the rifle Taylor held. And aside from that pregnant pause before he spoke, he seemed to take Taylor’s return from the dead without batting an eyelash.

“Unavailable.”

Taylor’s voice. Taylor. Alive.

Taylor said, “Will?”

“Right here.”

“Are you okay?”

“I am now.”

Orrin chuckled, and the sound was jarring. “Son, you can’t take both of us. Even if you do shoot me before I get to my rifle --”

“He’s got your SIG,” Will interrupted.

Orrin chuckled again. “Even if you did hit me at this distance and in this light, Bonnie will blow a hole through lover boy over there. No way you can take us both in time.”

“You’re right,” Taylor said. “But I guarantee I can -- and will -- take
you
.” And they could all hear the easy confidence in his voice.

Bonnie was shaking, but she knew better than to take her eyes off Will for one second. “Orrin?” she said worriedly.

Orrin didn’t say anything, his hand still resting on the rifle stock, but making no move to pick it up.

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“All it takes is one .22 plowing right between your eyes and into that lizard brain of yours, and that’s it for you, Orrin,” Taylor said. “I won’t make the same mistake you did.”

“Okay,” Orrin said. “So what do you think you have to bargain with?”

“Your life.” Taylor barely tilted his head in Will’s direction. “The only reason you’re not already dead is I want him.”

“You do seem sorta sweet on each other,” Orrin remarked. He barely twitched his fingers and Taylor took two fast steps forward, his finger caressing the trigger but somehow managing not to pull. “Okay, okay. Keep your hair on!” Orrin said, holding very still. “So what’s your plan, son? Him for me, is that the deal?”

“That’s the deal.”

The inability to read anyone’s face made the moment all the more fraught. Taylor’s outline was poised, ready. But despite his hard calm, Will felt his tension, and he suddenly knew what Taylor was afraid of.

Stitch must not be dead, and wherever he was, Taylor was afraid he wasn’t going to stay there long enough.

“Mexican standoff.” Orrin sounded amused.

The woman said, “Orrin…” as Will used his back against the tree trunk behind him to lever himself to his feet. He took a slow step away from her, aiming for the shadows of the trees.

His hands were still tied behind his back, which meant he was going to have trouble running. But they needed to go because the minute Stitch turned up, armed or unarmed, the balance tipped out of their favor.

Will passed Taylor, reaching the fingertips of the shadows. Taylor took a slow, careful step backward, his bead on Orrin never wavering.

“Orrin --” Bonnie moved, trying to keep Will in her sights

“It’s okay,” Orin said calmly. “They’re not going far.”

Will reached the safety of the thicket, and a moment later Taylor was beside him -- and a moment after that Bonnie and Orrin opened fire.

* * * * *

Taylor dived to the side, taking Will with him. The air was alive with gunfire, and they stayed low, moving fast, plastered to the ground as they crawled for cover. Or Taylor crawled. With his hands behind his back, Will was reduced to trying to hump along with Taylor tugging at him, half-dragging him.

They weren’t going to get far like this, but apparently Taylor wasn’t trying to get far, just get them into concealment. They plowed right into a stand of thick vegetation, flattening themselves to the ground. Will opened his mouth to ask what Taylor had in mind, but Taylor reached out and scooped up some wet earth, smearing it over Will’s face. The cold smear of mud silenced Will. He watched Taylor camouflage his own face.

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The shooting had stopped and the silence was nerve-wrenching.

Bushes rustled noisily down the path. A tall shadow staggered drunkenly out of the trees. Taylor breathed an obscenity. Before Will had a chance to work it out, he spotted muzzle flash to the left. A rifle opened fire and the second rifle joined in a moment later. There was an animal scream as bullets tore apart the shrubs and low-hanging tree limbs.

Will tried to get lower, but molded to the ground was about as low as it got.

Silence. They could hear Bonnie and Orrin thrashing about in the bushes.

“Oh my God,” screeched the woman. “It’s Stitch!”

Will picked up the lower murmur of Orrin speaking too, but his voice didn’t carry as well.

“Well, what was he
doing
here?”

