Cassie Miles - Rocky Mountain Manhunt

“What else was in your pack?” he asked.

No way would she tell him about the treasure. “A hunting knife. Fishing kit. Sleeping bag. That cooking pot. And first aid supplies, thank goodness.”

“Were you injured?”

She rolled up the tattered sleeve of her silk blouse and the T-shirt she wore on top of it. A wide, red scar crossed the middle of her upper arm. “This was bad at first, but I used antiseptic from the first aid kit. And I made a poultice from valerian leaves and roots to draw out the infection. I’m not sure if that was the right herb, but it seemed to help.”

“Was that your only wound?”

She reached up and rubbed her hand through her spiky hair. “I had a bump on my head. No big deal.”

Liam knew that head injuries could be tricky. If she’d had a concussion, it might explain her strange behavior. “You should see a doctor.”

“I’m already healed,” she said blithely. “No infections.”

“Kate, you have to go back,” he said gently. “Sooner or later, you need to let your family know you’re all right. Your mother’s worried.”

“When you leave, you can tell her that I’m okay.”

“She wants you to come home. She’s the one who convinced CCC to continue the search.”

An expression of concern crossed her face, and her gaze turned inward, as though she were reviewing her options. Then, she shook her head. “No,” she said simply. “This is my home. I’m safe here.”

“Safe from what?” he asked. “Why do you think you’re in danger?”

“I just know.”

She handed him a cup of fragrant mint tea and returned to the fire. She wasn’t insane. Her little hideout was orderly and efficient. Her ability to survive required an intelligent application of concentration and knowledge.

But she had completely disowned her prior existence; she refused to be Kate Carradine. “Is somebody after you? Who is it?”

She whipped around to face him. Her fists planted on her hips. Her voice was a challenge. “I can’t remember.”

That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If she’d been scared enough to stay in hiding for nearly a month, she must know why. “Are you saying that you can’t remember their names?”

She met his gaze. “I can’t remember anything. When I first came here, my memory was completely gone. The slate was wiped clean.”

Son of a bitch! She had amnesia.

As Liam studied the defiant woman who stood before him, he realized that handling Kate Carradine would require a delicate touch. He couldn’t fling her over his shoulder and haul her out of the forest. He needed to overcome her resistance and convince her to cooperate. Not an easy proposition.

When he’d worked for the Denver district attorney, he’d honed his skills in interrogation, and he was pretty damn good at knowing when someone was telling the truth. But how could he deal with amnesia? He wasn’t a psychologist. “You don’t remember anything?”

“Nothing about the immediate past.” She squared her thin shoulders and gave a diffident shrug. “It’s not really important.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“If I can’t remember, what difference does it make?”

“Let’s start with the obvious fact that Wayne Silverman is still missing. Your memory might be able to explain what happened to him.”

“I can’t tell you.” Her gaze flickered, but she didn’t look away. “I’m sorry that my disappearance triggered a search-and-rescue effort. And I’m sorry that I caused people to worry. But I didn’t have a choice. I’m in danger.”

“From a person or persons unknown.”

“That’s right,” she said.

He sensed that her amnesia masked darker, more sinister events. Something traumatic had happened to her—something too terrible to remember.

If he hoped to uncover the truth, he needed to keep her talking. “Fill me in on what you do remember. You came here twenty-eight days ago. Wounded.”

“I wasn’t exactly here,” she said. “It took me a while to find this perfect little cave.”

“But you don’t remember where you came from.”

“I was on the run.”

“But you didn’t plan to go into hiding,” he said. “You only had enough food for a week.”

“That’s when the MREs ran out,” she said.

“So you lived off the land,” he said. “How did you know which plants were edible?”

“It’s not difficult. There are obvious ones to stay away from. Vetch. Locoweed. And the state flower, the columbine.” As she talked, she returned to her food-preparation tasks, lifting a cover of leaves from an expertly filleted trout and placing the fish in the boiling water to poach. “There are ways to see if a plant is poisonous.”

“Like what?”

“Cut off a little piece and put it between your teeth and your gums. If it starts to sting or cause some other reaction, spit it out.”

Her story intrigued him. He was familiar with mountain-survival techniques but had never known anybody who actually lived off the land. “How did you learn all this?”

“My dad,” she said. “He used to take me backpacking and we’d forage for dinner.”

“Makes sense. Your father was the head of RMS, Rocky Mountain Suppliers.” He hadn’t taken that piece of her background into account. “He specialized in outdoor equipment.”

“I remember.” The minute she mentioned her father, her attitude brightened. “When we went camping, we were always testing some kind of gear. Dad used to say he was the luckiest man in the world because camping was a business trip for him. He loved the mountains.”

“Eric Carradine,” Liam said. “And you’re his daughter, Kate.”

“Rain,” she said. “Call me Rain.”

“Okay. It’s Rain.” He decided to humor her. So what if she wanted to call herself Rain? Or Moon? Or Ruby-Throated Hummingbird? After all these days in the wild and a dose of amnesia, some delusional thinking was to be expected.

Besides, her Rain persona appealed to him. He respected and appreciated her gutsy stamina. In her identity as Kate Carradine, he expected her to be a socialite, a pampered society woman who arranged flower bouquets rather than eating them for dinner.

“There’s plenty of food out here,” she said. “Look at all these trees. Inside the new branches is a soft, woody part that’s edible. If you roast pinecones in the fire, then break them open, these little nuts fall out.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort.”

“Oh, it is,” she said. “I spend most of the daylight hours foraging. And I have to hike all over the place to do it because I don’t want to completely wipe out the ecosystem in front of my cave.”

“Because it’s bad for the environment?”

“And I didn’t want anybody to find me.” She poked at the fish in her cooking pot. “Why don’t you sit down and relax?”

Though he had the feeling that he was losing focus on his goal of getting her away from this place, Liam allowed himself to be seduced. He sat on a flat rock at the opposite side of the fire pit and watched as she efficiently arranged leaves and stems on a woven plate made from twigs.

“You made those plates,” he said.

“When I figured out how easy it was to weave young branches and reeds, I made a bunch of things. It gave me something to do at night, when I couldn’t forage.”

Given enough time out here, he suspected she might really create a home for herself. Her little space was swept clean, and she’d placed dried flowers among the rocks for decoration. He pointed to a tall woven vase just inside her cave. “What’s that?”

“My calendar.” She brought the woven vessel closer so he could see inside. “There’s one pebble for every day I’ve been here. I try to choose a rock that looks like the day.”