Blood on Copperhead Trail (7 page)

“I know Dee.” Relief trembled in Laney’s voice. “But I’d still like to get back to Jannie as soon as we can. Just to reassure myself.”

He pushed to his feet, testing his muscles. A little achy in places from the long trek up the mountain the day before, not to mention the tumble off the trail. But nothing that should keep him from getting back down the mountain, as long as the weather allowed. “Snow melting yet?”

“Not yet. It’s early. But the weather forecasters all agreed that even up here on the mountain, the temperatures should be above freezing by midmorning.”

He looked through the grimy window next to the woodstove. Snow glistened diamond bright in the morning sunlight. “Sun will help, too.”

She dug in her backpack and pulled out a protein bar. Breaking it in half, she handed a piece to him. “So you up for trying to get back down the mountain?”

“If you think it’s safe enough now.”

“The visibility should be tons better. You won’t be as likely to wander off the trail.” She shot him a look of amusement.

“I didn’t wander off. I slid off. Big difference.”

She just chewed her piece of protein bar and stifled another grin.

She was right about the visibility, Doyle had to admit an hour later, when they started back through the woods to the trail. The neon-orange trail markers Laney had left along the way glowed like beacons, returning them easily to the place where they’d left the beaten path behind. She stuffed the retrieved markers back in her pack, trading them for a pair of binoculars, which she lifted to her eyes.

“Gotta get me one of those packs,” Doyle murmured, hoping for—and receiving—a grin in response.

“I’ll give you a packing list for next time.” She hooked the binocular straps around her neck, swung the pack onto her back and started moving along the snowy trail at a confident clip. He hurried to catch up.

About a quarter mile along the trail, she stopped, gazing down at the snow path ahead of them. “Look.”

He followed the wave of her hand and saw nothing but snow. “What am I looking at?”

She crouched, bringing her eyes more level with the trail. “Someone’s been through here.”

He crouched beside her. “I don’t see any prints.”

“It was sometime during the snowfall,” she said. “But after we came through here.”

“How do you know that?”

“The trail is wide here, and we instinctively keep to the right side. Just like we are now.” She waved her hand at where they stood, which was definitely on the right side of the trail path.

“Because we’re raised to drive and walk on the right,” he said.

“And to leave the left side open for others who might pass.” She pointed to the two dips in the snow. The one on the left was shallow, the one on the right definitely deeper. “Someone came through here sometime last night. This path wasn’t here when we came through, and it’s a little deeper on the right here than the trail on the left we made on the climb up.”

She was right. He’d have never noticed the subtle signs, or been able to read what they meant.

“It could have been one of the other search parties, couldn’t it?”

“Maybe, but nobody else was supposed to be looking in this area. And I don’t see signs that anyone came up here behind us.”

He looked doubtfully at the snowy expanse ahead. “Not sure how you can tell that.”

“The track would be deeper, like this one on the right. But it’s not. It’s only about three inches deep. Three inches is about how much snow there was on the ground when we came through, so these are our tracks. Whoever came through on the way back down tamped down more than three inches. About six inches fell in total, so whoever came through here came through when there was already five inches on the ground.”

“The snow was around five inches deep last night when we went out in search of whoever made that sound,” Doyle remembered.

“So maybe we were following in the wrong direction,” she said, standing.

“Maybe they were heading back down the trail instead of away from it?”

She nodded, starting forward again. She kept clear of the trail she’d discovered.

He followed her lead, trying not to jump to any conclusions. Even if there had been someone outside the cabin last night, and someone hiking back down the trail after five inches of snow had fallen, they couldn’t be sure that person was up to no good. It might have been another hiker, looking for shelter and shocked to find the cabin already inhabited.

Although why he wouldn’t have knocked on the door and asked for help—or why he’d have screamed bloody murder—

“There’s the second shelter.” Laney pointed down the trail and he spotted the trail shelter about fifty yards ahead. “That means we’re about eight miles from the staging area where we all gathered yesterday. If there are any search parties out looking for us, we should come across them soon.”

“Mind if we stop a second? I keep feeling something in my boot. Maybe I picked up a pebble or something in the cabin.” He’d been feeling it more sharply the longer they’d hiked, and he’d prefer not to keep going with whatever it was rubbing a blister on the bottom of his foot.

As he leaned against the wall of the shelter to take off his boot, Laney wandered over to the wooden pedestal that held the logbook box. “Maybe whoever was on the trail last night did us a favor and stopped to write something in the log,” she said, her tone facetious.

