Primal Obsession (15 page)

Later, as Annie scraped the last of hers from her aluminum camp dish, she mused that her brothers would laugh to see her relishing pan-fried bass and naked baked potato as if they were Wolfgang Puck’s specialty. Or was it comfort food, needed after her encounter with Sam?

Sam. She forced herself not to glance his way. Her skin tingled and her blood heated at the memory of their embrace. All he had to do was touch her, and she was wild for him. For the soft brush of his mustache, for the touch of his lips. For the rasping caress of his big hands. For his hot, hard male body against her. For his arousal pressing against her belly. For more—

You’ll be my sole focus... What I want from you will take hours.

His words triggered a pulse low in her body, making her squirm on the hard picnic bench. How she’d managed to stop, she didn’t know. But it had been the right thing to do.

An injury didn’t make Sam washed-up or a loser, though he thought that of himself. His bitch of a wife walking out on him had cemented that self-image. Annie didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but if cruel bluntness was what it took to put distance between them, so be it.

No more jocks. Sam might not appear to be the selfish egotist Ian was, but she was taking no chances. Sam had his own problems to work though, problems she didn’t need. One truth he’d have to admit—he was hiding out in the woods.

When this trip ended, she’d return to Portland, and he’d lead another trip into the wilderness. No way to pursue a relationship. She’d meant her words. Sex wasn’t recreation.

After the supper clean-up, Sam handed a map to Nora, the next day’s navigator. “Tomorrow, team, the next phase of your bushwhack training.”

“Sweet,” Frank said, stowing his plate in a plastic bag. “Uh, what do you mean?”

“It means you’re going without your intrepid guide.” Sam waited, letting that sink in.

“Hey, no, man. That sucks.”

Annie couldn’t help but smile. Most of the time, Frank’s moods took the day off, but occasionally those adolescent hormones and sensitivities kicked in.

“Frankie,” his mother admonished.

“Nora, it’s all right.” Sam grinned at the scowling teenager. “You’ve all learned enough compass and woods skills that you can do this hike on your own. Practice is over. Time to get in the game.”

“Time to snip the apron strings, you mean,” Annie said, grinning at Sam’s incessant baseball analogies.

He winked, apparently not deterred by her earlier rebuff. “Once you locate Otter Peak Trail, you’re all set.”

Nora unfolded the map and spread it out on the table. “You really think we can do this?”

“Piece of my mama’s coconut cake,” Carl answered. He gave Sam a pointed look. “In fact, I could lead this expedition the rest of the way all by myself.”

Frank shrugged. “Me too. A puny little hike? No sweat.” Still dubious, he folded his arms. “What are
you
gonna do all day, sleep?”

“Could be.” Sam propped one foot on the bench and leaned an elbow casually on his knee. “Or I might just be watching my team to see how you do.”

“Or catching more bass for our dinner?” Annie prompted.

“Sounds like a plan.” Sam grinned, his amber eyes holding no hint of his intent. “One more caution. Ted Wolfe mentioned some other campers had trouble with bears.”

“Bears?” Nora’s hand flew to her throat.

“You’ll be safe as long as you stay together. No lagging behind or scouting ahead.”

“I can promise not to sprint past everyone,” Annie said. No way in hell she would go solo or let Carl out of her sight. Sam hadn’t completely convinced her of Carl’s innocence.

“Those fucking campers probably mistook a raccoon or a moose for a bear,” the builder said with a derisive snort.

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Bears aren’t usually a problem until fall, but the lack of rain has decreased their food supply—berries and such—so a loner could be on the move. Anyway, one group. Nobody go off alone or in pairs even for a pit stop. Guard each other.”

Was the bushwhack test another way of pulling back from her? No, he wouldn’t send them out unless he knew they could handle the challenge. Pettiness wasn’t in Sam’s repertoire. Was releasing the campers on their own Moosewoods’ standard procedure? Was he staying behind to protect the camp from bears? Or from the Hunter? Did he believe her after all?

All questions she had no answers for.

He lounged with his back to her, legs crossed and arms folded, against the table. In the firelight, his hair gleamed like amber. Everything about him projected male power, from the set of his square jaw to his broad shoulders and muscular legs.

To the rest, he also projected confidence, but anxieties wound him as taut as a tightrope walker’s high wire.

For tomorrow’s bushwhackers, safety was in numbers, but Sam would remain behind alone. Unprotected. Her stomach clenched and her pulse raced.

What if the Hunter went after Sam? Did the Hunter somehow injure Ray? Was he eliminating them one by one to get to her? Or was she obsessing, as Sam said?

