Wylde (5 page)

Noah was watching him closely and seemed to pick up and accept Kell’s resolve. He nodded. “I’ll have hot coffee and food waiting whenever you make it back,” he offered.

“Thanks.” Kell hesitated but then made himself leave Noah and the warm haven of his house behind him.
D
EPUTY
A
LEC
D
ANVERS
was on the patio, waiting for the Chief.

He was fingering a leather pouch he wore around his neck and looking at the woods speculatively. “Dawn’s in another hour; it will be safer to look for the boy then,” Alec observed.

“Safer?” Kell cocked a brow at his friend. Alec shook his head, obviously not wanting to share his thoughts.
Kell looked back over his shoulder, meeting Noah’s eyes through his kitchen window. “We go now,” he said.

W
YLDE
remembered when his grandfather had been alive, vaguely. He’d lived in the same house then as the boy and the man, except things had been new and in better shape. But then something had happened one night, his grandpa’s chest had hurt really bad, and he’d… Wylde had fled into the forest.

He’d lived there ever since, on scraps he found in tin cans outside people’s homes or dumpsters in town.

Twice he’d made friends with people, and they’d seemed nice, one giving him his name, Wylde, but then they’d tried to capture him, hurt him.

M
ORLEY
O
RRIS
parked his truck near the path he used to get to his

little greenhouse deep in the woods. Morley had lived all his life at the bottom of Sullivan’s Mountain on one branching root of foothill. Early this evening, he’d sat out on his porch and watched the headlights flash past as the men looking for that fool rich boy headed down the mountain to catch some shut-eye before resuming the search.

Probably wouldn’t find him anymore than they had those hikers last summer, since it was easy to get turned around up there. Even the lumber companies hadn’t had much luck. Morley remembered his father said they’d had some bad luck back in the sixties when they’d shaved slopes of trees in the mess of canyons.

Thanks to being a bit of a night owl, Morley had an idea what all lived on that mountain. He’d even told one other person the secret. The same person he was blackmailing, it turned out.

He didn’t especially want to go up the mountain tonight, but he had no choice. His little greenhouse and generator had somehow avoided detection from law enforcement when they looked for the hikers previously, but he couldn’t count on it a third time, not unless he used the camouflage tarp he’d rigged up last time. It had worked like a charm.

His stock was all ready to go to his connection in Oregon, and although he had no doubt the Chief had better things to do than bust up his crop of Mary Jane, he’d be duty-bound if he stumbled over it, now wouldn’t he? And as lucrative as the blackmail was turning out to be, despite the creepy threats like the dead raccoon whose blood had spelled out “don’t push me” that he’d found on his front porch one morning, he didn’t want to neglect a sure thing.

Lurching to a stop next to the weedy track he used, Morley didn’t want to leave the warm haven of his truck, but he forced himself to open the door, the creak of metal overloud in the watchful silence of the woods.

Almost dawn,
he comforted himself. He’d be back in his own bed at dawn, and then he could think of how he would spend his latest windfall.

But as he headed down the path toward his little greenhouse, he was glad that he had his gun, fully loaded, as well as his flashlight.

K
ELL
’
S
hand went instinctively to the holstered gun on his hip as

he studied the shadows. He pushed aside a fir branch with his other hand, heavy with the dew of the deep forest, and scanned the trail ahead.

“Looks like footprints, maybe,” he told Alec, pointing to the ground ahead.

Alec nodded, his hand clasping his deerskin bundle. He’d been touching it constantly as they tracked, his face contained. “Looks like Thomas Anderson came this way, headin’ toward Morley’s land just like you thought. See, Chief?” Alec indicated the larger footprints in the mud, the imprint from some expensive boots that both men figured belonged to young Anderson.

Alec knelt for a closer look and then looked up at Kell, waiting a beat as if to see if he’d grasp the significance. “But there’s something else….” He pointed to a soft imprint. “Someone wearing some kind of strange footgear, like leather wrapped around his feet. Seen this before, a time or two. Crude moccasins.”

“Yeah, me too,” Kell grunted. “But what I want to know is how the hell is the mystery tracker managing to trail Thomas out here in the dark?”

“Might be that this is his… territory,” Alec said. “Seems like he knows the forest.”

 

“Well, whateverthefuck. I want to find that boy. Soon!”

Alec gave him a straight look, and they both remembered how they’d searched for Ralph Hindle until they’d found a few red bones and a crushed skull. The hikers, a young couple, they’d never found. The mountains were an unforgiving place.

“Yeah,” Alec agreed, climbing back to his feet. “We have to find him soon, before he gets totally lost out here!”

He raced down the path, leaping over mossy fallen logs in the pre-dawn darkness, and Kell didn’t waste any time following, the back of his neck clammy with sweat.

T
HOMAS
A
NDERSON
covered his mouth, trying to stifle his heavy

panting. He was so fucking scared! When he’d thought he’d heard something in the woods with him and Jade, he’d shot at it, but the gun going off had been so loud! And then Jade had started in on him, so he’d shoved her, and then he hadn’t heard her again. Had he hurt her? He’d fucking peeled out, trying to get to the house in the woods. Instead, somehow he’d gotten turned around, leaping over rocks, fallen trees, panicked. Worse, for the past few minutes, he’d sensed that something was following
him
. He could feel it, and sometimes he heard a branch snap under a footfall on his trail. Shit! It was the thing that got into their trash, night after night, the thing some called the ghost, he just knew it.

Now he bent over, shaking hand clenched over the stitch in his side, huffing for breath as quietly as he could. His face and body stung with scratches, and his shoulder oozed blood from a puncture wound. Somehow he’d lost his Dad’s fucking gun, which was great since the old man was proud of his collection and would have Thomas’s ass.