Doyle found the offending wood chip that had gotten in his boot and dumped it out onto the dirt floor of the shelter. Shoving the boot back on and tying the laces, he was about to ask Laney if she’d found anything when she let out a profanity. “Doyle, come here!”

He quickly tied the knot and hurried outside, where she stood staring at the log box, a scowl creasing her brow. Her blue eyes snapped up to meet his. What he saw there made his gut tighten.

“Look at this.” She punched her finger at the logbook.

He crossed to her side and looked over her shoulder. The logbook was open to a page that was blank except for a square photograph and a single line of block lettering. “You’re never really safe,” the message on the logbook read.

The photograph showed two people sleeping half slumped inside a cabin, their features illuminated by the glow of a woodstove. The image was a little blurry, as if taken through a grimy, time-warped glass window.

Doyle felt as if he’d taken a punch to the gut.

“He was out there. Watching us.” Laney sounded more furious than spooked.

Dragging his gaze from the photograph of the two of them in front of the stove, he darted a look around the woods surrounding them, wishing they were a whole lot closer to the bottom. “Laney, we need to get back down the mountain. Now.”

Her anger elided into alarm. “You think he’s still out here?”

The answer came with a sharp crack of gunfire and an explosive splinter of the wood wall just a few inches away from his head.

Chapter Seven

Doyle’s body crashed into Laney’s, slamming her to the ground before she had even processed the sound of the gunshot. Her heart cranked up to high gear, pounding like thunder in her ears, almost drowning out Doyle’s guttural question.

“Where can we hide?”

She tried to gather her rattled thoughts into some semblance of order. There weren’t a lot of places to hide on the trail, for obvious reasons. Nobody wanted to walk into an ambush, so the more open the trail, the better.

But there were places off the trail, and not just other structures like the cabin where they’d stayed the night before. None of them were that easy to get to, of course, but that might work in their favor.

She heard another crack of gunfire, felt the sting of wood splinters spraying against her cheek. Above her, Doyle let out a hiss of pain.

“Are you hit?” she asked.

The answer was a sharp concussion of gunfire, close enough to make her ears ring. Doyle was suddenly tugging her upward, his voice a muffled roar as he urged her to run.

She stumbled forward, forced to run in a crouch by Doyle’s arm pinned firmly around her, keeping her low. She sprinted as fast as she could from that uncomfortable position, trying not to jump every time she heard Doyle exchange fire with whoever was shooting at them.

They were at a severe disadvantage, she knew, because the gunfire she was hearing from their pursuer was definitely a rifle, not a handgun. Rifles were far more accurate across much longer distances, although based on the misses so far, whoever was wielding the weapon wasn’t exactly a crack shot.

Doyle pulled her out of the crouch and told her to run. “Zigzag!” he breathed, keeping his body between her and the shooter. “Don’t give him a good target.”

Gunfire continued behind them, at least four more shots, but they seemed to be coming from a greater distance now. Of course, with a scope, the rifleman could easily target them without having to leave his position, while they were already well beyond the distance at which Doyle’s pistol or hers could return fire with any accuracy.

She spotted Old Man Pickens ahead, the enormous slate outcropping that looked like a wrinkled old man frowning at the woods, and remembered exactly where they were. She looked behind her, reaching for Doyle’s hand, and almost stumbled over her own feet when she saw how much blood was flowing down the side of his face, staining the brown suede of his jacket.

He caught her as she faltered, pushing her ahead. She dragged her gaze forward again and darted around the side of the outcropping, trusting him to follow. From there, they would be out of the direct path of fire for as long as it took the gunman to shift positions and come after them.

The ground underfoot was only snow-free this far down the mountain, though the ground was soft in places from the rain. She dodged the muddy patches, trying to avoid creating any sort of trail, and edged her way closer to the rocky wall face that rose like a fortress to their right.

Somewhere along here, there was an opening, although it was hard to spot in the ridges and depressions in the rock facing. If she hadn’t already known it was there, she’d have never even thought to look for it—

There. It was almost invisible in the dappled sunlight peeking through the tree limbs overhead. She veered off the course, listening to Doyle’s heavier footfalls following closely behind her, even though he had to be wondering why they were running straight for the stone wall.

The cave entrance appeared almost like magic in front of them, as the angle of approach revealed it in the shadow of a depression in the rock. It still didn’t look like a cave, because the entrance to the deeper opening was off to the left, visible only once a person walked into the shallow depression.