EIGHTEEN

Night. When the Hunter did his best work.

He held the night scope to his right eye and peered at the cozy group seated around the campfire. Damned slick instrument. He’d had to leave his equipment in his apartment, including one of these, but this new one made up for the loss.

She was laughing. They were all laughing.

Oblivious still. Or pretending?

Damn. He caught only snatches of conversation when the wind was right, but he could tell the bitch suspected, was beginning to figure it out. He could see it in her face.

Her fear was building, churning, eating inside her. Breathing in the scent of her fear raised his exhilaration to fever pitch.

But he had to wait.

She had more guts than he’d expected. In the woods, alone and naked, she’d give him a challenge.

Clever. Creative. Bold.

At last, he’d have the excitement he craved. The excitement of the hunt. Before he doled out the punishment the bitch fucking deserved for betraying him. For deserting him.

Just like
her
.

Remember. Remember the hatred, the cramped darkness, the mustiness, the coal dust that suffocated him. He wheezed, coughed into his sleeve as he had then.

Quiet. He had to be quiet.

Sweat dripped into his eyes, blurred his vision. He gasped for breath. He squeezed his thighs together. He would save himself for her.

Calm.

He had to calm himself. Focus on his goal. Focus on his revenge. Focus on the rush, the ecstasy of power to come.

As soon as his breathing returned to normal, he picked up the scope again. She couldn’t see him here in the dark, but did she sense his presence? She must.

He wanted her to know. To know he was there. To know why she should fear. Whom she should fear.

And the Hunter wanted her to fear.

Yes, his strategies were frightening the bitch. Of course. She above all, knew how clever he was. But the loser jock kept distracting her. The Hunter hadn’t counted on that complication. Yet another way she betrayed him.

No matter.

He would prevail. They didn’t know it yet, but he’d isolated them. Incommunicado, that’s what they were.

He had the advantage. Weapons. Provisions. Stealth.

And patience.

Still...time was running out. He had to make his move before they traveled much farther south. He didn’t want to stray too far from the Canadian border and his new life.

Tonight. He had a plan.

NINETEEN

Early Saturday

Something woke Annie. She jerked up on her elbows. A scrabbling noise. A squirrel, a raccoon foraging in the night. The forest rustled constantly. She no longer cringed in fright at every scratch and peep.

She’d barely fallen asleep, dammit. Fatigue dragged at her, but so did her bladder. She shouldn’t have drunk that cranberry juice before bed. She stretched out on her back and waited for the need to subside.

No luck.

If she forced herself to visit the lounge, she could snuggle back into her sleeping bag for several more hours.

She heard the scratching outside again. A squirrel digging up a cache of nuts. A raccoon foraging. Or a bear.

Not the Hunter
.

Sam was right about one thing. Okay, two. The Hunter had become a self-destructive obsession. She was no profiler, no detective. Her notes held no clue to the Hunter’s psyche or his identity, only the gruesome details of tragedy.

She was making herself even crazier imagining the Hunter to be here. Her fears about tomorrow’s bushwhack were irrational. Especially her worry about Sam staying behind. She let her feelings for him—as jumbled as numbers in a lottery barrel—get all mixed up with her obsession.

Some of their disasters had to be accidental, like the hornets. Maybe Frank did erase her compass numbers. But the chipmunk? She wouldn’t put it past Carl to pull that one for a sick laugh. The snare was probably left by a previous camper.

But none of it could be the Hunter. Didn’t Sam prove he couldn’t have followed?

Not the Hunter. Not the Hunter. Not the Hunter.

There, that ought to seal it in her brain.

Going back to the story after the expedition ended would be her new goal. She could fulfill her promise to Emma to enjoy the wilderness. That was all. After the expedition, returning to the story would fulfill her other promise to Emma and Rissa—to keep the public aware and pressure the cops. Never mind that one of the cops was her brother.

She wriggled out of her sleeping bag. She felt for her flashlight, propped against her container of Crabtree & Evelyn carnation-scented bath talc. Since the first bushwhack, she’d given up mascara and lipstick, but she wouldn’t forgo her soothing powder. After jabbing her feet into sneakers, she stumbled out into the darkness.

She hated this. Picking her way to the latrine in the night gave her the willies. Clouds covered the moon, rendering the night black as the Hunter’s heart. Oh, perfect, now she was scaring herself.

Her gaze searched the clearing and the stand of birches beyond. No one. Nothing moving. Clad only in her long tee and leggings, she shivered in the night air.

The rustlings were only animals. Small animals. Chirps and cracklings came to her with the odor of fresh earth. She swatted at a mosquito homing in on her ear.

