Queen (20 page)

"Hell!" he muttered, wishing he'd seen it on his first round of searching and not wasted precious time.

He ran outside, stopped at the deck rail and then found what he'd been looking for. A trace of Queen.

There across the space leading into the woods were tracks. And because of the snowfall, they were disappearing swiftly. He was off the deck in seconds and dropped to his knees in the snow, touching the place where Queen had fallen, grabbing a fistful of snow where her knee had dragged, and squeezing it in silent anger until it turned to water and ran through his fingers.

It was obvious by the shape and length between strides that the man who'd taken her was tall and that most of the time Queen was being dragged rather than walking.

Fury overwhelmed him as he accepted the ramifications of what had happened and what could still happen to her. The rage that came with the acceptance was unmistakably that of a man whose boundaries had been crossed and whose mate had been taken.

Cody stared once more at the snow and the tracks and made his decision. He bolted back into the house, into his bedroom once again, praying that what he needed had not been taken or destroyed along with everything else.

It was there! Just as he'd hoped. The cordless phone was still behind the bedside table where he'd knocked it off that morning as he'd reached to shut off the alarm.

The base was still in one piece on the shelf below, somehow missed in the moment of destruction. If only the handset hadn't been off the base too long and lost its power, he might be in luck.

He was.

Swiftly he punched in a number. As he counted the rings, he dug through his closet, grabbing at a duffel bag on the top shelf and then tossing it onto the bed at the same moment that Abel Miller's dispatcher answered the phone. Cody opened the bag and thrust his hand inside until it closed around the semiautomatic pistol and the loaded clip.

"This is Cody Bonner. Tell Sheriff Miller that the man he's looking for, the one who murdered Patrick Mooney, was at my house. Tell him that Queen is missing and the house is a wreck. Tell him to get the hell up here with his search team fast."

The dispatcher's voice seemed disjointed, and several times their connection went bad. But Cody could hear enough to know that while the dispatcher had gotten his message, he was now trying to tell Cody to wait for the sheriffs arrival.

"No time," Cody shouted. "Snow is covering their tracks. If I wait, I'll lose them. Tell Abel to head up the mountain directly behind my house. I'll be ahead of him… and hopefully right behind them." He inhaled sharply and closed his eyes for a moment against the hell of what he'd witnessed and what was yet to come. "Please. Tell him to hurry."

With that he disconnected and the dispatcher was left with no alternative but to relay the message and hope that help arrived in time. If not, there might be more than two victims before the night was over. If Virgil Stratton didn't get them, the snowstorm would.

Tears burned Queen's eyes—not from pain, but from the bitter snow stinging and swirling constantly in her face.

She'd long ago lost her bearings in the thick forest of trees. She'd become adept at dodging low-hanging limbs, heavy with the weight of the snowfall, only to find herself walking into smaller bushes whose slender, bare limbs slapped sharply across her face instead.

Her lips were cold and dry, and she licked them gingerly, aware that it would only increase the chaffed condition yet unable to stop herself. A silent moan was all she could manage as the salty taste of blood came away on her tongue.

Twice since they'd left the house Virgil had slammed her against a tree trunk with a short, vicious order not to move, and during that time she'd watched him take out a compass and a small, hand-drawn map.

While he was otherwise occupied, she tried to assess her own surroundings, but she could see nothing beyond ten or twelve feet away. The snow swirled thickly beneath the cover of trees, lifted in tiny vents and updrafts by the wind on the mountain. She struggled with hysteria, knowing that even if she eluded him, she'd probably perish in the storm. She had no earthly idea of where she was, only that she was lost… and a very long way from Cody, and from Cradle Creek.

Watching Virgil's careful calculations, she suddenly realized he had a destination in mind and wasn't just wandering aimlessly through the woods in an effort to get away from authorities. That knowledge, coupled with his braggadocio comments and threats, increased her panic. If he reached cover with the dried and canned food that they had, it would be weeks before he would have to surface for more. Knowing that made her even more desperate to escape.

