Primal Obsession (16 page)

The radio. “How the hell—” He shook his head and flicked the switch. “Moosewoods 2 calling Moosewoods 1. Over.”

Dead air.

He tried again. Nothing. “Middle of the night. Ben probably doesn’t have the radio on.”

“You’re sure it works?”

Now she was being snippy, behaving more normally. He leveled a sardonic gaze at her. “I replaced the batteries before the trip. Can’t hurt to check.”

The radio felt oddly light. He scratched at his scarred hand, itching deep as the marrow. He turned over the rectangular black instrument and slid open the battery compartment door.

Leaning forward, Annie aimed her flashlight in it.

No batteries. In their place, a tangle of shredded wires.

“Damn it to hell!” He slammed down the ruined radio.

Annie clutched his arm. “The Hunter! What will we do? Do you have a gun?”

“No gun.” He shook his head, shook it again, hoping to jar loose an answer, a plan, an idea. Hell, sports hadn’t prepared him to face a fucking human predator. He was no warrior.

Should he wake everyone else up and gather them together for safety around the campfire? They didn’t seem to be in danger—yet. Annie was the one the Hunter wanted. No, Sam had to devise a game plan first. “You stay here tonight.”

“No argument. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to my tent alone.”

He skimmed off his windbreaker before arranging the extra-large sleeping bag so she could crawl in. It would be tight, but that was all right with him.

She scooted inside and stretched out beside him. “But Sam, no sex.”

“You’re safe from me tonight, sweetheart. Just let me hold you.” They’d ward off the nightmares together. The real nightmare awaited them in the darkness. He turned down the lantern, but left it glowing for safety. Turning on his side, he tucked her close.

He’d protect her. He had to.

She backed up against him, her butt in his lap. “Tomorrow, what can we do?”

Once again, she was counting on him to have a solution. They all had to count on him, whether they knew it or not. They had no choice. In spite of his efforts to take this trip all the way,
he
had no choice. He had to end it before someone got killed.

“We’ll do what a baseball manager does when the starting pitcher’s luck has run out. Call in the reliever. In the morning, we’ll go back to Wolfe’s to call for help. Everyone’s in danger.”

She rolled over to face him. He couldn’t see her, but he felt the puff of her warm breath. “But what if it’s Carl? You’ll tip him off.”

“If I tip him off,” he said, “it’s too damn bad.” She sucked in a breath, but he stopped her protest with a finger to her lips. “Relax, sweetheart. Carl can’t be the killer.”

“Because...” Challenge edged her voice.

He loved that she never gave an inch. And she didn’t bite his finger. “If you were a killer, would you rely on stolen weapons? Wouldn’t you come prepared with something like a pistol or a blade bigger than a Swiss Army Knife?”

“How do you know—” He could almost hear the gears whirring in that quick brain of hers. “Oh. His bags.”

“You got it.” Carl’s duffel and sleeping bags had leaked when the canoe had taken on water. Once they made camp, everyone helped him spread his belongings out to dry. “No weapons, nothing suspicious in his stuff. Unless you count red bikini briefs.”

“Remember? We agreed Carl couldn’t have caused Ray’s accident. Ironic, isn’t it?” she said, her voice sleepy, soft. Her fragrance drifted to him from her silky hair. “After all Ray’s desire for real-life adventure, he’s safely away now that our troubles have escalated from petty to desperate.”

“He got more real life than he bargained for. But that leaves him out of the running to be the Hunter.”

She went rigid. “Does it? Does it leave him out? You insisted there was no way anyone could follow us to Gomagash without our seeing a plane.”

“But his injury...”

“I saw a scrape and his knee jammed through that hole in the canoe. He moaned like a dying bagpipe, but do you remember the knee swelling like a sprain should?”

“You’re suggesting he faked it?” Frowning, he stared into the darkness. “His injury came at a damned opportune time. Carl was in the stern and couldn’t see exactly what happened.”

“We couldn’t come to their rescue until afterward.”

“He would’ve had opportunity to pull the other stunts as well,” he said, warming to the idea. “If he’s the Hunter, he knows how to make a small animal snare and mess with compass readings.”