Circling the flashlight gave her bearings. She could barely make out the other tents ranked in a semicircle around the camp area—hers, Frank and Nora’s, Carl’s, and Sam’s. All quiet.

Somewhere in the distance, a series of high-pitched cries attested to a coyote pack’s successful hunt. She shuddered at the images the yips and howls evoked. Sam had assured the campers no self-respecting coyote would dare enter their camp, but the eerie sounds spooked her.

Since she’d dug the six-inch-deep sucker herself, she knew well the location of the latrine. She set off with a determined stride past Frank and Nora’s tent, then turned left onto the woods path. When she finished, feeling bolder, she returned a more direct route, through the trees in a beeline to her warm bed.

The darkness seemed palpable, a living thing that swallowed up the puny flashlight beam. Shadows shifted with every arc of its illumination. When her beam swept an evergreen branch, something scrambled away in a flurry of trembling needles.
Don’t panic. Keep your eyes ahead.
Her tent was beyond the slender birches.

She lost her balance, crashed onto her knees. The flashlight flew from her hand. She landed flat, breath exploding from her.

It took a moment for her lungs to function. She pushed up on her elbows, spit out a mouthful of dirt. Her knees and hands stung. Too dark to see the scrapes. Maybe that was a good thing. The tumble shook every bone in her body. When she tested her limbs, they functioned.

Bloodied, but not broken.
Damn you, Mother Nature. You got me again.

She twisted around to sit up. All was quiet. No chirps or rustlings disturbed the silent gloom. The flashlight lay at an angle, its beam spotlighting the moonless sky. When she reached for the flashlight, she saw she’d fallen in a hole.

What in the blue-eyed world could this be? It wasn’t here yesterday, she was certain. The forest floor had been a litter of leaves, twigs, and stones, not soft dirt.

The beam showed a shallow trench, as long as a—

Nooooo!
Her heart lurched into high gear.

The beam glinted on something at the far end of the ditch. When she saw the reflection’s source, she bicycled in frantic retreat. A scream rose from her belly, but caught in her constricted throat.

***

Sam had to be dreaming. Annie’s voice drifted to him through the cottony cloud of sleep. She’d come to him after all.
No
and
never
hadn’t lasted long. No figuring women’s minds. A jolt of anticipation shot to his groin, and his sleeping bag heated up unbearably.

“Sam! Let me in, for God’s sake!”

She sounded desperate. Yeah, oh yeah. He shook his head, trying to clear his sleep-drugged brain.

When he managed to unzip the flap, she collapsed panting inside the tent.

He gathered her into his arms. “Sweetheart, I’d about given up on you.” He chafed the gooseflesh on her slender arms.

“Sam... out there,” she whispered breathlessly. “
He’s here. I... he...
” Her voice gave out on a sob.

Instead of her usual sweet-tart fragrance, she smelled of forest loam and fear. Her strangled tone and shaky limbs finally penetrated his murky brain. She hadn’t come for sex, but for safety. His erection could hold up a damn tent. Bad timing. He willed it to subside and flicked on his battery-powered lantern.

The lantern’s glow showed tears streaking muddy trails down her delicate cheekbones. Black dirt plastered her chin and oversized t-shirt. The shredded knees of her dark tights displayed bloodied skin daubed with more grime.

“What is it? You look like you’ve slid into second a few too many times.”

Giggling nervously, she leaned against him. “Oh, Sam, only you could make me laugh at a time like this.”

“Let’s get you cleaned up. I want a look at those cuts while you tell me what happened.” He poured water from his canteen onto a washcloth.

She pushed away his arm when he dabbed at her face, ashen beneath the filth. “No, you have to listen. It’s just a few scrapes. They can wait.”

At the fear in her eyes, he backed off. “Tell me.”

“I was coming back from the latrine, and I fell in a hole.” She inhaled deeply. Her eyes were wide as an owl’s. “Dear God. A shallow grave, just like the ones he—
the Hunter
—buried the murdered women in.”

Damn. Their saboteur. Or worse? How could it be possible? He rubbed her shoulders. “A grave? Are you sure? Maybe an animal dug a burrow.”

Anger snapped her chin up. “I know a grave when I see one. Dammit, I should have known you wouldn’t understand.” She narrowed her eyes, looking more tempting than ever. “You want it to be nothing. Well, so do I. But it’s not. Not any ordinary prank. Whether it’s Carl or he followed us, it’s the Hunter.”

Sam’s scars itched, an omen he couldn’t ignore. “How can you be so sure?”