"Come on, bitch, move!" Virgil yelled above the sound of the wind, and grabbed at her coat sleeve.

Queen balked, and in that instant Virgil staggered from the unexpected jolt of her immobile body and fell backward against an overloaded limb. Snow shifted, instantly blinding him by the miniavalanche that fell across his face.

Queen bolted. It was now or never, and dying in the snow was preferable to dying at this man's hands. Her long legs sank deep, struggling as she ran to get out of sight before his vision had time to clear.

The bullet slammed into the tree beside her head. She stopped in midstride, sinking to her knees in weary defeat as he fired one more round to emphasize his point before he started forward.

"Oh, God," she moaned, and covered her face. She hadn't made it, and he'd already warned her what he'd do if she tried such a stunt.

The thought of a bullet to the head was suddenly an attractive alternative to what was about to occur, and Queen tried to crawl forward, hoping that he would simply shoot and get it over with. It didn't happen.

Anger burned in Virgil's brain. Sanity disappeared behind the need to control and dominate. He shifted the rifle to his other hand and reached down, yanking Queen from the snow only to slam her down onto her back. He kicked viciously, and when she dodged and returned the action, it only made him laugh. He liked the fight. He liked the pain. It was what made him hard. It was what made him come.

"I think it's time," he said. Anger warred with the need to make her pay. It made him careless. He dropped the rifle behind him into the snow and started fumbling at the front of his pants. Just thinking about sinking himself into her hot, wet depths blinded him to all but the deed at hand.

Queen saw his hands moving across his crotch and kicked again, only this time she connected with flesh and bone. Virgil's knee buckled, and he roared wildly with anger and pain as he struggled to stand. Furious with the fact that she'd drawn first blood, he grabbed the handgun from his jacket and aimed at her head.

Flat on her back, Queen stared up through the swirling snow into the barrel of the weapon. This wasn't the way she'd planned to die. She closed her eyes and prayed he was a good shot.

Cody's lungs burned from inhaling the cold. His eyes watered constantly, forcing him to swipe at them continuously with his bare hands, trying to keep his vision clear and his focus on the swiftly disappearing tracks before him. He ran until he could no longer feel his legs, and then he switched into the same mode of semi-consciousness that he'd used when he'd walked out of the desert on a broken bone. If one didn't think of pain, it would become nonexistent.

Snow quickly covered the black cap of his hair and then just as quickly melted from his escaping body heat, running down across his face and into the neck of his coat and shirt.

Every few minutes he would stop and listen intently, his eyes trained on the landscape and the thick trees, ever searching for additional clues that would tell him where they had gone. The wind moved across the floor of the forest, constantly shifting and changing the surface of the cold, blowing snow. He cursed, refocused on the obliterating tracks, and started forward, again on the lookout for something to give him hope.

The shot came without warning. It was loud, and it echoed over and over beneath the heavy cover of trees until Cody was so disoriented, he couldn't tell its original location. And then the second shot followed, and for a moment he lost all hope.

"Oh, God," he muttered, tried not to think of the implications, and started running as a fresh spurt of adrenaline shot through his system.

The tracks were gone. All he was doing was running on instinct, moving through the snow with nothing but guts and determination to guide him.

And then he heard her scream and took fresh heart. At least she was still alive. He couldn't consider the conditions. He could only hope that when he found her, she'd still want to live. He'd seen what the madman had done to his house. Queen had obviously put up a terrible fight before being overcome. He didn't want to think of the repercussions she might have suffered because of it.

He burst into the clearing on a run and then staggered as he came to an abrupt halt between two towering pines, staring at the scene before him.

The man was huge and seemed even more so because of the hooded parka and the layers of clothing he wore. He loomed over Queen, who was lying stretched out on the snow. Cody groaned, calculating the distance between them to be just under fifty yards. Using a handgun in this low visibility was going to play hell with his odds of helping her in time to prevent further injury.