Laney waited until they were several feet beyond the opening before she pulled her flashlight from her pack and clicked it on. The beam danced over the narrow walls of the cave, illuminating a small cavern about twenty feet long from the entrance to the farthest end. The walls themselves were only six feet apart, creating more of a tunnel with no outlet than a cave.

“No way out of here but back where we came?” Doyle asked, his breath a little ragged.

“No.”

“So we could be sitting ducks.”

“So could he,” she said firmly, turning the flashlight on him.

He squinted against the light. “Give a guy a little warning.”

“You’re hurt.” She reached for his head, trying to get a better look at where the blood was coming from.

“Shrapnel wound,” he told her firmly. “It’s not deep.”

“It’s a bloody mess.” She nudged him toward the wall, where the stone had formed a shallow ledge about the size of a park bench. Hikers who’d found the cave over the years, herself included, had helped the natural formation along, chipping away at the slate to fashion the bench into a fun place to sit and tell ghost stories.

He sat on the bench, his gaze dropping to the obvious tool marks. “Is this a well-known hiding place?”

“Not that well-known,” she assured him, hoping she was right. The cave had been largely untouched the first time she and some of her friends had discovered it when she’d been about fifteen. They’d been social outcasts of a particular sort, good students who fit in with neither the popular crowd nor the pot-smoking, moonshine-drinking misfits and were often targets of ridicule or abuse from both.

They’d made Dreaming Cave, as they’d called it, their own little haven. A secret clubhouse where they’d told scary stories and dreamed big dreams of life outside Ridge County and their insular little world.

She opened her backpack and found the first-aid kit stashed in a pocket near the top. Doyle sucked in a quick breath as she wiped his wound with an antiseptic cloth. She tried to be gentle, but if she didn’t clean the scrape thoroughly, infection could easily set in.

“Will I live?” he asked, flashing her a grimace of a grin.

She smiled back, her heartbeat finally settling down to a trot from a full-out gallop. “I think so. The wound’s long but not very deep. I just need to get this piece of wood.” She wiped down the tweezers from the first-aid kit with an alcohol pad and eased out the splinter still embedded in Doyle’s temple. It was about a half an inch in length and sharp as a needle. She showed the bloody bit of wood shrapnel to him, eliciting another grimace.

“That was in my head?”

She nodded. “Want to keep it as a souvenir?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks.”

She placed three adhesive bandage strips over the wound to protect it from further contamination and went about gathering up the remains of her first-aid supplies. The simple act of cleaning up after herself seemed so normal, it went a long way toward calming her shattered nerves.

She packed away the kit and sat on the rock bench next to Doyle, wincing at how cold the rock was. “Yikes.”

He slid closer to her, lending his body heat. “Kind of missing that woodstove about now.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?” He held out his hand in front of her. “Let me borrow the flashlight.”

She handed it over. “I don’t think I’m hurt.”

He ran the beam of the flashlight over her, from head to toe, even making her stand up and turn around so he could check her back. Finally, he seemed to be satisfied that she hadn’t sustained any injury and handed the flashlight back to her.

She settled next to him on the bench, consciously positioning herself so that their bodies were pressed closely together. She told herself it was for body heat, but when he slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her even closer, the tingle low in her belly suggested her desire to be close to him wasn’t entirely based on the need for warmth.

She ignored the ill-timed tug of her libido and concentrated on listening for any sign that the shooter was lurking outside.

“If the shooter is from around here, he may know about this cave,” she warned, keeping her voice to a near-whisper.

“Don’t suppose you and your fellow spelunkers left any cans or bottles in here, did you?” Doyle whispered back.

“Probably not,” she answered. She and the other Dreaming Cave denizens had been the opposite of delinquents. Someone always made sure they left the cave the way they found it, like the compulsive rule-keepers they’d been.

But that didn’t mean more recent cave visitors had been so conscientious. She took a chance and ran the beam of her flashlight across the cave’s interior. To her consternation, the light revealed a pile of beer and soda cans in one dark corner of the cavern. “Bloody litterbugs,” she whispered.

“Got any dental floss or thread in that pack?” Doyle pulled a compact multiblade knife from his pocket and flipped open a blade shaped like an awl.

“Matter of fact, I do.” She pulled out a dental-floss dispenser and handed it to him.