“But Ray was so friendly and helpful, conciliatory even. He, even more than Carl, seemed to be exactly what he said—a computer expert who created games. You heard those debates with Frank. All Urdu or Swahili to me, but the kid ate up every word. Like that, none of this makes sense.”

“It does, if you think about it. Carl’s so full of bluster that you always know where he is. Ray’s quiet and invisible. Sometimes he blended into the background so that he could wander off by himself and return before we missed him. He sure as hell could’ve arranged that whole play with the cooler just like Carl accused him.”

“I know it was my idea, but I hate it. I liked Ray.” She sighed against his chest.

The puff of her warm breath tightened his nipples. He had to stifle his body’s reaction to having her tucked in with him like this. They were all in danger. But
this
was murder.

Murder. God, no.
“If Ray is the Hunter, he wouldn’t let himself be airlifted to any hospital. I have a bad feeling about Ted Wolfe.”

“Dammit, you’re right. The sooner we get back to his cabin, the better.”

“Try not to think about it any more tonight. We need rest if we’re going to paddle upstream tomorrow.” He draped his right arm around her and stared into the dark. Snuggling closer, she drew his hand beneath her chin. Before he realized what she was doing, he felt her soft, warm mouth on his knuckles.

She kissed his scars. “‘Night, Sam.”

He swallowed. Hard. “‘Night, Annie.”

Her breathing slowed, evened out. She slept, but he doubted he would.

Damn. The woman trusted him. A woman he cared for more than was good for him. Or for her.

Was returning to Wolfe’s the right thing to keep everyone safe? He had no fucking idea.

TWENTY

Annie opened her eyes to find Sam gently shaking her shoulder. She lay on her stomach, close enough to his furnace-hot body to feel the rhythm of his heart, absorb the earthy masculine scent she was beginning to know. She longed to stay put, safe and warm, until the Hunter threat vanished like the nightmare he was.

“I thought you’d want to get back to your tent before the others get up,” he murmured.

“Okay.” She pushed up on her elbows to clear the sleep from her brain. Her hair fell forward, curtaining her face. She flung it back and looked at Sam in the pale light of dawn.

He lay on his back, one arm across his forehead. His upper torso was naked, and though she’d seen him like that often during the day, this was much more intimate. She’d slept in his arms for part of the night. The thought sent tingles through her. Slept. Just slept. No sex. He’d agreed without argument, though she’d felt his erection against her back more than once.

His eyes were closed. His tawny hair and moustache were ruffled. Did men brush or comb their facial hair? She almost reached out to smooth the moustache, but discretion curled her fingers. No crossing that threshold. Stubble covered his jaw, darkened the indent of his dimples. His corded arms and powerful shoulders were no less impressive in repose.

Merely looking at him kicked up her pulse and melted her thighs. She was in deep trouble.

She scrambled into her sneakers and out of the tent as fast as she’d tumbled in last night.

Later as Carl groused about their breakfast of cereal and reconstituted milk, Annie struggled to keep her composure, to behave normally, as if she hadn’t snuggled in Sam Kincaid’s arms all night. As if she hadn’t found her own grave in the woods. As if she didn’t want to scream that the Hunter was stalking her.

Sam had kept watch over her trek to her tent until she waved to assure him she was safe inside. How he planned to tell the others, she hadn’t a clue. He’d simply said he’d take care of it. She might not trust Sam with her heart, but she trusted his wilderness savvy. Returning to the caretaker’s cabin was their only recourse.

She glanced at him, seated diagonally from her at the picnic table. No zombie-headed start for him today, no jokes about roughing it or bass pancakes or fish and cereal for breakfast. He radiated tension like a satellite beacon.

She probably looked just as ragged. She cast a surreptitious glance beyond the clearing. Was the Hunter watching them from the cover of trees as dense as bargain hunters at a Macy’s clearance?

Nora started collecting dishes for cleaning up.

“Hold on, Nora,” Sam said. “We’ll do that later. We have a change in our game plan. Hell, there’s no easy way to do this.”