More muted words from Orrin.

“Christ,” Will breathed. He glanced at Taylor. He could only make out the shine of his eyes.

“I thought I hit him harder than that,” Taylor said almost inaudibly. He didn’t seem particularly distressed as he glanced at Will. “One down, two to go,” and Will saw the glimmer of his smile.

Abruptly, Orrin and Bonnie started firing again, startling Taylor into immobility. A lot of firepower raking through the vegetation -- you had to respect that -- but the shooting seemed to be moving in the wrong direction -- away from them, and it began to seem that Orrin and Bonnie were just taking their frustrations out in ammo.

Taylor cracked open the barrel of the .22, checked the magazine and swore very softly. “Three cartridges,” he mouthed to Will.

Not good.

Under the barrage of rifle shots, Taylor nudged Will back into motion, guiding him with one hand locked on his arm. They wove their way through the ferns and bushes, hunched down, stopping every few feet to listen.

Taylor pulled him down, and Will knelt, trying not to lose his balance. Taylor’s hands felt over him, covering Will’s for a fleeting moment, as Taylor groped for the cords binding his wrists. Will could hear the grin in his whispered, “So…did you miss me?”

“I thought you were dead,” Will said simply. He couldn’t joke, couldn’t cover, couldn’t pretend it had been anything but what it seemed: the end of everything he cared about -- made all the worse by the realization that he hadn’t accepted how important Taylor was to him until it was too late.

Taylor said calmly, “Yeah, sorry about that.” And from his tone Will knew that Taylor at least partly understood what he wasn’t saying. “Are you okay? They didn’t rough you up too much?”

For a minute Will couldn’t manage his voice. “You shouldn’t have come back for me,” he got out finally.

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“You have the car keys.” Taylor was working the knots frantically. Thin, strong fingers wriggling and tugging -- apparently without luck. “
Fuck
.”

“I can run like this if I have to,” he reassured softly.

Bullshit with which Taylor didn’t even bother to argue.

He did more picking and pulling and plucking and prying, and finally Will felt the cords around his wrists loosen and fall away. He shook his hands free, and Taylor grabbed up the rope and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, which was good thinking since it was hard to know what might come in handy later.

Clenching his jaw against the torture of blood rushing back into his arms and fingers, Will was dimly aware of Taylor’s hands rubbing, trying to aid circulation. He was astonished when Taylor suddenly pulled him into his arms, lowering his head to Will’s. For a moment he was held fiercely. He felt Taylor’s lips graze his cheekbone, and then Taylor had let him go again, turned away.

Will yanked him back, running his hands over him until he found the bullet hole in his jacket.

“I knew it. You
were
hit.” His probing fingers found the punctured flask. “Taylor… Christ.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine. A couple of bruises.” And he freed himself, crawling out of the thicket, moving slowly, stealthily. Will followed -- oddly shaky with an emotion that had nothing to do with their peril or the pain in his arms and hands.

Since Taylor now seemed to have a plan, Will kept silent until they found the place where the trail branched off.

In the opposite direction they could hear the crack of sticks and twigs, the echo of voices. Every so often a light flashed through the trees.

“It’s not going to take them long to figure out we doubled back,” he warned.

Taylor nodded, and started down the sharply descending path.

The crack of a rifle split the night.

The echo ringing off the mountains made it hard to judge direction. It was possible that they had been spotted, or that Orrin and company were shooting at something else.

To the left there was a clatter of falling stones, a small slide maybe -- hard to identify in the darkness.

Taylor started running -- Will right on his heels.

They sprinted down the crooked trail like deer outracing brush fire, flying -- sometimes literally -- over the dips and rocks and fallen tree limbs, feet pounding the muddy trail. Taylor slithered once, and Will’s hand shot out, steadying him. Will tripped a few yards further on and Taylor grabbed him by the collar before he went tumbling. Both times they barely slowed their headlong rush.

The miracle was they didn’t break their necks or at the least a leg in the first three minutes. The stars were fading in the sky but there was no light to speak of, and even if there had been, the trail was mostly in the shadow of the mountainside, which was to their advantage in one way -- and not at all in another.