Her chin wobbled. “Be-because there are a few... facts the cops wouldn’t let the media release. On each woman’s grave, he left a marker. Sometimes a stick, sometimes a strip of birch bark, but always with a single word scratched on it—
PREY
.”

The fine hairs on the back of Sam’s neck rose. “This... hole has one?” Maybe it was a trick of the flashlight and shadows.
Keep that thought.

She shivered. “You have to see it.”

Had to be either a prank or an animal’s doing. If he checked it out, he could prove it to her. To himself. He jammed on a sweatshirt and pants. “I’ll be right back. Where did you say this damn thing is?”

“Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not staying here alone.” She scooted toward the tent opening.

He tossed her a sweatshirt. A few moments later, they trekked through the silent camp. His lantern and her puny flashlight lighted their way, but caused the shadows to weave and leap like inky spirits.

Shit, he was letting her fright spook him.

She wasn’t a small woman, but the Fenway Park sweatshirt drooped to her knees, though she rolled up the sleeves three times. In his shirt, she looked small and vulnerable and all too sexy. But more comforting had to wait until she saw that her “grave” was some animal’s digging.

When they reached her tent, she pointed. “It’s about a dozen feet behind the cleared tent space. I heard scratching when I woke up, but I thought it was an animal. Mother Nature and I have been feuding for years, but this wasn’t her.”

“A porky can be quite a digger.” Sam held out the lantern, expecting to see a burrow or the indent where a porcupine in search of grubs had overturned a rotting log. Maybe a strip of bark that looked like a message to Annie.

She stood beside him, her fists pressed to her mouth.

What the steady glow showed him was an even, six-foot-long trench that no animal had scraped out. A human had dug it with a shovel.

A grave. A freaking grave. No other word for it. A ball of tension twisted in his gut. “Damn.”

“Look at the far end,” Annie whispered.

What he saw knotted the tension tight as a noose. His knife. His missing Buck knife, four of the six inches of its razor-sharp blade plunged into the humus. At the hilt, it pierced a strip of bark, like a small roll of parchment, with that one ominous word scrawled on it.

PREY

He slumped for a beat before heat rolled through him in a tidal wave. He clenched his fists at his sides. “The bastard! What the hell’s he trying to do?”

Annie’s ashen features and terror-stricken eyes told him that he didn’t need an answer to that question. She answered him anyway. “If he’s trying to frighten me, he’s doing one hell of a terrific job.” Her chin trembled before she firmed it. “But I doubt fear is all the Hunter has in mind.”

Sam pulled her close. “I hate it but I have to admit you were right. This Hunter has followed you somehow. He’s harassed us all and maybe injured Ray. But this time, sweetheart, he made a mistake. He announced himself. It’s time to end this.”

“What are you going to do?” Her voice was muffled in his windbreaker, and her warm breath on his chest reassured him.

“Get help. But first, let’s check on the others.” He released her. After retrieving his knife, he kicked the pile of excavated dirt and leaves into the pit to cover its obscene presence. Cops wouldn’t approve, but he’d bet the Hunter left no fingerprints on the knife anyway.

They paused outside the other tents. A gentle snoring emitted from the first tent. As they passed Carl’s, Sam detected the sound of the man turning over on his inflated pad. He nodded to Annie, who stuck to him like bark on a sugar maple.

A few moments later, back in his tent, he handed her the flask of brandy he kept for emergencies. “A belt will take the edge off,” he told her as he searched through his duffel.

She nodded, but winced at the strong liqueur.

“Now let me see your cuts.” He forced himself to restrict his hands to cleansing. Not exactly the way he’d anticipated getting his hands on her.

Antibiotic cream soothed the scrapes. She had a few more calluses after their days of canoeing. Her nails were short and unpolished. Gone was her city war paint. As promised, a Wylde didn’t wimp out. She’d bitched and moaned on the first bushwhack, but he’d heard no word of protest since. The woman had more grit than he’d imagined.

When he was finished, she smiled her thanks, but remained pale and shaky. She must be in shock, realizing the Hunter meant to kill her. Not if he could help it.

“What are you looking for?” Annie whispered.

“The radio.” He rummaged in his shaving kit. Where the hell was it? “I keep it in my duffel bag, but it’s not there.”

“You’ve had a radio all this time? A working radio? I could’ve checked in with my brother about the Hunter, and you
didn’t tell me
?” The pitch of her voice rose with every irate word. Nothing like irritation to overshadow fear.

“Ease up, princess. It’s not much of a unit. I doubt you could raise the cops on it. But I can call my brother.”

Still huffing her indignation, she aimed her flashlight at the back corner of the tent. “What’s that?”