“Let me, Sam.” The cereal Annie had force-fed herself sat like glue in her stomach. Her nerves buzzed like flies on a window. “It’s me he’s after. I should tell them.”

***

Trading on instinct and a lifetime of wilderness experience, Sam shoveled water toward Ted Wolfe’s cabin and the radio as if the killer nipped at his heels.

Otter Stream’s depth hid the bottom in most places. With no rapids, it flowed gently but inexorably south but he paddled north. Each stroke had to count, had to propel him with force enough to compensate for the backward ebb each time he lifted the paddle.

He shook off the vision of Annie’s anguished face, the stark fear in her eyes. He had to haul ass to reach help. He couldn’t let himself think about the damn Hunter’s next step. He might be stalking Annie at this very minute. Or he might be following them in a canoe.

Don’t think. You get in trouble when you think too much. Just act.

He worked into a rhythm, not stopping for snacks, only for a gulp of water from time to time. Each time, he glanced back to check for the others.

So far, no sign of anyone. Only the twitters of songbirds and the plash of his paddle for conversation. Only a pair of loons and a muskrat in the muddy bank for company.

And the storm clouds. Still distant, they drifted closer, adding another threat.

Earlier, the group had listened without interruption as Annie, and then Sam, described the discovery of the Hunter’s grave and their conclusion that Ray was the killer. They accepted the dire news with more equanimity than he’d expected.

Nora hooked an arm around her son, and for the first time Frank didn’t rebuff her public affection. Sam hated seeing him afraid, but they had to know. His cynical brain absorbing everything, Carl asked the most questions. When did they first suspect? Why didn’t Sam do something sooner? Was it Ray? Were all those little disasters his doing to frighten them? To slow them down? Her shoulders rigid with the load of blame, Annie answered every one as fully and as honestly as she could.

Once they understood there was no way to contact anyone, that they were on their own, Frank and Nora agreed to Sam’s plan. Carl grumbled about a refund, but accepted the plan.

After they cleaned up and dismantled the tents, Sam demonstrated techniques for paddling against a current. Not that different from paddling rapids, he told them. But it meant a long, slow trip with lots of rest breaks. Sam had left the four of them in one canoe and struck out ahead on his own.

The trip took him three hours. The upstream struggle added an extra hour of sweat and stomach knots. When he glided in to the dock just after noon, the dog Captain barked a deafening barrage. The fine hairs on Sam’s nape stood at attention.

The Boston Whaler was gone. Wolfe always took his mascot with him. The yellow Lab rode point in the outboard’s bow.

“No one here. Damn!” He climbed out and snubbed the canoe painter on a cleat.

Captain kept up his frenzied baying.

Ray’s duffel and sleeping bag no longer rested by the door. No surprise. But the bunged-up canoe lay on the riverbank like a beached whale and the piles of discarded equipment took up a side of the porch. Wolfe had planned to ferry that gear to the take-out point. Who had taken the outboard?

“Poor Captain,” he called to the frantic animal. “Left you behind, boy?”

Everything was quiet, deserted, except for the canine. With his Red Sox cap, Sam scooped water to douse the tingles of apprehension that skittered across his sweaty scalp. His belly ached like he’d done two hundred crunches.

The door would be open. Wolfe never locked up. Always said visitors were welcome anytime. Someone might need shelter whether he was home to greet them or not.

Captain clawed at the chain-link fence that framed his pen. As Sam approached, the animal’s intensity subsided, but he whined and yipped.

“It’s okay, Captain. Good dog.”

When he mounted the stairs, the canine sent skyward a mournful howl. Then he lay down, his only utterance a pitiful whining.

Grateful for the silence, he listened for any sound from inside or in the yard. Any human sound that would locate the dog’s master. Nothing. Mental fingers crossed, he reached for the door latch. To his relief, it opened with a touch. The door swung inward.

“Ted?” he called, just in case. When no reply came, he stepped inside.

The cloying metallic stench hit him before the impact of what he saw.

In front of the two-way radio, Ted Wolfe sprawled in a wide stain of dark blood.

White noise roared in Sam’s ears, and heat suffused his face.

No
.