Through his tears, he spotted… light? A light moving through the woods!
Someone was out here with him. Someone with a flashlight. Oh, Christ! Tears stung his eyes in painful relief as he gathered himself, almost played out, moving clumsily through the woods toward the bobbing beacon.

“W
AIT
….” Alec held up a hand. They paused, listening, looking at
each other as they both caught the sounds of something moving through the brush.

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?” Kell wiped the sweat from his forehead, and Alec gave him a faintly amused look. “Yeah, been a while since I did regular PT.” Kell shrugged. “I’ll have to add running again to the workout in my home gym.”

Alec pointed to some crushed prints beside the deer trail they were following. “Sounds like it was coming from that rise just ahead, Chief, but this is what I wanted to show you. Another track. This one from what looks like maybe a full grown man.”

“That’s not the weird moccasin print or one from Thomas Anderson, that’s sure,” Kell said flatly, feeling a chill prickle down his back.

“Someone else….” Alec said grimly. “A hunter maybe?” “Come on, we’d better find Thomas!” Kell jogged up the steep incline, grabbing for handholds of roots and granite as he and Alec climbed the next rise.

W
YLDE
froze on the trail, waiting, barely breathing.

At first he’d been following the other kid, wanting to know where he was going. He was running the way Wylde had once run, deep into the woods, scared. But now he had the sense someone else was out here with them. A hunter trailing them? Wylde usually hid from them.

Light pierced the darkness
.
Wylde saw it, bouncing off tree trunks and branches in the distance like a dancing fairy from one of his grandpa’s stories in the pre-dawn chill.

Someone with a flashlight!
The hunter trailing him must have seen it too; Wylde stiffened as he heard something crash through the underbrush nearby, heading swiftly toward the source of that light.

Still hunting.
“
J
ESUS
M
URPHY
,
boy!
” Morley Orris lowered his shotgun,
recognizing one of his best new customers. “What in the hell are you doin’, runnin’ at me like that? I nearly plugged you!”

 

“
Please!
” Thomas was shivering. He looked over his shoulder. “There’s something following me!”

“Yeah, but I doubt he’d mean you any harm,” Orris groused, hefting his gun and peering warily into the darkness. “We’re closer to my greenhouse than my truck. C’mon, we’ll hole up there until it’s light. It’ll be dawn in a few minutes.”

“I don’t want to stay here!” Thomas dug his heels in, tugging Orris’s arm. “P-please let’s go to your truck and get the fuck out of here!”

They both heard something dry snap underfoot in the forest behind them. “Huh, now that’s strange; usually he don’t come too close to folks,” Orris noted. But there was one other possibility, and that definitely gave him a cold chill when he remembered the dead raccoon and the warning before his last push for more money. “C’mon, let’s head for my clearing!” He shoved Thomas ahead and trained his shotgun on their back trail. Just his luck the fool boy had come running to him for help. But at least he was someone who could be counted on not to blab about Orris’s crop to the Chief.

A branch swayed a few feet behind them, and Orris had a sudden, bad feeling—

“
Run, boy!
” he yelled.
L
EAPING
over rocks and fallen logs, gasping for breath, Orris kept the flashlight trained on the ground in front of them. Thomas was in the lead with Orris behind him, one impatient hand shoving him forward as they sprinted for the meadow.

And then they could see the little structure through the woods, Orris’s green grow lights casting an eerie beacon, the generator humming, the sound both prosaic and reassuring.

“
Almost there!
” Orris gasped in triumph from behind him. “Door’s unlocked, just—”
Thomas snatched the thin plywood door and it creaked open triumphantly.
Safe.
They were—

The flashlight went out. Thomas didn’t want to look back, but he couldn’t help himself, head turning, looking out of the corner of his eye.

“H-hey, Orris?” he whispered.
Boom! Boom!
He fell back inside the greenhouse, slamming the wooden door

shut.
A choked off scream, sound like… wet paper tearing—

Thomas waited, his heart beating in his ears, huddled on the greenhouse floor, hands around his knees. He heard something moving around outside
.

“Mister?” he called softly.
Something scratched at the door, as if searching for the latch.

Please… please….
He wasn’t sure whom he was begging as he trembled in the darkness.

 

I’m safe. Nothing’s out there. I’m safe.
He said the mantra over and over again in his head.

 

Then the door was thrown open, and he
screamed—
“
S
HIT
!
” Kell was over the rise like a big cat. He could see a faint
light coming through the trees where the gunshots and the scream had come from—

 

Alec pulled out his shotgun and ran beside him, eyes wide and dark as he tracked the woods around them.

T
HEIR
feet hit a path only as wide as a single man could run. Kell took point, trusting Alec to get his back since they’d served together in the Rangers. Suddenly, they exploded into a clearing as the sun prickled through the bottom of the trees, lighting the grass and a greenhouse in the center.

Instinctively Kell fell back on training, knowing Alec would also remember. He held up his fist and then made a familiar hand sign:
cover this area.

Gliding opposite Kell, Alec circled, his eyes showing white as he peered around warily. Kell took the other side, keeping the hut and Alec in his line of vision.

Nothing.
Then Alec gestured,
come.

Kell sprinted across the meadow to his deputy’s side. Alec pointed. More crushed brush, like something had rolled… or been dragged….

Kell knelt, touching one of the leaves. “Blood,” he whispered. “Looks like a
lot
of blood….”

 

“Thomas Anderson? Shit, Chief!” Alec cursed.

There was only one way to find out, Kell knew. Acting in tandem, they made for the greenhouse. While Alec covered him, he raised his leg and kicked the door in.