And then he saw her in the snow, silent, unmoving, and he started forward, afraid that he'd found her too late. He kept telling himself that surely God wouldn't… couldn't… let him get this close only to find that he hadn't been able to stop the inevitable.

He realized that they were unaware of his presence. He saw the man kick at Queen and then drop a rifle into the snow as he began fumbling at the front of his pants.

A rage exploded, blinding Cody to all but the sight of a man in the act of violation. He shoved his hand into his pocket, pulled out his semiautomatic pistol, and aimed as he began to run.

He fired two shots in rapid succession and stopped the progress of everything, changing the texture of the world around them. Now something more than fear had been added to the drama. Death had come calling and was waiting to see whom it would claim as bullets ripped through the air between the two men.

Cody drew a deep, shaky breath and stopped just inside the clearing, only yards from the man, who had bucked from the bullet's sudden impact. He had been hit. Expecting to see the man stagger and fall, Cody was shocked to find that it only seemed to enrage him further. The man roared, and then picked up his rifle and shook it above his head in a taunting gesture as he began to run toward Cody, who stood his ground and continued to fire.

Virgil had forgotten he still held the rifle. He'd didn't know there was a shot in the chamber he'd forgotten to fire. All he could think of was getting to the man and removing that look on his face. He put one foot in front of the other and kept slogging through the snow, unaware of the snowflakes that were beginning to coat his face and beard, giving him the appearance of a yeti, a mythological half man, half beast, dressed in human clothing.

The second shot hit Virgil high on the shoulder. He screamed in pain as he heard the bones break. The rifle fell from his useless fingers, and still he ran. The third shot hit him in the leg.

He paused and staggered, and for a moment Cody thought he'd finally stopped the brute. But it was not to be.

Virgil threw back his head and shouted an obscenity that was lost in the howl of snow and wind. The hood of his parka fell off his head, and for the first time since the ordeal had started, Cody stared into the face of the devil.

Even from this distance he could see the spider tattoo and the black and broken teeth, bared in a growl of rage. He shuddered, wondering how Queen had fared at this man's hands.

It was that thought that made what came next possible.

As a soldier, Cody had fought many battles during Operation Desert Storm, but never on the ground, always from a distance, in the air. He'd never seen his enemy's face… until now.

Virgil inhaled, relishing the cold influx of air into his lungs, and ignored the pain. Moving on nothing but adrenaline and rage, he once again started toward the man with the gun.

"Sonofabitch."

There was nothing else Cody could say to express his shock at the fact that the man had resumed motion. By all rights he should be dead on his feet. Cody looked down at his gun and then up at the man only a few feet away and knew that this shot had to find its mark. It was his last. He aimed and curled his finger around the trigger as it jerked beneath his grip.

Cody squeezed but didn't consciously hear the shot.

Yet he realized the finality of its impact as shards of pink and red stained the snow behind Queen's abductor.

The hole was neat and round and just above his nose. Virgil Stratton stared, but he didn't see. His last conscious thought had been one of rage, and the last thing he'd seen had been the hole in the barrel of the gun. His huge body wavered and then fell backward with a resounding thud, sending up a white cloud of snow upon impact.

"My God," Cody muttered, resisting the urge to collapse as Virgil had. His legs were shaking so hard, he didn't think he could remain standing. And then he looked past the man's body to the woman in the snow and knew that he had farther yet to go.

Queen's body ached, and her head throbbed. And she was cold… so cold. She reached out, thinking she was home in bed, and struggled to find the covers that must have fallen at her feet. And then she heard his voice, felt his touch, remembered wanting to die, and was suddenly glad she hadn't.

Cody had found her!

She opened her eyes and stared up into a world of cold and snow and then focused on a blue so intense that it made her burn.

"Cody?"

"Thank you, God," he muttered, and lifted her from the snow and into his arms. He closed his eyes against a wall of threatening tears and began pressing tiny, reverent kisses across her face.

With her arms wrapped around his neck in a desperate need to feel life, Queen cried as Cody praised her courage and promised her things she would never hold him to, and she knew that she was loved.