His brain didn’t want to accept what he saw. He tried to call out. The words stuck in his throat, jammed there by a spasm of nausea. His heart pounded hard enough to blot out the dog’s renewed howls.

His feet wouldn’t move except with concentrated will. One step. Two. A tangle of radio wires draped the body. The blade of an axe was buried in the guts of the radio. Sam forced himself to peer more closely at his friend.

Oh, God, Ted. No!

He ran from the cabin and down the steps. He lost the meager contents of his stomach in the shrubbery.

***

Augusta

Justin replaced the telephone receiver. A visitor. He needed this interruption as much as another mutilated victim. He’d spent the morning tracking down the van. A Colby grad student with a photographic memory had noticed the white van. His memory was good for what he saw. He didn’t get all the digits on the license plate. The process of checking out all possibilities, even with other detectives’ help, moved slower than the Maine court system.

He stood, catching Rissa’s eye as she wove her way through reception to the conference room command post. As usual, the reception area was crammed with cops, visitors, witnesses, and suspects, mingling odors of ripe bodies, pungent cologne, and anxiety.

She acknowledged him with a cool nod.

Not his type, but an attractive woman, in an exotic way. No shapeless sundress this time, she wore a slim pants outfit in an eye-catching dark red. Her willowy form and haunted eyes lent her an air of feminine fragility and vulnerability. Two detectives turned from their coffee break to observe her with male appreciation.

Expression unreadable, she seemed unaware of them.

Little did they know that cool veneer hid focus of a border collie and the ferocity of a mother grizzly.

“What brings you to MCU headquarters?” He pulled the extra chair over for her. “Day off?”

She smiled, the first one he could recall seeing. It softened her mouth but not her eyes. “Yes, my day off. But not yours. I hear you’ve been a busy boy.”

Ah, the campus gossip network. He should have known Mama Bear would show up to needle him. To encourage him, she would call it. “The van may be a good lead. I’m working on it.” He couldn’t, wouldn’t tell her much.

“Caitlin said you talked to Sajid. He knew the license number?” Her gaze browsed the computer screen and the files.

As big a pain in the ass as she was, he felt sorry for her, desperate for results. Hell, he was desperate himself. “Remarkable kid. He knew most of the license number. Apparently the van’s owner was clever enough to smear mud on his plate.”

She slumped, gripped her hands together in her lap. “So you don’t know who it is?”

“Without the complete number, we have to do a DMV computer search of all the possibilities and then get on the horn. Takes time.”

He leaned forward, placed one hand on hers. She felt cool but about as relaxed as a bomb-squad cop’s. She was a bundle of sparking nerve endings. “Rissa, we want to stop this slimeball as much as you want us to. I haven’t lost a daughter, but it’s personal for me too.”

“I know you care. Believe me.” Her gaze wavered. “It’s... I have to know. I can’t just sit around and wait.”

He tugged loose the knot of his Daffy Duck tie, scraped knuckles across his jaw. “By coming here, you have me doing just that.”

Her spine stiffened and her dark eyes spit sparks at him. Normally he liked intensity in a woman. But her inner fire seemed a volcano about to erupt and annihilate anyone and anything in proximity. Too extreme for his taste. “Exactly what do you mean?”

He shrugged. “We’re sitting here jawing when I could be tracing some of these DMV licenses the computer spit out. You’ve gotten what you came for. You know where I am in this mess.” He gestured at the printouts in front of him. She didn’t need to know that most of the pile was Peters’ report on businesses.

She shot to her feet, quivering with indignation. “Far be it from me to waste your time, Detective Wylde.” She stalked to the door, her heels typewriting epithets across the hard floor.

“Rissa.” His voice halted her, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ll call once I know something. Trust me.”

She gave a cynical huff. “I’ll be back.”

When she’d left, Justin leaned back in his swivel chair, gazed out at the scenic view of the parking lot. Now that they seemed to inch closer to the killer, Rissa dogged Justin’s steps even more than before. When did the woman work? If she wasn’t careful, she’d jeopardize her nursing-home job.

He understood her obsession, sympathized, but she might be diving off a cliff. She probably wouldn’t listen to a suggestion of counseling.