“I need about five of those cans,” he said, unspooling the dental floss. Laney fetched the cans and brought them back to the stone ledge, finally catching on to what he was up to.

“Just married,” she murmured, drawing his sharp gaze. “Cans on a string, like you put on the back of the groom’s car,” she explained, earning a grin.

“Exactly. We’ll string this across the entrance about ankle high and hide the cans out of sight.” Using his knife, he punched holes in the bottoms of the aluminum cans and strung them like beads on the dental floss. “Anyone trips the string, we’ll hear the cans clatter.”

“Brilliant.” She grinned at him.

He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around the string of cans. Handing the bundle to her, he edged quietly toward the cave entrance, listening. She slipped up behind him, putting her hand on his back to let him know she was there. His body jerked a little at her touch, the only sign that he might be as tightly strung as she was.

Edging through the cave entrance, he peeked around the stone wall that hid the cave from view. “Quick, while there’s nobody out there.”

He took the long end of the dental floss, while she gingerly placed the cans on the ground just inside the cave entrance. She edged the cans apart on the string to give them room to make a clatter and stepped back.

On the other side of the entryway, where the indentation ended not in a cave entrance but another wall of stone, Doyle found a small knob of rock jutting out about shin level. He looped the dental floss around the knob and tied a knot, adding a piece of surgical tape to help keep the knot from slipping off.

As he darted quickly back to where she stood, she felt along the rock wall for any sort of outcropping she could use to raise her end of the floss so that it stretched out adequately across the entryway. Her fingers collided with a small stone jutting out a little lower than the shin-level knob where Doyle had tied the other end of the floss. Not perfect, but it should do the job.

They stood back and looked at their makeshift intruder alarm.

“Think it’ll work?” she whispered.

“We better hope it does.” He picked up his jacket, caught her hand and tugged her back into the darkened cave.

They felt their way to the stone bench and sat, not risking the flashlight again. Without a fire or any way to warm themselves, it didn’t take long for the damp cold within the cave to penetrate their clothing.

“Are you as cold as I am?” he asked, his teeth chattering a little.

“Yes,” she whispered back.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders again, tugging her close. She opened her jacket so that the heat of their bodies could mingle a little better. He did the same. It wasn’t like sitting in front of the woodstove back in the cabin, but it was better than shivering alone.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed before Doyle spoke again. Apparently enough time that she’d managed to drift into a light doze, for his voice in her ear jerked her awake, eliciting a soft, laughing apology from him.

“Sorry. I was just asking if we’re still in the search quadrant we were assigned.”

“No, we’re south and east of our spot on the search map,” she answered.

“So they may not even think to look for us here?”

“I imagine they’ll search for us everywhere,” she answered. “I just hope whoever’s out there with that rifle doesn’t start taking potshots at them, too.”

“Your sister and Missy Adderly weren’t shot with a rifle,” he murmured.

“Doesn’t mean it’s a different killer.”

“I think it does,” he disagreed.

“What about the photo we found at the trail shelter?”

“It’s not exactly the same, is it?” he countered. “We found the photo of Janelle and the Adderly girls under Janelle, not in the trail log.”

“Maybe Janelle found the photo right before she was shot. The guy with the rifle started shooting at us not long after we found the photo.”

“True.”

“But serial killers do seem to be creatures of habit,” she conceded. “Would it be likely he’d change weapons that way if he didn’t have to?”

“When we get back to civilization, we’ll let forensics take a look at the photo.” He patted the pocket of his jacket. “They can probably tell us if it came from the same make of camera, or if the photo paper is the same.”

They fell silent again for a long time. Laney didn’t know what was occupying Doyle’s thoughts, but all she could think about was that string of cans in the entrance of the cave, and how long it would be before they’d hear them rattle.

He touched her lightly on the arm before he spoke again. “How do you know about this cave? Was this some sort of hillbilly make-out spot?” He softened the slight dig with a smile in his voice.

“Some people may have used it that way, I suppose.”

“But not you?”

She shook her head, her forehead brushing against his jaw. The rough bristle of his beard was pleasantly prickly against her skin. “No, my friends and I came here to plan our futures.”

His hand on her upper arm squeezed gently. “Plotting world domination?”

“Something like that.” She grinned at the thought. She and the other Dreamers, as they’d secretly called themselves, had been a motley crew, bonded not so much by their common interests as by their determination not to let the poverty and hopelessness of their surroundings stop them from believing they could make something out of their lives.