Protector of One. Rachel Lee
at once filled Gage with blazing love and desperate terror. He knew what it was to lose a child. Bringing Jeremy into his life had been an act of faith more difficult than anything he’d ever done.
Peeking in, he saw that the restless child, as usual, dangled one leg over the edge of the bed, and barely had any covers over him at all. Moonlight, thin and weak, barely touched him.
Again on impulse, Gage scooped the sleeping child up. The boy barely stirred. He carried him in to the master bedroom and slipped him under the blankets with Emma.
Emma stirred, murmuring quietly, and with a mother’s native instinct rolled over until she was wrapped around their child.
Gage adjusted the blankets a bit, then left as quietly as he could, sending up a prayer for their protection.
He thought he knew evil. He’d sure as hell seen enough horror. But tonight, somehow, he felt there was something even darker stalking this county.
Kerry waited, shaking, in her locked car outside the sheriff’s office. What was taking Gage so damn long? She drummed her fingers nervously on the steering wheel, while the back of her neck prickled as if a predator watched her. No amount of telling herself it was just a dream could erase the urgency she felt. The terror she felt.
And this time she didn’t care if anyone thought she was nuts.
At last headlights appeared, slicing through the darkness of the quiet main street. The moon, a mere sliver tonight, shed only the palest light, and the street lights, recently changed to stylish Victorian imitations, didn’t seem to do much better. It was as if the darkness refused to give ground.
But at last the sheriff’s SUV pulled into the reserved slot and she saw Gage’s silhouette at the wheel. He climbed out quickly, after turning off his ignition, and came around to Kerry. She rolled her window down as he bent to look in.
“I think it’d be warmer inside, and I can make us some coffee or tea.”
Clenching her teeth so they wouldn’t chatter, she nodded, turned her own car off, and purse in hand followed him into the office.
The lighting was dim. The night dispatcher, a young deputy, half dozed at the console. He jumped when Gage and Kerry entered, but Gage waved him to relax. “Nothing?” he asked.
“Not a peep, just the regular check-ins.”
“Start the coffee, would you? I think we’re going to have a busy night.”
At that the young deputy perked up. “I just made a pot. What’s going on?”
“I’ll know more after Adrian gets here. Just bring us the coffee, please. I need to get Kerry warmed up.”
“Yeah, sure, Chief.”
In his office, Gage turned on a portable electric heater to add its warmth to the air blowing through the vents in the floor. “Never gets warm enough back here,” he remarked. “For myself I don’t mind. That’s what jackets and sweaters are for, but you look like you need to thaw out.”
Kerry nodded gratefully. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this cold. Ever. And it’s not that cold outside.”
“Adrian’s on his way,” he said again as the young deputy entered and brought them coffee. Kerry suddenly remembered she’d had him in English class only two or three years ago. Calvin Henry, that was his name. “Thanks, Cal,” she said.
He smiled. “Anytime, Ms. Tommy.” The name the students called her. He looked at Gage. “Anything else?”
“Just send Adrian back here. I’ll let you know when I know.”
Cal nodded and walked out.
“Why is Adrian coming?”
Gage hesitated.
“Gage, please.” She needed something, anything, to right her reeling world.
“He heard a couple of gun shots tonight. From the same general direction where we found our vics.”
That was not what she needed. Not to set her world right. All it did was cause her to teeter more.
“Two women,” she said. “One is dead. The other wounded and running.” Her voice rose, almost to a keen. “Oh, God, Gage. We have to get out there! She’s running and alone!”
The convoy built as Gage led the way out toward the place where the murders had happened. Deputies and state police pulled off their routes and out of bed created a steadily lengthening train behind him. Kerry, in the backseat, leaned forward and looked between Gage and Adrian toward the dark hulk of the mountains ahead of them.
“Keep watching to the right,” she said suddenly. “The women had a campfire. You might catch a glimpse of it.”
“How far right?” Adrian asked.
Kerry closed her eyes. “One or two o’clock,” she said finally. “I’m not a hundred percent certain, but that’s what I keep seeing.”
“You got it.”
“Tell me about the dream again,” Gage said quietly.
“I already did.”
“I might pick out an important detail that I missed before.”
“All right.” Cold to the bone, despite the blast from the car’s heater, she forced herself to summon the images that had scared her awake.
“Two women,” she said. “Friends. They camp a lot together. They were waiting for someone who was delayed.”
“Any idea who?”
Kerry started to shake her head then. “My God! I think they were waiting for the men who were killed. One of them was worried, but the other wasn’t. As if…as if these guys are often late getting back to camp.”
Gage looked at Adrian. “That’s a link we didn’t have before.”
Adrian nodded. “Anything else, Kerry?”
“Just the same thing as before. I saw the side of a woman’s head explode. Then the other one was hit in the arm. She started running, away from the shots. She’s cold and terrified, and I think…I think she’s hiding. I think she found a place to hide.”
“Is she still being hunted?”
Kerry squeezed her eyes shut, reaching even though she didn’t want to, trying to pull more substance out of the nightmare that had torn her from sleep. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Gage pressed on the accelerator. “Then we’d better move even faster.”
Radios crackled back and forth throughout the trip, ideas shared, plans for the search worked out. No one seemed very hopeful they could find anything before dawn. The night was too dark, and once they got into the woods, it would only become impenetrable.
But dawn was no longer far away.
Ten minutes later, just as it seemed they were about to enter the abyssal darkness of the woods, Adrian leaned forward in his seat. Then he spoke above the radio chatter. “I think I see a campfire. About two o’clock. I can only catch it out of my peripheral vision, though.”
Kerry understood. Once you began operating on night vision, the clearest images were peripheral. She’d first noticed that when studying the sky at night as a girl. Some stars were so faint that you could only see them when you looked far enough to the side.
“There’s a fence road up just ahead,” Gage replied. “I’ll take a right turn on it. Tell the rest of the crew.”
The message passed by radio. Two minutes later Gage turned them onto a track that clearly served no other purpose than to allow a pickup to ride along a ranch fence.
“Chester McNair’s place,” Gage said, as if giving a travelogue.
“That’s