Linda Howard - Prey

She paused, going back over the night’s events, gathering her thoughts. “They were back toward the cook site; I wouldn’t have heard them except I don’t sleep soundly when I’m guiding, I’m always half-listening for trouble.”

“Have you had a lot of trouble?” he asked, scowling. She could feel his heightened focus on her face, studying her expression, and she turned her head enough that she could meet his surprisingly fierce gaze.

“No, of course not, but I’m alert. I’m a woman; I have to think about things that a man doesn’t,” she pointed out. “I’d be stupid if I didn’t. But it isn’t just that. I’m… I’m kind of afraid of bears,” she admitted sheepishly.

“I’m leery of them myself.”

“It’s more than leery.” Why not just get it all out there? “I’ve had nightmares about bears, and finding that body seriously spooked me. No way was I going to do much more than catnap. Anyway, when I got closer I heard Davis say something to Krugman about stealing from him. I yelled at them to knock it off, Davis looked in my direction, and Krugman shot him.”

Her tone went flat, her gaze going distant. “He had to have been planning it. Davis hadn’t made any threatening moves toward him, at least not that I saw. Then he started shooting at me. I threw myself on the ground and started rolling away from him, but when I hit the ground I lost my grip on the rifle. I just kept rolling. The horses were going crazy, the storm was right on top of us. Krugman went past my location, so I put my face down and stayed still; I was so muddy already I figured that was my best protection. Then… then the bear came.”

Dare waited in silence while she took a few deep breaths. “Krugman saw the bear, and took off. He took all four horses and ran.”

“He probably hoped the bear would get you, too.”

Angie couldn’t let her thoughts go there. She’d spent enough time already living with that scenario, and it still made the bottom drop out of her stomach. “He didn’t bother saddling his horse so I don’t know how far he got, because he isn’t that great on horseback. When I first saw you, I thought you were Krugman, but then the lightning showed that you were in a saddle, and I knew it wasn’t him. If it hadn’t been for that, I’d have stayed hidden.”

“Close call.”

That was an understatement, for damn certain. Angie closed her eyes and let her head tip sideways so it rested against his shoulder, just for a moment, somehow needing that brief contact to reassure herself. Then she straightened, swallowed, and continued her story.

“I needed the rifle, but where I’d dropped it was close to where the bear had Davis. He played with the body,” she said starkly. “Tearing it apart. I crawled toward the bear, freezing every time the lightning flashed. I knew it probably wouldn’t see me, didn’t think it would hear me with all the noise the storm was making, but if the wind had shifted and it had scented me… I don’t know if it would have left Davis’s body and come after me. I thought, just get the rifle, and drop the bear. But when I finally reached the rifle, the mechanism was so filled with mud I knew I didn’t dare try shooting it. I worked my way back, went to my tent and got some things, and set out on foot.”

“When did you sprain your ankle?”

She made a face. “Within the first half hour.”

“So you’d been crawling for hours.” His tone was neutral, though she sensed some tension beneath the words.

She gave a short, grim laugh. “What else could I do? Give up? Not likely.” She nodded at the percolator. “I think our water’s about to boil. Let’s have some stew.”

They ate their bowls of stew in companionable silence, sitting side by side on the mattress, backs against the wall. She had always considered the dry mixes, with hot water added to turn them into “stew” or “soup,” to be edible, but nothing more. This stew, though, more than made up in comfort what it lacked in taste, and with salt, pepper, and a little pack of ketchup and some hot sauce added to the mix, the taste wasn’t bad at all. The best part, though, was having something hot and filling in her stomach. She could almost have hummed in contentment.

Cleaning up after themselves consisted of putting the plastic bowls and spoons in the trash bag. What daylight there had been was rapidly fading, so Dare turned on the LED lantern. Angie looked uneasily at the windows. “What if Krugman sees the light?”

“Not likely. For one thing, there’s no reason for him to come this way. He doesn’t know the cabin’s here, doesn’t know I’m here, and has no way of knowing you’re with me now. If he’s smart, he’s sitting out this rain in your camp, with his rifle in his hand in case that bear comes back.”

His assessment was reassuring, because he was absolutely right. Chad couldn’t look for something he didn’t know existed. He might not be much of an outdoorsman, but he knew he wanted to go down the mountain, not cut sideways across it. Now that she’d had some sleep and some food, her brain was beginning to kick back in, and draw some conclusions. One of those conclusions was definitely unsettling. “I think Krugman may have been planning to kill me, too, from the very beginning.”

“Could be,” Dare replied, and she was gratified that he hadn’t immediately dismissed the idea as the product of an overactive imagination. “You have to think he knew Davis was on to him, otherwise why take a pistol with him?”

“I did tell them not to leave their tents without their flashlights and rifles; Krugman could have thought a pistol would do.” She thought about that for a split second, then shook her head. “No, even someone inexperienced would know a pistol wouldn’t stop a bear, and I specifically said rifle. ”

“Why would he even have a pistol with him, unless he’d planned something like this? You can’t conceal a rifle. By the way, did Davis have his rifle with him?”

“He should have.” Angie thought back, dragged up the memory of the two men, starkly lit by lightning, how they’d been standing. Davis had had his left side to her; he’d been right-handed, so if he’d been carrying his rifle it would have been in his right hand. “If he was, I didn’t see it, but he could easily have been carrying it in his right hand, pointed at the ground.”

“So Krugman took the pistol with him. Maybe Davis knew he had it, maybe not. For argument’s sake, say Davis didn’t know, because if he had he’d have been more alert. By the way, what’s Krugman’s occupation?”

“Accountant.”

Dare grunted. He stepped out of sight for a few minutes, and returned with a gun-cleaning kit in his hands. “He was probably siphoning some of Davis’s funds, and Davis found out about it. But Krugman was one step ahead of him, all the way. If he’d planned to kill Davis on this hunt, then, yeah, he’d probably planned all along to kill you, too, because you were the only witness.”

“But other people knew he was here. Ray Lattimore, for one. Harlan knows. How could he think he’d get away with it?”

“Maybe he expected to be identified, but if he killed both you and Davis on the first or second day of the hunt, that would give him almost a week to get out of the country before anyone would even begin looking for you.” Dare’s sandpaper voice had gone harsh and cold; his words sent a shiver up her spine, but the strategy he’d laid out reverberated inside her because all the pieces fit together the way she’d been thinking they might. What had happened had been bad enough when she’d thought it was something Krugman had done on the spur of the moment, maybe out of temper or desperation or because Mitchell Davis had been a son of a bitch one time too many. To think that Krugman hadn’t panicked, that he’d deliberately murdered Davis and just as deliberately tried to kill her, hit her hard in the gut.