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But it had a kind of amusement park ride charm to it, Will thought vaguely, barely catching himself from turning into a human avalanche yet again. That time he saved himself by jumping and landing, still running, on the trail winding below.

Somehow they made it down to the bottom without killing themselves. Taylor dropped down on all fours, gulping for air. Will walked a loose circle, giving his burning muscles a chance to recover, trying to catch his breath, listening for sounds of chase.

Throwing a look at the face of the craggy mountainside just beginning to materialize in the dawn, he was belatedly stricken at what they had attempted. It was a good thing he hadn’t realized it before they started running.

At muffled sounds of distress, he turned his head. Next to a small rivulet splashing down into a rocky pool, Taylor was on his knees, being quietly sick. Will didn’t blame him. That trail had to have dropped five hundred feet in less than a mile. Will thought he might have left his own stomach somewhere around the last bend.

Kneeling, Will put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Taylor nodded, scooped a hand in the water and splashed his face, further smearing the mud and sweat.

Will gave him a moment, rising and scanning the mountainside for the flashlights, for motion, for anything indicating pursuit.

Nothing.

That didn’t mean they weren’t being followed. The tiny waterfall rushing down into the pool at the foot of the path effectively drowned out the most immediate of the night sounds.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” he said, and Taylor nodded, got one knee under and shoved himself back to his feet.

They staggered their way down the canyon, finally taking shelter behind a series of sandy rock formations as the blackness of night began to dull to gray. From this vantage point they’d be able to see in all directions once it turned daylight. But once it turned daylight, they needed to be moving again. Will lay on his belly, watching for any movement.

There was nothing.

Taylor was on his back, his head leaning against the edge of Will’s shoulder. Will listened to him struggle to catch his breath. He thought Taylor’s breathing sounded funky: sort of squeaky…wheezy; was the injured lung holding up to the strain?

“Okay?” he asked, undervoiced.

Taylor nodded. Then shook his head. “Need a…minute.”

Yeah. They both needed a minute. But Taylor sounded winded. And Will could feel him shaking with exhaustion. Not that Will wasn’t shaky himself, but he was in better shape than Taylor. He turned it over in his mind. He didn’t like being on defense, but Taylor’s fatigue made any kind of offense impossible for
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now.

Assuming Orrin and Bonnie didn’t give up and go home -- and he couldn’t see how they could afford to do that -- they’d expect him and Taylor to continue down to safety and civilization, and they’d attempt to cut them off. That’s what he’d do in their position. Will shifted, and Taylor rolled away, swallowing hard.

“What do you want to do?” he whispered.

“We rest for a minute. Then we move to higher ground.”

Taylor’s face turned toward him. “We could split up. Make it harder for them.”

“We’re not splitting up.” Will held Taylor’s eyes with his own. “Never again.”

Taylor laughed.

“Something funny?”

“The whole goddamned thing is funny.” It sounded like he had recovered his breath, anyway. Will took care of that by covering Taylor’s mouth with his own in a quick, hard kiss.

* * * * *

The sky was turning a peachy pink when they started up the slope, sticking to rock as much as possible in an effort to hide their tracks.

Without his map it was hard to be sure, but Will thought they were on the west side of Elk Pass. This was confirmed when they later came upon an old, half-tumbled down mining shack.

There had been no sign of any pursuit since they’d made their escape down the cliff the night before.

Will thought they could risk going to ground for a few hours. It wasn’t like they had a choice, really.

Taylor was moving on willpower alone, and he needed time to figure out how they were going to get to help before Orrin and Bonnie got to them.

Will kicked the door, and half the wall fell in. Taylor began to laugh. And soft though it was, it echoed off the rocks and bounced around the canyon, a ghostly chuckle in the crisp, cold dawn.

“Shhh.
Shit
,” Will hissed, but he started to laugh too. “Be quiet, for God’s sake.” He grabbed Taylor and pushed him through the broken door -- and wall -- realizing how glad he was to have an excuse to hold him.