CASTILLO RIDGE
FRIDAY NIGHT
CARLY FOLLOWED DAN ALONG A TRAIL ONLY HE COULD SEE. WIND FOLLOWED THEM, pushing and pulling and distracting. She shivered, then ached. And she remembered Dan's leg.
"Okay," she said. "This is far enough. I can-"
"My leg's fine."
"Tell me again that you're not a mind reader."
"I'm not a mind reader."
"Why do I so not believe you?" she muttered.
"I haven't a clue. And stop rolling your eyes."
"How did you know?"
"I heard them."
She snickered and slogged along behind him.
Dan heard, and smiled. He was following the trail as much by instinct as by eye. Animals weren't stupid. They took the easy way, around boulders and clumps of small trees, twisting and turning, slowly gaining altitude. People were mostly too impatient to be smart. They just plowed straight up a slope like there was a stopwatch on them.
In places the going was easy. The land was nearly bare of snow, swept by the wind of all but a compact crust of snow. That same wind filled the hollows and creases with the kind of icy powder that drew people from all over the world to the high ski slopes near Taos. In the skiing scheme of things, this side of Castillo Ridge was a nonstarter. It was too windswept for snow really to accumulate anywhere but in ravines, and too rocky in the narrow ravines for safe skiing. The other side of the ridge had thicker snow because it was somewhat sheltered from the prevailing wind by the ridge itself. Rocks were mostly buried in snow. Pinons and cedar grew to real size, and true pines had a foothold on the dry land.
Dan wondered if the trail he and his father had beaten through two feet of snow almost a week ago was still visible or if it had been buried by new snow.
Just before Dan skylined himself on the uneven ridge, he stopped and searched the moonlight and darkness for any change, any movement, anything that could explain his occasional, uneasy sense of being watched. Like now. Someone was watching him.
You're paranoid.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
"What caused that?" Carly asked.
"What?"
"That grim little smile."
"I was talking to myself," he said.
"About what?"
"Paranoia."
"Was this a general or a particular conversation?"
"Particular."
She waited.
He didn't say anything more.
"Sometimes getting you to talk is like pulling hen's teeth," she said.
"Hens don't have teeth."
"That's what makes them hard to pull. What form did this paranoia take?"
"Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched," he said calmly.
Carly's breath came out in a long plume. "Me, too. Usually it's in an old house. So I'm paranoid, too?"
He laughed softly and finished the last few yards up to the ridge, pulling her along behind him. "You're something else."
"And that something is paranoid?"
"No, Carolina May. That something is-"
Suddenly Dan staggered back and away from her, yanking her with him as he went down the far side of the ridge.
The sound of rifle fire cracked like edgy thunder down the valley.
A snow-buried ravine broke Dan's fall. He hit bottom hard enough to make his head spin.
"Dan? Dan!"
Carly skidded to her knees and started clawing snow away from his face. Some of the snow looked black and shiny.
Dan's eyes opened and he groaned. "Bastard missed."
"It doesn't look like it from here," she said tightly. "You're bleeding."
"And you aren't. He missed."
"You're hurt. Let me help you up."
When she started to stand, Dan pulled her down into the uncertain shelter of the ravine and put his lips against her ear. There was snow in her hair, and her scarf was more off than on her head.
"Quiet," Dan murmured, finally starting to think past the ringing in his ears. "He might be coming back to finish the job. I sure hope so."
Only then did Carly see that Dan had eased off a glove and drawn a gun. She hadn't even known he was armed. She shivered with more than the cold, though the cold was bad enough to make her shake. It felt like a vampire drawing warmth and life out of her.
You asked for it, she told herself. You could have quit the job and you didn't. Dan paid the price. Now suck it up and deal.
She would rather have run screaming into the night, but refused to leave Dan behind. Since he wasn't going to leave voluntarily and was too big to carry, she was stuck lying in the snow watching him bleed and knowing the bullet had been meant for her.
Carly bit the inside of her mouth, hard, then harder, until the urge to scream died to a whimper she couldn't stifle. Her mouth tasted of salt and fear.
"It's okay, honey," Dan murmured against her ear.
She turned her head to him and breathed, "Bullshit."
His grin flashed white against the bloody shadows of his face.
Dan and Carly lay quietly while blood from a scalp wound ran down his face into the snow. She packed snow against his head, hoping to reduce the bleeding. It helped, but not enough.
Very slowly, he wiped blood away from his eyes with his free hand. Nothing moved on the ridgeline thirty feet above. No sound came from footsteps crunching through snow toward them.
Cold bit into him, numbing him until he knew it would be more dangerous to stay than to move. Neither of them were dressed to spend a night in the snow and freezing wind.
And despite the constantly renewed snow on his forehead, it felt like he'd been hit by a white-hot hammer. When it really thawed out, he would be screaming. Thank God Carly would be there to drive him out.
"Make me some snowballs," he murmured to Carly.
"What?"
"Snowballs."
She wondered if getting shot made someone crazy, but she carefully began scooping up snow and packing it into hard, rather eccentric balls. When she uncovered some small rocks, she included them in the mix.
Dan waited, thinking about where he had been when he was hit, where he'd fallen, where the shot probably had come from.
On the ridgeline, where it bends back toward the valley. Probably that group of boulders to the right. Maybe the trees farther on. Eight hundred feet. A thousand at most. Easy enough shot with a nightscope.
Impossible without one.
Cold clenched Dan's body. Without special gear-at the very least a survival blanket-a man had to keep moving to stay alive. That wind was a killer.
"Here," Carly whispered. "Some of them have rocks in the center."
"Sweet," he murmured, smiling thinly. "Give them to me first."
He felt something cold and hard nudge his left hand. He wasn't very accurate throwing left-handed, but that didn't matter. He just wanted to see how jumpy the sniper was.
In a single motion Dan rose to his knees, fired the snowball in the direction he would have taken if he planned to retreat over the ridge toward the ranch, and dropped back flat in the ravine.
No shot, no narrow thunder, no motion at all.
Silence.
Wind.
More silence.
Something hammering in his head and the feel of Carly shivering uncontrollably against him.
Time to go.
"Follow me," Dan said.
"What if he starts shooting again?"
Then we're dead.
But all he said was, "Let's go."