About thirty more minutes downstream, she turned and looked up at the terrain she'd just descended. What she saw sent a wave of fear through her. Far up on the sidehill, near the ridgeline above the creek, a lone figure moved quickly down the mountain. While the figure was not directly on her trail, he or she was moving in the same general direction and was no more than half a mile behind.
Maria's heart began to pound. If she could see the pursuer, then the pursuer might well have seen her. She considered her options. She could try to hide by losing herself in the brush, or she could run. Hiding might mean an overnight stay under a clump of trees, in nothing but a wool shirt. Capture by the kidnappers would be unlikely, even if they had radios and several hunters, but the chilly night could be brutal. Running in the dark was not a much more enticing option. What if she hurt herself on the trail? Run or hide?
Until dark, at least, she had to keep moving.
Turning downstream toward civilization would be the likely choice for Maria, but Corey knew that lower on the slopes she would find pot gardens, probably guarded by unpredictable men with tangled hair and beards, men living in hovels, who could or would do nothing else for a living, who lived outside the law. Such men didn't mind long stretches without much company under hard, primitive conditions. Each year they suffered the elements, thieves among their own kind, government raids, the threat of imprisonment, and the risk of great bodily harm or death at the hands of whoever happened to oppose them-and there were many who had reason to oppose them.
She considered how she might turn that situation to her advantage.
The second marijuana plantation was much larger than the first. Plants were everywhere, by almost every big tree. Some trees had several pots. And the plants were big. Already some were four feet high. Maria realized she was looking at millions of dollars in marijuana. What wouldn't they do to protect it? She had to get away from this place, across the creek and to the far side of the canyon, where there was no southern exposure-without the sun there would be no gardens. But as she tried to find a place to descend the precipitous mountainside to get to the creek, she was suddenly shaken by the coarse, boisterous blaring of an air horn. Adrenaline shot into her system as she looked around. Then at her feet she saw a trip wire. Damn. She was in the open near a steep embankment. She could hear someone coming. Galvanized into action, she went feetfirst down an almost vertical bank.
Within seconds she heard voices.
"Well, la-di-da." She whipped around and saw a sandy-haired man with a sly grin coming at her, a knife in his right hand and a military-style rifle in his left. The gun was pointed at her midriff.
"Take it easy now or I'm gonna put a bullet in you."
He wore a stained, heavy wool, half-unbuttoned shirt that revealed soiled long underwear beneath. There were small shells hanging around his neck, five earrings going up his ear, and a little patch of hair on his chin, with several days' growth on the rest of his face. Three feet away from her, he stopped. The muzzle of the rifle was in her belly.
He spoke into a radio.
"I think it was just another deer."
"I'm telling you I saw a woman coming down that hill."
"I'll keep looking."
He grinned at her again.
"I don't want to bother the rest of them just yet. Best I'd get is sloppy seconds."
Her insides turned sick. "You want sex?"
"Aren't you a mind reader?"
"Show me your hard-on," she said.
He laughed. "You gotta be shittin' me."
"I like to fuck as well as the next girl, but I wanna see what I got to work with."
He looked around for a moment.
"You first."
"Oh, come on, inspire me." She stepped close, sliding past the gun barrel, walking right up to the knife.
"You try anything and I'll twist this knife right in your gut."
He stank of stale sweat and had breath like rotten bananas. She had to concentrate in order not to retch. Forcing a smile, she ran her fingers over the front of his jeans, deliberately hurrying before he became erect.
She reached for the top button with her right hand. With her left she touched the stubble on his face. Apparently wanting to feel her breasts and use both hands, he turned the knife flat against her. It was a mistake. She put everything she had into her knee to the testicles and two thumbs into the eyes.
He fell to the ground, thrashing. Sharp thumbnails had gone deep; he was clawing at his eyes. She jumped away and ran. Only after getting twenty feet down the hill did she think about the gun. She cursed herself. Spinning around, she plowed back up through the brush only to see a second armed man coming toward the first.
Leaping back downhill, she barely maintained her balance as she ran full out.
"I'll shoot!" somebody said to her side as shots rang out. She disappeared over a six-foot drop-off. Even with all the noise of cascading rock, she could hear them coming after her.
"She's right down here," one of them shouted. As she bounded down the hill, she saw a tiny clearing and a ramshackle cabin about the size of a two-car garage, made of unpainted plywood. It had a big black stovepipe running up the side. Darting around the structure, she looked wildly for a place to hide. Knowing that she was running to a creek bottom in unfamiliar territory, she realized they would no doubt get close enough to shoot when she tried going up the opposite hill.
Slamming through the door, her hands shaking, she looked for a gun. Junk was piled everywhere. There were boxes and sacks of supplies stacked two or three deep all along the wall with three bunk beds and a table in the middle. Against one wall by the door, there was an old wood cook-stove. No gun. A knife on the table. She grabbed it and crawled behind some sacks of fertilizer. These people lived like animals. Desperately she clamped her sides, trying to calm her breathing, trying to make a plan.
"Hell, it's hard to find her in this brush," came a voice from outside.
"We'll find her. You run downstream on the trail and then come back up the draw."
"Wait. What if she went in the cabin?"
"Shit. You take off, I'll look."
She tried to make her hands stop shaking, to get control.
It seemed her whole convulsing body would give her away. The door creaked on its hinges.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are."
He started at the far end, looking behind some boxes. Scrunching down as tight as she could, she tried to make herself invisible.
She had no illusions. Getting caught would be a death sentence-after they were finished raping her. It made her desperate. Believing she had nothing to lose, she decided to lunge with the knife. He was five feet away and almost to the stacks of fertilizer. Trying to look around the six-foot stacks without exposing himself, he moved with slow deliberation. Any second he would see her.
His hand draped over a sack about three feet in front of her and above her. Frightened out of her mind, she lunged, skewering the hand with the knife, running it through and pinning it to the sack.
The man let out an earsplitting scream and dropped his gun to clutch at his hand. She dashed out of the cabin and with a backward glance saw him remove the knife.