“The signal is right here. She must have dropped it.” Seth held a rifle in his hand, but he didn’t look as competent as his best friend. Logan dropped to his knees in front of the window and reached in.
“It’s here, but they’re long gone,” Logan said.
“And the tracks go two different ways.” Mel ran his hand along an aspen tree’s trunk. “Someone’s been shooting. Looks like a .45 slug. Doesn’t look like he hit anything except this tree though. Not enough blood. Just a little bit in the snow and on the car. That happened in the accident.”
Bishop studied the scene, quickly coming to the same conclusion as Mel. If someone had been shot, there would be more blood. Unless this fucker had dumped her body, Nell was alive. There were three distinct sets of prints. One set, small, almost certainly female, went to the north. That set was alone, but he had the sudden certainty that those boot prints didn’t belong to Nell. They were triangular at the toe. A cowboy boot and therefore made of leather. Nell would never allow that to touch her feet.
No. The small rounded-toe prints were hers, and he knew what she’d done. She’d drawn the asshole with the gun away from the other woman.
If she wasn’t already dead, he just might kill her.
Mel pulled out a walkie-talkie. “Max? You there?”
A crackling masculine voice came over the handheld radio Mel had switched to. “I am. Just found one of our missing girls. Kelly said Nell was still up there when she took off. Nell was going to run the opposite way.”
Bishop didn’t wait for further information. He took off running, his feet following the line of the larger set of prints. He jogged easily through the snow, the previous runner having already plowed the path. Nell had survived the crash. She’d still been able to run. She was alive, and he had to find her before that changed.
A shot crashed through the forest, the sound seeming to come from everywhere at once. Bishop’s heart threatened to pound out of his chest. That shot seemed to echo, pinging off the trees and straight through his system. Seth had made it to his side. His eyes were wide as the shot sounded. He opened his mouth to scream.
Bishop quickly covered Seth’s mouth with his hand, the sound never making it past his lips. He kept his voice just at a whisper. “Don’t you dare scream. Don’t make a sound.”
He couldn’t let the kid alert the shooter that they were here. Seth nodded, and Bishop let him go.
Mel didn’t make a single noise as he moved in. He motioned toward the woods ahead, his hand making a chopping motion. Mel had some Army training. Bishop gestured around, silently telling Mel to take the flank. He pointed to himself and then in a straight line. He would go through while Mel and Logan went around.
“You can run, bitch, but you can’t fucking hide.” A male voice echoed through the woods.
He closed his jaw tightly to keep the growl that came naturally inside. Oh, Bishop was going to take that fucker’s head off. He would do it slowly. He would savor the way his neck crunched, but he wouldn’t be satisfied until it actually came off in his hands and he could mount it on his wall.
“Stay here,” he whispered to Seth and took off. The kid would just confuse things. Mel and Logan were calmer. Seth was just about ready to panic. This was likely the scariest thing that had ever happened to the kid, but Bishop couldn’t worry about him now. Seth had done his part.
Bishop moved forward. He wasn’t listening to his instincts. They were telling him to run yelling and screaming for her. He was on the verge of panic. He was Henry Flanders in that moment, and he needed to be John Bishop. He pushed the fear down. It wouldn’t help Nell. He was an iceman, a ghost. It was how he was able to do his job, but there it was—a horrible out-of-control feeling, like bile rising from the pit of his stomach.
He forced it down as he approached the spot where he was almost certain the sound had come from.
He heard a strangled scream and then a masculine voice shouting.
“What the fuck is that?”
There was a low sound, a huffing chuff that couldn’t possibly be human.
“Holy shit! That’s big.”
“It’s a moose.” Nell’s shaky voice whispered through the woods. “Try not to startle it. I think it’s already afraid because of all the shooting.”
“Well, we’ll see if he’s afraid of this.”
“Don’t!” Nell screamed.
And Bishop stopped fighting his instincts. He took off running, not caring if anyone heard him coming because he knew that Nell was about to do something supremely stupid. She’d already put herself in danger to save Kelly. She would likely do the very same thing for the moose.
A shot rang out again, the sound ringing in Bishop’s ears.
Bishop entered the clearing at a dead run and stopped on a dime at what he saw there.
An enormous creature stood between Warren Lyle and Nell, his massive body a bulwark separating them. The moose huffed, and even from where Bishop stood he could feel the heat coming off the large beast. It was bigger than anything he’d seen before, its magnificent horns at least as wide as Bishop was tall. Lyle looked small compared to the huffing animal. Bishop saw how his hand shook as he raised his weapon.
It was an easy thing to walk up behind him. Lyle’s whole being was focused on the beast that had him in its sights. The ground shook a little as the beast stomped one mighty hoof, its antlers shaking.
Bishop had an arm around Lyle’s neck in an instant, the muzzle of the SIG placed firmly at the base of the man’s head. It took everything he had not to pull the trigger, ending it all here and now, but he didn’t want Nell to see the blood, the way the man’s skull would split.
“Henry, you found me.” Nell’s voice was shaking. From what he could see she wasn’t prepared for the weather, her curvy frame dressed only in a thin robe and her rubber boots. In the moonlight she looked pale, her lips almost blue. “You need to be very still. The moose is gentle, but he will attack if he thinks he’s been threatened.”
“Drop the gun or I’ll blow your head off.” It was what he wanted to do anyway, but Nell was probably right about the moose. The big-ass animal seemed to have had too much stimulation for one night.
“I can pay you a million dollars. Just get me out of here and let me have the girl. She took everything from me. I’m a rich man. I'll get you anything you want.” Warren Lyle stood still, his voice a low, desperate rasp.
He was just digging himself a deeper hole. “The only thing I really want is to blow your head off. The only reason I haven’t done it yet is because of that woman over there. Whatever she did to you it was because she was trying to help someone else.”
“And because he was evil.” Nell’s teeth chattered as she spoke.
Where the hell was Mel? He was at an impasse. He needed to get Nell somewhere warm, but first he had to make sure he didn’t get trampled by Bullwinkle.
“So if he’s evil, I can kill him, right?” Maybe she would be reasonable about this.
She shook her head. “Henry, we can’t sink to their level.”
He’d already sunk. He’d likely killed far more than Warren Lyle could conceive of. Nell would be horrified. “Drop the gun or what she says won’t matter to me. Do you understand?”
Lyle’s gun dropped, falling to the ground.
Mel stalked up from behind. “You did real good, there, professor. Are you sure you haven’t done some hunting in your time?”
Oh, he’d hunted a lot—terrorists, killers, rogue agents. “I just got lucky.”
Bishop kicked Lyle’s gun out of the way as Mel walked straight up to the moose. Logan took his coat off and wrapped it around Nell. Bishop was starting to like the kid.
“Go on, now. You’ve had your fun.” Mel slapped at the moose’s backside, and Bishop stiffened, waiting for the thing to strike.